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I think we have to set our goals to something like The Venus Project first and start fixing the shits we did on our planet before going to others.

The effort to eradicate malaria is also currently under way through distributed research platforms such BOINC. The Zeitgeist Movement (of up to a million 'followers' worldwide) invite you to pull up a virtual chair and contribute your idle CPU time: http://wiki.zmlingteam.org/w/BOINC Stats: http://boincstats.com/stats/team_stats.php?pr=mcp&co=&st=0&or=12 Malaria must go during the transition to a resource based economic model: (1) http://www.thevenusproject.com/en/the-venus-project/resource-based-economy (2) http://www.thezeitgeistmovementuk.com/resource-based-economic-model

Are you kiddin' me? Did you get an economist to sponsor this story? The monetary is destined to fail, it is a paper debt based currency with no relation to anything in the physical world. We will have migrated to a resource based economy way before the next century. See more at: http://www.thevenusproject.com/en/the-venus-project/resource-based-economy. Money holds us back as a species. We have the resources if managed efficiently and effectively to overcome all problems together. What we don't have is the money to do so. Aids isn't cured because there are so many companies profiting heavily from treatments. It's the same all over, profit makes the world go round.. but maybe not for long, if you want it.

/facepalm

Yet another misinformed soul parroting whatever it is he heard or read. Overpopulation is not the real problem, it's the fact that we're living in an outdated society with outdated structures (poor space management). Really, a lot of things in our society are inefficient and there's a lot of waste. We produce so much waste it makes me physically ill to think about, especially when you consider the problem could be mostly avoided with better management of our resources.

As for solving the world debt... that's easy. Abolish currency. Money is debt. Think about this for a second... if all of the world's debt could somehow be suddenly paid off, where is the money to pay the interest on that debt? Simple; it doesn't exist. It was never meant to exist. The whole system has become a device used to enslave you with debt. This isn't some crazy conspiracy theory. In fact, it's actually pretty obvious and it blows my mind when people get defensive about this and try to start defending the big red, white, and blue dick that's being jammed in their ass.

The problem here in America is that we are essentially letting a bunch of rich assholes, who do not care about the average Joe in any way, shape, or form, run our country and make all the important decisions for us. Hell, the internet might be censored by the time I post this. Are you people getting it yet? These people do NOT care about us! We could all be living in a much better environment if we would just quit with the distractions for a minute and deal with these assholes that are trying to fuck us over.

I know, I know... you feel "safe" with your $60k/year and full benefits, no sense in changing something that isn't broken (for you!). Well what about your children? What kind of world will they be living in? What about your grandchildren? Do you like the direction our country is headed in? Do you really think it's going to get better? It's only gonna get worse, folks... unless we do something. If I may, I'd like to suggest a possible route we could go with our society: http://www.thevenusproject.com/. Before you go off dismissing this and pointing out flaws/etc... again, don't be afraid of change and just ask yourself, "Would this be better than what we have today?" I think the answer is pretty obvious. Or you could bury your head in the sand trying to chase the ever-elusive "American Dream", but I'd prefer you enlighten yourself and help the rest of us out!

I think George Carlin said it best, "It's called the American Dream 'cuz you have to be asleep to believe it." In fact, the whole bit that's from is spot on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q/.

Or post a link to the page, lazyass: http://www.thevenusproject.com/

The Zeitgeist Movement has some thoughts on this. Also see The Venus Project.

The 1950's view you mention reminds me a lot of the Venus Project. (Which I happen to consider utopian nonsense.)

My favorite dystopian view is that when nobody has to work to feed themselves anymore, or to buy housing or trinkets and gadgets, the masses eventually stop educating and policing and producing for themselves, dependent on kibble and slurry. Misery abounds.

looks like we're slowly moving towards what http://thevenusproject.com/ describes. mebbe it's time to replace all those politicians who can't behave by some sort of AI that surely will do better in managing the distribution of resources.

This sounds almost akin to the Venus Project, although a little less 'revolutionary'.

Venus' concept is a massive global supercomputer network that monitors the worlds resources, allocating them only where they are needed and in reasonable quantities, eliminating waste and misuse, but being auditing and controlled by human-elect. A different future society (although it is debatable between dystopian and utopian) could automate everything, doctors, lawyers, manufacturing, almost absolutely everything once the infrastructure is in place, and people could live simple, happier lives and not be wage-slaves. Granted it would probably a century or two of automata innovation to make something like that happen, but it would beat having such excess waste, such as cars/drivers ratio. It would be pretty neat to do what you love and love what you do without a lot of the extraneous worries.

And no I am not a communist/socialist, just saying it might be a cool alternate reality.

We are already beyond needing money since decades.

http://www.thevenusproject.com/

angel'o'sphere

Not everyone is in a position where they can do that.

