You should watch "Mike Hammer". It's so dated and corney it'll be hard to watch, but push your way through if you want to see some honest popular ideas and themes on society in the 80s. If you like / can find over the top corn funny and want to see something you can't imagine was on TV, try that.

I think Law & Order thrives on the format. The cast is always changing, but regardless of the characters, it's the format that people like so it keeps trucking. Like Marvel movies. You could swap out Spiderman a hundred times and it wouldn't effect anything. It's just the same story over and over again, not actor driven, people just love that format / same story with little variations.

I think producers have learned a lot about certain formats longevity in recent years and Law & Order was an early success in doing the same thing over and over and over again and still having it entertain people. It kills creativity, but it guarantees money flow, so now everything is kinda the same.

I'm not shitting on Law & Order. I just wish it wasn't so successful / the repetative format wasn't so successful, because now that it's clear to producers that about 5 different formats make the most guaranteed money, there's no room for other less guaranteed formats in the mid-level like sci-fi and comedies for instance. It's all either huge budget 8 episodes per year, or no budget indie Syfy channel when it comes to new creative ideas. There's still some, but why try something new as a producer when the guaranteed money is in repetition?

The show was good. Dick Wolf (great name) has gone on to spawn 9 direct spin-offs, not including Law & Order: UK. Or the other spin-offs of the format like FBI, FBI: International, Chigago Fire, Chicago Med, Chicago Justice, and on and on. Wolf has made like 100 versions of what amounts to the same show, and it squeezes out potential newcomers from getting air time. So. Just my thoughts. The money goes where the eyeballs go, so it's all fair in the end.

Nope. Ps., why doesn't Alabma leave the US and make it's own currency so that it can't be "controlled" by California or New York? Truth is, it helps to be in a larger market as well as having some downsides. The Euro isn't what makes Italy have crippling red tape that makes any IT company unworkable. California isn't what made Alabama the poorest state. It's the choices they make.

Greece runs a bad economy. Full stop. They have too many state owned enterprises. Too much red tape. Too many social programs. And guess what? They had to ask for money because they ran the economy into the ground. If you ask for money, the lender has to believe they can get it back, but the EU didn't even believe Greece could ever really pay it back. They have given tons of free money and relief over the years and the Greek government knows they'll keep getting free money. In return, ya, they have less clout and the major economies look down on them, and make demands. Demands they couldn't make if Greece fixed it's economy and became an asset rather than a liability. Both Italy and Greece are run by the older voting block that demands free money and services for old people that they can't cut off / are unwilling to cut off. So they keep voting for anyone who says they can keep their defunct economies doling out money when the only way to do that is to keep borrowing. So the lenders then say well I'll give you money if you do XYZ to fix your economy so we think we can at least get something back. But then they don't do it and the politicians point at Germany and Euros for all their political problems as a scapegoat. If Greece had it's own currecny it and left the EU it would have been bankrupt already decades ago. When they joined in 2001, the USD to GRD was 1 to 320. As soon as they joined the EU there was a boom in confidence (because they were now backed by Germany and France and the UK), and then they started spending like crazy and haven't stopped. They need to make major changes to their economy, but it's not politically expedient. So they take money and blame the EU. You don't want strings attached? Stop borrowing money and fix the economy.

>The Euro is a good counter-example for why international currencies are dangerous. Countries that have adopted the euro have seen tremendous economic and political power move outside their own country as a result.

I'm going to have to disagree here. The reason Greece and Italy are dependent on Germany and France isn't the currency unit, it's that they're shit at running thier economies and then they just take bailouts and keep blaming the people that bail them out. They could get their shit together and be economic leaders, they choose not to. Blame game is just easier.

There are global currencies. USD is basically a global currency. SDRs are a global currency that logistics companies all use. Crypto will never be a global currency. It's a "gold standard" currency and too volatile. There are tokenised forms that could act as fiat, but government's need to control the printing of currency. Randos making token fiat will not manage them as well as governments. I know, I know, all government's bad, but, in reality, most are better than people like Bankman-Fried.