How did Earth find itself in a squalor?

It seems to me that instead of making such long winded, often inaccurate posts, cthia's time would be far better spent actually rereading the books. This is not the first time I have seen cthia be ignorant of information in the books. The explanations are all in there, and we would not have to put up with constantly correcting factually incorrect posts.

Duckk wrote:No one on Earth cares about what happens out in the Verge any more than the average US citizen cares about the daily goings-on in Venezuela. Seriously, the situation in Venezuela is absolute shit right now, but no one cares because it doesn't have any impact on a US citizen's life. It simply is completely irrelevant to them. And the Solarian bureaucracy makes it a point to keep a low profile in the Core in order to prevent getting Solarian citizens from having a reason to get worked up. The incredibly tiny minority who does care is drowned out by the billions of other voices calling out for attention for their own personal interests. It'd take something major - like, I dunno, a shooting war - for people to pay attention to things happening outside the borders.

Duckk wrote:No one on Earth cares about what happens out in the Verge any more than the average US citizen cares about the daily goings-on in Venezuela. Seriously, the situation in Venezuela is absolute shit right now, but no one cares because it doesn't have any impact on a US citizen's life. It simply is completely irrelevant to them. And the Solarian bureaucracy makes it a point to keep a low profile in the Core in order to prevent getting Solarian citizens from having a reason to get worked up. The incredibly tiny minority who does care is drowned out by the billions of other voices calling out for attention for their own personal interests. It'd take something major - like, I dunno, a shooting war - for people to pay attention to things happening outside the borders.

I understand that Duckk. Yet you keep making offhanded and irrelevant analogies. You said it yourself, the affairs of Venezuela does not affect the average U.S. citizen. The affairs of Earth does affect Earth's citizens. The affairs of Manticore, Sphinx and Beowulf also affect the average Earth citizen. People travel, use the junctions, read media coverage while on other planets. Have their ears burned when they visit off planet. Perhaps the Core worlds and the Verge exist in a vacuum, but Earth doesn't.

Duckk wrote:And the Solarian bureaucracy makes it a point to keep a low profile in the Core in order to prevent getting Solarian citizens from having a reason to get worked up.

Exactly how is that accomplished? There is no East and West Berlin nor a wall between and a need for a radio free Europe.

Besides, as mentioned in one of my previous posts, it isn't as if educated and financially secure people living on Earth has no familial or business ties with Manticore, Sphinx and Beowulf -- locations where any real opposition would come from anyway. Case in point, what is happening on Beowulf. I can't accept that the same awareness doesn't exist throughout Earth as it is on Beowulf. Earth's citizens are not simply characters in a story... well...

I would expect what is happening on Beowulf to simply be the tsunami caused by many small tidal waves. Yet... where are the tidal waves?

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Potato wrote:It seems to me that instead of making such long winded, often inaccurate posts, cthia's time would be far better spent actually rereading the books. This is not the first time I have seen cthia be ignorant of information in the books. The explanations are all in there, and we would not have to put up with constantly correcting factually incorrect posts.

Duckk wrote:No one on Earth cares about what happens out in the Verge any more than the average US citizen cares about the daily goings-on in Venezuela. Seriously, the situation in Venezuela is absolute shit right now, but no one cares because it doesn't have any impact on a US citizen's life. It simply is completely irrelevant to them. And the Solarian bureaucracy makes it a point to keep a low profile in the Core in order to prevent getting Solarian citizens from having a reason to get worked up. The incredibly tiny minority who does care is drowned out by the billions of other voices calling out for attention for their own personal interests. It'd take something major - like, I dunno, a shooting war - for people to pay attention to things happening outside the borders.

I'm certain I'm the lone ranger of inaccurate posts and being ignorant of information in the books. Oh no, I'm sure you were never corrected, you're not human. Thanks for helping me with decisions regarding the allocation of my time -- I am in need of an assistant and I'm sure you know better than I. Course, I suppose when Duckk leads with a tone of disrespect, how can I blame the followers following the moderator. It isn't as if you have a mind of your own? I can't place Duckk on the ignore list.

I do have room on my ignore list for you though and won't miss your posts one bit.

cthia wrote:

Marty wrote:I think all the ambitious and idealistic people left the Earth for the "opportunities" out there in the cosmos, leaving only the lazy people behind, hence the home world ended up having nothing but the dregs.

If that is the case, and I don't doubt that it could be, then it would conspire against the whole idea of the Mandarins. Democratic societies talk amongst themselves. Free speech. And those native Earth citizens who left would communicate what they see from a new vantage point.

Communist countries use ignorance to accomplish what they do. The people are not allowed to travel. News services are controlled. Tourists are regulated or non existent. No outside media, pictures, etc.

This does not work on Old Earth so it just does not compute.

The vast majority of humans don't leave their birth planets. Spaceborne traffic isn't dense enough to allow this.

Remember, most colony ships went out with 50,000 to 100,000 colonists.

