[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Castout

It's your perception that tells you I'm being defensive. I was merely stating an opinion that I was likely to be thought of as a fool and were crazy.

Your opinion is based on your own perceptions. It's still defensive. If I say you're going to tell me I'm greedy and stuck in a rut, I'm being defensive, because you have done neither of those. I do believe you're looking toward an end that you believe will save mankind, but not seeing any way to make it happen that's not worse. I believe the same thing about the men in the videos.

The reason being we are really the products of our age and money is a big part of our second industrial revolution. So, expectedly most people will defend money.

It's easy chide someone negatively while not seeing the same thing in yourself. Dreams are fine, but practicality demands a workable solution, not just saying it's so.

But I will only be derided as a fool and being crazy or a communist ONLY if the idea has begun to gain a traction or a foothold in society. In the absence of traction, the idea will simply be ignored.

I'm not calling you anything but a believer. I don't know what will work and what will not. "Communist?" I happen to think Communism and Democracy are two sides of the same coin, and I believe both could be made to work...on a very small level. Both require absolutely willing participation from everyone involved, and both require that everyone involved be perfect. That's a problem.

If you really observe the world today, most of our problems can be attributed to money, directly and indirectly. Money makes us discriminate people. It takes away power from many groups of people and hands it to a few small groups of other people. Democracies are failing because money takes over genuine concern for people's interests.

The Bible doesn't say "Money is the root of all evil," it says "The love of money is the root of all evil." It's not money that does those things, it's greed, and greed isn't necessarily just for money. Most dictators, starting the first Pharaohs, weren't after money, they were after power. Not the same thing. Controlling the money can be a part of that, but controlling other people is what it's really about.

Today, just 6 persons own half of the world's entire wealth. 62 persons probably own as much as 80-90% of the world's entire wealth (money).
This means our world is pandering to just so few people. The rest of us have been made irrelevant and are forced to scrape a living off the marginal 5-10% of the world's wealth. This is the perfect recipe for enslavement in one form or another, for injustice, persecution, and oppression.

And how do you propose to change that? One of the videos shows people living in mansions and the people living on the streets. If all money disappeared tomorrow Bill Gates would still live in a mansion and I would still live in a one-bedroom apartment and consider myself lucky to do so, considering how a great portion of mankind lives. How would you change that?

Talk is cheap.

"There can be no hunger in such a world because foods will be produced according to the needs of all people instead of affordability or prices. Foods would also be produced in the highest level of quality now that cost is out of the picture.[/quote]
Produced by whom? Farmers would still have to lead the cows to the milking machines and I saw one clip in the video of several threshing machines driving side-by-side across a field. Will some drive those machines for free while others of us live off of their labors, for free?

We would be able to mine deep sea on a massive scale now that cost is out of the picture, according to our need since we wouldn't need to destroy the planet just to hoard money.

And who would do this mining? And how? By magic? Somebody has to do the work, and if they choose not to do it because somebody else tells them to, how do you make them?

Likewise with mining the moon on a massive scale, even other planets. There isn't even enough money in the entire world to mine our moon on a massive scale. Even if we had we would still not do it on a massive scale since the profit and cost consideration would not appeal to entrepreneurs even when there's demand for it.

So without money we would just willing devote our entire lives to building the technology do accomplish this without any motivation other than the purity of our hearts? The work has to come from someone, and you have to convince them that it is to their benefit to give their entire lives over to making this happen. We're not talking about the designers and engineers, who tend to be dreamers anyway, but about the laborers and workers, who have nothing to gain themselves and will likely never see the fruits of their labors.

It sounds like a sales pitch to you because it appeals to you. I'm merely stating an idea which I believe will work and will work for the betterment of us all by us dreaming a better dream than this nightmare somewhat of being controlled by money (or moneyed groups/people)/

No, it sounds like a sales pitch because you didn't look at both sides, positive and negative, but you pitched it at us to convince us of its correctness. That's what a pitch is, trying to convince people to believe what you believe.

Obviously, there needs to be a council to allocate resources according to our needs as a collective species but even those in the council don't get paid anything.

Put another way: There needs to be a group of people to tell us all what to do, and to tell us they're doing it for our own good. Now we have an unpaid dictatorship trying to make us do what they deem best. Still a dictatorship.

Mainly through above but in such a system, everything is free including us (our work). In the absence of toiling for money, with time, men grow ambitious and can focus on improving himself according to his passion and on improving his environment and society, all without for money.

A noble sentiment, but it still depends on men being perfect, or at least mostly so. You may convince the artist or musician to embrace a world like that, but how do you convince the common worker? Someone has to build your big-screen TV an your car, and he needs to believe there is a reason for him to work hard all day to produce things. Someone has to haul away your garbage and build your roads. How do you convince them?

The technical details need to be worked on but it's basically producing what WE CAN produce according to our needs without the need to destroy the planet just to accumulate money for influence and power (thus, security)

Money may aid influence, but it is not equal to power. Rulers control societies by force. They make people obey, not pay them to. Strong men have always ruled weak men. Money is the system we use to allow us to have food, clothing and shelter, and then to have better things. Many of the people in the world are starving, and we won't stop that simply by declaring money to be a non-entity.

The modern world has enabled its citizens to have greater luxury than ever dreamed possible by past generations. We've shortened the hours we work and allowed ourselves to obtain things formerly only dreamed of by kings. You're right, money wasn't absolutely necessary to accomplish that, but it has been a means to an end. That said, the West has attempted to feed some our less advanced neighbors, and often those attempts have been blocked; not by people who see money in it, but by rulers who see that withholding that food subjugates their people and increases their power.

Some people seek wealth, others seek power. Removing money from the equation may or may not change that, but looking at the way the world operates indicates that the answer is "not." The first objection you need to answer, though, is "how?"