[RowanTheFox]

Contrary to popular belief, healthcare in Canada isn't free....
What you pay is based off your tax return.

In my case I pay $271/month to maintain the public healthcare system that allows people to die waiting for treatment of serious diseases....

And if you leave the country to get treatment, the Feds charge you with tax evasion!

(Lost 3 family members to cancer waiting lists, and spent tens of thousands of dollars fighting the tax evasion charges when I went to the states to get my liver spurr treated because I couldn't wait the 16 weeks here in BC)

What if you can't work and don't have a tax return? Technically I can work, but every place I've applied to suddenly loses interest the moment I mention my issues, and they come up with some BS excuse for not hiring me. So, because people are ableist assholes, I can't work. Can't prove they're discriminating either. They're careful not to do or say anything that could get them sued. I feel an awful lot like one of the SR infected sometimes with the way people treat me.

At least I'm not contagious, so I got that going for me.

[Reaver]

Honestly?
 Don't know. I have worked every year to some degree which means I have a tax return.

Sounds like you would qualify for Permenate Disability.... which pays 60% of your averaged yearly salary until you hit 65... (then Old Age Pension kicks in)

In your case (because you don't have a tax return) it would be Welfare, which pays a base rate of $675/month.... and covers your health care costs. And as you can imagine, you can't really live off of $675 a month..... as rent alone hovers around $800/month in my city, and we are not a major one! Vanvouver rental rates are hovering around $1200 for a 1 bedroom. Even SROs run $600 to $800/month.

[Reaver]

After re-reading the thread from the begining, I have a question and can't remember the answer (and away from books so I can't look it up).


Can ghouls eat other ghouls for food?
My gut says 'No'....

[Senko]

I think they can.

As for governements we're not doing so hot in Australia right now . . . vote in PM, PM gets removed by parliment and replaced with who they want till next election, vote in new PM, PM gets removed by parliment and replaced with who they want till next election, vote in new PM, new PM tells us Australia is suffering major debt and has to cut healthcare/education but because our parliment is so badly paid and has so few perks (indexed pension for life, free travel for life) they need to give htemselves a payrise so they can afford their multimillion dollar mansions, parliment removes PM and replaces them with who they want till next election, vote in yet another new PM, massive numbers of parlimentarians accidentally make mistakes on their benefits (such as using free travel to attend their own/someone elses wedding) but hey its fixed up now its been pointed out, parliment removes PM and replaces them with who they want till the next election, vote in new PM, watch said PM break all the promises that would help lower income families while stating they will stand by their election promises (that help higher income campaign donors), waiting to see if parliment removes him currently.

[Reaver]

Well, IF they can, then that is partial solution to feeding them....

Take all the Ferals, round them up, let the bloodsuckers drain em for food, then when they die, use their bodies to feed the intelligent ones!

3 birds, one stone:
1: The farels are dealt with, thus reducing random attacks on people, and helping their reps...
2: the fangs get a meal without fucking up the citizens' souls (willing or not)

3: the intelligent ones get food, thus reducing their dependance on other sources (like living people!)




But, the simple fact that Asmando jailed all their farels (and fed them!) Says to me that they probably can not eat other infected..... Or the common thinking in Asmando runs along:

"We can't eat ghouls! They are people! We can only eat people-people"

And if THAT is the case...... lots and lots of fire, apply liberally to infection site until infection has turned to a fine white ash

[RowanTheFox]

I think they can.

As for governements we're not doing so hot in Australia right now . . . vote in PM, PM gets removed by parliment and replaced with who they want till next election, vote in new PM, PM gets removed by parliment and replaced with who they want till next election, vote in new PM, new PM tells us Australia is suffering major debt and has to cut healthcare/education but because our parliment is so badly paid and has so few perks (indexed pension for life, free travel for life) they need to give htemselves a payrise so they can afford their multimillion dollar mansions, parliment removes PM and replaces them with who they want till next election, vote in yet another new PM, massive numbers of parlimentarians accidentally make mistakes on their benefits (such as using free travel to attend their own/someone elses wedding) but hey its fixed up now its been pointed out, parliment removes PM and replaces them with who they want till the next election, vote in new PM, watch said PM break all the promises that would help lower income families while stating they will stand by their election promises (that help higher income campaign donors), waiting to see if parliment removes him currently.

Australia: The land where even your own government wants to kill you! 

[Sengir]

(OMG, lots of activity for a thread necro!)

People talk a lot about "just eating the dead", but forget that for many cultures, the dead are considered scared. Take the Native America culture where ancestors, elders and their remains are holy. in Today's world

...and that right there is the problem: Shadowrun is removed from "today's world" by far more than the calendar. IRL we take a rather dim view of things like Bunraku parlors, murdering security guards in the commission of a crime, blood sports on TV, or declaring yourself a souvereign nation to escape annoying laws. And if you want to draw religions views on treating bodies into it,  Abrahamic religions already have problems with tattoos placed on your own, living body. Chopping off your god-provided arm for a cybernetic upgrade or even worse rewiring your brain to slot chips overriding part of your personality (i.e. soul) would give any religious authority a fit.

