02-21-2010, 02:23 PM
Harold Wrote:Dear Danno, It still comes down to this; Who would be the referee that decides which technologies to pursue; who would decide who would be a referee; would their decisions be based on sound, profitable business plans; government mandated business plans never end up serving anyone but those at the head of the table, rightly or wrongly.
As I see it, one of the main problems of this concept is that we are currently encumbered by our present conditioning and way of thinking; we are prisoners of our indoctrination to such a high degree that it can be very hard for us to imagine such foreign concepts as a society that does not use money or barter.
Everyone would have input. The concept of government would become obsolete. A lot of decisions would be arrived at empirically. The current technology available to solve problems and the carrying capacity of the planet would be guiding forces. The concepts of having enough food for everyone on the planet or medical care for everyone are not a liberal or conservative concepts.
Individual freedom would become greater than humans have ever experienced. A person could pursue whatever activity they wanted to.
For the last hundred or so years people have said such freedom would not be possible because of something called "human nature". This is based in ignorance. If human nature were truly a limiting factor in human progress we would not be where we are today. Humans are very flexible. Human nature does exist. It is human nature to want to procreate. It is not human nature to club someone over the head in order to accomplish it.
Just your last sentence: "government mandated business plans never end up serving anyone but those at the head of the table, rightly or wrongly" can serve as an example of the difficulty of escaping our indoctrination. It, in an all encompassing way, assumes that, corruption, greed for money and power, the negative aspects of "human nature" and of government are inescapable. That is not true. The truth is that if we, for once in the course of human existence, put our efforts toward making the best of this life, instead of perpetuating a system that is inherently corrupt, the possibilities for human progress are mind boggling. The negative aspects of our society have been holding us back for eons and will continue to do so in perpetuity unless we change. Now is the time for that change. We have the knowledge and technology to do it. Science and technology unencumbered by greed, profit and corruption are the answers to human advancement.