Subj : Your opinions on communism
To   : Kirk Spragg
From : michael goodwind
Date : Wed Jul 03 2024 10:31 am

 KS> I've read most of them, some are quite different thats for sure. Which
 KS> ones did you not like or thought didn't fit the series?

Consider Phlebas, in hindsight or on a second readthrough, felt like it was written solely from the motivation of having it optioned and turned into a movie.  Over indexing on anything that would make for a shiny action scene or a great snippet for a movie trailer instead of actual substance

Player of Games - Felt a little too focused on the local/micro and not enough on the macro

Use of Weapons - Felt too focused on the individual and less on the broader canvas that he found himself in

Inversions - Didn't even feel like it belonged in the series, I'm never a fan when scifi goes all fantasy/medieval and I believe this one was the one with the cat people? Just felt out of place

Surface Detail - Cool concept, not as much dislike as the others in my list here but seemed to focus a bit too much on the hell and less on the broader picture.

The rest of the series is easily some of the best scifi I've read, for me personally I just wanted more of that Space Opera feel.

 KS>  mg> did they get?  Thinking about it, India got the first mover advantage
 KS>  mg> the realm of outsourced services and China for manufacturing and
 KS> It does seem like China's economy is ready to collapse in some way, as
 KS> per my response to Dr What, it looks like China's regional governments'
 KS> over reliance on borrowing to fund real estate projects which they try
 KS> to sell for a profit has failed badly... I wonder how they'll try to fix
 KS> that mess.

All very good points and the last one is something overlooked so often when people claim that China is relatively debt-free compared to the west, ignoring or being ignorant of the fact that China's debt is distributed federally, provincially and municipally instead of just at the federal level. Putting all level of debt together China's on par or worse with most western nation in pure numbers but seemingly much much worse in terms of sustainability.  It really does look like a house of cards that's starting to crumble.  There is a youtube channel called tl;dr News that has some good short pieces on this.  They are stuck in this spiral, partly exaccerbated by Ping's semi-religious hatred for western consumerism, trapping them in this reliance on a low-wage export driven economy.  I haven't heard of any reasonable solution so far to get them out of this quagmire, have you?

.... "No comment" is a comment.

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