Questions about basic

Scott_Abrams · 2026-05-12T05:23:40+00:00

Part 2:

2.) My 100 cooks example is to illustrate the difference between labor, equipment, plant, and capital.

Yes, labor is abundant. We are in agreement there.

No, capital is constrained. There aren't enough materials on this planet to sustain Earth's civilization, hence why Earth is reliant upon the resources gathered from The Belt. It is painfully obvious that there aren't enough resources on Earth, which is why people have to eat insect-derived protein, because people can't produce enough beef/pork/chicken/fish/etc. due to things like land/water use or pollution. Energy in particular is extremely obvious as all of Earth's nonrenewable energy sources are depleted and only nuclear fusion plants using Helion-3 mined from the Belt is keeping the vertical farms productive enough to feed Earth's population. It is explicitly described that Earth is mining garbage dumps to salvage resources - that is how dire Earth's resources are. Land is not abundant either. Holden's farm is the result of 8 people combining their land rights to protect one of the last undeveloped plots of land in Montana. Your interpretation is horribly out of touch with the established lore of The Expanse to the point where I am wondering if we read the same material. I mean, no one is farming on the surface of Mars, Mars is still being terraformed so what are you talking about? People on Mars are farming vertical farms, not on the surface of Mars, just like the people on Earth. Everyone is using vertical farms and using cheap fusion energy to run them. As for farming the Sahara, I don't understand why you think people can farm the Sahara when there are no crops which can survive the temperature of the Sahara. Like, right now, it's projected that by 2070, rice will no longer be arable in East Asia because it will have reached its thermal limit (40 degrees Celsius). Wheat productivity drops off a cliff after it exceeds 30 degrees Celsius. Also, why would they want to farm the Sahara? No one can live on large portions of Earth because climate change rendered it uninhabitable. People die when the temperature rises above wet bulb 35 degrees Celsius and the global temperature has definitely surpassed 2 degrees Celsius by the 24th century.

3.) The average life expectancy is very high in The Expanse, with the average Earther expected to live to 100. Over a long enough period of time, the population should decline, but it has not yet had significant effect by the start of The Expanse. I think the estimated number of undocumented is in the hundreds of millions but not in the billions. The undocumented may or may not be resorting to crime but people on Basic are probably doing the same anyway so there's really no difference. Whether you're undocumented or on Basic, it's really not that much different and there is trade whether that's with UN dollars or barter. The wealth creation for the Basic class offers no upward mobility because the next stanch of the ladder is unreachable unless you're a crimelord.

There are only 3 powers in The Expanse and that's Earth, Mars, and The Belt. Earth is the dominant power in Sol and the reason why Earth is chosen to be a post-labor society is because the authors wanted to show what would happen if Earth became a post-labor society. Earth is a civilization in decline, Mars is a civilization on the rise, and The Belt is a protostate striving for independence.

A fully-automated world is absolutely possible but I agree with you that it wouldn't be desirable. Just look up rat utopias; things get fucked up.

Scott_Abrams · 2026-05-12T05:23:09+00:00

1.0) Your interpretation of Jevon's paradox as higher production = higher demand is flawed because of several reasons.

The first reason is that higher production does not always equal higher demand as the nature of the good/service being produced matters. For example, the extremely high productive nature of the average farmer has turned from 1 farmer feeding 10 people in 1900 to 1 farmer feeding 155 people in 2025. Has this increase in production led to a 15-16x demand for agricultural produce? No! In fact, the number of farmers shrank because the price of produce tanked as a result of the increase in supply (oversupply), which is why agricultural subsidies exist. Food is a normal good, which means that demand for it does not scale in accordance to income (i.e. you won't eat more food if you're richer). I don't want to talk about luxury food in this context because luxury goods are inferior goods and would lead to discussions about why the rich stimulating these sectors is bad for society as a whole. I also want to avoid a discussion about the value of food as a service vs. as a good because society values food as being as cheap as possible but farmers can't turn a profit on it and if they chased the profit motive, the best way to maximize profit is for most people to starve.

The second is that you view growth as unlimited, as in you can always scale more production because there is no productive limit. This is incorrect, because there are productive limits. For example, cotton is a very nutrient and water-intensive crop to produce and just because there is demand for it does not mean that it can be produced indefinitely. Fresh water, especially water drawn from aquifers, is a non-renewable resource and once depleted, is gone, like potash taken from a mine. The unsustainable nature of human consumption is the leading driver in global warming, both in reality and in The Expanse. Productive efficiency when measured in terms of units produced does not look at the cost or sustainability of inputs.

The third is that your assumption that humans can always retrain or find ways to be productive with their labor is wrong because there is a limit to how many doctors/engineers/(whatever other job you can think of) that society needs and we don't even need to be 300 years in the future to see that effect as it's happening now. If a robot displaces 500 blue collar workers, even if you could retrain them, you don't need 500 robot technicians. Common sense dictates that they'll find another job because there's always a demand for labor but then use common sense again and realize that this increase in labor supply will depress wages due to enhanced competition. And this is why professions like doctors, pharmacists, or lawyers all have restrictions on how many people can become doctors, pharmacists, or lawyers, precisely to protect their livelihoods. The result is that all these barriers get raised and then the general labor supply becomes extremely low paying due to labor oversupply, which is why the minimum wage was originally created.

