Lets 'Philosophasise'

[Epidemic]

heh that could be a problem.

I don't know if it is possible... We may evolve to such a point economically. I.E. Star trek I believe they are a monitary free society. At least in the federation. But with virtually limitless power sources and the ability to replicate materials. If this ever became possible there might be the ability to take each persons strong suit from the farmer to the quantum physisist. I believe that this is a required stage to that type of enlightenment. We just make sure the taliban never takes over because they shun technology and all but religious enlightenment. Had to get that in there.

Stay on target. Stay ON TARGET!

By the way if All worked for free the power of all of humanity working together would be amazing. No borders everyone can use the communal jetski and take their two weeks in the location of choice in the world for entertainment.

With the additional funds aka (funds = work) were not saved up by a few individuals for rainy days or future generations. Humanity would be a force to be reconed with we have seen efforts like this with the manhattan project. Somewhat limitless funds aka work twards a common goal.

That project was slowed by secretiveness. In an open societ that you propose it could be amazing.



Who decides the direction society takes in their endeavors?

Who decides the job you will take. That gets more complicated. Not every one will want to follow their apptitude as is evidenced by some of the engineers I have met and the artists I have seen they had no apptitude. But some centralized group would decide your destiny.

[Epidemic]

What the!!!

club med was not the last one to post I was.

[capybara]

money is a way of keeping track of your efforts (and the efforts of your ancestors). it is the simplest way to track who contributes to society and who doesnt. as you give to society, money keeps track of your efforts.
how else would we know who has made a contribution to the world and who hasnt?
if there was no money, why cant i just sit in
my yard all day and drink beer?

[Epidemic]

You may have people like that. hell we already do. Did you ever hear of welfare. It helps some and others just live on it as their due.

The world that is being described is supposed to be a world where you take pride in your work. You could sanction people for not providing their quota they would not earn their ride on the jetski. They could not go to jamaica on vacation. Did joe do his job this year no Joe did not want to help the community... Ok His vacation pass is revolked... every one gets the same perks if they do their work they get the acclaim of their fellow employees. The lazy do not get the benifits afforded every hard working member of society.

[originel]

well, one thing to take into consideration, what exactly defines need? also if something wasn't "needed" would it still be produced? ex. games are not a necessity (as much as i'm addicted to cs i wouldn't shrivel up and die without it...i don't think) . In this world we wouldn't have games, movies, music, etc... except in the ameteur sense. Look at the Linux world, it is a world where, for the most part, money does not play a role. There are a lot of wonderful things in Linux, but all of them at one point in time or another were a necessity, which is why you don't see many games on it, and also there isn't much outside of what is needed. The closest thing to this society is (as already mentioned) communism/socialism. While everyone more or less contributes to the good of society without pay, look at how corrupted and power hungry the govt. became.

[Epidemic]

I think the closest are the tribal cultures and the omish.

But the future equivalent could be us. You see we have come to a point in the world that food can be produced in sufficient amounts to feed all. Industry exists. and free time is considered a necessity. So movies would not be in danger. Jet ski's still are around. The difference is you do not have to pay 8000 dollars to keep it in your garage 99% of the time. The work is saved up in the form of a capital investment. My family all live on the same street. We each have tools that the others can use. So we do not have to pay for a set for each person. I would love to see us pool our cars Three families rarely ever need more than 3 cars given the right planning. Instead we each have a car parked in the driveway at virtually every moment.

And freeing up the work=time=money that we as individuals save up for rainy days or for tools that could be shared. We end up working more than in this fantasy world. The problem is management of such a world on a global or country scale. But even the communist countries still had money. And some had more than others. Not every one got to use the jet ski.

[Epidemic]

Ya know the more I try to differentiat this from communism is the more that I end up thinking it is communism. On paper this stuf seems great.

Communism in its purest form is great. The problem is you need like devine intervention to manage it. communism fail due to quality of life reductions. Quality of life is reduced due to poor management and lack of incentive. The laws of supply and demand are broken too easily.

Freedom must be curtailed for the common good. Freedoms like where you live, what you do for a living and what people do for entertainment. Someone must determine what is good for all How much toilet paper to make how many stores to distribut them through.

You see if you put stores too close there is a waste of work that could be done for the common good. So perhaps you have to live closer to the store because you waste resources traveling. New forms of entertainment are difficult to create as they waste resources to develop so you do not have free market determining if people want to bungee off of cliffs.

As for innovation it can be down war directed that we want to fly to mars but in a truely communist world I would think people probably would not like to got there as a whole. What is the benifit of all my work to the common good. Why should I wait in line for toilet paper when one of these rocket scientists could be putting it on the roll next to me. If the need arose you could make the trip but just to say I think we should go there because we have not done it before... Technology would be hampered.

You end up with a backward society still. Another thing that happens is you see the guy who decides that he wont work as hard on the assemly line while you work your butt off. Yea he simply meets quota. While you are putting out 109% of quota. Why in the end he reaps the same perks of society. Back to the incentive thing hmmm. In our world we have people who work hard and retire at 45 or 40 due to saving.

In this magic world no matter how hard you work, no matter how many innovations you come up with you still retire at 65 or what ever uniform interval is.

There is no individuality which humans need. Your car is the same. Your house is the same. Your income is the same. Communism is ultimately a poor mans dream. You can suck in some rich folks to the ideals not properly thought out. but none the less a poor mans dream initially. Even the poor man ends up at the short end in the end.

[ClubMed]

Do you think money slows us down or makes things faster?

[Epidemic]

Money speeds us up because it drives innovation and gives incentives. It also slows us down sometimes because immediate profit superseeds long term growth... Stock market mentality. We have to see profit now or our stock will go down and my golden parachute wont open. Instead of lets build build build grow grow grow. and become the biggest and the best.