Grrl Power #847 – Status quoverthrow
If you think about it, all superheroes (except some vigilantes) are there to maintain the status quo. Galactus playing mini-golf through Manhattan? Call the Avengers. Don’t call the Fantastic Four though. Mr. Fantastic actually argued that Galactus (the guy who eats inhabited planets) should be spared because he’s a force of nature. If the Weather Wizard used his powers to stop hurricanes, Mr. Fantastic would probably beat him up for it.
Sorry, I digressed. While everyone else is trying to keep Magneto and Hydra from taking over the world, (i.e., maintaining the status quo) guys like the Punisher are arguably trying to change the s.q. I say arguably, because murdering a bunch of bad guys is likely to have limited effect. In the area he’s operating, sure, but his efforts are likely to be a minor blip in national statistics. Don’t get me started on Batman and the revolving door that is Arkham.
Obviously, maintaining the status quo isn’t a bad thing… if your quo is humming along just fine. If you’re living in “The Nazi’s Won” universe, or “Insert Dystopian Government/Reality of Your Choice,” then the civilian population is probably champing at the bit for a little re-quoing. If you’re living in a society that’s doing anywhere from “Excellent” to “Used to be all that but is in something of a backslide” to “Not great but up and coming,” having someone come in and stamp all over your quo is harder sell.
I have no idea how brandy snifters… I was going to say ‘work,’ but I get that it’s about smelling the brandy as much as it is drinking it, and sometimes that involves a slightly heated glass. I don’t know the etiquette. It’s possible blowing cigar smoke into the glass is some sort of high crime against the haut monde. Though alternating between brandy and a stogie probably means you’re not there to appreciate the subtle notes.
Actually, Max isn’t chomping on a stogie. I decided to google the word after I typed it, and learned that a stogie is “a thin, inexpensive cigar” which sounds a lot like an unfiltered cigarette to me. I also learned that a ‘corona’ is the benchmark size against which all other cigar sizes are measured. Given the news for the past few months, that piece of information caught my eye.
If I had googled cigars before drawing this page, I definitely would have had Deus smoking a ‘culebra‘ which is like three cigars braided around each other like a cinnamon twist.
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“I’m going to take over the world in a good way. Whether people like it or not, I will make their lives better. Well, those who survive the takeover. OK a number will be worse off too. And most won’t like the way I go about it.”
But, hey, he is being upfront about it.
He is a lot like Lex Luthor in a way, and I am not sure if he is a better version or worse version of him yet..
Here’s the thing about Lex Luthor. If it was not for his irrational hatred of Superman, or if Superman was not inherently good, he probably WOULD be Earth’s greatest hero, like he is in Crisis on Two Earths in the Earth-3 universe versus the Crime Syndicate and Uberman. Superman’s said it himself – if Lex Luthor was not so fixated on him, he could be more of a hero than Superman would ever be. And Superman agrees about that.
Lex Luthor’s primary problem with Superman, and superpowered beings in general, is something he said in All Star Superman. Something withi which Superman actually agrees to an extent. That humanity becomes too dependent on a superpowered alien to fix their problems, instead on relying on themselves. Or at least on ONE of their own – ie, relying on Lex Luthor. If you’re going to have a hero to solve your planet’s problems, Luthor reasons, it should be someone from that planet who has to suffer the same as everyone else on the planet if he or she truly fails. That Superman is just too powerful, and Lex cannot believe the idea that ANYONE could be so benevolent as to not see other beings who are so beneath him in power as being anything more than pets or afterthoughts. Lex at least still sees himself as human. He does not know about Superman’s secret identity, and that inherently, Superman sees himself as human as well since all he knows from his entire life is being raised as a human… just with powers.
In fact, Lex Luthor actually rather finds Clark Kent to be endearing and likes him as a human. Because he considers Clark Kent to be so flawed and decidedly HUMAN. And sort of marvels that Clark Kent is himself not angry at Superman because Superman catches Lois Lane’s eye rather than Clark catching her eye when he’s a rather good person as well.
In short,Lex feels that Superman has not earned his powers, and so he has not earned the right to be admired by the people of Earth. Lex actually has quite the different opinion of Batman (when he’s not blanketedly dismissing him as a threat in the first place, much to the Joker’s anger).
Lex Luthor’s interview with Clark Kent when Lex was on Death Row:
Lex Luthor: “It sickens me. That insipid boyish grin. That smug self-regard. Tell me the truth, Kent, doesn’t his very EXISTENCE diminish you? Diminish us all? Can you imagine a better world, Kent? That’s all I’ve ever asked. in a world without Superman, the unattainable Lois Lane might have noticed good ol’ Clark … pining away in the corner.”
Clark Kent: “You keep talking about me but I’m here to talk about you.”
Lex: “I’m just saying, a strapping farmboy with brains, integrity, no discernable style of his own – you’re a prize catch for a cynical city girl! ”
Clark Kent: “Why havent you filed an appeal?”
Lex (ignoring Kent’s question): “But with him around, you’re a parody of a man. A dullard. A cripple. Next to Superman, even Lex Luthor’s greatness is overshadowed!”
Clark Kent (hiding behind a punching bag): “Are you trying to intimidate me?”
Lex Luthor: “I’m TRYING to EDUCATE you!, inhuman perfection. That impossible ideal. Feel that Kent (shows a bicep) Real muscle. Not the gift of alien biochemistry. The product of HARD WORK. It’s easy to be strong when you just happen to have come from the planet Krypton This takes work. THIS is earned.”
He later on tries several times to protect and save Clark Kent, although Kent didnt actually need saving since he’s Superman. After beating Parasite and Parasite is down for the count under a cave-in, Lex turns to Clark and says the following:
Lex Luthor: “I’ve always liked you, Kent. You’re humble, modest, comically uncoordinated. You know… human. In short…. you’re everything HE’S not.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZCNDwKgi7o
Lex is a grandiose three dimensional villain and why he is a villain is obvious once you realize that Lex is not talking about Clark but about himself here.
Supermans existence is an insult to Lex’ ego, he, who is physically fit through hard work, has a genius level intellect and educated himself in every possible way. Who has accomplished so much in his life, who is not a comically uncoordinated, humble, modest man like Clark… he is a human superman, but Superman… well he is just superhuman. Lex’ own accomplishments, his perception by the public and his morals pale in contrast to that alien boyscout.
Every flaw Lex has is put under a microscope when compared to Superman. He is less ethical, less moral, less disciplined, less good, less physically perfect and, I would venture, by Lex’ own admission towards Kent, less human – though he doesn’t know it. And notice how he keeps insulting Clark while praising him. He is not even able to genuinely compliment Clark without at the same time telling him he has no style of his own and is comically uncoordinated. Because Lex is a narcissist who cannot bear that Clark Kent is more human than himself.
> In fact, Lex Luthor actually rather finds Clark Kent to be endearing and likes him as a human. Because he considers Clark Kent to be so flawed and decidedly HUMAN.
Really Lex has that pet-like disposition towards Clark that he accuses Superman of having.
Supermans existence dimminishes Lex, and that is exactly why he is a villain. And I don’t think Lex realizes that all his hate towards Superman is just rationalizing his own hurt ego.
Deus is simmilar to Lex in that I get extreme narcissist vibes from him. Really it’s easy to be in love with yourself if you are rich and accomplished, have a perfect body and regularly bang superheroes and -villains.
And I’m exited to see where exactly the big points of conflict will arise, because that will be where we will get to see who Deus is underneath all his swagger and if I read this correctly, it will also be where we see who Maxima is outside of “keeping the Status Quo”.
Exactly: every character flaw Luthor speculates Superman must have (viewing humans as pets or afterthoughts, etc.) is a flaw in Luthor’s own character that he’s projecting onto Superman. He’s too narcissistic to be able to imagine someone with Superman’s power not acting the exact way Luthor would if he had the power. When he finally does get that power, the heightened perception and awareness that comes with it forces him to see how small his view of things had been. He goes from a petty rampage to just staring at the beauty of the interconnectedness of the microcosm and the macrocosm (seen through microscopic and telescopic vision) and the vast sense of connection and immersion in humanity his other super-senses give him. He’s more connected to humanity as Super-Luthor than he ever could have been as Luthor, and the realization breaks him.
Deus is NOTHING like Lex. Where Lex despises Superman because feels that Superman diminishes Lex (and all other humans) by his very existence, Deus ADMIRES Maxima (and likes many other superhumans) for their very existence. He hires them, he treats them extremely well, he is very polite to them, and even in secret, he likes them, even if he thinks some might be opponents in the future. He is the opposite of Lex Luthor in that respect.
Also unlike Lex Luthor, Deus is fully aware of any of his character flaws. If anything, he’s extra-savvy about them because he’s extremely genre-savvy in general, while Lex Luthor is not.
I think of Vandal Savage, the Young Justice incarnation, where he wants humanity to evolve and become better. Deus is less savage in his methods than Savage (punny!), but the general idea of elevating humanity seems to be similar, even if Deus is more focused on technology and traditional progress while Savage is more on evolution.
Deus also seems to care about the lower tier members of society a lot, while Vandal Savage does not.
As with Lex, Deus is nothing like Vandal Savage. The only antagonist in fiction that i feel really fits Deus as an apt comparison at all would be David Xanatos from Gargoyles. And I think Deus is more like the more ‘evolved’ version of Xanatos at the end of season 2, rather than the one in season 1.
He’s a more pragmatic version of Doctor Doom.
Dr Doom – I protect my people as best I can from all comers and shall crush as perceived threats to my people and my power.
Pragmatic Doom – The game is not to immediately win even though a win gives the big prize yet a loss sets you back just as much. You always come out ahead every time through judicious cooperation and you end up with more in your pockets than the occasional winner.
He reminds me more of Xanatos
Oh definitely a lot more like Xanatos. I don’t think Deus is anything like Doom.
Dr Doom is a bit deeper than just protecting his people. Doom went through an almost unlimited number of alternate futures guided by a totemic god, panther i beleive, and found that in every singe one the world ended up in chaos and ruin if he did not rise to world controlling power. Ultimatly he is arguably the true hero with the fantastic four being the true villians, except for the fact that his methods and personality come off vilinous.
The best evil characters are those who have a good reason to be it, serving the greater good is not that different from the ultimate evil
Of course some people will be worse off, at least on paper. IE here are roughly 2000 billionaires in the world. If the SQ was disturbed by taking 990 million from each of them, They would be left with only $10M each, they would be worse off (but still never actually have to work for a living). Giving batches of $1M of that money to random folks would make 19,800,000 people much better off.
I’m not saying Deus is Bernie, but yeah disrupting the SQ for the good of 99% will likely upset 1%. I’m sure the warlords that Deus disrupted think he’s a jerk.
For most of those billionaries, their money is actually a measurement of the health of a company. It is a good thing that we’ve allowed Amazon/Apple/Microsoft(etc) to be created. If we’d redistributed Microsoft back in the 80’s Amazon wouldn’t have been created in this country.
What Deus is doing is creating wealth (so he is Jobs/Bezos/Gates). What Bernie was talking about is destroying it.
Not to launch into (yet another) political/economic debate, but what Bernie was talking about was not redistributing 99% of the wealth of every billionaire; more like upping their tax rate back where it was before Reagan. I mean, back in the ’50s, the top marginal rate was never below 70%, and we had a GDP up over 8%. There is absolutely no connection between tax rates and economic growth. It’s simply an article of faith among supply-side conservatives that if you cut taxes for the rich, they’ll spend money and stimulate the economy and somehow that will magically make everyone else richer. History should show by now that it just ain’t so.
Real wages for the average earner have been flat for the last 40 years, while the top 10 percent now account for over 45% of the income in America. CEO pay has grown 1000% (that’s one thousand percent) in the last 40 years. They now earn 278 times what the average worker makes. Supposedly this is due to the high stress and risk of their job: and yet, when the company loses money, it’s workers who are fired, not the CEO. So I’m moved to ask: What risk?
The wealth of the CEO may have very little to do with the health of the company. It has only to do with how well they get along with the Board of Directors, who recommend the CEO’s pay, and the CEO in turn ratifies the Board members’ pay. A very nice deal for all concerned.
And it’s interesting that the three CEOs you mention all came out against both the Bush and the Trump tax cuts, as antithetical to the health of the economy. It’s not that these guys don’t enjoy making money; but they can see the big picture, which is that we need tax income to run the nation and build infrastructure, and tax cuts do NOT “bring in twice the revenue” as it’s been said- another conservative myth.
What really builds the economy is a healthy middle class, something we’ve been losing for most of my lifetime.
“I mean, back in the ’50s, the top marginal rate was never below 70%, and we had a GDP up over 8%.”
The actual rate that was paid as never that high. The means of avoidance were at least as plentiful as they are now, and the usage rate on them was higher… because otherwise, you paid 70% or more, which is insane.
“History should show by now that it just ain’t so.”
If it weren’t so, history would show it by now. It doesn’t. Of course, that’s in part because we haven’t really tested it very well… the rich pay a higher percentage of the the income taxes than their percentage of income (that is, our taxes are highly “progressive”). That’s true at every level – top 10%, top 1%, top 0.1%. There are individual exceptions, I’m sure, but at each grouping, as a whole, that is true… and it’s not close. Also, many of the tax cuts you complain about, on net, increased the “progressiveness” of our tax system – the rich benefited, but those below them benefited even more. The optics of tax cuts, and the “articles of faith” on your side of things, virtually assures it.
