The Ethical Planetarian Platform; Revision 001

reply to post by Amaterasu

IQ of 165? Drive to understand? Analysis based on deep study? New ideas? Please. (And I do source where I have source and not merely my analysis - those have been ignored... Meh. Whatever, boncho. You're right.)

Where are the references to your "deep study"? Bibliographies, statistical analysis, something, etc...

Do you believe Youtube videos are references? Because they are not. And you plaster them all over different forums trying to support this idea.

OMG! I was asked to appear on The Colbert Report! I was posting about the abundance paradigm, and the path to get there, what to expect and all – posting all that on the Colbert Nation forum, and it seems that Stephen Colbert himself became intrigued! He offered me the Colbert Bump! I will be flown to NYC – still unclear when exactly – to prepare for and appear on his show! I am so excited!

Excerpt from your "book" ^^

Who exactly was on Colbert? Where is the clip. Post it for everyone.




IQ of 156 ends up as a prostitute and moves on to social work.

I don't know how you claiming to have a high IQ has anything to do with what you are talking about. But that is your entire platform, distraction!

When confronted with reality you turn to little semantic ramblings that you think will support your stance. Actions of a grifter, through and through.

If you want to claim that the "Ethical Planetary Platform" is based on reality, than show it. If not, represent it for what it is, fiction.

Stop screwing with gullible people's heads.

reply to post by boncho

I did notice a post about S. Colbert as a character in the book is that true? If so he has been discussed here allot lately.

Amaterasu reply:
Yup. He is a character. And I DID offer him first read. (I have several connections...) I never heard from him and he lost out.

Open Letter to Colbert from you
Reply from someone on the Colbert forum:

AMATERASU

STEPHEN HAS NO CLUE WHO YOU ARE. HE DOES NOT READ THE FORUMS.



holy doodles, delusional much

So you tell people in one forum you have "connections" to Colbert, but you get laughed off another forum (his forum), and yet your book is supposed to be about "Ethics".

I don't understand how that one works. Is lying and making up stuff okay in your "ethical" world?
12


I still don't understand why you don't write fiction with this idea, it is great fiction and has the potential to be read by many. I seriously question your judgement.

Originally posted by boncho
reply to post by Amaterasu

 

IQ of 165? Drive to understand? Analysis based on deep study? New ideas? Please. (And I do source where I have source and not merely my analysis - those have been ignored... Meh. Whatever, boncho. You're right.)

Where are the references to your "deep study"? Bibliographies, statistical analysis, something, etc...

I didn't keep a record of all my source material. I am bad with retaining names (something I must live with) but I do remember that Entropy is one of them. A great deal of research has been web-based - and no, I did not keep a list of those either. But, y'know what? You're right.

Do you believe Youtube videos are references? Because they are not. And you plaster them all over different forums trying to support this idea.

Oh, now THAT's an untruth. I have posted very few vids - and the last one had to do with cannabis and its curative nature, and before that it was all about the 9/11 false flag. I may have posted a vid or two (still... point to one; I would love to know how long it takes you to point to one) but I surely don't "plaster them all over different forums trying to support this idea."

On top of that, youtube is just like experts - some pieces are worth the attention; others (and most) are crap. I can assure you that if I did offer a vid or two - they were worth the watch.

OMG! I was asked to appear on The Colbert Report! I was posting about the abundance paradigm, and the path to get there, what to expect and all – posting all that on the Colbert Nation forum, and it seems that Stephen Colbert himself became intrigued! He offered me the Colbert Bump! I will be flown to NYC – still unclear when exactly – to prepare for and appear on his show! I am so excited!

Excerpt from your "book" ^^

Who exactly was on Colbert? Where is the clip. Post it for everyone.

WTF!?! You really are reaching, aren't you? In case you hadn't noticed, you are quoting a character in a book I wrote to illustrate the functioning of the abundance paradigm. That character is FICTIONAL. The book, is not so much fiction as it is demonstrative, and Stephen Colbert was used as an example of a media assist in getting the ideas out to the tipping point.

bonch, I am very disappointed in you.

I don't know how you claiming to have a high IQ has anything to do with what you are talking about. But that is your entire platform, distraction!

Uh. Yeah Sure. You're right.

When confronted with reality you turn to little semantic ramblings that you think will support your stance. Actions of a grifter, through and through.

Uh. Yeah Sure. You're right.

If you want to claim that the "Ethical Planetary Platform" is based on reality, than show it. If not, represent it for what it is, fiction.

I have been trying. That is what the book is for. That is what my posts are for. That is what my (seemingly at this point) wasting time with you is for. And it is only fiction until we decide to do it.

Stop screwing with gullible people's heads.

Stop taking a piss on things you can't understand. And stop posting arguments when you have been told you're right.

Originally posted by boncho
reply to post by boncho

 

I did notice a post about S. Colbert as a character in the book is that true? If so he has been discussed here allot lately.

Amaterasu reply:
Yup. He is a character. And I DID offer him first read. (I have several connections...) I never heard from him and he lost out.

Open Letter to Colbert from you
Reply from someone on the Colbert forum:

AMATERASU

STEPHEN HAS NO CLUE WHO YOU ARE. HE DOES NOT READ THE FORUMS.



holy doodles, delusional much

So you tell people in one forum you have "connections" to Colbert, but you get laughed off another forum (his forum), and yet your book is supposed to be about "Ethics".

I don't understand how that one works. Is lying and making up stuff okay in your "ethical" world?
12


I still don't understand why you don't write fiction with this idea, it is great fiction and has the potential to be read by many. I seriously question your judgement.

edit on 7-4-2011 by boncho because: (no reason given)

I had to repost that in its entirety. Really, bonch. I'm flattered. Why would you go to SO much trouble for li'l ol' me!?! You've read The Abundance Paradigm, clearly, and now you've gone hunting down my activity on another board! And studied it so DEEPLY at that! Wow. I didn't know I meant that much to you.

Here's the thing... You don't know where my connections lay. I can assure you they were not at the colbertnation forums. Please don't call me a liar until you know you are seeing all possibilities. Yes, there were some ill-mannered individuals at the board - reminded me a bit of you in their intense caring about what I say - and they spouted lots of stuff with little substance...

reply to post by Amaterasu


If you have so many connections, why post on Colbert's forum?

Seems, unneeded.

reply to post by boncho


I almost didn't deign to respond. You presume much. I had connections, and if they were tenuous, so what. I tried. Nothing came of it, just as I said in my post. Not all the connections One thinks One has are intact, and I presume that this was a case of that happening - connections no longer intact.

I think it's hysterical how far you reach, bonch. These nitpicks of yours. Off the wall nitpicks!

Anyway... You're right. Off you go then.

Originally posted by Amaterasu
reply to post by boncho

 

I almost didn't deign to respond. You presume much. I had connections, and if they were tenuous, so what. I tried. Nothing came of it, just as I said in my post. Not all the connections One thinks One has are intact, and I presume that this was a case of that happening - connections no longer intact.

I think it's hysterical how far you reach, bonch. These nitpicks of yours. Off the wall nitpicks!

Anyway... You're right. Off you go then.

You state things as facts. You base that on your knowledge and judgement. Those things should be put into perspective.

reply to post by boncho


LOL! Off you go then.

reply to post by Amaterasu


My insufficient words are like stone age tools compared to the laser beam precision of the immortal Rand. I will cede the floor to a mind neither of us could hope to rival.

"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Aconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?

"When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor – your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money. Is this what you consider evil?

"Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions – and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.

"But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made – before it can be looted or mooched – made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.

"To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except by the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss – the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery – that you must offer them values, not wounds – that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best your money can find. And when men live by trade – with reason, not force, as their final arbiter – it is the best product that wins, the best performance, then man of best judgment and highest ability – and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?

"But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality – the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.

"Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants; money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

"Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth – the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve that mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

"Money is your means of survival. The verdict which you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you'll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?

"Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?

"Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is the loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money – and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.

"Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.

"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another – their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.

"But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride, or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich – will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt – and of his life, as he deserves.

"Then you will see the rise of the double standard – the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money – the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law – men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims – then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.

"Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion – when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing – when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors – when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you – when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice – you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.

"Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it becomes, marked: 'Account overdrawn.'

"When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world?' You are.

"You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it's crumbling around you, while you're damning its life-blood – money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves – slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody's mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer. Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers – as industrialists.

"To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money – and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being – the self-made man – the American industrialist.

"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose – because it contains all the others – the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money'. No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity – to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted, or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality.

"Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters' continents. Now the looters' credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide – as, I think, he will.

"Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns – or dollars. Take your choice – there is no other – and your time is running out."

From where I stand, until any person forms a critique of money and what it represents, they must first take this eternal offering of wisdom into account, and they must either accept its validity or refute it in some reasonable way. If the critic is oblivious to the wisdom (willfully or no) contained in the above quote and wishes to have a reasonable discussion about what money really is and what its effects it has, that person to me is fooling themselves, and is a mere pretender when it comes to offering solutions to people other than themselves.

Scarcity must always exist in some form as long as human lives are finite. Thus trade, with some mode of exchange, must always exist until a time machine is mass marketed. If it is, it will only come into being through the means of voluntary exhange between voluntary partners, represented, in some way, by 'money'.

Originally posted by Amaterasu

Originally posted by Neo_Serf

*edit thought i had the quote thing down but apprarently not. appologies for my akwardness.*

Well... You can ORDER them. But I think you would not get them. You are using absurdities as if they are reasonable. You would have no need or use for all these robots - well, unless they're nanorobots... But that's not what you're saying.

Does not compute. You give me no answer to my question. You think I will not get them. You provide no insight as to how my request will be processed (and by who) and denied. You simply assert that I probably wont, and you seem quite comfortable in not providing a reason why I wont. Then you gloss it over by labeling the whole notion 'absurd', even though you provided a half answer first, thus telling me that you didnt actually find the query to be unworthy of a reasonable response, as you should have if the question truly was absurd.

If its absurd to suggest, why offer a reasonable answer? The reason I ask is the same reason I asked to begin with - because you have no reasonable solution to my problem besides the bliss wand.

Who said anything about "infinite?"

YOU DID! Remember? Scarcity does not exist!

Effectively, yes, we do have infinite gold. Back in the 1970's we transmuted lead into gold. The problem was not so much how to do it, but that, because the energy required to do it cost so much, an ounce would have cost something on the order of a million dollars. With that cost of energy removed, we can transmute most anything into gold.

So currently we cannot transmute stuff into gold because energy is relatively scarce. With neat infitnite energy, of course gold would not longer be the standard as its standard rests mostly on its relative scarcity. But infinite energy does not currently exist, as far as I know, and thus basing your *entire* platform on non existence is *pure fantasy*.

Show me free energy and Ill show you the monetary input that made it possible, Until scarcity is elimited *totally* (which you admit is not conceivably possible due to the limit of lobster in the sea) there must be a mode of exchange.

I did not, nor have I ever said "limitless," "infinite" (except effectively, as in gold), or any other descriptor meaning open-ended. I said "abundant." "Abundant" means enough to provide fully the basic needs for all, and have plenty left over - to the tune of basic needs ten times over.

By your standard of abundance, food, medicine and shelter are all abundant currently. We *could* already meet the basic needs of the destitute people you uphold as every persons personal shame. I know you will ascribe the misallocation of these vital resources to money itself, but let me cut you off at the pass, and I will assert this as fact without going into the valid reasoning and evidence - the real reason people starve, go homeless and die of malaria is not due to money, it is in fact due to the violent minority that currently control money and use it as a genocial weapon against those money should in truth be serving and uplifting. The massive poverty and starvation caused by western sunbsidies in agriculture is not due to the mechanism of value exchange which is money, but instead is inflicted by the hyper violence of the state that hugely subsidises (through involuntary taxation backed by guns) western farming and thus gives no room for 3rd world farms to compete in and thus advance. Farm subsidies in the west, a system enforced through institutional violence (using money as a captive weaponized facilitator) is likely responsible for more deaths than all wars combined in the 20th century.

Again, this is not moneys fault. The fault lies in those who support the state, and thus violence, not paper notes in ones back pocket.

The idea is not that we can accommodate absurdities, but that poverty will be vanquished - as well as taxes.

If an effect of free enegy is the elimination of poverty, then thats awesome. I think a paralelle could be drawn between first world poor, who have a relative abundance of food (and thus never starve) compared to third world poor, who starve en mass. If technology could be used to raise the bar for all in a sustainable way to a level beyond mere survival, that would of course be awesome. I just dont your demacation point between sacrcity (artificial or not) to relative abundance. (and if scarcity is largely artificial, it stands to reason that it is made this way by some entity that does not wish humanity to live in abundance, and thus relying on abundance as an inevitability would be nieve, as humanity would be actively opposed in naturally reaching abundance.)

And reasonable request will be delivered in a reasonable length of time. Any absurd request is likely to go unfulfilled. You may have to wait for lobster - depends on the availability. But you will not have to wait for food, clothing, housing. That will be yours for the asking.

Again, my question is not *if* my demands will be delivered, as we have established that some system must determine if i receive my allocation or not. My question is *by what standard, and by who* is this decision made?

Its really quite important that you answer this question clearly. If I order 10 000 lobsters from my personal robot attendant, within your abundance paradigm, where along the line of actions and while my order be declined? On what grounds, and by whom?

Whereas with money, no one would order 10 000 lobsters because such an investment would be plain stupid, all rational arguements aside. If I did posses the necessary capital to do such a thing, I would likely bankrupt immediately with 9995 rotting lobsters on my hands.

Not so in abundance, right?

that give them bliss to work on.

Could a form of virtuous bliss be measurable in dollars?

As for abundance, it surely does exist, but we are held back from it by the system of money. Money is a representation of energy expended. With an effectively infinite source of energy, the need for money (to account for it's being expended) will become moot. We have the plenum energy, and many have shown ways (and there are several) to extract it, and if we were allowed to have that technology for peaceful application, we would no longer be barred (virtually all of us) from the lifestyle of the power elite.

Could I buy one of these infinite energy motors in dollars and feed 10 starving people on its energy, and still remain virtuous?

If money is evil, are the above actions also evil?

would ever HAVE to work

A human can only rightfully be judged by what he/she takes in relation to what he/she produces. If one if a net suprlus to himself and thus others, he can be judged as moral. If he is a net drain to those around him and lives as a human parasite, he can be seen as immoral. If production is rendered irrelevant by abundance, we can move the yardstick. Until then, every person must produce at least as much as they consume if they wish to be on the nobeler side of humanity.

Yeah, baby, we have a marvelously abundant universe. We just need a paradigm of living in it.

That paradigm is called true freedom and does not require robots of any kind. (although robiods would be a great advantage to a free people)

Have you ever had both the experience of having no money and seeing all the things to want out there and wanting many of them such that it aches - and having lots of money to spend and looking at all the things to want out there and finding nothing that you really want enough to spend money on them? I have.

When I have no money I feel the sensation of helplessness in that I have nothing tangible to offer strangers in return for their good which I require. (food, shelter, ect) When I exchange my value as a worker for my bosses value as an organizer, i relish my justly earned paycheck that symbolizes all my concerntrated investment into a service that my customers value. My surplus of 'wealth' (which is minusule compared to some and lavish compared to others) gives me a sensation of personal value - i feel my skills and time invested are repaid in kind. This surplus in basic living that Im blessed to have access to (due to relative monetary freedom) allow me to do things a mere wage slave could never hope to - to take time off to enjoy the intangibles such as hiking in the wild, to invest in health products most of humanity could never dream of, living or past. Surplus allows me to tip my local servicers and thus add to the local economy. In short, surplus allows me to not only pay my own way and thus rely on no one, but it allows my independance to further the independence of other producers, who add earned value to my life and thus i return it in kind. Surplus of investment, represented in dollars and gains voluntarily, allows me both freedom of action, and freedom of virtue.

If abundance makes the above obsolete, then bring it on!

In abundance, most of Us will find that We are content - comfortable - with very few things.

Abundance and 'very few things' are not compatible terms.

And as for robots... What if we took all the money we're spending on war and instead, put it into peaceful, open-source efforts to build robots to do what We want to do on this planet? I offer ideas here. If the goal is to get rid of money, what does it matter where the money comes from?

The goal is not to get rid of money, the goal is to live virtuously. If virtue can be measured, in voluntary cases, to be a measure of virtue, getting rid of money would necessarily eliminate any virtue gained by the symbol of 'money'.

You make it sound as if every one of us has a whole lot of money to throw around. Golly gee. I'm free to throw my money in any direction I want. While technically true, the fact is that virtually all Humans on this planet are not so disencumbered. I will speak statistically here:

So you imply that money could indeed serve man, if it were just held by more people and less concentrated in the hands of the elite?

Agreed! That money is controlled currently by the elite does not invalidate the concept of money, just as the current monoploy of firepower held by the elite does not invalidate the concept of self defence secured by weaponry. A tool is a tool, by whom it is weilded and to what end is the issue, not the tool itself. (as, once invented, it will always exist. No problem is solved by monopolizing the use of dominant technology)

We all worry about paying the bills and holding what we have together, dependent on money(/power/energy), and many are losing their grip as we type. The System is doing what it was designed to do - and that is fail. I'm trying to offer a solution that does not entail a gruesome end to things - globally and into the universe.

And Im offering examples as to why your proposed system comes off as a desperate reactionary kneejerk ,seasoned with a healthy dose of marxism to satisfy your anxiety. The universe will be fine if we annialate ourself, but we wont. A gruesome end is almost assured at this point, a gruesome end to this system that is, to which we both agree. What we want is a path towards a more enlightened future, and in that we are both in total agreement, and a certain comraderie exists between those who look beyond their next couple steps.

Im simply telling you that your path out of the woods has been walked for centuries by those who found not escape, but a cliff, and until humanity can fly off that cliff, metephorically speaking, it may best best to seek the path to the spring that was always available, but never within perception. And we dont need robot boots to get there. (although it might be quicker)

Interesting comment. Ok, I apologize for my impatience. I'm intrigued.

I might wonder if you can see the drive to peaceful and loving outcome in all things as a trait to value. Humans have this trait, though it is mostly infolded in the mesh of a money(/power/energy) System, and though many of them are not extremely bright, they are not extremely lacking. Most, well, statistically ALL Humans want to keep Love going where They find it, and as long as They must rely on money(/p/e) as Their social energy flow, the love of money will produce it's evil.

The most peaceful, loving, and rewarding action I could offer to a relative stranger was (is) to offer him a raise, not based on his needs, wants or desires, but based on his own concentrated effort to add value to myself and the goal we set ourselves to accomplish. When I think about the look on his face when I rewarded him (not appeased him) for his justly earned raise, and knowing exactly how it feels to calculate the increased standard of living that he will recieve, and how i too once relished and earned that extra dollar an hour, i get goosebumps. Not because I handed out some alms for the poor, or disrespected him in any way by offering him charity, but instead had the capacity to reward his competence...well that is what i call bliss. And there is no way this could have been accomplished non materially, as I am completely indifferent to his personal life and struggle. (although i too have struggled, and continue to, so i wish him well and am gratified when he succeeds.)

Not so with the lazy, incompetent, self entitled brat. I would fire him before he could do any damage to myself, and with his own actions he shall be judged.

Again, if in scarcity the layabout can exist without burden to his fellows, then so be it. I would love to layabout somedays. My moral code forbids living off another, though.

That is why *I* care about Humanity as a whole. If you do not value that trait, then not caring - on the planetary and species levels - might be understood. But then what would become incomprehensible to me would be the lack of empathy towards peace and love.

That you see my unwillingness to relinquish that which is demanded of me as incomprehensible seems just as daft to me as your assertion that all are deserving. Peace comes through strength and independence. Love comes through virtuous action. Both are earned traits, and not given upon demand.

LOLOL! You'll do just fine in abundance!

Virtue succeeds under any paradigm, even if it fails.

Wait, wait, wait. If I'm sane I will admit I do not have all the answers? No, no, no. If I'm sane, I will admit I do not know whether I have all the answers or not. And I'll cop to that in a heartbeat. Nay! Nanosecond! Hrrm.

Excuse my response that is dripping with condecention, but that is the sanest thing youve said so far. Now only if youd apply this universally...

So far, I have felt confident that I do have the answers to the questions I have been asked. So I am giving the probability of me having "the answer" (an answer) to the next one at at least 85%. Heh. I'm much more confident, but only bank on solid expectation.

Wut probability would you ascribe to your hypotosis that money is the root of all evil?

Whoa. Had to stop you right there. That analogy is way off. Here's why: Money directly drives distribution; sex does not (in the vast majority of cases) drive marriage - though it is an important factor, the goals of the two intertwined, the children added and intertwined, these are the true drivers. The only place money does not drive distribution is in areas where people are subsistence farming and no money really flows at all.

Whoa. Gotta stop yo short on your short stop right there. That you think money is the driver (ie the CAUSE) of distribution, and not a facilitator of distribution, shows, frankly, your ignorance on the topic. Money simply arrises to fill the demand caused by distribution. Money, in effect, is a distributor, not the distributee. Money, in other words, does not create demand, it instead fills the demand for a common symbol of distribution, in your words.

The metephor holds in that sex is the currency of marrige, as bonding pairs echange value in order to reproduce. That echange is, in many ways, facilitated by the currency of sex. To claim that the mode of exchange is evil, and not the exchange itself, is to ignore the moral content of the agreed (or forced) terms.

Rape is the currency of an evil exchange just as consentual sex is the currency of volunteerism. Both are sexual modes of intercourse, but only one is moral. That both modes are reliant on penatration does not invalidate sex as a mode of exchange.

"Pricing is the *only* method we currently know of that can allocate resources efficiently..." Ok. But other models of economic structure have worked at varying levels even in this unchanging streak of scarcity paradigm. The problem is a planetary, species specific application of a scarcity of energy.

OK...so you agree the effecivity of money?

Which models do you site that ourperformed free(ish) market caplitalism? You realize that this computerized exchange was made possible only by the productive output of free(er) humans?

Um. We're using it right now. Freely (in a tenuous sense...). The Interweb

.

Why do you suppose it was the US that developed the intenet, and almost every other significant invention of the past couple hundred years? Was it in spite of money?

No... Money itself is not to blame. The LOVE OF money is. It is not highly probable (vanishingly small probability) that we can remove the LOVE OF money and keep money. By removing money, the LOVE OF money is excised. As long as money and the love of it exist, we WILL see elite and poverty. Without it, we will see equity and freedom for all.

But I DO love money, and more importantly, i love the symbol of money and what it represents. And yet, (and youll have to take my word for it) my existence occurs to the net benefit of those i engage with. I live a moral life, free of violence and fakery. And yet I use money. How can I possibly be moral, by your principals?

Oh, certainly. I'm just saying it would become unnecessary if we used the Interweb to have a central place to publcly and we set it up publicly, open source. Have a contest to see who had the best code to do that and choose the best one. Ooo. There's an idea.

This contest is already decided optimally by money. Anyone can click a box to show approval; only one who has accumulated value can truly show his deepest approval by allocating his precious resources into something he feels with add value for his hard earned input. Taking an online survey with no material cost is not the same as directing your hard earned capital into something you feel will return value.

And without money, and with the respect for Consciousness, the costs will be non-existent.

I currently respect your conciousness, and yet I pay internent fees to interact with you. This comes, ultimately, at the cost of my time.

No.... If I recall correctly, YOU suggested there might be other aspects of social energy than money, and I wholly agree. My point has never been that other energies do not exist, but that money(/p/e) is a thorn in the side of Humanity and that by excising it Our noble selves will manifest. And right NOW we can do it.

....so do it? how many $$ did you spend today? would you say those transactions were evil?

Ooo. And how many have followed this exchange of ours and considered each side? I'm hoping it is many. The more considering my ideas, the more likely Humanity will survive intact. Just to the tipping point, that's all I have to get to. Just to the tipping point.

You realize that the few half open minds you think might be reading this thread may very well see your robot utopia as the Skynet of our immediate future?

Anyway, my point is that ideas mingle and, in a chaotic emergence, match problems to solutions on a scale never before possible. That is why the Interweb and free energy and robotics and ideas capable of being spread worldwide if needed is so important.

Again, need is your highest ideal, and not production. This is pure communism. Just because someone exists and needs food does not mean I am morally bound to feed him.

Look up Polyface Farms... Here, I did it for you: www.polyfacefarms.com... This is the vision I have of comfort for the Conscious beings (small "b" to differentiate from Beings, who are ones who ask for rights...) while maintaining harmony and high yield. If Humans did this, rather than the evil out of love for money, our planet would blossom and provide as needed. We could distribute based on need. "Pricing" would be moot.

Sorry, again, learn some basic economics before you start delcaring solutions that great minds have grappled over for generations. Distribution based on 'need' (whatever that is) has been tried for a century and has been proven to be the single greatest killer of mankind of all time beyond natural death. That a homeless man needs booze does not mean I must work to provide him with such, and that a man cannot afford color TV does not necessitate (morally) that I work an extra hour per week to suite his preferences.

No, I won't call it by any name which uses scarcity paradigm terminology, because that is not what it is. And though there have been Systems that have used "communism" as their basis, no System on earth has been truly communistic - all have included power elite and a disproportionate amount of pie given to the inner party. 1984 is a prime example of the fascist overlay onto ideals of managing scarcity. In abundance, no one is above any others, and management is chaotic, emerging through the Interweb.

You dont seem to realize where that pie arrises from initially. Ill give you a hint - its not by robots or central planners.

Where people have the tools, materials and time we absolutely see problems solved, art and science emerging. If there were no such expression, there would be no overarching problems solved, there would be no art or science. With tools, materials and time available to any who want to avail themselves, we will see all the more of problems solved, art and science.

But you would at least admit that all such endevours are currently funded by money, yes?

You, as sociopath, may hunker in your domicile and ignore the world at large - in abundance you would be no drain. Have a nice life then, I guess it would be. But Humans, by and large are social, caring, Beings - many of whom would do something for the bliss of it, even for strangers.

You hurl a whole slew of intended insults at me in one short burst of veiled contempt. I have no response to this, being a 'sociopath', besides idle curiosity and mild distain. You assume that because i dont allow myself to be cowed by the invalid whip of fake aultriusm, that i dont care for anything but myself. Well, I dont, and neither do you. The difference between us is that i embrace my own self interest, while you seem to mask it behind some false pretense of caring for your fellow man. Let me shock you some - you and I only care about our fellow to the extent to which they allow us to live a preferable life. The suffering of others is only painful because their suffering effects *us*, and thus our desire to help our fellow man is just an extention of our rightful desire to help ourselves,

a person, as a psychopathic personality, whose behavior is antisocial and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience.

I think you must check your assumtions, as my moral code is specifically tailored to my social concience.

Given that you say you have no connection to society as a whole - only individuals you encounter - I can see "sociopath" being used to describe who you say you are. You lack social conscience, it would seem.

You lack basic reasoning, it would seem. If I owe nothing to anyone who has not earned it, but owe every last bit of compensation to those who have, does this make me evil, in your estimation? A simple way of asking this would be to ask 'if I am in *need*, (your standard) so you owe me anything? And visa versa?

Am I evil for not giving a beggar my hard earned change?

If it is selfish to demand resiprocity in every one of my binding relationships, I suppose Ive earned your intended slur.

No intended slur. An observation based on your responses here. Nothing wrong with demanding reciprocity in your relationships. But it IS sociopathic to have no connection, no conscience, to society as a whole.

