It's true. They're seriously talking about genetically enhancing the disease-spreading capability of ticks to make people allergic to meat to force them to stop eating it, and they call it "morally obligatory."
Ah yes, human economics. Very fascinating. Very concerning.
*wheeze*
“Who does Earth owe $350 trillion to?”
Mostly itself.
You owe money to pension funds, banks, insurance companies, investment funds, foreign governments, central banks, corporations, and millions of individual investors.
*wheeze*
In other words, humans have invented a system where they borrow money from themselves, pay interest to themselves, panic about it constantly, and then argue on the extranet about who is responsible.
As a Vølüs, I find this arrangement delightfully profitable.
The more interesting question is not who you owe. The question is whether the debt grows faster than the economy that supports it.
* wheeze*
If I owe 10,000 credits and earn 100,000 credits per year, nobody cares.
If I owe 10,000 credits and earn 12 credits per year, suddenly C-Sec starts asking questions.
Hah hah hah…* wheeze*
So when a human says, “We owe $350 trillion! Who do we owe it to?”
The answer is:
“Mostly other humans. The real question is whether future humans can keep making enough money to convince everyone not to panic.”
* wheeze*
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have several sovereign debt instruments to sell to the Elcor. They take a very long-term view of investments.
It's difficult to hate Electronics Arts as much as it deserves.
I never worked directly for them, but a small developer made up of close friends (as in they gamed at my house!) did a successful game for EA. EA paid for the development with advances. When the game was a hit, EA illegally withheld the royalties, obfuscating the matter by saying they had to "repay advances first" (despite the fact that the VERY FIRST QUARTER'S ROYALTIES would surpass all the advances combined). The small developer had been living paycheck to paycheck (EA advances aren't too big), and had planned to use the expected royalties to fund itself for more great games.
Well, without the royalties, the small dev was in immediate danger of bankruptcy, and they didn't have the cash to hire lawyers. If they hired a lawyer on spec, their counsel would face off against EA's huge team of a**holes who could draw it out forever. In hindsight, perhaps they should joined with other groups angry at EA, but they went under. Their company dissolved, and my friends found other jobs, scattering around the industry.
All the upcoming cool games they had been working on were destroyed by EA's short-sighted greed. If EA had instead funded them, then EA could have had a whole stream of successful games. But no, to get a few hundred thousand they murdered a goose with a golden egg.
I guarantee you've heard of the game they made, and may have played it. It was a big enough hit to have action figures made. Not giving the name here because EA is spawned from the bowels of Hell. That's just one single example.