No, they're not. There is no perfect solution.

They may need training, which they cannot afford

Then they could acquire help (from the government or something).

If people are out of alternatives, surely giving them a job as a way to assist them would be better than just giving them a check or allowing them to starve in the streets?

No. Then we have a bunch of people who contribute nothing useful to society. This seems like a problem with capitalism to me. I'd suggest that instead of giving them checks or letting them starve, society go through a change so that none of these inefficient practices are required anymore.

And there's no reason why the job has to be useless.

If it's not useless, then that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about creating useless jobs just for the sake of creating them. For instance, people may be employed to press a button every once in a while. The process is already automated, but they hired these people merely to give them jobs. They're useless and not really contributing anything. The same applies to any job that can be automated.

What they're taking is something that you seem not to value at all but society at large disagrees.

I can see that.

To give a real world example of the effect of this, imagine that it was illegal to charge for plumbing work.

No. Don't compare copying data to jobs which require that someone uses their time, effort, or resources to complete them. Copying data doesn't require any of that from the original author. In your example, something was removed from the person who did the job: time and effort.

Note that I don't advocate simply removing copyright laws. I advocate altering society in a large way (for many other reasons that just copyright). Why? Because I believe that our capitalistic society, which runs on scarcity (and forces artificial scarcity of the good is not scarce) is what is harming authors, 'pirates', and normal people, not the 'pirates'. I believe it's the fault of the society that requires artificial currency in order for an author to continue making works (and, in the case of copying data, they are almost forced to implement artificial scarcity in an attempt to gain more currency).

By the way, your statement that noone can "own" potential gain is nonsensical. By that logic, nobody can own anything since it's only the force of law that drives ownership to begin with.

What I meant was, it is likely impossible to actually own potential gain because you can't see it, touch it, use it, you never had it to begin with (the actual gain, I mean), and anyone can claim that you harmed them by not giving them everything you have (which would be a 'loss' of potential gain).

- clearly you do not.

You made assumptions based only on a small amount of information.

1. Why do you want to stop capitalism?

Simple.

It encourages greed. Leech off of your own subordinates to make a profit. If that includes profiting heavily even though they worked much harder than you, getting rid of them, or tricking them, then so be it. People that don't have money are oftentimes overlooked by society (even when that is not their fault). People that have more almost always have more power. It also encourages wars for resources deemed 'valuable' (ones that will turn a profit).

It causes much corruption among government, among other things. The rich can lobby to get what they want, and due to this society encouraging greed, it is likely that they will succeed. This happens constantly.

It often results in destruction. Destroy unreasonable amounts of the environment to get what you want, destroy other people who stand in the way of you making money (sometimes), utilize inefficient and destructive techniques to save money (such as chemical dumping or not recycling).

Basically, I advocate systems which I think are better.

2. Why do you want people to work where machines can clearly outperform them and provide them with the outcome of that work with 0 human energy expended?

I don't.

3. Aren't you admitting that if resource/energy depletion is a problem in a capitalist system, which produces everything that's needed, then there ARE problems that machines are not solving that need solutions? Soylent Green perhaps?

No. I said that everyone having their own machines that do everything for them is a waste of resources (which, as most know, may be abundant, but are not infinite). Really, if it came down to that, there should only exist a few of them that make goods for the general populace.

4. If you care about future generations, wouldn't you wish them to achieve this point in time, where all of their needs are taken care of by machines?

Of course. I don't know why you started thinking that I don't.

Here is the actual problem: what's the point of future generations?

What's the point of existing right now? There is none, no matter what society tells you. The "point" of your existence is what you make of it.

If people decide that they have nothing to do, they may end up committing mass suicide somehow from complete boredom OR they will find things to do.

It's called entertainment (hobbies). Or, if they really want to, they can do things that a machine could do (even if it's pointless).

Do you even understand that people are pushed forward by a desire to show off to their peers

Do I understand that people have egos? Yes, but I don't care about such trivial things.

People are CONSTANTLY 'wasting' energy and resources on discretionary stuff, that is really not needed for their survival.

Of course. But if they're going to 'waste' it, they shouldn't do it to such a severe degree that it drastically endangers future generations, I think.

"The future generations" you care so much about will have exactly the same problem, they will have to solve theirs, I don't give a shit, I have mine to solve.

And? I'd prefer their environment to at least be livable. If you don't care, then perhaps you shouldn't be a part of society.

What am I, a mushroom, just to sit there, wallowing happy in some moisture and some sun light? Fucking bullshit.

Essentially, yes.

Capitalism will fail?

