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

On Sun, 16 Jun 2024 15:48:09 -0700, Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@cruzio.com>
wrote:

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.

Nearly all ages until most people could afford gas and then
electricity. Even tallow candles were too expensive for most folk, and
fat/oil was for cooling and eating, not burning.

https://www.amazon.com/World-Lit-Only-Fire-Renaissance/dp/0316545562

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.

Just being paid doesn't mean people are productive.

Retired people, and people with passive incomes, and useless people
pay taxes too.