Your last line is absolutely true. Your bit about CEOs and Boards of Directors was spot on. The stuff about CEOs more generally… there’s certainly a lot of truth in that for the big companies, but it gets quite a bit messier as the company size goes down.
Tax cuts: I don’t know about “twice the revenue” (never heard that claim, so I really don’t know where you got it), but every large tax cut in the last 4 decades has resulted in higher tax *revenue* in total, for the government – go check the actual numbers, that’s not a myth. Until we have a tax cut that results in lowered revenue, we’ve still got the rates too high for *any* purpose but social controls.
You guys seem to be missing what Deus is capable of. He has visited a civilisation capable of building a Dyson sphere (and quite a sophisticated one at that). On his shopping trip he took things, to exchange, that would be tempting to various galactic races and civilisations. In return he will have obtained true wealth, such as ways to solve our water crisis, global warming, pandemic diseases and limitless energy.
He does not need to redistribute the shiny beads and other tokens that humans currently consider to be wealth.
I tend to agree about Deus’s potential here – instead of squabbling like stereotypical politicians over how to split the pie of current Earth economy and living standards, he could 100x the size of the pie. Unlimited energy and clean water would radically alter the individual and global status quo, much like innovations like cell phones and mobile banking have dramatically altered most of Africa over the last few decades.
However I also tend to agree that the current tax system and attempted reforms do favor the ultra-rich, and several of them (e.g. Gates) agree and have argued against it. Giant companies like Microsoft and Amazon have vastly improved the economy and average standard of living (win), but that ‘rising tide’ has not ‘lifted all ships’ equally. I have no problem with the founders/leaders making a lot of money, it is hard work and they did take risks. But when you end up with a situation like Bezos controlling more wealth than most countries GDPs, while vital workers that make the system run (like warehouse workers) have poor working conditions and can barely make rent, there’s clearly an imbalance in relative pay-to-value compensation.
“but that ‘rising tide’ has not ‘lifted all ships’ equally.”
The term is ‘a rising tide lifts all boats.’ There’s nothing said about it having to lift all boats equally. There’s something called the Pareto distribution (I think that’s what it’s called) which states that in any given human society (and even in nature in most animal societies and PLANTLIFE), a small percentage of the population will ALWAYS produce the majority of the goods, otherwise known as the 80/20 rule. This is not only in income, it’s in …. pretty much everything. It’s even in dealing with how the biggest trees will get the most sunlight compared to the smaller ones.
The corollary of this rule is that the richer you are, the easier it will be to make more money. The poorer you are, the harder it is to make more money and easier it is to lose more money and get deeper into debt. It’s the same for other things as well. The more famous you are, the easier it is to get movie roles/political positions/jobs/etc.
The great thing about capitalism IS it’s ‘a rising tide that raises all boats’ – because capitalism is not a zero sum game, like feudalism or communism or socialism are, where you can only get something at the expense of another losing something. In capitalism, it’s possible for both sides to GET something – it’s NOT a given that both sides will get something equally… just that it won’t necessarily be ‘one side gets something directly at the expense of the other side losing stuff.’
Prior to COVID-19, the world’s poor have been growing in wealth at an exponential rate compared to any other time in human history. For the poorest people though, this means they go from … say… a dollar a month to three dollars a month (I’m just using US Currency as an easy currency example). But it’s better than them remaining stagnant, or going DOWN. And once you start ‘winning’ it becomes easier and easier to keep winning.
That’s the reason why ‘a rising tide raises all boats’ is a good thing even if it’s not raising all boats equally. Because you’re not supposed to compare one boat to another boat – you’re supposed to compare one boat to the place that SAME boat was before the tide rose.
I totally agree with you though in most everything else you said – unlimited energy and inexpensive clean water would completely alter everything even more than cheap energy and clean water have already done in the past 50 years.
I have no problem at all with Bezos controlling more wealth than most countries btw.
Why? Because he doesn’t actually have most of that money. Most of that money is tied up in companies – which creates more wealth for everyone else as well. He literally CANT remove the money to use more than, I believe, approximately 540 million dollars, which is his liquid assets in cash, even if he’s worth upwards of 112 billion (it was higher before the divorce) and I believe Amazon is nearing $1 trillion.
But Pander, you ask, wanting knowledge from the devastatingly intelligent and beautiful attorney, can’t Bezos just sell off some companies and stock, then he’ll have billions?
No, no he can’t. Because then that would devalue the worth of the remainder of the stock, or would cause a run on people trying to sell the stock, and the rest of the value of his stock would plummet. Also, the value of a thing is only worth liquid assets if you can find someone who can BUY it. If no one can buy it, no one can give him the Scrooge McDuck money bin worth of money to swim around in :).
I’m always loathe to compare the rich to the poor as if inequity = inequality. It’s the difference between the equality of opportunity ( and the equality of outcome. Guaranteeing the first is good. Guaranteeing the second is horrible and removes any point of ever trying to improve yourself, which in turn improves the lives of millions of other people. And I don’t mean trickle down economics btw. I’m talking basic economics of job and wealth creation.
All excellent points – “devastatingly intelligent” indeed. :D Always fun and educational to read your
monologuescomments, you seem like you’d be fun to hang out with IRL. *Re: trickle-down economics, which clearly doesn’t work, that exactly why I did say ‘not equally’, even though it’s not part of the
shipboat idiom, and tide actually does lift boats equally, regardless of size. Unless some of the boats are tied or anchored down. But I digress, this is an economics point more than a socio-political one.I think it’s possible to create jobs and wealth without hoarding it, and without significantly slowing the growth of either. I’ve always been of the mindset that employees should be paid as much as the company can responsibly afford, not as little as they can get away with. Sure, the shareholders want to maximize profit, but does Amazon or Walmart really need to make billions of dollars to provide their services? They could easily give every minimum-wage employee a few $/hr more, allowing them to improve their lives dramatically and stop living hand-to-mouth, and pay the C-level execs a few $100M/yr less without affecting them in any meaningful way. No one needs a $1.9B yacht. Not that we should force pay equalization up and down the ranks, there is a lot of education and effort involved in managing a huge company, but taxing the super rich seems pretty reasonable (aside from the tiny problem of them just moving overseas).
Personally, I’d love to see more effort given to financial education to help people manage their money – I think that has a more immediate effect on quality of life,and is more attainable, than marching on the 1%. Less than half of US states require any financial literacy coursework, and in only 6 is it a dedicated class instead of being integrated with a larger subject like math or economics. I just… how… why are we forcing teenagers to take calculus (which I as a civil/structural engineer almost never used professionally) and ignoring things like budgeting basics and why payday loans will destroy your life?! My pet project is to build some free financial education and planning tools for the working class that do meaningful long-term planning, like financial planners have for millionaires, not just help you deduct monthly expenses from paycheck so you can tell exactly how poor you are that month. **
/tangential ranting
* In a non-creepy way. I promise never to stalk you if I happen to visit… NYC, I think I remember seeing at some point? Are… are you Elle Woods? Or Lucy Kelson? Or Darby Shaw? ***
** There’s some great basic tools, like YNAB or Mint or Personal Capital (which at least does cash flow forecasting), etc etc, but none of them do what I want. Open to suggestions if anyone knows of something amazing.
*** I don’t watch that much TV, so those are all the beautiful female lawyer characters I know… Dang, now it sounds creepy again. Text-based communication is hard.
I did what I meant to be a really great reply, but for some reason it posted down at the bottom of the page….
Warning, I go off on a couple of tangents, including quoting Danny DeVito. You have been warned.
“Re: trickle-down economics, which clearly doesn’t work, that exactly why I did say ‘not equally’, even though it’s not part of the ship boat idiom, and tide actually does lift boats equally, regardless of size. Unless some of the boats are tied or anchored down. But I digress, this is an economics point more than a socio-political one.”
The main point of ‘a rising tide lifts all boats’ is to say that you should NOT compare one boat to another boat – you should compare where that boat is now to where that boat used to be. You don’t compare yourself to others. You compare yourself in the present to yourself in the past. Otherwise you’re never going to feel the satisfaction of personal growth because there’s ALWAYS going to be people richer, smarter, prettier, stronger, faster, or just plain BETTER than you. You can never guarantee that you’ll be better than another person, even if you’re all given the same starting point, or at the very least, all not having people getting in your way equally (which is more realistic, because different people DO have different starting points just by dint of genetics, their birth, their parents, their country of origin, and the time in which they were born, if nothing else.
BUT…. and this is an important but, you can ALWAYS work to make yourself better than you were BEFORE today. Even if just a teensy little bit. It’s still meaning you’ve had personal improvement and you can be so much more awesome than you were before. Honestly, that’s the main difference between pure socialism and pure capitalism. Pure socialism requires everyone being equal in outcome. That means some people who are just naturally better will be unfairly held back in order to keep others at an equal level to them. Because you can’t usually bring everyone UP to a certain level in socialism – because you’re always going to be concerned with inequity between different people (equality of outcome). But you definitely can bring everyone down to the lowest common demoninator (it’s always equal outcome when everyone is equally miserable). Meanwhile pure capitalism doesn’t mind if everyone starts out from an equal starting point (althought it’s more likely to make sure no one holds you BACK by putting artificial stumbling blocks in your path). Because capitalism works best with equality of OPPORTUNITY (not equality of outcome, ie, equity).
I like when people show the old cartoon for socialism about equality vs equity with 3 people wanting to watch a baseball game, and there are 3 crates. One man is tall, one is medium height, one is short. There’s a fence in front of them, and 3 crates. They describe equality as each person getting a crate and standing on it, so that the tall man (who doesn’t really need a crate to see) and the medium size man (who needs one crate to see) can see over the fence, but the short man (who would need 2 crates but only has one) cannot see. Now aside from the fact that these three people are all freeloaders and should pay for their own damn tickets like the crowd watching the baseball game on the other side of the fence), this is actually a very stupid representation of how equity vs equality actually works. Mainly because the crates come from nowhere. In an actual representation of equity, as has occured time and time again in real life when socialism is practiced where equity is paramount, you chop off the legs of the tall man to his midsection, you chop off the legs of the medium size man to his knees, and then all three are the same size as the short man, and no one can see. Also the very tall man will probably die because he’s bourgeoisie and its his own fault for being too superior to the other two in a socialist utopia, thus trying to ruin the equality of everyone by his own stubborn… being taller-ness.
HA! I out-tangented you brichins! :)
“I think it’s possible to create jobs and wealth without hoarding it, and without significantly slowing the growth of either. ”
I’d argue that it’s not only possible, it’s essential. Hoarding wealth tends to make you not as successful. To quote the notable judicial scholar Judge Ron Whitey from Futurama, “My caddy’s chauffeur informs me that a bank is a place where people put money that isn’t properly invested.”
The reason people like Trump or Bezos or Gates or Buffet or Soros or Bloomberg are insanely wealthy is not because they hoard their money. They do the exact opposite. Their money is always working for them, invested in other areas, in order to make more money, which in turn makes them richer.
Heck, even Scrooge McDuck didnt hoard MOST of his money. He just has so much that he can make a skyscraper full of liquid assets that would make Bezos look like a pauper, but Scrooge also has businesses, diamond mines, corporations, etc. (he pretty much built Duckberg single handedly according to the Scrooge McDuck comics, so that’s canon even!)
If you hoard your money, it’s not going to accumulate interest at the same rate as inflation usually, and your money will be worth less over time. You’ll get poorer by simply doing nothing. And yes I know, most of Scrooge’s money in the money bin are gold coins which is probably why that doesn’t happen to him, since precious metals are a pretty good bulwark against inflation, since it tends to go up in value at a greater rate than inflation. But gold isnt fiat currency.
Bet you didnt think I’d be going on a Scrooge McDuck rant did you? DOUBLE TANGENT! I’m so good at tangenting!
” I’ve always been of the mindset that employees should be paid as much as the company can responsibly afford, not as little as they can get away with.”
Why? The employee should negotiate their salaries. The corporations are in the business to make money. That being said, good will and reputation does have value, and the richer the corporation is, the more likely the employees ARE going to be paid extremely well, because high pay attracts the best talent. If I was working at a major law firm like Sullivan and Cromwell or Skadden Arps (I acutally did some contract work for each of them for about a year each as a staff attorney and they paid SOOOO well, I wish I could have been an associate there, let alone a partner), then I’d EXPECT to be paid better than if I work in a small law boutique. I’d also be able to charge the clients more at a major law firm with a huge reputation than if I’m working in my own ‘Law Office PLLC’ which would not have a widely known reputation, and thus has clients who cannot pay 4 figures an hour.
“pay the C-level execs a few $100M/yr less without affecting them in any meaningful way”
I don’t know of any execs who get paid ‘a few $100 mill a year’ – even the executives who get bonuses in the millions tend to only get them because they met certain markers for success in maknig money for the corporation, or the shareholders would vote them out (if it’s a publicly traded company at least). And when they do get those millions, a lot of it tends to be in the form of stock. Which is in turn reinvested back in the company. It’s not like they are given a burlap sack of money with a big dollar sign on it :).
