Grrl Power #845 – Chantage sécurité
It seems Maxima’s love affair with Lorlara was short lived.
Panel 6: The implied text there is “Gary, I know this looks bad, but do you want to know what I see? An opportunity. For both of us.”
This is either a baller move, or a sign of overconfidence. Deus isn’t admitting to anything actionable here, but either way it almost seems like he’s bored with the opposition considering what he’s implying.
Make no mistake, he has an actual high end business that provides a legitimate service. Given the small number of supers in the world though, it tends to be more of a “quietly hunt down super powered blackmailers (that aren’t me) after the fact (and possibly offer them a job)” program than a vigilance/safeguard service. The way he finds new clients… might be occasionally… illegal-ish.
I’m not sure what fancy restaurant serves cake pops like a pile of bonbons, but Deus does own the place, so maybe he just likes having some down to earth stuff on the menu. Presumably these are also really good, fresh made cake pops, and not what they usually are, which is leftover cake crumbs mashed together with icing or chocolate. They’re basically the croutons of cake.
I’m also not sure what Maxima ordered there in panel 1 (or where it went in subsequent panels – oops) I think it’s either lime sherbert, or a key lime pie in a wine glass. Either way it’s got gold foil in the dessert and around the rim there. Because it’s a fancy restaurant so they have to embellish stuff like that.
I’ve finally updated the vote incentive. I’m trying something new this time. It’s a picture of Harem in the shower. All five of her. The vote incentive will take you to a SFW (PG-13) version of the pic, and there’s a NSFW over at Patreon for supporters. (Like a soft-R. Well, you can get away with some boobs in PG-13 these days, but you get the idea.)
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like!
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"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
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Lorlara is having a bacon orgasm at precisely the exact wrong time to have bacon orgasms.
There is no wrong time to have a bacon orgasm.
Why Master Dues, I understand he lesson here –killing is such a short lived pain. But this, THIS is almost as delicious as these earth water dwellers roasted in land dweller integument. And it lasts longer.
And –f-ing spell check decided to change his name from Deus
“Hey, spell-check, stop messing with my cuss words, you mother forklift.”
“Out! Out, dammned Spell-checker!”
Imagine Lorlara making these kind of brownies…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9nQ4v52fAc
Deus and Maxi stoned out of their minds…maybe Vale as well?
Here. Better recipe.
https://youtu.be/Ixe_NYTSFwo
> Private enterprise almost always does a better job than the government version, and for less money, or at the very least, more efficiently while not going bankrupt in the process :)
…according to private enterprise
“Private enterprises will not eat into your tax money like government agencies inevitability do all the time. In fact we will generate jobs and tax incomes to improve your living conditions much better than any government initiatives.”
Also:
“We need a bailout so we can employ our small army of constantly replaceable minimum wage workers. We just aren’t doing as hot as our tax haven foreign branches to stay out of the red this quarter…”
Hey now, I’m completely against bailouts for corporations.
“Too Big to Fail” was not an invention of private enterprise – it was an idea of the government.
I’m against the propping up of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into quasi-governmental entities – that was the idea of the government as well.
I can’t even blame corporations for taking the money, if the government was stupid enough to give it when they fail. Corporations know when to seek out opportunity, and the government being stupid is an opportunity. Not my fault government tends to be stupid in matters of business and economics.
I’m all for a corporation that fails to fail, so that other entrepeneurs can fill in the void.
Like I’ve said… multiple times actually…. the main problem with capitalism in the United States is that too often, government puts its fingers on the scales. Because government tends to ruin everything it plays with too much (or again, at the very least, makes it work worse).
True story- (although maybe a tad long)
Where I work, our prison food service used to be run by the state department of corrections. The legislature (not naming which party) (but you can probably guess) was determined that it could be better run by a private firm, to the point that the bidding process was rigged. They took the figures for how many meals were served on the coldest day in February, multiplied that by 365 to come up with the number of meals for the *whole year*, and asked, “Can your company feed the population this many meals for less than we spend now?” Well, of course they could!
Two years later, the company came back to the state and said they were running over budget and needed to revise the contract.
Much to his credit, the Governor said, “Hell no,” and turned everything over to the second bidder- who promptly tried to pull the same shenanigan.
Add to this untrained staff, who had relations with prisoners in the back kitchen on camera and smuggled in drugs, a staff turnover rate of umpteen people a month, and their contract was cancelled too. It’s now a department-run food service once again.
*Some* things the civil service does better, when they’re not trying to turn a buck off it.
》 ↑ This! ↑ 《
I’d like to point out that example is what happens when one combines the weaknesses of both private and public sectors though. It’s not a free market when the prisoners can’t go elsewhere for their meals and the persons paying (the taxpayer) can’t immediately eject from the payment cycle either.
Without some form of continuous accountability, clusterfucks like that are inevitable.
It’s also not a free market when you are getting a mortgage for a house or when you buy a car. Free markets are predisposed on an equity of power and information, something that hasn’t been true… well… ever really. Companies don’t want free markets, they make less money.
I’m not actually sure how you’d get a perfectly free market that lasts more than a month or two honestly. Make it super small scale and locality based? But that didn’t generate many free markets in American history, just a lot of local monopolies.
Actually, certain countries like Denmark have a VERY strong free market economy. It’s why their economy is so good. In some ways quite a bit stronger than the US, in that there’s a lot less regulation to private enterprises.
The fact that some people in the United States who are utterly clueless about economics or their own political philosophies (like Bernie Sanders) keep pointing to them as a socialist country, when even the Prime Minister has stated they are NOT a socialist country, is because they American socialists do not understand what socialism is, or that having high taxes alone does not mean you are socialist. Socialism involves the government control of private industry (including via excessive regulation).
The only difference with Denmark from an idealized market economy is they also have a very high tax rate for public services (which is mainly because they have a very small and homogenous population, which makes that more possible than in a country with a third of a billion people). In fact, the only reason they CAN have such a high tax rate is because of how heavily they lean into being a free market economy with VERY little business regulation.
You appear to be confusing the ‘Cold War bogeyman’ version of Socialism with the actual philosophy of government. You’re not alone; the fact that most of your country has the same misconception doesn’t make it true.
Socialism does not involve “government control of private industry”. What it does involve is Government committing to provide essential services to its people. Your access to decent infrastructure and healthcare being determined by the fact that you’re a resident of [insert country here], rather than being subject to the lottery of geography or the whim of profiteers.
