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AC wrote: "The post-scarcity society is not going to end this, even supposing it does turn from utopian dream to reality. If anything, it will make everything worse, because you'll have more resources with which to bestow your benevolence."

This is just about exactly the point I'm concerned about, as reflected in my sig of: "A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those thinking in terms of scarcity."

And that is the nightmare we are actually living today! People tend to forget about all the nuclear missiles still ready to launch from a computer glitch in decades old hardware from the 1960s and 1970s.

That is exactly why we need some sort of global mindshift to a newer way of thinking in order to survive having discovered all kinds of new sorts of technological "fire" (like nanotechnology, robotics, biotech, nuclear, networked bureaucracy, etc).
http://www.global-mindshift.org/discover/viewmeme.asp?memeid=239
http://anwot.org/

By the way, on "education" which in practice means compulsory state-sponsored mass schooling, see:
http://johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
http://disciplinedminds.com/
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199710--.htm

Or also on your theme:
"The NED, NGOs and the Imperial Uses of Philanthropy: Why They Hate Our Kind Hearts, Too"
http://www.counterpunch.org/2006/05/13/why-they-hate-our-kind-hearts-too/

You're welcome. Thanks for the comment. It's been said: "Where there is no vision, the people perish."

On that theme of consciousness raising and helping work towards a new vision for a 21st century society, here is something I wrote in 2009:
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/eff0aa5033106bb5

These are the ones I consider important and listed there and in a followup:
* limited demand invalidates classical macroeconomics relating to employment;
* the basic income guarantee and its history, as one of multiple ways to address the exponential increase in technological capacity and job loss;
* the issue of post-scarcity technology wielded to create artificial scarcities;
* the potential of 3D printing if it follows the growth of 2D printing and continues to improve; and
* how our social values may affect the nature of any Technological Singularity, and how the Singularity is a mirror.
* how the cost of computing dropping towards zero makes all prices drop towards zero.

I made a hokey short Youtube video myself, but obviously I'm not great artist/entertainer. :-)
"The Richest Man in the World: A parable about structural unemployment and a basic income "
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p14bAe6AzhA

I put that under CC-BY-ND because my voice is on that (and I did feel comfortable thinking about my voice remixed), but people should feel free to use the text or images or storyline under CC-BY-SA (though I'm sure any experienced artist or scriptwriter would rapidly leave almost all of that behind and make something way better).

Here is another parable I wrote recently, about the USA's future:
"Burdened by Bags of Sand"
http://www.pdfernhout.net/burdened-by-bags-of-sand.html

And another item:
"A post-scarcity "Downfall" parody remix of the bunker scene"
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/32e8fc32c89c96bd

So, yes, I'd agree, some young entertainers could make a huge difference running with these sorts of ideas and making funny videos, songs, drawings, and so on about them.

Here is a one minute item that I found inspiring and relates to these themes:
http://www.global-mindshift.org/memes/wombat.swf

More stuff like that that gets people thinking about a basic income and robotics might be useful.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
Here are some videos linked there, but they are a bit dry:
http://basicincome.iovialis.org/e00.html

Here is a video on a gift economy, but again, it could be more exciting:
"Gift Economy: Refuting the Market Logic "
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy4hFVcl6Vo

Zeitgeist, profiling the Venus Project in sequels, is another example. But the Venus Project and resource-based planning is just one option (a basic income, a gift economy, and local subsistence with 3D printing and solar panels and organic gardening are others that can all interact with it). So, we could use catch things that are broader. But Zeitgeist was a good start. We need short, funny stuff. Maybe there are even grants for that kind of stuff for the right people?
http://www.casefoundation.org/topics/social-media-for-good/videos

Computer games are another line of approach.