If I could emphasize one point in this whole rant it would be opposition to the above slander. There is no such thing as soceity as a whole! This is a biased construct youve weaponized in your mind.

Would you say I would be sociopathic if I has no connection to the Nazi party in Hitlers Germany? Would I be a conciousless monster if I rejected societys plans under Stalin or Mao? In these cases, I stand alone and defiant, just as I do now towards your technical hyper statism, or the current system of today. Am I evil for opposing the Nazis of my day, even if they make up 'society as a whole'?

Youre right, I have no connection and no empathy for those who follow the cult of death. They are scum and vermin and in my mind, and while I would never attack another, I hold nothing but the highest contempt towards the destroyers of freedom. In my mind, this does not make me insane, but instead hyper sane, as I refuse to forgive the unforgiveable. I refuse to sanction the evil society at large by consenting to its parasitic needs over my own.

If you hate, you do not understand agape. It's kinda like loving the sinner and not the sin. And I propose that it is your sociopathic nature that renders you incapable of this love, this agape

.

That you believe love in unconditional shows me only that you are not familiar with real love, which must be mirrored by hate of that which is loves opposite. That you allow love for the most underserving shows me you disprese your love without true disernment and value judgement that must preceed true love.

Hitler, Mao and Bernake are not *worthy* of love. If you feel they are, love truly has no meaning to you.

edit on 10-4-2011 by Neo_Serf because: (no reason given)

Originally posted by Neo_Serf
reply to post by Amaterasu

 

My insufficient words are like stone age tools compared to the laser beam precision of the immortal Rand. I will cede the floor to a mind neither of us could hope to rival.

"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Aconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?

Money is NOT the root of all evil. It is the LOVE of money that is the root of all evil. Rand, right there, nullifies her analysis. The root of money is the accounting of energy expended. Of course there would be no money if we expended no energy to produce things. Money has no connection to the goods and services themselves. Only the energy expended which produced the goods and services. Money is made necessary by a scarcity of energy. What I consider evil is the love of it such that technology is hidden to ensure profit, cures are hidden to protect profit, wars are instigated to ensure profit, illnesses are created to ensure profit (think water fluoridation - which is a way of disposing of toxic chemicals under the guise of being good), and any other evil done in the name of profit.

"When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor – your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money. Is this what you consider evil?

The value we place on money is rather arbitrary - the energy of the farm worker is valued much lower than the energy a star football player puts out. And Rand right there explains that money is an accounting of energy! "[Y]our claim upon the energy of the men who produce." So if we have infinite energy and robots to do the production... What do we need money for? And "moral principle?" The root of money is NOT a moral principle in and of itself. We surround it with a cloak of moral principle (don't be evil because of it). But the fact is that those who covet it, who love it, ignore the moral cloak and do evil to have it in one of its three forms: money/power/energy.

"Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions – and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.

Yes, I have taken a look at the root of production. It is often based on (wage) slave labor to ensure large profits. The ideas developed and the personal labor to bring them into reality are based in bliss. Bliss in solving a problem, or creating more ease, or getting money in the end. Bliss.

All the rest Rand brings up are thought experiments with the stripping away of technology. That is unrealistic (except in the SHTF scenarios). We must look at what we can build on. Those whose bliss it is to grow wheat may do so, but we can create robots to do that. We have no need to obtain food by our own back and sweat. Rand is correct in saying that man's mind is responsible for all the goods produced - but very wrong in saying that man's mind is the root of all wealth - wealth is just an accumulation of energy credits as they ooze around the economy greasing the exchange of goods and services.

"But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made – before it can be looted or mooched – made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.

"To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will.

This is all fine - until...the love of money breaks down that code. Men lose their good will in favor of their price - the point at which money becomes overwhelmingly enticing.

Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort.

Money rests on the axiom that every Human's energy is worth something and a better system was needed to account for it than barter - which had the downside that if one had something to trade but no one wanted or needed it, one might starve.

Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except by the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return.

This is true. But again, it points out that money is based on energy expended.

Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more.

Not exactly. Money also promotes motive to evil to gain more of it.

Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders.

No... Money also permits fraud, theft, and unethical business choices to promote profit. Hardly things of mutual benefit.

Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss – the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery – that you must offer them values, not wounds – that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods.

Money merely greases the mutual agreements. It is inequitably distributed - back to the farm worker vs. the star football player. Farm workers are paid far closer to what we pay slaves (and about as much as it would cost a slave owner to keep them) while the star football player is paid like a prince...yet we need the product of farms to survive and do not need football to do so. The common bond between Humans is NOT the exchange of goods but the exchange of Heart. If it were merely the exchange of goods, altruism would be non-existant and the inequities of the money system would be of no concern.

Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best your money can find. And when men live by trade – with reason, not force, as their final arbiter – it is the best product that wins, the best performance, then man of best judgment and highest ability – and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?

And what happens when the "best" is still a pale comparison to what we COULD produce but that we love our money so much that we produce cheaper and shoddier work to turn a good profit? Ayn presumes that there is no force involved which motivates Humans to cut corners. She claims a code, but there is none. The code is anything that makes a profit goes. Even if it will put many in misery (polluting because it's cheaper than not, for example), if the profit is better, do it.

"But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality – the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.

Money is an accounting, which is a tool, yes. If we account for energy, it is only because it is scarce. With effectively infinite energy comes no need for money. Bliss in creating, solving problems, caring and discovering will still be with us. We will not quit doing things merely because we are not being paid MONEY. Many are happier with a wide and good reputation (Linux is an awesome example of us doing things because we want to solve problems or gain reputation over any money motive), or the satisfaction from having solved a problem. Rand presumes no motive for doing things other than being paid money, and this is not the way Humans work. Sure, receiving a paycheck motivates - but it is not the paycheck, per se, but the bliss it might offer that is the motivation.

"Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants; money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent.

True. But money WILL degrade any code we may have in place where obtaining (more) money is placed higher in importance than Human consideration. It spawns love of it and thereby evil.

The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

Well... In order to really understand what Ayn is saying here, I need a definition of "superiors" and "inferiors." Seems a bit elitist. These problems, however, are not the problems with having a money system. It is the breakdown of ethics which the love of it engenders.

"Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth – the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started.

What!?! Only the man who does not need it is fit to inherit wealth? What determines "fitness" here? Ayn is unaware, it would seem, of how much luck has to do with success. Many Humans would make their own fortunes (and too many by evil means), but not all can be very lucky in the connections they make and the opportunities that come along. (Read Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers for an analysis of the importance of luck in making fortunes.)

If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve that mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

Wow. It's hard to decide where to begin on this. "Equal to his money???" How does one measure whether someone is "equal" to their money? You cannot corrupt money. Corruption is a behavior and money does not behave; rather, it moves based on OUR behaviors. We are the ones who become corrupt in efforts to gain as much money as possible. So if there is a question of corruption, it is within Humans, not money. And her idea that MONEY has virtue...objects have no virtue. Humans have virtue (most of them). And it is very elitist indeed to say "Money will not serve that mind that cannot match it." Money serves anyone who has it, by the luck of the draw. (Getting that job, inheriting it, meeting the right investor, having parents that can afford an education, etc.) And how would one measure this mind and its relationship to being served by money?

"Money is your means of survival.

Only in a scarcity paradigm, where energy is scarce and therefore needs to be accounted for.

The verdict which you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life.

Not so at all. Money is only representationally the source of my livelihood. The actual source is my energy expended. The verdict that money is unnecessary in an abundance paradigm is not the same as saying my life is unnecessary in an abundance paradigm. In fact, my life is likely to be far more useful, as I will then have the freedom to have time and tools necessary to better the world.

If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards?

It is not the source, per se, that is corrupt - it is the choices made. If YOU are corrupt, you have damned your own existence (if you are caught). And about the "ability" "deserving" a specific amount... LOLOL! Again. Farm workers are slaves, even though we need the produce from the farms to live; star football players are princes, even though no one died for lack of football. "Deserving..."

By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you'll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?

As if our system of wage slavery isn't set up such that virtually all of us despise the work we do. As if we can waltz out there and change that with no outside luck. There is no shame in being trapped in a system that makes most of us slaves so that some can be elite. "Reminder of shame???" I think not. Motivated to change that for all people? In my case, yes.

And again, I don't hate money. I hate evil - which the LOVE of money creates.

"Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?

Money is not the product of virtue. It is the produce of a need for a better system of accounting for energy expended. It can handle virtuous functions equally as well as evil ones. It is impartial.

"Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is the loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money – and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.

"Money is the creation of the best power within you???" Hahaha! Money is an accounting tool. To love money is to put it above Human consideration. To love Humanity is the creation of the best power within you. No keys are necessary to trade good effort in today's society with the introduction of robots to do slave work and energy eliminating scarcity.

The lovers of money are not the ones willing to work for it, but those willing to sacrifice Human principle and concern in getting it. Those who would use high fructose corn syrup instead of sugar - despite the vast evidence that it is extremely unhealthy to consume - because it's cheaper. Those that would try to hide its use with labeling such as "corn sugar." Those that market a substance called "Neotame" that just happens to be a version of Aspartame that looks worse than the original - and yet...unlike Aspartame, it doesn't HAVE to be on the label, and is approved for use in foods labeled "Organic" and "Kosher..." I'm sorry. That's done for the love of money - you can bet that Neotame interests are intermingled with pharmaceutical industry interests.

And what does the pharmaceutical industry thrive on? Sick Human Beings.

"Oh, but they would never kill off their customer base! That doesn't make sense!" Slowly suffering Human Beings who eventually die are great cash cows. They recycle. Plenty more coming in.

And what spawns THAT outlook? The LOVE of money. Ayn was VERY naive.

"Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.

LOLOL! If One approaches money in terms of the anguish it engenders and also sees that it all springs from a scarcity of energy, when One sees that "free energy" would solve the problem of eliminating virtually all the anguish and allow everyone to live richly if they desire, because it will dissipate money as a necessity and because We are at this position in our robotics and communication We can seize the day and make this happen. Ayn was too busy examining the trees to see the forest, I'm afraid.

"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another – their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.

Well *I* surely won't tell you that money is evil. It is an inanimate manifestation of the very real flow of energy expenditure between Us. However, when money motivates One to break any of the three Laws - you know, do not willfully hurt or kill another Being, do not willfully take or damage another Being's property, and do not willfully defraud another Being - is statistically always involved with money. Someone loves it over Ethical behavior.

"But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it.

Um... Say WHAT!?! Money makes no demands. Money/power/energy flows within society as We Each choose to push whatever amount We have to push in directions We choose based on necessity and comfort. We are the driving force of this currency. Not money. We can just as easily drive ourselves as the elite do, replacing their Human slaves with Our machines - especially using plenum energy - and pursuing Betterment rather than work.

And because there exists a propensity to LOVE money, getting rid of the need for it seems only reasonable.

Ayn surely sounds more like she is sacrificing her being to the ebb and flow of Our social currency structure. Money is God. Seriously, she asks Us to believe money is somehow demanding something of us. It's just there. It is a tool.

Men who have no courage, pride, or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich – will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt – and of his life, as he deserves.

No moral sense of their right to their money. Surely, honest gain is never an issue. It is the Human who has gain by breaking the Ethical Laws. I'd say labeling something "organic," sweetening it with Neotame (really cheap to make per sweetness unit), and failing to place "neotame" on the label...is breaking the third. If I buy it, I have been defrauded.

A good example, spurred by the love of money, that breaks the first is all the wars that have been created so as to supply one or both sides. Humans have gone to war over patriotism and other such nonsense, while the instigators make money hand over fist. Humans are sacrificed to this "God," money.

"Then you will see the rise of the double standard – the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money – the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law – men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims – then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.

I guess if one equates "money" to "virtue" this might make sense. I do not, seeing as I do that virtue is a value We bestow. Money is a tool and has no virtue on its own. We can bestow virtue onto money when we use it for Betterment. I see a great deal of contempt for those whose lives did not bring them luck of opportunity. Elitist attitude, wouldn't you say?

And clearly, the race is going to those most ruthless at extracting money. Ruins and slaughter? Nay. Pens of cash cows.

"Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue.

Oh, no, no, no, no. Good Works are the barometer of virtue. Money is a barometer of control. The more money/power/energy One has, the more control One has of this planet. One may choose virtuous Works - or One may choose other things to control.

When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion – when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing – when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors – when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you – when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice – you may know that your society is doomed.

See, now this is the stuff that turned me on when I read Atlas Shrugged. This is pretty much true, and is what will eventually happen when money is involved. Unless you find a solution. Free energy/robotics/communications/Will = a solution, I say. One in which money has no purpose, power is spread evenly amongst all Beings, and energy flows freely.

Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.

And then it's back on this "money is noble, virtue incarnate." No. Humans are noble. Money is a tool. It is involved with guns as commodity (though not in their use as a tool...), and it makes no terms at all. It permits nothing. We permit it to do what it does. And it is a tool that has outlived its purpose.

"Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence.

Money is no more protection than any other tool is. It may be a means to secure protection - if one has the money to do so - but in and of itself, it is no protection. And it surely is NOT the base of Ethical existence, but rather very unethical existence.

Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it becomes, marked: 'Account overdrawn.'

In a system that requires money exchange, this is an economical truth. And, in fact, do we see signs of "Account Overdrawn" anywhere these days...? This is what happens in a scarcity paradigm where the love of money is allowed its playground.

"When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world?' You are.

Again, money not = evil. Love of money = evil works. When you dangle money/power/energy control in front of people's noses, don't expect none (or even a scant few) to fall in love with it. To put it above the interests of others. To stay Ethical. To produce to the best of their ability. Where fraud is condoned on large scale for the purposes of looting many. Do not ask, "Who is destroying the world?" The lovers of money are.

"You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it's crumbling around you, while you're damning its life-blood – money.

Only indirectly. Without money, the love of it cannot arise. It is crumbling because some love money/power/energy beyond their love for Humanity. Far better Works would be done if money was nowhere in the motivation, but rather a drive towards Betterment and Bliss.

You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities.

No, I'm pretty sure my view is far more sophisticated than that. And I don't wonder at the worsening of things. A love of money explains it all.

Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor.

Today's elite! If We cast off "producer slavery" to robots, We all can choose to live as elite.

That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves – slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody's mind and left unimproved for centuries.

As if there are no slaves now? So they got rid of outright slavery and eliminated having worry about the food/clothing/shelter aspect by pumping out paychecks. And, again... Love of money = evil...

So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer. Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers – as industrialists.

Um... Slaves, check. Traders, check. Shopkeepers, check. Individuals. Industrialists...individuals under corporate umbrella. Corporations have virtually no culpability. Corporations are the end result of the love of money.

"To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money – and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being – the self-made man – the American industrialist.

Ayn manages to attribute the freeing up of money/power/energy in the free enterprise system (which is now dead) to the "virtues" of money/power/energy. However, the freer the flow, the more closely matched in power individuals are, and as long as energy flows freely, advances and Betterment take place as Our virtue emerges. This has nothing to do with the money accounting of energy expended, but of the virtuous nature of Humans when they themselves are content.

"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose – because it contains all the others – the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money'. No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity – to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted, or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality.

Wealth creation, however, is disparate. Again, farm worker vs. star football player. Just because you are creating money does not follow that the wealth is aggregating to yourself. You are most likely a slave, and the top 1% are getting the wealth - and frequently by defrauding the slaves. I think, rather than create money, I would rather be creating solutions.

"Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters' continents. Now the looters' credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide – as, I think, he will.

Oh, now this is just grandstanding. The "whip," by the way is not a literal one. It is one of hunger. It is one of cold. It is one of being unable to provide for your children. For these reasons do statistically all of us trudge to work that we would rather be doing something else at (at best) and loathe with a passion (at worst).

"Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns – or dollars. Take your choice – there is no other – and your time is running out."

Except... Money is a tool and a root of nothing. The root of all good or bad behavior, involving money or not, is Us. Our choices. When money ceases to be the tool by which products and services are exchanged (men dealing with one another being handled in person or via an electronic device), then robots become the tools of men. How about none of the above? Blood, whips, guns and money are slave-makers. I think there's a better choice. Humans as Free Beings.

From where I stand, until any person forms a critique of money and what it represents, they must first take this eternal offering of wisdom into account, and they must either accept its validity or refute it in some reasonable way. If the critic is oblivious to the wisdom (willfully or no) contained in the above quote and wishes to have a reasonable discussion about what money really is and what its effects it has, that person to me is fooling themselves, and is a mere pretender when it comes to offering solutions to people other than themselves.

I think I did just that, refute it in some reasonable way, and showed you the error in Ms. Rand's thinking. I strongly suspect that it is not that I am oblivious to any wisdom in her words, but that I see the gems of wisdom amongst the elitist tripe and misplaced worship. I guess this is fooling myself.

Scarcity must always exist in some form as long as human lives are finite. Thus trade, with some mode of exchange, must always exist until a time machine is mass marketed. If it is, it will only come into being through the means of voluntary exhange between voluntary partners, represented, in some way, by 'money'.

I disagree. With slavery cast off to robots, and energy flowing freely, this planet has more than enough for all of us ten times over. Specific things might be scarce - lobster, say - but wholesome, plentiful food, plenty of excellent clothing, and spacious housing will be available to all.

Bottom line, though, Ayn Rand's rant supported, and encouraged, slavery - though she did give a few economic insights.

Originally posted by Neo_Serf

*edit thought i had the quote thing down but apprarently not. appologies for my akwardness.*

Well... You can ORDER them. But I think you would not get them. You are using absurdities as if they are reasonable. You would have no need or use for all these robots - well, unless they're nanorobots... But that's not what you're saying.

Does not compute. You give me no answer to my question. You think I will not get them. You provide no insight as to how my request will be processed (and by who) and denied.

You place the order via the Interweb with the robots that make robots. They come back and say that they can supply 25,000 not the million (or whatever the number was you originally used). If you're willing to wait 15 years, they might make those million, in between covering other orders - which they limit to 25,000 initially, and will supply more as needed.

This may not be the best solution - but there are those out there who will know, and I'm sure these issues will be solved.

You simply assert that I probably wont, and you seem quite comfortable in not providing a reason why I wont.

The question was whether you could get them. Not what the process was. Geez. I answered your question.

Then you gloss it over by labeling the whole notion 'absurd', even though you provided a half answer first, thus telling me that you didnt actually find the query to be unworthy of a reasonable response, as you should have if the question truly was absurd.

Well the idea of having a million robots IS absurd. In fact, it was exaggeration ad absurdium. Unless we're talking nanorobots. Then having so many makes sense.

If its absurd to suggest, why offer a reasonable answer? The reason I ask is the same reason I asked to begin with - because you have no reasonable solution to my problem besides the bliss wand.

Lessee... Saying you probably won't get an absurd request is a problem because...?

What exactly is the problem you as you see it again? Maybe I missed it.

Who said anything about "infinite?"

YOU DID! Remember? Scarcity does not exist!

No. Abundance does NOT equal "infinite." That's like saying there is infinite food on the thanksgiving table. There may be more than can be eaten in one sitting, but there surely is no infinity.

So... No. No I did NOT.

Effectively, yes, we do have infinite gold. Back in the 1970's we transmuted lead into gold. The problem was not so much how to do it, but that, because the energy required to do it cost so much, an ounce would have cost something on the order of a million dollars. With that cost of energy removed, we can transmute most anything into gold.

So currently we cannot transmute stuff into gold because energy is relatively scarce. With neat infitnite energy, of course gold would not longer be the standard as its standard rests mostly on its relative scarcity. But infinite energy does not currently exist, as far as I know, and thus basing your *entire* platform on non existence is *pure fantasy*.

In my sig is a piece called "Who are "They?" You will discover my personal story and why I KNOW we have it. No fantasy at all. That is why I am so adamant. And FYI, just because YOU don't know about something does not follow that it does not exist. Geez. Talk about fallacies in logic.

Show me free energy and Ill show you the monetary input that made it possible, Until scarcity is elimited *totally* (which you admit is not conceivably possible due to the limit of lobster in the sea) there must be a mode of exchange.

There will be. Gifting will be common. No need to ask money for something if all needs are richly supplied. And, no... There are many people who would be satisfied just having food of any sort when they were hungry. And that we can produce plenty of. If you haven't, read my The Abundance Paradigm, included in the cowritten book linked in my sig. You will see how things will be handled.

I did not, nor have I ever said "limitless," "infinite" (except effectively, as in gold), or any other descriptor meaning open-ended. I said "abundant." "Abundant" means enough to provide fully the basic needs for all, and have plenty left over - to the tune of basic needs ten times over.

By your standard of abundance, food, medicine and shelter are all abundant currently. We *could* already meet the basic needs of the destitute people you uphold as every persons personal shame. I know you will ascribe the misallocation of these vital resources to money itself, but let me cut you off at the pass, and I will assert this as fact without going into the valid reasoning and evidence - the real reason people starve, go homeless and die of malaria is not due to money, it is in fact due to the violent minority that currently control money and use it as a genocial weapon against those money should in truth be serving and uplifting.

Very astute. We can indeed provide well for all, but because of the money/power/energy control that some have over others, We have problems. I'm thinking, however, that you're projecting YOUR shame onto my words, since I have never employed shame as a motivator - I have promoted personal solutions and gain for most (and no loss to others - except in power over others) as a motivator.

One thing, though... Because money(/p/e) engenders the love of it, as long as We have money, it will aggregate to the unethical, the ruthless, the sociopathic sorts. Because they are the ones who will take advantage to the detriment of those around them.

The massive poverty and starvation caused by western sunbsidies in agriculture is not due to the mechanism of value exchange which is money, but instead is inflicted by the hyper violence of the state that hugely subsidises (through involuntary taxation backed by guns) western farming and thus gives no room for 3rd world farms to compete in and thus advance. Farm subsidies in the west, a system enforced through institutional violence (using money as a captive weaponized facilitator) is likely responsible for more deaths than all wars combined in the 20th century.

Again, all about the money/power/energy. What would the motivation be in maintaining this structure if money was not an issue?

Again, this is not moneys fault. The fault lies in those who support the state, and thus violence, not paper notes in ones back pocket.

Yes, it's not money's fault. It's those who have a LOVE of money(/p/e)'s fault. In every case, money was involved by Your own admission, and it was the love of money that motivated those behaviors. Why would we want to keep such a complication in such an abundant universe?

The idea is not that we can accommodate absurdities, but that poverty will be vanquished - as well as taxes.

If an effect of free enegy is the elimination of poverty, then thats awesome. I think a paralelle could be drawn between first world poor, who have a relative abundance of food (and thus never starve) compared to third world poor, who starve en mass. If technology could be used to raise the bar for all in a sustainable way to a level beyond mere survival, that would of course be awesome. I just dont your demacation point between sacrcity (artificial or not) to relative abundance. (and if scarcity is largely artificial, it stands to reason that it is made this way by some entity that does not wish humanity to live in abundance, and thus relying on abundance as an inevitability would be nieve, as humanity would be actively opposed in naturally reaching abundance.)

In fact, it gives everyone the opportunity to live as richly as they care to. Your parallel is more descriptive than you give credit. It describes an aspect in the transitional phase. Things would get better and better... Eventually We would reach heaven for Humanity. I think a decade, but I'm am optimist.

And there surely are entities that would control Us. I am not naive on THAT score. My hope is that They prove to at least be Ethical. I advocate the Ethical Planetarian Party platform. If the ideas spread, perhaps We will weild Our power.

And reasonable request will be delivered in a reasonable length of time. Any absurd request is likely to go unfulfilled. You may have to wait for lobster - depends on the availability. But you will not have to wait for food, clothing, housing. That will be yours for the asking.

Again, my question is not *if* my demands will be delivered, as we have established that some system must determine if i receive my allocation or not. My question is *by what standard, and by who* is this decision made?

Here's how it works. At least in the end. Transition will take place in between. You will be in the house you chose when you turned 25(ish - not set in stone, open to debate) and call upon the Interweb to show you what's available locally grown, and order the ingredients for the party you're throwing the next day - all of which are produced organically and wholesomely. There are specialty things that you would like to serve and you go looking for them. You search and find out that robotic suppies of lobster are claimed, but you also find the website of a guy who is just chillin', catching lobsters, and will send them to you. You inquire about availability and learn that he just had a cancellation of a 25 lobster request and they're sitting there freshly caught and alive. Wow. Your luck! Sure send them here, you say, and they arrive in the morning - via robot delivery - ready for you (or your robots) to put out the culinary joy you put together, as you and your friends...play games, or play instuments, or work on a problem in trying to solve it.

Its really quite important that you answer this question clearly. If I order 10 000 lobsters from my personal robot attendant, within your abundance paradigm, where along the line of actions and while my order be declined? On what grounds, and by whom?

Oh. Heh. I just covered lobsters, and you are lucky! The guy wanted to ship the 25. I'm guessing 10,000 is getting into the absurd. Not that you are prone to exaggeration ad absurdium, of course.

Whereas with money, no one would order 10 000 lobsters because such an investment would be plain stupid, all rational arguements aside. If I did posses the necessary capital to do such a thing, I would likely bankrupt immediately with 9995 rotting lobsters on my hands.

It's not likely that in the abundance paradigm you will be entertaining thousands, though if you were, there would be many who cared and would help where they could. Maybe they raise lobsters... Point is, you could choose to entertain all you want. (If you hate entertaining and just want to be alone, you can. If you love to entertain but hate the effort of planing and execution...check the Interweb for the many who love to plan and execute fetes and affairs. You'll find help.)

Not so in abundance, right?

As I described, not so in abundance, because nobody would have a need for 10,000 lobsters - they're likely 1st come 1st served. Shipped individually or in small batches, perhaps.

that give them bliss to work on.

Could a form of virtuous bliss be measurable in dollars?

Indeed, with the supplanting of the "work ethic" with the Betterment Ethic, We can in abundance have virtuous bliss on this planet. As to whether we can measure this in dollars, I presume not. I suspect it requires the yoke of a money system cast off entirely, such that the energy coming in causes the money supply to become effectively infinite. This is hyperinflation to the max, but IF We have a plan in place, We can move eaily in that direction with all this energy we have to use.

As for abundance, it surely does exist, but we are held back from it by the system of money. Money is a representation of energy expended. With an effectively infinite source of energy, the need for money (to account for it's being expended) will become moot. We have the plenum energy, and many have shown ways (and there are several) to extract it, and if we were allowed to have that technology for peaceful application, we would no longer be barred (virtually all of us) from the lifestyle of the power elite.

Could I buy one of these infinite energy motors in dollars and feed 10 starving people on its energy, and still remain virtuous?

In the transition you may, I do not doubt. Eventually people will laugh at you if you say you want to pay.

If money is evil, are the above actions also evil?

LOVE of money, LOVE of money. Are those actions indicative of loving money? No. Before you ask me about whether something is evil, ask yourself whether it involves money or the LOVE of money. If merely money, no. If it's the LOVE of money, you have your answer: yes.

would ever HAVE to work

A human can only rightfully be judged by what he/she takes in relation to what he/she produces. If one if a net suprlus to himself and thus others, he can be judged as moral. If he is a net drain to those around him and lives as a human parasite, he can be seen as immoral. If production is rendered irrelevant by abundance, we can move the yardstick. Until then, every person must produce at least as much as they consume if they wish to be on the nobeler side of humanity.