That’s actually an amazingly good take on it. A pleasure to read, really.
Pander: Except the idea that created ‘too big to fail’ was, in fact, a result of deregulation, in the first place–namely, in allowing public investment into banks without providing adequate oversight. The issue with allowing the big banks and mortgage lenders to fail wasn’t the hit to the depositors–most of that money’s already FDIC protected. It was the fact that letting those banks fail would wipe out vast numbers of those oh-so-superior-to-Social-Security 401k plans, which would result in a massive wiping out of retirement funds for the nation, at the exact moment when we’re dealing with the last wave of Boomers entering retirement age.
If our country had a real national pension plan, ensuring people who worked for 45+ years would be able to live off their post-retirement income, then the banks wouldn’t have had the pistol to the head of the American economy, and could’ve been allowed to fail with relatively minimal fallout.
“Except the idea that created ‘too big to fail’ was, in fact, a result of deregulation, in the first place–namely, in allowing public investment into banks without providing adequate oversight. ”
No, actually too big to fail was a result of the federal government not wanting the negative short term publicity of major corporations failing because of their own poor leadership. So they propped up those failing businesses, when they should have let those businesses collapse and have other competitors fill in the void.
When government tries to pick the winners and loses, it just results in the losers somehow still succeeding, because government tends to be corrupt, or at the very least, extremely stupid when it comes to business matters. Makes sense – most government officials have not had a single day or running a business or balancing a business’s books without relying on other people’s money via taxes.
“No, actually too big to fail was a result of the federal government not wanting the negative short term publicity of major corporations failing because of their own poor leadership. So they propped up those failing businesses, when they should have let those businesses collapse and have other competitors fill in the void.”
You’re evading the actual point I made (by cutting the next line of the paragraph you quoted)–allowing those businesses to ‘collapse’ would’ve taken down the 401k stocks of a vast population just about to retire, or in the early years of their retirement. The suffering would’ve been immense, and the economy would’ve been left reeling. The bailout (which, for hte record, I think was very poorly handled) was seen as the lesser of two evils. You can make the case that senior citizens who have invested in those funds should be allowed to descend to living on half-rations of cat food if you like, but at least be honest that that would be the outcome.
“You’re evading the actual point I made (by cutting the next line of the paragraph you quoted)–allowing those businesses to ‘collapse’ would’ve taken down the 401k stocks of a vast population just about to retire”
I’m not evading anything. Whenever ANY company fails, it hurts some people who have invested in them. But then other companies rise in the void created, and new greater wealth is created. It’s why you should diversify your investmets – in case a few companies that you invest in fail. That’s how ETFs tend to work, btw, which are largely used in retirement investments.
“The suffering would’ve been immense, and the economy would’ve been left reeling.”
Not only is this highly speculative, it’s also incorrect. The economy would not have been left reeling, and the suffering would have been minimal if regulations are loosened to allow new companies to buy up the old ones and grow faster without the stifling requirements of government which tend to only favor large, existing corporations which can more easily afford to pay for the burdensome regs.
“The bailout (which, for the record, I think was very poorly handled) was seen as the lesser of two evils”
The bailout was stupid, it led to a recession, and some bailouts caused the housing bubble to burst (ie, the propping up of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, even after ‘Steady Freddie’ as shown to be cooking its books to make themselves seem like they were having never-ending increasing profits when they werent. It encouraged bad behavior and rewarded those companies, designating them as quasi-governmental companies (that’s the literal term used in the lawsuits against Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, BY the federal government).
In short, the government let inept a few big corporations lie, cheat, and steal, and then rewarded them for doing so by guaranteeing that they could not fail, which eliminated the need to run their business fairly and even remotely honestly, and largely eliminated the need for a profit motive because the government would always keep propping them up regardless of what they did.
The same problem exists with several banks and airlines. When Washington Mutual collapsed, it did not cause mass suffering. Chase just bought them up and bought up their accounts. Most people who were with Washington Mutual barely even noticed.
“You can make the case that senior citizens who have invested in those funds should be allowed to descend to living on half-rations of cat food if you like, but at least be honest that that would be the outcome.”
You are engaging in scare tactics, not in actual data. Just like the people who tried ‘too big to fail’ which allows large corporations to subvert the free market and produce results like Freddie Mac and Enron, and have accounting giants like Arthur Anderson cover for them until they are sued criminals (as they wound up being) – and THAT is what costs senior citizens their life savings, not letting a company fail so other companies can buy up the remains and replace them.
People who do not understand the steps taken in legal dissolution of a corporation are RIFE in federal government, largely because they’ve never run a business or studied business law.
You appear to have a very rose-tinted view of “the steps taken in legal dissolution of a corporation”. In many cases, by the time a corporation gets to the stage of dissolution, the ‘legal obligations’ are effectively meaningless: there is no cash or assets to pay for them in the entity that actually fails, and the holding companies that stripped out the assets are conveniently out of jurisdiction. The rose-tinted view might have been valid in the days of single-entity corporations, but not in the reality of tax havens and multilateral loan-and-lease-back arrangements.
Deus actually DOES deliver, however. Archon actually buys from him. Unlike some unscrupulous types looking for quick profits, he takes the long view, favoring repeat customers. He invested in infrastructure and education in his country because that helps in the long term.
I have little doubt that he can deliver 100% of what He’s promising and he’ll make a crapload of money in the process while increasing his personal power and influence.
I feel like you are my brother from another mother when you lay down the truth like that.
its not actually that much lie, private enterprise has to keep delivering because else there is no income; government agency just have to exists and appear doing something to keep having income
no it is a complete lie.
no “private enterprise” disrupts the market, they only do slow incremental changes and even then they do so slowly and at great cost. the for profit company only cares about sucking the most profit for the least amount of work possible.
A government branch only cares about doing the job it was given as best as it can. if that means you need to jump form version 1 directly to version 6 or throw away everything that came before and start a whole new pyrimidine of technology form scratch they do it no matter what the cost. (case in point there are no better internet providers then state/nation run internet providers. privet providers will always have higher prices, less coverage, slower average speed and be slower to upgrade to the newest tech because that wouldn’t be cost effective)
because that what is needed to reach the goal.
the only thing privet business can do better is scam people out of money to line the pockets of a few
Wow, it is so nice that you’re an expert on all gov’t agencies. So glad to know that the VA health care system is run so friggin’ well that I have to wait months to get in to see a doctor because it is run so well. Or that people have literally died while waiting for their healthcare.