That being said, if you pay your lowest level employees crappily, you’ll also get a negative reputation for it. The corporation then has to decide if the bad reputation matters more than the money saved on labor, or if the low wages are in line with the jobs being paid (or if it’s less of a hassle to just automate those jobs). Because what companies care about – hell, what they HAVE to care about if they don’t want a shareholder derivative lawsuit on their hands, is to make money for the INVESTORS.
To quote another well known fictional scholar, this time in the realm of business and economics, Mr. Larry Garfield, as played by Danny DeVito:
‘Amen. And amen. And amen. You have to forgive me. I’m not familiar with the local custom. Where I come from, you always say “Amen” after you hear a prayer. Because that’s what you just heard — a prayer. Where I come from, that particular prayer is called “The Prayer for the Dead.” You just heard The Prayer for the Dead, my fellow stockholders, and you didn’t say, “Amen.”
This company is dead. I didn’t kill it. Don’t blame me. It was dead when I got here. It’s too late for prayers. For even if the prayers were answered, and a miracle occurred, and the yen did this, and the dollar did that, and the infrastructure did the other thing, we would still be dead. You know why? Fiber optics. New technologies. Obsolescence. We’re dead alright. We’re just not broke. And you know the surest way to go broke? Keep getting an increasing share of a shrinking market. Down the tubes. Slow but sure.
You know, at one time there must’ve been dozens of companies makin’ buggy whips. And I’ll bet the last company around was the one that made the best goddamn buggy whip you ever saw. Now how would you have liked to have been a stockholder in that company? You invested in a business and this business is dead. Let’s have the intelligence, let’s have the decency to sign the death certificate, collect the insurance, and invest in something with a future.
“Ah, but we can’t,” goes the prayer. “We can’t because we have responsibility, a responsibility to our employees, to our community. What will happen to them?” I got two words for that: Who cares?
Care about them? Why? They didn’t care about you.
They sucked you dry. You have no responsibility to them. For the last ten years this company bled your money. Did this community ever say, “We know times are tough. We’ll lower taxes, reduce water and sewer.” Check it out: You’re paying twice what you did ten years ago. And our devoted employees, who have taken no increases for the past three years, are still making twice what they made ten years ago; and our stock — one-sixth what it was ten years ago.
Who cares? I’ll tell ya: Me. I’m not your best friend. I’m your only friend. I don’t make anything? I’m makin’ you money. And lest we forget, that’s the only reason any of you became stockholders in the first place. You wanna make money! You don’t care if they manufacture wire and cable, fried chicken, or grow tangerines! You wanna make money! I’m the only friend you’ve got. I’m makin’ you money.
Take the money. Invest it somewhere else. Maybe, maybe you’ll get lucky and it’ll be used productively. And if it is, you’ll create new jobs and provide a service for the economy and, God forbid, even make a few bucks for yourselves. And if anybody asks, tell ’em ya gave at the plant.
And by the way, it pleases me that I am called “Larry the Liquidator.”
You know why, fellow stockholders? Because at my funeral, you’ll leave with a smile on your face and a few bucks in your pocket.
Now that’s a funeral worth having!’
“No one needs a $1.9B yacht.”
The people who get paid to build the yacht need someone who needs a $1.9 billion yacht. So do the people who staff it, the people who own the marina, the people who maintain it, the people who repair it, the people who ship the materials used in making it, the architects and engineers involved in designing it, the investors who invested in the companies which built it, the schools which taught the people who maintain, staff, and build it, etc.
Not to mention if a guy wants to spend $1.9 billion for a yacht, who am I to say ‘no, that’s too much money for any one person to have.’ Who am I to tell them that. I want him to have enough money to buy a $1.9B yacht, in fact. That’s the OPPOSITE of hoarding. That means he took that $1.9 Billion and put it back in the economy. So it’s not being hoarded.
“Not that we should force pay equalization up and down the ranks,”
Unfortunately that’s what happens in practice in the real world when people decry billionaires. Utopia does not exist and is unable TO exist because human beings have human desires, and human desires ramp up in kind with human ambition, and the richest people TEND to be the most ambitious (and usually the most effective in using their money to make more money, or provide the service or product easiest to effectively scale up for the masses).
“there is a lot of education and effort involved in managing a huge company, but taxing the super rich seems pretty reasonable”
They already are taxed. Quite high, in fact. If you tax them too high though…. the rich leave. Because they can afford to leave. then they go somewhere that they are not taxed as high. And the place that was taxing so high no longer has that tax revenue coming in. It’s happened in New York (Governor Cuomo has been lamenting it). It’s currently starting to happen in California. It’s the reason the Tax Reform Act of 1984 (I did a thesis on this actually in college) was followed by the best economy in this century – because the tax rates fell from upwards of 91% to 35%.
“(aside from the tiny problem of them just moving overseas).”
I’d say that’s actually a pretty big problem.
“Personally, I’d love to see more effort given to financial education to help people manage their money”
I can not agree with brichins more here. And if I dispute ANYTHING ELSE in his post, I will still say his post is brilliantly written because of this one sentence. People NEED TO LEARN practical financial education in school. What they currently learn is amateurish and pretty much is a rehash of the same stuff from 6th grade onward, if they even get that much understanding. College students should have to take an economics course as a mandatory class in the first year, and you can’t progress if you fail. It would be doing them a favor, before they kill themselves with debt from college loans while not understanding anything about those loans.
“I think that has a more immediate effect on quality of life,and is more attainable, than marching on the 1%”
Brichins I adore you and I agree with you so much and I think if we ever hung out together we’d get along great. You, me, and Yorpie, night on the town. Guesticus can come too to show I like G too.
Btw, most people don’t realize, when complaining about the 1% that the 1% in the United states makes $421,796. The 1 percent are not even mostly millionaires (although some millionaire are in the 1% – mostly anyone who has a net worth of less than 9.5 million, and that includes investible assets like small business owners). Most multi-millionaires are in the 0.01%. And billionaires – they tend to be in the 0.01% or 0.001%, depending on how many billions they have. But that doesn’t roll off the tongue when chanting on wall street.
And that’s just the 1% if you talk about the US. If you talk about the WORLD…. then the 1% is about 19 million Americans (of a population of 325 million, a good portion of whom are non-income-earning minors remember). Even most poor Americans are pretty rich by international standards, and the wider the net you cast, the more money most Americans have in comparison.
“and ignoring things like budgeting basics and why payday loans will destroy your life?”
Because our educational system is backwards and I couldnt agree with you more on everything you’ve said here.
“I promise never to stalk you if I happen to visit… NYC, I think I remember seeing at some point? Are… are you Elle Woods? Or Lucy Kelson? Or Darby Shaw? ***”
I am none of those people. :) Plus I don’t know who two of those people are, which makes me even more certain I’m none of those people.
“There’s some great basic tools, like YNAB or Mint or Personal Capital ”
Mint is great, YNAB is pretty good for people who don’t understand how to handle their own money as well.
I work as a senior scientist in the most successful laboratory (as determined by how many new products are developed per year) in a global industry. I have dim hopes of ever paying off my student loans or owning a house (I have a villa).
Tesla died penniless.
The Kardashians are billionaires.
Jan Baer – Dupont? 3M? Bell Labs?
Student loans are murder, especially for anyone who doesn’t actually pursue a long career in their chosen field of study, and the cost and profit margin of higher education is criminally high (>90%). Education / student loan planning is one of my highest priorities for my eventual planning tool. I had always heard how bad credit cards are, but turns out the US has more student loan debt – and it’s not forgivable in bankruptcy like consumer debt is. Guess the Ivy League has better lobbyists than the bankers.
As for the relationship between skill and public value, Adam Sandler once said “I’m not particularly talented. I’m not particularly good-looking. And yet I’m a multimillionaire.” Sometimes I wonder why I wasn’t smart enough to join a band and seek fame instead of going into STEM fields.
Hah, I always imagined that you were prettier than Ally McBeal!
Woof Woof! I can tell if Timmy has fallen down a mine.
Yorp, you know those ‘guess how many marbles’ games with a bunch of marbles in a glass jar?
I want to know if you can tell how many Timmies have fallen down a single well, with that idea in mind.
Unrelated but funny:
My favorite Superman comic is where Superman uses ‘super mathematics’ to tell how many jelly beans are in a jar in order to astound Lois Lane, who also apparently skipped math class in 5th grade.
Super-mathematics. Otherwise known to us mere mortals as…. mathematics. And he does the math wrong, because apparently super-mathematics do not include ‘elementary-level multiplication.’
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/3c/c0/31/3cc031b2a950076fd0a5124f8151eb52.jpg
It’s 3,200, not 32,000. 20 x 16 x 10 = 3200. I didn’t need x-ray vision eithe. Or a calculator even. I’ll go get my cape now.
Btw I do completely agree with brichins that Deus should be, and most likely is, focusing on enlargening the pie. After all, as he said to Sydney, theres still so much out there that he doesnt yet own.
The top 1% make 20% of all income and pay 40% of all Federal income tax (roughly).
The bottom 50% make 4% of all income and pay 0% of all Federal income tax (roughly).
You literally can’t cut the income taxes of the bottom 50% because they don’t pay any.
Seems like the system is already pretty progressive.
The biggest tax the bottom 50% pays is FICA, which seems regressive on its face, except that it’s tied to a benefit which is *heavily* progressive in how it’s calculated.
Idk what you mean the bottom 50% pays no taxes, since I don’t even get a tax return, if you mean little to no taxes, it’s still something like a sixth of our paychecks, just as a worker, much less a small business with taxes on their business.
Unless you don’t live in America and aren’t poor, in which case I’m sure whenever you’re talking about is fine.
I have no idea how it is in America, but in Britain, if your income is below a certain level, at the moment it is roughly £900/month, I believe, you don’t pay any taxes at all…except road tax if you have a car, value added tax (UK version of sales tax), council tax (if you own a house), tobacco tax/alcohol tax/oil tax respectively on applicable good you buy…but not on income
Last I checked, $9,000 is subtracted from our gross yearly income before the taxes are calculated, so you get your first $9,000 of the year tax free. You still have to pay land taxes and sales taxes on non food, so there is still some tax burden on the lowest income people.
I rounded for effect, the bottom 50% actually pay 3% of all Federal income tax.
And that’s as a group, some within that group will pay more, some less.
As I mentioned, Social Security taxes are a bigger burden than income taxes to the bottom 50%, but that’s technically a payroll tax not an income tax, and a disproportionate amount of that is ultimately returned to the bottom 50% during retirement.
https://www.ntu.org/foundation/tax-page/who-pays-income-taxes
These numbers are before the TCJA took effect, but that is expected to increase the percentage paid buy wealthy people.
England did exactly what you wished during the 69s and 70s- tax rates of over 80%. All the rich people left and took their money with them. Same thing happened in France between the wars. Both produced high unemployment and a lack of opportunity.
In America in the high tax era you like so much, hardly anyone in that bracket actually paid that amount: it was cheaper to buy congressional favor and get a carveout.
Basically stratospheric tax rates mean corruption and good times for the very rich; stagnation at best for everyone poorer. “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting a different outcome ” .
I wouldn’t say Deus is a Jobs/Bezos. They never would have put so much work into improving the infrastructure, investing their own money into an area, and benefiting the people in it. Yes, he also does it because he believes that it will lead to being able to make more money through a strong economy and a happy middle class population. But if he didn’t believe that could happen, he’d be an idiot throwing his money into a pit.
He displaced warlords, brought peace and stability, and is doing so in a way he can continue to do…because yeah, he is totally planning on taking over the world. It just happens he is also more benevolent than the alternatives.
Go suck a billionaires dick. The only wealth Amazon and Apple have created is for the richest assholes on the planet who have deliberately taken steps to make the lives of nearly everyone else so much worse. The problem with Bernie is that he didn’t go far enough, all he wanted to do was redistribute some of the wealth when really he should have been pushing for the workers to seize the means of production and take back all the wealth that was stolen from us.
As of mid 2020, Amazon employs 840,000 people, Apple 137,000, Walmart 2.2 million (1.5 million just in the US)… in fact, the biggest 25 companies in the US employ over 10.6 million people (as of 2017), or 2/3 of the total workforce of ~160 million in 2017.
How is that not creating any wealth? Small business being the backbone of the economy may be the only thing all politicians can agree on, but giant employers are completely integral too. Sure, their CEOs are overpaid, but you can’t just yank the plug on the entire thing and try to make everyone equal.
Meanwhile ,they’re treating their employees as little better than slaves… except when they can get actual slaves.
https://imgur.com/gallery/2HO10wp
Turns out that the people who keep saying point blank, “greed is good,” don’t actually have your best interests at heart. Who would have believed?
More proof that Deus is a better billionaire/CEO than any billionaire/CEO in real life.
All praise Deus, amen.
You know my mom has to travel 50 km further than 25 years ago just to buy fabric right? Walmart’s policies 1 killed the one fabric store in town that was originally profitable by undercutting them, then decided fabrics weren’t profitable enough to continue offering that department, and because it would take years to build back a clientele in the region- many have moved because there’s literally no reason for them to continue renting in that town because none of their hobbies were supported any more; the town actively shrunk. Wealth condensation actually kills smaller communities if any aspect of those ‘big’ corporations downsize once they kill off the competition in smaller communities.