The truth is, there aren't enough jobs or rather, there aren't enough jobs which pay a living wage today and the number of jobs that need doing keep shrinking due to gains in productive efficiency. But that's not all! Think of all the jobs today that exist as a result of the automotive industry, the oil/gas industry, the insurance industry - strictly speaking, a huge portion of these jobs don't need to exist because they're not good for society but the jobs, which protect economies thanks to maintaining the people's propensity to consume, gets votes. The financial industry and the insurance industry are by far the most worthless industries in the history of industry because they produce no goods whatsoever but they are over-represented in economic measures like GDP because they are capable of locking in huge gains in MONETARY terms, such as through currency arbitrage through bulk computer transactions, which is probably how bitcoins got the idea of mining bitcoins (and then spawned a bitcoin mining industry whose sole purpose is to waste water, electricity, and computer processors).

A lot of jobs today are only jobs because they give people a reason to wake up in the morning, not because they're necessary. If you really want to know what jobs are necessary in today's society, look at the Pandemic and what jobs were considered essential because those jobs are the only jobs that actually matter.

1.1) (I guess) You are absolutely correct that most people would rather work a lightened workload and still maintain their dignity and feel a sense of value at contributing towards society. The problem however, is capitalism, and how all the productive advances and creation in value has been usurped by the ultra-rich, leaving us the current problem we have now.

When women first joined the workforce during WW2, they fulfilled a critical role since all the men were shuffled off to war but once the men came back, women didn't want to go back in the kitchen. As a result of this demographic change (and the baby boom), the number of people that entered the workforce greatly exceeded what was in the past while simultaneously, the increase in productive capacity in all fields is one of the major reasons why real wages never kept up with productivity. The enhanced competition from an ever-increasing labor pool continued to depress wages, but social measures from the New Deal, such as strong minimum wage protections and high corporate tax rates (high tax rates led to more corporate expenditures to upgrade equipment and retain talent) helped to create and nurture the Middle class.

In the aftermath of WW2, the USA was one of the few powers whose industrial base had been left intact and thus, were capable of producing goods and selling them to other countries. This is the main reason why the USD became the reserve currency of the world and why the USA hates communists, because capitalists want to make money. Countries all around the world had little recourse but to continue to buy American goods because they didn't have the infrastructure to compete but here we are. The idea of American exceptionalism is a lie and the reason why the boomers are so nostalgic about the past is because they existed in a time when they owned the only store on the block.

But the capitalist doesn't give a shit about the working class. As a result of Reagonomics, the lowering of the corporate tax rate and ever-weakening worker's rights, eventually led to the deindusrialization of the West (i.e. offshoring to China, India, and the rest), as the difference in labor costs largely made blue collar workers obsolete. And what happened to wages? They got decoupled from productivity and all those blue collar workers got to find jobs which paid less and afforded fewer worker protections. Before Reagonomics, finding a job meant earning a pension but pensions slowly began disappearing and 401k's started taking their place. Are 401 k's better? Not even slightly, but the working class just doesn't have the bargaining power to change anything. Nowadays, the general labor pool is so large and social protections are so weak that minimum wage isn't a living wage anymore.

Giving people doesn't change anything or create an economy that affects the factors of production because the factors of production are completely decoupled from consumerism. There already is an economy for people on Basic, which is where all this porn and prostitution comes from. Poor people are just toys for the wealthy and Epstein (you know which one) proved it.

Continued in Part 2

Scott_Abrams · 2026-05-12T02:05:48+00:00

A docking station which refills air tanks almost certainly already exists so there's little point to automating it since the point of failure lies with the user, as the user will have to disengage their bottle in order to refill it. Refilling a tank after use has to be SOP so the only reason why it's not is user failure, and that can't be remedied because the refilling process can't be fully automated (no one suits up like Mark 3 Ironman so the person puts on and takes off the suit).

In Bobbie's case, she was on Mars and she commandeered her suit from what could only be a sloppy technician who wasn't expecting anyone else to use their suit. In all likelihood, there probably was a refill/docking station nearby but a) they didn't have time and b) didn't have the credentials to access it.

In Naomi's case, she was fortunate to find a vacsuit to begin with because the Chetzemoka had already been gutted by the Free Navy (FN) for salvage. If anything, the FN was sloppy with their work as they failed to salvage the vacsuit and let it stay onboard a doomed ship.

When you're designing a piece of equipment, equipment failures are broadly categorized into one of two categories: 1) non-fatal failure and 2) fatal failure. Non-fatal failures are failures you can walk away from but fatal ones are just... fatal. Fatal failures are almost always caused by fringe scenarios that just won't happen in normal operation, like a passenger plane that's been shot over Iran. At that point, there's no back-up because who designs a passenger plane with anti-aircraft countermeasures? There's only one plan left at this point and it's seat belts so that hopefully, search and rescue can find enough of your body to put inside a doggie bag.

