The Random Crap Thread 2: It Hits the Fan.

HCGLNS

HCGLNS

It's clear from your vacant expressions, the lights are not on upstairs, but we're talking kings and successions, even you can't be caught unawares.
 
HCGLNS

HCGLNS

I'm malicious, mean and scary
My sneer could curdle dairy
And violence-wise my hands are not the cleanest
But despite my evil look and my temper and my hook
I've always yearned to be a concert pianist
 
Shakey

Shakey

Someone asked my 11 year old daughter what we should name our boy when he's born. Her response?

Schlong...

We had to have a talk about what that word means. She got pretty red when she found out. :p
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
Just got new glasses. And (laugh it up) they are bifocals. But not the kind with lines. They are called progressive. I've spoken about this before. Holy hell are they hard to get used to! I have to be looking at just the right angle for the focal point to come into focus. I know that sounds obvious, but you do it without thinking with regular glasses. I'm not to that point with these yet. Everything is all wonky and I have very little peripheral vision.
 
Yoshimickster

Yoshimickster

Let's say we discover an alternate reality similar to ours, but they have products we can't get in our reality and vice-versa. How hard would it be to instill trade, from an economic stand point?
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Yoshimickster said:
Let's say we discover an alternate reality similar to ours, but they have products we can't get in our reality and vice-versa. How hard would it be to instill trade, from an economic stand point?
Click to expand...
Well, assuming all other political entities are the same aside from the divergent product availabilities, it would then simply depend on how difficult it is to transfer goods and information between the two alternate realities.

It also depends on the nature of the discovery and implementation. If trans-dimensional travel is first discovered by a private entity, that private entity might keep it out of public disclosure altogether, simply turning themselves into a mercantile/import/export company that simply "works both sides of the portal," so to speak. It takes its dollars here, and buys fleshlights, or whatever, and then moves those fleshlights through the portal, and sells the fleshlights for Shmeckels or whatever the local currency is, uses the Shmeckels to buy Plumbuses, then brings the Plumbuses back to our dimension to sell for dollars. Since it is the only source of plumbuses in our dimension, and the only source of fleshlights in the other dimension, they get rich on both sides.

However, if the government is involved, it gets more complicated (as it always does). They might consider the other side of the portal to be foreign political entities, in which case they'll want to enact things like tariffs, customs, etc, etc. Somebody's going to suggest that maybe the air or matter or whatever from over there is dangerous and needs extensive testing before anybody's allowed to just cross over willy nilly in either direction, or we might end up like Australia on the Simpsons, invaded by alien bullfrogs. But once all the red tape is reeled out, assuming it's all safe and on the up and up, it'll probably end up no different than the process of trading with China.

So... TLDR version, how hard would it be? Anywhere from as easy as carrying a box down a hall, to as hard as trying to bring hummingbirds into Hawaii.
 
strawman

strawman

Yoshimickster said:
Let's say we discover an alternate reality similar to ours, but they have products we can't get in our reality and vice-versa. How hard would it be to instill trade, from an economic stand point?
Click to expand...
What's the difference between that and the same thing, but trading countries for alternate realities?

"Let's say we discover a country similar to ours, but they have products we can't get in our country and vice-versa. How hard would it be to instill trade, from an economic stand point?"
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

Yoshimickster said:
Let's say we discover an alternate reality similar to ours, but they have products we can't get in our reality and vice-versa. How hard would it be to instill trade, from an economic stand point?
Click to expand...
I imagine it would depend on the products. It's one thing if we have chocolate and they don't, for instance. But if they have something like "pocket-sized, DNA-based homing missiles" then our "side" is probably going to try and block import, no matter how tempting it would be.

--Patrick
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

GasBandit said:
Well, assuming all other political entities are the same aside from the divergent product availabilities, it would then simply depend on how difficult it is to transfer goods and information between the two alternate realities.

It also depends on the nature of the discovery and implementation. If trans-dimensional travel is first discovered by a private entity, that private entity might keep it out of public disclosure altogether, simply turning themselves into a mercantile/import/export company that simply "works both sides of the portal," so to speak. It takes its dollars here, and buys fleshlights, or whatever, and then moves those fleshlights through the portal, and sells the fleshlights for Shmeckels or whatever the local currency is, uses the Shmeckels to buy Plumbuses, then brings the Plumbuses back to our dimension to sell for dollars. Since it is the only source of plumbuses in our dimension, and the only source of fleshlights in the other dimension, they get rich on both sides.

However, if the government is involved, it gets more complicated (as it always does). They might consider the other side of the portal to be foreign political entities, in which case they'll want to enact things like tariffs, customs, etc, etc. Somebody's going to suggest that maybe the air or matter or whatever from over there is dangerous and needs extensive testing before anybody's allowed to just cross over willy nilly in either direction, or we might end up like Australia on the Simpsons, invaded by alien bullfrogs. But once all the red tape is reeled out, assuming it's all safe and on the up and up, it'll probably end up no different than the process of trading with China.

So... TLDR version, how hard would it be? Anywhere from as easy as carrying a box down a hall, to as hard as trying to bring hummingbirds into Hawaii.
Click to expand...
1.) The government would demand the knowledge of how Plumbuses are created, as they cannot be replicated by modern technology on our side of the portal (and if they can, why bother unless you can get them cheap enough that is justifies using the portal?). This means that you'd have to, minimum, create a fake factory somewhere making bits that look like they go into a Plumbuse or you're going to get shutdown immediately by the FDA or whichever alphabet soup applies. You had best hope they don't actually cause cancer or something, which nobody bothered to check before selling the Plumbuses on the open market. In ether case, the government WILL find out about the portal eventually, if only by tracking down where the Plumbuses come form. Once it does, red tape ensues.

2.) All of this is going to happen on the other side of the portal unless it opens up into some anarchist/libertarian paradise/dystopia, which has it's own problems when someone decides they don't want to pay for fleshlights anymore. I really don't want to deal with fleshlight hungry Mad Max types.

3.) The moment someone on ether side of the portal harms someone on the otherside, war WILL break out and suddenly we're the Terran Empire from Star Trek.
 
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