Or shall we talk about the about the massive waste, fraud, and abuse in the military procurement system? Or even in the military supply system?
To say that gov’t agencies are perfect or all well run examples of even half-competent management is just wrong.
“(case in point there are no better internet providers then state/nation run internet providers.”
Oh dear. In Oz we had (once) the Post Master General’s Department. Then somebody invented The Overland Telegraph, and some idiot decided the Edison/Berliner telephone instrument should be deployed. In due time, in the late 20th Century, the PMG became Telecom Australia, then Telstra, and in the early 21st Century it was slowly privatised.
Privatisation sounded good, because Telstra was cumbersome — on a good day — and expensive and very slow to maintain its assets. However. The Poms had a much better experience with their Telstra, because the Parliament decided to “partition” it. The British Telstra was summarily deprived of its hardware, the voice and data transmission lines and masts which were retained by the British Government. The rest of British Telstra was hived off and became just another carrier. Which then began to make humoungous profits.
But. The Australian Government lacked both courage and wisdom. All of Telstra was privatised, the software and hardware. And then Telstra hiked its prices “to pay for expenses”. And then it hiked them again. And then it began shedding jobs. And it began having “outages”. All of this despite Telstra having arrogated to itself the sole use of the CDMA protocol.
In the meantime, the Internet became A Thing. And it was pioneered by Private Industry. And it became inexpensive — not to mention “cheap” — and reliable despite Telstra’s best efforts to disrupt it. At the same time, Private Sector telephony providers were renting Telstra lines and providing very economical services to consumers.
As DSL became too old and inefficient, the National Broadband Network was born, a gruesomely disfigured travesty tainted by political DNA and a hideously botched birting procedure. But — at much too long last — Telstra was no no longer involved in Australian telecommunications.
Alas! And Alack! It seemed that the NBN was not going to make profits fast enough for the politicians. SO the CVC (Connection Virtual Circuit) was born to burden the internet backbone providers, and to be passed on the consumers in fees.
The short story is, that at all times the private sector (with the sole exception of Telstra) has always been not only the leader in comms, but the most efficient and lowest cost provider. In Oz, the State is a burden.
It is Pravda rather than Truth. There are a lot of things private enterprise does HORRIBLY. Private Enterprise, by itself, tends to result in economic boom-and-bust cycles that do horrible damage, with every ‘bust’ running the risk of bloody revolution. Tragedy of the commons, excess discounting of long-term value, and all that. But, it’s the Party Line for a bunch of dogmatic people who don’t give a crap about actual science and history, and they’ll never believe otherwise regardless of evidence. So… they’re going to keep saying so, and as long as nobody forces them to shut up they’ll claim they’re winning the argument. Regardless of what’s true.
+1
-1. No wait… -2
Math. I’ve won.
Private enterprise may indeed do a lot of things horribly. Still orders of magnitude better than government.
That depends heavily on the government
And a large factor there how well insulated said government is from the influence of private enterprise or special interests. Corruption requires a corrupting force, after all. Separation of church and state and all that. As Bear pointed out, belief that corporations are god, bigguberment is bad and the free market will save us is for all intents and purposes a particularly dumb and damaging religion.
Where it gets the worst is when private enterprise manages to completely parasitize a government. Then you have people with a vested interest in tearing down the body that regulates private enterprise running the regulatory body. You end up with human misery mills. For profit prisons, rackets on ppe during a pandemic. So they’ll say “Look, see? Government doesn’t work! Private enterprise would be better!” While ignoring that that IS private enterprise; it’s just wearing the skin of government.
did you mean “corporations are good”? i realize you did later say “religion”; i’m not trying to take what you said out of context or anything, just wondering if what you said was a typo
I’d guess it got it right the first time, a lot of people treat “the invisible hand of the market” as a stand in for a god.
Nah. Only anarcho-capitalists do that. Libertarians and minarchists (ie, not anarcho-capitalists) also believe in the ‘Non-Aggression Principle’ as a limiting factor on capitalism. So that it doesnt start running things like a government. It’s why libertarians tend to like the Sherman Antitrust Act, but anarchocapitalists do not.
Because government sucks at business.
Governments are fine at business if they are organized to be. Look at China. They’re better at capitalism then the US government is, more willing to lean on the levers of its economic power for the benefit of China. The US will relentlessly protect its IP and trade regimes around the world, and occasionally help install a dictator or overthrow a government to get cheap goods, but the US has been shaky on leveraging monetary policy, and business interests dominate lobbying and set the agenda in a way where the subordinated oligarchs and capitalists in China simply could not.
Ultimately though, a government is not run for profit and an ideal capitalist government counter spends the economy to smooth the boom and bust cycle to mitigate effects of the private sector.
Also, literally anyone who has worked for a contractor will tell you the entire system’s a joke, it’s been rigged in favor of a senator or a bureaucrat’s favorite (as defined by their donations and favors and the occasional outright bribe) company and no one will get their spot, while the scraps thrown to the lesser corporations are anchored in complete nonsense to apply for. Contracting is wholly captured by the contractors. Companies compete to offer the lowest price knowing full well that price in nonsense, but the government will pay you the over runs anyways, often to dramatic degrees. It’d be cheaper to let a department just handle many of the jobs themselves. But they can’t, so far more money is hemorrhaged to the contractor who lied the sweetest, and literally everyone knows it. Every single person involved.
“Governments are fine at business if they are organized to be. Look at China”
Seriously? China is AWFUL at business. Most of their success came from Hong Kong, which benefited from a 99-year lease to the British Empire, which is why the people of Hong Kong have a very westernized mindset, especially when it comes to capitalism and economics (and freedom of speech). There’s also the fact that China regularly manipulates its currency and, all too often, dealt with people in the United States who would give them sweetheart deals.
China is TERRIBLE at business. They’re good at manipulating currency. Even though they have a population 3 times that of the United States and and are regulated from the top down (with certain exceptions like Hong Kong, which reverted back to them in 1997 and they have not yet gone about pulling HK into the fold because HK makes them so much money from being capitalistic).
It really doesnt depend on the government Guesticus. Government ALWAYS does things worse.
In fact, the one flaw with private enterprise is government sometimes puts its foot on the balancing scale, which tends to be what creates any flaws in capitalism in the first place. For example, Big Tech. It’s corrupt. Why? Because government gives certain companise an advantage that it doesnt give smaller start-ups. If they did not, then the big tech companies would not be able to compete as well, and something like Facebook would become MySpace. Something like Youtube would wind up collapsing against newer startups like Minds or Bitchute. Something like Twitter (which has an awful business model mind you) would collapse against a newer startup like Gab or Dissenter, or any other newer startup which provides the same or better product or service, but without the same baggage or artificially imposed limitations.