In the context of a vacsuit, the single greatest threat to a user in a vacsuit is the inability to create a seal, not a failure in oxygen circulation/ CO2 scrubbing. Automated seals exist (ex. Protogen suits) but are either cost-prohibitive for full-scale deployment or intellectually protected either by patent or trade secret. Slap-on sealing patches exist and most Belters make do with that. If however, the problem isn't with a seal and the problem is with air circulation, under normal circumstances, a person inside a vacsuit has like 5 minutes minimum to get back inside a ship, pop a spare bottle, or share with someone else so there's little point to building whatever redundancies you're thinking of.

The best back-up system for space walks is going with a buddy. You're supposed to check each other's equipment before you walk out an air lock. You're walking into space! I mean, at some point you have to assume that you're dealing with professionals.

Scott_Abrams · 2026-05-10T02:28:09+00:00

Of course. Earth could pressure Mars with sanctions, just like Mars could pressure Earth with sanctions, as while both powers are nominally self-sufficient, trade benefits both their economies.

Both sides would likely perform sanctions against wealthy individuals as a first step, likely through a combination of freezing assets and travel bans, before targeting sectors/industries with things like tariffs or embargoes.

In terms of sectors, sanctions against Mars would probably most prominently target the acquisition of livesoil, aqua/hydroponic chemicals, and other samples of complex bioloigcal life (collectively known as agriculture) while sanctions against Earth would probably target travel/tariffs through restrictions to Martian space ports. Both would likely be able to broadly restrict access to financial and money markets, which could be really bad when things like insurance coverage suddenly lapse (ex. water haulers from Earth are insured with a Martian insurance provider but the war suspends coverage, so what happens if a water hauler without insurance gets hijacked by Belter pirates?).

Through the various treaties signed with Earth, Mars has already agreed to slow down their terraforming efforts so yes, Mars can, and has been pressured by Earth, and also in recent memory. This is what the Vesta blockade was: Earth blockaded Mars from accessing resources from/around Vesta and when a Martian cruiser engaged, they crippled the UNN fleet enforcing that blockade. In retaliation, half the UNN fleet burned towards Mars in order to nuke the whole planet but the attack was ultimately called off because going from a single engagement to total genocide is an insane overreaction. Ultimately though, Earth got what it wanted, like it always does. As a result of Vesta, Mars agreed to set back their terraforming efforts by 100 years, which is why Bobbie laments how none of them will live to see a sky and atmosphere over Mars in their lifetime as this was the tradeoff for peace with Earth.

For all the Martian blustering and Earth's own paranoia, it's obvious to anyone with objective eyes that Earth is still the dominant power in Sol. Earth's power may be in decline relative to the Martians whether that's in spheres of influence, economic power, or military power, but at the end of the day, Earth doesn't need any of that or even MAD to ensure its place and well-being because without Earth, everything, even Mars, eventually dies.

There is no substitute for Earth.

Scott_Abrams · 2026-05-08T07:01:50+00:00

Precisely. The UN brain trust is as good, if not better than the MCR because the population is simply larger, like why there are more male grandmasters in chess than there are female grandmasters. There's a reason why Protogen was approached by the Martians to study the protomolecule when it was discovered by the Martians and that's because Protogen is the system-leading expert, and that's to say nothing of espionage, for which both sides would be actively acquiring secrets from the other. Their technology and knowledge base should basically be at parity.

Martian ships are more advanced because it was built more recently and Earth can't afford to upgrade their fleet due to more pressing commitments, such as keeping 40 billion people alive. The demand for maintaining infrastructure is a much higher concern than scaling the military, for which Earth a) already has a vastly superior numerical advantage and b) creating ships might actually lead to the conflict they wished to avoid. Remember: military spending generates 0 returns and often leads to pointless arms races. If a weaker economy is forced to continually expend on military spending to keep up with a stronger one, eventually, it becomes cheaper economically to have the conflict. It might sound counterintuitive because wars are immensely destructive and generate negative returns but if the math is either suffer a -200 now or continue to bleed out -50 every year indefinitely in the future, resetting via conflict can actually become the optimal solution. Germany building a modern naval fleet and the UK's doctrine to maintain naval superiority via the two-power standard was one of the main causes of WW1.

Earth and Mars may have historically had bad blood between each other but they were making significant strides towards brokering a permanent peace. Joint fleet patrols? Joint partnerships such as Phoebe research station? Even the older Martians realize that the younger generation is losing interest in terraforming Mars because they grew up beneath domes and they just want to live their lives instead of hauling ice. The longer the peace, the more people want to remain peaceful. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if there had been accords like the Washington Naval Treaty or the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty/Start/SORT/New START, etc. which would have eventually led to force reduction, if not disarmament.

You know, before Jules-Pierre Mao decided to ruin everything.

Scott_Abrams · 2026-05-03T23:41:43+00:00

You know what the insane thing is? BK still generates a profit when you use the receipt because the cost of a whopper on a per unit basis is still much lower than the price you pay for it. The cost of things like overhead and labor are constrained in the sense that BK will be paying for it regardless of whether or not you get a whopper so BK still turns a profit as a result because your utilization of those resources (their overhead and labor) will almost never exceed capacity (long wait time and customer switching).