If a thousand such ships left Sol during the first Diaspora - only 100,000,000 people at most left Earth. Approximately 1.3% of Earth's population today.

Push it up to twenty thousand colony ships throughout history, to allow for a 25% success ratio. So perhaps two billion human beings in total have attempted interstellar colonisation journeys - not all from Earth; Haven and Beowulf eventually launched colonies of their own for example.

Tourism... I think we know there are somewhere between 25,000 and 100,000 merchant vessels total. Even if all of those were passenger liners similar in capacity to Haven's Longstop class transports(40,000 each), that's only four billion at any given time. The number is probably closer to half a billion.

Out of an universe containing potentially four to five trillion human beings. Incidentally, estimates of how many of Earth's population has flown vary between 5-20%(despite a claimed 3.5 billion air passengers annually - you're counted four times if you make a return trip with one change each way, for example).

Part of the issue obviously is that interstellar travel is time-expensive. It takes weeks and months for those ships to move between destinations. Thirty days of travel is a multiplier - oxygen consumption, water usage, food...

The series' Manticore-centric viewpoints makes this more difficult to realise - the Manties have three planets in their system, all within a day or two's travel. They also have their Junction, which brings Beowulf, San Martin, Basilisk and so on within three days' travel. So the average Manticoran could easily afford "interstellar" vacations.

This is not the normal situation for the rest of the Honorverse. In order to visit other planets, they need enough savings to support themselves for most of a year, during which they will not be working at all. True, prolong does make it more likely people will attempt interstellar tourism - but prolong is not universal.

It's also implied early on in the series that not all of the League's members are democratic. Some of them are quite authoritarian - like the People's Republic of Haven used to be. North Korea is a UN member, after all.

cthia wrote:I understand that Duckk. Yet you keep making offhanded and irrelevant analogies. You said it yourself, the affairs of Venezuela does not affect the average U.S. citizen. The affairs of Earth does affect Earth's citizens. The affairs of Manticore, Sphinx and Beowulf also affects the average Earth citizen. People travel, use then junctions, read media coverage while on other planets. Have their ears burned when the visit off planet. Perhaps the Core worlds and the Verge exist in a vacuum, hut Earth doesn't.

In what universe does the average citizen spend more than 10 seconds a day pondering the trade balance between the EU and US? That is the point. You keep going on and on about how this impacts people's lives, but it doesn't, not to any meaningful degree. Oh, to be sure, some truly shocking event like the recent terrorist attacks might break through and merit some genuine concern and thought, but by and large humans will always put priority on concrete issues closer to home than on abstract issues far away, stuff like family, job, and health. And since the Solarian League is an interstellar government, not a planetary one, its actions have effectively zero impact on the local population's lives.

Exactly how is that accomplished? There is no East and West Berlin nor a wall between and a need for a radio free Europe.

Besides, as mentioned in one of my previous posts, it isn't as if educated and financially secure people living on Earth has no familial or business ties with Manticore, Sphinx and Beowulf -- locations where any real opposition would come from anyway. Case in point, what is happening on Beowulf. I can't accept that the same awareness doesn't exist throughout Earth as it is on Beowulf. Earth's citizens are not simply characters in a story... well...

I would expect what is happening on Beowulf to simply be the tsunami caused by many small tidal waves. Yet... where are the tidal waves?.

Familial ties? Preposterous. Undoubtedly there are some, but as a percentage of the population of Earth - hell, as a percentage of just Chicago - "ludicrously small" doesn't begin to do it justice. There's no vast population block of Manticore nationals in the League who are itching to expose the truth.

Business ties? Start with Chapter 2 of ART. That is the kind of attitude Solarians exhibit when interacting with Manticorans.

Duckk wrote:

cthia wrote:I understand that Duckk. Yet you keep making offhanded and irrelevant analogies. You said it yourself, the affairs of Venezuela does not affect the average U.S. citizen. The affairs of Earth does affect Earth's citizens. The affairs of Manticore, Sphinx and Beowulf also affects the average Earth citizen. People travel, use then junctions, read media coverage while on other planets. Have their ears burned when the visit off planet. Perhaps the Core worlds and the Verge exist in a vacuum, hut Earth doesn't.

In what universe does the average citizen spend more than 10 seconds a day pondering the trade balance between the EU and US? That is the point. You keep going on and on about how this impacts people's lives, but it doesn't, not to any meaningful degree. Oh, to be sure, some truly shocking event like the recent terrorist attacks might break through and merit some genuine concern and thought, but by and large humans will always put priority on concrete issues closer to home than on abstract issues far away, stuff like family, job, and health. And since the Solarian League is an interstellar government, not a planetary one, its actions have effectively zero impact on the local population's lives.

Exactly how is that accomplished? There is no East and West Berlin nor a wall between and a need for a radio free Europe.

Besides, as mentioned in one of my previous posts, it isn't as if educated and financially secure people living on Earth has no familial or business ties with Manticore, Sphinx and Beowulf -- locations where any real opposition would come from anyway. Case in point, what is happening on Beowulf. I can't accept that the same awareness doesn't exist throughout Earth as it is on Beowulf. Earth's citizens are not simply characters in a story... well...