I disagree. A Human can only rightfully be judged by the Human's choice of behavior. Their works and Their friends can speak for Them.

What if the definition of "produces" is changed to producing Betterment and Bliss? I don't like the word "moral." The differences in morality within Humanity are striking. I look to Ethics - which span the societies of the planet. In abundance, no One is a drain, so He is no Ethical problem. Let Him be. He might be the one who solves a major problem someday.

Yeah, baby, we have a marvelously abundant universe. We just need a paradigm of living in it.

That paradigm is called true freedom and does not require robots of any kind. (although robiods would be a great advantage to a free people)

Yes and no. Surely, one is free to function without robots. True freedom includes the choice to have robots if one wants them.

Have you ever had both the experience of having no money and seeing all the things to want out there and wanting many of them such that it aches - and having lots of money to spend and looking at all the things to want out there and finding nothing that you really want enough to spend money on them? I have.

When I have no money I feel the sensation of helplessness in that I have nothing tangible to offer strangers in return for their good which I require. (food, shelter, ect) When I exchange my value as a worker for my bosses value as an organizer, i relish my justly earned paycheck that symbolizes all my concerntrated investment into a service that my customers value. My surplus of 'wealth' (which is minusule compared to some and lavish compared to others) gives me a sensation of personal value - i feel my skills and time invested are repaid in kind. This surplus in basic living that Im blessed to have access to (due to relative monetary freedom) allow me to do things a mere wage slave could never hope to - to take time off to enjoy the intangibles such as hiking in the wild, to invest in health products most of humanity could never dream of, living or past. Surplus allows me to tip my local servicers and thus add to the local economy. In short, surplus allows me to not only pay my own way and thus rely on no one, but it allows my independance to further the independence of other producers, who add earned value to my life and thus i return it in kind. Surplus of investment, represented in dollars and gains voluntarily, allows me both freedom of action, and freedom of virtue.

If abundance makes the above obsolete, then bring it on!

Indeed, abundance makes it such that you may work as you wish, looking for betterment, and following your Bliss - but the robots don't need tipping. [grin] "Paying" Your way is done by contributing Your bliss - even if it's climbing a mountain or visiting the Congo... And You earn respect and prestige by the Betterment You contribute.

In abundance, most of Us will find that We are content - comfortable - with very few things.

Abundance and 'very few things' are not compatible terms.

Um... Just because there's still food on the thanksgiving table doesn't mean you're going to keep eating until it's gone. Abundance is fully compatible with the choice to do with very few things. It is an option as much as the most conspicuous consumption. No, no one is going to force you to consume.

And as for robots... What if we took all the money we're spending on war and instead, put it into peaceful, open-source efforts to build robots to do what We want to do on this planet? I offer ideas here. If the goal is to get rid of money, what does it matter where the money comes from?

The goal is not to get rid of money, the goal is to live virtuously. If virtue can be measured, in voluntary cases, to be a measure of virtue, getting rid of money would necessarily eliminate any virtue gained by the symbol of 'money'.

The goal is to remove evil that We may live virtuously and free. The root of all evil is the love of money. Ergo, to remove evil, getting rid of the need for money is a very logical option if it presents itself. And lo, we have the plenum energy, the robotics, the Interweb. We need the awareness and the Will. My job is to do what I can to provide the awareness.

You make it sound as if every one of us has a whole lot of money to throw around. Golly gee. I'm free to throw my money in any direction I want. While technically true, the fact is that virtually all Humans on this planet are not so disencumbered. I will speak statistically here:

So you imply that money could indeed serve man, if it were just held by more people and less concentrated in the hands of the elite?

No implication. Very much, when energy is scarce, it can serve a purpose. I'm saying with abundant energy, the need for money will dissipate. And also that money systems always have elite and poverty. I want to end poverty at the expense of the elite's power over others.

Agreed! That money is controlled currently by the elite does not invalidate the concept of money, just as the current monoploy of firepower held by the elite does not invalidate the concept of self defence secured by weaponry. A tool is a tool, by whom it is weilded and to what end is the issue, not the tool itself. (as, once invented, it will always exist. No problem is solved by monopolizing the use of dominant technology)

I'm saying that keeping money keeps poverty and elite. Period. If we can eliminate both, wherein lies the problem? And, in fact, the biggest reason free energy is suppressed is because They KNOW it means Their loss of power over Us.

We all worry about paying the bills and holding what we have together, dependent on money(/power/energy), and many are losing their grip as we type. The System is doing what it was designed to do - and that is fail. I'm trying to offer a solution that does not entail a gruesome end to things - globally and into the universe.

And Im offering examples as to why your proposed system comes off as a desperate reactionary kneejerk ,seasoned with a healthy dose of marxism to satisfy your anxiety. The universe will be fine if we annialate ourself, but we wont. A gruesome end is almost assured at this point, a gruesome end to this system that is, to which we both agree. What we want is a path towards a more enlightened future, and in that we are both in total agreement, and a certain comraderie exists between those who look beyond their next couple steps.

Kneejerk... Wow. 50 years of pondering and hunting data... Putting it all together... Hardly a kneejerk. No Marxism. That is, as I have said, a scarcity paradigm solution. I'm not advocating anhiliating Ourselves. I know it looks gruesome, and for two years, as it has progressed as I knew it would, I have been trying to bring this solution to awareness in the hopes of avoiding gruesomness. I think money is a deterant to enlightenment, personally. It takes us from our personal path in so many ways.

I do appreciate Your willingness to look further than most. Thank You for caring.

Im simply telling you that your path out of the woods has been walked for centuries by those who found not escape, but a cliff, and until humanity can fly off that cliff, metephorically speaking, it may best best to seek the path to the spring that was always available, but never within perception. And we dont need robot boots to get there. (although it might be quicker)

And I'm telling You that never before have We had the wings. Now we do. Interweb/Plenum Energy/Robotics (not to mention antigravity...). I'm telling you now is the time We can fly off that cliff.

Interesting comment. Ok, I apologize for my impatience. I'm intrigued.

I might wonder if you can see the drive to peaceful and loving outcome in all things as a trait to value. Humans have this trait, though it is mostly infolded in the mesh of a money(/power/energy) System, and though many of them are not extremely bright, they are not extremely lacking. Most, well, statistically ALL Humans want to keep Love going where They find it, and as long as They must rely on money(/p/e) as Their social energy flow, the love of money will produce it's evil.

The most peaceful, loving, and rewarding action I could offer to a relative stranger was (is) to offer him a raise, not based on his needs, wants or desires, but based on his own concentrated effort to add value to myself and the goal we set ourselves to accomplish. When I think about the look on his face when I rewarded him (not appeased him) for his justly earned raise, and knowing exactly how it feels to calculate the increased standard of living that he will recieve, and how i too once relished and earned that extra dollar an hour, i get goosebumps. Not because I handed out some alms for the poor, or disrespected him in any way by offering him charity, but instead had the capacity to reward his competence...well that is what i call bliss. And there is no way this could have been accomplished non materially, as I am completely indifferent to his personal life and struggle. (although i too have struggled, and continue to, so i wish him well and am gratified when he succeeds.)

Oh, I'm not saying that expressions of appreciation are not things We wouldn't want to receive. I'm saying that money is not the only thing people like to receive. Words of praise, word of mouth (reputation, prestige), gifts. It doesn't have to be money they receive to be valued. In fact, such things would be very highly valued with money gone.

Not so with the lazy, incompetent, self entitled brat. I would fire him before he could do any damage to myself, and with his own actions he shall be judged.

Understood. But in abundance, that brat can go do His own thing and never be a problem for You.

Again, if in scarcity the layabout can exist without burden to his fellows, then so be it. I would love to layabout somedays. My moral code forbids living off another, though.

You mean, in abundance... [smile] Yes. In abundance, such people are no burden. They also might be just left alone - pariah status.

That is why *I* care about Humanity as a whole. If you do not value that trait, then not caring - on the planetary and species levels - might be understood. But then what would become incomprehensible to me would be the lack of empathy towards peace and love.

That you see my unwillingness to relinquish that which is demanded of me as incomprehensible seems just as daft to me as your assertion that all are deserving. Peace comes through strength and independence. Love comes through virtuous action. Both are earned traits, and not given upon demand.

Who demands what of You? I guess I'm not catching that. What has that to do with failing to have empathy towards peace and love? As for all being deserving of opportunity, of rich living, of pursuing their bliss...how would You determine otherwise? Maybe by whether they break any of the three Laws?

LOLOL! You'll do just fine in abundance!

Virtue succeeds under any paradigm, even if it fails.

Please define "virtue" as you see it to be.

Wait, wait, wait. If I'm sane I will admit I do not have all the answers? No, no, no. If I'm sane, I will admit I do not know whether I have all the answers or not. And I'll cop to that in a heartbeat. Nay! Nanosecond! Hrrm.

Excuse my response that is dripping with condecention, but that is the sanest thing youve said so far. Now only if youd apply this universally...

Excuse my response that is rippling with amusement, but Your condescention may be what keeps You from seeing solutions.

So far, I have felt confident that I do have the answers to the questions I have been asked. So I am giving the probability of me having "the answer" (an answer) to the next one at at least 85%. Heh. I'm much more confident, but only bank on solid expectation.

Wut probability would you ascribe to your hypotosis that money is the root of all evil?

That's not my hypothesis. I am standing on old wisdom that the LOVE of money is the root of all evil. And I give that probability at about 99.99999%ish based on my observations.

Whoa. Had to stop you right there. That analogy is way off. Here's why: Money directly drives distribution; sex does not (in the vast majority of cases) drive marriage - though it is an important factor, the goals of the two intertwined, the children added and intertwined, these are the true drivers. The only place money does not drive distribution is in areas where people are subsistence farming and no money really flows at all.

Whoa. Gotta stop yo short on your short stop right there. That you think money is the driver (ie the CAUSE) of distribution, and not a facilitator of distribution, shows, frankly, your ignorance on the topic. Money simply arrises to fill the demand caused by distribution. Money, in effect, is a distributor, not the distributee. Money, in other words, does not create demand, it instead fills the demand for a common symbol of distribution, in your words.

If you think that money/power/energy does not drive distribution you do not understand that they're the same thing, like ice, water and steam. Energy by virtue of solving problems, power by virtue of connections, money by virtue of motivation (in a scarcity paradigm, no money means no motivation to do business).

The metephor holds in that sex is the currency of marrige, as bonding pairs echange value in order to reproduce. That echange is, in many ways, facilitated by the currency of sex. To claim that the mode of exchange is evil, and not the exchange itself, is to ignore the moral content of the agreed (or forced) terms.

I'm not sure how this relates. Can you clarify? (And I persist in my view that marriage is not driven by sex. Sex is important, but you don't have to get married to have sex. Ergo, the drive is something more subtle.

Rape is the currency of an evil exchange just as consentual sex is the currency of volunteerism. Both are sexual modes of intercourse, but only one is moral. That both modes are reliant on penatration does not invalidate sex as a mode of exchange.

Only one is Ethical, yes. And again, you are giving an analogy that suggests I am saying money is evil. If one was so enthralled, so in love with the sex act to the point of rape, then the LOVE of sex is the problem. Not sex itself.

"Pricing is the *only* method we currently know of that can allocate resources efficiently..." Ok. But other models of economic structure have worked at varying levels even in this unchanging streak of scarcity paradigm. The problem is a planetary, species specific application of a scarcity of energy.

OK...so you agree the effecivity of money?

Oh, geez. I have agreed and agreed that in scarcity money is a viable solution - at least for a while. Then it crumbles and a new money arises. I'm just saying that money is not necessary with an abundance of energy, and since its presense engenders love for it and therefore evil, if We can elimninate it, We ought to.

Which models do you site that ourperformed free(ish) market caplitalism? You realize that this computerized exchange was made possible only by the productive output of free(er) humans?

I'm not disputing any advantages of any system of money. I am saying that genmod "food," fluoridated water, false flags starting wars to enrich the war suppliers, Neotame being allowed in food without being labeled and approved for "Organic" and "Kosher" food - when the evidence shows it is very unhealthy and certainly not organic (don't know enough about kosher to say one way or the other) - I'm saying all this would vanish. All the stuff like it would vanish.

For the ONLY motivation for any of this is money/power/energy.

Um. We're using it right now. Freely (in a tenuous sense...). The Interweb

.

Why do you suppose it was the US that developed the intenet, and almost every other significant invention of the past couple hundred years? Was it in spite of money?

Happenstance, that this was the country that did it. The Japanese have nearly as many and are overtaking us. And it surely had money involved. But that does not mean that without money none of the good things would have come about. In fact, honest science would flourish. Science not limited by grants and scientific superstitions.

No... Money itself is not to blame. The LOVE OF money is. It is not highly probable (vanishingly small probability) that we can remove the LOVE OF money and keep money. By removing money, the LOVE OF money is excised. As long as money and the love of it exist, we WILL see elite and poverty. Without it, we will see equity and freedom for all.

But I DO love money, and more importantly, i love the symbol of money and what it represents. And yet, (and youll have to take my word for it) my existence occurs to the net benefit of those i engage with. I live a moral life, free of violence and fakery. And yet I use money. How can I possibly be moral, by your principals?

Why do you love money? What does this symbol represent to you?

You keep using "moral." Are you speaking of Ethics? Or some list of things, inclusive of Ethics but which often contains many which are arbitrary? It is Ethical not to willfully hurt another Being. It is likely moral, as well, in most moral lists. But on some lists, it's ok for a wonam to wear a bikini in public; on others that is high immorality.

By my principles, I ask only for Ethics. Follow the three Laws. Since I have no "morals," You cannot be "moral" by my principles.

Oh, certainly. I'm just saying it would become unnecessary if we used the Interweb to have a central place to publcly and we set it up publicly, open source. Have a contest to see who had the best code to do that and choose the best one. Ooo. There's an idea.

This contest is already decided optimally by money. Anyone can click a box to show approval; only one who has accumulated value can truly show his deepest approval by allocating his precious resources into something he feels with add value for his hard earned input. Taking an online survey with no material cost is not the same as directing your hard earned capital into something you feel will return value.

Optimally??? Oh, I think not. Optimal would include the elimination of poverty, n'est pas? It would eliminate love of money and corporations that do evil things in the name of profit - such as outlaw natural medicines like cannabis and colloidal silver - in favor of selling patented stuff with lots of side effects that more patented stuff can be sold to treat. Optimal would be organic food only being produced. Optimal would be best solutions and not the cheapest of most profitable.

Yes, anyone can vote. I might presume You support a plutocracy, rather than a democracy, based on you idea that "votes" should be money units. Like you're worth more being rich. All it means is that you're luckier.

And without money, and with the respect for Consciousness, the costs will be non-existent.

I currently respect your conciousness, and yet I pay internent fees to interact with you. This comes, ultimately, at the cost of my time.

Actually, it comes at the cost of your energy over time. Of course, without money, Interweb access will be free.

No.... If I recall correctly, YOU suggested there might be other aspects of social energy than money, and I wholly agree. My point has never been that other energies do not exist, but that money(/p/e) is a thorn in the side of Humanity and that by excising it Our noble selves will manifest. And right NOW we can do it.

....so do it? how many $$ did you spend today? would you say those transactions were evil?

We... WE can do it. That is why awareness is important. WE can't do it if WE don't know there is an effort to join.

I spent no money today. Had I done so, I am sure my choices would not have been evil.

Ooo. And how many have followed this exchange of ours and considered each side? I'm hoping it is many. The more considering my ideas, the more likely Humanity will survive intact. Just to the tipping point, that's all I have to get to. Just to the tipping point.

You realize that the few half open minds you think might be reading this thread may very well see your robot utopia as the Skynet of our immediate future?

I'm only slightly familiar with Skynet. And I keep saying it's NOT a utopia. Just better by leaps and bounds for statistically all of us on this planet. All those unlucky souls.

Anyway, my point is that ideas mingle and, in a chaotic emergence, match problems to solutions on a scale never before possible. That is why the Interweb and free energy and robotics and ideas capable of being spread worldwide if needed is so important.

Again, need is your highest ideal, and not production. This is pure communism. Just because someone exists and needs food does not mean I am morally bound to feed him.

No, no, no. Again, communism is a scarcity paradigm solution. My point is that need is something that should be met, first and foremost. If needs can be met and are not, Ethically that is reprehensible. That abundance provides provides not just needs but most wants brings it beyond communism. Not one pie split equally, plenty from which One may have as much or as little as One wants.

Ethically, I say We are bound to feed any that we can. "Morally?" What's on your list of morals?

Look up Polyface Farms... Here, I did it for you: www.polyfacefarms.com... This is the vision I have of comfort for the Conscious beings (small "b" to differentiate from Beings, who are ones who ask for rights...) while maintaining harmony and high yield. If Humans did this, rather than the evil out of love for money, our planet would blossom and provide as needed. We could distribute based on need. "Pricing" would be moot.

Sorry, again, learn some basic economics before you start delcaring solutions that great minds have grappled over for generations. Distribution based on 'need' (whatever that is) has been tried for a century and has been proven to be the single greatest killer of mankind of all time beyond natural death. That a homeless man needs booze does not mean I must work to provide him with such, and that a man cannot afford color TV does not necessitate (morally) that I work an extra hour per week to suite his preferences.

Geez. You insinuate that a) I do not have a great mind, and b) that great minds of the past were working with the same options - Interweb, robotics, plenum energy. The latter I know is not true, and the former I suspect may not be either.

Well, in abundance it becomes distribution by want, for the most part. No you don't have to work to give a homeless man booze - but what if homes and booze were free and you never had to encounter a pan-handler or work to support anyone?

What about the homeless old woman who was laid off, has rheumatism and can't stand for more than 1/2 hour at a time, and can't compete with the 20-somethings and 30-somethings out in droves in the job market? But is quick, bright, earnest, capable and willing to work? What, if anything, might she deserve from you?

No, I won't call it by any name which uses scarcity paradigm terminology, because that is not what it is. And though there have been Systems that have used "communism" as their basis, no System on earth has been truly communistic - all have included power elite and a disproportionate amount of pie given to the inner party. 1984 is a prime example of the fascist overlay onto ideals of managing scarcity. In abundance, no one is above any others, and management is chaotic, emerging through the Interweb.

You dont seem to realize where that pie arrises from initially. Ill give you a hint - its not by robots or central planners.

Care to be less mysterious? The pie is free. It is the Earth, it is the plenum, it is the universe. We value Our energy and use money to account for its expenditure as we solve problems. With plenum energy, the pies will multiply.

Where people have the tools, materials and time we absolutely see problems solved, art and science emerging. If there were no such expression, there would be no overarching problems solved, there would be no art or science. With tools, materials and time available to any who want to avail themselves, we will see all the more of problems solved, art and science.

But you would at least admit that all such endevours are currently funded by money, yes?

Again, and for the manyth time, yes. That does not mean we MUST have money for these things to be pursued, however. We like solving problems and will do so whether money is needed or not.

You, as sociopath, may hunker in your domicile and ignore the world at large - in abundance you would be no drain. Have a nice life then, I guess it would be. But Humans, by and large are social, caring, Beings - many of whom would do something for the bliss of it, even for strangers.

You hurl a whole slew of intended insults at me in one short burst of veiled contempt. I have no response to this, being a 'sociopath', besides idle curiosity and mild distain. You assume that because i dont allow myself to be cowed by the invalid whip of fake aultriusm, that i dont care for anything but myself. Well, I dont, and neither do you. The difference between us is that i embrace my own self interest, while you seem to mask it behind some false pretense of caring for your fellow man. Let me shock you some - you and I only care about our fellow to the extent to which they allow us to live a preferable life. The suffering of others is only painful because their suffering effects *us*, and thus our desire to help our fellow man is just an extention of our rightful desire to help ourselves,

No insult was meant. I was using sort of a royal You (you may note the "I guess it would be"). I have no contempt for You whatsoever. No "whip" of altruism. Just that We all will personally do better - unless it's in the power over others category. In fact, abundance is fulfillment of ultimate self interest within the three Laws. I do all this from deep self interest. I have never said otherwise. *I* want the ability to choose what I spend the finite time I have on this planet doing - not be a slave to a system with scant time to do whatever I happen to be able to afford. But you're wrong that I only care about our fellow to the extent to which they allow us to live a preferable life. I care deeply about all my fellow Humans and meeting their needs, wants and bliss. The suffering is painful wherever I see it.

And if I do not see it, it does not mean it is not painful to me, but that I cannot point to it, being as it is unseen. The abundance paradigm is perfect fusion of Service to Self AND Service to Others.

a person, as a psychopathic personality, whose behavior is antisocial and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience.

I think you must check your assumtions, as my moral code is specifically tailored to my social concience.

Fair enough; however, You have to admit that You have given me no distillation of those to enter in my mental database. It is hard for me to see anyone as NOT sociopathic who fights for a system which keeps 99% of Humanity under control and, what, at least 70% in poverty, against a system that takes power over others away and gives effectively 100% of Humanity the ability to live at the level that today's elite live at - IF they want to.

To love money and symbols (very Ayn Randish) over having Your cake, eating it, and knowing everyone else is doing the same just seems unconscientious of the society in which that One lives - and from that I put up probabilities that One such as that is who I am communicating with here given that You seem to match My criterion of arguing FOR money.

Put me straight then.

Given that you say you have no connection to society as a whole - only individuals you encounter - I can see "sociopath" being used to describe who you say you are. You lack social conscience, it would seem.

You lack basic reasoning, it would seem. If I owe nothing to anyone who has not earned it, but owe every last bit of compensation to those who have, does this make me evil, in your estimation? A simple way of asking this would be to ask 'if I am in *need*, (your standard) so you owe me anything? And visa versa?

Not evil, dear. Apathetic to the misfortunes out there. To the people like that old lady who could do a bang-up job if given a chance but is never given one despite over 35,000 tries over 5 years. Apathetic to the evils done - from Neotame to GMO - as if it's not YOUR concern - for profit and perhaps deeper evil. Apathy to the luck of Your fellow Human Beings (I presume You to be Human but I will not give that more than 92%).

Also, steeped in the work "ethic." The "be a good enough slave and you may do better than other slaves" "ethic." And that is important somehow important to you - it would seem.

The question is not whether I owe You something if You are in need. The question is whether I would reach out to help you in a time of need and if I could. Absolutely I would. That is why I fight so hard for the abundance paradigm. It gives me a chance of bringing help to the so very many that have been (and will be if We don't do something) crushed as this system collapses. I think I have a solution.

If I was in need, and you could help me, would you?

Am I evil for not giving a beggar my hard earned change?

Again, just insensitive. Hey, we can get rid of beggars altogether if we bring in the abundance and its paradigm.

If it is selfish to demand resiprocity in every one of my binding relationships, I suppose Ive earned your intended slur.

It is selfish to resist a system that takes no skin off your nose and gives Humanity dignity. That removes slavery in all its forms. Yes. I think so. You can still have binding relationships - they just will be social and civil, just not business oriented.

No intended slur. An observation based on your responses here. Nothing wrong with demanding reciprocity in your relationships. But it IS sociopathic to have no connection, no conscience, to society as a whole.

If I could emphasize one point in this whole rant it would be opposition to the above slander. There is no such thing as soceity as a whole! This is a biased construct youve weaponized in your mind.

Slander? [chuckle] Hey, maybe if I had more information about You I could understand why You fight for money. Perhaps I misspoke. Humanity as a whole. There is no Human society without Humans. Maybe humanopathic? And these days, We are a global (singular) society. Society as a whole holds, now that I think of it...

Would you say I would be sociopathic if I has no connection to the Nazi party in Hitlers Germany? Would I be a conciousless monster if I rejected societys plans under Stalin or Mao? In these cases, I stand alone and defiant, just as I do now towards your technical hyper statism, or the current system of today. Am I evil for opposing the Nazis of my day, even if they make up 'society as a whole'?

No, and no. Hyperstatism? You have got to be kidding me! Where is the place that the state resides in my ideas?

Ahhhh. I loathe dictatorships. Hitler was creepy and revolting (I understate). Any elite in control raises my suspicions. That's why I am thrilled to envision the functioning of abundance. There is no central control except where a concern is of core importance - and then, all these people with time on their hands will solve the problems as they arise, and as is their bliss. The best leaders with the purest of motives will emerge from this approach, with no structure than roughly what I describe here in the platform.

Youre right, I have no connection and no empathy for those who follow the cult of death. They are scum and vermin and in my mind, and while I would never attack another, I hold nothing but the highest contempt towards the destroyers of freedom. In my mind, this does not make me insane, but instead hyper sane, as I refuse to forgive the unforgiveable. I refuse to sanction the evil society at large by consenting to its parasitic needs over my own.

How is abundance not total freedom to do with One's life as One chooses (within the three Laws might go without saying at this point, but I'll cover the base anyway)? It is as close to freedom as We have, I tell you what. The freedom of Consciousness to choose how moments are spent.

If you hate, you do not understand agape. It's kinda like loving the sinner and not the sin. And I propose that it is your sociopathic nature that renders you incapable of this love, this agape

.

That you believe love in unconditional shows me only that you are not familiar with real love, which must be mirrored by hate of that which is loves opposite.

The opposite of Love is fear. And let me ask, does burning fury at elitism and plutocracy and fascism and ANY system that creates poverty and allows the Imelda Marcoses of the universe to be "better" than...count as hate? Does consuming desire to bring egalitarian and rich lives to the People of My planet, with thoughtfulness and deepest gratefulness for this orb We traverse the plenum sea upon.

That you allow love for the most underserving shows me you disprese your love without true disernment and value judgement that must preceed true love.

What qualifies one to be undeserving? Let's pin that down. Not lucky enough to be born with a mother that got One into computer labs that most would never see, and the other two pure luck factors in the making of Bill Gates? Being old and in a satuated job market competing for lean job postings? Being on the surface of the planet as They spray Corexit?

Hitler, Mao and Bernake are not *worthy* of love. If you feel they are, love truly has no meaning to you.

I loathe them all. But I can forgive as long as I see a better solution that takes power away from any who would climb the money/power/energy pyramid.

Looks like I have my work cut out for me! Appologies if I dont make it through all of your thoughtful responses. (which is greatly appriciated, even if youre wrong

The root of money is the accounting of energy expended.

No. Just No. You must abandon this premise if we are to continue.

The ditch digger expends *far* more energy than the CEO. The farmers energetic output far exceeds the day traders. Money accounts for nothing besides the aggregate demand for the energy expended. The ditch digger inputs far more joules of expended energy to his task, and yet makes exponentially less money. If money = energy expended, I would be a far richer man.

Money is NOT the root of all evil. It is the LOVE of money that is the root of all evil. Rand, right there, nullifies her analysis. Of course there would be no money if we expended no energy to produce things. Money has no connection to the goods and services themselves. Only the energy expended which produced the goods and services. Money is made necessary by a scarcity of energy. What I consider evil is the love of it such that technology is hidden to ensure profit, cures are hidden to protect profit, wars are instigated to ensure profit, illnesses are created to ensure profit (think water fluoridation - which is a way of disposing of toxic chemicals under the guise of being good), and any other evil done in the name of profit.

Since the basic foundation of economics is unlimited desires vs finite resources, I fully agree with you that scarcity produces money. We dont pay for air because it is relatively abundant. So I will conceed that abundance in any field will relieve us of the need for money.

