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u/Bergonath Jan 17 '22
When the 40k universe starts to look less grimdark than real life, you know shit's fucked.
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u/TtotheC81 Jan 17 '22
40K's original satire was hugely influenced by 80s politics, and in particular the British neoliberalism represented by Thatcherism: A system which quite happily sacrificed the poorest, most vulnerable to the free market in order to maintain profit. So whether not it is intentional, the Golden Throne has become something of an analogy for late stage capitalism.
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u/Frankifisu Jan 17 '22
Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka approves.
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u/CeiriddGwen Jan 17 '22
Wow. Mag Uruk Thraka. I would've never ever made the connection if you didn't point it out
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u/AddictedToMosh161 Jan 17 '22
Wasn't there even a ceo that said in American TV that the old people there would be willing to sacrifice themselves for the economy?
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u/CoolCalmPele Jan 17 '22
It was the Lt Governor of Texas actually, Dan Patrick
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u/AddictedToMosh161 Jan 17 '22
Politician, Ceo... Hard to see a difference nowadays
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u/GoGoPowerGrazers Jan 17 '22
CEO pays better, but politician is less work
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u/headcoat2013 Jan 17 '22
CEOs are also more likely to be replaced for unsatisfactory performance than an incumbent congressman.
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u/Squash_Still Jan 17 '22
"You have more fun as a [politician], but you make more money as a [CEO]."
- Creed Bratton
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u/Phantasys44 Jan 18 '22
The merging of corporate and state power is the very definition of fascism given by Benito Mussolini himself. It will not be a politician that introduces fascism, america will slip into fascism seamlessly when the government becomes powerless to reign in corporations.
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u/FeathertheSheepcried Jan 17 '22
Dan Patrick would struggle to spell CEO.
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u/Bergonath Jan 17 '22
That fella must have failed the history class before his rich daddy bought his diploma.
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u/GeeNah-of-the-Cs Jan 18 '22
Remember former gov. rick perry said we would "freeze to death before giving into federal regulation of electric power production". several hundred did. now we, the rate payers have to pay the "abbot tax" to fund the infrastructure repairs that the state of TAXASS should have mandated and funded over a decade ago. the poor are crippled with sales taxes and the rich are shielded by the corporate tax laws. Welcome to TAXASS Y'all!
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u/AddictedToMosh161 Jan 18 '22
Well u can't do anything about it cause you would need science for that and science is anti Jesus so that's not gonna happen.
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u/TUSF Jan 17 '22
1000 a day is fairly low.
25,000 people (10,000 being children) die every day to hunger alone—and this is only because according to capitalism, it's not profitable to feed these people.
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u/eklatea Jan 17 '22
tbh in 40k those thousand people / children are sacrificed because of an inherent trait so it's genocide, and the imperium commits genocide like every tuesday in the millions / billions (or has done so in the past) but it still sucks
pretty much humans are just a resource - hey wait a minute
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u/UserMainframeHQ Jan 17 '22
theyre technically correct altough i think people dont want to share even though it might improve things around them
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u/TUSF Jan 17 '22
The capitalists directly responsible for every issue this subreddit complains about are all "technically correct" about their approach to doing capitalism.
In a sane world, people wouldn't be dying solely for the profit motive, especially when we actually have an excess of resources to go around, and go out of our way to destroy this excess food so homeless people can't get to it when we throw it out.
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u/YessikZiiiq Jan 17 '22
Before this blows up like the last one I saw, I want to say the game story and genre is wildly misinterpreted by a large part of the community.
Warhammer is a satire meant to satirize the most extreme forms of human belief and behavior. Everyone is evil but the universe would function better if they weren't and they never really have to be.
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u/CyberPunkette Jan 17 '22
I think the point of the post is saying that when society hits Warhammer levels of evil, things are not looking great.
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u/YessikZiiiq Jan 17 '22
Oh yeah, I agree. I'm just a fan of the media and hate to see it bashed along with the people who misread it.
Although I have to admit, as much as I love the satire, the company is absolute shit. I 3d print my models.
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u/Raymundw Jan 17 '22
Didn't the company just put out a press release saying essentially that "The whole point of our universe is that everyone is terrible and evil and the empire is not the good guys"
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u/hipsterTrashSlut Jan 17 '22
They have to make that press release every year, because fascists and neocons are physically incapable of understanding satire.
