andyh wrote: Yeah sorry andy Late last night I bunged in the RBE bit of Fresco's ideas as something to mull over. It's the bit that I find most relevant in what he says.

I see a trend emerging here, what you perceive as the real world human nature and your idealistic conceptions of a better world.

To me this signifies the cost of the Left losing an ideological war throughout the 70's and eighties, there are many examples of people, communities and industries pulling together with donations, contributions to the struggle, their time, skills etc etc, many striking families who's main bread winners didn't go to prison, were made redundant, kicked off benefits and yet the stories you hear when you speak to these people are of times of plenty they'd never known, people having 2 turkeys on christmas day and more presents than usual.

The point is in, the struggle against class oppression human kindness and generosity flourishes, otherwise what is it struggling for?

Good audio visual here with some historical perspective on the potential of human nature:
www.marxist.com/audio-britain-on-the-brink-1972.htm
Edit to add:

@gue gonna think about historical movements we can look at and learn from - nice idea

@andy - I may be wrong but I am of the belief that technology has advanced at the rate it has because those with the expertise and skill set to develop it have not had to worry about the basics - it has also reduced the manpower needed to get tasks done - in turn though it has lead to the distancing between man and nature - and a reliance on resources that are not as plentiful as man power the ownership of such resource has led to much of the disparity in wealth we have seen through the ages. Removing the 'ownership' and the reliance may defo be one way forward particularly in conjunction with alternative energy sources - manual jobs will still remain and rely on those who are willing to put themselves forward unselfishly in order for fairness to prevail

@dubs - loads to reply to here - will think about the majority but will comment on thisI would love those characteristics to be down to nurture alone - but a huge part of me believes that they are part of our survival instincts and not so easy to let go of.

Guevarista wrote:
Yep nature vs nurture.
To my mind humans are mostly creatures of nurture. IMHO we probably have no idea what we are actually capable of because we are all dumbed down by our culture and its spam on our brain.
To even consider a society without money is something only a few are capable of doing in a mature fashion.
It leads to complete brainfarts lol.
Its certainly one of my favourite topics but sadly I can't discuss it with people I know locally.

thoreau wrote:
One really big example is geothermal energy.
It costs a shitload of money initially which is why it doesn't get used, yet sat right there for the taking is terawatts of power and its not that complicated at all!
It would make sense in an RBE to make use of such a thing.

andyh wrote:
Agree entirely - iceland is a shining example of the ease with which to accomplish such stuff - plus the geothermal lagoons were lush

@Gue. Absolutely, when we look at times when people have collectively struggled: Wars, Strikes etc, we do tend to see a pulling together. A pooling of resources and less competition between individuals. Certainly something to explore as it does I feel have relevance here.

@thor Tbh I see things as being a combination of nature and nurture. Icke would say that tptb have recognized the Reptilian brain/R complex and done their best to get us building on it. I don't think that's too far from the truth. We have been encouraged to keep each other rooted in the animal so to speak rather than evolve beyond such survival instincts at the same pace as our ability to survive has increased.

@andy As I understand it Geothermal is not disastrously expensive when it is put in place at the beginning of a reasonably sized development. It gets monstrously so though if it's added post build or on individual homes.

andyh wrote:
Why have HS2 when we could have ET3?

It's a function of the state - greasing its own wheels.

vimeo.com/36360891

This post scarcity anarchism is another thread I think we should have in relation to the main topic, what are the main sources for Post Scarcity thought is it Bookchin?

icke_is_right wrote:
I don't see any signs of the system changing so im stuck in it also.

When I see massive amounts of people protesting the wealthy class I will think more about this topic.

RealAmerican wrote:
G'day RealAmerican.

The system won't change. It is what it is. What CAN change is our support of it. The system cannot support itself, it requires us to support it. In essence, a new system is required, and that will only happen when each of us stops supporting the current system.

I had a relevant thought this morning whilst chatting with Ms dub.

I remember that about 5 years ago, the band Radiohead released an album online. They didn't set a price for it, anyone that wanted to download it could decide how much they were prepared to pay. From nothing upwards.

Sadly the band went quiet about the results of the experiment for a long time and even ended the experiment on the release of the physical CD. This led to all the naysayers declaring it a failure.

Then the publisher Warner Chappell broke silence:
musically.com/2008/10/15/exclusive-warne...ainbows-pot-of-gold/

It seems that the experiment was something of a big financial success and yielded the band more income than they'd ever got before form digital downloads.

So I ask this. Are such experiments potentially a step towards a new more equitable model for business and ultimately perhaps valuable in addressing the issues of profit and money? Does the concept of pay what you want have any value in this context?

I would say they didn't get more on average per sale, they just got a larger volume of sales with lower price.
Hard to tell exactly from the article link.

Remember Prince 'gave away' his albums via newspaper deals as well.
He apparently saw more cash directly from the deal than he would have seen through normal distribution contracts with the multitude of middlemen taking their cuts.

I think what I'm asking is does the notion of Pay What You Want offer anything at all to a transitional phase on the path away from currency?

As I see it, what happened in the Radiohead experiment was this.

-The band got paid and so did all of the overheads of producing the album.
-The majority of people (myself included although I don't actually rate the album) got the album for free.
-A minority paid what they thought was to them affordable and fair.
-An even smaller minority paid far more than what they thought the album itself was worth. We could speculate as to why but it'd be fair to say that those people had a suitably large disposable income.


Feather mentioning Prince's give away is similarly interesting as are the experiments of people like Trent Reznor.

andyh wrote:
I think the topic is so unrealistic that people outside the conspiracy world just won't engage in the dialog.

RealAmerican wrote:
Well...its unrealistic because they think its unrealistic lol

I've not read through this entire thread so forgive me if I make an ass of myself here. (no change there then).

I always hit stumbling blocks when trying to envision a system without tokens/coins/currency.
Yes I am about to be deliberately simplistic here but ...

Many goods or services are not readily transferable for other goods or services.
Let's say for example you have an approximate enough number of cabbages/chickens/whatthefuckever to offer a reasonable exchange for a home/plot of land/road/architect's remuneration. Those perishable goods quickly become worthless to the recipient.

You end up back at the transferable tokens solution.

Is currency the actual problem or is it allowing people to gamble, trade and speculate with currency?
I see most of our issues today stemming from that practice rather than the actual currency being to blame.

Pushes past tumbleweed to go back and read the thread.