Re: OT: some electronics for a speed controlled electromagnetic gun

On Sun, 16 Jun 2024 11:38:42 -0700, john larkin <jl@650pot.com> wrote:

1000 years ago 80% of the population was farmers who barely grew
enough to survive.

Those farmers might have been starving, but they had resources.  For
example, they could grow a large family and sell off the kids if they
have a bad harvest.  They could organize a mob and pillage the
neighbors crops.  Every culture has a festival to mark the beginning
of the harvest season, which oddly coincides with the beginning of the
pillaging season. 

Clothes were so valuable that people were killed
for theirs.

That's a rather high price to pay for wearing the latest fashions.
Unfortunately, little has changed over the last 1000 years:
"BEWARE AND BE SAFE !!! SNEAKERS GETTING ROBBED / STOLEN"
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LHrCLiMKZQ>

Most people were illiterate

Today, people are more literate but continue to do stupid things.
Literacy is not a good substitute for intelligence or a cure for
stupidity.

and lived in the dark when the sun went down.

That would be the dark ages.  They didn't last long to do much real
damage.  Also, we still have regular planned power outage holidays to
remind us of those days.  Here's a map of California showing past PSPS
(Public Safety Power Shutoff) events.

Progress has made us so efficient that probably 80% of the
developed-world population now has zero net productivity.

In FY 2023 the IRS processed 162 million individual tax returns.
That's out of a total population of 333 million.  Subtract 74.4
million children age 0 to 17, most of whom are not required to file a
return:
  162 / (333 - 74.4) = 63% of US adult population is productive
or
  100 - 63 = 37% are non-productive.


--
Jeff Liebermann                 jeffl@cruzio.com
PO Box 272      http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Ben Lomond CA 95005-0272
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