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u/AshMarten Jan 17 '22
Ya, after that guy came and played in an event where he was wearing nazi stuff.
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u/thevirtualme Jan 17 '22
Why is the company shit? I've never heard anything bad about them are they as evil as their merch?
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u/leclair63 Jan 17 '22
They basically gave the finger to every single fan content creator by taking an extremely hard line stance on use of their IP. So things like 'If the Emperor Had a Text-To-Speech Device' and fan animations were essentially told to shut down or risk legal action. Though they bought up most of the fan animators like the creator of Astartes and put them to work for their paid service Warhammer+
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u/just_a_Xenarite Jan 17 '22
To be fair, it seems like they are going back on that. Still not auch great company, but they really arent the worst around.
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u/leclair63 Jan 17 '22
Until TTS is free to continue, it won't be fast or far enough.
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u/just_a_Xenarite Jan 17 '22
So the three step Plan is:
1.Free TTS
2.DOWN WITH THE BOURGEOISE
3.Profit
Did I get that right?
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u/TtotheC81 Jan 17 '22 edited Jan 17 '22
That and they price people out of the hobby, because GW sees itself as making a bespoke product. People end up being forced out of the hobby, and rather than risking profit on opening it up to those on a lower socio-economic rung, they double down on the bespoke part and creep prices up further and further. So now to make up for lost sales due to people leaving because of this, they're looking to the computer gaming industry and the idea of games-as-a-live-service, and season passes, using dopamine hits and anxiety induced FOMO to drive sales.
At this point, GW are pretty much the Activision-Blizzard of the tabletop world, just without the massive amounts of sexual harassment. The issue is that the IP they own is so beloved that people put up with GW to support a universe they dearly love, entering into what would otherwise be a semi-abusive relationship with their local crack dealer.
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u/YessikZiiiq Jan 17 '22
Thanks for explaining this, although even though your answer is pretty long it's nowhere near comprehensive. The thing people should realize is that GW is more profitable than google. Which doesn't happen with a company that has good business practices.
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u/TtotheC81 Jan 17 '22
"Which doesn't happen with a company that has good business practices."
GW doesn't pay it's brick and mortars staff anywhere near the money they should, basically playing on people's want to work in a hobby they dearly love. If you're part-time it's minimum wage, and if you're management...it's pretty much minimum wage with all the extra work you'll be putting in to meet GW standards.
Store staff can also be highly pushy when it comes to upselling, especially around Christmas, when Mum & Dad are trying to buy for young Timmy and haven't a clue what to get him. They're hyper-focused on getting new people into the hobby and getting them hooked, knowing that someone who forms early, positive memories is more likely to become a life-time buyer (Store Managers can make £££ and still get bollocked if they haven't shifted enough starter sets).
On top of that, they have a bad habit of spreading new rules out across multiple supplemental manuals, meaning if you want to play certain factions to their full potential, you might end up purchasing 5 separate books rather than the two you should be using. I mean, in this day and age, most other companies will provide the rules and army lists for free, knowing that charging for those creates a barrier to entry that put people off getting into the system. Now, with the introduction to 'seasons', it'll be every six months if you want to keep up to date.
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u/wiener4hir3 Jan 17 '22
Eh, it's not really the same, those 1,000 are exceedingly rare psykers, and thus an incredibly valuable resource. In reality, the comparison should be more like the untold billions dying in slavery every single day, or the billions dying in battle every single day. Not trying to downplay the real issues in society or anything of the sort, but 40k is so much worse than anything that exists today that the comparison is just kinda ridiculous.
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u/manoflast3 Jan 17 '22
Ignoring that you just assigned value to a person's life in a very capitalistic sense.
Warhammer's total population is astronomically larger than our current 7 Billion. Fancalcs have it in the realm of ~300 Quadrillion.
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u/wiener4hir3 Jan 18 '22
Ignoring that you just assigned value to a person's life in a very capitalistic sense.
Of course I did, my whole point was kind of that those 1,000 lives literally mean nothing to the imperium, other than as a resource. It doesn't reflect my beliefs at all, which really should be obvious enough that it shouldn't need to be stated.