Yes. Whether there is a suitable replacement or not is irrelevant. It will, inevitably, fail (and in many ways, it already has failed). That is mainly because it, in its own inefficiency, relies on scarcity and human labor (it is an idea crafted by humans, after all). If technology truly became that advanced, I'd say a system such as this would become feasible.

Try using the money if the bank goes under!

I'm fairly certain there's at least a few laws in place that protects up to around $100,000 for you if the bank that stores your money actually does go under.

No, you truly do not "actually have" the money.

According to society and the bank you do. It doesn't exist in the future. It exists now.

because without them, they would have nothing.

You're right. But they never had the money in the first place, so they remain unchanged.

If person A pirates the works of person B, they are stripping person B of their legally-granted rights, causing a worse situation for person B, and more often than not, a better situation for person A.

The better situation for person A is irrelevant because they don't actually remove anything from person B to be in that better situation. Person B isn't in a worse situation because they have everything they had previously. They lost nothing.

Are you disagreeing with society's use of money?

Yes.

So, what exactly is the problem with copyright? You say "patched", I would say "fixed". What problems with copyright are you referring to? What exactly does artificial scarcity not solve?

Artificial scarcity is unnecessary and prevents people from obtaining things (in some cases, educative resources) that they would otherwise have. While that doesn't harm them, they'd certainly be better of if they had them (at no one else's expense). Instead of reforming society to get rid of its capitalistic practices, they employed copyright to patch the problem. It's probably nice for artists now, and I don't blame them, but to leave such a gaping flaw wide open only hurts all of society (and there are more culprits than just artificial scarcity). Scarcity in general is an atrocious way to run society.

Perhaps so, but what is the alternative?

I'm not here to talk about alternatives. The first step is realizing that there is a problem.

However, here is a possible solution (as in, an alternate solution that people came up with). Whether it would work or not remains to be seen.

Except for the fact that it's a direct infringment against their Constitutionally-granted rights.

Mentioning that is completely pointless, as that is a 'right' that many are arguing against.

you aren't only affecting the original creator

As I mentioned, you aren't affecting the creator. They've lost nothing that they already had (and again, that 'right' is what we argue against).

The infringer also didn't have a product to consume before either.

Yes, and they've taken nothing to get it.

a creator invests time and money into a product that is legally under his/her control

That's not the fault of the copyright infringer (who didn't even interact with the artist or take anything from them).

Who are you to say what value they can place upon that?

I didn't say anything about that. I said that we shouldn't force people to conform to artificial scarcity laws and instead admit that there is a problem and actually work on finding an alternate solution.

You don't have to say it, it's a logical inference implicit in your entire argument. Can you not see that?

No, I can't. There time may indeed be worth something, but that doesn't mean that we should criminalize people who don't even interact with the artist (or harm them).

Now who's making assumptions? The original argument was regarding printed sheet music and photocopying, not downloading songs on the internet.

Both are forms of copyright infringement, correct? I was speaking of copyright infringement in general. I never assumed anything about you.

I've never heard an argument against copyright that didn't ultimately boil down to "I just want shit for free."

I'll also generalize and say that I've never heard an argument against copyright infringement that didn't ultimately boil down to "loss of potential future gain can be equated to harm." This is especially foolish because that would mean that you're 'harming' someone merely by not giving them everything you own (of course, they never had it in the first place, so no harm was done, but that was just an example).

I think that artificial scarcity is a perfectly acceptable way for someone to make a return on their investment because you are buying the time it took to make the end product.

I'd say it would benefit society more to drop poor capitalistic practices in general. Use things that are in unlimited supply or in great abundance properly and efficiently.

Violating the social contract hurts the creator

How does it hurt the creator when they've lost nothing? The actions of the copyright infringer hasn't incurred any additional time, resources, or monetary costs upon the artist. Initial costs are not the fault of the infringer.

So if artists deserve money, where should it come from?

Apparently I didn't make it clear enough that I (but that's not to say that there's not alternate solutions other than mine) actually argue against the use of currency in general. Also, no matter how much you oppose any alternate solutions I or others propose, that was not my original point. My original point was to demonstrate that people should not be criminalized for committing victimless crimes.

Why should we not criminalize people who break the law and hurt all of society in doing so?

You don't hurt society by breaking

That system is unworkable.

Which one are you talking about? The current one which promotes war for profit, greed, corruption, abuse of the environment for profit, abuse of living beings for profit, pollution, artificial scarcity, inefficient use of resources, and planned obsolescence? Like it or not, our capitalistic society is largely outdated and our technological progress has shown that. If this continues, the consequences could be disastrous. Capitalistic societies typically treat the planet as if its resources are unlimited and use far too much of them, only to later dispose of a great deal of them. It's not sustainable.

I promote this system. Futuristic or not, we're doomed if we don't come up with some sort of alternative.

