@austrosillyism The best argument for democracy is to create a shared fund with other community members and ask if you're okay with one guy having unilateral control over with a pinky promise he'll redistribute it fairly.
@SethJacob We tried that many times in the 2000s and early 2010s, and the original worldbuilding got indulgent enough (Fal'Cie) that we're arguably living in the backlash against it with more grounded settings today. Gonna take a while for originality to be prized again.
@CptHastings1916 Society isn't/shouldn't be a meritocracy in the first place because the point of a society is to enrich it's own members, not sort winners and losers for some external purpose like a job might do.
@adonispara@Fleck9r Then many elites will unite against you, many generals will be enticed by their money, and you'll be viewing a civil war that destroys everything.
@MattZeitlin The point is that "education" doesn't really matter as an additive effect, we're really just relying on inherent talent/drivr, peer network effects, and a structure that doesn't get in the way to produce "talent".
@maxwelltani It's sadly ironic that it's an image of something that might exist in the 80s, hell even 60s and it wouldn't look different. No technology, a complete absence of futuristic or a world that might exist beyond our own.
@c30ff8@PoltFan69 Railway companies in Asia double as real estate companies who build and own malls above their stations for massive profit margins that help supplement the low-profit margins of the railway network.