So while we're mired in the Second Great Depression American workers keep getting squeezed from below by illegals and above by H1B.

For so long Crytek looked like they were doing so well. What went wrong?

The reason why comes down to their doomsday prophecies. In the Jewish (and Christian) prophecy the state of Israel returns. Needless to say for Islam this is not a situation they will tolerate simply because it makes someone else's superstitious nonsense look more legit than theirs.

Wind was the power of Columbus, we stopped using it 100 years ago as a power source for a reason. Yet, we are told it is the future. Light rail used to be the main mode of transport (unless you were rich and owned a car), your great grandparents probably used to use it. Yet we are told this is the future. This is their ideal lifestyle, and yes I've actually been told that the early 1900's lifestyle is the "ideal" lifestyle because it used less resources. You see, that's what this is really about, in their view we are in imminent danger of running out of resources so we must "live with less". In reality they were pushing this long before global warming even became an issue. What they don't tell you is that this means hugely increasing our poverty levels by making everything, especially electricity, exorbitantly expensive, it's already happening in Germany. So how exactly is it progressive to want to go back to some idyllic earlier time? Isn't that what reactionaries want? And as I've pointed out in another post, all this is completely meaningless. The third world is not going to reduce it's CO2 emissions. We could impoverish ourselves and reduce our emissions to zero, and it won't make any different because of that.

Carbon based fuels are here to stay for a long time, there's no getting around that. It's going to be a couple of decades before the technology will be ready to replace combustion engines in cars and thanks to the environmentalists we're going to be stuck with coal and natural gas for decades more at least. There's no point in artificially driving up the cost, especially when it's the poor who get shafted.

Let's stop pretending that renewable energy is anything other than a massive malthusian scheme to strangle our civilization. Defunding research into nonsense that's never been able to replace fossil fuels for electricity production is somehow going to have grievous consequences for the climate? Seriously? While Germany, China and the third world continue to build NEW coal fired power plants? While the Chinese throw their bicylces aside for fossil fuel burning cars by the hundreds of thousands every year? "Sound public policy"? These policies are economically devastating to the poor by artificially driving up prices of even basic things like electricity and depriving them of opportunity. If you don't believe me take your electricity bill and multiply it by 5, now imagine how someone with more modest means feels when he or she sees this. There's consequences for going back to the early 1900's, back when cars and electricity were toys for rich people, but you won't find this in the utopian visions of the sustainability movement. It will end like every other utopian experiment, a fiscal and/or humanitarian disaster with the poor paying a huge price. I think it's time for Krauss and the rest of the bourgeoisie elite to get their heads out of the sand and realize that renewable energy and "sustainable transport" are giant leaps backwards. This is class warfare being fed by their narcissistic do gooder fantasies, and I'm glad at least someone is putting a stop to it. Good for you Australia for turning away from this malthusian suicide pact.

Renewable energy and "sustainable transportation" were largely tried in the 19th century and abandoned because they were too limiting. This isn't the real future, this is what reactionary conservatives like yourself want to take us back to.

The reality is publishing is a dying business. It used to be that the only way an author could sell to the mass market was by begging publishers to take it to print. Naturally because it limited competition it tremendously benefited big, established authors like Stross. Another unfortunate side effect was that it severely limited books about skeptical topics like debunking paranormal nonsense. It's no accident that in book stores there's usually only a handful of science related books and row upon row of new age spirituality books, because that's what the PUBLISHERS decided was popular. Amazon and other e-publishing platforms changed all that. Now we're seeing an explosion in lower priced books with far more variety than could be conceived before. What Stross is really saying is that people should pay more and have fewer choices about what they pay for. Let's not pretend it's anything other than a cynical ploy to turn people against a system that has so far proven to be far more pro-consumer for his personal gain. Shame on you Mr. Stross, shame on you.