Haven - cutting welfare

Another problem with the Dolists is peer pressure NOT to get a job/study etc. We have that problem in some of the slum schools here that doing well in school is "acting white" and there is significant peer pressure NOT to do well in school in those neighborhoods.

Haven Dolists have it exponentially worse. There the problem is so big, it's not just a few neighborhoods but the majority of society. The peer pressure not to excel in the traditional fashion is going to be enormous. A few independent minded types will buck the trend but most people are fairly susceptible to peer pressure (whether they admit it or not).

The war caused a profound change in this peer pressure. Now the peer pressure is in the other direction.

JeffEngel wrote:Haven did seem to have a fair bit of ways for Dolists to keep themselves amused without doing the economy much if any net good accidentally. There's sex, rioting, cheap drugs (trade excess cheap food for it, say, and you're not stimulating demand much), and cheap HD.

Even plenty of ambitious Dolists could easily get sucked into activities that won't help: participation in a lousy educational system, participation in ideology-driven academia (mainstream or alternative), beefing up InSec's state thuggery, participation in ineffective resistance movements. Maybe exotic sex and rioting! And all of those would be the likelier places for ambitious Dolists to move into, most of the nominal ramps the old Havenite system provided for "advancement".

That´s exactly my point, that just trashing the education by itself isn´t enough, you have to keep people from doing "good" anywhere to kill off such a vast economy as Haven is.

Rules and regulations that stymie innovation and business creativity, and like you said, "other things" to keep as much of the populace as "sedate" as possible.
And so on, there´s plenty more that can be done.

And like i said before, all that is unlikely to just "happen" on its own, it might, but it´s far more likely that the Malign "rigged the system" from behind the curtains, to keep Haven from becoming a danger.

And once their influence was broken by the revolutions, you get a bounceback effect along with the improved politics("relatively" improved for the regime between revolutions).

Duckk wrote:
Ah yes, FASAnomics, where a XXL engine that costs as much as an entire lance of assault mechs. Then there's the goofy combat scale where .50 cal machine guns apparently only reach to 90 meters...

Actually, BT MGs are very seriously NOT .50s.
If you check out the source material, anything up to automatic 30mm cannons can be listed as "Machinegun".

The "average" seems to be rapid fire/multibarrel 20mm guns(at least some of those definitely modelled on the 20mm Vulcan Gatling).

And the range oddity is because of how it was made as a game first and tech second(which is often a good thing).

And the way that ablative armour is the norm, it IS actually possible to make a serious argument for the ranges to be "in universe" realistic.

Light guns like a "MG" then simply does not have enough energy in a burst of fire beyond the stated range to cause "normal" armour to loose any thickness to ablation, it simply "bounces" it completely.

Also, as an interesting sidenote to that, is the fact that serious research is currently being done into ablating armour, which if combined in layers with so called super facehardened armour, actually DOES have properties like the fictional BT armour...


OTOH, current research is nothing near the kind of extreme protection given, and the most advanced type of ablative armour i´ve found so far, is actually made out of explosives, and is 90% UNRELIABLE, so effectively worthless as too much explodes 9 times out of 10.


Armour research overall though, especially superfacehardened, might very well turn currently used weapon and armour techs completely obsolete in less than a decade or two depending on how the next couple of generations turns out.

Already, tests with Exote SFH material added on a regular tank, just 1-2cm of material, appears to be enough to make sabot shots have a drastically increased level of failure, as the material disrupts the fluid dynamics impact and instead causes the sabots to either break longitudinally(and have multiple ineffective impact points) or get squashed against the armour, or both.

JeffEngel wrote:snip...
Maybe exotic sex and rioting!
snip...

What exactly is exotic rioting?

crewdude48 wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:snip...
Maybe exotic sex and rioting!
snip...

What exactly is exotic rioting?

What you get when scab workers try to cross the picket line at a unionized "gentlemen's club"?

biochem wrote:Another problem with the Dolists is peer pressure NOT to get a job/study etc. We have that problem in some of the slum schools here that doing well in school is "acting white" and there is significant peer pressure NOT to do well in school in those neighborhoods.

Haven Dolists have it exponentially worse. There the problem is so big, it's not just a few neighborhoods but the majority of society. The peer pressure not to excel in the traditional fashion is going to be enormous. A few independent minded types will buck the trend but most people are fairly susceptible to peer pressure (whether they admit it or not).

The war caused a profound change in this peer pressure. Now the peer pressure is in the other direction.

For a real life example of this, read Ben Carson's biography. When his mother laid down some rules for him and his brother to start them learning, many of the neighbors started telling her that her kids would hate her when they grew up. Her reply was basically, that at least they would be capable.

Very capable: Head neurosurgeon in the pediatrics dept. of John Hopkins, presidential candidate now; and his brother became an aerospace engineer. The joke on his brother is that he hated algebra in H.S., complained he would never have a use for it, did his best to talk his mother into letting him skip it. She had the guts to insist he quit complaining, and do his homework.

I think that woman's refusal to go along with the peer crowd got two people out of the slums.

When you consider it, the difference between us and a hunter/gatherer society is the infrastructure, including the knowledge needed.

BTW, agriculture and herding could be thought of as the first steps toward conservation: replacing plants used, and animals harvested instead of stripping the local environment bare. They had to know about seeds and births, not just how to get the food. Of course, on this we are still learning. Management intensive grazing is less than a century old, and it allows much increased carrying capacity while improving the pasture. There are like advances in intensive gardening and aquaponics.

Per the educational side of the Haven Dolist situation:

"While Wall Street tends to focus on balance sheets and income statements and treats employees as an expense to be curtailed, human capital is what truly separates great companies from mediocre ones. Over time, production processes can be copied, non-human assets can be acquired, and current technology becomes outdated, but innovative employees are a source of sustainable, long-term competitive advantage."

from:

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2 ... maker.aspx

Tesla and Apple seem to be in a battle to hire skilled employees. It has been suggested that one reason US teacher's union NEA is against educational vouchers is that they are afraid it would start competition they couldn't handle. I know I had to retire years late because of the problem of finding a capable replacement (but it helped my income and the work is interesting)

The family helped: my parents took an active interest in how we kids did in school; one summer vacation started late for me because I had not learned the math I should have that year. Dad sat me down and drilled me. It is easier to fool a teacher than a parent who does his job


Douglas Hvistendahl
Retired technical nerd
ddhviste@drtel.net

Dumb mistakes are very irritating.
Smart mistakes go on forever
Unless you test your assumptions!

DDHvi wrote:...

Tesla and Apple seem to be in a battle to hire skilled employees. It has been suggested that one reason US teacher's union NEA is against educational vouchers is that they are afraid it would start competition they couldn't handle. I know I had to retire years late because of the problem of finding a capable replacement (but it helped my income and the work is interesting)
...

Considering that the effect of educational vouchers here has been a slide downwards in education quality, i think they have some excellent reasons to oppose it.

Sounds good in theory, but brings a crapload of problems with it.

Here we get stories like the valedictorian at a New Oreans public HS who couldn't pass the state mandated test required to get her HS diploma. This isn't a hard test. The valedictorian was functionally illiterate. How do well do you think the other kids were educated?