People pay them if they want to. Can you imagine working under those conditions, where you turned up at work and your employer paid you if they felt that you had done work justifying your getting paid.

Criminalizing people for victimless crimes isn't the answer.

Lack of respect for copyright deprives the artist _and_ society by reducing the incentive to create.

Which is exactly the problem I'm talking about. Copyright infringement is a victimless crime (for reasons I've already pointed out), and the file sharers aren't where the problem lies. The problem lies in society itself. Criminalizing people for actions which hurt no one is not a way to fix this.

Speaking of incentive, what happens if someone were to not buy a product, and because of this, the business went bankrupt? Many people who did buy the product would be disappointed, there would be less incentive, and much of society would likely be 'harmed'. That's all file sharers do: not give someone their money while not interacting with them in the slightest.

How would any barter system not have the same effects as using currency?

Currency is only 'needed' in systems with limited resources that promote (or fail to prevent) overpopulation. The problem, I believe, is and always has been not utilizing resources in an efficient way, not making sure that we don't consume too much (thus not allowing renewable resources to replenish quickly enough), and breeding until these problems worsen. I'm not saying that there's an unlimited number of resources, but by fixing the above problems, resources would be abundant for humans.

Every system requires trading.

That you know of. I'm talking about this. Futuristic or no, the problems I've listed have every bit to do with our capitalistic society, and failing to fix them could prove disastrous for the future.

Yet, it's still illogical to blame pirates and create artificial scarcity. Also:

http://thevenusproject.com/ [thevenusproject.com]
http://memwiki.pirate-party.us/But_How_Will_the_Artists_Get_Paid%3F [pirate-party.us]

This is what I read:

This kind of "honor system" works when people realize that they get screwed when they don't support the artists. If there's no money to be made, then artists won't produce anything.

From here, I gather that they should get paid via some kind of honour system?? But if pirates won't honour their wishes now, in the face of copyright law, how in the hell would they pay the artists without copyright? Please I want to know how law-breakers would suddenly stop what they are doing as soon as it becomes legal...

That page is simply hilarious. It shows both complete unawareness of how creative works are made, and a horrible sense of entitlement, that because people desire something, they should have it as long as it can be digitally copied.

Also, the creator is actually 'harming' them by 'depriving' them of the possibility of future gain (free entertainment) by not letting them merely download their works.

A sense of entitlement that you apparently share. Also here you finally widen your definition of the word harm. Good for you. You also apply my logic ass backwards, as expected. They are not deprived, because the artist is not obliged to give it to them or allow them access. Can you get that through you entitled head? If the artist wants to give it, it is the artists prerogative. If the artist wants to exchange for it, it is the artists prerogative to name the price. It is the consumers prerogative to accept the price, or reject it.

No need to repeat yourself, just tell me how that logically translates to harm even though they're left completely unaffected (unaffected doesn't mean that they are worse off than before).

Please read my post about the high school student and the scholarship. It's just below my last reply. I hope that's logical enough for you.

Which is what is being debated. I don't believe that people are inherently entitled to these future gains unless one of the following conditions is met:

A) Someone has directly asked them to perform a job for them while promising a certain amount of money for completing the job, and the artist completes the job.
B) Someone has actually stolen something that they already had.

Indeed, in your world, creators of art are not entitled to anything (except maybe attribution), only you and the consumers are. What a horrible world that would be.

Pirates don't even interact with the author in the least. They merely copy their content, and the author is likely completely unaware that a specific person just copied their work. They remain completely unaffected, unknowingly to them.

Please consider my analogy about the student and the scholarship, but imagine the scholarship board and the parent doing this without the student's knowledge. In my view, it's still harm. Yours?

I have repeated myself many times

You said it's because they lose the possibility of future gain, but if they never had the gain in the first place, it can't translate to harm. No need to repeat yourself, just tell me how that logically translates to harm even though they're left completely unaffected (unaffected doesn't mean that they are worse off than before).

Because as you have admitted in other posts, you, and other people who think as you do, have no good system to replace this.

Yet, it's still illogical to blame pirates and create artificial scarcity. Also:

http://thevenusproject.com/
http://memwiki.pirate-party.us/But_How_Will_the_Artists_Get_Paid%3F

It does not save them from any harm because if they pirated something and enjoyed it, they were not in danger of being harmed, but it wrongfully harms the creator.

It saves them from the much more critical harm of losing currently valuable money for entertainment that is in an infinite supply while leaving the original creator completely unaffected. Also, the creator is actually 'harming' them by 'depriving' them of the possibility of future gain (free entertainment) by not letting them merely download their works.

It is not the benefit the consumer receives that is the issue, but the lack of benefit the creator of the work receives.

