Writing a short-story?

I have a good plot; but geesus; I thought I might turn it into money some day...Got eny monee???

Well, I'm not sure if getting strangers to do your homework will 'move society forward, to a better world'

fankstew eventually found himself

That's fairly easy [though probably open to much speculation]. How does society move forward? Ethics, morals, government, laws, punishment, trial and error? Pick one or more, or completely different ones, if you believe they help society. The conflict? Something that could cause a halt to the things that you choose that move society forward, so it depends on what you choose. Brainstorm a plot around it. You're making it more complicated than it really has to be for you.

Is there a better way??? What do you think all of human progress has been built upon??? Equity and Justice, perhaps???

Are you like; Retarded... Society moves forward on the power of those who push the train and are left behind to their fates... Humanity survives on its morals, but progress has always been built upon immorality, slavery, exploitation, and murder.... The trick has been to find the point where immorality destroys society and step back from that point... Did not work for the Greeks, and Romans to name two... The closer to the end they got the more meaningless became their destructions... First goes meaning, and then goes life...

Like most people, I can imagine this society trasnsported some distance into the future, but not beyond a few years, and not beyond the point where artificial intelligence begins feeding on human beings, as it already has in fact; because some are worked to death to keep pace with the Robots and machines, and others are denied employment at all and their part in their own recreation through creation... How long will it be before those who run our world decide there are just to many of us loafing, and decide between them to fire up the meat grinder of war???

No, I'm hardly retarded. I don't see how being immature really improves the situation, Fido. You're only making yourself look bad.

America did not progress by immorality, slavery, exploitation, or murder. Some murders may help society as a whole, but really, enslaving black people hardly got us anywhere. It helped lead to a civil war, and if that is pushing America forward, that's.. well, retarded. Sure, mistakes help us come to the realization there is a problem and needs to be a solution, but it otherwise wasn't very helpful. If immorality helped push us so far forward, governments would be doing a lot better because there's enough corruption and clashing agendas in there. Morals were made for a reason.

You do not know what you are talking about... If people were paid a fair rate there would be no growth of capital, and where fairness is an issue there is no growth of capital.... Islam allows no interest, but in Germany during the first days of capital, interests often reached 30%... The church objected to usury and was disposed of...Before that was feudalism, and that economy consumed nearly all it produced... Then, for us whose genes survived it came the blessing of plague... The black death killed a third to a half of Europe, but it freed so much capital built up over hundreds of years and put it in the hands of those with the desire to gather it to themselves... Suddenly society could afford art, and afford science and afford exploration and invention... That was not good enough... Laws were made to keep people from benefitting from the labor shortage by demanding fair wages...

In no time at all, we Europeans stood in America, and it was the dead who paid the passage... And we took those two continents and paid with death... And because we could not enslave the natives we joined the triangle trade and enslaved the blacks... For sugar blacks were worked around the clock at times with an average life span of 3 years.... The sugar brought to America was made into rum, and traded in Africa for more slaves... The slaves were sold and the profit used for to buy more sugar, or the slaves were sold in the South of North America.... They were not particularly productive in simple agriculture, but when the cotton gin was invented, slavery came into its own... From that period of time we have the term: sold down the river... And we have a song, oh Suzanna... The meaning of each is the same: Certain Death... In the Gulf states where cotton was really productive, a slave had a life expectency of less than ten years...Oh Suzanna packed with opposites is an appeal for sympathy...The South was a hell form which no black ever returned... They died of heat, humidity, malaria, snake bite, and profit, and their lives, or rather, the price of replacing them set the price of cotton, and while they slaved, and brought more and more land under cultivation, their owners saw little of profit... New York City, which thought of seceeding with the South, controled the market and the capital... They saw the profit for which people died; but when have people ceased dying for capital???Black people had no freedom and still they paid interest...We have no freedom and still we pay interest on everything...

People who cannot pay taxes can afford to lend the government money for interest, or lend it out of a bank or stock market for interest...Nothing of necessity gets done in this country, perhaps in the world, without interest paid.... Capital cannot afford to pay a fair wage, or any thing approaching a fair wage, but to keep consumers consuming and to squeeze every last ounce of capital out of the people, they loan at interest... And as always, as in the beginning of capital it is cheap labor, and easy money which pays for invention, for investigation, and discovery....lt was the deaths of others that bought our improvement, and our deaths will advance the world even further, but there is nothing of morality, and nothing fair about it...

I immediately laughed at whoever voted you down because they must think what I thought after your first two sentences. You tell me I'm retarded, and now I don't know what I'm talking about. I think you should take a moment of introspection and reread everything you just wrote me.