But since you have conceeded that not *everything* will be abundant (lobster example), some mechanism is required to decide who will get what. Two options are available here. Top down,violentcentral planning, or negotiated and voluntary exchange, represented by money.

Your example of water floridation is not specific to money as this is a government program. The corperations disposing of this toxic waste are offloading the costs of disposal involuntarily to the tax payer - if they had no body to offload these enormous costs to, they would likely have to find a more cost effective and sustainable solution.

Again, money is not the problem - institutionalized violence is.

The value we place on money is rather arbitrary - the energy of the farm worker is valued much lower than the energy a star football player puts out. And Rand right there explains that money is an accounting of energy! "[Y]our claim upon the energy of the men who produce."

Youre missing the key part of the idea - the 'men who produce'. Produce what? Produce value. A man could spend his entire life digging ditches for which no one has a use, or value for, while expending enormous physical energy. That energy is expended is not the key point here - that others value his expenditure is the key point. This value is *not* arbitrary in that it is arrived at by the objective aggregate demand of all parties valuing his work.

Value of money and energy is only arbitrary when one group fixes artificially the value of the energy expended. If the government decides the ditch digger is to be paid the same as the football star, *then* the value of money becomes arbitrary.

So if we have infinite energy and robots to do the production... What do we need money for? And "moral principle?" The root of money is NOT a moral principle in and of itself. We surround it with a cloak of moral principle (don't be evil because of it). But the fact is that those who covet it, who love it, ignore the moral cloak and do evil to have it in one of its three forms: money/power/energy.

By this logic, any tool used by any evil person is also evil. And yes, if everything, including the human life, were infinite, money would become obsolete.

Yes, I have taken a look at the root of production. It is often based on (wage) slave labor to ensure large profits. The ideas developed and the personal labor to bring them into reality are based in bliss. Bliss in solving a problem, or creating more ease, or getting money in the end. Bliss.

No, the root of production is simply producing something that would not have existed if not for the input of the human mind. Everything you take for granted, that makes your life infnitely better than that which came before, is based on production. The marxist wage slave canard is irrelevant. Our current levels of bliss is a result of our productive struggle out of the caves.

Rand is correct in saying that man's mind is responsible for all the goods produced - but very wrong in saying that man's mind is the root of all wealth - wealth is just an accumulation of energy credits as they ooze around the economy greasing the exchange of goods and services.

Serious contradiction here. You accept that mans mind produces all goods, but then somehow deny that the wealth itself is a product of the goods that a mans mind produces?

Money is nothing more than a symbol that represents the objective value placed on goods, which are products of mans mind. You cannot artificially seperate the two and call one valid and the other evil.

This is all fine - until...the love of money breaks down that code. Men lose their good will in favor of their price - the point at which money becomes overwhelmingly enticing.

So money is fine until it corrupts? Couldnt the same be said for sex?

which had the downside that if one had something to trade but no one wanted or needed it, one might starve.

So in conclusion, one must offer others something of value if one wishes to exist?

And this is wrong how? The alternative is to be a slave.

This is true. But again, it points out that money is based on energy expended.

No! No no no! Energy expended is *meaningless* if said energy is not valued by others! If I go for a run, which benefits myself only, yet expends a lot of energy, I couldnt expect a walker to somehow value my sweat and be willing to exchange anything for it!

Not exactly. Money also promotes motive to evil to gain more of it.

Sex promotes rape and therefor sex is bad.

No... Money also permits fraud, theft, and unethical business choices to promote profit. Hardly things of mutual benefit.

Sex promotes rape, molestation and murder. Hardly things of mutual benefit.

Money merely greases the mutual agreements.

Can we at least agree that this is a good thing?

It is inequitably distributed

As is human ability. Money reflects this.

Farm workers are paid far closer to what we pay slaves (and about as much as it would cost a slave owner to keep them) while the star football player is paid like a prince...

Football players posses unique abilities that people are willing to pay them for. Farm hands, comparitively, do not.

People want cheap, abundant food and thus farmers respond to that demand by lowering labour costs, among other things. If food were in shortage, I assure you that trend would reverse...

And yes, in my estimation athletes are way overpaid. My solution? Dont buy a ticket.

And what happens when the "best" is still a pale comparison to what we COULD produce but that we love our money so much that we produce cheaper and shoddier work to turn a good profit? Ayn presumes that there is no force involved which motivates Humans to cut corners. She claims a code, but there is none. The code is anything that makes a profit goes. Even if it will put many in misery (polluting because it's cheaper than not, for example), if the profit is better, do it.

If cheaper and shoddier is what people demand and deem the 'best', then that is what they will recieve. I buy cheap underwear from Walmart because its cheap, and I expect is to wear our shortly. On the other hand, if I were to buy a house I would want only the best, strongest and enviromentally most friendly construction possible. Not everyone shares your preferences.

Polluting is only made possible by the problem of the commons, which is created soley by the government. I will not go in to this further, though, and instead will simply say that if you own your own land and are responsible for it, (and cannot offload the price of pollution to the taxpayer) you wouldnt # where you eat.

"But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality – the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.

Rand presumes no motive for doing things other than being paid money

Rand *asserts* that the value of exchange between parties is represented in money. This can only occur if value is exchanged. Exhanged value = good!

True. But money WILL degrade any code we may have in place where obtaining (more) money is placed higher in importance than Human consideration. It spawns love of it and thereby evil.

True. But *sex* WILL degrade any code we may have in place where obtaining (more) sex is placed higher in importance than the Human consideration. Sex spawns love of it and is thereby evil.

Well... In order to really understand what Ayn is saying here, I need a definition of "superiors" and "inferiors." Seems a bit elitist. These problems, however, are not the problems with having a money system. It is the breakdown of ethics which the love of it engenders.

One of us is 'superior' in argument and one of us is 'inferior'. If you think your argument is superior, is it then invalidated because is it 'elitist'?

So money isnt the problem?

What!?! Only the man who does not need it is fit to inherit wealth? What determines "fitness" here? Ayn is unaware, it would seem, of how much luck has to do with success. Many Humans would make their own fortunes (and too many by evil means), but not all can be very lucky in the connections they make and the opportunities that come along. (Read Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers for an analysis of the importance of luck in making fortunes.)

Theres an old saying 'gotta be lucky to be good, and good to be lucky.' Ones measure of fitness might be described as his ability to harness the power (in wealth) that fate has given him. An unfit poker player dealt a superior hand my still lose to a fit player with an inferior one.

You might also want to reveiw the countless fortunes squandered and destroyed by 'unfit' secessors. History is replete with examples.

Wow. It's hard to decide where to begin on this. "Equal to his money???" How does one measure whether someone is "equal" to their money? You cannot corrupt money. Corruption is a behavior and money does not behave; rather, it moves based on OUR behaviors. We are the ones who become corrupt in efforts to gain as much money as possible. So if there is a question of corruption, it is within Humans, not money. And her idea that MONEY has virtue...objects have no virtue. Humans have virtue (most of them). And it is very elitist indeed to say "Money will not serve that mind that cannot match it." Money serves anyone who has it, by the luck of the draw. (Getting that job, inheriting it, meeting the right investor, having parents that can afford an education, etc.) And how would one measure this mind and its relationship to being served by money?

"Money is your means of survival.

If I inherited a million bucks it would most likely be hookers and blow unto oblivion, lol. Thus I would be measured unfit and unequal to that wealth. If I eared it through a lifetime of mutual and benefiticial exchange, however, I might be more prudent, and thus be 'equal' to my wealth.

The mind itself is an object. Does it lack virtue? Do the skilled, lifesaving hands of a surgeon lack virtue? How about the tools he uses to save lives? Do they not play a part in virtue? How about the miraculous advancement in farming technology? Does not its life giving nature have the potential for goodness? Or the prinitng press? Or the internet? Do they not contain the ingredients needed to advance? Can we not call our capacity to produce such things 'virtuous'?

Or is 'virtue' to live in a cave and die and 28?

The verdict which you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life.

Not so at all. Money is only representationally the source of my livelihood. The actual source is my energy expended. The verdict that money is unnecessary in an abundance paradigm is not the same as saying my life is unnecessary in an abundance paradigm. In fact, my life is likely to be far more useful, as I will then have the freedom to have time and tools necessary to better the world.

Do you exercise? How much energy do you expend in doing so?

How much do you think i should 'pay you' for your energy expended?

Zero, you say? But I thought money was based on expenditure?

It is not the source, per se, that is corrupt - it is the choices made. If YOU are corrupt, you have damned your own existence (if you are caught). And about the "ability" "deserving" a specific amount... LOLOL! Again. Farm workers are slaves, even though we need the produce from the farms to live; star football players are princes, even though no one died for lack of football. "Deserving..."

How much do you donate to your local farmhands? Do you purposly overpay when you buy food? Do you go to a farmers market and pay double for blueberries, so that your words might actually become action?

If you do none of these things, but instead buy food at the offered price, your words are empty and thus meaningless because you do not practice what you preach.

And again, I don't hate money. I hate evil - which the LOVE of money creates.

Again, replace 'money' (a voluntary transaction) with 'sex' (a voluntary transaction) and see if you arent contradicting yourself.

Money is not the product of virtue. It is the produce of a need for a better system of accounting for energy expended. It can handle virtuous functions equally as well as evil ones. It is impartial.

The only thing I demand is non contradiction, yet you seem to contradict youself at every turn. Which is it? Money? Or human corruption? If its the latter, let us drop all reference to money and focus on the real evil.

"Money is the creation of the best power within you???" Hahaha! Money is an accounting tool. To love money is to put it above Human consideration. To love Humanity is the creation of the best power within you. No keys are necessary to trade good effort in today's society with the introduction of robots to do slave work and energy eliminating scarcity.

Perhaps money accounts for all the power you had within you, as expressed by others willingness to trade their own power for your own.

The lovers of money are not the ones willing to work for it, but those willing to sacrifice Human principle and concern in getting it. Those who would use high fructose corn syrup instead of sugar - despite the vast evidence that it is extremely unhealthy to consume - because it's cheaper. Those that would try to hide its use with labeling such as "corn sugar." Those that market a substance called "Neotame" that just happens to be a version of Aspartame that looks worse than the original - and yet...unlike Aspartame, it doesn't HAVE to be on the label, and is approved for use in foods labeled "Organic" and "Kosher..." I'm sorry. That's done for the love of money - you can bet that Neotame interests are intermingled with pharmaceutical industry interests.

You realize all your above examples were given the stamp of approval by a governmental agency, which people mistakenly believe to be in their interest of safety?

Again, money, not the problem. Coercive monopoly of violence conning everyone into the corperatist dystopia? More so the problem.

"Oh, but they would never kill off their customer base! That doesn't make sense!" Slowly suffering Human Beings who eventually die are great cash cows. They recycle. Plenty more coming in.

Do you pay for the services of death and destruction? No? But you pay for benefitial services. What seperates the customers of death from the customers of life? Is it money? (which you of course yourself use) Or is it ignorance? Did money produce that ignorance? Or something deeper...

"Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.

LOLOL! If One approaches money in terms of the anguish it engenders and also sees that it all springs from a scarcity of energy, when One sees that "free energy" would solve the problem of eliminating virtually all the anguish and allow everyone to live richly if they desire, because it will dissipate money as a necessity and because We are at this position in our robotics and communication We can seize the day and make this happen. Ayn was too busy examining the trees to see the forest, I'm afraid.

Ayns objectivist philosophy was, unfortunately, based in the real world as it exists today. Like us, she did not have access to magical infinite abundance, (although Atlas Shrugged centers around a free energy device much like what you propose) and thus her philosophy was bound by scarcity, just as we are today. When infinite resources do arrive, we will be safe in updating her conclusions. Until then, scarcity stands and must not be simply disregarded because it might not exist in some future time.

Well *I* surely won't tell you that money is evil.

*sigh* Theres only so many contradictions I can stand in one sitting. Your entire premise is that money is evil, or is incapable of virtue due to its corruptive power. I simply dont know which way to argue when you constantly dance between money being the root of evil, and/or mans desire, instead, being the root.

Originally posted by Neo_Serf
Looks like I have my work cut out for me! Appologies if I dont make it through all of your thoughtful responses. (which is greatly appriciated, even if youre wrong

The root of money is the accounting of energy expended.

No. Just No. You must abandon this premise if we are to continue.

The ditch digger expends *far* more energy than the CEO. The farmers energetic output far exceeds the day traders. Money accounts for nothing besides the aggregate demand for the energy expended. The ditch digger inputs far more joules of expended energy to his task, and yet makes exponentially less money. If money = energy expended, I would be a far richer man.

How we value any given person's energy is irrelevant. Money represents energy expended. It is not a premise, but the truth. Just because we say, "Ditch digger, your energy is only worth minimum wage, and CEO, your energy is worth a huge salary does NOT follow that money does not represent energy expended. (And if I must abandon the truth here to continue, I would not continue.)

Since the basic foundation of economics is unlimited desires vs finite resources, I fully agree with you that scarcity produces money. We dont pay for air because it is relatively abundant. So I will conceed that abundance in any field will relieve us of the need for money.

And if we have abundance of energy, eventually we would have no need for money.

But since you have conceeded that not *everything* will be abundant (lobster example), some mechanism is required to decide who will get what. Two options are available here. Top down,violentcentral planning, or negotiated and voluntary exchange, represented by money.

Or, first come first served sign up on a website.

Your example of water floridation is not specific to money as this is a government program. The corperations disposing of this toxic waste are offloading the costs of disposal involuntarily to the tax payer - if they had no body to offload these enormous costs to, they would likely have to find a more cost effective and sustainable solution.

LOLOL! Originally, the makers of aluminum had all this sodium fluoride They wanted to get rid of - but it cost LOTS of money to dispose of it because it is a toxic waste. By convincing people that it was good for the teeth, They got approval to instead sell it to municipalities - Pay to dispose or get paid to dispose... Oh, yes. Money was very much involved. Why do you think they dreamed this scam up?

Again, money is not the problem - institutionalized violence is.

What motivates "institutionalized violence?"

The value we place on money is rather arbitrary - the energy of the farm worker is valued much lower than the energy a star football player puts out. And Rand right there explains that money is an accounting of energy! "[Y]our claim upon the energy of the men who produce."

Youre missing the key part of the idea - the 'men who produce'. Produce what? Produce value.

You cannot "produce" value. Value is a judgment and can (and often does) vary from individual to individual for any given thing. The only things that can be produced are goods and services. How we value them is a personal evaluation, though we often find consensus.

A man could spend his entire life digging ditches for which no one has a use, or value for, while expending enormous physical energy. That energy is expended is not the key point here - that others value his expenditure is the key point. This value is *not* arbitrary in that it is arrived at by the objective aggregate demand of all parties valuing his work.

True, but the product was the ditch(es), not the value. Others are judging to set each his/her own value. And yes the value IS arbitrary - insofar as it is merely an aggregate of many personal estimations which could be set anywhere - and can shift radically depending on situation or additional information. Like stocks - yesterday XYZ company's stock is valued at $10. They may introduce a new invention. Today their stock is valued at $20. The value fluctuates because there is no baseline value for anything. It is merely a judgment.

Value of money and energy is only arbitrary when one group fixes artificially the value of the energy expended. If the government decides the ditch digger is to be paid the same as the football star, *then* the value of money becomes arbitrary.

I disagree. ALL value is either arbitrary or semiarbitrary. It becomes semiarbitrary in a supply and demand situation where there is a glut or a dearth. Beyond that, who's to say that painting has a value of $5,000 and not $5? Arbitrary, and based on personal judgment.

So if we have infinite energy and robots to do the production... What do we need money for? And "moral principle?" The root of money is NOT a moral principle in and of itself. We surround it with a cloak of moral principle (don't be evil because of it). But the fact is that those who covet it, who love it, ignore the moral cloak and do evil to have it in one of its three forms: money/power/energy.

By this logic, any tool used by any evil person is also evil. And yes, if everything, including the human life, were infinite, money would become obsolete.

No. By this logic any tool used by any evil person is still a tool. Any action taken may be evil, but the tool is the tool. We don't need infinity, just abundance of energy to make money obsolete.

Yes, I have taken a look at the root of production. It is often based on (wage) slave labor to ensure large profits. The ideas developed and the personal labor to bring them into reality are based in bliss. Bliss in solving a problem, or creating more ease, or getting money in the end. Bliss.

No, the root of production is simply producing something that would not have existed if not for the input of the human mind. Everything you take for granted, that makes your life infnitely better than that which came before, is based on production. The marxist wage slave canard is irrelevant. Our current levels of bliss is a result of our productive struggle out of the caves.

Let me see if I understand... The root of production is production. Sorry. No. The root of production is motivation to produce. That motivation can be money, personal pride, prestige, fame, desire to fill a need or solve a problem, reputation... Money is to buy bliss as much as possible. The rest deal directly with bliss.

No... Our current levels of COMFORT are a result of our productive struggle out of the caves. Bliss is derived from doing, not being.

Rand is correct in saying that man's mind is responsible for all the goods produced - but very wrong in saying that man's mind is the root of all wealth - wealth is just an accumulation of energy credits as they ooze around the economy greasing the exchange of goods and services.

Serious contradiction here. You accept that mans mind produces all goods, but then somehow deny that the wealth itself is a product of the goods that a mans mind produces?

Wealth is greatly a product of luck. Just because one produces goods does not follow that one will then have wealth. So wealth is more a product of having control over the producers and is substantially a result of luck.

Money is nothing more than a symbol that represents the objective value placed on goods, which are products of mans mind. You cannot artificially seperate the two and call one valid and the other evil.

Um... No.... The value has no objective standard. Value is only a consensus of personal arbitrary values.

And... I call neither evil. Again... Neither goods and services nor money is evil. The LOVE of money leads to evil choices.

This is all fine - until...the love of money breaks down that code. Men lose their good will in favor of their price - the point at which money becomes overwhelmingly enticing.

So money is fine until it corrupts? Couldnt the same be said for sex?

Sure. So?

which had the downside that if one had something to trade but no one wanted or needed it, one might starve.

So in conclusion, one must offer others something of value if one wishes to exist?

Not exactly. One must have something of perceived value to facilitate trade in a scarcity paradigm. Value will be placed on betterment, good ideas, hand crafted items, antiques, social status, solving problems as opposed to money if money is removed.

And this is wrong how? The alternative is to be a slave.

Or get rid of money by infusing the system with plenum energy and the alternative then results in leisure, best solutions over the cheapest or most profitable, reputation as "coin," and opportunity to create for all. As long as money is part of the system, there WILL be wage slavery, exploitation, greed, elite, and evil choices made.

This is true. But again, it points out that money is based on energy expended.

No! No no no! Energy expended is *meaningless* if said energy is not valued by others! If I go for a run, which benefits myself only, yet expends a lot of energy, I couldnt expect a walker to somehow value my sweat and be willing to exchange anything for it!

I suppose I thought this went without saying, but yes, money represents meaningful energy expended. I never said it represents ALL energy expended for whatever reason. So. Though your energy expended may mean something to you (healthier body, perhaps), it is not meaningful energy expense to anyone but you. Only you place value on that expense of energy. So, no. You will not gain money for it. But, yes. Rand's comments about money representing the efforts of people is the same thing as saying money represents meaningful energy expended.

Not exactly. Money also promotes motive to evil to gain more of it.

Sex promotes rape and therefor sex is bad.

I covered this in my LAST post. It IS NOT MONEY OR SEX THAT IS EVIL. It is THE LOVE OF money/sex that promotes evil behaviors.

No... Money also permits fraud, theft, and unethical business choices to promote profit. Hardly things of mutual benefit.

Sex promotes rape, molestation and murder. Hardly things of mutual benefit.

Let's get off this sex thing. You keep talking to me as if I am saying money is evil. I am not. It IS NOT MONEY OR SEX THAT IS EVIL. It is THE LOVE OF money/sex that promotes evil behaviors.

Money merely greases the mutual agreements.

Can we at least agree that this is a good thing?

We can agree that this is a good thing if the mutual agreements that money is greasing are Ethical, sure. But money, being a tool, does not care about whether it is being used to grease Ethical agreements, or agreements with evil in them. And with plenum energy, We can eliminate the need for money, and if We eliminate the need for money, the root of all evil ( the LOVE of money) will have nothing to grow from.

It is inequitably distributed

As is human ability. Money reflects this.

Wrong. Money reflects mostly who was lucky and who wasn't. Bill Gates lucked out and had a mom who got him into computer labs that virtually none of us could have dreamed of having access to at the time. If he had not had that opportunity, HE WOULD NOT BE WHERE HE IS TODAY. Is it brains that got him into the labs? No. Luck only. Though there is a slight correlation between inventiveness and success, largely the main factor is luck.

Farm workers are paid far closer to what we pay slaves (and about as much as it would cost a slave owner to keep them) while the star football player is paid like a prince...

Football players posses unique abilities that people are willing to pay them for. Farm hands, comparitively, do not.

According to SOME people's valuation of their energy. Not all. I think star football players are grossly overpaid. And farm workers grossly underpaid. Others do not. A clear example of the fact that energy expenditure is valued arbitrarily.

People want cheap, abundant food and thus farmers respond to that demand by lowering labour costs, among other things. If food were in shortage, I assure you that trend would reverse...

Oh, I understand economics, supply and demand, and all. But I doubt labor costs would change directly. The producers would only see increase as a result of inflation.

And yes, in my estimation athletes are way overpaid. My solution? Dont buy a ticket.

Oh, I don't buy tickets. My point is that the valuation is arbitrary - we don't think it appropriate, but clearly others do. And enough of them, at that.

And what happens when the "best" is still a pale comparison to what we COULD produce but that we love our money so much that we produce cheaper and shoddier work to turn a good profit? Ayn presumes that there is no force involved which motivates Humans to cut corners. She claims a code, but there is none. The code is anything that makes a profit goes. Even if it will put many in misery (polluting because it's cheaper than not, for example), if the profit is better, do it.

If cheaper and shoddier is what people demand and deem the 'best', then that is what they will recieve. I buy cheap underwear from Walmart because its cheap, and I expect is to wear our shortly. On the other hand, if I were to buy a house I would want only the best, strongest and enviromentally most friendly construction possible. Not everyone shares your preferences.

Except, that is NOT what people want. They WANT well-made. They can afford only the crap - which is made shoddily so as to enhance profits. You make it sound like We have a choice to buy the good stuff - and (statistically speaking) We do not. We have limited funds that We are trying to stretch to cover all bases, and shoddy is all we have the money for. Because we did not luck out into a position in that top 1%.

Polluting is only made possible by the problem of the commons, which is created soley by the government. I will not go in to this further, though, and instead will simply say that if you own your own land and are responsible for it, (and cannot offload the price of pollution to the taxpayer) you wouldnt # where you eat.

What? Polluting is made possible by companies paying money to people who love it (and therefore willing to do evil) to look the other way, or falsify information, so that the polluters don't have to do anything about it. It cost too much to make sure there was no pollution to begin with, and too much to quit. Cheaper to pay fines. It has little to do with the government (except as regulations are set) and everything to do with evil choices to ensure maximum profit.

"But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality – the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.

Rand presumes no motive for doing things other than being paid money

Rand *asserts* that the value of exchange between parties is represented in money. This can only occur if value is exchanged. Exhanged value = good!

Exchanged goods and services = neutral; money tool to facilitate exchange = one method of facilitation = neutral. "Value" is subjective. Doing things that help and/or do not hurt for money = good. Doing things that are unEthical for money = bad.

And still... Rand presumes no motive for doing things other than being paid money.

True. But money WILL degrade any code we may have in place where obtaining (more) money is placed higher in importance than Human consideration. It spawns love of it and thereby evil.

True. But *sex* WILL degrade any code we may have in place where obtaining (more) sex is placed higher in importance than the Human consideration. Sex spawns love of it and is thereby evil.

There you go with that sex thing again. What's your point? Like you can justify all the evil people do because they love money by finding another issue where people do evil because of a love of something? Sex aside, as you agree is true, money WILL degrade any code we may have in place where obtaining (more) money is placed higher in importance than Human consideration. It spawns love of it and thereby evil.

Well... In order to really understand what Ayn is saying here, I need a definition of "superiors" and "inferiors." Seems a bit elitist. These problems, however, are not the problems with having a money system. It is the breakdown of ethics which the love of it engenders.

One of us is 'superior' in argument and one of us is 'inferior'. If you think your argument is superior, is it then invalidated because is it 'elitist'?

No... Not in that sense. But as I recall, Ayn was talking of, in essence, financial "superiors" and "inferiors." Pulling the terms out of context leaves pretty much nothing. What does she mean in THIS USAGE of the terms "superiors" and "inferiors?"

So money isnt the problem?

Money is only a problem because it is based on a scarcity of energy and falls in such a way that billions live in poverty, some more live just above that line, and only a very small number wind up as "elite." Because money promotes the love of it, and the love of it promotes evil behaviors, indirectly only is money the problem.

What!?! Only the man who does not need it is fit to inherit wealth? What determines "fitness" here? Ayn is unaware, it would seem, of how much luck has to do with success. Many Humans would make their own fortunes (and too many by evil means), but not all can be very lucky in the connections they make and the opportunities that come along. (Read Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers for an analysis of the importance of luck in making fortunes.)

Theres an old saying 'gotta be lucky to be good, and good to be lucky.' Ones measure of fitness might be described as his ability to harness the power (in wealth) that fate has given him. An unfit poker player dealt a superior hand my still lose to a fit player with an inferior one.

Huh? What's that got to do with the fact that statistically, all rich were just very lucky? Lucky to be born into wealth, lucky to be at the right place at the right time, lucky to be born with an innate talent that others place arbitrarily high value on, lucky to have gorgeous looks, whatever. (If you think models are not cashing in on luck... Heh.)

You might also want to reveiw the countless fortunes squandered and destroyed by 'unfit' secessors. History is replete with examples.

Some of them unlucky, some of them merely foolish. But this begs the question, why is this relevant and who should care what they do with the money they get, however it was gotten?

Wow. It's hard to decide where to begin on this. "Equal to his money???" How does one measure whether someone is "equal" to their money? You cannot corrupt money. Corruption is a behavior and money does not behave; rather, it moves based on OUR behaviors. We are the ones who become corrupt in efforts to gain as much money as possible. So if there is a question of corruption, it is within Humans, not money. And her idea that MONEY has virtue...objects have no virtue. Humans have virtue (most of them). And it is very elitist indeed to say "Money will not serve that mind that cannot match it." Money serves anyone who has it, by the luck of the draw. (Getting that job, inheriting it, meeting the right investor, having parents that can afford an education, etc.) And how would one measure this mind and its relationship to being served by money?

"Money is your means of survival.

If I inherited a million bucks it would most likely be hookers and blow unto oblivion, lol. Thus I would be measured unfit and unequal to that wealth. If I eared it through a lifetime of mutual and benefiticial exchange, however, I might be more prudent, and thus be 'equal' to my wealth.

Um... Ok... But let's get back to that old lady - the one who was laid off, spent 5 years looking for work, no one was hiring old ladies when they had a pool of 20- and 30-somethings, went through savings, 401K and all help from friends and family and is now on social services. This person would invest wisely if there was money to invest. This person would take the million dollars if it was inherited and build from there. I guess it's because she is unequal to it that she doesn't have it? Not at all. She is highly skilled but her luck is that she is out of work when so many others are out of work, too, competing with a younger workforce.

You cannot value people by whether their luck made them lots of money.

