Siddermark Going the Way of the Wiemer Republic? (Spoilers?)

SilverbladeTE wrote:
Another example are the Eugenicists and their garbage, it was never based in fact, they wanted it to be that way and so warped things, or denied them, to fit their view

Well, being a proponent of improving humankind myself, I must point out, that eugenic as science is perfectly solid. It is possible to improve humans through selection. Problem was to define "improvement", and here politicial demagogues and racists came into play, abusing science to fit their politicaltheories.

dobriennm wrote:
Whatever the economics of the situation (and I do believe free people are better for industrialization than a slave based system), the social aspects overrode every other aspect -the free people did not think of slaves as human beings and thought that they were only suited for slavery. They were never going to give up that belief willingly or to allow their beliefs to be challenged.

Sigh. Again, the economics is first. Anything else is second or even third. While peoples COULD for some time put ideology above the economic - pre-Perestroyka USSR is an example - this couldn't last for any prolonged period. Especially in capitalistic economy, where powers-to-be are directly interested in profits.

PeterZ wrote:Indeed. Yet, the issue with slavery was also political as well as social and economic. The 3/5ths compromise attempted to give the slave states more political representation in the federal government by counting slaves as 3/5ths a person with respects to allocating House and Electoral Gollege seats. Destroy the institution of slavery and the Southern Magnates will have lost ANY chance of equitible representation compared to Northern Magnates. The confederacy has 9 million residents, with 4 million slaves. Eliminate slavery and the landed Southern gentry would have lost every bit of power they have.

With that, I agree completely. But I must point out, that is is partially an extension of economical - the Southern elite wanted to stay in power to preserve economical system, which was favorable for them.

dobriennm wrote:
Whatever the economics of the situation (and I do believe free people are better for industrialization than a slave based system), the social aspects overrode every other aspect -the free people did not think of slaves as human beings and thought that they were only suited for slavery. They were never going to give up that belief willingly or to allow their beliefs to be challenged.

Dilandu wrote:
Sigh. Again, the economics is first. Anything else is second or even third. While peoples COULD for some time put ideology above the economic - pre-Perestroyka USSR is an example - this couldn't last for any prolonged period. Especially in capitalistic economy, where powers-to-be are directly interested in profits.

PeterZ wrote:Indeed. Yet, the issue with slavery was also political as well as social and economic. The 3/5ths compromise attempted to give the slave states more political representation in the federal government by counting slaves as 3/5ths a person with respects to allocating House and Electoral Gollege seats. Destroy the institution of slavery and the Southern Magnates will have lost ANY chance of equitible representation compared to Northern Magnates. The confederacy has 9 million residents, with 4 million slaves. Eliminate slavery and the landed Southern gentry would have lost every bit of power they have.

Dilandu wrote:
With that, I agree completely. But I must point out, that is is partially an extension of economical - the Southern elite wanted to stay in power to preserve economical system, which was favorable for them.

The primacy of economics in any national or political decision is countered by socialism. That institution is not nearly as efficient as a free market driven by voluntary exchange. That means there is more wealth for the same resources in societies operating free markets driven by voluntary exchange than in socialist ones. Yet we see a plethora of socialist nations failing their populace. Why is that?

Well that's because socialism is better at exerting political control over resources. The elites engaged in that control are better equipped to maintain control. Sweden is an excellent example of a nation swinging back from socialism into a voluntary exchange driven free market. Government is primarily a collector of funds and the private sector provides the goods and services. Education is based on private for profit enterprises running schools. There is still a government element in providing healthcare but the system is decentralized with decisions much closer to patient than the English system.

With regards to the ACW, Southern Magnates wanted to retain power. They would have been better off paying their labor. The economic return would have been much better. Had there not been a political incentive, the slaves of the South would have been freed without a war. Social conservatism and political incentives maintained support for that vile institution to a greater degree than pure economics.

Many plantations were run without slaves. About 3 million white southerners were laboring farmers who owned no slaves.

However, the factor system did maintain an economic lock on Southern markets based on low prices keeping non-participants out. Southern plantations either used the factor system or were screwed. So, the factor system created an incentive to increase the size of the plantations to increase profits by keeping prices down. More volume means more need for slaves they facilitated and a greater need to move large volumes of goods that they also facilitated.

Dilandu wrote:

SilverbladeTE wrote:
Another example are the Eugenicists and their garbage, it was never based in fact, they wanted it to be that way and so warped things, or denied them, to fit their view

Well, being a proponent of improving humankind myself, I must point out, that eugenic as science is perfectly solid. It is possible to improve humans through selection. Problem was to define "improvement", and here politicial demagogues and racists came into play, abusing science to fit their politicaltheories.