Which is what is being debated. I don't believe that people are inherently entitled to these future gains unless one of the following conditions is met:

A) Someone has directly asked them to perform a job for them while promising a certain amount of money for completing the job, and the artist completes the job.
B) Someone has actually stolen something that they already had.

Pirates don't even interact with the author in the least. They merely copy their content, and the author is likely completely unaware that a specific person just copied their work. They remain completely unaffected, unknowingly to them.

You want to work from a different definition than the rest of society.

No, I want to work from the actual definition. How can you take away (deprive) someone of something that they do not even have?

I gave an actual definition. "deprive, tr v, 2. To keep from possessing or enjoying; deny:" Preventing the seller of the benefits of the transaction while the receiver is allowed to utilized the benefits is wrong.

http://thevenusproject.com/the-venus-project-introduction/faq

Apparently, there is an idea after all.

Sure, sounds great on paper like many things, but resources are not overly abundant. They are limited and would become more so after a short time in any society they describe. Quite quickly the people would decide to implement forced rationing.

They would invent an artificial currency.

Not if it worked properly.

It won't.

I think you're the only one that would make that argument, illogically

I especially like how you state that it's illogical but you don't say why. Why? How is that not a loss of a potential sale or potential profit when piracy somehow is?

Do I really need to? No one else would even ask that I prove why it's illogical to expect everyone everywhere to be obligated to buy every product.

because you're trying to support your ideology.

The funny thing is, so are you. Isn't that the point of an argument?

I'm trying to be realistic as well.

Ok, so by that logic, that no harm has occurred, one could argue that stealing money from any of the hyper-rich billionaires should be legal because it doesn't hurt them.

No, you couldn't. Why? They already have the money, and in that scenario, you take it from them. You have directly stolen something that they previously had. It's gone. They no longer have it due to your actions of stealing it right now.

I would think that someone on Slashdot would know what copying is and how no one was deprived of physical property.

I'm commenting on your "no harm" argument which is silly. Not you refusing to understand what "deprive" means.

Having it in the first place is, as I've already noted, is a minor distinction.

No, it's not. As I said above, saying it's possible to steal things that only exist in the future

It exists the moment the torrent is downloaded... it being the received goods along with the obligation to pay for those goods.

Bribery would continue without money.

But not with a system where the majority have far more power than they do now. Bribery would be useless, then, if it still even existed.

Unless you can see into the future, I would not make such statements.

Things still have inherent value without the existence of money, those values just become more complicated to represent and somewhat ambiguous. Money is nothing more or less than a convenient representation of value, usually your time.

Wars will still be fought, even for profit.

Apparently you missed the part about having no money.

Again, things other than money have value, and with that profit if the net gain is positive. Think land and increased territory.

Land is real property and is not artificially scarce.

Humans don't need to fight over land, there's plenty. Sorry to say, but people wouldn't all be living in huge mansions and own large sections of land. The 'need' for that would be rooted out.

You s

If slavery were legal, they would not make it right.

Im not arguing right or wrong in general, im talking about the context of our society. If you're going to argue that our society is broken you're just trolling because you choose to be a part of that apparently 'broken system'.

I believe that criminalizing people who have logically done no harm is wrong, sorry. Citing the law isn't going to make you more 'correct'.

In the context of our society and our laws - which you live in and take advantage of - they have done harm. In the context of another society that may be different but not in ours. You're obviously just trolling because you choose to be a part of what you say is a 'broken system' even though you don't have to be.

I know about copyright law, but I disagree with it.

But you choose to live in a society that supports it while offering no alternative. Your argument is baseless because you don't action it, therefore you don't really believe it.

So how about you explain to me how a research firm is going to make money if what they develop can be taken by anyone and just given away for free?

This is a problem with the current system, not pirates or copying. The fact that a research firm who may benefit all of humanity needs money in the first place is a disgrace.

'who may benefit all of humanity', no don't add your own bullshit to try and justify it just because you can't answer the question, that was NOT a qualifier.

This failed? For some reason, I didn't think that was tried before.

And that's a 100% perfect system is it??

The fact that you keep citing the law as evidence demonstrates that you yourself are ignorant. That is not evidence, nor does it change my point that nothing is being taken.

No im aware of the rules and laws of the society i choose to live in and choose to abide by them. If you don't like it then don't be a part of it.

You say there is an 'injustice being done to pirates', well according to the laws of the society you live in that is false.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_law

If slavery were legal, they would not make it right. I believe that criminalizing people who have logically done no harm is wrong, sorry. Citing the law isn't going to make you more 'correct'.

You only fail to see it because you are ignorant, you don't know anything about copyright law which is a part of our society.

I know about copyright law, but I disagree with it.

So how about you explain to me how a research firm is going to make money if what they develop can be taken by anyone and just given away for free?