We aren't talking about extinction - yet . We are talking about the threat of an invasive species that feeds on us and is seeking dominance.

The infected are not people - they are aliens. Humanity is their food source which is why they cannot truly be part of humanity. Granting them rights is the first step to becoming their cattle - as the Ghoul nation demonstrates quite succinctly.

The funny thing about this whole "Infected are a threat to humanity" thing is that the haters manage to elevate ghouls from pretty disgusting carrion feeders to potent and ferocious apex predators, which humanity actually holds in higher regard

[MijRai]

Sengir has some really good points. 

[Reaver]

Everything you listed happens in today's world too.

While we don't have the tech for bunraku, if you live in a modest sized city, just do a search for "body rub" or "massage Parlour" in your town..... same idea just no mind altering tech.

And exactly HOW many police have died in the US in the last few months?

Get out of a 1st world country and into developing world. Cock fights, dog fights, pack on boar fights are all on TV through out Africa. And in darker spots, other fighting happens (and generally one of the fighters isn't there willingly)

The Ex-wife's pastor made a great coffee fountain when he saw my shoulders, arms and back.... at least he paid for the cleaning of the shirt...

Check out the Soverign Citizen movement... or Freemen on the land movement....

In the SR universe they lightly touch on the views of various religions. Such as the catholic chuch declaring meta-humans and magic "works of the devil", and then recanting that stance.
How Islam bans outright the use of magic unless you are an Imam. And other views.

As for Apex pedators.... we are ok with them as long as we are on the top of the list.... but the infected are higher then metahumans simply because they EAT us as their SOLE form of food. That's were the problem lies there, we are no longer the Apex of apex predators.

(Also keep in mind, for some countries, these things are not crimes! Prostitution is state sponsored in some countries. To the point that declining a sex work job disqualifies from unemployment payments and welfare! Looking at you NZ. Ghana has no animal abuse laws, thus animal fights are common sporting and gambling activity you can find in many bars)


Trust me. The Real Life world is more fucked up (from an insulated Western view) then people know. Slavery still happens. You can buy children easily. Mutilations happen for the fun of it. And mass gang rape is a sport.

The shit I have seen in 13 years of working in developing and 3rd world countries is the greatest contributor to my sleepless nights. There are things that once you see, you never forget...

<And that is why I knock the teeth out of North American Social Justice Warriors when ever they get in my face... these fuck heads have absolutely NOTHING to bitch about! And if they really want to bitch... now they have a reason! Their missing fucking teeth!>

[Dwagonzhan]

Well since I didn't give my typical code for dealing with Infected:

-Terminate Feral Infected as opportunity presents; otherwise avoid. Any possible humanity they had fled with their sanity. They serve no useful purpose save possibly research and present a threat to everyone else.
-If any sapient Infected deliberately infects another without that person's consent, terminate the perpetrator.
(I hold a similar code for forced augmentation. Unless augmentation is necessary to save someone's life and they are absolutely unable to make that decision due to circumstance, just don't do it.)

-If someone wants to become a vampire, ghoul, etc has carefully considered what it truly entails and finds a host infected to turn them, then fine. Their body, their essence, their decision (no matter how foolish I personally think it is)

Basically, if the sapient Infected find useful outlets for their needs and otherwise act with dignity and respect towards others (Infected and Uninfected alike), I will show it in kind.
But any infected tries to turn my runners without their consent, they can expect a lethal response. (and yes, I've lost a character to HMHVV; he was a dwarf who went Feral Ghoul. Fun times! )

[Reaver]

Have to say, you treat them better then I do.

My encounters with infected generally run along these lines...

I see the infected and feel the slightest bit threatened, Flamethrower spell overcast. Enough said.

I don't work with them. Period. The risk of infection is just too great. And I don't like the "snack on legs" look they all get in their eyes especially when hungry.

But I do have a 'Drop and Wire' policy with a single ghoul... I dead drop a body I need gone, he wires me money. But it also knows I see it within 5 meters of me, it gets extra crispy....

Vampires.... nope. Burn them where they stand. Too dangerous.

[Dwagonzhan]

Have to say, you treat them better then I do.

It's more about risk mitigation than humanitarian effort. Well-fed ferals don't hunt, and unless my job is to clean out a nest of ferals, I stand to lose more than I gain by engaging them.
As for those seeking to become infected, well, you can't fix stupid, you can only treat the symptoms.