With respect to the “creation of wealth” you are mistaken, but it’s not your logic. It’s your terms of reference. Go have a good hard think about what “wealth” is, and then ask yourself whether your answer works in other contexts. For example, gold is completely useless in a shipwreck survival scenario. That’s an intentionally trivial example, purely illustrative. What does Gates or Bezos having a big number of dollars out of circulation do for the wider community? In the case of Musk it was seed capital for a future for humanity, but that’s highly unusual.
“I’m sure that the Warlords that Deus *disrupted* (emphasis mine) think he’s a jerk”; absolutely, those that aren’t burning in Hell, which would be….. ummmm….. Dave? :)
I don’t know, he seems almost sad that she asked him that. But that could be a ploy. :-)
I think it’s more that he’d like her to join him, but knows she never would because their viewpoints are so different. “No one is the villain of their own story.”
It’s not a very apt analogy really. Kylo is decidedly evil and Rey is a de facto mary-sue level of good. Deus is not remotely evil (even if he might like the persona and trope subversion because it throws people off their game), and Maxima is not mary sue levels of good.
Mostly just wanted the “join me” line, Deus is definitely not as
whineyevil as Kylo, nor Max as naive as Rey. I like Star Wars, but man there’s a franchise with some 1-dimensional characters.Fair enough :) I’d probably have used Darth Vader and Luke if I was using the ‘join me’ statement since it was much better (and Force Awakens ripped it off from Empire Strikes Back. Except in that movie, it had actual meaning since Darth Vader was (spoiler alert)…
… Luke’s father. I know. What a twist. I apologize to anyone for whom I’ve utterly spoiled the movie, but I did say spoiler alert.
Darth Vader: “Luke, you do not yet realize your importance. You have only begun to discover your power. Join me, and I will complete your training. With our combined strength, we can end this destructive conflict and bring order to the galaxy.”
That’s… potentially an interesting parallel. In Star Wars, a large part of Palpatine’s motivation for establishing the Empire was to strengthen and unite (that part of) the Galaxy to resist an intergalactic invasion, having been warned to expect it by a neighbouring empire. (At least, it was before Disney took over and discarded most of the Extended Universe.) It’s admittedly not certain that Vader was read into this objective, but it seems highly probably given his status as second-in-command and de facto heir to Palpatine. To pile supposition upon tangent, maybe Deus knows something the rest of the world doesn’t about just what “minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, [regard] this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely [draw] their plans against us”.
The problem with the “benevolent dictator” thing is that they rarely are as benevolent as they want us to think. Also, even if they *are* benevolent, they are one person, who will eventually grow old, probably senile, and in all likelihood won’t be running the show during their declining years, much less after they die. Democracies have tons of really obvious flaws, but they do have processes for smooth transfer of power and at least some form of accountability should the “benevolent” leader turn out to not be so benevolent. Deus is setting up a system where literally no one can hold him accountable.
It doesn’t help that leaders of any kinds need to do things that maintain their power- things that are often seen as the opposite of benevolent. Not because they necessarily want to, but because there are always forces that leaders of nations, be them presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings/queens, or other, must balance. CGPGrey explained it fairly well here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs), and as no ruler can rule alone, neither is their power PERSONAL.
Every dictator in our history have claimed to be benevolent. Most have even belived they actually were.
Oh, no, not all of them. That’s a pretty recent thing, really. Plenty of historical supreme leaders (of whatever title) didn’t give pile of warm crap about that. Even today, many of the smaller scale dictators (small enough to not get much press) don’t bother. Well, and the Kim family in NK, of course.
“much less after they die. ” Except in North Korea.
Which kinda makes my point for me, thanks. The ruling family of North Korea started out as a genuine revolutionary who, during his younger years, appeared to genuinely want to make his country better off than it was. Life has a way of not going the way we expect, and look at them now. The family itself may still be in power, but they’ve all, including their founder, been anything but benevolent.
Oh, and also let’s not take our eyes off of the ball: Deus is not to be trusted. Everything he says shouldn’t be trusted. He’s openly trying to subvert, and possibly seduce, arguably the one person who might be able to stop him all by herself. He’s clearly embracing super villain tropes, but smart enough to stay in the grey areas of life so that it’s harder to rally opposition.
But anything he says? Nope. He’s an unreliable narrator, do not take his words at face value. That’s how he manipulates you.
“By their works shall ye know them.” Judge him by his works… this is entering “designated villain” territory.
I would say political and corporate accountability are rather lacking in the current era, democracy or not.
Benevolent dictators are mostly a pipe dream because the “benevolent” won’t use the keys to power to become dictators.
Really, he’s been too obvious and honest about some things to consider him the stereotypical “benevolent dictator”. He has after all, actually done the work and followed through on the infrastructure thing. And right here, he is very up front that…yeah, he’s going to be a “bad guy” for her. Because her job is to protect the status quo. She’s a super powered military officer cum super-police, for a specific nation. She has attacked and killed super powered beings in other countries, as part of wars, and blown up a mosque. None of this means that she isn’t a good person, or a great character, or trying to do the right thing. Or that we shouldn’t support her.
But…equally, Deus is working on a big picture. He’s already been to space, and is working on space diplomacy better than most of the actual diplomats. And considering what we’ve seen of space, that could end up being really helpful in saving the whole world.
Benevolant people would never become dictators? Good thing he’s not trying to become a dictator. Middle class freedom to spend and live and be happy, and to do so under another person…that’s not that kind of dictatorship. He isn’t aiming to create a cult of personality that ignores the truth. The system will fall down after he leaves? Maybe. I think he’s aiming to get to something in particular before then, something on the lines of earth entering the space big leagues properly.
I wouldn’t call allying with a race that is so rapacious someone set about building a force clearly to exterminate every last one of them to be good diplomacy. He’s positioning Earth to leap forward, but also positioning Earth to face those massive genocidal machine-things that Sydney fought. He’s bypassed intergalactic laws about technology exchanges and he’s stolen artifacts while temporarily allying himself with one of Earth’s most horrible villains. He thinks he’s being pragmatic, but he’s making a hell of alot of powerful enemies along the way. He also clearly knows it, which is why he’s trying so hard to lure Max into his “army”.
On the contrary, being able to take such a race and set them into a stalemate, to quickly grasp then manipulate them is basically ideal diplomacy.
Those genocidal machine things were as likely to show up before, especially considering sciona and her ghost pod, and “just lay low” isn’t really the best tactic. We don’t really know the motives of said genocidal machine things, but it certainly doesn’t seem related to enforcing import regulations.
And again, confirming to her that they’ll inevitably end up opposed, isn’t really trying very hard to lure her in. He may have hoped to, and I’d read that pause as him sadly considering if there is a chance.
And while this is going to get buried, this suddenly feels appropriate for his “changing from dictatorship to business supporting and uplifting people” angle: https://youtu.be/rStL7niR7gs and it also shows why, if pulled off, it’s really hard for it to slip back into full on wartorn revolving door dictatorship.
Case in point, Trump.
Culebras are gimmicky as hell. It looks like the cigars they are smoking are quite dark, probably maduros which usually have a bold flavor perfect for after meal drinks.
Lets face it, Earth alone is too small for Deus’ ambitions he’s playing a different game to most of the cast and his isn’t one who win, but one where you’re no 1.
and typos
Petitioner in panel 9, looks like he’s drawing a gun. Could this be misdirection and Deus is a sacrifice?
I’m sad.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-146-opossum-ocomitatus/comment-page-1/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koB1hdap3ek
“Your job is to beat up bank robbers?” When? They only fought the group in the first story arc. After that they couldnt catch sciona (she got away and made them look incompetent 3 times), the rest of the people who worked with her got away and have been promptly been forgotten, and the demon hunter lady has been completely been dropped (no mention since capture, no motive, no conclusion… great writing). Since then its been a “whole lot o nuttin.” For a superhero comedy there has been more usless exposition than super heroes. And the comedy has been less and less as the comics gone forward. What is the joke in this comic? One imagine spot?
Seriously whats the point of this comic? Where is it going? Whats the themes? Why am I still reading this? Well shit Ive come this far why leave now. And it amuses me to comment, i honestly get more entertainment here than reading the comments.
He said “your job ISN’T really beating up bank robbers.” Sciona got away, but only temporarily (And is no longer a threat). The others are currently reduced to two dudes sharing one body and who are on the run (and presumably are being tracked by others working offscreen). The demon hunter lady has been arrested and, in the absence of a revolving door prison system, will most likely stay in custody for some time.
If you’re going to critique, pay attention to detail. Otherwise, you just sound like a nitwit.
First sciona is still out there only in the body of a drug lord (i think, he never made it clear and he hinted the body she inhabits is a super) and enough of schemer to be a threat. Plus she has a ton of souls from her dead planet.
Second, two dudes? You pay attention, there was the lizard lady wyrm guy/cooter, two vampires and that weird doctor. We dont even know WHY they were with sciona. Plus the implication that the vamps of the twighlight council is enough to make a story out of. Even then those loose ends are much more intriguing than this boring crap and shitty soft core porn crap (fucking furries and 3 weeks worth of max deciding what to wear what makes that worth paying attention to)
3 demon hunter lady… What. Happened. To. Her. She was captured, yes, i saw that. Then we had some stupid succubus world building that means little to the actual story. Then we went to the next storyline. Did she go to the twighlight or arc swat? Did she know that was where the little girl was gonna be, or was it chance? Is she working with someone? And the question I wanted answered, why does she have 8 arms and yet is hunting the “monsters”. There is no revolving door prison but she doesnt just disapear either.
I have been paying attention. For about 4 or 5 years. And in that time nothing has happened. Nothing signifigant. If you can tell me how much sydney, dabbler, and max (the only characters who you could call “protagonists”) have changes and grown as people, not just got a new power or did something funny. Actaul character progression, i will concede your point
The webic has been going for 10 years real time, how long has it been in world? Two, three months? Tell me how much ‘change and growth’ occurs in that amount of time (and remember, Sydney effectively didn’t exist for nearly two of those months)
Way, way way way back at the beginning, before Sydney revealed the Orbs & joined ARCHON, she brought a super spicy lunch at a restaurant near her comic shop, then went to deposit some work money at the bank. With Max further up the line. Then 2 “bank robbers” came in 7 did the whole show & dance, shotguns fired into the roof, Sydney as a hostage then using her Spicy Breath Attack… :P
Enjoy the stroll down memory lane. I know I did… https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-36-roll-for-initiative/
And do not forget the tongue flip. That is one beautiful move.
And in 811 comic strips how much has actually happened? Nothing. Funny stuff happened, but nothing of real substance, sydney still hasnt shown anything that would make her a lieutenant like they said she was in the FIRST FIVE STRIPS. I wouldnt trust that spazz with a flashlight let alone an actual leadership position. If hes gonna make a gag comic fine, he’s not that funny, but all the power to him. If he’s gonna do an a serial story, again go ahead, but it needs to be presented better than this.
ok, this is one epic-ally long flashback.
you have noticed that sydney is shooting her gun right? the one handed to her disassembled?
we’ve had 3 major fights that i can think of.
Sydney has at least one new power,
we now know at least something of what all but one ball does.
the comic shop has grown, and moved to a new location.
somewhere someone has said how long its been but id guess we are a minimum of 6 months from the start, more likely a year possibly 2.
with the evolving art style its hard to tell but sydney should be showing the effects of those daily runs about now.
in a way i think this is realistic. an outfit like arcon is not going to be dealing with a super fight every day and not even once a year. also- sydney is changing, she isn’t quite as impulsive as she was at the start, but shes nowhere near field agent ready yet. so yeah this is a lot of character building which means people do lots and lots of talking.
I think Sydney has at least three new powers actually, not one. Or two new powers and one new variation on an existing power.
Power #1 – Teleportation
Power #2 – Aetherium Causeways (Stargates)
Power #3 – Machine gun rapid fire PPO
And yes, it’s an epic-level flashback :)
I think folk are being too literal. I took his statement as saying ‘Your job isn’t really fighting supervillians’, but maintaining the status quo, the most visible and lowest hanging fruit of which are supervillians. And even they don’t normally threaten the status quo, their effects being localized and insurance existing.
Something sparkly for the easily distracted masses to focus on, while people like Deus work to affect real change ‘offstage’.
am… am I gonna end up rooting for Deus?
Who knows? There were actually legitimate reasons to prefer the emperor over the republic in Star Wars, as has been discussed ad infinitum – until the Empire started blowing up inhabited planets on whim.
OTOH, the Republic was so incompetent that it could not stop a trade federation from taking slaves, building private armies and generally doing whatever they damned please as long as it wasn’t on an “important” world.
Neither was much preferable to the other. When progress is stopped, exploration done solely in the name of profit and “advancement” is considered solely in terms of “how much money did it make me”, then a social order is seriously in decline, though it may be decades before it shows on the surface.
In other news, one of the largest and most valuable appearing black walnut trees you ever saw broke in half during a storm a few years back, and put a number of limbs through my roof. Looked extremely healthy, but was rotten in the center. You may take whatever moral you wish from that very true (and expensive) story.