This is a problem with the current system, not pirates or copying. The fact that a research firm who may benefit all of humanity needs money in the first place is a disgrace.

That FAILED, or are you not familiar with history either, that was abolished for most of the world in favor of the monetary system.

This failed? For some reason, I didn't think that was tried before.

You keep saying that but it's patently false, according to our legal system they are hurting copyright holders - if you fail to see that then you are not educated on the legal system or copyright law.

The fact that you keep citing the law as evidence demonstrates that you yourself are ignorant. That is not evidence, nor does it change my point that nothing is being taken.

You want to work from a different definition than the rest of society.

No, I want to work from the actual definition. How can you take away (deprive) someone of something that they do not even have?

Have you speculated what such a society without money would do?

http://thevenusproject.com/the-venus-project-introduction/faq

Apparently, there is an idea after all.

They would invent an artificial currency.

Not if it worked properly.

I think you're the only one that would make that argument, illogically

I especially like how you state that it's illogical but you don't say why. Why? How is that not a loss of a potential sale or potential profit when piracy somehow is?

because you're trying to support your ideology.

The funny thing is, so are you. Isn't that the point of an argument?

Ok, so by that logic, that no harm has occurred, one could argue that stealing money from any of the hyper-rich billionaires should be legal because it doesn't hurt them.

No, you couldn't. Why? They already have the money, and in that scenario, you take it from them. You have directly stolen something that they previously had. It's gone. They no longer have it due to your actions of stealing it right now.

I would think that someone on Slashdot would know what copying is and how no one was deprived of physical property.

Having it in the first place is, as I've already noted, is a minor distinction.

No, it's not. As I said above, saying it's possible to steal things that only exist in the future of an alternate dimension where someones other self has acquired something is absolutely insane.

Otherwise, I want to see everyone in existence buy every product in existence, or else they'd be stealing potential profit and therefore harming artists and legitimate businesses.

Bribery would continue without money.

But not with a system where the majority have far more power than they do now. Bribery would be useless, then, if it still even existed.

Unless you can see into the future, I would not make such statements.

Wars will still be fought, even for profit.

Apparently you missed the part about having no money.

Land is real property and is not artificially scarce.

Humans don't need to fight over land, there's plenty. Sorry to say, but people wouldn't all be living in huge mansions and own large sections of land. The 'need' for that would be rooted out.

Government regulations can make it artificially scarce but it will have a very real finite quantity and thus value even without money and building new places to live over most of the oceans and then populating other planets.

Yeah, even with as many people as we have now, we are nowhere near close to running out of space.

Wars will also continue to be fought over racial superiority beliefs.

For a time, perhaps. Humans will evolve, or they will die.

The environment isn't treated as less important than money by most businesses.

Oil drilling, chemical dumping, etc. No, they might not say or think it directly, but they have absolutely no consideration for the future.

Our current pollution situations are in some cases actually solutions to worse pollution problems. A car is less polluting than a horse.

That's nice, but I mentioned nothing of getting rid of technology. We need to find (already done) and utilize clean, renewable energy sources. The problem right now, in many cases, is cost, and profit. It would be difficult to charge outrageous fees for something

"Oh, I know that. You just missed the sarcasm. Apparently you have no problem defending a right like privacy which, when broken, causes no physical harm whatsoever. But you cannot grant the right of intellectual property."

I never missed the sarcasm. I knew exactly what you were implying. If you're breaking into someones house, even if you don't break or steal anything and invading their privacy, you're definitely an individual I wouldn't want to be around. That does, in fact, invade their privacy. Piracy doesn't invade anyones privacy or harm anyone in any noticeable way. You know when someone breaks into your house, but you likely don't know when someone pirates something.

"I am assuming that content creators created the content knowing that the law protects their intellectual property and that this law will allow them to recuperate their investments."

There's nothing to recuperate. What is hurting these artists is the capitalistic society that requires that they have worthless artificial currency in order to survive and continue living their dream.

"And by your own logic if I can't afford the car I want we should change the law so that stealing cars is legal."

What? Are you absolutely insane? When you steal a physical object, you're not copying anything, you're actually taking it away from its original owner. This is harmful and does have an impact on the person, as the object has monetary value, and likely emotional value as well. Pirates aren't depriving anything from anyone. How hard is this to understand?

"This only shows that you either have no clue what is going on in the gaming market or that you have no problem leaving logic and common sense out of the discussion if the interfere in making your point."

What? I asked that if you could prove that it was directly because of pirates that this happened (hint: you can't, not only because accurate piracy statistics are virtually impossible to obtain, but logically, pirates don't hurt anyone).

""This is where you have it all wrong. You are not "rewarding" developers when you pay them for their product, you are fulfilling your social and legal obligation to pay for the work they have done in creating the product, just like your boss is not "rewarding you" with a paycheck, he must pay if he wants to or not.

