star trek! i had to ask Ai as I did not watch star trek, star wars or any of that. my childhood was just reruns of "Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier." I don't think there was any money mentioned in those movies. Except for the riverboat episode in which the pirates sink with treasure in the boat.
Discussion
yeah, they have some funny ideas about money in star trek, they make it seem like only those big ear guys use it but that's nonsense obviously... the replicators meant that there was very little need for basic construction and the computers could build a lot of things but the simple fact was they were a military organisation, and the stars of the show were a recon ship, essentially, that's why they were so science focused
hmmm. i sometimes wonder if military type orgs could be better run than private enterprise. especially if the hypothetically well-run military institution had unlimited funding that hamstrings the private enterprise.
Amtrak has this problem .it's national and threatened to be privatized. but then when things get privatized, the vision gets reduced to short term profit. so bold visions need national support, even if it's just the vision of sitting on a train across the desert.
privatized services start skimping on the station cleanliness and the silverware turns to plastic etc.
military organisations don't have unlimited funding, they do however have the lion's share of the budget from taxation
without taxation, militaries cannot be expeditionary, aggressive forces
the original model for defense for the USA was militias, which were entirely self funded... soldiers were all like the same as a reserve force in that they did other work much of the time and maintained their training to stay effective
just keep in mind that prior to the Federal Reserve, the federal tax was like 2%, and the USA had no standing army before this, and if they needed money they basically would beg for it, mainly from the wealthy people whose products were needed and whose interests were in maintaining security
the modern social democratic state is an evil institution that grows like a cancer and consumes the wealth of the people, and gives nothing back, scaling government back to pre-20th century would be worthy of being called a golden age
I think Amtrak will become good when bitcoin is the dominant money. That's because I think corporations become a lot more efficient when they can't beg for the money printer to go brr - that's basically what's going on when corporations get special deals with government, special interest rates, guarantees, mote-raising regulation, etc.. Look at how the railroads were originally built - the only thing the government did was offer a prize of 1 or 2 million dollars (forgot, but not more than 2 mil) to the first RR to reach the west coast. The RRs had to buy the land - there was shady stuff, but they paid. The winner got the prize, the losers had to figure out how to turn a profit to repay debts.
One of Amtrak's problems is that they are required to provide service to places that aren't profitable. And they aren't profitable because suburbia spreads out the population, so the traffic at one station is always relatively sparse. Hard money fixes suburbia, too. Land/homes stop being a store of value, people lose whatever incentives they've had not to have chickens, and population reorganized to both higher and lower densities. I would definitely not want to own a suburban house while bitcoin is monetizing. Anyways... Amtrak will be fine after the US realizes it actually does have to learn from the models built in other countries.
amtrak shouldn't exist... idk if you read Atlas Shrugged or played any of the Railroads! games but before the mid 20th century all train companies were private businesses, pretty much also all across the world
if a business can't be run as a private company it isn't a viable enterprise, there should not be any exceptions to this, because the only way to fund them is to take people's money away for it, it doesn't matter which way you frame it, that's extortion if people don't give it voluntarily.
that's the point - the train company should be funded by its customers, not arbitrary other people
Oh, as a government thing, it definitely shouldn't exist. I think the entity will probably continue on, though. It'll privatize.
and it will become way more efficient if they do, i like how Trump is razoring the size of the federal government but i'm sure he will be fought every step of the way and the result will be middling, and people will forget these times and let it slide back to shit again in the future. Unless maybe something else happens to end their tyranny.
Bitcoin will fix it. I think Trump has to give some oligarchs military spending to get their support against the welfare oligarchs. War is obviously stupid, but I'd rather the government literally light the money on fire than make more people dependent on welfare in all its various forms.
I guess I'll survive if Amtrak privatizes, but what about porta-potties in city parks.
I'm so tired of public restrooms being "closed for maintenance" and contracts given to some porta-john provider ("Honey Buckets" in Texas).
And all the portajohns were probably all at the Coachella event last week and sprayed out and installed at the kite festival this week
And I will use one next week at the ride-a-retired-train festival next week.
Meanwhile the umbrella portajohn company is buying Bitcoin on their balance sheet.
yeah the government used to pay for toilets to be maintained, funny how they don't seem to be able to do that now... too busy raising their own pay rates endlessly and demanding the government issue more debt to cover it, while we have to pay more taxes on the other side
happened all over the world... in bulgaria one of the solutions is private companies take over the toilets and they charge like 30 cents to use it, TP included at the counter, would be good if more countries would adopt this strategy... and they really need an attendant at these things, so they don't go for a day or more without service
here on madeira, there is a few public toilets in parks and you see the cleaners in them pretty regularly, yet ironically, at the one right next to the main town hall of this area i live in, is pretty awful and smelly and poorly maintained, but the ones in the tourist district are good
if they aren't gonna maintain them, they should sell them and let private individuals make it profitable enough to keep a person there to watch over them and clean up any messes that arise through the day... i'd happily pay to use a toilet that is actually really nice and clean, i think everyone would
but that shades into the other issue that these corrupt governments, especially local ones, are doing all kinds of things that result in escalating street crime and the junkies make a mess of the toilets because they are out of it and don't have any moral fibre
yeah, that's the thing... it almost seems like they put trump in to pull things back a little so it doesn't lead to total loss of trust in the government, and then once everything seems nice again they will lets the rats back out to play
I recall this from Voyager, which always made me smile.
https://video.nostr.build/c383aae3a410fa929f64f4b8d7ef0e41bc2103debc76e0366c7f332decfbcaab.mp4
Very cool. It's so funny how we write stories that become the future