I don't mean to hijack the conversation away from HD players or flaming, but I really like this subject ;)
>>I am not sure if a society that has everything for free can survive for long. You get everything you want, why work? Very few would even want to excel because their excelling at something won't have a direct impact on their lives (except some pats on the back). In my understanding of a free and open society, at least one that's based on resources as opposed to money, all the basic necessities of life are provided for through modular, sustainable compounds. The people that would work at these compounds would do so for the benefit of the community. Had everyone decided to space out all day every day and never contribute to society, the society would fail and everybody's standard of living falls. So the drive to succeed and excel would be to directly affect the quality of life of everyone in your community, as opposed to simply you and your family's lives. The barter system would hold up as a necessity, "You have lot's of energy but no means to produce iron? Here is some iron, we have too much. Please give us some energy, we have a deficit in that department." Hoarding resources as wealth hurts society as a whole in this situation [and probably does in our respective societies as well] but since there is no monetary value applied to such resources, hoarding is unnattractive due to the demurrage incurred. Resources tend to degrade as they sit unused, making them less valuable. I think the real problem or downside is that these systems are really vulnerable to violence, warlords, etc. There's no budget for a military here and it seems likely that outside forces would be very interested in your resources. But I think humans are smart enough to work out a successful system, we'd just need to dedicate some time to it, but who has time? I don't. -- Schell Scivally http://blog.efnx.com
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