Dilandu,
We Humans do not know jack squat.
Our arrogance is appalling.
Science is wonderful but we've barely scraped the surface of our Universe, to say otherwise is rank, dangerous stupidity.
Every time Humans propose...reality bites us in the ass eventually as it disposes of our crap

Eugenics is NOT Science.
What is a "better Human", hm?
Define it? Best be very careful what you wish for....

Give us a at least 10,000 years of Scientific advancement before you dare muck around with our fundamental selves, please.
Again, go.look at the record of those who claimed to know and found out, oops, Reality has more twists twix cup and lip than the Twilight Zone!

Shall I even try to list the disasters of such hubris?
Like oh, destroying the insects we need to survive cause blockheads cheerfully sold the world that gross over use of toxic chemicals wasn't anything to worry about...and that the END JUSTIFIES THE MEANS so hey, let's ignore caution and take everything to extremes?
Bioy that has worked out so well for us!
/sarcasm overdrive disengaged

As a victim of part of modern day, post-Nazi Eugenics, I have a VERY short fuse on such for damn good reason.
Pray you never suffer so, sirrah.

SilverbladeTE wrote:
Dilandu,
We Humans do not know jack squat.
Our arrogance is appalling.

What is truly appalling is the ignorance, with which you are trying to persuade geneticist (granted, I'm working with plants) that the modern science "knew nothing about that".

SilverbladeTE wrote:Eugenics is NOT Science.

Seriously? Do you have any practicalreason, why controlled breeding should not work on humans as well as it worked on other mammals? And I'm asking for practical, not moral ones.

SilverbladeTE wrote:What is a "better Human", hm?
Define it? Best be very careful what you wish for....

(shrug) With the lowered probability of hereditary diseases, such as haemophilia, Huntington's disease, ect. You prefer them to be around for our descendants? I didn't.

SilverbladeTE wrote:Give us a at least 10,000 years of Scientific advancement before you dare muck around with our fundamental selves, please.

Yeah, yeah. So several trillions of humans would suffer from genetic diseases & defects while ignorants could feel themselves "safe". Sorry, not gonna work. When Jenner developed vaccination, he did not suggest to wait a thousand years or so until the biology would be completely understood. He just hit the smallpox with all power of science, and by mid-XX century smallpox was stamped as "Extinct".

SilverbladeTE wrote:As a victim of part of modern day, post-Nazi Eugenics, I have a VERY short fuse on such for damn good reason.

I'm sorry to hear that, but my position still stand. We need the eugenic just to survive. The humankind are already hitting the problem; with modern medicine, natural selection for Homo Sapience basically stopped to work. And the natural selection do one often unnoticed, but important thing; it cleans the population gene pool from negative mutations.

With modern medicine, almost every single person could survive and have children. Which is one of most wonderful things that science brought to us! But, as you mention -

Reality has more twists twix cup and lip

- this led to a obvious problem. Our gene pool is slowly but steadily overfilled with defects, hereditary diseases, crippling mutations. And this is the problem for future generation.

It is possible, of course, that gene therapy would someday advance enough to solve this problem by actually overwriting the defect genome. But until that, the best practical solution would be the positive eugenics. Basically, if future parents have a high probability to pass something nasty to their children - they should seriously consider using a donor ovum and sperm.

Certain portions of the UK are currently suffering from genetic flaw issues, especially those sub-sections that have immigrated from cultures where cousin-marriage is regularly practiced for a variety of reasons (including keeping property rights intact).
Pakistani communities, for example, currently account for over 30% of genetic disabilities due to generations of inbreeding, despite being responsible for under 3% of all births.

While the practice of Eugenics has been perverted many times in the service of political aims, the concept of countering genetic disability is something that most people with medical experience would agree with. The primary issue which prevents actual progress on that front is that too many would-be Eugenecists see the aim as building towards an ideal rather than identifying and fixing flaws.
Baroness Flather (former Tory MP, first Asian peer in the House of Lords) has called for mandatory DNA testing before marriage to ensure that inbreeding does not occur since it provably increases the chances of having disabled offspring who require large amounts of support (medical and societal) in order to survive.