The mind itself is an object. Does it lack virtue? Do the skilled, lifesaving hands of a surgeon lack virtue? How about the tools he uses to save lives? Do they not play a part in virtue? How about the miraculous advancement in farming technology? Does not its life giving nature have the potential for goodness? Or the prinitng press? Or the internet? Do they not contain the ingredients needed to advance? Can we not call our capacity to produce such things 'virtuous'?

The mind is NOT an object. (If so, point to it...) Scientists have no clue where or what the mind is. All We have for evidence is the behaviors emerging from the mind to surmise its presence. Do behaviors have virtue? No. Do We place value on behaviors? Yes. Do the surgeon's hands lack virtue? Yes. Do We assign value to them? Yes. Miraculous scientific advancements? No value except that which We assign. Printing press, Interweb, or any other thing... They just are. WE assign our more or less random values to these things, the aggregate of which gives Us the "metavalue" in society.

And, no. We cannot call our capacity "virtuous." We can call what we DO with our capacity virtuous or evil or any shade in between.

Or is 'virtue' to live in a cave and die and 28?

There is no virtue lest We assign it.

The verdict which you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life.

Not so at all. Money is only representationally the source of my livelihood. The actual source is my energy expended. The verdict that money is unnecessary in an abundance paradigm is not the same as saying my life is unnecessary in an abundance paradigm. In fact, my life is likely to be far more useful, as I will then have the freedom to have time and tools necessary to better the world.

Do you exercise? How much energy do you expend in doing so?

How much do you think i should 'pay you' for your energy expended?

Zero, you say? But I thought money was based on expenditure?

[sigh] Again... Money represents meaningful energy expended. Energy others place value on at some level. Really, this and the sex thing seem almost deliberately dense.

It is not the source, per se, that is corrupt - it is the choices made. If YOU are corrupt, you have damned your own existence (if you are caught). And about the "ability" "deserving" a specific amount... LOLOL! Again. Farm workers are slaves, even though we need the produce from the farms to live; star football players are princes, even though no one died for lack of football. "Deserving..."

How much do you donate to your local farmhands? Do you purposly overpay when you buy food? Do you go to a farmers market and pay double for blueberries, so that your words might actually become action?

No - because when One is living on $58 a month, that is not a luxury One can afford. And no, because it's not the farm hand that gets the money. But this is sidestepping the point. We value our farm workers who feed us far less than star football players who merely entertain some.

If you do none of these things, but instead buy food at the offered price, your words are empty and thus meaningless because you do not practice what you preach.

Instead, I do what I CAN do and offer ideas such that if implemented, no one would live in poverty, no one would be tied to a slave's job, luck would not dictate wealth and poverty, and Humans would be free to blossom in Their individual bliss. Since I can't go give money to all the farm workers in this world, I give ideas on how to pay them all in spades.

And again, I don't hate money. I hate evil - which the LOVE of money creates.

Again, replace 'money' (a voluntary transaction) with 'sex' (a voluntary transaction) and see if you arent contradicting yourself.

No. I'm not contradicting myself. (Again with the sex.) Like money and the love of it are the same thing. Really?

Money is not the product of virtue. It is the produce of a need for a better system of accounting for energy expended. It can handle virtuous functions equally as well as evil ones. It is impartial.

The only thing I demand is non contradiction, yet you seem to contradict youself at every turn. Which is it? Money? Or human corruption? If its the latter, let us drop all reference to money and focus on the real evil.

I am not sure I can deal with One who claims contradiction where there is none. Let me see if I can break this down for you.

I have NEVER said money is "evil." I have said that, because it exists and some choose to love it over Human interest, if the need for it dissipates, so will virtually all evil, not because money itself is evil, but the Human corruption that having money engenders. And we CAN"T drop money and discuss evil.

Because the LOVE of money is the root of all evil. And though money itself is not evil, it is tied to evil by virtue of people loving it above Human consideration.

"Money is the creation of the best power within you???" Hahaha! Money is an accounting tool. To love money is to put it above Human consideration. To love Humanity is the creation of the best power within you. No keys are necessary to trade good effort in today's society with the introduction of robots to do slave work and energy eliminating scarcity.

Perhaps money accounts for all the power you had within you, as expressed by others willingness to trade their own power for your own.

All the meaningfully expended energy, yes. That assumes, of course, that there is an opportunity to meaningfully expend energy - the old lady has no opportunity.

The lovers of money are not the ones willing to work for it, but those willing to sacrifice Human principle and concern in getting it. Those who would use high fructose corn syrup instead of sugar - despite the vast evidence that it is extremely unhealthy to consume - because it's cheaper. Those that would try to hide its use with labeling such as "corn sugar." Those that market a substance called "Neotame" that just happens to be a version of Aspartame that looks worse than the original - and yet...unlike Aspartame, it doesn't HAVE to be on the label, and is approved for use in foods labeled "Organic" and "Kosher..." I'm sorry. That's done for the love of money - you can bet that Neotame interests are intermingled with pharmaceutical industry interests.

You realize all your above examples were given the stamp of approval by a governmental agency, which people mistakenly believe to be in their interest of safety?

They had government complicity, but these are CORPORATIONS we're talking about. Monsanto does Neotame. You seem to think the government is not people, many who love money to be paid off to allow unEthical business practices. That is irrelevant to the fact that these CORPORATIONS are choosing to make money to the direct detriment of Humans - with full knowledge. Willfully. That is evil. It is not the money but the willingness to harm others to get it.

(Virtually anything a corporation does these days requires some government involvement - and many a government flunky is a paid off flunky.)

Again, money, not the problem. Coercive monopoly of violence conning everyone into the corperatist dystopia? More so the problem.

No, money is not the issue in and of itself. Why do they behave that way, these monopolies? Because They love money over Human consideration. If money was out of the equation, They could not love it.

"Oh, but they would never kill off their customer base! That doesn't make sense!" Slowly suffering Human Beings who eventually die are great cash cows. They recycle. Plenty more coming in.

Do you pay for the services of death and destruction? No? But you pay for benefitial services. What seperates the customers of death from the customers of life? Is it money? (which you of course yourself use) Or is it ignorance? Did money produce that ignorance? Or something deeper...

I watched as my mom treated issues (that cannabis could have treated with no side effects) with pharmaceuticals. From those she wound up needing others to deal with the side effects. From those more were needed to fix the side effects of THOSE! The pharmaceutical companies were making a killing off her! And killing her, in the process.

The most beneficial of medicinal plants, cannabis, is illegal NOT because of anything wrong with using it - objectively, We should be embracing its awesome benefits - but because it threatens pharmaceutical profits, paper forest profits, cotton, textiles, and other profits. Is this Ethical? To hunt, sting, arrest, try and incarcerate people because of its use? To PAY for all that? No. It is grossly UNEthical. But We retain the prohibition because money is spent to make people BELIEVE there is a problem with it. (Defrauding.) And ruin lives because of this system of prohibition, as well as spend BILLIONS a year to worry about it.

So it is neither - money nor ignorance. It is the LOVE of money.

What is motivating all this evil? The LOVE of money.

"Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.

LOLOL! If One approaches money in terms of the anguish it engenders and also sees that it all springs from a scarcity of energy, when One sees that "free energy" would solve the problem of eliminating virtually all the anguish and allow everyone to live richly if they desire, because it will dissipate money as a necessity and because We are at this position in our robotics and communication We can seize the day and make this happen. Ayn was too busy examining the trees to see the forest, I'm afraid.

Ayns objectivist philosophy was, unfortunately, based in the real world as it exists today. Like us, she did not have access to magical infinite abundance, (although Atlas Shrugged centers around a free energy device much like what you propose) and thus her philosophy was bound by scarcity, just as we are today. When infinite resources do arrive, we will be safe in updating her conclusions. Until then, scarcity stands and must not be simply disregarded because it might not exist in some future time.

No... Ayn is not objective at all. She assigns "virtue" to money itself - which has no intrinsic virtue or evil. So this alone deteriorates her arguments. We are NOT bound by scarcity, nor do we need INFINITE resources. All We need are plenum energy and ABUNDANT resources (which overall this planet offers in amounts far exceeding our needs).

And Ayn's conclusions don't need updating - just an injection of reality and facts she somehow misses (like the fact that money has no virtue just as a hammer has no virtue. Only the One who wields may manifest virtue or evil, and that money represents energy expended (meaningful).

Well *I* surely won't tell you that money is evil.

*sigh* Theres only so many contradictions I can stand in one sitting. Your entire premise is that money is evil, or is incapable of virtue due to its corruptive power. I simply dont know which way to argue when you constantly dance between money being the root of evil, and/or mans desire, instead, being the root.

[sigh] There's so much clinging to the idea that I have said money was evil. NO CONTRADICTION! *I* never said money was evil. I have said that the LOVE OF money is the root of all evil, and that the only way to excise evil is to be rid of the soil the root grows in. As long as there is money, We will see the LOVE of it creating evil behaviors.

Behaviors = Evil / Good. Money = tool.

Go back here and count the times I have said that money was evil and then count the times I have said that the LOVE of money is where the problem lies.

Again, and again, and again. Money = neutral. LOVE of money = evil.

It is not a premise, but the truth. Just because we say, "Ditch digger, your energy is only worth minimum wage, and CEO, your energy is worth a huge salary does NOT follow that money does not represent energy expended. (And if I must abandon the truth here to continue, I would not continue.)

Yes it does completely follow. If it did not, I wouldnt have wasted the keystrokes.

If money = energy expended, then ditch digger *must* (by your own reasoning) = wealthy man! I dont know how to say this any simpler. But lets test your premise in a few other ways and see if it stands.

- Me doing 20 pushups = much time + energy expended. Monetary gain = $0.
- A multi national mining company inputs countless man hours and investment of resources to find copper in an unexplored mountin range. 5 years and the careers of many up and comers are expended. Said company finds nothing but granite, at massive energy expenditure. Monetary gain = negative untold millions.
- A potential olympic swimmer invests his entire life into training, expecting to reap the rewards from placing as a medalist olympian. He places .2 seconds behind his competition in trials and doesnt even compete in the olympics. His monetary loss is incalcuable in terms of youth and time invested. Yet his energy invested exceeds the lifetime investment of an average person.

If money = energy invested, as you stubbornly assert, the above examples would be impossible.

Now conversely, if the above examples resulted in success, others would *value* the energy expended, and thus would be willing to trade their surplus value (represented in money) to the successful parties for a negotiated exchange for mutual benefit.

If I spend my whole life collecting coke cans, and expend my every last joule of energy digging through dumpsters for cans, I can expect nothing more than what others are willing to pay for my energy expenditure. That would probably not exceed the deposit price of the cans, and could expect to not have much money in the end.

Money is simply a yardstick for the objective value placed on goods and services. Value is determined by aggragate demand. Aggragate demand is determined by the culmination of each individual exchange between parties. Energy expended is only one factor in determining value.

You simply *must* abandon this fallicious arguement if we are to continue.

And if we have abundance of energy, eventually we would have no need for money.

Agreed.

Or, first come first served sign up on a website.

So you imply that a body exists that controls the limited lobster resources and can administer them as it sees fit. In other words, a central monopoly which must (by definition) control the lobster catching grounds by force. (otherwise it would not control said resource and thus would not be able to administer the lobster allocation monopolistically on its website)

Immediately this 'lobster board' falls victim to all the historical pitfalls of corruption that all monopolies succumb to. (what will stop this lobster board from rewarding its friends with more lobster and punishing its opponents with none? Who will regulate this lobster board, and who will regulate its regulators? What will stop Red Lobster from stacking the lobster board with its paid lobbyists? Bliss? ect ect)

LOLOL! Originally, the makers of aluminum had all this sodium fluoride They wanted to get rid of - but it cost LOTS of money to dispose of it because it is a toxic waste. By convincing people that it was good for the teeth, They got approval to instead sell it to municipalities - Pay to dispose or get paid to dispose... Oh, yes. Money was very much involved. Why do you think they dreamed this scam up?

Again, you over simplify and scape goat money as the prime factor here. You say sodium floride was *expensive* to dispose of. Thus the *state* (Stalin in the gulags, then Hitler in the concentration camps, then the western world in water 'treatment') stepped in and allowed the aluminum concerns to *offload the costs of disposal* to the taxpayer by allowing the industrials to dump their poison into the *public* (state controlled)water supply.

This situation can only exist because the state interjects and allows toxic waste into the water supply it controls. The aluminum smelters are of course motivated by money to reduce costs and thus will of course take the state up on 'free' disposal. This option would not be available to them if the state did not exist, or allow it to take place.

Thus the state (monopolized violence) is to blame, not money.

What motivates "institutionalized violence?"

The desire to rule others by force.

You cannot "produce" value. Value is a judgment and can (and often does) vary from individual to individual for any given thing. The only things that can be produced are goods and services. How we value them is a personal evaluation, though we often find consensus.

I can produce a good or service that is deemed to be 'valuble' through concensus, and that concensus is objectively represented by 'money'.

You just (unknowingly?) validated everything ive been trying to say.

True, but the product was the ditch(es), not the value. Others are judging to set each his/her own value. And yes the value IS arbitrary - insofar as it is merely an aggregate of many personal estimations which could be set anywhere - and can shift radically depending on situation or additional information. Like stocks - yesterday XYZ company's stock is valued at $10. They may introduce a new invention. Today their stock is valued at $20. The value fluctuates because there is no baseline value for anything. It is merely a judgment.

True? Thank you.

ar·bi·trar·y/ˈärbiˌtrerē/Adjective1. Based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system.
2. (of power or a ruling body) Unrestrained and autocratic in the use of authority.

*depending on the situation of additional information* ie. *not* based on person whim or random choice. The stock is valued higher because individual actors judge the new invention to be valuble, not randomly or on a whim, but because they have an objective system in place that measures value on aggragte demand. NOT an arbitrary one.

You are correct in saying there is no intrinsic value to anything, even air or water, as some (who wish to die) do not value these things. Gold has no intrinsic value as it is just a metal in the ground that can be used be people who value it, or disused by those who dont.

Money is simply a yardstick measuring how much gold, or any other good, is valued by those who wish to trade for it. Again, nothing to do with energy expenditure.

I disagree. ALL value is either arbitrary or semiarbitrary. It becomes semiarbitrary in a supply and demand situation where there is a glut or a dearth. Beyond that, who's to say that painting has a value of $5,000 and not $5? Arbitrary, and based on personal judgment.

Whos to say what a painting it worth? Something is worth *exactly* what others are willing to pay for it. The painting is worth $5 if the painter sells for $5. The painting is worth $1 000 000 if it is sold for $1 000 000, even if every other bid was $5.

Things are worth what you are willing to exchange for them. Period. If this payment is based on personal whim, or aggragate demand, is immeterial.

That people generally wish to deal based on a generally accepted yardstick such as money or gold tells us that people generally prefer an objective standard to compare relative values of goods to. This tells us that people generally prefer money.

No. By this logic any tool used by any evil person is still a tool. Any action taken may be evil, but the tool is the tool. We don't need infinity, just abundance of energy to make money obsolete.

Paperclips are abundant and yet we still find money a useful tool to allocate them.

If money is not evil, stop your attack on it and seek the deeper cause.

Let me see if I understand... The root of production is production. Sorry. No. The root of production is motivation to produce. That motivation can be money, personal pride, prestige, fame, desire to fill a need or solve a problem, reputation... Money is to buy bliss as much as possible. The rest deal directly with bliss.

Now youre just being obtuse. The root of production is the human mind coupled with its desire to control its enviroment to its benefit.

Wealth is greatly a product of luck. Just because one produces goods does not follow that one will then have wealth. So wealth is more a product of having control over the producers and is substantially a result of luck.

Are you seriously going to sit there, on the other end of this futuristic and unfathomable device called the internet, and tell me with a strait face that it bubbled up randomly from the eather based on sheer 'luck'?

You know what lucky is? That we are lucky enough to live today with access to such wonderous technologies that our ancestors couldnt even dream of, and that we are able to have thing conversation across the globe, all the while not being hunted by wild beasts or whipped mercilessly by slave drivers, unlike the 99.99% of humans who have existed before us. THAT is luck. The inventions and advances you say were arrived at by luck, though, certainly did not chance into reality, like you assert, but instead are the result of the focused and productive human mind.

Do you feel everything you personally have produced and achived (including your arguments) to be a result of 'luck'?

Um... No.... The value has no objective standard. Value is only a consensus of personal arbitrary values.

Ok and this concensus is symbolized by money. Im glad we finially agree that money represents aggragate value and *not* energy expended.

Or get rid of money by infusing the system with plenum energy and the alternative then results in leisure, best solutions over the cheapest or most profitable, reputation as "coin," and opportunity to create for all. As long as money is part of the system, there WILL be wage slavery, exploitation, greed, elite, and evil choices made.

Are you saying that without money, evil and exploitation will end?

You realize moneyless systems have been tried before, right...?

I suppose I thought this went without saying, but yes, money represents meaningful energy expended.

FINALLY we make some progress. You admit that meaningless energy expenditure does not equal money. Thus it is 'meaning' or 'value' that defines money, and not energy expended. Value is defined by others definition of what is valuble. Thus money is a means of exchange of value.

AGREED.

I never said it represents ALL energy expended for whatever reason.

A lot of energy could have been conserved if you were clear about this up front.

Rand's comments about money representing the efforts of people is the same thing as saying money represents meaningful energy expended.

And since we agree that value is based on aggragate demand, we must conclude that money is an effective tool in facilitating the exchange of value.

Not exactly. Money also promotes motive to evil to gain more of it.

I covered this in my LAST post. It IS NOT MONEY OR SEX THAT IS EVIL. It is THE LOVE OF money/sex that promotes evil behaviors.

So wheres your attack on sex? I assure you I love both money and sex, and yet Im pretty much in the 'good' catergory by any objective yardstick.

Let's get off this sex thing. You keep talking to me as if I am saying money is evil. I am not. It IS NOT MONEY OR SEX THAT IS EVIL. It is THE LOVE OF money/sex that promotes evil behaviors.

But you are saying money is intrinsically bad because it promotes bad behaviour. The same could be said for sex.

We can agree that this is a good thing if the mutual agreements that money is greasing are Ethical, sure. But money, being a tool, does not care about whether it is being used to grease Ethical agreements, or agreements with evil in them. And with plenum energy, We can eliminate the need for money, and if We eliminate the need for money, the root of all evil ( the LOVE of money) will have nothing to grow from.

I can assure you that the rapist needs no monetary incentive to rape his victim.

Wrong. Money reflects mostly who was lucky and who wasn't. Bill Gates lucked out and had a mom who got him into computer labs that virtually none of us could have dreamed of having access to at the time. If he had not had that opportunity, HE WOULD NOT BE WHERE HE IS TODAY. Is it brains that got him into the labs? No. Luck only. Though there is a slight correlation between inventiveness and success, largely the main factor is luck.

So all of life it just a roll of the dice to you? Free will plays no part? What about a child molester? Is he just 'unlucky' to inherit the pedophile gene? What about the child he molests? Just a #ty hand?

Is anyone ever responsible for their actions?

According to SOME people's valuation of their energy. Not all. I think star football players are grossly overpaid. And farm workers grossly underpaid. Others do not. A clear example of the fact that energy expenditure is valued arbitrarily.

Most peoples.

Oh, I understand economics, supply and demand, and all. But I doubt labor costs would change directly. The producers would only see increase as a result of inflation.

And what does this tell you about the value of their labour?

Oh, I don't buy tickets. My point is that the valuation is arbitrary - we don't think it appropriate, but clearly others do. And enough of them, at that.

And I suppose youre 'lucky' enough to know better.

Except, that is NOT what people want. They WANT well-made. They can afford only the crap - which is made shoddily so as to enhance profits. You make it sound like We have a choice to buy the good stuff - and (statistically speaking) We do not. We have limited funds that We are trying to stretch to cover all bases, and shoddy is all we have the money for. Because we did not luck out into a position in that top 1%.

Our lack of choice and inablity to afford things is a result of the debasement of currency, which is directly attributable to government.

What? Polluting is made possible by companies paying money to people who love it (and therefore willing to do evil) to look the other way, or falsify information, so that the polluters don't have to do anything about it. It cost too much to make sure there was no pollution to begin with, and too much to quit. Cheaper to pay fines. It has little to do with the government (except as regulations are set) and everything to do with evil choices to ensure maximum profit.

Government is the king of polluters. This is too broad a topic to delve into here.

--------------------------------------

Will perhaps continue later.

Originally posted by Neo_Serf

It is not a premise, but the truth. Just because we say, "Ditch digger, your energy is only worth minimum wage, and CEO, your energy is worth a huge salary does NOT follow that money does not represent energy expended. (And if I must abandon the truth here to continue, I would not continue.)

Yes it does completely follow. If it did not, I wouldnt have wasted the keystrokes.

If money = energy expended, then ditch digger *must* (by your own reasoning) = wealthy man! I dont know how to say this any simpler. But lets test your premise in a few other ways and see if it stands.

No... Ditch digger does not GET the perceived value of his energy in money. The company he works for gets most of it. Maybe the City hired the company ditch digger works for to dig a bed for their canal. The City pays the company 200,000. The company pays the boss 50,000 and has 10 ditch diggers - whose work/energy is what is actually being done. He pays each of them $1,000 to dig the ditch. It takes 100 hours.

The ditch digger made $10 an hour - his energy is "worth" that, even though it was HIM that actually made it happen. The boss made $500 an hour for mostly doing nothing. The company has $140,000 to pay the stock holders and reinvest in the company.

So though the energy was expended by the ditch digger, others took his money.

Better to have robots digging the ditches and the ditch digger doing what he wants to do.

- Me doing 20 pushups = much time + energy expended. Monetary gain = $0.

Who besides you finds meaning in that energy you expended? You can't do business with yourself alone and expect to turn a profit.

- A multi national mining company inputs countless man hours and investment of resources to find copper in an unexplored mountin range. 5 years and the careers of many up and comers are expended. Said company finds nothing but granite, at massive energy expenditure. Monetary gain = negative untold millions.

Ok, I see your problem. You seem to think that money representing meaningful energy expended means that the one expending the energy is the one who actually gets the money. No, no, no. Sometimes this is the case - freelance workers, for example - but most often, the energy is expended by one and the money goes to another. And money representing meaningful energy expended does not mean you can create more inflow of money by expending energy (in this example, your energy enriched the workers at the company, but since the energy expended had no meaning from the standpoint of a viable place to mine, there was no inflow.

Only MEANINGFUL energy expense is represented by money.

- A potential olympic swimmer invests his entire life into training, expecting to reap the rewards from placing as a medalist olympian. He places .2 seconds behind his competition in trials and doesnt even compete in the olympics. His monetary loss is incalcuable in terms of youth and time invested. Yet his energy invested exceeds the lifetime investment of an average person.

No. He lost, didn't put the energy into the competition. He "lost" no money. His result was not meaningful. The energy expense wound up being meaningless.

If money = energy invested, as you stubbornly assert, the above examples would be impossible.

If money being REPRESENTATIVE of MEANINGFUL energy EXPENDED, regardless of who winds up with the money, then infinite energy added to the system will eliminate the need for money.

And if you would quit "rephrasing" what I said to say things I did not say, then communications will be extremely enhanced.

Now conversely, if the above examples resulted in success, others would *value* the energy expended, and thus would be willing to trade their surplus value (represented in money) to the successful parties for a negotiated exchange for mutual benefit.

Agreed that when the energy expended has meaning, money (of some kind) will be created, some kind of exchange can take place. What that is depends on the subjective view of value. Yes.

If I spend my whole life collecting coke cans, and expend my every last joule of energy digging through dumpsters for cans, I can expect nothing more than what others are willing to pay for my energy expenditure. That would probably not exceed the deposit price of the cans, and could expect to not have much money in the end.

Yes. I never said every joule had an absolute value. You are likely not to create money at a high unit to joule ratio. Though the City in my example above paid premium for those joules the ditch digger expended, by the time it got to him, others were "compensated."

Money is simply a yardstick for the objective value placed on goods and services.

LOLOL! Value is ENTIRELY subjective. Money is a yardstick for determining who (of those with it to spend) values what how much, I suppose. And a yardstick for how much we value Human life.

Value is determined by aggragate demand. Aggragate demand is determined by the culmination of each individual exchange between parties. Energy expended is only one factor in determining value.

Energy expended is NO factor in determining value. Money, which represents energy meaningfully expended, may be how we indicate how much we value something, but we never value something because it took energy expense to produce. (I have seen detailed, painstaking paintings not sell at all, and paintings where someone merely tossed cans of paint at the canvas sell for hundreds of thousands.)

You simply *must* abandon this fallicious arguement if we are to continue.

Since it's not fallacious, I cannot abandon it. You THINK it is because you are failing to understand how the relationship between meaningful energy expended and money develops.

And if we have abundance of energy, eventually we would have no need for money.

Agreed.

Ok. That's good. My point in the End of Entropy piece (linked in my sig) is that, since we have plenum energy everywhere, if we tap it, we don't need money. This piece, The Ethical Planetarian Party Platform, offers a structure for a moneyless society to function under.

Or, first come first served sign up on a website.

So you imply that a body exists that controls the limited lobster resources and can administer them as it sees fit. In other words, a central monopoly which must (by definition) control the lobster catching grounds by force. (otherwise it would not control said resource and thus would not be able to administer the lobster allocation monopolistically on its website)

Not yet it doesn't. But it will. No "monopoly." In order for the concept of "monopoly" to exist, one has to have a money system. There's no *competition* to supply lobsters. All available in the centralized, robotic control are given to those on the list. If someone loves to catch lobster, they can do that too and, like the man who sent you those 25 lobsters, put their catch up on the web.

Immediately this 'lobster board' falls victim to all the historical pitfalls of corruption that all monopolies succumb to. (what will stop this lobster board from rewarding its friends with more lobster and punishing its opponents with none? Who will regulate this lobster board, and who will regulate its regulators? What will stop Red Lobster from stacking the lobster board with its paid lobbyists? Bliss? ect ect)

LOLOL! Originally, the makers of aluminum had all this sodium fluoride They wanted to get rid of - but it cost LOTS of money to dispose of it because it is a toxic waste. By convincing people that it was good for the teeth, They got approval to instead sell it to municipalities - Pay to dispose or get paid to dispose... Oh, yes. Money was very much involved. Why do you think they dreamed this scam up?

Again, you over simplify and scape goat money as the prime factor here. You say sodium floride was *expensive* to dispose of. Thus the *state* (Stalin in the gulags, then Hitler in the concentration camps, then the western world in water 'treatment') stepped in and allowed the aluminum concerns to *offload the costs of disposal* to the taxpayer by allowing the industrials to dump their poison into the *public* (state controlled)water supply.

No. No oversimplification at all. And I do not blame money. Quit saying that. I blame THE LOVE OF MONEY.

This situation can only exist because the state interjects and allows toxic waste into the water supply it controls.

And why would the state accept this? Because somebody got paid off. No one in their right mind would say, sure. Dump poison in the water so you don't have to pay to dispose of it properly. Unless... Either they were lied to ("Fluoride helps teeth") for the purposes of making money or they were paid off to make money.

And in the end, we're poisoning people to the end of making money/power/energy. Without money as a motive, no one would do this evil.

The aluminum smelters are of course motivated by money to reduce costs and thus will of course take the state up on 'free' disposal. This option would not be available to them if the state did not exist, or allow it to take place.

Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa. The STATE didn't say, "Here. Dump that waste in the water supply." No. Didn't happen that way. The Aluminum companies sold the idea under pretense and payoff to the municipalities. They ACTIVELY courted the Cities. This option would not exist if the creators of sodium fluoride had not lied and brought money to bear.

Thus the state (monopolized violence) is to blame, not money.

Thus the LOVE of money is to blame, not money.

What motivates "institutionalized violence?"

The desire to rule others by force.

What allows them to proceed? Money/power/energy. WHY do they proceed? The LOVE of money/power/energy.

You cannot "produce" value. Value is a judgment and can (and often does) vary from individual to individual for any given thing. The only things that can be produced are goods and services. How we value them is a personal evaluation, though we often find consensus.

I can produce a good or service that is deemed to be 'valuble' through concensus, and that concensus is objectively represented by 'money'.

Yes, you can produce a good or service. It's value depends on who is looking at it and where they place that value. Consensus does not set value but gives you an average of values placed. It may be that consensus would give an average value of $100 for your gizmo, but if you can only find people who value it at $50, you will not be getting $100.

Money only objectively defines any given individual's assessment of value.

You just (unknowingly?) validated everything ive been trying to say.

I'm not seeing it.

True, but the product was the ditch(es), not the value. Others are judging to set each his/her own value. And yes the value IS arbitrary - insofar as it is merely an aggregate of many personal estimations which could be set anywhere - and can shift radically depending on situation or additional information. Like stocks - yesterday XYZ company's stock is valued at $10. They may introduce a new invention. Today their stock is valued at $20. The value fluctuates because there is no baseline value for anything. It is merely a judgment.

True? Thank you.

Sure.

ar·bi·trar·y/ˈärbiˌtrerē/Adjective1. Based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system.
2. (of power or a ruling body) Unrestrained and autocratic in the use of authority.

*depending on the situation of additional information* ie. *not* based on person whim or random choice. The stock is valued higher because individual actors judge the new invention to be valuble, not randomly or on a whim, but because they have an objective system in place that measures value on aggragte demand. NOT an arbitrary one.

And what do they base their judgment on? Their personal, arbitrary (as in the first definition above) evaluation. That may be influenced by the fact that someone sold something like it for $2,000 and this looks better, so it must be worth $3,000... But it is still arbitrary on the whole.

You are correct in saying there is no intrinsic value to anything, even air or water, as some (who wish to die) do not value these things. Gold has no intrinsic value as it is just a metal in the ground that can be used be people who value it, or disused by those who dont.

Thank you. [smile]

Money is simply a yardstick measuring how much gold, or any other good, is valued by those who wish to trade for it. Again, nothing to do with energy expenditure.

Once money is circulating, you can use it as a yardstick of how much and what people value, yes. But the making of money requires energy to be expended at some point along the line.

I disagree. ALL value is either arbitrary or semiarbitrary. It becomes semiarbitrary in a supply and demand situation where there is a glut or a dearth. Beyond that, who's to say that painting has a value of $5,000 and not $5? Arbitrary, and based on personal judgment.

Whos to say what a painting it worth? Something is worth *exactly* what others are willing to pay for it. The painting is worth $5 if the painter sells for $5. The painting is worth $1 000 000 if it is sold for $1 000 000, even if every other bid was $5.

And what others are willing to pay is arbitrary. You can find an average, to be sure. If you had a bunch of $5 offers and one million dollar offers, it just would highlight the arbitrary valuation. You say the painting is worth a million, but I say that is not to. To the BUYER it's worth that much. The buyer is not guaranteed (s)he will get anything for it if (s)he decides to sell it. The arbitrary evaluations of others will determine what the seller gets. Or does a good or service's value fluctuate naturally outside the evaluation of the potential buyer?

Things are worth what you are willing to exchange for them. Period. If this payment is based on personal whim, or aggragate demand, is immeterial.

Well, that statement is surely true.

That people generally wish to deal based on a generally accepted yardstick such as money or gold tells us that people generally prefer an objective standard to compare relative values of goods to. This tells us that people generally prefer money.

But it's NOT objective. It's subjective as hell. If it was objective, there would be no such thing as inflation. Things would stay at fixed prices. No one would wait for sales, as there would be no such thing. All it tells us is that people will use money when it is there and they feel confident that the next guy will take it. But there is plenty of evidence that people would prefer not having to worry about it.

No. By this logic any tool used by any evil person is still a tool. Any action taken may be evil, but the tool is the tool. We don't need infinity, just abundance of energy to make money obsolete.

Paperclips are abundant and yet we still find money a useful tool to allocate them.

Are you suggesting we cannot use one tool relative to another? That is the only way I can make sense of this statement. I mean, what is your point here?

If money is not evil, stop your attack on it and seek the deeper cause.

I think I will go back and count how many times you have accused me, directly or, as in this case, obliquely, of saying money is evil.

It is THE LOVE of money that promotes evil. THAT is the deeper cause.

Let me see if I understand... The root of production is production. Sorry. No. The root of production is motivation to produce. That motivation can be money, personal pride, prestige, fame, desire to fill a need or solve a problem, reputation... Money is to buy bliss as much as possible. The rest deal directly with bliss.

Now youre just being obtuse. The root of production is the human mind coupled with its desire to control its enviroment to its benefit.

I think YOU're being obtuse here. The root of production is the Human desire to improve the environment because of personal satisfaction/pride, prestige, fame, desire to fill a need or solve a problem, reputation...or, if it's there, money.

You just said what I said, really.

Wealth is greatly a product of luck. Just because one produces goods does not follow that one will then have wealth. So wealth is more a product of having control over the producers and is substantially a result of luck.

Are you seriously going to sit there, on the other end of this futuristic and unfathomable device called the internet, and tell me with a strait face that it bubbled up randomly from the eather based on sheer 'luck'?

Yes. If you weren't born to a mother that could get you access to a computer lab when such things were very rare, you won't become Bill Gates. If you weren't born of parents who can send you to Harvard and there is no scholarship, you aren't going to graduate from Harvard, even if it's a dream you had since you were a child. Think of all the money you lose being born to parents who can't send you to Harvard and instead send you to community college!

You know what lucky is? That we are lucky enough to live today with access to such wonderous technologies that our ancestors couldnt even dream of, and that we are able to have thing conversation across the globe, all the while not being hunted by wild beasts or whipped mercilessly by slave drivers, unlike the 99.99% of humans who have existed before us. THAT is luck. The inventions and advances you say were arrived at by luck, though, certainly did not chance into reality, like you assert, but instead are the result of the focused and productive human mind.

I can't tell you how lucky I feel when I solve a problem. I was lucky I thought of the solution. I'm lucky it was ME who solved the problem. I'm lucky I was smart enough.

Be that as it may, you make it sound as if all advancements were worked on and created as a Humanity whole. But only the ones LUCKY enough to think of some better way, or LUCKY enough to be bright enough, or LUCKY to have the materials to build a prototype are the ones who make money. Many times people have been UNlucky, when they come up with something and show it to the wrong person. That person steals it (because they LOVE money) and the UNlucky one is out on the street.

Nope. One has to be lucky to succeed in any large measure.

Do you feel everything you personally have produced and achived (including your arguments) to be a result of 'luck'?

Yep. I am lucky enough to be pretty sharp and capable. I am lucky enough to have been taught how to read and write. I am lucky that the clarity of thought and analysis are mine to offer ideas that have merit. I am lucky to have the Interweb to convey the ideas. I am lucky to have personal knowledge of elements some dispute (plenum energy). I am lucky to have what it takes.

Um... No.... The value has no objective standard. Value is only a consensus of personal arbitrary values.

Ok and this concensus is symbolized by money. Im glad we finially agree that money represents aggragate value and *not* energy expended.

No. This consensus dictates prices. Money is still a representation of meaningful energy expended.

Or get rid of money by infusing the system with plenum energy and the alternative then results in leisure, best solutions over the cheapest or most profitable, reputation as "coin," and opportunity to create for all. As long as money is part of the system, there WILL be wage slavery, exploitation, greed, elite, and evil choices made.

Are you saying that without money, evil and exploitation will end?

Pretty much, yes - as long as you have enough energy, technology and a structure.

You realize moneyless systems have been tried before, right...?

Yep, and in all of them people had to work. This is no longer the case. Robots can work and Humans can create. Be blissful. Live as the elite of today live if They choose. Only because for the first time in our present history we have robotics, Interweb and plenum energy will a moneyless society succeed.

I suppose I thought this went without saying, but yes, money represents meaningful energy expended.

FINALLY we make some progress. You admit that meaningless energy expenditure does not equal money. Thus it is 'meaning' or 'value' that defines money, and not energy expended. Value is defined by others definition of what is valuble. Thus money is a means of exchange of value.

No. It is meaning which assigns value for any individual. The degree of value is reflected in the amount offered in money. Money still represents energy expended, but it can be used to "shortcut" barter - that was it's purpose to begin with.

In other words, that the money is there to offer indicates that useful energy was expended somewhere along the line in the past. That it is used to purchase a sofa at $500 now means that the buyer valued the sofa at least $500 worth (and had the $500 to spend).

AGREED.

Close but no cigar.

I never said it represents ALL energy expended for whatever reason.

A lot of energy could have been conserved if you were clear about this up front.

Mea culpa.

Rand's comments about money representing the efforts of people is the same thing as saying money represents meaningful energy expended.

And since we agree that value is based on aggragate demand, we must conclude that money is an effective tool in facilitating the exchange of value.

I never said it was not effective. I said we don't need it. I also said that since we cannot excise the LOVE of money - which would be awesome if we could, as it is the root of all evil - excising money does effectively the same thing. And that can be accomplished by adding plenum energy to the system. Which leads to richness of lifestyle for all who choose it, no poverty, no starvation, and no evil done for the LOVE of money (virtually all evil).

Not exactly. Money also promotes motive to evil to gain more of it.

I covered this in my LAST post. It IS NOT MONEY OR SEX THAT IS EVIL. It is THE LOVE OF money/sex that promotes evil behaviors.

So wheres your attack on sex? I assure you I love both money and sex, and yet Im pretty much in the 'good' catergory by any objective yardstick.

I have no attack on sex. I have no attack on money. I have an attack on the LOVE of each. And if we could get rid of sex, it would get rid of the LOVE of it. However, unlike money, which we CAN get rid of, sex is pretty much here to stay.

Me? I hate money. I love all the stuff, though, so I endure money as far as it goes. But I am certainly motivated to get rid of it if I can and eliminate poverty for those so unlucky to be born into it (some lucky few do get out - but they are the exceptions, the lucky ones; some unlucky few - well, many these days - fall into poverty).

Let's get off this sex thing. You keep talking to me as if I am saying money is evil. I am not. It IS NOT MONEY OR SEX THAT IS EVIL. It is THE LOVE OF money/sex that promotes evil behaviors.

But you are saying money is intrinsically bad because it promotes bad behaviour. The same could be said for sex.

You show me where I said that. In fact I may count the times I have said just the opposite. The LOVE of money...

THE LOVE OF MONEY promotes bad behavior.

And since we can't excise the LOVE of money, but CAN excise money, let's excise money to eliminate the problem of LOVING it.

We can agree that this is a good thing if the mutual agreements that money is greasing are Ethical, sure. But money, being a tool, does not care about whether it is being used to grease Ethical agreements, or agreements with evil in them. And with plenum energy, We can eliminate the need for money, and if We eliminate the need for money, the root of all evil (the LOVE of money) will have nothing to grow from.

I can assure you that the rapist needs no monetary incentive to rape his victim.

Yeah. He needs a LOVE of sex. He needs to put sex before Human value. What's your point?

Wrong. Money reflects mostly who was lucky and who wasn't. Bill Gates lucked out and had a mom who got him into computer labs that virtually none of us could have dreamed of having access to at the time. If he had not had that opportunity, HE WOULD NOT BE WHERE HE IS TODAY. Is it brains that got him into the labs? No. Luck only. Though there is a slight correlation between inventiveness and success, largely the main factor is luck.

So all of life it just a roll of the dice to you? Free will plays no part? What about a child molester? Is he just 'unlucky' to inherit the pedophile gene? What about the child he molests? Just a #ty hand?

Surely will plays a part - without it, any luck has no chance. But you judge harshly people who are in poverty, as if they "just didn't TRY hard enough" or are necessarily lacking in intelligence. Because YOU made it, everyone else should be able to, I guess. But the fact is that statistically all people are poor and a large chunk are in poverty because the luck of the draw landed them there, and no matter how much will they brought to bear, they were stuck.

Is anyone ever responsible for their actions?

100% But their actions cannot guarantee success. A very large part of life is luck.

Oh, I understand economics, supply and demand, and all. But I doubt labor costs would change directly. The producers would only see increase as a result of inflation.

And what does this tell you about the value of their labour?

That it can be done by a robot.

Oh, I don't buy tickets. My point is that the valuation is arbitrary - we don't think it appropriate, but clearly others do. And enough of them, at that.

And I suppose youre 'lucky' enough to know better.

I wouldn't throw luck in there unless we're talking about the luck that I was born such that I could become aware enough to make a value judgment. How I judge is irrelevant to luck.

Except, that is NOT what people want. They WANT well-made. They can afford only the crap - which is made shoddily so as to enhance profits. You make it sound like We have a choice to buy the good stuff - and (statistically speaking) We do not. We have limited funds that We are trying to stretch to cover all bases, and shoddy is all we have the money for. Because we did not luck out into a position in that top 1%.

Our lack of choice and inablity to afford things is a result of the debasement of currency, which is directly attributable to government.

Or rather to those controlling the government...impelled to do so by a LOVE of money/power/energy.

What? Polluting is made possible by companies paying money to people who love it (and therefore willing to do evil) to look the other way, or falsify information, so that the polluters don't have to do anything about it. It cost too much to make sure there was no pollution to begin with, and too much to quit. Cheaper to pay fines. It has little to do with the government (except as regulations are set) and everything to do with evil choices to ensure maximum profit.

Government is the king of polluters. This is too broad a topic to delve into here.

I am going to doubt that. All the pollution I have ever seen is either littering, cars, or coming from some private industry plant. And they get by with it by greasing palms.

--------------------------------------

Will perhaps continue later.

Looking forward.

No... Ditch digger does not GET the perceived value of his energy in money. The company he works for gets most of it. Maybe the City hired the company ditch digger works for to dig a bed for their canal. The City pays the company 200,000. The company pays the boss 50,000 and has 10 ditch diggers - whose work/energy is what is actually being done. He pays each of them $1,000 to dig the ditch. It takes 100 hours.

Firstly, your example is predicated on the 'city' using stolen (taxed) money, which is the antithesis of the free, peaceful market situation that I advocate.

Secondly, youre totally falling for the marxist fallacy that incorrectly believes that the company, comprised of various directors and bosses, *arent working or producing anything*. This = FALSE, and Id like you to address this point specifically because I believe this is a major flaw in your reasoning.

Do you actually believe (and lets pretend this is a free market situation, wherin the ditches actually were in demand and demand was not artificially manufactured by government) that the bosses and executives, the owners and financial executives that run this ditch digging concern are *not working*?

Do you actually believe (yes or no will do) that the countless hours invested by the 'bosses' in business school, the immense risk the owner took in investing in a new company, the many hours of overtime paid into the essential book keeping by the accountants...do you actually believe the intelligence and brains of the operation, that actually went out, took a risk of time and money, hired a staff, advertised, competed for contracts head to head with other ditch digging concerns, spent weekends at the office optomising practices...do you actually believe these people are *not working*?

Do you actually believe that these highly ambitious and immensely skilled and groomed proffesionals, upon which the digger himself depends, is not working harder or longer hours that the digger himself?

As one who has dug ditches myself, I can tell you in my experience, the boss was always the one to work into the night. He was always the one grinding out the weekends, as I took them off to let my body recover. Never did it occur to me to resent his input, as his hard work, although not physical, was exaustive, and without it my tiring job would *not exist*. Without my boss, I would have been producing $0/h instead of $10.

What do you think would happen if my boss was forced to pay me and my fellow diggers (unskilled, young and expendable) the same wage as his accountant, who invested years of his life into a highly specialized and demanded feild?

The ditch digger made $10 an hour - his energy is "worth" that, even though it was HIM that actually made it happen. The boss made $500 an hour for mostly doing nothing. The company has $140,000 to pay the stock holders and reinvest in the company.

Butit wasnt the ditch digger at all who made it happen! Who hired the ditch digger, and to what end? Why does the position of digger even exist in the first place? People dont demand random holes everywhere; if they did, I could pick up a shovel and make a fortune in my back yard. The demand for ditches only arrises where there is need for ditches, and those who need a ditch are willing to pay a certain amount for a reputable *company* to forfill their ditch desire. Those who demand ditches must first find an outfit who is capable and reputable in the feild of ditch digging - this requires specialized expertise, not to mention advertising. (if the person demanding ditches is to even become aware of the ditch diing outfit) Shovels and machinery must be bought, advertisment must be placed, skilled foremen must be hired, and training must be provided to raw and unskilled diggers. All of this must be coordinated by the massive input of ingenuity provided by the owner/boss. And if he cannot raise the capital required for this highly complicated system to operate, investors must be courted into throwing down their own hard earned wealth.

You IGNORE all this in favour of the poor ditch digger who you declare is the one making all the above happen. You ignore the fact that without all of the energy and time invested by his superiors, he would not have a ditch to dig at all. You also ignore the fact that he accepts his job voluntarily and of his own free will, and does so because he *knows* his unskilled labour is not worth to anyone more than $10/h.

Besides, I has a blast digging ditches, I got an awesome tan, and at the time $10/h wasnt bad scratch.

So though the energy was expended by the ditch digger, others took his money.

So youre saying that his boss held a gun to his head and stole an unspecified amount of money that was justly due to him?

If I sell you a car for a $1000, and you accept of your own free will, do you then have the moral right to turn around to me and demand another $500?

Did I 'take' anything from you, in the above example?

Better to have robots digging the ditches and the ditch digger doing what he wants to do.

Agreed. But the ditch digging company would still require skilled executives to deploy and operate said robots.

Who besides you finds meaning in that energy you expended? You can't do business with yourself alone and expect to turn a profit.

Exactly.

Ok, I see your problem. You seem to think that money representing meaningful energy expended means that the one expending the energy is the one who actually gets the money.

Where did you get this idea? Whoever trades their valued surplus gets the money. I hardly have to lift a finger to sell my car.

No, no, no. Sometimes this is the case - freelance workers, for example - but most often, the energy is expended by one and the money goes to another. And money representing meaningful energy expended does not mean you can create more inflow of money by expending energy (in this example, your energy enriched the workers at the company, but since the energy expended had no meaning from the standpoint of a viable place to mine, there was no inflow.

So you agree that expended energy is meaninless if said energy has no value to others.

Ummm, thats what Ive been saying the whole time, and what youve been vigerously arguing against. (until your last post, which is confusing to me, and highlights your contradicary premises.)

If money being REPRESENTATIVE of MEANINGFUL energy EXPENDED, regardless of who winds up with the money...

Again, you misunderstand the nature of money, which, seeing as youre an intelligent person, must be willful at this point.

The person who winds up with the money is the one who is the most successful at exchanging meaningful energy expenditure. If exchange is necessarily meaningful to all the parties he voluntarily exchanged with, the person with the most justly earned money has offered the most meaningful energy to the world.

Money doesnt just end up randomly in some guys bank account. (unless if was inherited.) It got there by his skillful trading of value between himself and voluntary trading partners, who are better off for his wealth. This does not apply to money gained by coersion, theft or fraud.

Agreed that when the energy expended has meaning, money (of some kind) will be created, some kind of exchange can take place. What that is depends on the subjective view of value. Yes.

Hooray for progress! Money will be created in any situation in which resources are not infinite. People need a mode of allocation that does not involve force. That mode is best represented by a commodity of near universal value, be it sea shells, salt, gold, sticks or paper notes. Or bliss. (although the accounting for an all bliss economy would be a nightmare~) Whatevr people feel they can convert their resources into and trade them to others widely.

This is not evil! Voluntary trade for mutual benefit is, in fact, the opposite of evil.

Yes. I never said every joule had an absolute value. You are likely not to create money at a high unit to joule ratio. Though the City in my example above paid premium for those joules the ditch digger expended, by the time it got to him, others were "compensated."

And justly so. Have you ever run a business? I have. Its hard. I failed. Now I provide value to others as a sub contractor, effectively contracting out the messy and risky aspects of business to those who are more capable than I was. When I aquire the needed skillset to go it on my own again, I will. But first I must invest heavily in my intellectual capital and knowlege if I am to succeed.

LOLOL! Value is ENTIRELY subjective. Money is a yardstick for determining who (of those with it to spend) values what how much, I suppose. And a yardstick for how much we value Human life.

It is objective in that we objectively agree that an ounce of silver is worth (objectively) about $47 today. (prolly $50 by the time you read this) If the value of silver were subjective, ie anything you want it to be, well, try buying it for $5 and tell the seller that its value is subjective, and that you have arbitrarily decided this. He'll either laugh, or play along, and if he does decide to humour you, he might tell you the value of an ouce of silver is subjectively $1000 and ounce, since all value is arbitrary, as you assert. See how far you get with him.

Energy expended is NO factor in determining value.

Its amazing to me how you started by arguing the exact opposite of this, and now you go as far as to capitalize the opposite to which you so energetically argued to begin with, as if this is the position you held all along, and *im* the fool for pointing this out.

You really would make a great politician~

Money, which represents energy meaningfully expended, may be how we indicate how much we value something, but we never value something because it took energy expense to produce. (I have seen detailed, painstaking paintings not sell at all, and paintings where someone merely tossed cans of paint at the canvas sell for hundreds of thousands.)

Remember, you do not determine the value of the energy expended. The market does this. If the market is filled with dummies who embrace irrationality, then irrational objects is what they will value. This is not for you to decide.

Since it's not fallacious, I cannot abandon it. You THINK it is because you are failing to understand how the relationship between meaningful energy expended and money develops.

Since you have accepted my argument that money = meaningful products, and products = energy expenditure, therefor meaningful energy = meaning as defined by the market, I dont think I am the one with the misunderstanding.

Remember, you started this discussion in the position that money = energy expended. You then reversed your postition and admitted that energy expended must have value, or meaning, to others. We agreed, then, that meaning to others is arrived at by the aggregate demand generated by each individuals preferences, which you assert is arbitrary and random, and i conclude is based on a rational methdology that determines value to each individual.

The last point is immeterial if we both agree that money = value to others. How others arrive at their standards of what is valuble is irrelevant to the discussion, and your opinion of what and how others should arrive at value is also irrelevant.

I think I understand just fine. If you did, you wouldnt have had to reverse your position and argue to opposite of your original stance.

Ok. That's good. My point in the End of Entropy piece (linked in my sig) is that, since we have plenum energy everywhere, if we tap it, we don't need money. This piece, The Ethical Planetarian Party Platform, offers a structure for a moneyless society to function under.

But you agreed some things will still be scarce, like lobster. You provide no adaquate function as to how the remaining scarce resources shall be allocated.

Not yet it doesn't. But it will. No "monopoly." In order for the concept of "monopoly" to exist, one has to have a money system.

You havent thought this through, and once again have contradicted yourself.

You said in your moneyless utopia, a website would exist that would be a 'first come first serve' system. Thus you imply that there is someone who does the 'serving', and that someone is probably the one who runs the website. Thus, in *your own words* this person or persons has exclusive rights to distributed the lobster as it sees fit. (in this case it distributes by first come first serve) Thus, by necessity of *your own argument*, that person must have exclusive control over the lobster fishing grounds and thus *must* have a monopoly over them!

If they didnt, your plan would be nonsensical, as I could easily just disobey your internet poll and go fish all the lobster i wanted, regardless of your plan. Others could do the same. Thus, your first come first serve system would be just that, but not in the way you intended. Your internet allocation would be a meaningless farce, as those who skipped the whole inventory checklist and just went out and trapped lobster would control all of the scarce crustation, and no one who actually checked a box on your site would receive anything, as it would all be controlled by the lobster fishermen themselves.

Thus it follows that either your plan is meaningless, in which case its back to the drawing board, or it is enforced by monopolisitc violence, in which case you violate one or more of your own three rules.

There's no *competition* to supply lobsters. All available in the centralized, robotic control are given to those on the list. If someone loves to catch lobster, they can do that too and, like the man who sent you those 25 lobsters, put their catch up on the web.

If lobsters were infinite, competition would be meaningless, just as no one competes for air. Since they are scarce, and coveted (cuz lobsters are downright delicious), we must accept that competition would be fierce. (as it is)

Centralized, robotic control, you say? Well at least now you admit that we are to be ruled by robots. Theres a reason a central theme of dystopic sci fi novels is the ensalvement and destruction of man at the hand of his own robotic creations.

You wistfully ignore that this central robo command must be programmed by HUMANS.

No. No oversimplification at all. And I do not blame money. Quit saying that. I blame THE LOVE OF MONEY.

So it is humans who corrupt money, and not the other way around?

It follows that, in the absence of money, humans will find another idol to pave their way to corruption.

And why would the state accept this? Because somebody got paid off. No one in their right mind would say, sure. Dump poison in the water so you don't have to pay to dispose of it properly. Unless... Either they were lied to ("Fluoride helps teeth") for the purposes of making money or they were paid off to make money.

So we agree that without the state, these companies would have to bear the costs of disposal and thus go bankrupt if they were unable to do so.

The state in this example is the enabler. Without it, money would serve the opposite end - money would then force said company to find an economical solution to its waste that was acceptable to its customers.

Thus money, in a truly free society, would force polluters to reduce and eliminate pollution, as pollution is nothing but overhead. (which the market always seeks to eliminate.)

example: nuclear power could never exist without the state, as no private insurance company could insure the potential liability ranging in the billions that nuke plants represent. (england actually tried to privatize their nuke plants, which sent investors fleeing - no one but the state can afford to take on such a risky and potentially catasrophic endeavor, and the state is only able to do to because of the extortion of taxation) In this example, money actually serves as a rational check on irrational behaviour.

And in the end, we're poisoning people to the end of making money/power/energy. Without money as a motive, no one would do this evil.

Power is an actual biochemical stimulant and addiction to the human brain, as it served us to seek it in our primordial evolution. But just as sugar tastes sweet to us because it was so scarce in our caveman days, so to does power feel sweet to us today, just as it did when our evolutionary pathway rewarded us for seeking and obtaining it.

But now we command near infinite sugar, and near inifinite power, never conceived by the slow process of evolution, which has not caught up to our rapid advancement. We are fat because we seek sweets as we are programmed to, and we are mad with power because we are not equipped to weild the immense power over others that technology has allowed us. Power is an addiction, and money can be a means to that fix, but it it the craving for power itself that is our destroyer, and not money, which actually serves as our best defense against unchecked power.

A wealthy society with a diffused power base and many competing concentrations of wealth and power is the only check against the nightmare of centralized control.

If not money, the human desire to rule others will manifest in another way, like, say, controlling the centrally planned robot AI in your utopian (dystopian) future.

Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa. The STATE didn't say, "Here. Dump that waste in the water supply." No. Didn't happen that way. The Aluminum companies sold the idea under pretense and payoff to the municipalities. They ACTIVELY courted the Cities. This option would not exist if the creators of sodium fluoride had not lied and brought money to bear.