Government really should have a very limited role – to prevent private industry from BECOMING like government. That’s why laws like the Sherman Antitrust Act are good – it prevents robber barons and runaway monopolies. That’s also why Big Tech protection laws like Section 230 are… just awful… when applied to monopolies and oligopolies that do not actually follow those legal exceptions (and do not get punished for it because, again, GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS TEND TO HAVE A LOT OF CORRUPTION) :)
It’s why quasi-governmental entitles like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are also just awful (and were directly involved in the housing bubble popping). Why government bailouts of banks and airlines are awful too (with the notable exception of when the government itself is forcing those companies to do something or shut down in the first place). Government gets involved and ALWAYS makes things worse when they start doing anything beyond making sure the private companies do not become like Government.
Just a note, but before you typed that ALWAYS in large capital letters, did you stop and think? At all? Did you check what the standards of living are in some of the countries where government is larger?
Did you check the most recent five or six “failed states” and see big government, as opposed to private-industry mobsters able to assert their own law, bringing them down?
I mean, just … did you think? Did you research? Or did you just repeat something you already believed? Because I used to believe the same thing, and then did actual research and now I don’t any more.
Because repetition doesn’t make something true.
this
Thing is I know exactly where he’s coming from. And I would never have believed anybody who just told me I was wrong. ‘Cause, understand, I KNEW I was right!
It was LOGIC! It was THE EMERGENT EFFICIENCY OF THE FREE MARKET! It was DOING GOOD BY DOING WELL! And a bunch of other things that sound terribly, terribly convincing as long as I was completely failing to recognize the value of shared resources and commons. Whenever someone pointed such things out, I was all “Well those things should be privatized, and then they’d be efficiently managed!” Because that goes along with the internal logic.
It’s a view of economics which is tremendously self-consistent, simple, logical, obvious, and utterly wrong. It’s really, really hard to get past. I couldn’t get past it and start seeing why it was wrong, until I found basic contradictions myself. I would never have taken someone else’s word for it. But when I had collected the data, and it flatly did not fit my model of the universe…. Well, it’s always the model that’s wrong, not the universe.
In the course of figuring out why? I came across all the simplifying assumptions that make that model so easy to believe, basic, and appealing. But it had to be my data. Otherwise I’d never have trusted it.
But here’s a softball. What does the government spend on the (nationalized, single payer) health care system Canada? What do US citizens spend (on average) for health care/insurance in the United States? And Which country has better life expectancy? Now where is that money being more efficiently spent?
Pssst, Bear, I knocked your softball out of the park below.
Total home run.
Feel free to respond, as long as you can do so good naturedly. :)
Wouldn’t dream of it. Nobody but you can convince yourself, and that only when you try. You’re interpreting some very peculiar things as “Government,” and using wibbly whatabouts to avoid comparing things. One might almost say you’re reinterpreting the past to fit a predetermined narrative. Which is really boring. But you do you.
Seriously: take the time you need. It’s never easy.
I’ve read your post three times and have no idea what you are trying to say. You did not bother to respond to my statement, and I think you might be trying to be witty but it’s not making much sense.
“Just a note, but before you typed that ALWAYS in large capital letters, did you stop and think? At all? Did you check what the standards of living are in some of the countries where government is larger?”
I think quite a bit actually. It’s my favorite pastime. And I typed it in capital letters because I’m not sure how to to bold and underline as well.
That being said, yes. ALWAYS. Government. ALWAYS. Does worse than a market economy.
What, are you going to bring up Denmark? Guess what – even the prime minister says they are a market economy. They just happen to have, on top of the market economy, a very high tax rate. You NEED a market economy in order to have a high tax rate. Denmark has far less business regulation than the United States. Because they realize that government sucks at business. They had a brief attempt at full on socialism and it almost destroyed their economy and they pulled waaaay back from it as a result.
“Did you check the most recent five or six “failed states” and see big government, as opposed to private-industry mobsters able to assert their own law, bringing them down?”
Yep, it was big government that was the problem.
Venezuela? Government
Liberia? Government
North Korea? Government
Uganda? Government
Syria? Government
Niger? Government
Kenya? Government
Guinea Bissau? Government
Guinea? Government
Pakistan? Government
Iraq? Government
Zimbabwe? Government
Central African Republic? Government
Afghanistan? Government
Yemen? Government
Sudan? Government
South Africa? Government
Russia? Government
Cuba? Government
Every single time government runs things unopposed, they make a mess of it. You need a market economy to prevent corruption. Ironically, most of the problems in the US even are not because of private industry, but because of government putting their fingers on the scales too heavily.
“I mean, just … did you think? Did you research? Or did you just repeat something you already believed? Because I used to believe the same thing, and then did actual research and now I don’t any more.”
Pretty sure I’ve done a lot more research than you have, actually.
“But here’s a softball. What does the government spend on the (nationalized, single payer) health care system Canada? What do US citizens spend (on average) for health care/insurance in the United States? And Which country has better life expectancy? Now where is that money being more efficiently spent?”
You know what Canada has that’s different than the US? Very little need for a powerful military. Because they have the US at its southern border. Not to mention 1/10th the population. And no, Canada does not spend money more efficiently on medical services. There’s a reason the technological medical innovations and pharmaceutical innovations do not come from Canada, but from the US. Because of the profit motive.
Just did an underline test. Using lg; u gt; does not work. This seems to be a WordPress feature, to avoid things that might look like a hyperlink but aren’t… Apparently we’re too dumb.
The number one funding for medical innovation is the US government via the national institutes of health, and not the private sector.
Huh, if it was down to “Profit motive”, then why is the USA the only country without universal healthcare in the top 10 for medical research?
Almost as though they are using their sheer size and population to compensate for a shitty system…
“why is the USA the only country without universal healthcare in the top 10 for medical research?”
Because other countries benefit from the US taking the lead on medical research. That’s where a majority of the expenditures in medicine come from – the research and development of pharmaceuticals and medical procedures, a majority of which come out of the United States. If you don’t have to pay for that, you suddenly can afford to do other things, and even then you don’t do those other things particularly well for the major catastrophic medical situations.
