Funny Events of the "Woke" world

Ag3ma

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It's funny let's say hypothetically an asteroid falls down on Earth loaded with expensive resources that dwarf even the debt by a factor of 10. To lessen other variables let's say it fell on a state and no one died, and to make this even more unrealistic, and simple let's say everyone agreed it belongs to the federal government. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if Biden straight-up just gave it to the highest US bidder for pennies on the dollar with Black Rock and Co. coming in and lobbying them when in reality the best thing to do would be to charge for it at semi market rates, pay off the debt, make SS and the Medicare plus Medicaid programs solvent, do lots of future goods spending aka infrastructure spending with high-speed rail, walkable cities for those that want it, housing, and etc.

Don't for a second think this isn't plausible.
It's not just plausible, it's what generally happens. The government sells licences to companies for access, or levies a tax of some sort on the extracted product.

For a country the size of the USA this can be limited: Saudi Arabia or Norway can make a fortune for the government because they have small populations and so correspondingly modest government budgets. $1 trillion worth of oil offers a country that economic size vastly more options than it offers a country the size of the USA.

Nevertheless, there is a concern about countries using that wealth in what may be relatively poor ways. The UK used its 80s oil bonanza for tax cuts, which was great at the time for people who had more cash in their pocket, but now is often viewed as a huge missed opportunity. It's certainly a concern that the USA would let a lot of the potential income slip through its fingers to give easy profits to shareholders.
 
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meiam

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It's funny let's say hypothetically an asteroid falls down on Earth loaded with expensive resources that dwarf even the debt by a factor of 10. To lessen other variables let's say it fell on a state and no one died, and to make this even more unrealistic, and simple let's say everyone agreed it belongs to the federal government. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if Biden straight-up just gave it to the highest US bidder for pennies on the dollar with Black Rock and Co. coming in and lobbying them when in reality the best thing to do would be to charge for it at semi market rates, pay off the debt, make SS and the Medicare plus Medicaid programs solvent, do lots of future goods spending aka infrastructure spending with high-speed rail, walkable cities for those that want it, housing, and etc.

Don't for a second think this isn't plausible.
Such a strange example. To start with, if there really was such a large amount of resource on it, the price of those resources price would crash and become extremely cheap. Also I don't know why it would be unrealistic that it would be agreed the material belong to the federal government, they are the largest landowner in the country by quite a lot, chance are good it would fall on federal land. But then, yes, the government would grant a license for it to be exploited. The price of the resource are for the extracted, refined and accurately measured version. All of these require expertise that the government doesn't have and are quite expensive to do, you can look up profit margin for mining company and they're not outrageously high (typically in the 5-10% range). Sure, the government could make its own state owned enterprise to exploit it, but those don't have the best track record and it would take quite a long time to get the project started.
 

Silvanus

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Such a strange example. To start with, if there really was such a large amount of resource on it, the price of those resources price would crash and become extremely cheap.
That's far from certain. Prices are not just determined by absolute, overall supply-- the available supply is throttled by ownership, market vagaries, and artificial scarcity. The result is that there can be enough of something for everyone in a country to have plenty, and yet its price remains prohibitively high and people go without. A prime example is shelter. There is enough empty, long-term-unused, indoor space in my country to house every single homeless person, with acres to spare. But... we have a homelessness epidemic. Because owners would rather sit on disused property than see it put to "unprofitable" use.

If the sheer glut of a resource arrived on an asteroid, and corps got their hands on it, they'd throttle the supply to maintain a high profit margin year-on-year, politicians would do nothing to stop them, and plenty of people (the poor) would go without.

Unless it was kept out of private hands by a government with a bit of foresight, and unbeholden to corporate interest. But good luck getting one of those in the US.
 
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RhombusHatesYou

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It's certainly a concern that the USA would let a lot of the potential income slip through its fingers to give easy profits to shareholders.
Yeah, no country could be that stupid...

*looks at Australia*

Oh right.. Ignore that world's largest LNG exporter that makes more money off tobacco excise that it does on LNG royalties.
 

tstorm823

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(My comments directed at the article's author)
Go to a different agent and get the book published, idiot! Nobody was even upset about a white person writing about Indian culture, one (terrible) agent was afraid that other people would be upset, and recommended trying somewhere else. So do that instead of whining on the internet please.
 

Terminal Blue

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It hurts doubly because not only do I think that cultures are enriched by appropriation
Ah yes, the well-known "enrichment" of Indian cultures..

Honestly, I struggle to imagine that anyone who says stupid shit like this has anything worthwhile to say about anything that would justify printing it, and I suspect the agent is simply sparing their feelings.

Getting a literary agent, especially for a work of fiction, is incredibly, incredibly difficult. The idea of some fucking boomer getting upset because an agent didn't reply to them immediately is somewhere on the border of funny and pathetic. If you want someone to stroke your ego, pay a vanity press. That's what they're for.
 
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Ag3ma

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Ah yes, the well-known "enrichment" of Indian cultures..

Honestly, I struggle to imagine that anyone who says stupid shit like this has anything worthwhile to say about anything that would justify printing it.
Many Britons seem to think fondly of the days when their ancestors used to 'enrich Indian culture'.
 