Physical labor, and your boss agreed to pay you to begin with. Pirates never agreed to anything, and have no "social" obligation to pay for media that is in infinite supply.

"Piracy in this case cost the company $500 or $5 per pirate."

Pirates broke into the companies office and stole either $500 or $500 worth of equipment? The fact that they expected to make more money has no relation to piracy, as they've still taken nothing. It could be blamed on people who simply didn't buy it as much as it could a pirate.

"You are living in a capitalistic society and the content you are interested in was created by capitalistic companies who rely on capitalistic laws that will protect their investments. If you despise capitalism that much then you can simply ignore their content. Obviously you want to have your cake and it eat too"

Obviously I'm talking about a system without any worthless artificial currencies that only encourage corruption (government, corporations), greed (restrict the flow of information), and selfishness, all while causing numerous other problems as a side effect.

http://thevenusproject.com/

That is the system I'm talking about.

"And how are pirates a symptom of a capitalistic society?"

People are trying to restrict media that is in an infinite supply. Some realize that such unlimited goods should not cost money, so they do not pay (and doing so, they also don't take anything, because they're merely copying data).

Also, allow me to quote two of my previous examples that illustrate exactly why making 'stealing' potential profit illegal would be a very, very terrible thing to do.

"L

"See your not understanding. Even with eating both meat and veggies/fruits we do not have enough to go around. So if you take meat out of the equation we would just have more people starving to death. In other words we are already at the point that we have to eat meat to keep people from dying. We don't eat meat just for the fun of it but to survive."

You're not understanding me. Plants can easily be grown, and at least in countries such as the US, seem to be abundant, as well. Many people overeat and consume more than they need to, as well. They have no reason to eat meat. Also, this is the fault of the human race. More specifically, overpopulation. If these idiots didn't decide to have babies 'naturally' all the time instead of adopting, this wouldn't be such a problem. I wonder how much effort is actually going into in vitro meat.

"Unfortunately we have to have a capitalistic society until we reach a point where there is enough of all basic needs to let all people live comfortably."

Not necessarily. Money only WORSENS scarcity. If you don't have enough money, you can't have more resources, even if they exist.

"Those kind of Marxist utopias cannot exist until everyone can live happy healthy lives."

No one claims to know of an idea to make society 'perfect'. No one claims that a society without money would mean that absolutely no one suffers. It would merely eliminate the people who thrive off of making other people suffer (large corporations, etc). As such, governmental corruption would be reduced as well (if implemented correctly).

Here's the system that I'm talking about: http://thevenusproject.com/

No one claims to be perfect. That is a common misconception when people consider these systems.

"All that does is point out that you think your way is the right way no matter what."

I don't think that.

"Your claiming the only way to be moral or intelligent is to stop eating meat."

Ha. I never claimed to be 'moral' myself, I'm far from that. That is a term that illogical idiots invented to describe 'good' humans. Personally, if I knew that the human race would soon be eliminated with nothing else on the planet going with it, I wouldn't be too sad. They cause far too much destruction for their own good, or for the good of anything else on the planet.

"but morality does have to do with the way the animal is treated when slaughtered."

Not really. Morality has little to do with anything. That is just what some people claim to be, you obviously not being one of them. Odd though how even if I was starving, I couldn't slaughter and eat a human. They are animals, after all. It's survival!

"Do you not understand they many humans die already from starvation and getting rid of meat will only further hunger?"

Do you not understand that that's what I meant the entire time? If someone is starving, I believe that eating meat would be fine in that case, even if that meat came from a human. I never said otherwise.

"That is still only done in the lab but you don't seem to understand that breakthroughs in science takes years to become commercial."

No, I understand it perfectly. I merely said that I think it would be best if it was used in the future.

The Venus Project and the Zeitgeist movement seem to push that mentality, but unfortunately the eccentricity of Jacque Fresco and the verbosity of Alex Jones keep them down sometimes. Check out their website for a possible glimpse of a better future.

You need to find the reason people commit violence in the first place. Why do people murder, steal, cheat, and etc? Resources. We can solve this problem by using a Resource Based economy. http://www.thevenusproject.com/a-new-social-design/resource-based-economy

Taking on planning to reduce and eliminate all violence ends up with discussions altering all of society. Economy, to reduce suffering and violence caused by it. Education, to reduce violence caused by ignorance. Health care, to reduce pain and anger. Communities, to get things done with less suffering. Politics and law, to reduce war and police abuses. And on and on. It's the invisible detail lurking behind everything that everyone ignores and laughs at.