Then see if the training budget will cover this: :-)
    http://www.humorproject.com/conference/

See also:
    http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/health/30vitamin.html?permid=196#comment196

By the way, as an alternative to working:
    http://idlenest.freehostia.com/mirror/www.whywork.org/index.html

And, consider:

The US currently spends as much on schooling, social security, and welfare to give every citizen about US$800 a month.
    http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html

And it spends enough on Medicare/Medicaid to cover everyone with good health care if it was managed better.
    http://www.singlepayeraction.org/

And the US spends more than twice as much on "defense" in a year than it would take to change the entire country over to using renewable energy and no longer need much of a defense department.
    http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan

It's all about the paradigm and a global mindshift beyond narrow vested interests.
    http://www.global-mindshift.org/memes/wombat.swf

I decided to post the whole thing as a reply here since it is not easily accessible, even though there are a couple of replies there and additional comments by me.

Embedded software developer Joseph Stack allegedly intentionally flew a small plane into government offices in Austin, TX, in an act that has been labeled as domestic terrorism. He cited, among other things, IRS regulations about independent contractor status as well as other issues related to government corruption.

Could his behavior have been partially due to vitamin D deficiency syndrome from indoor work? Could vitamin D deficiency also have contributed to the violent behavior alleged of Hans Reiser or Amy Bishop? And is part of the problem also that Joe Stack was not talking to anyone about any of this to think through real solutions and find positive things to do that, as Mr. Rogers sang, would not hurt himself or anyone else?

Here are some useful resources for preventing more copycat violence to show how there are plenty of alternatives to violence despite Joe Stack's claim otherwise in his manifesto:

Treating Disease With Vitamin D

Surviving America's Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy

Dark Nights of the Soul: A Guide to Finding Your Way Through Life's Ordeals

Albert Einstein on: Religion and Science

A wombat talks about a global mindshift

TED | Peter Eigen on moving beyond corruption

The Optimism of Uncertainty

Social Movements and Strategic Nonviolence

As another software developer who has done embedded work, here are some non-programming things I've worked on related to helping people see positive alternatives to violence:

Possible cures for a jobless recovery

Post-Scarcity Princeton, or, Reading between the lines of PAW for prospective Princeton students, or, the Health Risks of Heart Disease

Rebutting Communiqué from an Absent Future

The amazing thing to me is not that stuff like this happens. What is amazing is that it does not happen more often, which is a tribute to most of humanity's basic social nature. In a way, even Joe Stack chose a relatively limited approach; an embedded software developer such as he was could have done far more damage if trying to create general mayhem (he could have tampered with nuclear power plants or medical devices or airplane software). There is also irony here that a person took a very advanced piece of technology — a private airplane, and all that it represents as a technological marvel — and used it to destroy a past instead of to create a future.

What do people think and feel about all this?

A lot of people become homeschoolers because they tried for decades to change the system from within. From Wikipedia: "John Taylor Gatto (born December 15, 1935) is an American retired school teacher of 29 years and 8 months and author of several books on education. He is an activist critical of compulsory schooling and of what he characterizes as the hegemonic nature of discourse on education and the education professions."

More from there:
"""
What does the school do with the children? Gatto takes this in "Dumbing Us Down", the following propositions:
1. Makes the the children confused. It presents an incoherent ensemble of information that the child needs to memorize, to stay in school. Apart from the tests and trials that programming is similar to the television, fills almost the whole, "free" time of the children. One sees and hears something, to forget it again.
2. It teaches them to accept their class affiliation.
3. It makes them indifferent.
4. It makes them emotionally dependent.
5. It teaches them a kind of self-confidence, which require constant confirmation by experts (provisional self-esteem).
6. It makes it clear to them that they can not hide, because they are always supervised.
"""

Another such person was John Holt, who also tried to improve things for years inside the system. In turn, the have inspired others, like Grace Llewelyn. There are many more. Both boredom and burnout (common in children as well as teachers) can be deadly.

So, this spying with webcams is just a continuation of a general trend for one hundred and fifty years.