I’ve seen people describe the Star Wars universe as the ruins of a previous civilization, now going through a feudal phase. The “Republic” was just another feudal regime, maybe at best the fading remnants of a former actual republic.
“Who knows? There were actually legitimate reasons to prefer the emperor over the republic in Star Wars, as has been discussed ad infinitum – until the Empire started blowing up inhabited planets on whim.”
No, there weren’t. The whole point was that the Sith had been working on undermining the Republic for ages. The corrupt politicians favouring the megacorps were ultimately in Palpatine’s pocket.
Then he manipulated said megacorps to bankroll a massive secessionist movement to orchestrate a mulitple years-long war that tore the galaxy in half and which he used to systematically dismantle the Republic’s democratic institutions and centralise more and more power in his own office.
Clone Wars actually makes a point of how damaging the war and Palpatine’s war-time policies were for the Republic – it was in huge debt and social programs were pretty much dead.
And the Empire was an inefficient fascist dystopia that pretty much kneecapped itself by blowing huge sums of money on TWO superweapons.
The Republic had its flaws, but it was still way better than the fascist nightmare that replaced it.
bad for the ecconomy? Do you have any idea how much empoylent building those two “super weapons” generated? The Empire stood for law and order, it got rid of corruption that pervaded the entire Senate of the Republic.
What evidence do you have that the Sith undermined the Republic? and for ages? You got proof for that claim? Let me guess…the only proof you have is “Sith are evil because Jedi say so”. The Republic allowed the Trade Federation to grow into a corrupt megalith that wielded almost equal political power (or even more power) to the Senate.
But of course, you precious Rebel Propaganda movies would depict the Empire as the bad guys. Even IF the Emperor did the things he is accused of in the movies…Omlettes and Eggs. To weed out a fundamentaly rotten system, measures had to be taken. And yes, it takes ages of preparations before a corrupt system like the Republic can be felled.
War and military spending is a classic example of the ‘broken window fallacy’ – something that creates some apparent good while actually resulting in a net loss. Sure, the weapons programs were part of the economy, but what if all that money spent (on both sides) had instead gone into infrastructure, raising the standard of living, and social reforms? The current “Defund the Police”* movement in the US is generating a lot of interesting discussion about exactly this.
* Poor naming choice, but catchier than “shift local government spending on police from military equipment and combat training to social work and community uplift”
Unfortunately the ‘Defund the police’ movement is NOT about police reform. It’s about people literally wanting to do away with police. Because usually the people calling for it have a childlike view of how a society operates, and the rich among them also usually have access to private armed security firms which protect them already.
Best case scenario with a ‘defund the police’ would be if it also accompanied a mass deregulation of firearms and pro-2A philosophy. Then you’d just have the Wild Wild West instead. That’s the ‘best case scenario’ with Defund the police.’ Rather sketchy idea on ‘best’ though (and I say that as someone who’s rather pro-2A). I do not think a ‘wild wild west’ structure works well for a LARGE population, like a city. Maybe for a town or a small gated community.
I’m honestly not sure if a full defunding of the police would even be constitutional. Not that many politicians understand the Constitution lately, it seems. Unfortunately (and worryingly). Certain anarcho-capitalists might argue that it could still be constitutional (as well as many anarcho-socialists and outright anarchists, obviously) because it can always be replaced with private security hired by the neighborhoods, but there are a lot of legal problems with that too if you stretch it out to a city-level population.
It’s literally one of the few things that I think the US Government is constitutionally obligated to provide as a public good, similar to how the US government is obligated to provide the post office as a public good as part of ‘promote the general welfare’ or ‘ensure domestic Tranquility’).
If you were to argue that the Preamble was not actually part of the law, it might also fall under the duties of Congress under Article I, Section 8, to “To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union” since the meaning of the word Militia is not what people normally think it means – it means any citizen who can be called to fight or upload the laws (ie, police would fit this requirement as one example).
Or at the very least, it’s part of the oath of office that all of Congress AND the President must take in getting sworn in under 5 USC 3331 (ie, “defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic”)
There also tends to be a variation of that oath of office for governors and mayors, but usually for the state constitution.
Oh the Defund movement has some unresolved issues* for sure – although from what I’ve (briefly) seen discussed (and per Wikipedia), it’s goal is about social reform, by moving spending away from military-like equipment / training and into social services, and not actually eliminating police completely. The idea of private security businesses handling criminal matters is extremely dystopian, and I can’t see how it would result in anything but protection rackets and clan warfare.
I wasn’t endorsing it either way, but the discussion around it is certainly raising awareness into some problems and generating interest in other possible solutions.
* logistical, political, institutional, economical, racial, social, constitutional…
Fair enough. I only wish the people arguing it were arguing what you were arguing instead of what they are arguing.
But trust me…. if we actually defunded the police, it would not end well. It would DEFINITELY be dystopian, like you said. And it -would- end in privatization, if it ever actually happened (or best case scenario it would end in a wild wild west everywhere in the country).
I mean cmon, that’s the entire backstory to Robocop and how OCP took over Detroit. :)
Hoooookaaayy… Living in Oz is not all a dream come true. There’s a lot of things that definitely could be managed better. But I can tell youse all that having only two levels* of police to worry about is very refreshing.
And the drink is positively sparkling when you realise that State police means that jurisdiction doesn’t end when you leave town, only when you cross the State border. That the Feds are actually in tune with the State cops, and there’s no competition for kudos.
I’m not saying our cops are paragons of virtuous achievement. Most of them would have trouble catching a cold in winter. But when you cross the State border is when extradition becomes a thing, and the cops on both sides work together.
* Oz police do not do counter-intelligence. That’s ASIO. We frequently wonder how unintelligent people can possibly do counter-intelligence :( Even our Feds try to stay far far away from that stuff. And ASIO is smart enough to not get involved with street crime.
“Consider the fact that four Minneapolis police officers responded to a 911 call that described a minor, nonviolent crime.” (RollingStone)
I can tell youse all now, that no way in Oz would that offence be even listened to on our “000” (triple-zero) service: no person had been injured or killed, and there is no legal way non-police can detain any offender who is not threatening lives. Threats to property could possibly be considered threats to lives, but the detainer will have to show that in court. This crime could certainly happen here, but the triple zero would not have summoned the cops out.
It seems Oz cops are already “defunded” — in addition to being underpaid, overworked, undertrained and therefore underappreciated. Oh, and they have to pay out of their own pockets for ammo used in range practice. Talk about fiscal responsibility!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Tell that to the folks of Camden, NJ. They not only defunded the police, they redirected those funds into social services and programs that eliminate the factors that lead to crime. They also drastically changed the training and policies of the department, away from militarization and towards being a part of the community they serve. The result: their crime rate (especially violent crime) is a FRACTION of what it was.
There were reasons which would have been legitimate had the strife impacting the Republic been genuine, rather that a complete and utter Sith-show.
Palpatine engineered a situation in which a benevolent dictator would be advantageous to the Republic, portrayed himself as possessing the appropriate traits and personality for that role, had himself granted a lesser-form of that position (Emergency Powers ag the end of Attack of the Clones), and used his control of both sides to enhance his own actions and disrupt those made by committee, the Senate, or the Jedi – all so that people would decide it was a good idea to install him in the role permanently.
Had, for example, Palpatine fallen victim to a misplaced blaster bolt or high-velocity debris at the start of Revenge of the Sith, and someone who honestly embodies those ideals (e.g. Bail Organa, Mon Mothma, or Pafme Nabierre) become Supreme Chancellor and later pressured into Emperor / Empress, then the next 60 years would have been as lot less dark and fearful
I’m not into Star Wars at all well enough to know the politics (I’ve only seen the prequels once each), but I feel that the term “Sith-show” deserves recognition.
Bear in mind that the Jedi were 100% okay with legal slavery (Anakin’s mother was never even purchased by the Order, let alone rescued or liberated), economic oppression, and worse. In the KOTOR games they emphasize that point. G0-T0, the droid built to save the Republic, sums it up: “The Republic exists to support the Jedi Order.”
The Republic was in fact an aristocracy, with only the barest trappings of democratic rule. Hell, there’s a bit in the books where the Jedi stage a coup because they don’t get along with the Chancellor. (granted, people were dumb enough to elect frickin’ DAALA, but still…)
You should. Rooting for the hero is the acceptable thing to do, after all. :)
Not if you stay away from the refreshments (and don’t accept any from Pander either :P)
Don’t listen to him Ryexandra! Join me! We can rule the forum as … well not father and son but…. as two really neat people on the interwebs!
Also cmon Guesticus, you know you want some of this cool delicious kool-aid. Yummy yummy in your tummy.
Nuh-uh, and you can’t make me! :P
All the cool kids are rooting for Deus. Don’t you want to be cool?
Every time I see him I think “Drop a deuce”.
Been waiting for someone to knock him out.
Unfortunately, Deus is a billionaire and Maxima is a soldier who is also a cop. They’re both villains.
What a cop is entirely dependent on the nation. In the USA a notable number of cops are violent corrupt enforcers because the USA has a corrupt violent side to it.
Meanwhile in the Nordic countries where prison isn’t even supposed to be punishment but rather rehabilitation the worst thing people regularly complain about the police doing is being underfunded and catching them when they are speeding on the motorway.
Maxima is a super-cop in the USA, so she has likely stood on the sidelines when there was abuse of police power going on, but I doubt she is such as YesMan (or Yes-Woman rather) that she’d just stand guard and watch a police officer beat the crap out of unresisting protesters. Mostly because she is powerful enough that she isn’t intimidated by corrupt leaders, but still.
Not that I think corrupt police would dare go slashing tires if they knew someone like Maxima was flying around overhead.
Such a blanket statement is flawed. Yes, there are areas in the USA where cops are corrupt and violent, but there are areas where they are not. The problem with the US is that every county, not just merely every state, has their own standards of police training and recruit selection.
Some counties happily take any gunhappy redneck who signs up and knows the front end of a gun from its back end…just give them a badge and a gun and let them loose after maybe half an hour at the shooting range…
Other areas screen applicants for past conduct and attitude and give the accepted recruits propper training, which includes instructions in ethical conduct, gun safety, the actual law (so they actually know what they are meant to uphold), etc…
Arc-SWAT is military and police…they are military police…they are trained in many tings, amongst which you can bet Discipline is a big one (all “out of uniform” scenes to the contrary)..or at least Maxima is trying to instill discipline…to varying effect…. We already have seen that they teach proper Gun Safety…
Also, Military Police has different regulations and directives that civilian police. If Maxima was to stop a regular petty theft…or a corrupt civilian cop…, she’d be raked over the hot coals for juristiction infringement…
I’ll just quote myself “a notable number”. It wasn’t a blanket statement by any stretch of imagination.
I really shouldn’t need to say more than that, the statement already implies that at the very least most aren’t “violent corrupt enforcers”, which by extension also implies that it varies by state/area.
I prefer to focus on actions over words. In my experience, people who use the sweetest words often commit the foulest actions. Hell, that’s where the phrase “gaslighting” comes from – look at the news and notice how many people (on every side of the political spectrum) casually deny doing evil, evil things, while continuing to do them.
So, let’s look at Deus’ actions. Here he is, straight committing murder:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-390-project-overkill/
Here he is, coldly boasting of how he has forced the residents of a country to submit to drastically altered living standards:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-393-deus-uses-develop-country-its-super-effective/
Here he is, casually discussing methodology with a fellow burglar while committing a heist:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-570-the-bamboomanity/
Notice the discrepancy between my description and what you actually see there. Deus… I wouldn’t call him a villain. Maybe an antagonist, but not a villain.
Yes, he is more an antagonist than a villain…however, I agree, people who use the nicest words tend to be the nastiest villains. Throughout all of human history, ther ehave never been greater attrocities commited than by “good people” with “righteous causes”. Witch hunts, inquisition, outlawing knowledge (burning of the Library of Alexandria), delivering the word with fire and sword, converting and educating the natives…and that was just a single group. There were many more…Nazis, Maoists, Stalinists, ISIS/ISIL, …. Every holy warrior, every revolutionary, every self-righteous and “beneign” bringer of change….
Which is why I would never support any good cause, whatever it might be.
I’ve always thought that he’s got Supervillain Syndrome, and knows it, and is self-medicating for it because there’s nobody who could actually treat that condition.
I think, he romanticises the idea of villains like Xanatos, Doom and Luthor. A lot of what he does is a basic merger of business and politics, but he loves the flair of cliche Rich Genius Super Villains.
He is a comic book nerd…he probably liked Batman and Spider-Man comics the most, they had the most colourful villains. He doesn’t need to maniacly laugh to the backdrop of lightning, but he loves the concept. He doesn’t naturally stand imperously at of the window, which is why he has to remind himself to do that with scheduled times in his diary.
So, while he clearly has Superlillain Syndrome, and quite probably knows it, there is no way he is medication for it…he loves it, why would he wish to cure it?
I’d argue that street-level heroes like Luke Cage, Daredevil, and Spider-Man are less about maintaining the status quo than they are about making the status quo a place where people can live safely.
Yes, they are focusing on maintaining at least one small area of calm and peace, rather than try and change the entire world
*Trigger Warning: Depressing Cynical Viewpoint*
“Obviously, maintaining the status quo isn’t a bad thing… if your quo is humming along just fine. If you’re living in “The Nazi’s Won” universe, or “Insert Dystopian Government/Reality of Your Choice,” then the civilian population is probably champing at the bit for a little re-quoing.”
