My crazy solutions

1. Imagine an entire nation functioning like a military camp. Everything is organized, people work - and obtain what they need to run the camp. The purpose - sustainability, freedom and the basics for all. Money are banned, people - will have lots of free time - to spend as they want. Travel, play, create, compete, whatever. They will not need "jobs". They can do whatever they want - as long as they don't interfere with the functioning of the camp, and they don't destroy. The camp - uses the best of human inventions - to keep everything going, but it offers only the basics. No "luxury" - cars, mansions, and so on. People are allowed - to leave the camp if they want, and sustain themselves if they chose - but there are no money, so the people who live on their own will not be able to become capitalists, and take more than they need, just to sell - this means - not turning the planet into money. Also - no land ownership. People who want to build stuff outside the territory owned by the "camp", if they move from the land they stay on - the land is free again. Also there will be places - national parks and the "very nice places" - where nobody can move and make his farm. Totally free land.
They are allowed - to build whatever they want - cars, yachts, even the St Petersburg palace, as long as they do it for themselves and for fun, not for "profit". My theory says - people do not like to kill the planet, they will be free, not caught in jobs that have consequences they don't control, so they will not start destroying nature "for fun". Peak oil would be almost irrelevant now - it will affect us after some 300 years. This works only for nations that have the resources to be self sufficient. It does not work for Saudi Arabia.
Destruction will be limited, if some people want a Ferrari - they will need to start almost from nothing. If there are not enough passionate people - to help with all the production - there will be no car, there are no poor people that will do whatever you tell them to do, because you condition their survival on that. Everyone can participate in the "camp" (nation) and get the basics. Nobody will need a job mining the metal for that car - nobody needs to destroy the Earth and waste his time - just to survive. Only - if people have the same passion, they will gather, and create - whatever they want, working because they want to. For "fun" - which in fact means "living".

2. A solution for today's mad system, without thinking about the planet, resources, people:
No more banks, no more taxes. One single state owned bank, it gives loans with no interest. You still need to show you can pay it, and pay the money you get, but with no interest. This - and the lack of taxes means - super economic growth. The state (minimized) - sustains itself by printing money. No need for taxes. These new money is what the economy needs to grow. They will not cause inflation. It's possible that the economy will need even more money than the state prints and spends - in this case money are thrown from helicopters, or something like that. Right now - all the new money the economy needs for growth come from the banks that create them from nothing and require interest. Because this is going on since 1500 - nobody can call it "theft" anymore. The bankers own us. If - the money the state spends - cause inflation (unlikely), taxes appear, and taxes will exist only until the inflation problem goes away.


[edit on 21-6-2010 by pai mei]

reply to post by pai mei


Your "crazy solutions" are what will save this planet.

BUT>>>who gives up power? And who gives up money?

The rich and the powerful would rather die (and they will).

Not crazy solutions, pai mei.

And I guess many of us would like to live in the society you mention in your first solution and from history, this is similar to the ideals that true communism holds, where everything is shared for the good of all.

Where this solution falls down, is with us chickens. While sum would be happy to live in a society where everything is shared, some will want more and some will not want to share the work load, and typically, those who make decisions are subject to influence from those who want decisions made in their favour.

With solution 2, there is an implication of growth, and people becoming rich off the efforts on others, as to repay the loans, you would have to have an asset or skill which can be sold to someone are a higher price that it costs.

reply to post by Freedom ERP


Humans are not greedy or evil by nature. The system we lived in - shaped our beliefs. Imagine if the 1. solution was in place. Would you trade that freedom for what we have today ? To obtain the basics - there is not much work needed. We would be working some 1/10 of today, or less. Rest of the time to use as you wish.

"No Worry, No When, No Want"

Also see what happens when people find - a system as I described:
Prisoner Exchange
In the past this system was in place - by the nature of things. Now we are too many, and we modified the planet too much, so - we need to make it work, it can't be "free for all" anymore.

More info about how this madness began, here, page 24:
www.scribd.com...


[edit on 21-6-2010 by pai mei]

reply to post by pai mei


I am sorry?

Humans are pretty bad - the rich guys are destroying the planet.

So we won't get this working.

reply to post by catwhoknows


I don't care. It's too easy for me to post this here, so I post it.

Grass grows trough the asphalt, on the asphalt, wherever it can. It does not care, and does not know the asphalt is there. It's alive, it grows wherever it can. It ignores the Machine. So - I don't care about "you can't change anything" propaganda. Grass (and all life everywhere around) does not care. I - being the "superior human!", should also not care.

I recommend all the links above.

This is the primal war: the refusal of life to be domesticated. It is the refusal of wildness to become ordered and civilized. It is the spirit that refuses to die.

It is not about a certain people, place or time: it is about life. Those who know that spirit without mediation have always put up the hardest fight. There was no fight or revolution for abstract ideals, for some unknown or unknowable place of undefined and questionable freedom as individuals. The fight was about something felt, something innate. The fight, then, now and always, is the rage of the spirit of life and wildness. It knows no isolation or mediation. It grows through the cracks in the sidewalk and the refusal of toxins in our bodies. It will stop for nothing and it is extremely deadly.

It is within us, anxiously waiting. It cries for the healing of the spirit (rewilding) and the healing of the body (resistance). Both are one in the same. Our deepest wound cries for healing. That is a cry for action.

For the nihilists and egoists, resistance comes from the immediate need to destroy what destroys you. Its only construction is in its destruction. I’m not going to say that is always a bad thing. But I will say this: I have no question in my being that there is something that I am fighting for, not just something I’m fighting against. It is not about morality or about some lofty new age crap: it’s about something unmediated and present. Something real.

www.insurgentdesire.org.uk...

They know that there is a way the world is supposed to be, and a magnificent role for themselves in that more beautiful world. Broken to the lesser lives we offer them, they react with hostility, rage, cynicism, depression, escapism, or self-destruction—all the defining qualities of modern adolescence. Then we blame them for not bringing these qualities under control, and when they finally have given up their idealism we call them mature. Having given up their idealism, they can get on with the business of survival: practicality and security, comfort and safety, which is what we are left with in the absence of purpose. So we suggest they major in something practical, stay out of trouble, don't take risks, build a résumé. We think we are practical and wise in the ways of the world. Really we are just broken and afraid. We are afraid on their behalf, and, less nobly, we are afraid of what their idealism shows us: the plunder and betrayal of our own youthful possibilities.

www.ascentofhumanity.com...

[edit on 21-6-2010 by pai mei]