Michael Everett wrote:Certain portions of the UK are currently suffering from genetic flaw issues, especially those sub-sections that have immigrated from cultures where cousin-marriage is regularly practiced for a variety of reasons (including keeping property rights intact).
Pakistani communities, for example, currently account for over 30% of genetic disabilities due to generations of inbreeding, despite being responsible for under 3% of all births.

While the practice of Eugenics has been perverted many times in the service of political aims, the concept of countering genetic disability is something that most people with medical experience would agree with. The primary issue which prevents actual progress on that front is that too many would-be Eugenecists see the aim as building towards an ideal rather than identifying and fixing flaws.
Baroness Flather (former Tory MP, first Asian peer in the House of Lords) has called for mandatory DNA testing before marriage to ensure that inbreeding does not occur since it provably increases the chances of having disabled offspring who require large amounts of support (medical and societal) in order to survive.

I think eugenics as a term in the US is plagued by early 20th century Progressives like Margret Sanger. She founded Planned Parenthood and her early views about eugenics to "help the race towards the elimination the unfit" still manifest today. Blacks are 12% of the population but represent 37% of abortions. They are 3x times more likely to abort their pregnancies. They have remained 12% of the population for quite some time even though they represent proportionately more pregnancies than other races in the US.

Eugenics in abstract or the Baroness Flather example is a fine idea. As practiced in some of the more visible examples, it is a vile.

Margret Sanger
Abortion Stats in US

PeterZ wrote:

Michael Everett wrote:Certain portions of the UK are currently suffering from genetic flaw issues, especially those sub-sections that have immigrated from cultures where cousin-marriage is regularly practiced for a variety of reasons (including keeping property rights intact).
Pakistani communities, for example, currently account for over 30% of genetic disabilities due to generations of inbreeding, despite being responsible for under 3% of all births.

While the practice of Eugenics has been perverted many times in the service of political aims, the concept of countering genetic disability is something that most people with medical experience would agree with. The primary issue which prevents actual progress on that front is that too many would-be Eugenecists see the aim as building towards an ideal rather than identifying and fixing flaws.
Baroness Flather (former Tory MP, first Asian peer in the House of Lords) has called for mandatory DNA testing before marriage to ensure that inbreeding does not occur since it provably increases the chances of having disabled offspring who require large amounts of support (medical and societal) in order to survive.

I think eugenics as a term in the US is plagued by early 20th century Progressives like Margret Sanger. She founded Planned Parenthood and her early views about eugenics to "help the race towards the elimination the unfit" still manifest today. Blacks are 12% of the population but represent 37% of abortions. They are 3x times more likely to abort their pregnancies. They have remained 12% of the population for quite some time even though they represent proportionately more pregnancies than other races in the US.

Eugenics in abstract or the Baroness Flather example is a fine idea. As practiced in some of the more visible examples, it is a vile.

Margret Sanger
Abortion Stats in US

Thus my creation of the Mesan Alignment while simultaneously showing you genies like the Meyerdahl mods. Dilandu is absolutely right about the consequences of mitigating the effects of genetic weaknesses . . . and also about medfical science's moral imperative to offer the very best care possible to anyone with a problem. The science is neutral; how it is used can be either vile or wonderful.

It's one thing to fix a problem, but completely different when claiming to "improve".

Genetically modified crops have become a disaster,typical of Human arrogance because we do NOT anything like as much as we boast about.
Claims that genes wouldn't propagate to other species soon proved vainglorious stupidity. As usual Humans didn't know everything and virii happily spread genes in ways we didn't think possible.
And behind it all was corruption, it was never about feeding people it was about forcing farmers to use more pesticides to make more profit for the corporations. Pesticides which are far more harmful than the swine ever admitted.

If you all want to learn some dark, nasty history and real life conspiracies, research "LIVING MARXISM", bunch of extremely unpleasant people booted out of UK communist party for their inhumanity.
Then went to other political extreme, became corporate mouthpieces, have stated goal to "infiltrate the System" and are involved in very nasty stuff.

SilverbladeTE wrote:Genetically modified crops have become a disaster

Could you please claim something less ridiculous? Like "Earth is flat", for example? I constantly work with GM-crops, and frankly, failed to notice any kind of "disaster".

SilverbladeTE wrote:Claims that genes wouldn't propagate to other species soon proved vainglorious stupidity.

From your side - yes.

SilverbladeTE wrote:If you all want to learn some dark, nasty history and real life conspiracies, research "LIVING MARXISM", bunch of extremely unpleasant people booted out of UK communist party for their inhumanity.

...The typical Russian answer on that kind of jumps in logic is "hey, who provided internet access to madhouse?"