I’d like to challenge that statement.
I want you to ponder on that and take a truly deep dive into history.
IF the Nazis had completely and utterly won, wiped out all resistance, and fulfilled their stated goals of wiping out the Jews and the other “Undesirables”, would the population REALLY be chomping on the bit for change?
Consider, the truly regrettable tragedies of human history:
-Pre-recorded history: When homo sapiens wiped out homo erectus. Are we chomping for change?
-1795: When Qing Dynasty wiped out the Miao people. Chomping for change?
-1500s to 1900s: Native American genocides (Yes, we have lost entire cultures and many tribes in both North and South Americas; eg Taino, Kalinago, Pequot, Narraganset, Beothuks, Yaquis, Yukis) and shunted the few survivors onto undesirable reservation territory. Of which the United States of America was responsible for a good proportion; arguably worse and more devastating than the Nazis have done… Chomping for change?
-1600s to 1700s: Native Siberians genocide by Russians. Chomping for change?
-1800s: Japanese genocide against Ainus (Hokkaido) and Ryukyu (Okinawa). Chomping for change?
…
…
…
I could go on and on and on and ON about the atrocities and genocides in human history, some ancient, others more recent, many never addressed or acknowledged.
So tell me again. Civilian population will be agitating for change in the face of genocide or dystopia?
It’s precisely because of this that when people fight for freedom, for justice, for equality, it’s beautiful. When people protest in things like BLM or Civil Rights or fight against genocide, it’s moving.
Because it’s rare. In the course of human history, it happening at all is rare. Success is even rarer still.
the problem is Nazi always need an out group.
“Undesirables” are simply scapegoats not real sources of any problem so nothing would have been fixed. that means even if Nazi’s has completely own they would have needed another group to blame.
Oh, we have an outgroup. Maybe we don’t gas them, but have an outgroup we like to blame for problems. It tends to change depending on the situation, but we have them.
Some examples:
-“Lazy/violent” black “criminals”
-“Mexican immigrants stealing jobs”
-“Muslim immigrants spreading radical Islam and committing terrorism”
In the past:
-“Native American savages”
-“Yellow Terror/Yellow Peril”
You don’t need to completely purge the Undesirables. Just keep them their population to a manageable level and continue to blame them for failings.
Still. I think you have a point. After all, we ARE seeing BLM…
“If fascists run out of people to strip rights from, then they’ll just start stripping rights from each other”
What BLM claims to be wanting and protesting for is indeed great, and I support that.
What their actions and proposed policies say they are actually for is another thing entirely, so I don’t support the organization of BLM. Which of course, they use as evidence of racism, since clearly, that’s the only possible reason not support an organization with that name.
(Also, the People’s Democratic Republican of Awesome-istan is totally a republic, totally democratic, totally run for the benefit of the people, and totally awesome. And I have a bridge to sell you.)
Groups like BLM, that co-opt that beautiful action for awful stuff instead, is one of the many reasons such wonderful, rare activity so often fails.
oh let me guess you’re one of that fools that think unrest is a bad thing?
its one of the greatest signs of privilege in the U.S. that people honestly think peaceful protest is enough on its own. you should really look into the track record of purely “none violent” movements ( there has never been such a thing even they had unrest) and how they don’t get a lot done honestly. movements like MLK (Malcolm x and years of riots and black deaths) and Gandhi (a literal war to the death) where surrounded in violence. they were simply the calm point and even then more people hated MLK then Malcolm x. it was only years after MLK’s murder that the narrative that most people respected him started to form. even movements like the peace movement that ended the Vietnam war was set against the back drop of 1000’s of us deaths a year.
Pretty sure BLM isn’t one monolithic organization.
That’s like saying white supremacists is one monolithic organization. (In case you thought they were, lemme tell you: they’re not. There’s the neo-Nazis, the KKK, American Renaissance, Pioneer fund, etc).
As for the riots and violence? Yes. Terrible. But consider this:
“riots is the language of the unheard” -Martin Luther King Jr.
And if you think for a single second that all protests should be peaceful or they’re not valid, let me again take you on yet another dive of history:
-1765 Stamp Act Riots
-1773 Boston Tea Party
-1788 Doctors’ Riot
-1786 Shays’ Rebellion/Paper Money Riot
-1790s Whiskey Rebellion
-1859 John Brown’s Rebellion
…
Yeah, there’s a ton more, going into modern day, but surely you wouldn’t consider the Boston Tea Party invalid, would you? Think of all the violence and property destruction taking place!
Yeah.
Invalid? No. Ineffective… yes. Let’s take the Boston Tea Party as an example. The protestors, or rioters if you prefer, were trying to make their voice heard. They got the opposite of their desired result when the British went even further. None of these riots or rebellions actually succeeded in getting the people involved what they wanted or desired.
Also, none of the participants had a voice or a say in how things should be, which is very different from today.
What has happened with the police is as much an administrative issue (failing to fire people unworthy of the badge, and failing to pay a proper wage so that people who don’t want to abuse the power of the badge will want to be cops) as anything else. And there’s a way to fix this… VOTE!!!!
Not in the federal elections, in your local elections. Oh sure, vote in the federal ones too, but they have no actual power to do jack squat about police abusing their power. The police department is under the administration of the local city (or in some cases, county or state). The federal government, as per the 10th amendment, has zero ability to impact this in any way. Ironically, this is one problem that cannot be blamed on Trump, despite the fact that he has repeatedly tried his hardest to make a bad situation far, far worse by opening his great big gob on social media and saying stupid things, as per usual. However, he’s made *suggestions* that the states use excessive force because he has no authority to order it, so all he can do is suggest.
So if you want to stop police brutality, if you want the police to actually Serve And Protect instead of… what they have been doing… make your voice heard at your next City Council meeting. Enough people showing up at a public City Council Meeting, peacefully but vocally demanding reform of the police department and how it is handled, is going to be FAR more effective than riots.
The only thing Rioting does is a) give the abusers of power a fig-leaf excuse to ‘justify’ (not that it IS justification, mind) their abuses, b) harm the employees and small business owners (big companies will just cash in their insurance policies, fire all employees, and find another place to set up shop), and c) further polarize the situation.
Let me turn your argument on its head for a bit… that something like this could happen is certainly a crime and a tragedy. To let it *CONTINUE*, however, is a failing of every voting member of the city. Or, to borrow an overused quote: The only thing necessary for evil to win is for good people to do nothing.
Local elections are coming up. You want your voice heard? There’s your platform. Don’t just complain on the internet, build a voting bloc in your city and vote the people who permitted these abuses to happen out of office. Make BLM a party platform. Make police reform a voting topic in your city council.
That’s a much better and more productive use of your time than trashing some innocent third party’s place of business and/or employment. At least in my opinion.
@ShneekeyTheLost You make valid points. Voting is definitely one way to apply pressure to change.
I dunno about the claim that riots or rebellions never got people what they want though. I don’t know if you remember the American Revolution, for one?
Also, I’d like to correct a misconception you seem to have. The federal government actually DOES and CAN have an impact of local police departments. For example, under the Bush and Obama administrations, there were investigations into local depts and they had a very real impact on them. They can pass federal laws, make federal regulations, etc. that local police would have to abide by. Consider, for example, Miranda rights, a ruling made on the federal level.
And don’t want to be a Debbie Downer, but voting in local elections in and of itself may not be enough. There’s something called “police unions”. Such that even if you have a mayor trying to get change done and a police chief that agrees, the culture in the police department and the union may fuck things up; forcing them to rehire problem officers. Most recently, for example, consider that Minneapolis mayor said that they would ban the “warrior training” (aka Killology, treat public as enemy, be prepared to kill), and the police union head just said they would ignore the ban…
Hmm… you also make some valid points.
The thing with the American Revolution is… they really didn’t want independence, not at first, certainly not at the point the Boston Tea Party happened. If you recall, the slogan was ‘No Taxation Without Representation’. Also of note that the Tea Party acted against a British official merchantman, not against locals. And they didn’t get their representation, instead they got more troops and a revocation of their Charter. So it rather spectacularly failed. It was spun by their propagandists, and it was used to spur on outrage, but no one was really talking about independence yet, they just wanted their voices heard.
The Federal Government cannot directly intervene in the local affairs unless it crosses into Federal matters, such as under the 13th amendment which, in addition to freeing slaves, also has an ‘entailed rights’ clause. Basically saying ‘that which the Federal government grants as a right to the people, the State has no authority to revoke’. Which is how the investigations in the Bush and Obama administration were able to occur. Well, that and Bush rode the coattails of 9/11 and the PATRIOT Act to pretty much ram them through on pretty dubious grounds. So yes, I suppose it is possible to initiate an investigation at the Federal level into city police department affairs under the claim that there are violations of the federal civil rights act. In which case, it would be specifically the White House, since the Executive branch is in charge of such things.
Not that I needed another reason to vote the bum out of office, but there ya go. However, that doesn’t minimize the importance of ALSO voting in local city elections.
I can understand your pessimism, but I think there’s quite a bit that can be done to reform the police departments administratively, unions or no. First off, the problem with the “warrior training” as you put it doesn’t come from the police department… it comes from the military veterans. Specifically, most major police departments offer veterans who have an honorable discharge substantial reductions in training under the assumption that they already *have* much of the training they need. Unfortunately, the problem is that military training revolves around ‘kill the enemy’, which is the exact opposite reflex you want in civilian police forces. The problem is that military veterans don’t need to get as much training… when in fact they probably need more, just to redefine their Rules of Engagement down to a reflexive level.
Which, I feel obligated to point out, isn’t necessarily the veteran’s fault. My brother served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. My Uncle served in ‘Nam. My grandfather served in WW II. I would have joined up after college (I wanted to start off as a butter bar, not a grunt), had I not gotten a medical disqualification. However, and it was most notable with my brother since I had both a before and after, they were changed people when they got back. When you see shit like that, and *don’t* get the psychological support needed to process and deal with it? Yea, that’s called PTSD, which is *NOT* something you want a cop having. What is going on now? What happened so infamously? That whole knee on the back of the neck thing is a military detainment technique. The military acknowledges that it can be lethal, and trains soldiers in it on the theory that a dead prisoner is less problematic than an escaped prisoner who kills soldiers. I’m willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that the cop in question was reacting as though he was dealing with an insurgent rather than a civilian. Which is a HUGE problem. And while I am certainly *NOT* absolving him of guilt in the matter, he’s the one who did it and deserves whatever the courts give him for it… he was able to act in such a manner in the first place because he got his badge effectively for having a pulse and an honorable discharge, without the training needed to change his trained reflexes. Which brings me back to the point about an administrative failure.
Demand more training for officers, remove the waiver of training that military veterans get, and you’ll see a sharp drop in that sort of mindset. If the police union head states that they are unwilling to reform… fire him. If you are unwilling to conform to your code of conduct, that is grounds for termination, union or no.
“When homo sapiens wiped out homo erectus. Are we chomping for change?”
I know this isnt the point of your post but just mentioning, and it might just be minutiae, that I do not think homo erectus and homo sapiens ever actually overlapped in the same area at the same time, unlike homo sapiens and homo neanderthalis, which did overlap.
Them, and I believe a tiny bit of Homo Habilis. Erectus pre-dates all but the later, if i recall right.
And they then all consorted with each other… Because inter-species consorting is nice :)
Somehow I knew when I wrote that post, that it would end up with an australian talking about proto-human orgies.
It’s a tale as old as time. I should have prepared myself but I was foolhardy.
Well played goblimey. Well played.
https://youtu.be/ZE5RXhPwlKc?t=95
Someone like Deus has absolutely ZERO desire for a change in the status quo. He is only where he is because of that status quo. The only thing he wants is to be at the top of the pyramid, otherwise he is just fine with the way things are,
There is also a HUGE problem with the enlightened despot/ benevolent dictator concept that Deus is going for.
It doesn’t work.
At best it works for while he is the benevolent dictator, and then the next person – probably his offspring – is an entitled little shit and everything goes straight down the toilet.
More likely he finds that once his new middle class starts having educated children, those kids start asking “why are we all following this white guy and his super powered thugs?” And bekeve you me, in Africa, the white guy being in charge is going to be a BIG problem in the long run. Even if he was the best damn leader in history and life was just about perfect, it wouldn’t matter, he is still a foreigner, and people hate foreign rule.
And gods forbid those super powered soldiers aren’t African! More white folks with their boot on the necks of Africans – no matter how gentle that boot – is still going to be a problem sooner or later.
And so there are protests, and things get out of hand, and Deus and company starts getting angry at the ‘ungrateful peasants’ and then out comes the guns, and putting down ‘riots’, and so on.
And even more likely, even if Deus is completely honest about everything, it doesn’t mean his followers are. Or that he will stay this way. Power corrupts, the more power, the more it corrupts. Some of these super powered ‘soldiers’ of his will realize “shit, I can do ANYTHING I want, and no one will stop me.” And before you say ‘the other supers will’ may I point to the police of the real world? “You don’t rat on another cop!”
