No elections. Air, water, parks, roads, bridges, rivers, lakes, all owned by mega-corporations. Police, fire departments, owned by private companies.

No Social Security, no Medicare of course. No public schools, no public assistance, no unemployment compensation, no Environmental Protection, no workers compensation. No FDA to stand in the way of Big Pharma.

Prayer in schools limited to Christian approved stuff. No contraceptives of course.

And that’s just a start. Doesn’t seem a pleasant place.

I (along with others) have been accused of making everything political. But I didn’t do that. Other people did, and they want to go even further in that direction. Things are “political” when politics controls those things in your life. More things get political when politics controls more things in your life.

Removing politics from discussion should, in an ideal world, involve removing politics from our day-to-day existence. It should not mean “stop bitching about how politics is controlling your life.”

The water this frog is floating in has gotten pretty damn hot.

Now, a small rant on software. Keep in mind that I am pretty happy with the current version (well done!) although a link to the Comment dashboard would be nice. I had to bookmark one.

Now, the rant: The conflict I’ve seen (and this applies to many other things a lot more than it does this forum) is that the urge toward the New seems to override utility. I’m dreading Windows 8 and the Mac Mountain Lion is heading this way, too.

In entertainment, new is a plus. In a well-used tool, it is a nightmare. When you’ve trained yourself to an interface, the last thing you need is to have someone twonk it around, even if some cool new feature is involved.

It’s like having the wiper switch moved to a different spot in your car every six months. I drive two completely different vehicles, and I still have to fish for routine controls. I’ve flashed dozens of people with my brights in a lot of rainstorms.

Developers: When you get something that works reliably? Sit on your hands.

The obvious problem is that nobody pays a software developer to sit on his hands. So you get a work forever in progress. Come to think of it, that’s probably why I’m always battered with “new and improved” products at the grocery store in place of my beloved standards.

Thought I’d put down my thoughts in one post so as to avoid fragmentation. You’ve all made valid points about parts of the problem, and I feel a synthesis coming on.

The HabitableZone flourished with a steady-state population of around a hundred people. The emigration was roughly balanced by immigration. Studies and my gut validate that around a hundred’s an optimum size for a self-sustaining group. We’ve fallen well below that level, and I think that any other reform we might undertake won’t really matter when applied to such a small population.

Rob shows an uncanny memory with his list of people who left and why. The list might be indicative of why the population wasn’t replenished, also. Two sides of the same question: What quality of this place was declining and caused people to leave; the lack of said quality at the same time making the Zone less attractive?

Tom touched on the self-image of Zoners–we’re space enthusiasts–which is close but perhaps not quite it. Perhaps that transcendant quality of the “glory days” was that the Zone was a place for smart people. We were intellectual elitists.

Non-intellectuals recognized that about the Zone right away. “All they do is talk talk talk!” was a typical dismissal of a taste of the Zone by the noncognoscenti. The people who just weren’t Zone Material. The ones who stuck were the ones who had something to say and the burning desire to say it.

I think part of my recent grouchiness is that all of politics is looking pretty stupid to me, here and out there. And so when politics come up I see it as…well, let’s just say I don’t see the Zone as such a smart place any more. At least when politics rears it’s ugly head. And perhaps I’m not alone?

My two threads aren’t unrelated. I think that a larger population would inject new life into political arguments. At least there’d be more variety…guys, it’s pretty depressing when I know all your lines by heart. That’s just zombie ping pong.

I wouldn’t try to restore the population on the premise of political discussions, though. That by itself isn’t enough and risks self-immolation with the wrong influx of new recruits. In an election year no less.

Rob:

In 154 days Curiosity will land on mars. It’s an event that could increase membership. I hate to make us sound like some desperate people in the Hotel California but without some “new meat” your prediction is likely to come true. “User registration is currently not allowed”. It would help if the front page and registration were fixed by then.

He’s right, doing something with/about/for Curiosity could be a great way to return us to our roots and maybe attract apostate Zoners to return and new ones to join up.

And it segues right into the final thread, which is the technical milieu: My software. Or my “damn software”…everybody noted that exits spiked during traumatic transitions.

This software is here for the long haul because, as I’m sure you’re tired of hearing, I’m developing it for a client. That’s entirely a good thing for the Zone, because my life’s work has essentially boiled down to continually improving this software. I need to update the Zone’s installation more often to keep it up-to-date. The immediate to-do list awaits the version I’m currently working on, and then the Zone will undergo one of those convulsions as I go around upgrading all the details. I’m thinking I’d prefer blue over that olive-drab, and we need to finally agree on a font to use everywhere. But I digress…the important thing is that there’s a deadline to Rob’s idea and I’ll need to make sure the Zone is ready if we do something.

