I am always a mite disturbed when people advocate the banning of fascist literature on the grounds that reading it will turn people into fascists, like some dreadful contagion.
Gentles all, have you _read_ any fascist literature?
It's badly-written puerile shit that couldn't convince anyone whose brain hasn't already been eaten.
Far from banning it, we should put it on a big shelf in libraries labeled "CAN YOU BELIEVE WHAT THESE MORONS ACTUALLY THINK?" for people to point and laugh at.
@nyrath @Hcobb @isaackuo @MeiLin
Applying the same principles to growth-obsessed societies/peoples suggest to me that GFGS civs are acutely vulnerable to breaking down into civil resource wars - and, if you're using relativistic transports, probably the kind of civil resource wars that leave nothing behind except the Cancer Emulation Is Not A Viable Strategy Memorial Stellar Graveyard of 3162.
@nyrath @Hcobb @isaackuo @MeiLin Actually, while I contemplate cancer analogies for growth-for-growth's sake, it occurs to me that there are obvious modes of failure that apply to tumors which also apply to GFGS civilizations.
Necrosis, in which logistic problems starve the center; and cancer-gets-cancer, in which attacking your neighbors to expand into their territory provides better returns than trying to expand into the now-distant margin of the tumor/sphere.
(Step two, for those not paying attention, is the part where you conclude consciously or subconsciously that your immense caring grants you an exemption to all the ethical rules standing between you and the full fascist fucknuggetry you just thought of.)
@cstross
It's OK to like the engineering of space X without agreeing with the personal politics of Elon Musk.
If every inventor in the world had to pass an ideological purity test, we'd still be struggling with taming fire.
It's when we start projecting "the engineering is good so the politics have to be good" we get in trouble.
Also: "Inviting a Communist Party into our market, even as it bars foreign competition in its own, is no one’s idea of advancing capitalism. What exactly do these groups think they're defending? Is this really their conception of the free market?"
I will defend to the death the right of my enemies to believe half-baked economic theories which lead them to subsidize cheap goods for me at their expense, for reasons that should be obvious to anyone not prone to leave free money on the table.
I am told that libertarians are badly isolated in this TikTok fight, and how much our kicking and screaming is hurting our credibility in the conservative coaltion.
Gentles all, _fuck_ the conservative coalition.
If you don't have principles when it's inconvenient, you don't have principles. And you don't deserve to have any credibility, either.
Science fiction writer. Speaker to minerals. Consensualist. Illeist. Pony and kanmusu stan. Can call spirits from the vasty deep!