I would expect what is happening on Beowulf to simply be the tsunami caused by many small tidal waves. Yet... where are the tidal waves?.

Familial ties? Preposterous. Undoubtedly there are some, but as a percentage of the population of Earth - hell, as a percentage of just Chicago - "ludicrously small" doesn't begin to do it justice. There's no vast population block of Manticore nationals in the League who are itching to expose the truth.

Business ties? Start with Chapter 2 of ART. That is the kind of attitude Solarians exhibit when interacting with Manticorans.

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Duckk wrote:In what universe does the average citizen spend more than 10 seconds a day pondering the trade balance between the EU and US?

I won't purport to have the qualifications to answer that. I certainly know that it is discussed, ahem, overly discussed in my social circles.

How is it you feel that shipments being stopped, junctions being closed, war being waged, Beowulf seceding not affect people's lives? Listen to yourself. Unless, for starters, you think the average family didn't lose loved ones aboard those Solarian ships.

At any rate, the League is about to fracture, yet its citizens haven't a clue.

How is it you feel that shipments being stopped, junctions being closed, war being waged, Beowulf seceding not affect people's lives? Listen to yourself. Unless, for starters, you think the average family didn't lose loved ones aboard those Solarian ships.

Yes, that is happening now. And as David has made abundantly clear, Solarian citizens are starting to sit up and take notice. But it has absolutely no bearing on the past several hundred centuries, which was when the rot set in.

The proof lies in its wealth, Cthia. Besides the underclass Duckk linked to, Sol system is the wealthiest in the galaxy, save Manticore. That implies there is sufficient wealth distribution between the 8 billion or so people living there to limit active dissent to negligible levels. David said as much in that referenced post. The League is satisfied with their wealth. This doesn't happen overall unless there is an acceptable level of wealth distribution for all citizens.

Since the local governments ensure local policies governing EVERYTHING on Sol besides the League government, it follows that whatever corruption there is below the level to foster dissatisfaction in Sol's citizenry. Yes, there are poor people in Sol, but they are being seen to by local agencies well enough that they do not riot. The undocumented keep out of sight for fear of being deported and so don't complain.

As to the ignorance of foreign affairs, just think of them as the United States in a world where there is NO OTHER nation even remotely close to its affluence. No EU, no China, no japan, nothing except for nations like the failed states of the middle east and Africa. Beyond needing to know that they need help to pull them out of their poverty, what more does one need to know? If we aren't studying it in school or preparing studies for superiors in business, what benefit does knowing their history and culture offer anyone?

That sort of insularity does not imply corruption. It does imply ignorance to a staggering degree, perhaps even into bigotry. Travel doesn't help. Living elsewhere does help offset that ignorance. Everything I've read in the stories suggest that relocation outside the core worlds happens so infrequently that it is considered a severe hardship. Relocation is tantamount to being banished from civilization.

cthia wrote:I'd like to believe that Peter but where is the proof? Where is the checks and balances that should be present if that is true? Where is the opposing tide?

What and where is the power of the local government if they are not corrupt. Is the local government impotent in the overall scheme of things? A lot of somethings just doesn't make sense to me.

It is difficult to accept at face value that things could end up this way and the average Joe to be ignorant. Democratic governments just don't work like that. If everything on Earth isn't like what is going on in Flint Michigan then where is the proof?

One thing that I obtained from Duckk's dump is the wealth of many citizens in the League. AND if the average citizen isn't corrupt then how can they remain so ignorant of foreign affairs? If there is such enormous wealth of Earth's average citizen then familial, business and friendly ties with Beowulf, Manticore and Sphinx would educate them. Surely they travel and have family and friends scattered about. It isn't as if the average Solarian never ventures outside of their own star system, yet it sure seems that way.

Duckk wrote:

How is it you feel that shipments being stopped, junctions being closed, war being waged, Beowulf seceding not affect people's lives? Listen to yourself. Unless, for starters, you think the average family didn't lose loved ones aboard those Solarian ships.

Yes, that is happening now. And as David has made abundantly clear, Solarian citizens are starting to sit up and take notice. But it has absolutely no bearing on the past several hundred centuries, which was when the rot set in.

Clearly there are a few differences on Earth. After all, the government seems quite able to organize riots and impact public opinion.

I think extra money is spent on the planet, more than for most other planets, just to have people ready to riot appropriately. Just as we've seen in Russia, Venezuela, etc.

Chances are things are not that dissimilar from now. Some really rich and more than a few poor with some in between. Of course with interstellar trade, etc, the really rich and REALLY far better off. And in a place like the League very influential.

I am not at all sure that earth is the wealthiest system in the SL. Is this stated anywhere? Given that they had a huge and extraordinarily destructive and deadly war they were in a huge hole that the rest of the SL had to pull them out of.