Our little alien girl here (who I can’t be arsed to find the name of) thinks the only way to rule is with an iron first. How many other people in his organization think the same way? The masses didn’t get a say, they do as they are TOLD!
Deus has already used murder to get his way, and thinks the law is for the little people. He crossed the line long ago, and can likely justify it as ‘for the greater good’ (gods but I hate that phrase). But how long before he does that to every little tribal leader than gives him trouble (and in an African nation, there will be several, and they have no desire to be equal to their hated enemies beside them) – it’s very efficient, and for a time may even make the other tow the party line in order to stay alive. But the problem with fear is that after a while you get used to it, and its no longer scary, it’s just life.
I know this isn’t very coherent, but my point is this. There have been plenty of attempts at benevolent dictators, Most dictators honestly believe they are working for the good of the people, just that the people are too stupid and weak to know what is best for them, so it takes a strong hand to make sure that what is best for them is done. But no matter their intentions, eventually they or their successors become despots.
As Churchill said, democracy is the absolute worst form of government, except all the others that have been tried.
Democracy is not the best choice for everything, but when it comes to government, for all it’s flaws, democracy is still better than the alternatives (and many of the flaws in modern democracy are because wannabe dictators work to subvert it because the people can’t be trusted to make the right decisions).
Also… absolutely NO way Africans will sit still for colonization by blue skinned aliens. Been there, done that, been regretting it ever since.
the problem is this is a logical world view and everything about Desu is completely illogical
Good job.
You just basically summed up how dictators/emperors and dynasties arise. Sometimes on the top of a corpse of a dead democracy/republic.
*applause*
I wouldn’t say that power corrupts, power merely makes one more of what they already are. And since one has to be corrupt to begin with in order to grab the power, getting the power will make one even more corrupt. If a good and benevolent person was to gain power, that person would become even more benevolent. But imagine a decent and honnest person trying to get power. Against the corrupt guys who have no scruple, bend the rules, who lie, bribe, kill and cheat, what chance does a good guy have, who won’t do any of that? And with the decent guys out of the race, the corrupt only have to compete with other corrupt, and the most corrupt will come out on top, because they have the least moral limitations.
Democracy would be nice, but there is no democracy anywhere in the world. Brazil tried it once a few years ago, didn’t take because the people didn’t want the responsibility that comes with democratic self-rule…having to actually pay attention and show up for votes on all matter, and then being responsible when things turn south… So much better to elect a representative ruler and blame them when things go wrong. Just say “He didn’t do what I voted him in for” and elect a different person/party. Republic is what people want, because democracy means, you only have yourself to blame.
And ye, nobody wants to be ruled by foreigners (which is why Brexit). Even in the Republic of Kongo, people were so much happier when the whites left and returned the country to a black government. And within two years of the white devils leaving, Republic of Kongo had reinstated slavery and slave markets, selling black people (mostly female..plenty of what we whites would consider underaged)…but at least they are not ruled by foreigners.
I don’t want to worry Deus – though he doesn’t really strike me as the worrying type – but setting up that burgeoning middle class might not be a smart move if he wants to keep absolute control of Galytn. One thing the middle class are going to look for is a say in how they are governed, not least because they’re likely to be governed badly. Deus may be a wise and clever leader, but his minions are going to include their fair share of assholes.
Sooner or later the middle class malcontents will do something about their situation. John Pym, George Washington, Maxamilien Robespierre, Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Fidel Castro were all middle class – revolutionary leaders almost always are.
I’m just a little curious who the economics textbook is intended for in panel 6; The truth is, the gold standard actually had a pretty good record compared to fiat currencies in maintaining price stability over the very long term. Most of the inflation of the last two centuries happened after the gold standard was abandoned, and a dollar in the US is now worth about 5% of its value a century ago.
The main advantages of fiat currencies are mostly the sort of manipulation the gold standard is intended to prevent!
Exactly this! That kind of thing is exactly what I was hitting the comments to post.
The gold standard is not perfect… just the least bad of anything we’ve found so far. Debasing the currency is one of the most common ways to destroy a country, in the long term, and the gold standard prevents that.
The main problem with the gold standard is it limits the ability to create new wealth beyond a certain point, which a fiat currency does not do. The gold standard is just a LOT less stable in an international market than fiat currencies are, even if fiat has its own problems as well.
Here’s the main problem with the gold standard, or any standard that depends on precious metals. The supply of that which you are making a standard based on is finite, so the quantity available is going to grow a lot slower than the economy can grow. Basically it slows the economy down, especially in an era of global trade. And that then leads to LONG periods of deflation, and can turn what would normally be recessions into depressions. And even in the best of circumstances, you are not going to have enough gold to actually back up the available currency. One of the big reasons that the Great Depression lased as long as it did WAS the Gold Standard – at least according to most economic experts.
Okay maybe in the Grrlpower universe you might with that geomancer guy. But he’s fortunately not making that gold available:).
“The main problem with the gold standard is it limits the ability to create new wealth beyond a certain point,”
No, that’s the fundamental fallacy behind fiat currencies: Money isn’t wealth, it’s just an accounting mechanism. If you doubled the amount of money tomorrow, nobody would be a bit wealthier.
The reason governments inflate currency is that, while increasing the money supply does nothing to increase the total amount of wealth, it’s a very effective way of transferring wealth from the people who previously had it to whoever gets the added money. Any forger can explain THAT to you, it’s why the increase the money supply themselves.
If tomorrow you doubled the amount of money in circulation, and all the new money was in your hands, presto! Half the wealth of the nation just became yours.
Governments claim that gold standards have all sorts of horrible consequences, but the truth is, governments hate the gold standard exactly because it’s resistant to manipulation, and governments can transfer wealth from the public to themselves by currency manipulations. It’s a form of taxation, but governments like it because when the price of food goes up, people blame the grocery store, not the government that printed more money.
Actually, the best quick definition of “money” I have seen is:
“A legally or socially binding conceptual contract of entitlement to wealth, void of intrinsic value, payable for all debts and taxes, and regulated in supply.” From Wiktionary much to my surprise.
There is a fundamental difference between money and currency:
“1650s, “condition of flowing,” a sense now rare or obsolete, from Latin currens, present participle of currere “to run” (from PIE root *kers- “to run”). The notion of “state or fact of flowing from person to person” led to the senses “continuity in public knowledge” (1722) and “that which is current as a medium of exchange, money” (1729).” From Online Etymology.
The reason governments inflate currency is simply because it is not possible to increase money without increasing productivity — whatever form that productivity is, but it will always stem from primary and secondary industry and never from tertiary industry.
The Gold Standard suffered from two insuperable problems: varying prices depending on geographical location; and limited supply. Fiat currency is defined as “intrinsically valueless money used as money because of government decree.“, i.e. Paper money. Because it is intrinsically valuless, its value can be negotiated against that of another country. As it happens, because paper money is actually “a thing”, it is subject to Forex manipulation by private operators. Unfortunately, only one nation, the PRC (that I know about) has seen fit to exclude its fiat currency from the Forex. It would help if the US government was to grow some gonads and follow the PRC example.
How about a currency which is based on “one day’s unskilled work performing a key role”? So if a job is considered important, in order for society to function, the government can grant a licence to that employer to issue tokens. Jobs which require greater skill could be granted more tokens. These could be exchanged for goods or other services, in the normal way that currency is used.
Greater tokens could be issued to key workers, if they require more training. Say one year’s training increasing the amount 100%. So a doctor, with seven years training would earn eight times as much as a manual labourer. Working in hazardous conditions could likewise allow an increase. Likewise possessing demonstrably unique or rare abilities, necessary to perform or improve their key role.
I’d actually never heard of time-based currency until last week, a podcast I enjoy included a section on Ithaca Hours. It’s an unusual idea and I haven’t absorbed it enough to have an opinion on it yet.
The economic textbook might be necessary to explain that the gold standard was never really abandoned; +50% of the voters just decided to *give* the government +99% of the gold, silver, platinum, petroleum, etc. That’s what fiat currency actually is; “Give us EVERYTHING, and we’ll give you these paper receipts you can redeem for stuff later. We’re eager to do this because we know you mindless slaves are too stupid to realize that when you redeem them, they’ll be worth a lot less than what you gave up. The longer you wait, the more of your stuff we get to keep. And if you die before redeeming it, we take ten percent of what’s left before your heirs get anything. Damn, It Feels Good to Be a Gangster!”
Governments still transfer massive amounts of compact high-value goods between each other; precious metals, rare earths, energy sources like fissionables and hydrocarbons. Fiat currency effectively separates the ruling class from the ruled.
EDIT: …or do you think the ALIENS will accept paper dollars? Which can be easily replicated with technology capable of making Sydney’s augmented glasses for free. Heck, at the rate 3D printing is progressing IRL, we’re either going to have to go back to gold standard or full-retard communism where the government controls ALL the economy.
And that turned half the planet into a trailer park.
Good lord, you’re so wrong that it is funny.
Even alien fabricator tech won’t be able to steal our jerbs. 3D printers are great for prototypes and one-off items, but even in a few decades (possibly centuries) they won’t be able to compete with dedicated mass production equipment. The math of the energy just doesn’t work out – it’s much more efficient to squish material into a mold and create thousands of copies in rapid succession than it is to heat and exude the same amount of the same material on hundreds or thousands of complex machines, each needing calibration and maintenance.
Alien mass-production equipment on the other hand… and AI, and medical care, etc etc.
Oh, and your point about gold isn’t terribly relevant – almost nobody has a use for actual gold, including aliens probably, it’s just a medium of exchange just like paper money, or digital account balances, or Yap stones. The important thing about money is not its form, but the rules placed around it, and the ones around gold aren’t so different from the tools we’ve replaced it with. The gold standard doesn’t fix arguing about the rules. And the problem with a more useful commodity with a more accessible intrinsic value (like oil, or grain stores, or rare earths for electronics) is that it tends to get used instead of traded, which is basically a barter system.
No, but alien fabricator tech will be able to *copy* paper money. Meaning we will have to switch over to something that *can’t* be copied or go broke. Even if it’s just bitcoin.
Heck, alien tourists probably visit Earth because they have effectively unlimited funds. Ever heard of wampum? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wampum
We can copy paper money, or produce more wampum, or any other physical manifestation of currency. Counterfeiting has always been a thing. As for digital currencies like bitcoin, alien quantum (or whatever) computing should easily be able to crank out the rest of the bitcoin units long before we can (if not flat-out steal it from our primitive hard drive encryption), so in spite of the technological inflation controls they’d still end up with a huge share of the currency.
I can’t think of anything that can’t be copied – if it can be made, more than one person can figure out how to make it. It’s already canon in-comic that a super has amassed more gold than the rest of the world combined (and is fortunately keeping it off the market) – aliens could do that with any substance.
We’d probably end up adopting the galactic standard credits fairly quickly.
The aliens have *something* equivalent to “gold pressed latinum” or galactic civilization would look a lot like Earth’s; vague and full of holes where no-one can agree what actually happened. Because some jerk stole everything and left everyone else to burn books in order to keep from freezing to death.
There have been over 700 fiat currencies in recorded history; *all* of them collapsed due to hyperinflation. Every time, commerce was *forced* back to precious metals, and proceeded to give it up a few generations later because living memory didn’t remind them they were selling their civilizations to snake oil salesmen.
In 1942 the US dollar was roughly worth the same as in 1800. Inflation took off like a rocket after the introduction of fiat currency to the system in 1942; the dollar has lost over 92% of its value. We are in free-fall and don’t realize that the impact will kill us because it hasn’t happened *yet.*
Gold, even if you can extract it from a planetary mantle, will *always* be valuable due to basic physics; its atomic number of 79 makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally in the universe, so it would be fairly difficult and energy-costly to synthesize, even with an atomic-level replicator. Above that are radioactive elements, antimatter, dark matter, strange matter… anything that’s *hard* to counterfeit.
Fiat currency is the freaking Nigerian email scam applied to entire civilizations. “Give us your stuff, and we promise we’ll make you rich later!”
And it has never, ever worked in the history of the world.
But what do you do with gold? You can’t eat it, you can’t really build a house with it effectively, you can’t use it for machinery (except tiny amounts in electronics). Gold is near-useless for everyday purposes.
And US inflation didn’t kick off in the 40s, or just after WWII even – the ‘hockey stick’ curve doesn’t pivot until the 70s, with the rise of Keynesian economics, deficit spending, and international trade. I readily admit I’m no economist and don’t pretend to understand the intricacies of international monetary exchanges, but I’d rather own grain stores and land than heavy, soft metal when hyperinflation comes for us.
That worked out *real* well for 1840’s Ireland, or modern Asia in the face of UG-99.
I agree that food is *really* important – the most basic unit of currency is “what does it cost to feed one person for one-third of a day” – but you do NOT want to base your economy on something that can be rendered 100% worthless by one strain of fungus.
You need a *wide array* of food sources in order to stay alive. Optimally we need to crack 100% synthetic food; dump biomass in the hopper, get tea, Earl Grey, hot. Which is another reason to go back to a precious metal standard rather than regulate replicator tech to keep the government’s pyramid scam going right up until the collapse.
Oh, and “3D printing means paper money is easier to make than printed circuitry” also neatly dovetails into, “we NEED to END the WAR ON DRUGS.”