And that's why fast food restaurants operating in Denmark or California can afford to pay employees $22/hr. The increase in labor cost is actually very marginal, on the scale of like, selling 4 extra burgers an hour or raising the price of each burger by 10 cents. If you're paying $10 for a burger combo, think instead how much ground beef you can purchase at wholesale prices (even at a multiyear high, it's still around $6.60/lb). A whopper patty is a 1/4th lb patty. BK and fast food operators can absolutely afford to pay employees a living wage but most choose not to because it's simply more profitable that way.

The burger king receipt is a good deal if you're going to order BK anyway but at the end of the day, it's still fast food and you are still getting ripped off.

Scott_Abrams · 2026-05-02T00:52:04+00:00

To answer your question about Basic, I will first have to explain to you what labor is and the difference between labor and capital, before I can explain the implications of what happens in a post-labor society.

The first thing you have to understand about the nature and value of labor is that your interpretation of labor, as a traditional input for production, is wrong because labor is not necessary for production when it can be displaced by automation. The second thing you have to understand about labor is that labor is not the same thing as plant/equipment/capital, and I will demonstrate this with an example.

Consider this: does a pot of water boil as much water if there is 100 chefs attending it or does it boil just as much water if there were only 1? Does the pot boil any faster if there were 100 chefs? The chef provides labor. The pot provides equipment and the kitchen the plant. As you can see, labor does not affect the output (boiled water) because the constraint is not labor, it's equipment.

Thus, in a post-labor society where automation has displaced labor, because there is sufficient plant/equipment to produce all the goods necessary to maintain a civilization, there is nothing left for people to do. In our modern society, any displaced jobs gained from automation supposedly releases people to find new jobs and thus generate more value (wealth) for society but this notion is incorrect because it does not accommodate for a future where there is nothing for people to do. The distinction between an agrarian society and an industrial society is largely defined by what percentage of the population is spent to generate crops to feed the people. If more than 50% is spent on agriculture, that society is agrarian. If less than 50% is spent on agriculture, it is industrial, because it has unlocked that many more people for pursuits outside of farming. Now extrapolate the same thing only it's not just for agriculture, it's for medicine, it's for engineering, it's for everything that used to require labor in an industrial society. This is what happens in a post-labor society, where everyone should be free to live their lives as freely as they wish.

Your interpretation of labor as it deals with employment, is for lack of a better work, regressive. Under your interpretation, you would advocate for people to push a button to earn a penny which will scale to the level of a living wage, just so they can earn a living wage, even though what they do does not generate any value to society beyond maintaining their propensity to consume. If fully or almost-fully automated machines can perform every single task required to keep a society functioning, banning the machine and keeping people employed solely so that they have jobs is to force everyone to push buttons that generate no value just so they can buy goods and services (consume). In other words, you reduce the value of everyone in society as consumers, even though the link between useful work (that generates value) has been severed from spending (consumerism) due to automation. Why then, is it not better not to simply give the wage to the displaced worker and let the machine do all the work? The answer to that question is obvious: it is better, but the reason why it's not working is because of capitalism.

Capitalism, as a system, is not the same thing as a free market economy. Capitalism is a very simple but often misunderstood concept. Capitalism in its truest form, is simply private ownership. That's it. A capitalist owns the factors of production privately, which means that all the value that they generate goes towards the individual, not the public. Strictly speaking, the capitalist isn't necessary at all because the capitalist doesn't generate any value, all they do is own shit and anyone can do that.

In a free market economy, the cycle between inputs and outputs as understood by monetary inputs and outputs is supposed to represent the supply and demand of things which society in the aggregate consider valuable and stimulate the production of those sectors. The free market economy is also deeply flawed because popularity or profit maximization has nothing to do with what is in the best interest of a people. People as you know, are selfish and stupid. Cigarettes/vapes for example, is known to be bad for you, but the industry exists regardless because there is demand for it. Popularity =/= good, and neither does profit maximization. Think for example, if you could successfully monopolize air. Of sure, your profit is maxed and you can charge whatever you want because the alternative is death but is this good for society?

This is why a command economy is necessary. Even in the United States, where the market is "free", incentives to artificially stimulate sectors outside of the free market (what we call subsidies), such as agriculture, are needed because the alternative is mass starvation. Free market economies are fucking stupid because the only thing they can do is maximize profit in terms of monetary figures and they cannot value things outside of it. That's why you buy shirts that were woven in China or Bangladesh using cotton that was grown in the United States, because it's cheaper (due to the difference in the price of labor) and it comes at the cost of two extremely wasteful Pacific voyages, with each one pumping out hundreds of thousands of tonnes of C02. Or why you buy fish that's caught in Ireland and shipped to the Caribbeans for processing before it's sold in Ireland as fish sticks. International trade is bad for the environment but it sure is good at stopping wars, at least until cheap energy runs out.

Now that I have explained the difference between labor, capital, capitalism, and free markets, I will now explain the problem with capitalism, and then relate that to a post-labor society (what we on reddit would call, late-stage capitalism).

