Role-playing games, World Of Warcraft, and other interesting considerations

I am sure that readers of earlier entries on this journal already know this, but I will repeat it for the benefit of those who came in late. I play the MMORPG known as World Of Warcraft. I play it a lot. When I was a child, I read about things referred to in computer magazines called Multi-User Dungeons, or MUDs. And with some qualifications, MMORPGs are sort of what I imagined when I read those articles.

Social services should be about investment, not charity.

A common argument used by conservative shitheads who do not wish to pay the “enormous” costs of welfare to people other than themselves is that if welfare transfers to the poor were eliminated, small organisations that are formally known as charities would pick up the slack. Aside from the usual stupidities associated with this argument, it is well worth examining a few concepts associated with it. For one thing, the idea that privately run, disparate, and highly specialised charities can collectively replace a centrally organised and carefully planned system of allocations is laughable at best and complete bullshit at worst. Furthermore, because charities are only beholden to the people that finance them, impartiality is a big problem. A certain “charity” in America, for example, refuses to even talk to the people that it makes most of its money by claiming to represent, not even allowing them a spot at the table, so to speak. If a government organisation were to treat the people that it claimed to represent in this manner, the media would go after it with a vengeance.