Silvanus

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Getting a literary agent, especially for a work of fiction, is incredibly, incredibly difficult. The idea of some fucking boomer getting upset because an agent didn't reply to them immediately is somewhere on the border of funny and pathetic.
This isn't really a fair description of what happened. He already had an agent, and through them another agent had said they would look for a publisher. The latter then not only didn't look for a publisher as they said, but strung the author along for several years with replies implying they were still working on it. Any way you look at it that's some enormous unprofessionalism.
 
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Satinavian

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Yes. If what was described, really happened (one side of the story and all that), it is pretty bad.

For an agent (yes, he found the agent through a referral and they are not his usual agent, but they is the main agent for the illustrator who also was not informed and they acted as agent for this particular book) to pretend for several years to look for a publisher, but not actually presenting it to a single one and just doing some general asking around is basically not doing his job and lying about it.
If he really thought he couldn't get it published, he should have informed the author and artist immediately instead of feeding their hopes to continue getting paid.

That is something to be upset about. The appropriation angle is kinda secondary here. Children book market is hard and we have not seen any actual publisher rejecting the book expressly for that reason. We only have an excuse from some horrible agent claiming that publishers would do so and it would not be worth to bother.
 
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Terminal Blue

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The latter then not only didn't look for a publisher as they said, but strung the author along for several years with replies implying they were still working on it. Any way you look at it that's some enormous unprofessionalism.
The level of entitlement is still annoying, because again, it's the publishing industry. It's one of the most brutal commercial environments there is. Most people who send manuscripts to a literary agent never get a reply at all, because unless you're a well established author who has never produced a single commercial failure an extremely rich person who is willing to throw huge amounts of money into an obvious scam or an already famous person with an audience likely to be converted into book sales, the likelihood is you're not going to make anyone money, which is all anyone cares about.

Expecting any kind of standard of treatment from someone who holds all the cards, owes you absolutely nothing and whose soul likely left their body while they were reading five different YA novels with supernatural love triangles every day back in 2005 is naive enough to be cringe.

Most people think they can write a book. Very few of those people are actually capable of writing a book anyone will pay money to read. If you've found an audience of internet smart boys who FUCKING LOVE SCIENCE and need a substitute daddy to tell them how cool it is to be an atheist, and if you've managed to make money off them, maybe just take the win instead of pretending to be an artist.

And yeah, I'm overreacting, but this boomer shit is a pet peeve. Young people in any kind of creative industry generally learn very fast what their actual value is. Watching old men cry because the world isn't bending around them just makes me want to slap them.

If he really thought he couldn't get it published, he should have informed the author and artist immediately instead of feeding their hopes to continue getting paid.
Literary agents are paid by commission.

If you're paying an agent directly, it's a vanity publishing scam.
 
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Silvanus

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The level of entitlement is still annoying, because again, it's the publishing industry. It's one of the most brutal commercial environments there is. Most people who send manuscripts to a literary agent never get a reply at all, because unless you're a well established author who has never produced a single commercial failure an extremely rich person who is willing to throw huge amounts of money into an obvious scam or an already famous person with an audience likely to be converted into book sales, the likelihood is you're not going to make anyone money, which is all anyone cares about.

Expecting any kind of standard of treatment from someone who holds all the cards, owes you absolutely nothing and whose soul likely left their body while they were reading five different YA novels with supernatural love triangles every day back in 2005 is naive enough to be cringe.
Expecting basic professional courtesy from somebody who has told you they'll do something for years is not unreasonable or "cringe", and is not equivalent to just sending a manuscript to an agent you don't have a relationship with and not getting an initial response.

I think you're being unduly harsh because of the cultural appropriation element, but you're not doing justice to the situation.
 
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Silvanus

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Biden is owned by Black Rock.
We were talking about automation. What does any of this-- the stuff about Biden selling resources to the highest bidder, and being owned by Black Rock-- have to do with automation?
 

Gergar12

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We were talking about automation. What does any of this-- the stuff about Biden selling resources to the highest bidder, and being owned by Black Rock-- have to do with automation?
He and the democrat's political class won't save us from being jobless when it happens, you have only yourself to rely on due to him siding with private equity over works like traditional democrats LBJ, JFK, and FDR have.
 

Trunkage

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He and the democrat's political class won't save us from being jobless when it happens, you have only yourself to rely on due to him siding with private equity over works like traditional democrats LBJ, JFK, and FDR have.
I could say that LBJ and FDR are better than Biden on Labour. It would be a mistake to think that any of them could be relied on for much. Even progressives, who are usually for labour, aren't really for keeping old jobs like smithing, coopering or (recently) coal mining
 

BrawlMan

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I hate book banners of all kinds. Get a life people. It's one thing to criticize but it's another thing when you got crap like this going on. I still say those on the Republican side are slightly worse, but the ones doing it on the left are much better either.
 

Trunkage

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If you got access, can you summarize a little. I could see it talking about review bombing before I gave up trying to get around the paywall

Eat Pray Love might not deserve one star, but it might not get to two
 

Ag3ma

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He and the democrat's political class won't save us from being jobless when it happens, you have only yourself to rely on due to him siding with private equity over works like traditional democrats LBJ, JFK, and FDR have.
I think this is an unsafe assumption.

It's unsafe because our societies have in many ways remained quite static - there are rich, and there are poor, and elections are won by the middle deciding to side with the rich or the poor and generally balancing them out. When you're talking about a society with the economics turned upside down through mass unemployment due to automation, it's radically different and you may not be able to apply the logic of the here and now.