People are NOT fundamentally dishonest (this is pretty much proven). However, dishonesty breeds dishonesty. Money has become just another [dishonest] way of saying who is "better" than who. We may not all be exactly equal in every way (skills, resources) but it's clear money has very little correlation with our true net worth to society. If you think about it, your money is really your inverse debt to society (selling your work is a promise to buy some work). Inverse debt (really someone else's debt, or 'Somebody Else's Problem') is just as bad for you in the long run because that means there's that much more debt out there and debt is bad for us all. One of the main reasons the free market can't work is that people (and even non-people!) can hoard money. Money is supposed to be "I've done X to help society, so society owes me X," but it's become... I don't even know what... almost like a drug.
Anyways, if there were no dishonesty there would be no need for money. Everyone could just receive favors and promise to do something equally helpful (this is basically the foundation of civilization; think 'ant colony') or be lazy and say 'I'm freeloading!' (and watch their reputation and favors decrease). "Sure, there were always some people who would cheat, but they were isolated and small scale. If you cheated on a large scale, you got caught and..." no one would help you anymore. So there would have to be a reputation tracking system.
As long as the "price" of something does not reflect the true cost to society, there is a NEED for dishonesty (if 'legal' music downloads didn't cost more than your fair share of the production costs, usually a matter of cents, there would be little incentive to steal). "And it has long been known how you can fix that. There are two general ways. The first is to take the market out of the picture. Some entity, most likely the..." fans, "...would fund the production of new works, and anyone would be free to copy them." The advantage of this is that consumers get the goods for their..." small cost, and decide what works get produced.
I like the black hole analogy. People who take exponentially more money than they give are black holes. That's why the rest of us have to work so hard, because all the work we do (represented by money) vanishes into the assholes.
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People are NOT fundamentally dishonest (this is pretty much proven). However, dishonesty breeds dishonesty. Money has become just another [dishonest] way of saying who is "better" than who. We may not all be exactly equal in every way (skills, resources) but it's clear money has very little correlation with our true net worth to society. If you think about it, your money is really your inverse debt to society (selling your work is a promise to buy some work). Inverse debt (really someone else's debt, or 'Somebody Else's Problem') is just as bad for you in the long run because that means there's that much more debt out there and debt is bad for us all. One of the main reasons the free market can't work is that people (and even non-people!) can hoard money. Money is supposed to be "I've done X to help society, so society owes me X," but it's become... I don't even know what... almost like a drug.
Anyways, if there were no dishonesty there would be no need for money. Everyone could just receive favors and promise to do something equally helpful (this is basically the foundation of civilization; think 'ant colony') or be lazy and say 'I'm freeloading!' (and watch their reputation and favors decrease). "Sure, there were always some people who would cheat, but they were isolated and small scale. If you cheated on a large scale, you got caught and..." no one would help you anymore. So there would have to be a reputation tracking system.
As long as the "price" of something does not reflect the true cost to society, there is a NEED for dishonesty (if 'legal' music downloads didn't cost more than your fair share of the production costs, usually a matter of cents, there would be little incentive to steal). "And it has long been known how you can fix that. There are two general ways. The first is to take the market out of the picture. Some entity, most likely the..." fans, "...would fund the production of new works, and anyone would be free to copy them." The advantage of this is that consumers get the goods for their..." small cost, and decide what works get produced.
I like the black hole analogy. People who take exponentially more money than they give are black holes. That's why the rest of us have to work so hard, because all the work we do (represented by money) vanishes into the assholes.