You're basically saying the price of killing black people in labor set the price for cotton and.. that made society as it is today. I'm mortified. The price of cotton and this and that and the birds in the sky had really nothing to do with today. We have since evolved as a world [most of us] and it was nothing more than a stepping stone. I understand it may have had an influence on how the south worked and other things, but it didn't help anyone progress forward. Selling blacks, working them to death, and making prices for cotton did not help. What helped was changing that.

A lot of things aren't 'fair' and just. Nothing ever will be 100% moral and fair. But striving for morality, hence why rights were made as well as laws, pushes people forward. It's not the deaths of others. We could murder a million people and it would push no one forward. It's the want to improve, the laws that were put in place to help people improve, the common beliefs that we abide by [most of us], etc. Plus what I stated before.

I'm not here to debate, name call, or belittle you or anyone else. I said in my first post it's open to much speculation. If you don't like my opinion, that's your right. There is no right or wrong answer as long as you have enough support and it makes sense to others. It's my right to believe what I want, too, and I'm not changing it.

What do YOU think sets the price of anything, high, or low... Do you imagine that there is no more slavery, or that even wage slavery is not insidius??? Do you not understand the extent to which the deaths of millions in wars can drive forth technology while giving to all the survivors a better life for a time on the unused capital the dead leave behind??? Given time, we breed into our resources, and the constant need for profit and more profit sucks the life out of society... Only mass slaughter by war and disease can free the sort of capital necessary to feed consumption, profit. and science, education, experimentation, and exploration...

Sure, this country was opened up with slave labor, but it was taken whole from people already here, who had only to conveniently die for us to have it... How many people came here from Europe only to feed industry and drop dead??? How many today drop dead without issue, giving all back to society, taking nothing for the care and education of their children, leaving them nothing of capital to continue their lives because they do not exist... Look at us breed ourselves out of existence, here and in Europe... We recognize that we do not have enough to support more mouths... We must give it all to profit only to find out that less bodies working cannot support more old and loafing... Nor can the self centered few remaining defend the old who are victimised through their lives only to suffer a nightmare of fear in old age...

If society could only figure out how to kill off the old so soon as they were done being productive, it could move on, unencumbered... Think of it... Do you believe it is some accident that war, poverty, disease, and destruction are the constant companions of Capitalism, and every economy, since honor economies and honor societies were put aside??? The one, -exploitation and death, flows out of the other... One is Genus, and one is Species...

As you call it: A stepping stone... That is what much of society is, and what most of humanity is; just so many stepping stones to be ground into the mud and blood so the rest can move on... Blood is the universal lubricant... If we cannot kill nature, we must kill human nature, and we must transcend humanity, and make ourselves god to hope to survive and hope to avoid being ground into oblivion, and instead grind others to death... Fun, isn't it???... Do you get a sense of the stark view of Nietzsche's humanity???... It is a by product of the knowledge of history... We have come through carnage, if we but will it so; otherwise we are in it..

I do not care what 'sets the price.' Setting the price is not what made society as it is today and has really nothing to do with it. A life is not worth a price. Selling or making cotton does not make society as it is today. There were many, many, many influences, consequences, and decisions that made the world as it is today.

Only mass slaughter by war can feed profit, etc? Are you really listening to yourself? America could massly slaughter Australia or Europe or Africa or South America. Do you believe it would push anyone forward? Do you think murdering other societies feeds education or science? You are sadistic. Murdering other people is nothing but murdering other people. There may be a cause, as if fighting supression or a bad government or something similar, but war does not help anyone in general. That's how societies lose money; putting money toward bombs, guns, death tolls, etc. That's a step back, not a step forward. If it fed what you say it does, war would occur 24/7 on a mass scale to help 'science, education, experimentation,' and 'exploration.' The only war that helps anyone is a war that accomplishes a large, majority purpose like removing a leader that surpresses.

Slaves were not a stepping stone, the stepping stone was fixing slavery. War is not a stepping stone either unless accomplishing something that supports the majority. It has to benefit many for anyone's death to really gain meaning in a war.

While the elderly and disabled may cause an imbalance in societies, that does not justify the act or impulse to do away with them. The elderly have worked, fought, and suffered to have the world as it is today for you. If you cannot respect their loss, you do not deserve to breathe yourself. The elderly may not directly contribute to society, but nursing homes and other homes cost a lot of money, as well as around the clock care. They do their share of bringing incomes in for nurses and similar workers. As long as they are benefitting someone, it's not a total loss, and even if they were not, that would be okay too. A person cannot help how their child is born under standard circumstances, and the child cannot help this either. Targeting the weak to play a key role in your less than humane ideas is barbarous.

I agree there is no perfect world and that society will not always be humane. I know of Nietzsche, and even have some of their quotes on my board, but I do not agree that death propels anyone forward without a solid, just cause. As Hemingway put it, “Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.” War is not a lubricant, and neither is death, and we should not pretend it so to distort a view into something you want it to be.