Here is a good discussion of the current dynamics of what is going on in the educational world, from an interview with Jerry Mintz on Sustainable Education: " Nevertheless, there is an education revolution going on, and it is long overdue. It is moving in the diametrically opposite direction of the "testing" push. The latter comes from the bureaucrats from within that dying system, who do know there is something wrong. But since they can't think "out of the box," the only remedy they can come up with is longer hours, more homework, and "teaching to the test," in other words, more of the same. The education revolution is coming from people who have created alternative schools and programs, thousands of them, and from others who have checked "none of the above" and have decided to home educate. There are now nearly two million people home educating. The first charter school was started in 1991. Now there are 2500 of them! And there are over 7500 additional alternatives in our database and many thousands more we have yet to discover. All of these fall in the general category of "learner-centered" approaches. We list many of them in our book, The Almanac of Education Choices. These people are steadfastly OPPOSED to the governmental thrust for more "standardization" and testing."

If you are burned out as a schoolteacher (and, in some ways, teachers are the worst victims of all this), here are some resources:
Treating Disease With Vitamin D
Surviving America's Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy
Dark Nights of the Soul: A Guide to Finding Your Way Through Life's Ordeals
Albert Einstein on: Religion and Science
A wombat talks about a global mindshift

If kids are animals in that sense, why are so many homeschoolers at the same age so well behaved? No group is perfect, of course, just an alternative thing to consider that the environment may be causing a lot of behavior problems.

Other aspects of the solution, as a care package of healing-related links. :-)
    "Treating Disease With Vitamin D" (anyone like a school child spending most of their time indoors is at risk)
        http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
    "Surviving America's Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and
Community in a World Gone Crazy"
      http://books.google.com/books?id=bCuC2H-6k_8C
    "Dark Nights of the Soul: A Guide to Finding Your Way Through Life's Ordeals"
        http://books.google.com/books?id=RKZreNYKNHQC
    "Albert Einstein on: Religion and Science"
        http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm
    "A wombat talks about a global mindshift"
        http://www.global-mindshift.org/memes/wombat.swf
    "The Orchid Child"
    http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200912/dobbs-orchid-gene

From the last: "Most of us have genes that make us as hardy as dandelions: able to take root and survive almost anywhere. A few of us, however, are more like the orchid: fragile and fickle, but capable of blooming spectacularly if given greenhouse care. So holds a provocative new theory of genetics, which asserts that the very genes that give us the most trouble as a species, causing behaviors that are self-destructive and antisocial, also underlie humankind’s phenomenal adaptability and evolutionary success. With a bad environment and poor parenting, orchid children can end up depressed, drug-addicted, or in jail—but with the right environment and good parenting, they can grow up to be society’s most creative, successful, and happy people."

Bullying will always be with us, but we can reduce it by having a better society with happier and more fulfilled individuals. Wi-Fi on school buses empowering children to do self-directed learning using networked computers is a big step forward in many ways, even if there are downsides as well (vitamin D deficiency from not walking outdoors, obesity from sedentary behavior, some media content is candy or even toxic, and it displaces other good things like face-to-face interaction, relationships with nature, hands-on hobbies, helping others physically, and so on).

Places with huge problems also tend to have legacies of intervention by foreign governments and foreign corporations. The Earth has no resource limitation problems in the long term:
"Earth's carrying capacity and Catton"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-August/004123.html

But, with robots on the way, it's easy to see why many think life is cheap because masses of human labor are no longer needed for the earlier exploitation:
"Robot videos and P2P implications (was Re: A thirty year future...)"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005926.html

