Wandering Adventure Party

@stevendbrewer @cstross

Then we have the liquidator warehouses that set up in big, dis-used industrial buildings around here. We called one of them the "Rat Palace" in recognition of the species present that solidly outnumbered the human staff.

It was the absolute tail end of the retail food chain and one of the most depressing experiences you can ask for. To think that every single item piled up in the multiple hectares of factory floor space was somebody's retail design idea, seen
through to production and marketed.

If you needed tiles for the bathroom, however ...

Ocean State Job Lot looks infinitely fancier: it has a web site and probably even tracks its inventory.

@EndlessMason @scottsantens One reading of a paper by Johns Hopkins economics researcher Daniel Thompson (Stagnant services, 2021) is that inflation is largely capped by constant costs associated with a growing "stagnant services" sector. These are any services where there's no big productivity gain in automation, and very slim profit margins.

A UBI could transfer some of the total productivity of society to increase the take-home of workers in low-wage stagnant services. This could be done without increasing inflation, because the cost of those services remains the same.

You could also see more workers prepared to take lower paid or volunteer jobs if their basic needs and health care needs were met. That would be dis-inflationary too.

@sundogplanets Perhaps it's time to put that information into the CRASH clock. Consider sending the FCC a summary.

If the critical delay for orbital corrections drops enough, perhaps even below even that associated with standard operations, then there's a really good argument to deny the application.