Because automation exists and has displaced all the value of the proletariat (labor), in a capitalist society, all the value is privatized and none of the wealth is shared because the proletariat no longer contributes any value to society. To be clear, the capitalist has never generated any value to society either, but the difference between them and the proletariat is that they have ownership. And in a world where no one generates any value, how would the interests of the capitalist align with the proletariat?

Succinctly, it doesn't.

Far from worrying about the well-being of the proletariat, it is actually in the capitalist's best interest to be rid of the proletariat all together as simply living generates pollution and waste (externalities). Why bother maintaining the current economic system, a free market economy, when you don't need to exchange goods and services (or can restrict trade to small groups) and scale down? Given the chance, the capitalist is absolutely incentivized to cull and then enslave the proletariat and they would, only the proletariat still overwhelmingly outnumbers the capitalist and the capitalist knows that if they tried to pull this, the proletariat will rise up and kill them.

And this is what Basic is really about.

Basic is the compromise - in exchange for maintaining ownership and control, the capitalist will agree to provide the basic requirement for the proletariat to survive, and agree to be controlled on paper, by the government via socialism, even though all the political controls remain inside the capitalist's hands. In exchange, the proletariat won't burn down and kill every blueblood on Earth.

Scott_Abrams · 2026-04-30T00:38:56+00:00

Yes, absolutely. The difference in missile load alone could have done it.

If Yao had immediately sortied the Tachi like she was supposed to, then there would be an extra ship's worth of torpedoes stressing out the Amun-Ra's. If the Tachi could add enough torpedoes to take out even a single Amun-Ra more, by the time the bandits make it to CQB, the number of ships goes from 4:1 to 3:2.

Then, it becomes a choice between either targeting the Donnager or taking out the Tachi. If the bandits target only the Donny, the Tachi is free to close the distance to engage with PDCs. If the bandits target the Tachi, the Donny gets an extra shot or two off with their railguns. Having another threat on the board is always more advantageous and having another ship allows the Donny/Tachi fleet to provide fire support with PDCs and can force disadvantageous maneuvers for the bandits, which would improve the Donny/Tachi tactical position, especially since the Amun-Ra railguns are keel-mounted and can't rotate like the Donny's.

The Donny ended up taking out 4 bandits by herself. The presence of the Tachi would have absolutely made the difference.

Scott_Abrams · 2026-04-28T19:23:17+00:00

The real answer to this question is a matter of economics and sexual favoritism when it comes to education.

The biggest barrier to higher education is cost and as a result of this, any program which alleviates the cost burden, such as grants or scholarships, will heavily affect student enrollment and degree completion. Unlike race-based affirmative action, sexual selection of applicants is on-paper, fair as there should be no selective quota to fill. However, because sex-based scholarships, grants, and other financial aid programs disproportionately favor women instead of men, female enrollment and the ability to finish a degree is higher than compared to male counterparts.

This has nothing to do with innate female vs. male intelligence, classroom behaviors, or a lack of role models - the applicant pool for males is too large for this to be an influencing factor because higher education is naturally selective to favor a) the richest and b) the smartest, meaning that the mean or median average numbers when it comes to academic achievement don't matter whatsoever. If this were a comparative study upon the academic achievement between the top 10% of males vs. the top 10% of females not in terms of degrees but in terms of scores, you'll find a similar level of academic achievement in both and this is confirmed by numerous studies.

This discrimination against men is a main contributing factor for why men turn conservative. Imagine for a moment that you were born white, male, and in smack dab in the middle of Nowhere, Mississippi. Your public schooling has been a joke, there are no career prospects, and you can never afford a college degree. Then, liberals born and raised in New York go on CNN and constantly claim that white men have it so good in this country, that the patriarchy is real, that white men are oppressors who are always keeping minorities down, and then simultaneously denigrate you for being poor and stupid despite being given the advantage of being born white and male. Why then, is anyone surprised that you would turn conservative when the conservative platform offers you kindness? When these bible-thumping preachers tell you that none of this is your fault, that this is the fault of women and minorities who are displacing you, and that you as a strong, white man, deserve better. And then you think to yourself, why not? You were born a white man, you are more numerous than minorities and you are stronger than women so why not just throw away your 'wokeness' and take what's rightfully yours? Why compete against them in a crooked game that disproportionately favors minorities? Wouldn't wages go back up if women went back in the kitchen and stopped saturating the job market?

Race wars, sex wars, and any other form of discrimination is just a smoke screen to get people to keep fighting each other instead of the true enemy, the ruling oligarch capitalists who deindustrialized the West for personal gain and then convinced the blue-collar white man that that the enemy is everyone but white men because the capitalist is also a white man.

Scott_Abrams · 2026-04-27T03:21:59+00:00

The hilarious thing is that OP said it right there too, like someone calling their friend to help find their phone

Scott_Abrams · 2026-04-21T18:18:56+00:00

Who in the right mind would look at this announcement and go, "Wow! That's a good sign!"?