The what-to-do is the subject of other posts. This one is too long already. There are also the points bowser made about other online services like twitbook. Much that could be said there about the Zone’s differences and which ones are weakness and which ones are strengths (e.g. a strength: No ads and no incentive to betray your personal info). But that’s for another time…

And as long as space programs are run by politicians, politics will be a legitimate subject in that field. And as long as politicians are dicks, the politics will be heated.

Comparisons of “war costs” with space program opportunities are a legitimate subject too, as long as we can keep the actual numbers in mind and rationally compare them to everything else the government spends money on too. It’s not a binary tradeoff, and never has been.

Every group needs energy. In a diverse group such as ours politics seems to provide it. Nothing else seems to generate the interest.

Or they need common interests. We don’t seem to have any except a belief that most everyone on the HZ should be hanged. And that is mitigated by it being each half of HZ believing the other half be hung.

You are right. If issues on Space, for instance, could be discussed without interjecting politics and blame there could be some discourse. And, sooner or later, someone like myself will say that had we not gone to war in Iraq we could have gone to Mars times, and indeed did say so at the time.

And then it’s over. Politics again. I don’t have an answer, unless it’s gathering around the old raccoon pond with a keg of beer, a six-pack of diet cola, and a mess of organically raised barbecue tofu chicken. And then that would become a clique not particularly welcoming to new folks.

Which is a good idea. Be more welcoming to newcomers, visitors. One of our correctable problems is that we do have a core group, a clique, and aren’t as attentive to newcomers as we could be.

And, Facebook is doing for others what we once did for ourselves. Twitter, too.

When did everybody leave and why might more relevant questions.
Some left before the 2 moves but quite a few left during the transitions.

Why they left. Correct me if i’m wrong:

Dan- personal attack
Justin- joined the army
SuccessMachine- self imploded
Larry J- politics. I think he couldn’t handle any opposing views to his on the war.
Greg- along the same lines as Larry.
Fox- possibly politics maybe personal issues.
Ecto- I don’t remember, probably politics.
Davin and RL- Went ballistic over the non-exclusion of bigotry on the board
Lindy- harassment
SDAI- Just a theory but I think he couldn’t deal with the fact that both wars which he defended were quagmires. There was nothing more for him to write about.
Laury Street- popped in a few times during the moves
Tony- couldn’t figure out how to post
Eri- passed away
RNE- passed away
Mcfly- politics- hard to believe someone who had been here all these years “finally” got fed up with politics
Nick- health issues?
Raoul- became more involved in his community.
GothGirl-a flash in the pan- might have been a prior member
Buck- still around but rarely visits- seems to enjoy politics though

Most recent:
ER- gone for the 3rd or 4th time. This time because he was reprimanded

Who is new:
VRB

The people that left were involved in heated political discussions for years with the same antagonists. “Leaving” must involve something more than just “getting fed up”

In 154 days Curiosity will land on mars. It’s an event that could increase membership. I hate to make us sound like some desperate people in the Hotel California but without some “new meat” your prediction is likely to come true. “User registration is currently not allowed”. It would help if the front page and registration were fixed by then.

As far as politics go; “They Stab It with Their Steely Knives, but They Just Can’t Kill the Beast “…

Unfortunately, until driven to distraction, ER was one who could disagree rather moderately.

I will moderate my rhetoric while keeping to the main points in which I believe. It will seem a bit overdone at first which does not mean I don’t follow and buy into the concept. As best I can. Which isn’t always great.

People don’t like having their political ideas questioned. Nothing new there. Basic human nature: intellectual inertia.

Unfortunately, I can’t think of a lot of public forums on the internet where political ideas are seriously knocked around by both sides. People tend to gravitate toward “echo chambers” on either side where opposition is actively discouraged, either by the board operators or sheer pressure of member hostility. Finally, everything on the forum settles down to a nice, even flow of the “correct” thinking, with everyone nodding like those little plastic ballplayers on your dashboard. You could spend hours there and never see anything that leaves the accepted mainstream.

I don’t think people leave here because of the politics and partisanism. They leave here because there’s too much of what they consider the “wrong” politics and partisanism.

That, and the damn interface keeps changing.

More like, the engine that drove away the Zoners. Where’s everybody gone, Rob? I recall lots of people complaining about the bitter partisan tone of most discussions…on their way out the door. When did anybody leave complaining the politics here weren’t bitter enough for them?

Do I have it wrong? Has the population declined because of not enough partisanship at the Zone?

That wasn’t a threat I made, that was just a linear extrapolation of the decline of the Zone. Business as usual is a dead end. Something has to change or the HabitableZone will dry up and blow away.