It’s sort of like how, militarily, the United States keeps the international seaways protected for international trade. Other countries benefit from this without having to spend money on their militaries. Or with NATO, the United States footed most of the bill, while most other countries could not even provide the 2% of GDP that they were supposed to. If you don’t spend money on one thing, you can spend it on another thing. Even if you’re not producing new wealth in the process.
For a “favourite pastime”, you appear to be woefully inept at it :)
Then again, the Internet, GPS and chemotherapy only exists because the Government did things that Private Industry couldn’t or wouldn’t. And, I shudder to consider how horrific a state the road network would be if handed entirely to the Corperations.
Government does far better in the many areas where there is either little or no profit to be made, or where making a profit is mutually exclusive with producing the optimum output.
I can always tell when i’m talking to someone who likes socialism when they start with an insult.
The internet, GPS, and chemotherapy do not exist because of government. They exist because private enterprise took those things and made them commercially viable, unless you were surfing the net on ARPANET. In fact, private enterprise had ALSO created each of those things. FOR the government (with the exception of ARPANet, which was useless until private enterprise got its hands on it.
“Government does far better in the many areas where there is either little or no profit to be made”
I would love to hear of an actual example of that happening. Government always does worse, in fact, because there’s usually some way to make a profit. And even when there isnt… somehow private enterprise does better. Case in point – private charities provide a LOT more help overall than government handouts, with a lot less waste.
Well, Goverment does far better work as a Justice System… At least, outside of the good ol’ USA where that apparently IS run for profit.
Face it: you’ve had to move goalposts and redefine terms so many times in this thread that you look like a stubborn conspiracy theorist, fingers in ears and loudly insisting that the world is flat. You’ve even had to admit that, without Goverment oversight, Private Enterprise would tear the world apart in a flurry of monopolies – demonstrating that even making Private Enterprise viable and sustainable is something that the Government does better than Private Enterprise.
Oh, and Private Enterprise has nothing to do with GPS, beyond minor contract work at the Goverment’s behest. They just make use of a service of satellites which the US government launched in 1973, and decided to make freely available to everyone in 1983.
I’m not particularly a fan of socialism – so you got that wrong. I’m just fed up with complete and utter morons. That said, I do appreciate living in a country where medical treatment doesn’t have to be “commercially viable” – just effective and efficient.
No one should have to die because they aren’t rich. No one should have to go bankrupt because they are ill. No one should have to pay a 3000% markup for a cheap and simple drug they require to live due to an inherited genetic condition. We hold this truth to be self-evident: convenient access to affordable basic healthcare should be a human right, not a cash-cow.
“Well, Goverment does far better work as a Justice System”
Then why are private arbitration and mediation services growing at a record pace, and both plaintiffs and defendants are preferring it for many civil matters since it’s less expensive and gets a speedier resolution? Alternative Dispute Resolution has been massively successful, and even the courts have started bringing in private ADR firms to help alleviate the bloated systems. I should know. I’ve worked for those firms on per diem cases.
“Face it: you’ve had to move goalposts and redefine terms so many times in this thread that you look like a stubborn conspiracy theorist, fingers in ears and loudly insisting that the world is flat.”
I’ve moved no goalposts whatsoever, and you’re now strawmanning. Next sentence?
“You’ve even had to admit that, without Goverment oversight, Private Enterprise would tear the world apart in a flurry of monopolies”
Er… yes. I believe in limited government regulation. The key word there is LIMITED. Very, very limited. Minimal really. Just make sure corporations do not become oligopolies and monopolies, or engage in illegal trusts. That’s about 95% of the danger of capitalism, and once that’s taken care of, capitalism works AMAZINGLY well compared to any other economic or political system ever devised by mankind, because it takes the core structure in mankind – greed and he desire to have more – and makes that vice into a virtue by forcing people to actually produce something beneficial (or at least more beneficial than their competitors) in order to satisfy their greed, which results in a net benefit for both the buyer and seller. The buyer gets money, which they value more than the product or service they’re selling. The seller gets the product or service, which they value more than the money they’re giving away. Capitalism is the only system which is NOT a zero-sum game – it’s the system best designed to actually CREATE wealth, not just shift it from one person to another by governmental fiat.
“demonstrating that even making Private Enterprise viable and sustainable is something that the Government does better than Private Enterprise.”
It’s like you don’t even read my posts. Or you do, and you do not understand what was being said. The US federal Government’s main job, and some might say only real job, as the Founding Fathers had envisioned, is to prevent authoritarianism taking away the rights of individuals to prosper. With corporations, the main danger of this is if they become monopolies or oligopolies, or if the government protects them from their own corruption by not letting them have to deal with the consequences of failure. In other words, when government lets corporations essentually become the private enterprise version of socialism – a corporatist dystopia.
It’s the ONLY flaw which is why something like the Sherman Antitrust Act is a good move and one of the few responsible uses of government beyond what’s laid out in the Constitution.
Government, on the other hand, has a whole lot of flaws already – because they do NOT have a profit motive. They can just keep churning out money. They can have a failed official not have to pay for failure (and can even rise in the ranks from failure). Why would you ever want government to enable private enterprise to be LIKE that?
“Oh, and Private Enterprise has nothing to do with GPS, beyond minor contract work at the Goverment’s behest. ”
Do you bother doing research before you type out posts? Under the federal government, GPS was limited to a network of 24 aging satellites, which first started back in 1959. It was inaccessible to the general public and highly impractical for anything beyond military use. It wasn’t until private industry was involved that it became universally beneficial to mankind, especially with GPS receivers, which is the main reason anyone uses GPS beyond for military use. It also has allowed us to add an additional 7 non-military satellites in orbit with far greater capabilities, as well as many ground-based systems (which are also private enterprise).
Please look up Dr. Ivan Getting, who was president of the Aerospace Corporation, which created the satellite-based global navigation system back in 1962. This isn’t even specialized knowledge I’m relaying to you – it’s completely available via google. You didn’t even get the dates right :/
“I’m not particularly a fan of socialism – so you got that wrong.”
You sure seem to be an apologist for it.
“I’m just fed up with complete and utter morons.’
Insults thrown out when you gave wrong information to begin with. I’ll ignore the ad hominem attack and move on to your next sentence.
“That said, I do appreciate living in a country where medical treatment doesn’t have to be “commercially viable” – just effective and efficient.”
Two questions.