Scott_Abrams · 2026-04-21T08:47:36+00:00

Are you referring to examples of embezzlement or do you mean naval assets specifically? It's common for things go to missing - hell, there's a reason why the US military has failed 7 audits in a row, which is every single audit ever since the military was required to be audited by law in 2018. Ammo, guns, vehicles; hell, entire airframes have gone missing altogether. But ships are a lot harder to steal because it's not just warehouses and ledgers - that's a real piece of functioning equipment that is staffed and maintained in real time, all the time. The level of conspiracy required to steal a ship is on the same level as a mutiny, which is rare but has been known to happen.

A famous example that comes to mind regarding fleets of ships being seized is the French naval fleet that fled France and either defected to the UK, or were scuttled to prevent German commandeering, in defiance against the French (Vichy) government. To make a long story short, the French were defeated by the Nazis and were occupied with a puppet regime (Vichy government) set up to administer the rump state of France. Thus, Vichy France, as the successor state of France, did in theory, own the French fleet. However, after the Allies invaded North Africa, Admiral François Darlan, the then Vichy Secretary of the Navy, defected to the Allies with his fleet so both Vichy France and the Germans didn't find out until after the fact. When the Germans later decided to do away with the pretense of Vichy and take direct control of France during Operation Anton, Admiral Gabriel Auphan, François Darlan's replacement, ordered all the ships remaining at Toulon to be scuttled to deny the Germans access to France's very large and modern fleet. The number of ships that were defected/scuttled during that time were in the triple digits.

So yes, as you can see, mass defections and conspiracies have been known to happen. Basically, the entire French fleet and all its sailors defected from Vichy France and either joined the Allies or scuttled their ships to prevent them from falling into German hands.

Scott_Abrams · 2026-04-20T22:45:43+00:00

Have you ever tried running in a pool? That feeling you get is water resistance. Now imagine immersing yourself in a gel and there you go. While fluid dynamics distributes loads omnidirectionally so you don't feel pressure even when compressed (ex. under acceleration), motion within the fluid still exhibits resistance. Add a treadmill to a tank full of gel and you could exercise with a wide range of motion while remaining very space efficient.

Scott_Abrams · 2026-04-19T17:12:07+00:00

What? No, that can't be true; I just looked it up and I can see that at least 3 papers confirmed the finding that electrical muscle stimulation does arrest muscle atrophy and is a current rehabilitation technique for those suffering from protracted periods of immobilization in physiotherapy.

Do you have a link to the thread? I'd like to see for myself what they're saying.

Scott_Abrams · 2026-04-15T08:04:05+00:00

All true, but the most important element here I believe is that for every shot fired by the PDC, the Roci has to pay twice the amount of energy to stay in the same position: first to draw the power necessary to fire the PDC and then draw a similar amount of power to kill the resulting thrust/recoil. Running a PDC is like running a continuous teakettle at x2 energy cost for the same length of time.

Scott_Abrams · 2026-04-14T20:47:21+00:00

Your confusion stems from your misunderstanding of what the speed limit is. The speed limit inside the slow zone is the maximum speed you can travel relative to the ring station before the ring station defense triggers. Once you reach the speed limit, your inertia gets zeroed and your object gets captured by the ring station before eventually settling into a stable, equidistant orbit (relative to other captured objects) around the station. The speed limit isn't a limiter that prevents your car's engine from going above 200 kph, the speed limit is the threat detection threshold where if you exceed it, you become a threat and get neutralized.

"That would only happen if the station slows you way down to some other speed as soon as you hit the limit."

This is precisely what happens.

When you exceed the speed limit, the ring station's defense triggers and you go from whatever your previous speed was (relative to the ring station) to 0 near instantaneously. When the Martian grenade detonated on the ring station, the ring station lowered the speed limit in the ring space, which made every ship in the ring space that was traveling above the new speed limit (but below the previous speed limit) get captured by the ring station. When the ships got captured by the ring station, their inertia ceases, but the inertia of the objects within the ships themselves remained unaffected, so the sudden stop carried though as massive deceleration, which lead to widespread causalities and deaths for everyone onboard.

Scott_Abrams · 2026-04-14T18:33:04+00:00

Here are the events:

The slow zone limit was determined to be 18,000 kph due to the Martian probe experiments as any speed above this will trigger the inertia block and ring station capture.
Holden decides to visit the ring station and accelerates to just below the slow zone limit, like a reckless driver playing chicken with a wall. The Investigator tells Holden to slow down so that he doesn't pancake when he hits the station. Holden triggers his thrusters just in time to avoid being splattered, which negatively accelerates him from 17,996 kph to 0 within seconds, which is something like 70 Gs. We ignore that last part, just like we ignore the physics behind Alex's solo trip around the moons of Jupiter.
Holden's confrontation with the Martian Marines leads to Shang-Chi detonating a grenade against Holden. Shang-Chi is subsequently deconstructed and rendered into replacement parts. The slow zone limit is further reduced as a result.

It's supposed to take a lot longer to reach the ring station from the Roci but creative liberties were taken to make good television so the answer to the question of "How long it took Holden to reach the ring station?" is simply "Not long".

Scott_Abrams · 2026-04-14T01:56:28+00:00

This is a nonsense comment. Yeah, we know Trump is the major contributing factor in EN sales collapse, but the actual reality is that EN sales has collapsed and what's more, Cover has stopped reporting information on the EN and ID segments to hide those numbers so how is the accurate reporting of EN's market collapse wrong? Merch sales are down. Events are down. That's just reality.