Acids and alkaloids are far less complex than any of the components of food; microdispensed nutrients, amino acids, lipids, carbohydrates. Any machine that can turn basic elements into edible food can turn them into controlled substances.
Within the next decade, the War on Drugs WILL turn into, “We are enforcing global famine to protect the bottom line of pharmaceutical companies. That and we’re racists who want to kill people who prefer 0% LD50 marijuana to violence-inducing, brain-damaging poisonous alkaloids.”
“… almost nobody has a use for actual gold …”
Um. Mostly true. BUT. Gold, like all other precious metals is incredibly useful for fine tech that doesn’t need corrosion but does need ininhibited conductivity.
Oh, and jewllery. For the same reasons as above.
Gold is in the same camp as ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium, platinum and silver. And copper, believe it or not. Without these a lot of our tech wouldn’t be.
So I guess that most people simply don’t know they have a use for actual gold :P
Precisely – electronics manufacturers with a hugely complex supply chain, R&D budgets, and production and distribution systems that took decades to refine are the ones with a use for that stuff, not the layperson consumer. I have a use for a smartphone, but none whatsoever for a pinch of raw materials of the rare earths they contain.
As for jewelry, it is by definition non-essential, and (the merits of art aside) basically useless for anything needed to sustain life and civilization, but it does utilize the chemical properties well.
“+50% of the voters just decided to *give* the government ”
Where by “give”, you mean, “Hand over as an alternative to going to prison.”
I always thought Superheroes fighting for the Status Quo was a result of the serial nature of american comics. A series is easier to continue if you can re-use (don’t kill) the Joker, and easier to “sell” if the world keeps relatable. “Our world + superheroes” is easier to follow/write than “Year 20 of Superman’s Utopia: Under attack by the subversive forces of the free market”.
Worm does it rather well.
Well, sure: In Watchman, the world had converted to electric vehicles because Dr. Manhattan’s transmutation powers allowed him to supply effectively unlimited and cheap lithium for manufacturing batteries, and presumably had other technological implications as well. Notice that he spends most of his time in a research laboratory, not fighting crime.
Watchmen really is a pretty good deconstruction of a lot of different superhero tropes when it comes to Dr. Manhattan.
Deus is deliberately trying to use her moral and ethical values to manipulate her for his own ends. Don’t take his words at face value. Even when he IS telling the truth, it’s for a calculated purpose.
He’s trying to manipulate her, and by extension, us the readers.
I’ve never tried a culebra, but I’ve always wanted to. They just don’t get distributed very often.
I…I ship it. Dammit.
I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily “Maintaining the Status Quo” to stop Mr. Walking Nuke and Madame Anthrax from leveling Manhattan and then wiping out the survivors with a horrible disease.
There’s a Right Way and a Wrong Way to change the status quo, and violent upheaval of a stable system usually isn’t the Right Way. The Right Way just takes more time and effort and with far less recognition for your contribution.
Thousands upon thousands of scientist, engineers, relief workers, social reformers, and genuinely good people work tirelessly day in and and day out behind the scenes to change the SQ the Right Way, and it’s the duty of the heroes to protect them so that they can continue to do it the Right Way.
Deus is just someone who’s Selfish, Ambitious, and Lazy enough in the right combination to decide he’d rather do it the Wrong Way, and that’s why he’s the Villain and why the Heroes are eventually going to beat him down.
How many people suffer and die while waiting for the “Right Way” to produce results?
Roughly about half as many as those who die while and after the “Wrong Way” failed to produce results. Iraq, anyone? Aghanistan? Chile? Nicaragua?
Don’t forget France, and probably Russia.
Cases where someone tried your ‘wrong way’ in a half-hearted manner, and ran away before finishing the job. It’s not easy: it takes long-term engagement and the willingness to pay for progress. Responsibilities which most politicians are afraid to take on, because most voters either don’t understand or don’t care that the initial ‘regime change’ is only stage one.
Max’s powers don’t include x-ray vision, unlike some of her peers:
https://media.springernature.com/lw685/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1057%2Fs41599-019-0326-6/MediaObjects/41599_2019_326_Fig5_HTML.png?as=webp
Ok, sure, you rule over the world, the whole world and all 7 billion humans that live in it, but then what? You have to manage the damn thing. If you don’t that means things will fall apart, you’ll be facing rebellions, uprisings and a multitude of fires, both real and metaphorical because of the differences in cultures etc.
Much easier to install regional rulers that toe the line if they want to remain alive and in regional power, and keep them competing with each other antagonistically so that they never realize they could collectively tell you to kick rocks.
No need to have them compete ‘antagonistically’. Make it clear that the one to take over the top job on Deus’s death/retirement will be the one with the best record as regional viceroy, and so on down the levels. Keep them competing, but competing for who can benefit everybody the most.
The brandy may have a smoking head, but it seems that Dues is holding the proverbial “smoking gun.” Max seems to already be smelling the cordite from it though…
I remember during my vacation to Cuba a couple decades back, in addition to the famous cigars you could buy by the woodstained decorative box, you could also buy little packs of “cigarellos”, which were cigars the size of an ordinary cigarette, machine-wrapped in paper.
Now you’re probably saying, “isn’t that just a cigarette?” No, actually, the flavour is entirely different, and cigar-like (much richer than a cigarette) despite that they basically look the same.
I have to say, I never quite mastered smoking the big cigars; had trouble keeping them lit. Possibly I wasn’t doing it quite right, and I was the only smoker in our group, so there wasn’t really any more experienced person I could sit around with and get tips from.
(Well… okay, we walked passed a granny in a old wedding dress, who looked a few weeks late for her own burial, sitting on a stoop smoking something the size of a black porn star’s… yeah. Look, I don’t actually speak Spanish okay, THAT’S why I didn’t want to try talking to her… sure… O_o)
…Anyway, the point is, I very much enjoyed the cigarellos. They were easy to smoke if you were used to cigarettes, and tasted great. I miss them.
What if you’re living in a universe in which humanity is FAR into global overshoot and no super-powered beings have yet stepped in to change the status quo?
That’s a massive oversimplification of Richard’s position. It was more along the lines of “Kill Galactus and you won’t like the consequences.” It’s like killing death. Sounds good at the start, but then you run into all the issues you hadn’t thought about hard enough. Massive infestations of insects and vermin, because they breed so much faster than humans. Vast overpopulation, leading to rampant starvation that cannot even mercifully end in death. People who have a heart attack or who are maimed in a car accident or burned in a house fire living with that agony forever. Etc.
“nd you won’t like the consequences.” It’s like killing death. Sounds good at the start” Then the Beyonder learned that, the Beyoder actually destroyed death, He eventually Used a replacement, which by the way. was male as a human, but death is female!
But, per Galactus’ origin story, (One of them, anyway.) he was actually the previous universe’s *revenge* on the new universe that was going to emerge from it’s death. “OK, I’m dying, but deal with THIS!”
He was actually a foreign element imposed on the present universe by the previous one that was pissed off about dying to give birth to it.
That’s about the size of it. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen some “origins of the cosmic entities” that have Eternity, Galactus, and several or the others as carry-overs from one or more prior universes.
There’s a reall great, 5-issue comic called “Wrong Earth,” where a dark, gritty superhero changes placers with a version of himself that’s basically 1960s Batman. One of many great scenes is when the head of the city’s bank calls the hero from the mayor’s office about a bank robbery. The gritty hero shows up and asks why a private citizen is helping control government business, and basically goes off on the banker and the mayor for being corrupt.
I really like how Deus seems concerned that he will be on the opposite side of Max sooner or later. And not because of fear.
It makes him vulnerable, more relatable and credible as a character.
Glad to see someone finally say it: Batman may be the worst superhero ever. Every criminal he puts behind bars ends up escaping a few issues later. That’s why I stopped reading superhero comic books but kept reading war comics. At least in Sgt Rock’s universe, the bad guys he killed stayed dead.
You’d probably like The Authority then. They kinda hop around to various realities, but it’s pretty much a given across their team that Villains get dealt with lethally. Midnighter in particular is basically “Gay Batman crossed with Wolverine” which makes him an incredibly scary opponent.
Order can be very nice, but when it isn’t, Chaos is your only hope.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChaoticNeutral
Well you didn’t give much context, but Deus seems to be very structured and orderly.
Kevin (IGetStronger) was all about the chaos, while still skirting more than a dip into evil.
That’s what Mother Tiamat tells me. :)
Come on, guys. You act like this is the first morally grey character you’ve read about in your life.
Exactly! Why are so many taking his words at face value, when he’s so clearly manipulative?
Because his personal lawyer has been handing out the Kool-Aid since his first appearance :P
With ice cubes and a little umbrella, if you ask for them. It’s got an odd flavor but it grows on you after a few sips. :D
For some of them, it may very well be. Societies tend to cycle between black-and-white stories and grey ones, often out of phase with what people are dealing with in real life. Some of the readers may have spent most of their lives on black-and-white stories, and some may merely be young and have few life experiences. Sometimes you just have to let them struggle through learning and understanding things on their own.
And Reed would be right. Don’t kill Galactus!
I’m not sure if the story is still considered canon or whether they were correct. But there is a longer story where the Elders of the Universe claim that the universe ends if Galactus should die because Eternity and Death will go kerboinc without him. Their idea was to end this one and become the bosses of the next. And they try but the Silver Surfer and Nova stop them. Their Wiki-page has a summary.
On a storytelling level, Reed Richards saved Galactus in order that he could be put on trial, and then they had to come up with some reason a smart guy like Richards, who was supposed to be one of the good guys, would save a guy who went around eating civilizations, when all he had to do was not lift a finger and the world killer would die on his own.
So, really, it was all BS anyway. The trial was the reason for the crime, and the verdict was the reason for Galactus being essential.
Seems someone is going to do something drastic.
Funnily enough, that’s the first time something Deus says actually piques my interest. Except the “then the death field expands and fills the room” line, but it was kind of urgent and topical so I’ll let it slide.
Honestly though? Deus is kind of a “living” embodiment of the idea that rich people are unethical by nature – own wealth they do not create by virtue of having access to what others use to produce wealth, and get some or most of it. But the thing is he OWNS it. He’s alright with that! I’ll be damned if his ego is anywhere near his persona though, my belief is he’s constantly juggling solipsism, grey morality, and statistics. He’s getting this power, and note how he never said what his actual goals were? I don’t think it’s really “taking over the world”. Or, not so simply. I don’t see him willing to be the undying hero of the world that took over and ended most systemic issues, took us to FTL and had us enter the United Planets, but objectively bettering society along the way is something that is either important to his goals, or self-justification on ethical/moral grounds while he’s going for his goals. I do believe he wants to do good. In the dickest of ways, because that’s Deus for you. Obviously he wants to do something extra advanced, after getting many things from the Fracture and the Black Reliquary.
“Mr. Fantastic actually argued that Galactus (the guy who eats inhabited planets) should be spared because he’s a force of nature.”
Galactus actually needs to be spared. They once de-powered Galactus. That released Abraxas:
“A starving Galactus dies and adopts the form of a star.[54] The death of Galactus allows the entity Abraxas (a metaphysical embodiment of destruction and the antithesis of cosmic entity Eternity) to emerge from imprisonment.[55] The entity wreaks havoc across thousands of alternate universes, killing various incarnations of Galactus before the children of Reed Richards—Franklin Richards and Valeria Von Doom—exhaust their powers to restore the original Galactus. Galactus then provides Mr. Fantastic with the Ultimate Nullifier, which he uses to reset reality and prevent Abraxas’ initial escape and destruction”
Pro tip: If you needed time travel or reality resets to fix it, it was a bad idea!
I predict that one day, far in the future, angry mobs will tear down statues of Deus erected in every city in the world, and various colonies around the galaxy.
Hum I was just looking at stuff when my minds eye noticed that Deus scar in the last panel looks rather off, kinda metallic or unnatural, is it just me or perhaps he has some powers we don’t know about? I know its probably not true but perhaps it gives him mental advantages or something who knows.
We’re forcing teenagers to take calculus because science education in America (math being a science) has lagged drastically behind almost all other advanced nations in the world. Sure, we provide a service economy for the rest of the world, but the time when one could graduate high school, get a factory job and work the assembly line for 25 years, then retire with a lifetime pension are as dead as my aunt and uncle (who did exactly that for their careers).
We’re a society of knowledge haves and have-nots, and if someone wants to be in on the technology marketplace as a producer rather than a consumer, they need that knowledge. As well as knowing how to budget their money.
Dang, this was supposed to be a reply to a thread higher up. Now it’s just a non sequitur.
I wish I could delete this somehow, it was supposed to be a reply higher up in the thread…..
No deleting, that’s part of the fun :D
Our modern education system is considered by some to be an obsolete relic of the industrial age, with some odd attitudes over science mixed in during the Space Race, and is still geared towards putting kids into pre-defined tasks rather than preparing them for critical thinking and creative work.
I’m really, really interested to see how things shake out after 2020 now that everyone has gotten a taste of learning and working remotely.
Superheroes can’t change the world for the better. Understand the word change. Unless they are in a position of social power, they cannot act on something that exist on a societal level. Organisations and mass action are the what change the world. Because only they have the main power and action to do this
What an individual can do is change their world and contribute to those organisations.