getting endlessly rich is seen as a problem now apparently said:
Now I distinctly remember having a discussion about the dangers of excessive immortality among the rich in the thread a while back. My position drew heavily on Piketty's statistics to justify the need for some sort of progressive taxation and for some means of limitation of the concentration of capital among the 1%. Tarrangar seemed quite unconvinced of the problem, disagreed with the morality of my proposal, and also disagreed with my socioeconomic points.And some criticism of trickle-down economics said:
This reasoning is dubious. We took issue with his methods, so we compromised -- we swore before the Old Gods that come Winter, no wildlings save for those fit to fight will be Beyond the Wall. And like magic, it worked. He agreed to stop eating people, because in his mindset there was no longer the need.
This is not "social Darwinist nonsense".
It absolutely is. He is a powerful spirit, he could easily have done something more productive then eating old grannies and children. He just prefers to do the thing he does because 'the weak don't deserve to live'
So are we, several in fact. We eat remarkablly few sickly old folks.
And daemons mindsets are different from humans because of thier nature as well, what's your point? I get why he has the outlook he does, I just think he is wrong.
We started as a street thug, he started as a powerful supernatural spirit, if you are insufficient to the task, do better or seek allies, 'a modest proposal' is not a reasonable reaction.
No it isn't. The werebear is on a wartime philosophy, and in his mindset the weak were unacceptable liabilities because they were inevitable enemy assets. His entire philosophy hinges on denying the Others their future wights. You can talk about how he "could have done something," and sure, but from what I can tell he came straight out of being tortured for thousands of years and worked with what he had.
We have far, far more tools. If he had the same tools, he wouldn't have resorted to such drastic measures. Case in point -- when we promised to ferry the wildlings South of the Wall, he no longer saw the need to eat them. You seem to be refusing to acknowledge this.
Feel free to think that he is wrong. However, it needs to be acknowledged that there is a very good reason he thinks the way he does. His actions were born of last resort in preparation for the end of all wars.
Finding allies Beyond the Wall is a hard sell, considering the place is infested with Winterborn, and considering that he can't teleport out of there if he even had the ability in the first place. Feel free to hate him for his methods, but don't outright ignore why he chose the options he did. If there were better options then he would have taken them. Us showing up was a fluke of destiny as far as he's concerned.
Which ones this time?
Ugh... trickle down economics... consider me sickened by the mere mention of it.
No, I never formally studied any of that. I have some experience in large scale retail (so no, I don't mean jobbing as a cashier), but no background in banking or similar.
This I think is the central point of disagreement here. I don't believe that to be the case. The bear was motivated, driven, and doing what it thinks is right. Someone like that doesn't stop doing the right thing without motivating factors.
Because that isn't what happened. That interaction was not
You and I have very different reads on this character.
Sorry, but he is the textbook definition of a Social Darwinist. His line is literally that the weak will perish and the strong prosper.
They are not permanent gates. We just shuffle wagon trains around with Planeshift and use a homing beacon to make sure that they are perfectly accurate.
It is mostly the jargon, yeah. I would have to read a bunch of texts on monetary policies and then try to painstakingly imitate them if I wanted to do that, and you just seem to write it out in a few minutes!
Yes. Preparing for the Long Night by any means necessary being what it thought was right. The coming of the Long Night would be his source of justification. Were that not the case, we would have seen very different actions from the bear.
The compassion of this is irrelevant, the bear's mindset was purely pragmatic. The weak he doesn't get rid of today becomes the undead minions that try to murder him tomorrow. He wasn't enthusiastic about letting the weak go further south, but they were less of an immediate danger so he relented.
Clearly. I agree he's an asshole. However, from what I've seen, I believe that had he had different tools and more tools, he wouldn't have started systematically wiping out the weak. There wasn't exactly a magical button for him to press to get all the weak to safety, and every day a Peryton came to remind him of the Long Night.
Social Darwinism typically doesn't carry the subtext of, "And everyone weak whom you don't thoroughly get rid of will inevitably become a wight under the control of the Others who shall then try to murder you."
From where are you drawing this conclusion? Nothing about his actions or explanations of his motivations suggests that he would have acted markedly differently without the pending Others invasion to me. Perhaps he would have been less urgent about it, but "culling the weak" would definitely have been on the agenda in either case as far as I can tell.
Programmer. The ability to use arcane terms with very specific meanings fluently is part of the job.
That depends on where you consider the median supporter of Social Darwinism to be on the scale from "Improvement of the Species" to "Eradicate those damn [minority] before they do the same with us!".
DP would need to give us an actual price for them so I can work out the crafting details.
The core of his motivation is to prepare for the Long Night and get rid of the weak before they inevitably turn into wights. If there was a way for them to guarantee that no, they wouldn't be turned into wights for the army of the Others, then I don't see him still pursuing their eradication, because at the end of the day there needs to be people to repopulate after the Long Night. He has brutal methods, but I don't see him trying to enforce them in places he knows they're unnecessary. Not to mention the fact that it would be a waste of energy for no real gain on his end.
We can do it if necessary, but why? Are there really that many places that need them?