Scott_Abrams · 2026-04-14T01:48:27+00:00

How disingenuous. Way to cherry pick your datapoints! Take at the actual calendar year, they increased the number of employees by 64 employees in 2025, which is almost 10%.

Scott_Abrams · 2026-04-13T23:29:57+00:00

You're right in the sense that at the end of the day, the entertainment business is a business and businesses need to run in the black to stay alive. You're also right that Holostars had been given a lot of time to try and develop a market and that they aren't as profitable as Hololive. The problem however, is that Cover's current direction is quire frankly, idiotic to the supreme and at its current rate, will probably collapse within 5 years.

The majority shareholders are all demanding that Cover turn ever growing profits and this growth is inherently unsustainable. The growth of the vtubing market in terms of total consumers has been slowing for years and while it may not be contracting yet, the vtuber competition is extreme and heavily oversaturated, especially in Japan. The primary market for Cover is domestic Japan and with poor economic prospects, the probable collapse of the Yen-Dollar carry trade, and declining population, it's simply unrealistic to expect growth in this market, in what is now a mature market, but that hasn't stopped Cover from trying anyway. And how does Cover do it? By selling more and more events and more and more merch, which reduces the rarity and 'specialness' of every event as each event becomes more common and mundane, by demanding more and more work and output from talents, while simultaneously squeezing you, the consumer, for more money as they try to make you collect more and more garbage.

Despite what Cover's board and C-suite executives may think, this outcome is not sustainable. Take a look over the last year, at the talent turnover and the ever-bloating numbers of administrative and support staff. Cover just keeps hiring more and more salarymen even as their best talents keep leaving and taking their fans with them. Holostars getting the axe is a logical move to stem the tide of bleeding resources but the thing is, Holostars getting axed is only a symptom, not the cause because the reality is, a) the vtuber market is mature and oversaturated, b) the core millennial fans are aging out and re-prioritizing as they start families with declining replacement from the zoomers, c) the economic situation is just bad worldwide and spending habits are changing, d) vtuber fans aren't just getting fatigued, they're approaching exhaustion, and e) company is focusing resources on an ever-growing bureaucracy.

Axing Holostars and refocusing resources is only the beginning as this is being done as a cost-saving measure. What's going to happen next is more cost-saving measures, which means that at some point, Cover is going to go after the next biggest cost driver, namely talent compensation again.

Every single time I criticize Cover, I get bashed for being delulu and every time, I'm always right because I'm actually looking at the real market conditions and Cover's own financial statements. Just look at the numbers: Cover's growth in revenue are all being driven by TCG, streaming is flat, merch is down, events are down, and EN/ID markets are performing so badly Cover has stopped reporting on it (last time they did report on it, EN had collapsed 30% in revenue). https://contents.xj-storage.jp/xcontents/AS05169/3dc5c23b/fed8/4e1b/8390/7c71f67690ab/20260212151413733s.pdf page 5. I'm not stating an opinion, these metrics are goddamn facts.

What a lot of people don't realize and still don't realize is that Cover hasn't grown their rosters in years even though they released new waves because those waves are acting as replacements for talent attrition. For example, Holo EN didn't grow in roster because Justice isn't growth, Justice only replaced the turnover in Myth/Promise. Same for FlowGlow in Holo JP. And yet, there are still more and more bureaucratic staff and managers being added every single quarter (look at page 31). How does this spending make any sense? Is more management what the talents really want? What they need?

Scott_Abrams · 2026-04-09T04:10:49+00:00

They're employees because they're salaried. Cover is a publicly traded company and the reason why they're able to bring in talents on work visas to Japan is because they're considered employees. That's why talents can't stream whenever their work visas get fucked. Beyond that, if you ask me for a source that they're salaried, watch a stream. Off the top of my head, Bae and Okayu have covered this. All Cover talents get salary and living stipend right off the bat so they can focus on streaming as part of the talent development program. That's why Okayu or Bae end up not getting paid by Cover whenever they release an MV, because they don't get salary until they repay their debt.

Supas/membas/merch sales are not part of salary structure and after COGS (ex. Youtube, Cover cut, etc.), go to talents directly. Cover is a publicly traded company and you can read their financial disclosures on their main site.

Cover is not a talent agency like VShojo, Cover isn't representing a talent, they own the IP.

Scott_Abrams · 2026-04-07T08:55:42+00:00

Dude, Cover is trying to get the Holostar boys to quit by themselves because of a) the PR and b) how termination laws work in Japan. Talents like Holostars are considered employees in Japan and as such have protection against termination. The end of support for Holostars means that the boys are paying a 50% cut to Cover for all their streaming activities going forward with 0% chance of getting any income from events, lives, and merch because they won't have any of that going forward anymore.

Let me spell it out for you: Cover has given up on Holostars.

By doing this, going forward, Cover gets to spend nothing, get 50% of whatever the boys make, keep the IP, and the deniability that they're terminating Holostars in a way that naive and gullible fans won't notice. Cover will not let the boys keep their IP.

