What does that have to do with the gay marriage debate here?

Translation: Under self-censorship, people are required to change their posts to pander toward the agents in power.  In other words, no, our society isn't perfectly fair and just, and I'm not the best forum poster in IC politics history. 

> xeno syndicated wrote:

> What's the value of even having argumentative / debate discussions on internet forums in general.  I know having debates on this particular forum is pretty much pointless, for it is nearly thoroughly censored by the right-wing, near police-state enforcement by such mods as Zarf , but for the sake of this discussion, let's consider the value of online politics debate discussion forums / news sites comments sections in general.

In general, yeah, it makes sense.  That being said, I have to go to bat for the mods here. 

Remember, in this forum, the politics forum even specifically has exceptions placed in certain rules for the sake of preventing content-based censorship you describe.  For the most part, the only moderator intervention in the politics forum is based on issues of wording choice (such as swearing).  In issues such as swearing, there's generally not a reason why avoiding swearing changes the political content of one's message... so the net effect is extremely minimal.  As for trolling/personal attacks, it could be easily argued that allowing personal attacks is actually counterproductive to the facilitation of debate, because parties are polarized to the point where the political issue at hand suddenly becomes second to the person making the post.

Actually, I'm with you on that... I was mainly making a joke, hoping to follow with something along the lines of "yes, it would definitely be in the best interests of the country to prevent Justinian from marrying..." and perhaps follow it by some comments about preventing proliferation of evil genes... you know, my general routine. 

> [TI] Sitting Duck wrote:

> Actually Zarf is correct, Kelvin would be a lot more appropriate.

Exactly!  Silly people assuming there's only two temperature scales. 

Well, there is, assuming "needs" means "encouraging the person to leave the computer and do something more productive than arguing on the internetz." 

I googled it, I swear!

I like xeno's idea on this, and was going to suggest it myself once I got the willpower to write up a post. 

Seems like the best balance... and it means players actually have to work to maximize the benefit from op planets, rather than the "+1 op per tick, max 1" system.  That system just makes it way too easy for oppers to receive the benefits.

> twosidedeath wrote:

> the farm subsidies is another interesting situation. knowing that this is a huge import in china it would make sense to let the prices rise in order to help inflation in thier country but perhaps we are trying to force a dependance where later when they are unable to replace us we effectively have a monopoly. this is also what china does for thier manufacturing which is thier major export. it is a funny system

Well, there's a couple reasons why that is probably a terrible idea.

1: It's not a real economic monopoly.  Yes, it's a monopoly in the sense that there would only be a single producer in the market.  However, the only reason any single business would obtain that market share was because subsidies were offsetting the cost of production, so a significant portion of the industry are producing beyond their cost of production, simply because they don't realize the losses.  If I sell shoes at $5.00 a pair, but it costs me $6.00 a pair to produce, I'd normally be producing no net gain for society.  But if the government subsidizes my business for $2.00 per pair produced, I can produce despite the fact that I'm not actually adding any sort of wealth to society.

2: What you're describing is clearly illegal under international law.  Both the US and EU signed onto the General Agreement on Trade an Tariffs, which among other things banned exactly the behavior you described.

3: Empirically, we know that nations retaliate against US and European subsidies with their own trade barriers.  Most recently, the Doha round of international trade talks, meant to advance World Trade Organization tariff reductions, collapsed because a coalition of developing nations, led by Brazil, argued that cutting tariffs without seeing reciprocal cuts in US and European farm subsidies.  In addition, the WTO actually found the US liable for damages to Brazillian farmers as a result of US cotton subsidies, allowing Brazil to levy a huge tariff on US pharmaceuticals (the US and Brazil actually settled out of court, with the US paying the equivalent amount in subsidies to Brazillian cotton farmers, rather than allowing the tariff to come into effect).

4: At the point where both US and European governments offer subsidies on sometimes competing products, clearly complaining about the subsidies of the other while ignoring their own... it's clearly not a monopoly because the US and Europe will be competing with one another... the result being increased subsidies to compete with on another (and thus, decreasing product efficiency in production).

5: Seriously... your argument is that the world won't be able to produce agriculture after a while?  Now, I understand where this is coming from (that they can't compete with a subsidized US product), but the end goal just committed the US to perpetually keeping subsidies at dumping prices.  The moment subsidies go away, whether by domestic pressure (probably because we're spending hundreds of millions subsidizing big business) or by international pressure (the more monopolized the market becomes, the more likely the WTO, Brazil, or other agents that don't like US subsidies will endorse reciprocal barriers against the US), the market becomes competitive again... and the decades of farm subsidy policy are rendered useless.  Agriculture's not that difficult a business to get into once you can buy the land. 

The European Union has an even bigger farm subsidy program than the US... so yeah, it's a pretty big amount of distortion in food prices overall.

Which person is the "you" to which that post was directed?  Are we talking about the birth control proposal, or my development proposal?

Haha.  Okay.

But you're definitely right, part of the problem in some nations is that they're not very good markets for businesses to invest.  So what's the solution?  I'd say work by example... unless you're willing to go Iraq War on Somalia and every other developing nation to reestablish a government.  However, even your solution (some sort of birth control in those countries) would require an infraction of sovereignty on those nations... inevitably meaning going Iraq War on them, with the exception that a development war would be articulated as "we want to establish a legitimate government and develop your economy," whereas a birth control-motivated war would be easily interpreted as "we want to take over your country so we can kill off your kids."  Which one looks nicer? 

So what's the alternative?  Back to economics.

East Asia is really the envy of the developing world, in that they're the center of foreign investment just by merit of stable governments and cheap labor.  However, cheap labor can't exist forever, as we're seeing with the increasing standards of living for the region.  As a result, just like how East Asia managed to get factory production formerly reserved for Mexico, the rising standard of living in East Asia will mean they're not as good a cheap labor source, so with the maturation of manufacturing in East Asia, simple manufacturing producers will need new labor sources.  That's where Africa comes in.  From there, it's really a question of US political pressure toward stability... perhaps some light interventionism, such as helping out one dictator or another with equipment or something.  Remember, most African countries can provide cheap labor.  It's really a question of who is first to stabilize politically.

Remember, businesses aren't necessarily looking for democracies to invest in, although that would be nice.  More than anything, they're looking for stability... governments that won't randomly seize property at a whim, countries with stable property rights laws... a democracy has its own advantages, and may be better at providing some services, but examples like China clearly indicate it's not a prerequisite.