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  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday January 01 2020, @01:12PM (3 children)

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Wednesday January 01 2020, @01:12PM (#938186) Journal

    I think the world in The Expanse is even more screwed up than ours.

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday January 01 2020, @02:07PM (1 child)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 01 2020, @02:07PM (#938192) Journal

    That could warrant a discussion, in and of itself. The most exploited people in the Expanse, are the Belters. We have our blood diamonds, our copper miners, our coal miners, our child labor, and our sweat shops, without ever considering real slave labor.

    All in all, I think that world is directly comparable to our own, in screwiness.

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Wednesday January 01 2020, @02:49PM

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Wednesday January 01 2020, @02:49PM (#938211) Journal

      Well, maybe the worst exploited people suffer about the same, but in my understanding, in The Expanse even the Earth people, with exclusion of a small upper class, are very bad off. IMO much worse off than people in our Western world (or at least in Europe, I can't tell about the US). Of course in the series we only get very few glimpses of the life of ordinary Earth dwellers, however I assume that those are meant to be exemplary for the general Earth population.

      Basically from a social point of view, The Expanse is the world we are moving towards, but we didn't actually arrive at it yet (and I sincerely hope that we'll not get there, although I definitely see the possibility).

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 11 2020, @02:01PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 11 2020, @02:01PM (#942221)

    It's probably pretty much exactly where we're headed.

    What exactly do people think's going to happen after basic income becomes a thing? It's going to lead to achievement and consequently income inequality that will would make the kings and peasants of times past look socially indistinguishable. One group will become lazy and dependent on handouts while another group gains the riches to independently operate entire fleets and run independent planetary colonization efforts. Oh and nobody will care about the 'takers' because they literally have all their basic needs taken care of so it is provable that any failure to achieve is their fault and their fault alone.

    People are so myopic on things like this. We always see the exact same pattern on all sort of social programs. They don't push people up but instead subsidize a downward inertia. We passed all these social programs during the 'war on poverty' try to solve poverty. It's done absolutely nothing to combat poverty which is now even higher than in the late 60s just after all these programs passed. All that's changed is that we've now got 40million people that now literally would starve to death without government handouts and so they vote accordingly. Woot progress!