Socialist

Have you read, understood, and followed all of the rules listed in large text at the top of the suggestions forum?(Yes/No): Yes Answering "no" to the above question will result in your post being deleted. Many people have had many complaints about how brief the stone age is. There have been many suggestions for requirements before the development of metal, and other artificial limitations, but this is neither accurate (historically), or overly believable. The main development that allowed people to stay in one place and develop the technology and innovations that we want to delay was agriculture. As it is, agriculture is extremely easy to start in TFC. Seeds are obtainable from any wild plant, ripe or not, and immediately plant-able in quickly tillable dirt. This is what should be changed. Agriculture should be much harder and slower to start, and with that, the necessity of travel for food will slow the advancement of other technologies desired for later in the game. In the beginning, seeds should not be obtainable by harvesting wild crops. All that should be obtainable from crops is the raw food, assuming they are ripe. When eating the raw crops, there should be a chance that the crop is "planted" on the tile the player is on, a chance which is tiny at first. Better would be to make some way so that an indication that they have been "planted" is not immediate, and only after a day or two in-game do the first signs (1st wild stage of the crop) appear. These crops, that are semi-wild, would give food, as well as something like "crop parts", which could be used on grass or dirt for a much higher chance of creating crops. (These crops should be immediately view-able) These second-stage human-grown crops would drop seeds as normal, and from there, agriculture as it is. After a certain agriculture level has been achieved, it is possible to get the intermediate seeds directly from new wild crops. At an even higher level, getting new crops should be essentially as it is in TFC1, you find it, you have the seeds and can plant it. Following this model, it would require a moderate agriculture level before growing things you don't directly eat (jute, sugarcane), was possible. A crude form of quern should also be available, like a mortar and pestal or something, that is much slower and more inefficient, but does not require metal to make. It should only be usable with grains, not the minerals, but should allow for bread before metal. If this was implemented, the natural abundance of wild food should decrease. It shouldn't be possible to collect enough food for a few months in a few days, then work to develop metals while just starting with agriculture. The scarcity should be such that player need to work for food, at least until they have a good agricultural base going. This isn't to say metal should be impossible to get before agriculture, it should also be possible to advance as a nomad, and herd animals and such to survive, and develop metal, all without plant agriculture, but it should be much more difficult, and a much slower start. (For this, think of how the mongols were pre-global conquest)

The biggest problem with homeschooling is not the fact that the parents are inefficient teachers or that the kids are socially deprived, although that does happen in a few cases, the biggest problem is the knowledge of the parents who are teaching them. Lets face it, who remembers everything they learned in school? Virtually no-one. Many/most adults would fail the tests their kids take and pass, because, much of the information they learned is not overly relevant at their current jobs. Yes, they can teach well everything relating to the field in which they are employed, but other fields, and a general education? Even professional schoolteachers cannot teach everything a student learns, especially as they get older and branch off into many more areas and subjects, like science, history, language, math, arts, and more. What is worse can be then that the student is not exposed to some subject that they might otherwise go into. As to sex ed, it is highly important, because at that age, trying to totally repress such activities is futile, without virtual imprisonment. As such, they need to be informed on the issue, and know the consequences and risks, as well as how to do it safely. As to the conservatives wanting to return America to how it was when it was "Great", well, that is absurdly subjective. Conservatives used to argue for segregation, before that, slavery, also there have been things such as polygamy, burning witches at the stake (this is similar to the creationism v evolution issue, people not looking at the evidence and thus killing innocents), and more, all of which they are against now. In a 100 years or so, these social issues which we argue about now will be accepted as totally acceptable, and obvious, by both sides. The only question is how long it will take, and what new issues will come up for them to argue about then. As to the "where you could determine your own path in life and do what ever you wanted with your life without anyone holding you down or taking from you.", for the vast majority of the history of the nation that was not true. A massive amount of what people could do was highly dependent on their circumstances. For much of our history, being born female condemned you to a life of being a mother and wife. Only a lucky few could actually do what they wanted. Socially mobility is as high or higher now as it has ever been. To the examples of leftist extremism; I will not deny that such opinions exist. They do exist, but in small numbers, and much of that is just ignorance or over-reaction, problems which plague both sides of the spectrum. Don't judge all of one side by the few hyper extremest. Such still exist on the right as well, 3 months ago pamphlets from the KKK were distributed on cars 10 miles from where I live. That doesn't mean everyone who is a conservative agrees with their views.

How is the regular bow useless? With a fully drawn bow, it can destroy most mobs very quickly, and players too. The only thing it cant kill well is skeletons. It is almost too overpowered, at least for the ease of access.