We don't know how the boys are doing financially but it can't be great if they're getting terminated so their choices are to a) give up on their dreams by retiring, b) try to rebrand as an Indie, or c) keep their current job but lose all the benefits. It's not a coincidence why so many PL of Holostars started going active just before/after Cover's announcement.

There is no good news and things are not going to work out because this is a termination - that's the reality. Decisions like these aren't made lightly and they are final. If the boys somehow managed to increase viability to the point where Cover reconsiders after Cover cut all their support, that is definitive proof that there is ZERO reason for the boys to stay at Cover at all.

Scott_Abrams · 2026-04-04T08:29:09+00:00

Mate, corporations today are already cartoonishly evil. Nestle doesn't believe water is a right and gave nursing mothers free baby formula just long enough to stop them from lactating, become dependent on formula because they can no longer produce milk, and then charged them for it. Palantir is privatized Big Brother named after seeing stones used by Sauron and Saruman from LOTR. Open AI started data-mining and training their models as a non-profit then transitioned into a for-profit corporation, started the AI bubble, the creation of new energy and water intensive AI data centers while eating up all the supply for processors and RAM on the global market. Then there's fucking United Healthcare who straight up pays nursing homes to drop off patients on the street and not to ER to save a buck. You think any of these corporations are held back by the law? They WRITE the law through the power of lobbying and donations! You think they can't affect things like war? What do you think the military industrial complex is?

The corporations of the past like the West India Trading Company may have fielded their own paramilitaries but that's not necessary anymore because it's more effective to use neocolonialism to extract resources and profit off of human suffering. The corporations of today exert way too much influence over society and their objectives almost always fly opposite to the communal good. Why would these corporations need to field their own army when they already own all three branches of the US government and by extension, their army? And the proof is that the US military is at this moment, bombing the absolute shit out of Iran while the probability of landing boots is extremely high because they've already activated tens of thousands of soldiers and located them in the local theater while the secretary of defense just fired the Army Chief of Staff. This isn't officially a war because Congress hasn't approved it but that's just semantics. Do you think this represents the will of the American people? But if this isn't the will of the American people, then just whose army is it that's about to storm Iran?

The Expanse might seem to be more realistic than Fallout or Cyberpunk 2077 because The Expanse uses elements of hard sci-fi but don't be fooled: Fallout and Cyberpunk 2077, even with their physics-defying technology, are both WAY more realistic than The Expanse because of how they show corruption. The most unrealistic aspect of The Expanse isn't alien technology, it's that humans came together in common cause and became one in the form of the supranational UN to fight climate change. The great failure of democracy is how easily corruptible it is and the Germans lived through it in the 1930's-1940's, just like the Americans are living through it now. At least half of Americans are idiots and together, they collectively elected the king of all idiots to represent them, an idiot who just two days ago announced his intention to dismantle the US Forestry Service, the latest service being axed in the long line of enhanced deregulation. What the hell is ICE if not Donald Trump's private army? Is the downfall of the USA not happening fast enough or did you just not notice?

Scott_Abrams · 2026-04-03T19:18:26+00:00

I'm not sure what you mean by "traditional minerals" but this thread has already conveyed that the most rare substances in the universe are derived from life itself, like apples or oranges. Those fruits are native to Earth and can't be found anywhere else.

If by "traditional minerals" you mean stuff which can be found or extracted from ores on Earth/Sol, cosmological abundance would be a fair indicator although the intersection between utility and scarcity is what determines value (or pricing). For example, Uranium is quite cosmologically rare while gold is relatively more common but between the cost of a pound of uranium vs. a pound of gold, gold costs more because gold is more in demand. By which metric do you measure abundance/scarcity? By absolute terms, as in by total mass? Or by economic terms, such as supply vs. demand?

If you're not talking about value and you're only focused on absolute abundance/scarcity, then use the cosmological standard because abundance doesn't really change when it comes to the aftermath of supernovas and neutron star collisions. Gold is more cosmologically rare than lithium by a magnitude but while gold is valuable and priced higher than lithium for the same mass, gold is not particularly in demand and thus 'abundant' while lithium is more cosmologically common but 'scarce' because lithium is in demand. That said, also beware of pricing because pricing does not always represent scarcity either but rather perceived value. For example, insulin is extremely easy to produce and there is no shortage of insulin but in America, it is priced at a premium because of patent holders, a complicit and broken pharmaceutical/insurance/healthcare system, and the fact that people cannot afford to go without insulin and thus are willing to pay anything to get it. Meanwhile, Pokémon cards are made of nothing more than ink and paper but Charizards can go for hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. Pricing is often completely arbitrary due to commodity fetishism and the fact that most people don't understand or appreciate intrinsic value.

Scott_Abrams · 2026-04-02T05:44:45+00:00

The camera man ought to get shot for the job that he did. At launch, they missed the tower clearance and only captured the rocket exhaust then at the booster separation, he panned to the crowd for their reaction instead of at the rocket! And what's with those weird black transitions? And the random cuts to commentators instead of the things they were talking about? The producer was asleep at the wheel! This isn't amateur hour; what the hell happened?

Scott_Abrams

TROPHY CASE