That is the deeper problem we need to address as a society, how to move past the irony of having all these tools of abundance but people using them to make artificial scarcity. We need to stop using military robots to enforce a culture of work on humans and instead make robots to do the work. We need to stop building nuclear missiles to fight over oil wells on Earth and instead use the same basic technologies to produce power or make accessible resources in space (I'm a renewable energy fan more than nuclear though). Here are some other ways to move past that irony:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm
http://www.michaeljournal.org/lesson1.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy
http://www.freecycle.org/
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/free_matter_economy?page=0%2C1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3d_printing
http://www.mel.nist.gov/programs/slim.htm
http://www.remineralize.org/
http://www.thevenusproject.com/
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/
http://books.google.com/books?id=bCuC2H-6k_8C (Surviving America's Depression Epidemic)
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
http://www.honestfoodguide.org/
http://www.global-mindshift.org/memes/wombat.swf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobless_recovery

There are lots of solutions rather than kill off people or prevent them from being born when there is so much abundance for everyone these days through modern technology. You want to stop suffering? Break the link between a right-to-consume and being able to sell your labor on a market where automation and better design is removing good jobs every day, like people said would be a problem even back in 1964:
http://educationanddemocra

You missed the revolutions in network connectedness (and global consciousness),
  http://www.global-mindshift.org/memes/wombat.swf
robotics, materials, genetics, and design tools. Examples of the state of the art in robots:
    http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005926.html

Here is an index into stuff I wrote on why doomsters are wrong about material issues (but may be right about social issues):
    http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-August/thread.html#4123

We are not running out of stuff or energy by any means. The human imagination is the ultimate resource (as Julian Simon suggests). Are you suggesting optical fiber uses more energy that copper?

On earth, we can recycle and use renewables (or other energy sources even -- whether nuclear or coal), and there are enough resources in the solar system to support quadrillions of humans at a higher than current US standard of living, building thousands of Earth's worth of area in space habitats. How can we be running out of, say, metals when we just need to mine the landfills to get them back? The US auto industry has also become a *net* producer of metal as people downsize cars. And if we switched to electric cars, we would use less electricity (since it takes more electricity to make a gallon of gas than it takes to make an electric car go the same distance as a gasoline car).
    "Why luxury safer electric cars should be free-to-the-user"
    http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/09eb7f4c973349f2?hl=en

Try James P. Hogan or Iain Banks or Ursula K. Le Guin for something different in sci-fi.

I, for one, have looked through your post and don't see any of the "pertinent facts" you claim to present to us.

Quite frankly, I don't care about the details of how any particular group of Christians pretends to do their cannibalistic feasting. Celebrating the torture and murder of a God or a human as a means to attain a state of ecstatic grace that surpasses all understanding is an absurd thing to devote one's life to, and the practice has inflicted much pain and suffering on the world. Euphemisms about the "Lamb of God" and so forth are self-serving attempts to keep from seeing the horror of what Jesus started in that upper story room. He definitely wanted to shock his apostles with that horror, so why do the christian churches try so very hard to whitewash it?

The only good Christian is a post-christian. Then, and only then, can the Goddess-given human capability of Reason work with the Goddess-given human capability of Perceiving Beauty to craft this world toward the more excellent place it can become. Not some other World. Not some AfterLife. This world. Listen to the wombat. He speaks a high truth.

If there is a God worthy of worship Out There, He or She will understand that "One world at a time" is a reasonable human goal for making things better.

"The U.S. no longer has to worry about nuclear war? Probably. "

The USA is terrified right now that just one nuclear bomb will be used by someone in a US city. Because of that terror, the USA is willing to change its entire structure of civil liberties (like allow broad wiretapping without warrants). The terror of just one bomb. Why did we then build about 70,000 of them?
    http://www.brookings.edu/projects/archive/nucweapons/50.aspx
    http://www.nti.org/e_research/e3_atomic_audit.html

So, US military policy about nuclear war has been wrong for fifty years. The cost of losing even one city is too big to imagine, too big to bear. So, we need a different way forward. We need a different vision of national security than unilateral dominance; we need a national security policy that is based on global mutual security.

As Einstein said, with the release of the power of the atom, everything has changed but our thinking. We need a "global mindshift":
    http://www.global-mindshift.org/discover/viewMeme.asp?resourceID=239