Will it be possible to move the portal locations to any degree, or will they be totaly fixed?

It would not work well for an early roof, because it would be either A) Fully Aestetic, as it would require a complete roof underneath it, or Not early game, because it would use support beams, which require metal saws.

I'm pretty sure there ISNT a tag if dirt was placed by the player. I'm almost certain it is that if the block is a grass block when hoed, it gets the nutrients, if it is a dirt block when hoed, it gets none.

That is just plain wrong. NPR is by far not the most biased media outlet. And they are by no means state owned. NPR is privatly owned and gets most of it's funding from private donations, not state governments. In VA, all state funding for NPR has ended, and the stations are still runing on private donations. They are one of the LEAST biased media outlets avalable, and do an excelent job of having interviews with people from both sides. As for the Incan Empire being built on conquest and bloodshed, how is America any different? We invaded and took places such as California by force, and much more recently used US supported military takeovers in peaceful South American democratic socialist societies to make them into violent, horrid "Capitalistic" dictatorships with masive amounts of killings, no free press and more. The after effects are still being felt. The Incans did take over by force, and then made a concerted effort to assimilate the new teritories into their lands. They weren't perfect, but no nation ever has been, especialy not the USA. Oh, and I'm perfectly well aware that Obama isnt a socialist and disagree with some of what he does, but the example I used was socialismic.

I personaly think Sweden would be a great place to live, am a hard core American Socialist, and yes, I did choose this username specificaly for this conversation. First of all, I would dispute many of the assertions made by your postings. Most of the heads of big buisnesses are NOT leftists, rather the oposit, rightists, and I think it is fairly clear based on the salaries of the high-ranking coperate officials and simultaneous low wages and outsourcing that the buisnesses do NOT have the people's best interests at heart. They need to be regulated, and the best method for doing so is the federal govenment. The first atempts by workers for better wages and conditions were met with hostility and conflict when the first unions formed. Also, the reasons for the USA's lower rankings in academics has much less to do with Public Schooling, but rather measures such as "No Child Left Behind" (Passed by Bush), that make it neccesary to get everyone to a minimum level of competence, a level that there is no reward for surpasing, only problems if it isn't reached. The cheap, government run public schooling through highschool is the reason that the USA did so well in many areas decades ago. The problem is that now such competitiveness requires higher education, which is NOT government provided in the USA (although Obama is trying to change that). The system in Germany (which is fairly socialistic and on the rise) is better, with spliting the students into college bound and industry bound for ideal training after good, strong, basic education. Also, you mentioned several "Socialist" countries that had collapsed. None of them had been a truly socialistic nation. The only truly socialistic nation in history has been the Incan Empire. It was a great place, without any form of currency, yet it was still expanding and strong until Spanish came in and took captive and murdered their leader who had greeted them without conflict. The main destructive agent was smallpox, also brought by the spanish. The Incan Empire was a great place were ABSOLUTLY EVERYBODY had food, water, and housing, where there was at any time about a 2 year stockpile of extra food in case of famine, and where their form of taxation was everyone labored for the government for so long each year, serving in many ways, including but not limited to government farms, building and maintaining rope bridges, working on public works such as building houses and cities, terracing land, working on the road network, serving in the military, mining, and weaving textiles for the government. Yes, social mobility was fairly limited, but the highly socialistic government made sure everyone in the empire was fed, clothed, and housed, as well as maintaining a large empire with a crime rate that was absurdly low, even by modern standards. Socialism has gotten a bad reputation for many because of the actions of a few dictatorships which were never truly socialist. A democratic socialistic society would actualy work very well, as long as the idea of currency was abandoned. Oh and They are controled by leftists because the people there believe the leftists will help them more than the rightists, not because leftist control degraded the areas. I now state my opinion that there are some liberties that can be sacrificed. I believe in stringent gun control, and reading the original amendment, it actualy only gives the states the right to have groups of semi-organized armed men for protecion, in those days from the british, as we were weak and under constant thret. Now we have the strongest military in the world by far and a full-time police force to protect us/enforce the law. It is pointless in modern times. Excessive freedoms must be curbed to some degree so as to not infringe upon the freedoms of everyone elce. Finaly, the actions that would have the largest impact on improving the government would be to first end ALL monetary lobbying in ALL forms, second, employ a campaign media method similar to the French, where if in any media source one canidate gets so much coverage, all other canidates in the same race get the same amount of coverage, and 3rd greatly reduce the salaries of elected officals to the point that they are enough to live on but not so much as to atract people to politics for the money. These 3 steps would make the government much more honest, and a much better representation of the will of the people, not that of large corporations.