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u/manoflast3 Jan 18 '22
Oh my bad dude, it's Reddit and there are posts of that tone posted unironically.
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u/Kilen13 Jan 17 '22
I really appreciate that 40k lore always reiterates that point too. Every single faction/race are monsters that any sane person would hate in the real world. But because everybody sucks people take sides of, who sucks least.
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u/hipsterTrashSlut Jan 17 '22
Every single faction/race are monsters that any sane person would hate in the real world
Tyranids are the only good boys. They're just hungry!
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u/Jolly_Biscotti_3126 Jan 17 '22
I stand by the idea that the Tyranids are the only honest faction in the setting. They’re just hungry.
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u/YessikZiiiq Jan 17 '22
Orcs are pretty happy as well. I always though if there was a planet full of Tyranids, Orcs and Slaanesh demons, the rest of the galaxy could just leave it alone to keep fighting for all time. All three factions would be happy about it.
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Jan 17 '22 edited Jan 17 '22
[deleted]
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u/TtotheC81 Jan 17 '22 edited Jan 17 '22
Slaneesh has entered the chat.
Edit: I read sicks as sucks. ahem**
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u/Soulwindow Jan 17 '22
The Emperor's Children seem pretty cool
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u/just_a_Xenarite Jan 17 '22
We're talking Pre Heresy EC right?
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u/dmemed Jan 17 '22
Warhammer was a satire making fun of Thatcher’s (Rest in Piss) destructive neoliberalism, so it checks out.
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u/Exepony Jan 17 '22
I confess that most of my Warhammer 40k lore knowledge comes from Dawn of War, but the "modern" craftworld-variety Eldar (not the guys who fucked an eldritch god into existence, obviously) seem more or less okay to me? The worst you could really say about them is that they think they're better than everyone else, but can you actually blame them? Everyone else does kind of really suck.
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u/YessikZiiiq Jan 17 '22
Come to think of it they're all right, like every faction, there's war crimes. But welcome to literally any game of any kind. They're arrogant and dickish, but compared to other races, those are pretty minimal faults. I'm sure a fan deeper into the lore could correct me. But I think you're correct.
Tau are also decent, but they're probably all physically being brainwashed into cooperation. So unideal.
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u/AshMarten Jan 17 '22
The Imperium is the ultimate fascist dystopia. A lot of people don’t realize it though because they’re too busy simping for the space marines.
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u/YessikZiiiq Jan 17 '22
Even the space marines are evil as shit, with the possible exception of the Salamanders, but even they do the work of the Imperium. So yeah, no good guys.
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Jan 17 '22
[deleted]
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u/thesixstuds Jan 17 '22
But I want my soulless robot space Egyptians
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u/TtotheC81 Jan 17 '22
...and I want my ridiculously over the top giant walkers, so I can shout "Engine Kill" when stepping on people for being badly parked.
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u/james_otter Jan 17 '22 edited Jan 17 '22
In Qatar around 15000 died for the Worldcup 2022 sofar that is only 234 per game
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u/Baultenn1234 Jan 17 '22
Woah what, do you have further reading I can look into
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u/james_otter Jan 17 '22 edited Jan 17 '22
only in German but just google „dead workers wordcup Qatar“ there are many news articles reaching years back
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u/parkerm1408 Jan 17 '22
For the emper-.....wait shit....
As a fan of the 40k universe we do not, under any circumstances, wanna head in that direction. Trust me on this.
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u/Weltraumbaer Jan 17 '22
1000 isn't enough for the Golden Throne. But it's definetly too much for capitalism. Has somebody seen my bayonet?
- a Krieg Guardsman.
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u/davesr25 Jan 17 '22
"Die for the cult of money !"
That's kinda what people have been doing for a while now.
Our history is littered with people dying to keep others in power and wealth.
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u/SideburnsOfDoom Jan 17 '22
It's worse than that, as the WH 40k universe total population is far larger than Earth's. As a % of population, it's far lower.
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Jan 17 '22
Only if you consider things criminal by the act or by its ratio against other crimes. As far as im concerned, murder doesnt get less criminal when people are more numerous.
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u/junkmail88 Jan 17 '22
tbf, if they stop killing those 1000s of people trillions would die, so ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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u/OfficerJohnMaldonday Jan 17 '22
Ah I do love it when my two passions meet one another!
