Previous | Next
Previous | Next
I’m not sure what their society does with cartoonist though. Maybe they keep them in underground pods with nothing but a few juice packets.
———————-Alt Text———————-
Still at the restaurant, Thoos gestured with their hands and said, “anyhow, what with robots and only the big three corporations, there aren’t all that many jobs. Which means one can hand pick the best employees.” With a judgmental squint, Picknar said, “while the rest of our people bide their time.” Knox asked, “how do they survive with no work?” Picknar explained, “everyone’s provided housing, modest but comfy. Kind of just a bed in a small room.” Crossing their arms, Thoos said, “I disagree. I’d hardly call that housing.” Picknar continued, “And you can get food everywhere from the public food synths, although I think they program them to make food not very good.” With a finger in the air, Thoos said, “that, however, i fully agree with.”
———————-/Alt Text———————-
Previous | Next
This explains the popularity of Russian tea cookies. I’m sure if Picknar gets home, they’ll get rich with a doughnut chain.
Christopher, I know it’s one of those things that you struggle with, but the About/Cast page linked on the right of this page could really use an update for the current incarnation of Spacetrawler. I’ve been struggling with character names and tried that to find a reference and oops…
Thanks for SpaceTrawler. All of it.
@Seymour, I know. I’m sorry. I’ll try to get to it soon.
Free housing, free food, and free medical care if you can tolerate experiments by mad scientists — I’ll take it.
Underground pods and juice packets? That’s better than they treat cartoonists here.
This is commentary on something, right? It just feels like it must be . . .
I am unclear whether Thoos agrees that the food doesn’t taste very good or with the idea of programming public food synths to produce food that is not very good.
Um, both?
Sounds like a society run by Effective Altruists. In which case humor would be a capital crime, punishable by, say, crucifixion, which they would characterize as entertainment for a people obviously too downtrodden to be allowed to suffer someone as poisonous and disruptive as a cartoonist.
That’s what Fox News has programmed you to think, old-timer.
https://www.wired.com/story/deaths-of-effective-altruism/
You were saying?
Right now? Nothing, ’cause I just enjoyed a slice of home-baked bread with butter while waiting for also home-made mac and cheese to warm up. :p
Why wouldn’t there be very many jobs? Just because the society is so wealthy that food, clothing, and shelter for the population is about as expensive as air is here doesn’t mean that there wouldn’t be lots of jobs.
You can see where it’s heading in our modern society. Entertainment, exploration, research, and other areas that aren’t strictly necessary for survival are exploding. We have more people who play games or write stories for a living now than were even alive a thousand years ago.
I do agree that it’s really hard to know *what* those jobs are going to be… Like, who in the 1950s would have been able to predict e-sports? And as I was driving home from a trip a few months ago I passed a massage parlor… for horses…
But when you see gobs and gobs of people unemployed across the whole economy? That’s usually because something has happened to cause sufficient turmoil that *nobody* can see even highly localized ways of making things better. That’s a heck of a lot of chaos… Expect a war to be brewing when that happens, because preventing people from ironing out that chaos within their own sphere of influence requires powerful interests stirring the pot intentionally. Any they’ll invariably either pick a fight with each other, or the average citizen will eventually get wise to it and quit participating.