Yep, you need a bit of friendly competition, like the "scrap yard challenge" type shows, build something that can perform loosely related tasks A, B, C,... Thing is you only reveal the tasks one at a time, (like real life scope creep). Of course hookers and blackjack would certainly help if the budget stretches that far.

Had the same thing in a sawmill town in Australia ~1980, snow was light but most of us kept a chainsaw in the boot to get to the shop after any high winds. The electricity/phone line to the town was regularly down for 2-3 days at a time. Water was from a small dam that ran dry the second summer I was there. Apart from water, the trick is to get a gas fridge/freezer, gas lanterns, a potable gas bbq, and a half dozen gas bottles. Hot water came from an old fashion wood stove in the kitchen that doubled as a heater in winter, in summer we had cool showers.

From personal experience, no running water is much worse than no mains electricity.

A bunch of teenagers wanking off to a Natalie Portman movie have time to form a "general philosophy"?

You don't have a clue what it's like to be a billionaire and even less of a clue as to what motivates them to spend money on lawyers. If it was all about financial reward then google would simply give the government everything they wanted with a minimum of fuss and pay a few PR hacks to explain why the can't "fight city hall". I don't claim to know what their motivation is, however it's obvious there's no financial reward to be had that would outweigh the costs of their self-imposed policy.

Good plan, AFAIK they're not tracking ostriches.

As the GP said, "they" borrow it [the money] from China who, as you say yourself, are "loaning it". Unborn children and the "future-you" don't exist so they cannot possibly lend you anything, however you can take things away from them before they arrive.

So, the SG wrote a recursive tax law, but because the FG exists it must be the FG's fault?

It's much more likely to be a coup from within, reason being "your kind" are also humans. The bit that "your kind" haven't worked out yet is that the ability to discern the folly of humans in large groups does not imply the ability to avoid it.

"My kind" get the hyper-organism thing, it's not created by "my kind", it spontaneously forms whenever a human society grows past a handful of related individuals. It's only when "your kind" fully realize "your kind" are not immune that "your kind" will start to understand why society 'doesn't work'.

Many people on slashdot holding those kind of opinions self-label as libertarian, but you're correct in that it is not part of the libertarian "platform". However like "flower power" in the 60's, the libertarian movement tends to attract people under 25 who are well-meaning but very naive about the human condition. They tend to believe all people are basically decent people and will naturally "get along withe each other" if only government would stop doing "stuff". This is simply false, without larger societies humans will revert to their natural tribalism, the alpha male in each extend family will rise (sink?) to the status of warlord. What both groups are really asking for is a self governing society, what they fail to see is that we already have one. I'm not sure what it says about the US but both movements arose and are strongest in the US.

During the late 60's, early 70's the hippies leaving the city to join communes in the country was one of the largest, if not the largest, internal US mass migrations of all time. Most of the communes fell apart quickly, people simply walked/ran away when the alpha members of the group turned it into a personality cult and started using and abusing everyone else for pleasure and profit. Very few lasted more than 2yrs, about the time it takes to truly realize that living with other people, (even like minded people), entails copious amounts of compromise + confrontation (politics).

Simply put evolution has designed our minds to live in tribal societies numbering between 100-200, all other tribes (even tribes of chimps) were universally seen as sub-human, xenophobia is still alive and kicking today because in geological terms evolution is still just playing with the idea of civilization for primates.

I don't know about anyone else but my utopia is simple, it's a tropical island with plenty of fresh water, fruit, and fish, the rest of you can get the fuck off my Island.

Bullshit, my brother owned a wholesale nursery for almost 20yrs, the Aussie mega-drought killed it a few years ago. Plants sold in department stores and supermarkets are grown on contract, often the buyer supplies the patented seed/rootstock via a third party to the contract. At harvest time the buyer's insurance company sends out an assessor to make sure the crop is in good health. The plants leave the "farm" in excellent condition, from that point onwards they start to die unless they are properly taken care of in terms of light, temperature, and moisture. Warehouses, the insides of shipping containers, vans, etc, are normally dark, dry places, there's also a limit as to how long you can keep an outside plant displayed inside a supermarket, which (unlike the insurer) the store generally ignores until the leaves start falling off. I've found that supermarkets that sell poor quality plants also tend to sell poor quality fruit and veg, most likely for similar reasons.

Agreed, but they get a lot of their stock from the same wholesalers, just like the local fruit and veg shop gets their stock from the same wholesale market the big supermarkets shop at.

Just to be clear, I wasn't suggesting barefoot was superior, did you notice the guy in the video is wearing synthetic joggers? Also, wolves, dogs and hyenas ARE persistence hunters but they generally do it tag team style, apes and lions are not built for it. The video shows them targeting a healthy bull because it's horns slow it down, but in prehistoric times the kills were more likely weaker members of the heard, ie: the young, old or sick.

There are fossils of tall hominids in Africa, the species is said to have been capable of 30mph+, it's though that it practiced persistence hunting with nothing more than a fist sized rock for a weapon, they were obviously superior at that type of hunting but died out? - Thing is there is no "silver bullet" for survival, humans survived over other hominids not because we were "experts" at anything, rather it's because we were well adapted to many forms of hunting, fishing, sheltering, gathering, territorial defense, etc, etc.

Apparently DA anointed Mark Cox as his successor when accepting some lifetime achievement award, but his real achievement is the production company, he often calls the behind the scenes talent that work with him the "heroes", he has a current series that uses his old and new footage to demonstrate the technological changes as well as changes in our understanding of the rock we live on. My dad is 80 and has started to walk like Attenborough, but nobody is immortal and you simply can't replace a beloved role model who has been with you for all of your personal eternity.

You make a good point, some individuals wake up one morning and find themselves owning a thriving business, they built it from the ground up and pride themselves on being able to competently perform any and every role (yes, in many cases these people are delusional). However....

Here's another anecdote along similar lines..

I drove taxis for a few years, the guy I worked for had one of the biggest taxi fleets in the city (Melbourne), his personal wealth was around $AU30 million, he also sat on the board of the city's taxi directorate. He was normally at the depot 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, he and his son did all the repairs and servicing of the cabs, his standard attire was a pair of oily green overalls and steel cap boots. New sales reps often wandered in and asked him where "his boss" was.

His work ethic set a great example, he worked harder and longer than anyone else in the company, consequently he knew the industry inside out and top to bottom. The only job he would no longer do was driving. Unfortunately the rest of his personality was that of a complete *arsehole, he used his depth of knowledge and experience in the industry to bully his son, his workers, other board members, the local council, basically everyone on his radar. Any driver with half a brain avoided the old man and dealt with the son for shift changeover, but if you wanted your overheating cab back on the road fast then you went to the old man with the big screwdriver hung on his right thigh like a six-shooter.

*arsehole - He was a smart, honest, hard working guy, if these traits had been weaker I suspect he would have been "top dog" in a prison somewhere. I'm now roughly the same age as he was when I knew him, the "suffer no fools" attitude has its uses but it just doesn't scale to accommodate people who firmly believe everyone else is a fool.