Orcs, despite popular belief, are not violent warrior tribes hellbent on raiding & pillaging, but rather remarkable hunter/gatherers, so much so that they have developed an extremely mobile civilization. Because of this, strength is often valued due to its usefulness in both battle, hunting and farming, equaled only by a budding cultural hobby of zoology and advanced botany.
I’m a new DM, but i liked this idea so much i added some flavour to it and added it to my world. If anyone wants it, here:
When someone hears the word "orc" they think of a brutal warrior without mercy or kindness. They'll immediately picture the orc bandits or raiders who smash everything in their paths, slaughter anyone in front of them, and take anything they want. These people would also be offended to hear an orc say that "all humans are selfish weaklings who fear hard work and stab you in the back" This would be because the orcs most people meet are criminals that have been cast out of orc tribes, and most humans that come upon orc tribes are criminals who try to swindle them.
It's not a myth, however, that orcs respect strength. They are nomadic, which makes them hard to encounter by chance, and require that strength to carry their lives on their backs. They move in seasonal paths, hunting and gathering in locations passed down by songs in their culture, based on the stars which they have long since used for navigation and timekeeping. They have their own calendar which has 8 months (the seasons and their inbetweens), their own language, their own economy (barter system), and orcs in this country have 2 holidays (one on each solstice) that have different traditions. In the summer they feast and drink wine that has fermented for a year in a secret location they return to on that day. This is called the 'alone' holiday because outsiders to the tribe are not welcome. It's a time for the tribe to remember their year together. In the winter many tribes meet together to pool food so no one goes hungry in the cold and perform marriages. This is the 'together' holiday, for obvious reasons, but also because marriages mean that some orcs will switch tribes and parents will be seeing children for the first time in a year.
Most orc tribes are very wary of outsiders, opting usually to stay quiet and hidden or avoid high traffic areas all together, but have been rumored to help injured travelers in rare cases where they've stumbled upon anyone.
Tribes have hierarchies based on age:
○ Elders lead as a council and educate
○ Adults handle crafting, cooking, repairing, and healing
○ Young orcs track and hunt animals as teams of 3
○ Children gather plants in large groups of 5+
This is because orcs rarely stop growing as they age and trade speed for strength over their lives. Elder orcs can reach heights of 10ft and often die of heart failure, or a bad fall that crushes them under their own weight.
everytime i bring up billionaires and how having THAT much wealth is *basically* a crime, a family member mentions that simply giving the money to the impovershed would kill any incentive to work for a living, and i can never refute with anything other than "people deserve to be treated like humans". are there any arguments i can make or articles that prove that when wealth is distributed, people dont just stop working?
Except that’s not true.
When Canada did a Basic Income pilot project in Manitoba in the 1970′s, there was only a slight drop in people working (and the reasons were to attend school or care after children), despite everyone being given money:
MINCOME was a partnership of the provincial and federal governments. In 1976, however, the provincial NDP government of Ed Schreyer fell and was replaced by a PC government led by Sterling Lyon, who wasn’t keen on his predecessors’ special project. Federally, the minority Trudeau Liberals were increasingly distracted by oil price shocks, persistent inflation, unemployment and high interest rates. Over the course of the experiment, political support waned. MINCOME was unceremoniously shut down in 1979, with no significant analysis completed. Boxes of data changed hands several times, ending up in a federal archives, where they attracted little interest for three decades.
Shortly after the experiment ended, the scientific director of MINCOME, Derek Hum, and economist Wayne Simpson salvaged some of the labour market data from the Winnipeg sample. Their research showed that the GAI didn’t cause adults with full-time jobs to work significantly less. Two groups of workers, however, did reduce their work hours. Married women, at a time when women were first entering the workforce in large numbers, used the GAI to “buy” longer maternity leaves (the law at the time sanctioned only four to six weeks of leave). Adolescent boys—“young, unattached males” in the jargon of the day—also worked less.
[…]
Conversations with participants in the experiment confirmed what I’d suspected: young men in low-income families were often under pressure to become self-supporting, but MINCOME had allowed some families to support their sons a little longer. A lucky cohort of young men in Dauphin had unexpectedly been able to graduate high school in a time and place where that was unusual. While their older siblings went into agriculture or manufacturing—jobs that paid well in the 1970s but have since dwindled—the MINCOME kids graduated and, in some cases, went on to college or university. These young, unattached males reduced the hours they worked in the short run but had greater opportunities over their lives and could provide better opportunities for their own children.