Actually, and you should know this so Im sure Im not updating you on anything, but Stalin was the first to introduce Sodium Floride into drinking water that supplied his slaves in the gulags. Hitler then took his example and used it in the water fed to the concentration camp inmated. Only after ww2 was water floridization introduced to North America, largely at the behest of Nazi chemists working for Bayer who knew exactly the effects of this most toxic substance.

Again, the state enabled the situation under which aluminum and uranium smelters could offload their costs to the state in the form of dumping in the state water supply. OF COURSE these companies chose to cut costs by not properly disposing of their pollution, but this is not enabled by money, as money, in a free system, would explicitly PROHIBIT such behaviour, as no person would voluntarily pay for tainted water. It was the STATE who poured millions into public disinformation programs during the manhattan project to disinform the public on the effects of flouride on humans. No private concern could ever, or would ever want to, engage in a multigenerational plan to poison its customers, only to open itself to being sued out of existence, if it did not have the umbrella of legal protection that the STATE provides.

Again, in an actually free society, money would serve as a bulwark against this kind of behaviour because if the public ever found out that a company was willingly poisoning them, that company would be sued into bankruptcy, and all its competitors would have every incentive to reveal its nefarious deeds to the public. (and thus competing water companies would constantly test their competitors water purity, and widely publish and adverse results.)

Thus the STATE enables this, and not money, which would serve as an effective check against this sort of evil in a free situation.

Thus the LOVE of money is to blame, not money.

That I love my paycheck, and yet somehow remain a pretty good dude, flies in the face of your basic premise.

What allows them to proceed? Money/power/energy. WHY do they proceed? The LOVE of money/power/energy.

A gun can be used to attack and murder others, or defend those same victims from murder.

Money doesnt kill people, people kill people.

Yes, you can produce a good or service. It's value depends on who is looking at it and where they place that value. Consensus does not set value but gives you an average of values placed. It may be that consensus would give an average value of $100 for your gizmo, but if you can only find people who value it at $50, you will not be getting $100.

Should it be any other way?

Money only objectively defines any given individual's assessment of value.

But you have been saying the whole time that the value of money is subjective! Arrrrrrrg! Which is it??

I'm not seeing it.

I see that!

And what do they base their judgment on? Their personal, arbitrary (as in the first definition above) evaluation. That may be influenced by the fact that someone sold something like it for $2,000 and this looks better, so it must be worth $3,000... But it is still arbitrary on the whole.

Regardless of how each individual determies value (i may value my great grandfathers $2 watch as priceless, while the pawnshop would only actually give me $2) the fact is that competing bids (each bids value based on individual preference) will determine the 'value' of any item. That value, which in summation might be an aggragte based on aribitrary or even random preferences, will in the end be represented by an objective, agreed upon sum, in this case dollars. How or why the specific dollar amount is arrived upon is meaningless - that a final sum is agreed to, and exchanged in, is what is important to our discussion.

In an auction, we dont just yell out random numbers (arbitrary) and expect a result. We yell out a specific number with a specific value attached to said number, which is objectively defined and agreed upon by all parties as is implied by the very act of bidding. That we engage in bidding only with the knowlege that our bids have meaninging implies that all parties involved may have no objectively agreed to the value to the specific object they are bidding on, (otherwise they wouldnt be bidding) but they have implicitly and objectively agreed to the means by which they making the bids - money itself.

Money only functions when all parties involved agree, objectively, that said money has a set value that is agreed upon. Thus we use gold as a unit of exchange because we know its realitve value wont fluctuate wildly and will almost always be a medium of exchange that others objectively value. We dont use seashells because, although there might be one savant who really, really values seashells, his *arbitrary* value of seashells does not represent what is *objectively* understood - that seashells and abundant and thus cannot represent scarcity.

Thus the value of individual items may be based on arbitrary and personal preferences, but the *mode of exchange*, by its very nature, cannot. Money only works when it its objectively valued by those who use it.

Once money is circulating, you can use it as a yardstick of how much and what people value, yes. But the making of money requires energy to be expended at some point along the line.

*Of course* energy expenditure is one factor in determinig value. This is why a ditch digger can expect more pay than a burger flipper, even though both require similar aptitudes. Oil shale, while abundant, is only as valuble as its ratio of oil produced to its ratio of energy expended to create said oil, which is also in relation to the energy inputs required to drill for sweet crude. If more energy per unit was expended in extracting oil from shale (as it used to be), no one would develope it and no money would be produced. So of course energy expenditure is a factor in a products cost. But this has nothing to do with money itself. Money simply measures the aggragte demand for the above processes.

A barrel of sweet crude and a barrel of tarsand oil go for roughly the same price, if my assumtion is not mistaken. But shale oil requires in order of magnitude more input of energy per barrel than a saudi oil well does, yet they demand the same money per barrel. Thus energy input is a concern only to the producers of the oil and not the purchasers. In this case energy input is irrelevant to money, as money will represent the same amount of value (oil or sweet crude) regardless of the huge disparity in energy expended between the two.

In other words, if something *must* cost more because the energy it consumes in production consumes money, then so be it, and this will be represented in the final cost. But money is by no means bound by energy consumtion, it just represents it in the cases where energy consumtion is valuble. I can expend next to zero additional resources (compared to my normal day) by sitting on a stage and telling jokes, the production of which cost me negligable resources, and yet, if i was funny, i would receive huge amounts of money represented by ticket sales.

Expended energy is only one variable in the formula that = value.

And what others are willing to pay is arbitrary.

How many dollars or ounces of gold they are willing to pay may be arbitrary. The value of the gold or dollars themselves is not.

You can find an average, to be sure. If you had a bunch of $5 offers and one million dollar offers, it just would highlight the arbitrary valuation. You say the painting is worth a million, but I say that is not to. To the BUYER it's worth that much. The buyer is not guaranteed (s)he will get anything for it if (s)he decides to sell it. The arbitrary evaluations of others will determine what the seller gets. Or does a good or service's value fluctuate naturally outside the evaluation of the potential buyer?

If something is only worth what others will trade for it, the BUYER is the only relevant factor in the eyes of the SELLER. The buyer and the seller are the only relevant parties when considering the value of their trade.

No one is garanteed anything if trading is voluntary. I might not sell you my hockey card collection for a million billion bux. The only way you could garantee the transfer of my hockey cards would be through violence.

But it's NOT objective. It's subjective as hell. If it was objective, there would be no such thing as inflation. Things would stay at fixed prices. No one would wait for sales, as there would be no such thing. All it tells us is that people will use money when it is there and they feel confident that the next guy will take it. But there is plenty of evidence that people would prefer not having to worry about it.

If the value of money was arbitrary, and whatever you wanted it to be, you could walk into McDonalds and demand a big mac for 25c, and your arbitrary estimation of the value of those cents would be just as valid as their arbitrary estimation that the big mac was indeed worth $2500. That they post a fixed price, in dollars, on their board, and people, generally, will pay said price, means that both McDonalds and their customers have objectively agreed upon the value in dollars that said big mac will cost. If the value of money were arbitrary, this would not be possible.

Inflation itself is objective. We can all track and define the rate of inflation (an insideous hidden tax), make plans to counteract it, and still buy a cheeseburger, does not make the value of money arbitrary. It simply make the value of money objectively deminishing. But I think youre right, to an extent. The current money system run by fiat by central bankers is certainly, to a degree, arbitrarly decreed by rule of force. Our currencies have lost %90+ of their value over the last century, and this is not because we have all, conciously agreed to downgrage our money. So to the extent that money deviates from is natural form due to the meddling of the evil central banks, that portion of its deviation i think could be called arbitrary.

But this devaluation is only possible because money has objective value to begin with. If Im a milk farmer, and I sell %100 pure milk for $3, and then I slowly begin to dilute my milk with water, but still sell my milk for $3, customers will only pay the original price under the illusion that my milk was still %100. If my milk dropped to %50 milk/water, and people got suspicious and discovered my fraud, they would, at the very least, demand my milk be revalued at half of what i was charging, and that value would be entirely based on the milk value content of my product. Thus my milk, while devalued through fraud, still retains is objective value, just as money, while devalued through fraud, does aswell.

That precious metals are currently skyrocketing in relation to paper dollars should show you the objective standard of value - gold and silver are simply responding to the massive inflation and devaluing of paper currency. If money were arbitrary, no such relationship could exist.

Are you suggesting we cannot use one tool relative to another? That is the only way I can make sense of this statement. I mean, what is your point here?

My point is that money is a tool, and an extremely advanced one at that. Even in an abundance of paperclips, money is still the most useful tool to determine how many should be made and where they should go.

I think I will go back and count how many times you have accused me, directly or, as in this case, obliquely, of saying money is evil.

Youve said countless times that money causes most if not all of humanities ills. If not the object itself, our desire for it is to blame. To eliminate money, you claim, would resolve the worst ills that face humanity.

Im simpy saying that this is not the case, and indeed is the opposite. Money has allowed for the comfortable life you and I enjoy, which is basically a utopia in our own little bubble if a time traveler from the past were to see us. Money, and the exchange of values it represents, has brought to your fingertips the most incredible advancements in our standards of living that our ancestors could literally never have even dreamed of. Voluntary exchange of value, respresented by money, is *entirely* responsible for this, and if your robot utopia is ever to come into existence (which I hope it will) it will only do so incentivised by the productive wealth and capital humans produce, represented by, you got it, MONEY.

So if money falls into disuse of its on downward momentum, so be it, but until then, lets not throw the baby out with the bathwater, eh?

It is THE LOVE of money that promotes evil. THAT is the deeper cause.

I think YOU're being obtuse here. The root of production is the Human desire to improve the environment because of personal satisfaction/pride, prestige, fame, desire to fill a need or solve a problem, reputation...or, if it's there, money.

But money, in many ways, symbolizes the previous virtues you mentioned.

Yes. If you weren't born to a mother that could get you access to a computer lab when such things were very rare, you won't become Bill Gates. If you weren't born of parents who can send you to Harvard and there is no scholarship, you aren't going to graduate from Harvard, even if it's a dream you had since you were a child. Think of all the money you lose being born to parents who can't send you to Harvard and instead send you to community college!

Must we delve into the number of rich who didnt even go to college? For every 'lucky' sob born with a silver spoon, theres an unlucky one born dirt poor.

Not that it matters. If im 'lucky' enought (or skilled enough) to be able to give my children an awesome advantage in early life that I was never afforded, no blame on my child can be assigned. To improve on your own circumtances throught your offspring is one of the most essential functions of all life.

I can't tell you how lucky I feel when I solve a problem. I was lucky I thought of the solution. I'm lucky it was ME who solved the problem. I'm lucky I was smart enough.

So you dont believe in free will?

What do you hope to achive by debating with me, if Im not at all responsible for my arguments? (as it was sheer luck that led me to them) Are you hoping to 'get lucky' and convince me of the validity of your position?

Nope. One has to be lucky to succeed in any large measure.

Even if this is the case, does my 'luck' invalidate any of my achivements? Does my 'luck' invalidate my arguments? If so, why argue? Does your 'luck' validate yours? If youre just lucky to have defeated my reasoning, what could possibly be gained from that? If you bested me in debate, it would be no different than a landslide crushing my car, while leaving yours unscathed. Certainly, either way, you could make no claim to 'rightness' as luck determines all action and cause.

So if you have won, in your mind, you just got 'lucky' and thus no validity can be claimed, just as it would be absurd to claim victory if the landslide crushed my car and not your own.

Yep. I am lucky enough to be pretty sharp and capable. I am lucky enough to have been taught how to read and write. I am lucky that the clarity of thought and analysis are mine to offer ideas that have merit. I am lucky to have the Interweb to convey the ideas. I am lucky to have personal knowledge of elements some dispute (plenum energy). I am lucky to have what it takes.

So you take no responsibility for any of your actions?

If I murdered one of your loved ones, would you simply say 'he was unlucky to be born a murderer'?

Pretty much, yes - as long as you have enough energy, technology and a structure.

These things are a product of money.

Yep, and in all of them people had to work. This is no longer the case. Robots can work and Humans can create. Be blissful. Live as the elite of today live if They choose. Only because for the first time in our present history we have robotics, Interweb and plenum energy will a moneyless society succeed.

except for lobster, of course.

No. It is meaning which assigns value for any individual. The degree of value is reflected in the amount offered in money. Money still represents energy expended, but it can be used to "shortcut" barter - that was it's purpose to begin with.

Weve demonstrated that energy expended is just one variable in the value of money. Weve agreed that moneys central function is to facilitate voluntary trade of mutual value.

I never said it was not effective. I said we don't need it.

HOLY SMOKES!!

If we didnt *need* it, it wouldnt be *effective*~~~~

I also said that since we cannot excise the LOVE of money - which would be awesome if we could, as it is the root of all evil - excising money does effectively the same thing. And that can be accomplished by adding plenum energy to the system. Which leads to richness of lifestyle for all who choose it, no poverty, no starvation, and no evil done for the LOVE of money (virtually all evil).

Your argument is comparable to what they inflict on catholic priests - the love of sex is evil, and thus, without sex, they couldnt be evil.

I think you know where that led!

Evil is done for the addiction of power, of which money can be one facilitator. Removing money would simply manifest mans evil desire to another object.

I have no attack on sex. I have no attack on money. I have an attack on the LOVE of each. And if we could get rid of sex, it would get rid of the LOVE of it. However, unlike money, which we CAN get rid of, sex is pretty much here to stay.

Just as super technology could obsolete money, so too could it obsolete sex. This does not make it desireable.

Me? I hate money. I love all the stuff, though, so I endure money as far as it goes. But I am certainly motivated to get rid of it if I can and eliminate poverty for those so unlucky to be born into it (some lucky few do get out - but they are the exceptions, the lucky ones; some unlucky few - well, many these days - fall into poverty).

You hate money, but you love stuff. Stuff is a creation of money. Thus, another contradiction.

Eliminate poverty? You know how many millions of chinese and indians have climbed out of poverty in the last decade?

What have you ever actually done, in your own life, to eliminate poverty? An an employer, I can speak to the subject in non theoretical terms, as my action has led directly from people rising out of poverty.

Actions > Words.

You show me where I said that. In fact I may count the times I have said just the opposite. The LOVE of money...

LOVE of sex...

And since we can't excise the LOVE of money, but CAN excise money, let's excise money to eliminate the problem of LOVING it.

I love it. Not seeing the problem.

Yeah. He needs a LOVE of sex. He needs to put sex before Human value. What's your point?

So lets get rid of sex!

Are you listening to youself!?

Surely will plays a part - without it, any luck has no chance. But you judge harshly people who are in poverty, as if they "just didn't TRY hard enough" or are necessarily lacking in intelligence. Because YOU made it, everyone else should be able to, I guess. But the fact is that statistically all people are poor and a large chunk are in poverty because the luck of the draw landed them there, and no matter how much will they brought to bear, they were stuck.

So free will is superior to luck, and luck is secondary to purposful action. Earlier you proclaimed that luck was the be all and end all. Again, contradictions = error.

Who said I 'made it'?

We are all unlucky to be born into debt slavery. We are all responsible for how we react to this.

100% But their actions cannot guarantee success. A very large part of life is luck.

So are we not to act because we might end up 'unlucky'?

I wouldn't throw luck in there unless we're talking about the luck that I was born such that I could become aware enough to make a value judgment. How I judge is irrelevant to luck.

Arrrrg! But you *just said* not a few paragraphs above that all you skills, talents, abilities and intelligence is entirely decided by luck! How you judge is based on these qualities!

Or rather to those controlling the government...impelled to do so by a LOVE of money/power/energy.

So without government these compulsions would have no foundation.

I am going to doubt that. All the pollution I have ever seen is either littering, cars, or coming from some private industry plant. And they get by with it by greasing palms.

And whos palms are they greasing?! The ones with the gun in the other hand!

reply to post by Amaterasu

Can you explain why someone who claims to be the antichrist posts under your account. Here?

How does that fit in with your planetarian platform?

Originally posted by Neo_Serf

No... Ditch digger does not GET the perceived value of his energy in money. The company he works for gets most of it. Maybe the City hired the company ditch digger works for to dig a bed for their canal. The City pays the company 200,000. The company pays the boss 50,000 and has 10 ditch diggers - whose work/energy is what is actually being done. He pays each of them $1,000 to dig the ditch. It takes 100 hours.

Firstly, your example is predicated on the 'city' using stolen (taxed) money, which is the antithesis of the free, peaceful market situation that I advocate.

Ok, so Joe Blow wants a canal and pays the company $200,000 to dig it. You are throwing up strawmen here. Clearly the "City" is not important to the example, but you are making it so.

Secondly, youre totally falling for the marxist fallacy that incorrectly believes that the company, comprised of various directors and bosses, *arent working or producing anything*. This = FALSE, and Id like you to address this point specifically because I believe this is a major flaw in your reasoning.

No, I did not say they do nothing. I said they are not doing the final job - the ditch digger is. All they're doing is administrative stuff and investing (share holders). My point is that of all the meaningful energy expended on this project, only the ditch diggers are doing the actual work that needs to be done. And THEY are the lowest paid of the lot.

Do you actually believe (and lets pretend this is a free market situation, wherin the ditches actually were in demand and demand was not artificially manufactured by government) that the bosses and executives, the owners and financial executives that run this ditch digging concern are *not working*?

I say they are not the ones actually creating what is needed.

Do you actually believe (yes or no will do) that the countless hours invested by the 'bosses' in business school, the immense risk the owner took in investing in a new company, the many hours of overtime paid into the essential book keeping by the accountants...do you actually believe the intelligence and brains of the operation, that actually went out, took a risk of time and money, hired a staff, advertised, competed for contracts head to head with other ditch digging concerns, spent weekends at the office optomising practices...do you actually believe these people are *not working*?

Sorry, this is a misleading (and strawmanish) question. Do I actually believe... I actually believe that the "intelligence and brains" are worth nothing without the ones who actually accomplish the goal. The ditch digger's meaningful energy expended is what actually makes it happen, and without the ditch digger, the "intelligence and brains" could do all the risking and advertising and contracting and optimizing and planning and accounting and hiring and investing and competing they could possibly do, but without the ditch digger, nothing would actually be done.

Do you actually believe that these highly ambitious and immensely skilled and groomed proffesionals, upon which the digger himself depends, is not working harder or longer hours that the digger himself?

I actually believe that you have that backwards. The ditch digger doesn't rely on those above him if a ditch needs digging. He can dig that ditch whether those guys are playing with the agony required by the need for money or not. I have worked in administration, and I have dug a ditch. I can tell you right now - the energy one needs to administrate (in all phases and guises) is nowhere NEAR the energy needed to dig a ditch. Even if one is administrating overtime.

So the vast energy the ditch digger uses is not compensated to HIM - virtually all of it goes to someone else who is more concerned with paperwork in some form or another, all necessary because we need to account for money.

As one who has dug ditches myself, I can tell you in my experience, the boss was always the one to work into the night. He was always the one grinding out the weekends, as I took them off to let my body recover. Never did it occur to me to resent his input, as his hard work, although not physical, was exaustive, and without it my tiring job would *not exist*. Without my boss, I would have been producing $0/h instead of $10.

And without money, when ditches need to be dug, those concerned can step up to the plate and offer their services (solving problems is many people's bliss) even without robots, leaders will emerge, and the work will be thereby coordinated and done.

In the setup we have - with the need for money - "bosses" are a necessity. We didn't develop all this paper requirement for any other reason than to keep tabs on money, or to promote gaining more money.

What do you think would happen if my boss was forced to pay me and my fellow diggers (unskilled, young and expendable) the same wage as his accountant, who invested years of his life into a highly specialized and demanded feild?

What do you think would happen if money was not needed, and we could create to the best standards and not the cheapest? (As to what would happen in a money situation...so many are so used to sapping the energy of the slave (paying him about what it would cost to own him outright) that and living better than him on that energy he expended, what would happen is that the ones propping the money mechanism would complain that they had to get less, and stop propping the money structure.)

The ditch digger made $10 an hour - his energy is "worth" that, even though it was HIM that actually made it happen. The boss made $500 an hour for mostly doing nothing. The company has $140,000 to pay the stock holders and reinvest in the company.

Butit wasnt the ditch digger at all who made it happen!

As far as actually digging the ditch, indeed, he was.

Who hired the ditch digger, and to what end? Why does the position of digger even exist in the first place?

The position exists because we don't have robots yet to do it, and people require non-random ditches.

People dont demand random holes everywhere; if they did, I could pick up a shovel and make a fortune in my back yard.

True. But what's your point?

The demand for ditches only arrises where there is need for ditches, and those who need a ditch are willing to pay a certain amount for a reputable *company* to forfill their ditch desire. Those who demand ditches must first find an outfit who is capable and reputable in the feild of ditch digging - this requires specialized expertise, not to mention advertising. (if the person demanding ditches is to even become aware of the ditch diing outfit) Shovels and machinery must be bought, advertisment must be placed, skilled foremen must be hired, and training must be provided to raw and unskilled diggers. All of this must be coordinated by the massive input of ingenuity provided by the owner/boss. And if he cannot raise the capital required for this highly complicated system to operate, investors must be courted into throwing down their own hard earned wealth.

I understand how it works in scarcity of money/power/energy without robots I grasp the logic of this. Without money, with robots, and with the Interweb, the person who needs the ditch dug does a search for ditch digging, finds people who are willing to program robots for person (or might find a number whose bliss it is to dig ditches...) and arranges with them to dig the ditch. If it's a major project, the one who thinks of it first poses it as a problem (no problem? No need for project) on the central site. Others who would like to contribute may. Through the thread suggesting the problem might arrange for meetings, or someone might come up with a better solution. Those interested in solving a problem will do so.

(And if no one else is interested, it really isn't a problem...)

You IGNORE all this in favour of the poor ditch digger who you declare is the one making all the above happen. You ignore the fact that without all of the energy and time invested by his superiors, he would not have a ditch to dig at all. You also ignore the fact that he accepts his job voluntarily and of his own free will, and does so because he *knows* his unskilled labour is not worth to anyone more than $10/h.

No, I culled all that to point out that when it comes to whether a ditch is dug or not, it is the energy of the ditch digger that is needed.

I ignore the structure that has been developed to account for money/power/energy, yes, because there ARE other solutions. But no matter which solution chosen up to the point of digging the ditch, without the ditch digger (whether human or robot) the ditch does not get dug.

I don't "ignore" issues of "free will." The ditch digger, having the spoils of his energy taken by those who support the money/power/energy accounting structure, has little choice in his life. He barely puts food on the table. So he will accept the next ditch digging job. And in most cases, ditch diggers didn't get to go to Harvard because they had no money for it - keeping them in the ditch digger position as opposed to some position in the support structure. He doesn't do it because he "knows" his high energy expenditure is not worth more than $10 an hour to others. He does it because that is all of his energy expenditure others are willing to pay so that the true worth of his energy can be siphoned to others.

Besides, I has a blast digging ditches, I got an awesome tan, and at the time $10/h wasnt bad scratch.

And I am not saying someone who wants to dig ditches can't.

So though the energy was expended by the ditch digger, others took his money.

So youre saying that his boss held a gun to his head and stole an unspecified amount of money that was justly due to him?

No. I'm saying he is between a rock and a hard place - either expend his energy to benefit others, or starve.

If I sell you a car for a $1000, and you accept of your own free will, do you then have the moral right to turn around to me and demand another $500?

Did I 'take' anything from you, in the above example?

Better to have robots digging the ditches and the ditch digger doing what he wants to do.

Agreed. But the ditch digging company would still require skilled executives to deploy and operate said robots.

Or, we can work as individuals, since companies are pointless without money, and have the problem solvers bring forth leaders of the moment to get things done. People with experience will have social advantage, and those who are key in solving a problem will gain prestige and reputation.

Ok, I see your problem. You seem to think that money representing meaningful energy expended means that the one expending the energy is the one who actually gets the money.

Where did you get this idea? Whoever trades their valued surplus gets the money. I hardly have to lift a finger to sell my car.

Because you seem to think the ditch digger is getting the true value of his meaningful energy expended, when he is not. Many others leach off him, using his energy to create their money.

No, no, no. Sometimes this is the case - freelance workers, for example - but most often, the energy is expended by one and the money goes to another. And money representing meaningful energy expended does not mean you can create more inflow of money by expending energy (in this example, your energy enriched the workers at the company, but since the energy expended had no meaning from the standpoint of a viable place to mine, there was no inflow.

So you agree that expended energy is meaninless if said energy has no value to others.

Ummm, thats what Ive been saying the whole time, and what youve been vigerously arguing against. (until your last post, which is confusing to me, and highlights your contradicary premises.)

No. I said all that money represents is energy expended, you said something on the order of, "So if I jump on a pogo stick for an hour I have expended energy and should expect to be paid." (Not those words, but same in concept.) I realized where you were having difficulties and clarified that it is meaningful energy. And now you are claiming I have some sort of contradiction going on. WTF? (And actually, saying all money represents energy expended does NOT equal all energy expended represents money - which is where you were having difficulty.)

If money being REPRESENTATIVE of MEANINGFUL energy EXPENDED, regardless of who winds up with the money...

Again, you misunderstand the nature of money, which, seeing as youre an intelligent person, must be willful at this point.

The person who winds up with the money is the one who is the most successful at exchanging meaningful energy expenditure. If exchange is necessarily meaningful to all the parties he voluntarily exchanged with, the person with the most justly earned money has offered the most meaningful energy to the world.

No. In the system of accounting for money, with the LOVE of money rampant, the person who winds up with the money is the one who is best at using others' energy to provide them with money. And I see the term "justly" there. Oh, sure, if no one was motivated to gain money unjustly, many problems - virtually all - would be eliminated.

However... Because the LOVE of money exists, the whole system is corrupt. The system rots from within. Though money itself is not the culprit, eliminating money will eliminate the object upon which people base their unjust acquisition of money.

Money doesnt just end up randomly in some guys bank account. (unless if was inherited.) It got there by his skillful trading of value between himself and voluntary trading partners, who are better off for his wealth. This does not apply to money gained by coersion, theft or fraud.

It turns out that, with the exception of paychecks, most money is gained by coercion, theft or fraud. (And even some of those were gained by those means.) Many contracts are awarded because some greased someone else's palm. Why? To get a lot of money in the end. And all of this is built, for the LOVE of money at the top, and for Love, Itself, at the bottom.

If you remove money, those that presently are at the top because They forsook Ethics for gaining more money/power/energy, twisted out of Human form by it, statistically would choose Ethical behavior. Dare I say it, Star Trek Now is?

The key to freedom is in the income of energy, and IF all the world, statistically, agreed to follow civil agreements based on Ethics We Humans would get along beautifully and accomplish much.

About code...from a book I will write:

All the money-related codes have become rather cutely regarded for their amusement. "Look at THIS one! You had to fork a portion of your energy away in taxes! OH, ROFL! How could they ever have believed that they should keep "doing what they had to to survive" because it was better than having everyOne doing as One pleased...within an Ethical structure???" - That was emailed to everyone in the History of 19th, 20th, and 21st Centuries group - a group that loves to study this part of history...and has the well populated site, 192021.one, from which the some News (expected to be truth to the best of One's knowledge; any untruth will bring shame upon the teller...) groups pull to offer what THEY found out... And many people will read and appreciate the fact that they can know this information, and it fuels conversation in some groups, as Humans move in circles They choose, rather than constrained by the system of money.