If a newly turned vamp decides it was a terrible idea and expresses their displeasure through an uncontrolled blood sucking rampage, I treat the problem with a liberal application of force and fire.

Vampires.... nope. Burn them where they stand. Too dangerous.

Only encountered one vamp in my many games oddly enough, and seeing how he was munching on my extraction target when I found them, I had no reason to extend my usual courtesy.

Trust me. The Real Life world is more fucked up (from an insulated Western view) then people know. Slavery still happens. You can buy children easily. Mutilations happen for the fun of it. And mass gang rape is a sport.

The shit I have seen in 13 years of working in developing and 3rd world countries is the greatest contributor to my sleepless nights. There are things that once you see, you never forget...

<And that is why I knock the teeth out of North American Social Justice Warriors when ever they get in my face... these fuck heads have absolutely NOTHING to bitch about! And if they really want to bitch... now they have a reason! Their missing fucking teeth!>

If we ever met, I'd buy you a beer.
I've done a limited amount of mission-relief work, some on Native American Reservations in North Dakota (they were good folks, living in squalor, but good folks all the same), but the most eye-opening stuff I've personally witnessed was in Mexico City (and El Paso, to a lesser degree...barely).

And even that stuff pales in comparison to the brutality perpetrated in the shitholes of the world.
(South Africa, the effective drug cartel states in South America and Mexico, most of Asia outside of Japan and South Korea, and of course the vortex of bloodlust and religious zeal that is the Middle East)

The peace and stability we enjoy in the west is not something I take for granted.

[MijRai]

Everything listed happens, sure.  The implication for Shadowrun is that it is much more commonplace/ingrained everywhere, however.  It's where even the 'civilized' world has blood-sports where people die and police are targeted more frequently than even today in the States (approximately 60 have been killed this year, which is about 7 a month).  It's where there's entire sections of cities in the so-called 'First World' that law enforcement won't enter without being in platoon-strength with armoured support.  It's where nobody cares, so people are free to be as bad as they want to be, civilized or not; it just takes some extra nuyen to do it where people might see it. 

I believe you when you speak of what you've seen.  I've seen some of it too, and I've gotten plenty of second-hand experience from people I trust explicitly.  The world is a shit-hole and I actively block things out to function regularly.  I'd say the main reason I try to keep a positive outlook is so the negative doesn't drown me. 

I still think the implication of Shadowrun, as well as the intent, is to be a setting that is worse than today by far.  It's a place where the thin restraints holding society together are even more frayed and stretching, with gaps for all the bad things to start leaking through. 

And yes, I agree that the entitlement people have been developing recently is absurd. 

I've played characters on multiple sides of the HMHVV debate, which I find fun and interesting.  I've played ones who think they're abominations, ones who think they're threats, ones who think they deserve rights, even one who was Infected.  I definitely understand your viewpoint there, Reaver.  I mean, the last character I played literally went on regular ghoul-hunts after they tried to snatch a kid from his neighborhood.

[Reaver]

Don't get me wrong, I am glad there are infected in the game. And I enjoy the socio-political touch they have put to it. And I am even glad they are a playable 'race' (for those that can actually play them more the uber-jumped up adept/mage killing machines.... but that is a different can worms)

But that doesn't mean "I" have to like them

[RowanTheFox]

Trust me. The Real Life world is more fucked up (from an insulated Western view) then people know. Slavery still happens. You can buy children easily. Mutilations happen for the fun of it. And mass gang rape is a sport.

The shit I have seen in 13 years of working in developing and 3rd world countries is the greatest contributor to my sleepless nights. There are things that once you see, you never forget...

<And that is why I knock the teeth out of North American Social Justice Warriors when ever they get in my face... these fuck heads have absolutely NOTHING to bitch about! And if they really want to bitch... now they have a reason! Their missing fucking teeth!>

If we ever met, I'd buy you a beer.
I've done a limited amount of mission-relief work, some on Native American Reservations in North Dakota (they were good folks, living in squalor, but good folks all the same), but the most eye-opening stuff I've personally witnessed was in Mexico City (and El Paso, to a lesser degree...barely).

And even that stuff pales in comparison to the brutality perpetrated in the shitholes of the world.
(South Africa, the effective drug cartel states in South America and Mexico, most of Asia outside of Japan and South Korea, and of course the vortex of bloodlust and religious zeal that is the Middle East)

The peace and stability we enjoy in the west is not something I take for granted.

Here's some mead from another victim of sleepless nights, Reaver. I've seen some drek in my life as well, and it's the main reason behind why I do what I do, and why my goals are what they are. I don't want to see anyone else suffer like I have, so I volunteer as often as my health will allow. I may be cynical and jaded with a broken body, but I can still help, dammit. You know the city you grew up in is a shithole when finding a homeless man dying of multiple stab wounds doesn't even make your personal top ten list of the most fucked up things you've seen.