Even if it did kill the incentive to “work for a living” in some folks… what exactly is so terrible about that?
We know that in an eight hour day people on average are getting about two to four hours of actual work done. Cutting out the busywork, cutting out the time spent at work isn’t a bad thing in and of itself.
What about working to make the people around you smile? What about working to make your community a better place? What about working to bring more joy into someone’s life? What about working to improve your quality of life?
Why do we have to work just for a living? Why do we have to suffer dehumanizing treatment and abuse that is practically inherent in retail and food services these days…. just to eek out money to live?
If we live in such a resource rich society, which as Canadians we do, why do we fail to provide for those who can’t “work for a living”?
What is the inherent value of working for a living? Why is the threat of starvation and homelessness the only incentive people can think of to make human beings do things?
I’m not even going to get in to how most low wage workers do more hard work for longer hours than most billionaires so what is keeping the billionaires “incentive to work for a living” going exactly, because the main point here is that working for a living isn’t… valuable in and of itself.
1/2 So. I have family in the states, and they said Trudeau started the trade nonsense himself and Trump was just being sensible and retaliating.. I've been looking at the timelines and it's wrong. The States started it around May 25th. However, Ezra Levant (himself not a proper academic source I know) stated Trump was originally retaliating to a hike in dairy tariffs made by Trudeau before the election here which was unnecessary given the existing supply management system.
2/2 In response, I’ve been doing research on supply management, and think it’s a sensible system – and understanding why the US thinks their being cheated out by Canada’s high dairy standards. But all countries are a bit protectionist w agriculture, and the US just wears free market glasses it seems. Anyways, so, regardless. I just wanted to know, were you or your followers aware of the apparent tariff spike by Trudeau claimed by Ezra? What is it that he’s misconstruing, you know? Thanks !
Yes, you’re right. Donald Trump started this trade war himself.
Our tariffs on agriculture are used to regulate prices so that the supply of food is maintained, and farmers are guaranteed income. It can raise prices a bit, but it offers stability. I don’t see an issue with being protectionist on issues involving the security of food. Its an important national issue, and comparing it to markets like steel or aluminum does a disservice to the argument.
But it is not true that Trudeau has spiked dairy prices. Trudeau has done nothing to increasing existing tariffs on agriculture. He’s just maintained the system that has existed since 1971 (and which is supported by all of Canada’s political parties). Trudeau Sr. created the system, so maybe that’s what they’re talking about?
It’s also worth noting that there are reasons why Canadians dont buy American diary products, if we can avoid it. Primarily speaking, it’s because our food regulations are significantly safer than the US’s, even before Trump rolled back on those.
The second reason is that Canadian dairy farmers provide enough for the entire country, whereas the US dairy farmers keep producing more and more product without more and more clientele appearing. They flood the market, so in order to keep domestic product stable, they get tariffs.
Why do they flood it? Because the more they produce, the more they get out of the government in form of money in return. Farmers have gotten approximately $70,000 a year from government subsidies apiece in the US for their production supply.
That alone makes a huge incentive to keep producing things that aren’t necessary, which will keep increasing attempts to export, which will increase tariffs in order to keep international markets from being flooded as well.
A delicious, three ingredient brownie recipe using NO boxed mix- Made with no butter, flour, sugar, grains or dairy and suitable for those following a vegan, dairy free, paleo, gluten free and sugar free lifestyle❗️❗️❗️
Ingredients🍎:
1 cup pumpkin puree*
½ cup drippy almond butter (can sub for peanut, cashew or nut alternative spread)
¼- 2/3 cup cocoa powder (more cocoa yields a richer taste)
Frosting of choice (optional)
Prep👩🏻🍳:
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and coat a small 4 x 6 or 6 x 6 loaf pan with cooking spray and set aside- A smaller pan yields thicker brownies.
2. Add all your ingredients into a high speed blender, food processor or large bowl and mix until fully immersed and a thick batter is formed.
3. Transfer brownie batter to loaf pan and bake for 12-15 minutes, or until a skewer comes out just clean. Allow the brownies to cool in the pan completely before either frosting to slicing into bars.