1) Who actually invents the pharmaceuticals and medicines, and are they created for free? No. They cost billions of dollars to develop, and if they are not commercially viable, there is no incentive for corporations to spend the massive amount of money, research hours, and manpowe to create anything innovative. People will die as a result of that stagnation. People will die because of ideas like yours. People HAVE died because of ideas like yours.
2) The doctors who actually do the work – do you think you are entitled to their labor? You said health care is a human right, not a commercial venture. So why do you think you are entitled to the work of another person without just compensation in a mutually agreed upon contractual basis? Do you think housing is a human right and everyone should get it for free? Who pays for the houses? Do you think food is a human right and everyone should get it for free? Who pays to grow the food, raise the food, kill or harvest the food, ship the food, package the food, can the foot, cook the food, etc? This is the economic understanding of a 7 year old (no offense intended – I’m not saying you in particular, just the idea of socialism in general). A seven year old who says ‘We should just give people stuff they need for free then everyone will be happy!’ with no more awareness of how economics or supply chains work than that.
It doesnt work. It’s been tried.
It’s been tried in Russia. 20-60 million people starved to death under Stalin. Medicine stagnated unless stolen from more productive capitalist regions of the world
It’s been tried in China. 60-100 million people starved to death under Mao. Medicine again stagnated unless stolen from more productive capitalist regions of the world.
“No one should have to die because they aren’t rich.”
Give everyone a free house, free food, free advanced medical care beyond the most basic stuff by government decree. Ignore that any of it has to be produced and costs a lot of money to produce or invent. The government doesnt care after all – it’s not like the government produces any of it well.
“No one should have to go bankrupt because they are ill.”
Again, this is a young child’s concept of how the economy works, with no knowledge of what is required for a supply chain or production of goods and services.
“No one should have to pay a 3000% markup for a cheap and simple drug they require to live due to an inherited genetic condition.”
There’s a saying. ‘The pill might cost only 50 cents to make but $50 to sell… but the first pill cost $5 billion to make.’ The reason medicines and advanced procedures are expensive is because of the amount of money that goes into Research and development of those pharmaceuticals and procedures (and the training required for them which can take over a decade).
If you remove the ability of a company to recoup the money they spent researching and developing the damn pill for the first 20 or so years (ie, the standard life of a patent), then they would have no reason to bother doing it. So medicine would stagnate. No one would produce anything new anymore. More. People. Would. Die. If you did not compensate doctors VERY well for their services, most would not spend between 8 to 14 years studying to go into the profession. You’d have a rush on competent doctors being available. And Many. More. People. Would. Die.
And this isnt even a hypothetical. It’s HAPPENED already in history multiple times, and people with flowery language say ‘but that’s sad! Everyone should get it for free!’ First spend your money to create something before you demand it be given away for free or without a profit that makes all the work worthwhile.
Most people are NOT going to be like Frederick Banting (the discoverer of insulin) – and even with him, private enterprise took his discovery and made it far more efficient, and made it so it could be artificially manufactured so it did not require removing the glands from dogs, pigs, and other animals to produce it.
Think of it like this, NoNameFred:
Lets say you take a year of your life to build a car. You put a LOT of effort into building it, and a lot of money into buying the parts. You also spent a lot of time researching HOW to build a car, and sacrificed that time, money, and energy that you could have used doing something else. But in the end, you had a car. Now lets say you decide you’d like to sell the car.
The first person who comes up to you says they want to buy it, but they do not have the money you’re asking for. So you should give it to them for free. Because they need the car so they can go to work so they can feed their families. Hey… if you do not give them the car you built, you are starving their children, you heartless monster. Fine… okay maybe that’s not fair. Maybe they then say ‘fine, you heartless child-hating monster who won’t give me what is my HUMAN RIGHT TO OWN A CAR TO GET TO WORK…. I will pay you exactly what the parts cost to if you were to buy the parts today. What.. you think your TIME is valuable? You capitalist pig, how dare you.”
Take that analogy, and apply it to pharmaceuticals.
“We hold this truth to be self-evident: convenient access to affordable basic healthcare should be a human right, not a cash-cow.”
I missed that part in the Constitution. Because it’s not in the Constitution.
Also, if you’re living in the US, you already have better basic healthcare than most of the rest of the world. In fact, there are laws that state that if hospitals want certain government grants, they need to provide free emergency services to indigent people who cannot pay. If they don’t want to do this, they don’t get the government grants. For basic healthcare services. BASIC. Key word.
You don’t have a right to ADVANCED healthcare though. That costs a lot more money. Because the patents are not up on it, so you cannot get the generic version yet.
Capitalism works as described (mutually beneficial transactions driven by selfish motives) until people realize it’s cheaper to exploit differences in information to deceive and emotionally manipulate the other party than to provide a competitive product or service at a competitive price.
Strawman arguments, Pander. You’ve criticised others for them in the past, try not to fall into the same trap.
You seem to like the medical examples, which isn’t surprising given the background you’ve previously mentioned. How does the private sector decide where to put its money? Purely by where they expect the money to come out, i.e. by what will get the most rich people paying for the most treatments.
I’m not going to join the conspiracy theorists claiming that ‘Big Pharma’ have a one-shot cure for cancer or some other chronic disease and are suppressing it in favour of selling ongoing palliatives. But compare research spending on erectile dysfunction or baldness against that on malaria, let alone something ‘properly’ rare like Zygomycosis. As you say, people will (and do) die. If there isn’t the leadership at the Governmental (or even intergovernmental) level to steer the pharmaceuticals into prioritising the population’s health rather than their own pockets.
Capitalism is not the only zero-sum game in town, it’s just the zero-sum game that’s done best in pushing the negatives outside the users’ notice.
““But here’s a softball. What does the government spend on the (nationalized, single payer) health care system Canada? What do US citizens spend (on average) for health care/insurance in the United States? And Which country has better life expectancy? Now where is that money being more efficiently spent?”
You know what Canada has that’s different than the US? Very little need for a powerful military. Because they have the US at its southern border. Not to mention 1/10th the population. And no, Canada does not spend money more efficiently on medical services. There’s a reason the technological medical innovations and pharmaceutical innovations do not come from Canada, but from the US. Because of the profit motive.”
Way to dodge the question. Canada’s military budget is irrelevant, because the whole point is comparing the per-capita expenditures on health care vs. the outcomes in both nations. And consistently, nations with high levels of government-run health care beat the US both in terms of spending less and getting better results (by virtually every metric except for one, addressed below)–the very definition of efficiency.
