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Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Basic Income in Finland:

Support for the basic income in Finland is 70% according to polls.  In addition, the ruling parties have agreed in principle to the implementation of a basic income and are just working out the details.  If actually implemented (in a democracy, with 70% approval, you would think this is a given. . .), Finland would be the first state on Earth to implement a basic income policy.  We could then see for ourselves whether the policy is better or worse than what came before.  I've advocated for a citizen's dividend for so long my throat is hoarse, so there's really nothing left to say about it.  We'll just see if it works like I said it will and creates a paradise on Earth (though Finland is pretty much a paradise already, but there's always room for improvement so hey why not?).

Once Finland is a success, maybe the naysayers against this most important policy on Earth will fade away, and we can see a rapid adoption of the policy all across the planet.  In a world of automation where jobs are impossible to find, the basic income is the only humane and decent policy left to the world.  In addition, it's cheaper than our current plethora of social programs and creates no negative incentives like having children out of wedlock, claiming disability or staying unemployed to gain unemployment benefits.  There are no defects to the citizen's dividend, only advantages.  It is very rare to be put in a situation where you can give more benefits to everyone for cheaper than before, but that's the case with the citizen's dividend.

In other good news, Major 2nd is receiving an anime adaption.  This is a good thing, considering the manga is no longer being translated, so those of us in the west will only ever have access to this series via the subtitling of the anime.  It's unfortunate, however, that we're getting a Major 2nd anime when the original Major anime was never finished in the first place.  The Major World Series arc was done in a paltry two oav's, even though it's meant to cover 100 chapters of manga or whatever.  Those chapters of the manga are also forever untranslated, which means no one outside of Japan has ever enjoyed the final installment of the original Major series in any format.  Skipping ahead to Major 2nd, when we don't even know what the hell happened in the ending of the first series, will be discombobulating to say the least.

In other news, Iowa lost to Michigan State at the last second of the game and therefore fell out of the playoffs.  In the end only one of the teams I originally picked, Clemson, got in to the final playoff selection.  Still, I'm perfectly content with the teams that were selected.  They had the best records so it was obvious they should go.  It just turns out my predictive powers weren't good enough, which is to be expected in a game so much decided by chance.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake isn't going to be turn-based, but nor is it going to be real time hack n' slash either.  I'm not sure how the battle system works, but I trust Square knows what it's doing.  The graphics look incredible and that was the point of the remake, so I'm sold on it.  I'm also perfectly fine with the remake being made across multiple games.  The point is to produce the perfect game, the best game ever made, which this really has the potential to become.  If that takes more money and resources than normal that's just fine.  Rome wasn't built in a day either.


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