You need to find the reason people commit violence in the first place. Why do people murder, steal, cheat, and etc? Resources. We can solve this problem by using a Resource Based economy. http://www.thevenusproject.com/a-new-social-design/resource-based-economy

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

The biggest challenge of the 21st century is technologies of abundance in the hands of those thinking in terms of scarcity.

Money is a collective fantasy about rationing; how can we move beyond it? As Iain Banks wrote, money is a sign of poverty. James P. Hogan in "Voyage From Yesteryear" also envisioned a post-scarcity society that had moved beyond it.

The last time an big company recruiter sent me an inquiry, I sent back this link: :-)
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html

The problem:
"The Mythology of Wealth"
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/47
"The Wrath of the Millionaire Wannabe's"
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402
"School Daze links"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-October/005379.html
"Rebutting Communiqué from an Absent Future"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/006005.html

Some more links about moving beyond the need to work for pay:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
http://www.usbig.net/whatisbig.html
http://www.pdfernhout.net/basic-income-from-a-millionaires-perspective.html
http://educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
http://www.thevenusproject.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsistence_economy

From something I helped put together:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobless_recovery
"Dealing with a jobless recovery presents global society with some difficult choices about values and identity. A straightforward way to keep the current scarcity-based economic system going in the face of the "threat" of abundance (and limited demand) resulting in a related jobless recovery is to use things like endless low-level war, perpetual schooling, expanded prisons, increased competition, and excessive bureaucracy to provide any amount of make-work jobs to soak up the abundance from high-technology (as well as to take any amount of people off the streets in various ways). That seems to be the main path that the USA and other countries have been going down so far, perhaps unintentionally. Alternatively, there are a range of other options to chose from, whether moving towards a gift economy, a resource-based economy, a basic income economy, or strong local communitarian economies, and to some extent, the USA and other countries have also been pursuing these options as well, but in a less coherent way. Ultimately, the approaches taken to move beyond a jobless recovery (either by creating jobs or by learning to live happily without them) involves political choices that will reflect national and global values, priorities, identities, and aspirations."

Links with four different approaches:
    http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
    http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/buddhist_economics/english.html
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
    http://www.thevenusproject.com/

without taxes there is no society. without society you're very likely to experience actual theft and actual gun barrels, but very little services.

I hear there's no taxes in Somalia and it's only a plane ride away.

There is something called a resource based economy in which there is no money and therefore no taxes. This would be a much better society to live in because it solves the problems of crime, war, and poverty.
http://www.thevenusproject.com/

I just saw the free movie Zeitgeist Addendum last night. It explains how the US keeps the whole world under our thumb through the Federal Reserve, the fractional lending reserves, and the World Bank which gives loans to other countries in order for our corporations to go in there and build infrastructure -- in other words, we loan them money, they pay it to us (via our corporations), and then they still owe the entire amount of money.

And the fact that our money is created out of thin air, via debt, is just stunning. I urge everyone to watch this; it completely explains how international banking systems are corrupting the planet.

There are some flaws! You may want to fast-forward through the first 7 minutes or so, until they start talking about the banking system, as the beginning drags on (and doesn't follow the excellent speech-writer's take: "tell them what you're going to tell them; tell them; then tell them what you told them", but oh well -- it's full of great stuff). And the last hour is pretty out there; it makes sense, but it sounds more like a sales pitch for The Venus Project (which is not necessarily a bad thing, they're very forward-thinking). Also, you may want to watch it with the captions on, as many portions of the movie are rather dark, with no motion, so the captions helped both with recall, and also gave my eyes something to pay attention to.

Anyway, your post reminded me of a part from it, which describes how our corporations control the media (the thread on the ad for the medical marijuana reviewer had a post repeating what most of us already heard on-line, that Mexico recently reclassified pot with laws similar to how Amsterdam treats it, and rightly said "bet you didn't hear that on the six o'clock news") -- a few major corporations control almost every newspaper and TV station in the country. Politicians looking to gain media exposure need to "toe the line" or they won't get funding; or, more realistically, the corporations choose a politician that nobody has ever even heard of, but through constant repetition are able to convince us that we've known of that person for some time. Even someone as insipid as Sarah Palin.

Don't want to make this a huge rant, so I'll just end with: watch the movie. I actually haven't seen the first one, and am going to download it right now (from the first link, above). Enjoy!

you should have a look at the venus project: http://www.thevenusproject.com/

It will never happen but... http://www.thevenusproject.com/

This is probably more art than practicality, but The Venus Project has some very cool renditions of automated construction. Check out the "Automated Construction" link on the following gallery:

http://www.thevenusproject.com/vp_gallery.htm

This is probably more art than practicality, but The Venus Project has some very cool renditions of automated construction. Check out the "Automated Construction" link on the following gallery:

http://www.thevenusproject.com/vp_gallery.htm