Yes, American companies are good at high-tech innovations and pharmaceutical development–but those are not the same thing as actually providing health care to citizens. A cancer panacea that only ten percent of the population could afford even with existing health insurance would do very little to change the outcomes of most patients, even as wealthy cancer patients shelled out to the patent-owner to save their lives.
The government could spur similar interest in innovation by sponsoring ‘cure bounties’ for different medical conditions deemed worthy, but with the caveat that the resulting product would be open-source for manufacture.
“Way to dodge the question. ”
How did that dodge the question? It directly responds to it with pertinent information that explains the difference.
“Canada’s military budget is irrelevant, because the whole point is comparing the per-capita expenditures on health care vs. the outcomes in both nations.”
Do you not realize if a nation does not have to spend a lot of money on military protection they can spend that money elsewhere? To put it in simpler terms – If you live rent free in your mom’s basement where she cooks meals for you, you’ll be able to afford that cool gaming system that you wouldnt be able to afford if you had to pay rent and buy groceries.
“And consistently, nations with high levels of government-run health care beat the US both in terms of spending less and getting better results (by virtually every metric except for one, addressed below)–the very definition of efficiency.”
Where to begin.
First at least you acknowledge that the most expensive and time-consuming part of the health care industry, R&D, is done almost entirely by the United States, and not by Canada. But then you ignore it and act like it has nothing to do with providing health care to citizens. If the drugs are not invented, they can not be provided to citizens.
With health care, there are always three qualities possible, and you can only have up to two of them.
Ben Shapiro put it very well in both his debates with Cenk Uyger of the Young Turks and in an interview with Dave Rubin. You can have affordability, you can have universality, you can have quality. Pick two – you cannot have all three. I’m going to just post what he said because the guy is a lot smarter than me and more eloquent in his speech. He goes into detail about the need for price transparency, which is missing in the US.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSlW3gcF6bM
“Yes, American companies are good at high-tech innovations and pharmaceutical development–but those are not the same thing as actually providing health care to citizens.”
Actually yes, it is. If you spend billions on high tech innovations and pharmaceutical development, that money needs to be recouped, and there needs to be a profit made or there’s no incentive for companies to spend billions on it. If, however, you glom off of another country that did all the hard work and wait for the drugs to become generic, you get all the benefit (20 years late but still a benefit) with none of the cost.
The problem is you have to be glomming off someone else to do that. Canada gloms off the US for that.
“A cancer panacea that only ten percent of the population could afford even with existing health insurance would do very little to change the outcomes of most patients,”
It’ll do a lot for that 10 percent of the population. And then when the companies recoup the money they spend on that panacea, it then can become available to the rest of the population for a FRACTION of the price.
Take laser eye surgery. It used to cost $20,000… per eye. Now it costs like… $3,000. For both eyes. Because it’s older technology now, that was paid for by those wealthy people you seem to dislike so much. Maybe you don’t. I shouldnt judge there. But you seem to by referencing and singling them out.
All the generic drugs that you can get for under the amount of your co-pay? The only reason you can do that is because other wealthier people, over the past 20 years, paid a lot more for the same treatment, which gave the companies a reason to do the research in the first place. If they didnt, you’d have no treatment at all. Now OR 20 years from now.
“even as wealthy cancer patients shelled out to the patent-owner to save their lives.”
Yes. If you have more money, you can afford better stuff. In the 1950s, buying a television was a major extravagance. If you had one, it probably cost you an arm and a leg. 20 years later, and everyone had not one, but sometimes two or three in their homes, at a fraction of the price. Today you can get a TV for under $100 …. sometimes less. That’s how technology works. Not just medical technology. ALL technology. That’s also how economics works. If you did not have a profit incentive, most people would bother producing stuff – people’s time has value, people’s intellectual property have value, people’s effort have value. Oh… and people’s money that they spend on R&D obviously have value.
“The government could spur similar interest in innovation by sponsoring ‘cure bounties’ for different medical conditions deemed worthy, but with the caveat that the resulting product would be open-source for manufacture.”
Funny story, the government HAS tried to ‘spur on innovation’ before. They tried it with the automobile. It failed HORRIBLY, and the automobile only took off when private enterprise started taking the reigns, like Ford. More recently, they’ve tried it with green energy, picking winners and losers. It failed HORRIBLY AGAIN. I’m assuming you have not forgotten Fisker Karma, A123, or Solyndra? It wasn’t all that long ago. You know what did not fail? Elon Musk with Tesla. The government didn’t ‘pick’ him. He picked himself. He made huge profits. And now he’s going to do the same thing with space exploration.
Private enterprise works better than public works. It innovates faster, it innovates more in quantity and quality, and it innovates more efficiently. Not just in the medical field. In almost all fields.
Let me summarize what I think are two very important truths that you seem to be exploring here: Government is that which governs, regardless of what you call it, and the rightful purpose of government is to prevent the formation of government.
Exactly. Well said Torabi.
And it’s also well said from someone who defined the role of government rather eloquently and precisely as well – Thomas Jefferson.
He explained rather explicitly the role of government in that little thing called the Declaration of Independence.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
TL;DR: Government is formed to secure the inalienable rights of the people, it is not there to GRANT them those rights. We already have them. Government is only there to prevent others from taking them away.
If government winds up trying to take them away? Well then it’s time to abolish that government, and make a new one that will…. because government’s not doing its job and is becoming tyrranical, and becoming the very thing it was formed to prevent.
This is the basis of all law and governance in the United States.
This is another bit where Deus is acting like he’s being original and the law hasn’t caught up to him, but it very much has. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_corruption#:~:text=An%20illegal%20act%20by%20an,on%20the%20country%20or%20jurisdiction.
I did know know you could create Wikipedia links that included the text to select on the pages. Kudos, this will come in handy.
Whether something is illegal is orthogonal to whether it will endanger one’s high office. If it’s legal and the voters don’t like that they will punish you even more.
Ah, how does this work? I’m using a Mozilla browser and it does nothing. Wikipedia says nothing about the type of link.
Machina Industries Personal Security Service – Making blackmail and extortion tax deductable!
Do you have locks on your doors? Do you think the lock company is paying people to burglarize?
No. People burglarize already. That’s why the lock companies make locks. Because they know they can sell them. Because people already do burglarize homes.
My God, I love Lorlara; she’s the gift that keeps on giving!
I assumed the dessert was some kind of colorful croquenbouche or a bunch of macarons stuck together.