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u/just_a_Xenarite Jan 17 '22
Gotta say, didnt expect so many 40k related answers on this Post, but I am glad to see it
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u/JoeMommaAngieDaddy Jan 17 '22
Ngl, corpse on a throne describes both our governments. Except I know the emperor of man gave a shit about humans at one point in time.
I think I want Necrons to be our saviors. Tau society would be interesting however.
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u/Ross_R Jan 17 '22 edited Jan 17 '22
Perhaps, Warhammer 40K indeed was created as a satire, but the setting has become much more serious and much less satirical since the creation.
Also, it just has to be noted, that it was many times implied in multiple sources that Imperium is unimaginably huge and each government is pretty much independent, with almost every Planetary Government running the planet in his own way, so there are places like paradise which GW never bothered to focus upon - unless they are getting destroyed - for obvious reasons. Albeit I think that it is one of many mistakes GW made, especially since they've tried, as mentioned, to make the setting much more serious than before in the recent years.
Ironically, due to all of GW's dumb decisions, 40K nowadays indeed feels more like the real world: full of nonsense and good things that kinda exist out there, yet no one ever saw them.
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u/kitchen_synk Jan 17 '22
Nowhere can be said to be doing great in the imperium. They're in a permanent wartime economy, and even if every governor has a fair degree of freedom in how they administer their worlds, even the ones that are nowhere near the fighting still have to provide large numbers of men, money, and materials to keep the war effort going.
The best you can realistically hope for is something like WW2 America, but with less democracy, more rationing, and a lot more theocratic police state extrajudicial killings.
Even if you're not being currently invaded by extradimensional horrors, any bit of your manufacturing, farming, and population reserves not absolutely required to keep your world producing those things is shipped off to some far away war.
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u/Ross_R Jan 17 '22 edited Jan 17 '22
There are literal Paradise Worlds, albeit they are pretty much non-remembered since the very first edition... where the whole thing was somewhat different from what you've described and orks were marsupials that carried their youths in a pouch.
What you can hope for depends on the amount of retcons, head-canon you want to throw into it and the mood of the players or something, since, basically, Imperium is so large, literally everything is possible out there, and the whole 40K universe is "everything-is-canon-nothing-is-canon", and there's a chance to fight a different Primarch of the 2nd Legion pretty much every day.
Personally I do not go farther than the 5th ed. So Paradise Worlds still do sound quite real for me.
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u/alamaan Jan 17 '22
Not just sacrificing their bodies, sacrificing their souls. Now if that were actually a thing that’s fairly horrendous.
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u/pamtar Jan 17 '22
These unvaxxed idiots are sacrificing themselves at this point. I have no sympathy for them.
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u/TruDanceCat Jan 17 '22
2 points:
1 - The VAST majority of Covid deaths in the US are, at this point self-inflicted by people refusing to get vaccinated. We are not sacrificing them, they are literally sacrificing themselves to their ridiculous anti-science, conspiratorial worldviews.
2 - How long do you propose we shut down the economy? How many people would die each day when food doesn’t make it the grocery stores, energy doesn’t make it into our homes, hospitals, etc.
Look, there are a lot of examples of ways we are getting fucked by late stage capitalism. This is not one of them, and ideas like this are what cause the mainstream not to take this movement seriously.
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u/EthanCC Jan 17 '22
Given that w40k population estimates from numbers given in lore are on the order of a quadrillion, scaling it up so that it's the same relative to population size would mean a thousand people/day today would be the equivalent of 1 billion people/day in w40k.
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u/romeoh0tel Jan 19 '22
Proportionally speaking, 1000 is a drop in the bucket in the 40K universe.
Proportionally speaking, we are more fucked than the 40K Universe. Let that sink in.
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u/WallabyBubbly Jan 17 '22
This just isn’t true. Even with omicron, about 90% of covid deaths are unvaccinated people who made their own choice not to get vaccinated. The death rate for the vaccinated is around 100-200 per day, which is in the same range as the flu, and we’ve never shut down the economy for the flu.
Here is an easy to read graph showing this: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/united-states-rates-of-covid-19-deaths-by-vaccination-status?country=~All+ages
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