Yep. He is pretty much setting himself up for a UNSC resolution against Galytn. If he plans on doing this to the US, he plans on doing it to other industrialized nations. Tell China or Russia an african country is compromising the internal security of the United States and they will laugh, leave the office, and find out if supers are compromising their internal security as well. More liberal countries might require supers to register their powers with the government, while more totalitarian ones will be like ‘We must control or kill every super in our country. Use drugs, money, or hostages, but keep them here.’
Deus is also about to have a lot of countries start demanding ‘technological transparency’ of Galytn. Normally they wouldn’t bother to do such a thing, but if you want alien tech, and you want ALL the alien tech, you take it or you destroy it so others can’t take it. Deus might buy time by playing east off of west, but eventually one of them is going to get your shit.
In fact, I would really love it if after this meeting, the next panel went “UN Security Council levies sanctions on Galytn.” on the screen as Deus looks irked. Lorlara rants, but Deus admits that he may have overplayed that hand. Of course she calls for the heads of his rivals, but he just calmly waves and tells her ‘Lorlara… when you overplay, don’t keep overplaying.’ And he makes the UN deal with the Alari Triumverate for ‘Technological transparency’, shifting the obstruction from him to them while hiding his wormhole generator.
Deus would probably ‘help’ Alari tech trickle out of Galytn… after he’s firmly exploited it as well. Eventually someone is going to notice humans are playing with other people’s toys, and someone is going to come and ask. And Deus paid for those toys SOMEHOW. Like capitalism seemed to be a thing in space, so somewhere are goods from Galytn which will raise red flags for someone. When that someone arrives, he’ll want to be able to say, ‘not me. Them.’ But if they do call him on it, he’ll want to say ‘Look, did Galytn do bad? Maybe. We had the ability to reach you and I took it. But now the tech is everywhere. Will you kill seven billion humans because I bought a pack of nanotransitors?’ (The fun answer is ‘Yes’.)
I don’t think Deus is dumb enough to want ALL the toys. I think he’s smart enough to want the BEST toys.
Always a good idea to save the best inventions for yourself.
He’s offering to sell some toys to Uncle Sam (and “persuade” some politicians to make sure they buy). Anyone who tries to take his toys will need to deal with those he sold them to. Sanctions and blockades will prove difficult to enforce as he has a teleporter on the payroll who already helps with moving freight.
I’m more inclined to think he’s actually offering tech he bought offworld and using the triumvate as a smokescreen. Is Alari tech even usable without involving a blood cult?
That girl has zero poker face..
Like then I thought..
How’s an invisible camera, which light is presumably passing through, take any kind of digital image?
Infrared and/or Ultraviolet. Neither of which are vissible to the human eye. Then convert the image to the “normal” spectrum, that we can see.
So your hypothetical invisible blackmailer has enough control over their ability to let only certain wavelengths of light pass through them while still allowing others to bounce off him? Then he’d be visible to infrared cameras as well and that wouldn’t do well for an invisible blackmailer at all.
I see he has night vision goggles on in his invisible outline so maybe he only controls the visible spectrum of light, but then that’s still a risk he could be seen doing this job he hates.
They would need to ascertain, that he was filming with infrared. and/or UV. They would need. to look for IR Light. Or IR light. They could use an ultrasonic, wave, maybe.
I’m guessing Max’s dessert is a VERY fancy Grasshopper milkshake.
https://food52.com/blog/11055-jeffrey-morgenthaler-s-grasshopper-shake
If Lorlara is warm-blooded, and her light-sensitive cells are located like ours inside her eyes at body temperature, then she is not seeing IR anywhere near or below her own body temperature.
Cats are widely believed to see IR, but the out-of-spectrum (to us) color in their visual system is actually ultraviolet.
You’re sort of making an assumption based on a species that is at least significantly different enough from humans that they can regrow their lost limbs within minutes, and can move from body to body if their own body is destroyed, or sew their own head on the body of another creature and take over that creature’s motor functions perfectly.
Sci-fright regrew her arm because she had ingested fresh troll blood, and she more than likely had an assistant attach her head to the body of a former assistant (actually, probably one of her bloodbanks)
The only thing you got correct, was moving from body to body
Da. It’s amazing what you can do with Blood Magic. Just a shame it’s not available to the general public. I remain to be conviced that all Alari can move their psyches to other bodies, especially to non-Alari bodies. I would need to see proof, as a canonical panel or strip in this comic.
That’s with no Blood Magic involved.
The proof is the Soul Battery that Sciona had found on the planet. That was made WITHOUT blood magic. Either that, or many Alari know blood magic.
That doesn’t require ‘many magic users’. That just requires ‘as many magic users as were in the battery’. Maybe not even that, if one magic user can act as ‘ferryman’ to transfer others’ souls into the battery and from there into a new body.
Guesticus, Dabbler already told Maxima, after shooting her leg off, that it would grow back. Dabbler did not know about the troll blood. She knows instead about Alari physiology. Not to mention Sciona had not taken troll blood during that point in time – she had taken a concoction of super blood, which at best would have been something to speed up her regeneration, but it’s very clear, both from Dabbler and from Sciona’s statements, post-troll body, that Alari have regenerative capabilities.
PS Guesticus, the arm was from troll blood because she had to use Troll blood when Sydney broke her arm, since she had not yet regrown her Alari body. There was no troll blood used when Dabbler shot her leg off (and part of her wing) with the handheld railgun in the bunker fight. And judging from the picture of the concoction she took, regeneration was not one of the superpowers in that mixture.
Which makes sense if the Alari ALREADY have regenerative capabilities, based on what Dabbler had said to Maxima.
… If she had natural regeneration, why did she need to have her head sown onto an ogre’s body? o_O
As it happens, (un)lucky aphakic humans can see UV wavelengths. It would appear the absorption of UV by our lenses is to enhance visual acuity. Look here.
I can see with UV light. In the sun, shining on a white wall, I can see bluish colors. I wear sunglasses, because they filter out some UV light.
I have been told, that modern auto windscreens filter out UV. But it seems the side windows don’t. All this is hearsay, as I never bothered testing, mostly because I would only have one use for a UV-meter, and the money would therefore be wasted.
Do you see in UV through an automobile windshield?
As I said, I wear sunglasses, to filter it out!
Underline test
Still corruption.
Reminds me of a line from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels. The Fire Department wouldn’t necessarily burn your house down if you didn’t ‘contribute’. But they would stand around commenting how flammable your house looked