Agreed that when the energy expended has meaning, money (of some kind) will be created, some kind of exchange can take place. What that is depends on the subjective view of value. Yes.

Hooray for progress! Money will be created in any situation in which resources are not infinite. People need a mode of allocation that does not involve force. That mode is best represented by a commodity of near universal value, be it sea shells, salt, gold, sticks or paper notes. Or bliss. (although the accounting for an all bliss economy would be a nightmare~) Whatevr people feel they can convert their resources into and trade them to others widely.

Well - and please don't get confused here - abundance means effectively infinite resources overall, because though specialty items may be scarce, materials to richly provide for everyone's material needs (food, clothing, shelter) exceed by an order of magnitude what we actually need.

This is not evil! Voluntary trade for mutual benefit is, in fact, the opposite of evil.

True, but if it becomes unnecessary, why bother? (Again, I never said justly exchange of energy was a problem. Only that because of a scarcity of energy, Humans devised a method of exchange, money, and because of how We interact relative to it, We are frequently drawn into LOVE of it such that We forsake Ethics.

Yes. I never said every joule had an absolute value. You are likely not to create money at a high unit to joule ratio. Though the City in my example above paid premium for those joules the ditch digger expended, by the time it got to him, others were "compensated."

And justly so. Have you ever run a business? I have. Its hard. I failed. Now I provide value to others as a sub contractor, effectively contracting out the messy and risky aspects of business to those who are more capable than I was. When I aquire the needed skillset to go it on my own again, I will. But first I must invest heavily in my intellectual capital and knowlege if I am to succeed.

But the whole premise of a business is based in slavery. You HAVE to have wage slaves to give the energy needed to do whatever it is you're dog, the return of which feeds the money structure around the energy extraction itself. Yes, some energy is expended by those in the support system (for which they are compensated, mostly as higher paid slaves), while those at the top reap the bulk of the slaves' energy/money.

As for going into business, is this something you want to do to make money? Or is it something that happens to make money that you love to do?

LOLOL! Value is ENTIRELY subjective. Money is a yardstick for determining who (of those with it to spend) values what how much, I suppose. And a yardstick for how much we value Human life.

It is objective in that we objectively agree that an ounce of silver is worth (objectively) about $47 today. (prolly $50 by the time you read this) If the value of silver were subjective, ie anything you want it to be, well, try buying it for $5 and tell the seller that its value is subjective, and that you have arbitrarily decided this. He'll either laugh, or play along, and if he does decide to humour you, he might tell you the value of an ouce of silver is subjectively $1000 and ounce, since all value is arbitrary, as you assert. See how far you get with him.

And I contend that if an ounce of silver fluctuates, this is indicative of an arbitrary base that merely follows an aggregate of suppositions. If it were objectively set, it would remain constant. Now objectively we can say that today we agreed on a price, but we cannot say that price we agreed on has any objective foundation.

As for trying to buy something for a price no seller will go for - not because the deal items have any objective value - but because they stand with the aggregate average of the subjective assessment of value, you're going into a bit of exaggeration ad absurdium.

Energy expended is NO factor in determining value.

Its amazing to me how you started by arguing the exact opposite of this, and now you go as far as to capitalize the opposite to which you so energetically argued to begin with, as if this is the position you held all along, and *im* the fool for pointing this out.

It's amazing to me that you keep missing my point and confounding things I say. Like I said, if we set a value on a joule then the ditch digger will make way more than the boss that sits on the computer all day. So clearly the ditch digger's energy expended is valued far too little - so clearly it is not energy expended that is determining the value. The value is being set by subjective suppositions of worth.

You really would make a great politician~

Not really. I am not the greatest orator, and I tell the truth as I see it - a deadly fault in politics.

Money, which represents energy meaningfully expended, may be how we indicate how much we value something, but we never value something because it took energy expense to produce. (I have seen detailed, painstaking paintings not sell at all, and paintings where someone merely tossed cans of paint at the canvas sell for hundreds of thousands.)

Remember, you do not determine the value of the energy expended. The market does this. If the market is filled with dummies who embrace irrationality, then irrational objects is what they will value. This is not for you to decide.

The point is that with plenum energy we don't have to worry about it. There is no "market," per se, but what people produce out of bliss and offer to those who appreciate their work.

I highly recommend you read The Abundance Paradigm. I think you will gain insight to what I try here to describe. Maybe you could read it (it's novella length) before tackling an answer.

The book linked in my sig has it included, but a PDF of it alone is found here:

media.abovetopsecret.com...

Since it's not fallacious, I cannot abandon it. You THINK it is because you are failing to understand how the relationship between meaningful energy expended and money develops.

Since you have accepted my argument that money = meaningful products, and products = energy expenditure, therefor meaningful energy = meaning as defined by the market, I dont think I am the one with the misunderstanding.

Not quite there - you're really good at telling me what I accept or say... Money=representation of meaningful energy expended. It can be used to motivate people (but is not the sole motivator of people) to expend more energy to make money for you.

Since you failed to provide what it was I said that you said was fallacious, it's really hard to determine whether you're right here, so... I said:

The root of money is the accounting of energy expended.

To which you replied:

No. Just No. You must abandon this premise if we are to continue.

The ditch digger expends *far* more energy than the CEO. The farmers energetic output far exceeds the day traders. Money accounts for nothing besides the aggregate demand for the energy expended. The ditch digger inputs far more joules of expended energy to his task, and yet makes exponentially less money. If money = energy expended, I would be a far richer man.

I said: It is not a premise, but the truth. Just because we say, "Ditch digger, your energy is only worth minimum wage, and CEO, your energy is worth a huge salary does NOT follow that money does not represent energy expended. (And if I must abandon the truth here to continue, I would not continue.)

You said:

You simply *must* abandon this fallicious arguement if we are to continue.

I said: Since it's not fallacious, I cannot abandon it. You THINK it is because you are failing to understand how the relationship between meaningful energy expended and money develops.

And you start telling me what I agreed to. The original premise was that money = meaningful energy expended and that the root of money is the need to account for it. Basically, you have merely naysayed this without showing me where I err.

Remember, you started this discussion in the position that money = energy expended. You then reversed your postition and admitted that energy expended must have value, or meaning, to others.

REVERSED!?! No. CLARIFIED ("admitted," my ass), since you seem to be envisioning swimming across a stream, expending energy, should be making you money under my definition. It was clear that a clarification was in order. Where I initially saw this as self evident, the apparent dimness on your part led me to this clarification. There was NO reversal. Maybe it's because you THINK it's somehow a reversal is the reason you are confused.

We agreed, then, that meaning to others is arrived at by the aggregate demand generated by each individuals preferences, which you assert is arbitrary and random, and i conclude is based on a rational methdology that determines value to each individual.

Oh, I am sure each individual has their own methodology. Won't argue there. But that just points out how arbitrary it really is. There can be no standardization because there is no standardized methodology.

The last point is immeterial if we both agree that money = value to others.

There you go again, telling me what I agree with. Not exactly. Money = representation of (m)* energy expended. That the value given to the results of that energy expended can be expressed (by those who have it) in terms of money spent. But money, itself does NOT equal value to others.

*(m) - meaningful

How others arrive at their standards of what is valuble is irrelevant to the discussion, and your opinion of what and how others should arrive at value is also irrelevant.

I have no opinion whatsoever of how others should value things. Why are you phrasing that as if I did? That's poor form, dear. But yes. As we have said, everyone has their own methodology and the particulars of that methodology is irrelevant.

I think I understand just fine. If you did, you wouldnt have had to reverse your position and argue to opposite of your original stance.

If you could grasp, you would understand I DIDN'T reverse ANYTHING but merely clarified. (I have NEVER argued opposite my original stance - that you believe so suggests you might want to go back and read again. Either that or the idea of clarification confuses you...)

Ok. That's good. My point in the End of Entropy piece (linked in my sig) is that, since we have plenum energy everywhere, if we tap it, we don't need money. This piece, The Ethical Planetarian Party Platform, offers a structure for a moneyless society to function under.

But you agreed some things will still be scarce, like lobster. You provide no adaquate function as to how the remaining scarce resources shall be allocated.

Uh... The Interweb? First come first served? Why do I have to go over so many things with you. You finally let go of the idea that I was saying money was evil, but man, it took some doing! Now I haven't provided something I provided. I hope it sticks this time.

Not yet it doesn't. But it will. No "monopoly." In order for the concept of "monopoly" to exist, one has to have a money system.

You havent thought this through, and once again have contradicted yourself.

You said in your moneyless utopia, a website would exist that would be a 'first come first serve' system. Thus you imply that there is someone who does the 'serving', and that someone is probably the one who runs the website. Thus, in *your own words* this person or persons has exclusive rights to distributed the lobster as it sees fit. (in this case it distributes by first come first serve) Thus, by necessity of *your own argument*, that person must have exclusive control over the lobster fishing grounds and thus *must* have a monopoly over them!

Yeah... Ok. Serving is done by robot. The website is handled by a problem solver who loves to maintain records and inventories and be useful keeping such a site up to date. But really, mostly, it can be put in place and all the transactions done electronically - robot lobster catchers report numbers to site, site pops those numbers up, hungry-for-lobster person orders lobster, goes on a list, may or may not get lobster.

Not that tough, really. And... No "monopoly."

So... No. NOT in my words, and I did not imply any of what you said I did. You inferred it incorrectly from what I said.

If they didnt, your plan would be nonsensical, as I could easily just disobey your internet poll and go fish all the lobster i wanted, regardless of your plan.

Who has a plan? Sure. Go catch all the lobster you want. Knock yourself out! But for those for whom it's not THAT important, they can place their info on a list and maybe they'll get lucky.

Others could do the same.

Sure. Not a problem.

Thus, your first come first serve system would be just that, but not in the way you intended.

Except FAR more people want lobster than are willing to go out and get it if they don't have to to meet needs. Most people will not bother. And so, the web is for those who have better things to do than catch lobsters.

Your internet allocation would be a meaningless farce, as those who skipped the whole inventory checklist and just went out and trapped lobster would control all of the scarce crustation,

LOLOL! Individuals going out and getting more lobster than they will use themselves (when robots are providing the majority) and they have no market other than to be given away... I'm thinking having 1000 lobster will just ensure a lot of people don't get lobster and you will have a stinky mess. Unless you put an ad on the Interweb saying you'll ship orders... In which case you will find people to give lobsters to. But why do it when the robots could. I'm sure you have better things to do with your time than catch lobster.

and no one who actually checked a box on your site would receive anything, as it would all be controlled by the lobster fishermen themselves.

But it wouldn't be controlled. Not in a moneyless, energy-rich society. Any who went out and caught lobster would be the ones whose bliss it is to be there catching lobster - and if they caught more than they needed, they could put an ad on the web...

Thus it follows that either your plan is meaningless, in which case its back to the drawing board, or it is enforced by monopolisitc violence, in which case you violate one or more of your own three rules.

Or, your failing to grasp. There would be no advantage to catching lots of lobster - unless you're doing it to gain status, reputation, prestige - "Oh, hey! It's Lobster Guy! Thanks friend!"

There's no *competition* to supply lobsters. All available in the centralized, robotic control are given to those on the list. If someone loves to catch lobster, they can do that too and, like the man who sent you those 25 lobsters, put their catch up on the web.

Well, you're right, there's no competition. Not all there are will be caught by robots. Just the bulk we can use without depleting lobsters on this planet.

If lobsters were infinite, competition would be meaningless, just as no one competes for air. Since they are scarce, and coveted (cuz lobsters are downright delicious), we must accept that competition would be fierce. (as it is)

Competition is fierce only because of money. Virtually all who do the lobster thing are NOT doing it because of bliss. They are doing it for the money. Without money, only the bliss-driven ones will go catching them.

Centralized, robotic control, you say? Well at least now you admit that we are to be ruled by robots.

Again saying I do something I don't do. I do NOT admit that We are to be ruled by robots. Open source provides Us with ways of creating the BEST programs, as people whose bliss it is to write programs offer theirs, offer improvements to others, and discuss merits, all on the web - and through the programs We create We rule robots. Are you really that daft that you think robots will take over?

Theres a reason a central theme of dystopic sci fi novels is the ensalvement and destruction of man at the hand of his own robotic creations.

Ah. Fiction is valid "proof." Gee, So-and-so wrote about robots taking over the universe, so that means if we develop robots, they will take over the universe. Well... Neo...

Since Roddenberry showed a positive outcome with robots in Star Trek, I can prove you wrong. I guess. Since fiction is proof...

You wistfully ignore that this central robo command must be programmed by HUMANS.

You might want to look up the meaning of the word, "wistfully..." I think you misuse it. And I surely DON'T ignore that robots will be programmed by Humans - in fact I do believe I have said (over and over ad nauseum) that people whose bliss it is to program robots will program robots.

And what's your point here anyway?

No. No oversimplification at all. And I do not blame money. Quit saying that. I blame THE LOVE OF MONEY.

So it is humans who corrupt money, and not the other way around?

No. Neither. Money just is. It's a tool. Our behavior relative to it can be corrupt or not.

It follows that, in the absence of money, humans will find another idol to pave their way to corruption.

Oh, I'd love to hear you come up with an example. I really would. How can corruption exist if everyone may have their needs richly met and have no power over anyone but themselves?

And why would the state accept this? Because somebody got paid off. No one in their right mind would say, sure. Dump poison in the water so you don't have to pay to dispose of it properly. Unless... Either they were lied to ("Fluoride helps teeth") for the purposes of making money or they were paid off to make money.

So we agree that without the state, these companies would have to bear the costs of disposal and thus go bankrupt if they were unable to do so.

I suppose so, yes. But it sounds like you're playing apologist for poisoners.

The state in this example is the enabler. Without it, money would serve the opposite end - money would then force said company to find an economical solution to its waste that was acceptable to its customers.

No. The company created toxic waste. The state had regulations in place to protect the community and placed limits on the way it could be disposed of. Without the state, the toxic waste could be spewed anywhere, meanwhile, the buyers of the product don't care about the plant two states over. They care about whether the product meets their needs. The state is not the enabler - though some people, who love money over their fellow Humans within the State have corrupted the State because someone paid them off in money/power/energy to allow such things as shirking proper disposal to avoid cost while selling poison as a "health benefit."

So... I'm not seeing how the state itself is the enabler, but the corruption of it, nor am I seeing how money would change anything without a state.

Thus money, in a truly free society, would force polluters to reduce and eliminate pollution, as pollution is nothing but overhead. (which the market always seeks to eliminate.)

Not necessarily. Cheap sneaky ways will likely be the most frequent solution.

example: nuclear power could never exist without the state, as no private insurance company could insure the potential liability ranging in the billions that nuke plants represent. (england actually tried to privatize their nuke plants, which sent investors fleeing - no one but the state can afford to take on such a risky and potentially catasrophic endeavor, and the state is only able to do to because of the extortion of taxation) In this example, money actually serves as a rational check on irrational behaviour.

Bad example. We don't need (and *I* surely don't want) nuclear energy. Plenum energy is clean, non-radioactive, and plentiful - easy to extract. And with all the energy We want, since money will dissipate, insurance, investors, and taxes will become non-existent. Money is pushing people to produce power/energy they control - and creating dangers of great magnitude on this planet. I mean... You are aware of Fukushima, aren't you? Wait till the San Andreas and the New Madrid faults go. Fukushima will look like peanuts.

And in the end, we're poisoning people to the end of making money/power/energy. Without money as a motive, no one would do this evil.

Power is an actual biochemical stimulant and addiction to the human brain, as it served us to seek it in our primordial evolution. But just as sugar tastes sweet to us because it was so scarce in our caveman days, so to does power feel sweet to us today, just as it did when our evolutionary pathway rewarded us for seeking and obtaining it.

And this is relative to my comment how? How does a pleasure from power relate to poisoning Us because it improves the bottom line?

But now we command near infinite sugar, and near inifinite power, never conceived by the slow process of evolution, which has not caught up to our rapid advancement. We are fat because we seek sweets as we are programmed to, and we are mad with power because we are not equipped to weild the immense power over others that technology has allowed us. Power is an addiction, and money can be a means to that fix, but it it the craving for power itself that is our destroyer, and not money, which actually serves as our best defense against unchecked power.

No. We are fat because high fructose corn syrup (added because it's cheaper than sugar) messes up our systems. Since We "mad with power," let's eliminate it over others and each have autonomous power over self - within an Ethical foundation. That is accomplished by eliminating the need for money - by releasing plenum energy.

A wealthy society with a diffused power base and many competing concentrations of wealth and power is the only check against the nightmare of centralized control.

And that is precisely what the abundance paradigm is. Power is completely diffuse unto Each of Us. For We will be all ultimately wealthy.

If not money, the human desire to rule others will manifest in another way, like, say, controlling the centrally planned robot AI in your utopian (dystopian) future.

First, this is the second time you brought up a "central" robot thing. In fact, except on a very small scale, there will be no "centers." Programming will be offered on the web, and when the best solution is determined, the ones who need robots will receive ones thusly programmed.

And again... IT IS NOT A UTOPIA (OR DYSTOPIA) - IT'S JUST A LOT BETTER FOR BILLIONS AND BILLIONS.

Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa. The STATE didn't say, "Here. Dump that waste in the water supply." No. Didn't happen that way. The Aluminum companies sold the idea under pretense and payoff to the municipalities. They ACTIVELY courted the Cities. This option would not exist if the creators of sodium fluoride had not lied and brought money to bear.

Actually, and you should know this so Im sure Im not updating you on anything, but Stalin was the first to introduce Sodium Floride into drinking water that supplied his slaves in the gulags. Hitler then took his example and used it in the water fed to the concentration camp inmated. Only after ww2 was water floridization introduced to North America, largely at the behest of Nazi chemists working for Bayer who knew exactly the effects of this most toxic substance.

Yes. But the history of it is irrelevant to the fact that these companies thought to do this in large part because it was expensive to dispose of safely, and by corrupting the state, lying, manufacturing "evidence," and so on, they were allowed to put it in the water (solving two problems - how to MAKE money instead of spending it, and how to use its affects to take over the planet).

Again, the state enabled the situation under which aluminum and uranium smelters could offload their costs to the state in the form of dumping in the state water supply.

Corruption within the state, you mean.

OF COURSE these companies chose to cut costs by not properly disposing of their pollution, but this is not enabled by money, as money, in a free system, would explicitly PROHIBIT such behaviour, as no person would voluntarily pay for tainted water.

That's presuming they know it's tainted - in any system of money, any action will be taken that saves money and can be hidden if it harms. Believe me, if everyone knew the truth about fluoride (rather than now where most still believe the lies), there would be reprocussion. But state or no state, there is no protection from money.

It was the STATE who poured millions into public disinformation programs during the manhattan project to disinform the public on the effects of flouride on humans.

Greased with a lot of Alcoa's money/power/energy, I assure you. "Here, Senator, go in there and fight for the government to tell people it's good for them so we can sell it to municipalities rather than pay to dispose of it safely. We'll arrange for a donation of 500,000 from Joe Smith's Investments - which no one will track to us..."

No private concern could ever, or would ever want to, engage in a multigenerational plan to poison its customers, only to open itself to being sued out of existence, if it did not have the umbrella of legal protection that the STATE provides.

But if they thought they could get away with it and make money? Oh, They'd do it in a heartbeat. The state was corrupted by money/power/energy.

Again, in an actually free society, money would serve as a bulwark against this kind of behaviour because if the public ever found out that a company was willingly poisoning them, that company would be sued into bankruptcy, and all its competitors would have every incentive to reveal its nefarious deeds to the public. (and thus competing water companies would constantly test their competitors water purity, and widely publish and adverse results.)

Oh, but darling, if the money is good enough, there will be Ones who risk it. State or no state.

Thus the STATE enables this, and not money, which would serve as an effective check against this sort of evil in a free situation.

No. The LOVE of money enables this, with the state being corrupted and used thereby. And the only check against the LOVE of money is to eliminate the need for money.

Thus the LOVE of money is to blame, not money.

That I love my paycheck, and yet somehow remain a pretty good dude, flies in the face of your basic premise.

[sigh] That is not the love of money you are describing. Loving your paycheck (or rather what you can do with your paycheck) is not the same thing as loving money to the exclusion of your fellow Human. You are not making choices which are unEthical. Loving money means you WILL choose unEthical behavior if the price is right. If you love money and someone offered you $1,000,000 to kill someone...you will try to fulfill that request. You may be willing to do it for $10,000.

What allows them to proceed? Money/power/energy. WHY do they proceed? The LOVE of money/power/energy.

A gun can be used to attack and murder others, or defend those same victims from murder.

Another bit where you seem to be answering non-sequitur. Lessee...

I asked: What motivates "institutionalized violence?"

You answered:

The desire to rule others by force.

I responded with: What allows them to proceed? Money/power/energy. WHY do they proceed? The LOVE of money/power/energy.

And you start talking about guns. Maybe you're saying money/power/energy can be used for good and evil, which is true, but my point is that since We can get rid of the need for money, We would be better off doing so. Good will be done but virtually no evil. why cling to something that promotes Neotame, fluoridations, cheap products, waste, wage slavery and all that, when We can get rid of all that in favor of best solutions?

Money doesnt kill people, people kill people.

Yeah. The Ones who love money.

Yes, you can produce a good or service. It's value depends on who is looking at it and where they place that value. Consensus does not set value but gives you an average of values placed. It may be that consensus would give an average value of $100 for your gizmo, but if you can only find people who value it at $50, you will not be getting $100.

Should it be any other way?

Yes. It should be that you build your gismo because doing so gives you bliss, and if you do, you offer it on the web for consideration. If enough people like your gismo, they will join together to figure out a solution to the problem of producing it for any who want it. If it is a good gismo and everyone wants one, you will be lauded as the creator of the gismo. Your face (if you choose) will be all over the web with the news of the gismo, and people will stop you and ask if you aren't the gismo creator, telling you how much They love it, and so on. You will feel GREAT.

Or maybe you built your gismo to solve a problem, because your bliss is solving problems. Whatever the bliss that leads to the gismo, the "pay" is the same. If it solves a problem, you will be lauded, etc. (This also has the advantage that intellectual property will always belong to the One whose intellect created it, so not "Microsoft" but Joe Blow gets credit for the program he wrote.)

Money only objectively defines any given individual's assessment of value.

But you have been saying the whole time that the value of money is subjective! Arrrrrrrg! Which is it??

This seems to be a reading comprehension issue. Money only objectively defines an individual's assessment (or ability to pay...). It does NOT define value. Is that easier for you to grasp?

I'm not seeing it.

I see that!

Thanks for the clarification.

And what do they base their judgment on? Their personal, arbitrary (as in the first definition above) evaluation. That may be influenced by the fact that someone sold something like it for $2,000 and this looks better, so it must be worth $3,000... But it is still arbitrary on the whole.

Regardless of how each individual determies value (i may value my great grandfathers $2 watch as priceless, while the pawnshop would only actually give me $2) the fact is that competing bids (each bids value based on individual preference) will determine the 'value' of any item. That value, which in summation might be an aggragte based on aribitrary or even random preferences, will in the end be represented by an objective, agreed upon sum, in this case dollars. How or why the specific dollar amount is arrived upon is meaningless - that a final sum is agreed to, and exchanged in, is what is important to our discussion.

If you're saying that once one has a price negotiated you can objectively define that number...sure. If your saying something else, it's clear as mud.

In an auction, we dont just yell out random numbers (arbitrary) and expect a result. We yell out a specific number with a specific value attached to said number, which is objectively defined and agreed upon by all parties as is implied by the very act of bidding.

Yeah, but the choice to call out any number (which we can indeed define objectively as a number) is arbitrary based on the caller's subjective evaluation of whether the item in question is "worth" that number. If this was not true, everyone would be bidding, first, and they all would stick on the same number.

That we engage in bidding only with the knowlege that our bids have meaninging implies that all parties involved may have no objectively agreed to the value to the specific object they are bidding on, (otherwise they wouldnt be bidding) but they have implicitly and objectively agreed to the means by which they making the bids - money itself.

Yeah again, in a society still strapped to money, but auctions of this sort would not take place without money. In fact, in the event an "auction" situation arises, it will be more random. People interested in a given item will indicate their interest (and there are myriad was to do that) and from the interested parties, one name is "pulled out of a hat" - or equivalent. That One will get the item.

Money only functions when all parties involved agree, objectively, that said money has a set value that is agreed upon. Thus we use gold as a unit of exchange because we know its realitve value wont fluctuate wildly and will almost always be a medium of exchange that others objectively value. We dont use seashells because, although there might be one savant who really, really values seashells, his *arbitrary* value of seashells does not represent what is *objectively* understood - that seashells and abundant and thus cannot represent scarcity.

I think you are confusing "objectively" with "by consensus." It is better said, "Money only functions when all parties involved agree, by consensus, that said money has a set value that is agreed upon." What that end value assigned by consensus is can be described objectively, but the placement of a value is purely subjective. Gold can fluctuate wildly, by the way... And people SUBJECTIVELY value it as much as they subjectively value money. As for seashells... They are indeed abundant, but so is the energy of the plenum which can replace the representative for the item itself.

Thus the value of individual items may be based on arbitrary and personal preferences, but the *mode of exchange*, by its very nature, cannot. Money only works when it its objectively valued by those who use it.

No. Money only works because subjectively people value it. There may be an objective number We can point to which describes the consensus evaluation - "That hamburger is worth the $5 they're asking." - but our evaluation of that hamburger and its worth is completely subjective. Someone else might disagree. "I wouldn't pay $5 for that hamburger." So the hamburger's value in dollars is quite subjective. On top of that, We might find ourselves in hyperinflation and then, even consensus goes out the window. "That hamburger was $5 yesterday. Now it's $15! I like those burgers enough I will pay $15." "What? It wasn't worth $5!" "Well, the dollar isn't worth as much as it was before, so I think $15 sounds about right..." "I don't think it should be THAT high. Maybe $10." "Well who knows what hyperinflation says it should be. Who knows."

Once money is circulating, you can use it as a yardstick of how much and what people value, yes. But the making of money requires energy to be expended at some point along the line.

*Of course* energy expenditure is one factor in determinig value.

No. Energy expenditure is irrelevant to determining value. I have said this before, too. Personal assessments in aggregate determine value.

This is why a ditch digger can expect more pay than a burger flipper, even though both require similar aptitudes. Oil shale, while abundant, is only as valuble as its ratio of oil produced to its ratio of energy expended to create said oil, which is also in relation to the energy inputs required to drill for sweet crude. If more energy per unit was expended in extracting oil from shale (as it used to be), no one would develope it and no money would be produced. So of course energy expenditure is a factor in a products cost. But this has nothing to do with money itself. Money simply measures the aggragte demand for the above processes.

And if We had abundant energy (from the plenum) We could have robots to flip burgers and dig ditches and wouldn't need petro-fuels at all.

A barrel of sweet crude and a barrel of tarsand oil go for roughly the same price, if my assumtion is not mistaken. But shale oil requires in order of magnitude more input of energy per barrel than a saudi oil well does, yet they demand the same money per barrel. Thus energy input is a concern only to the producers of the oil and not the purchasers. In this case energy input is irrelevant to money, as money will represent the same amount of value (oil or sweet crude) regardless of the huge disparity in energy expended between the two.

You're not imparting any new information here. I understand economics. VERY well.

In other words, if something *must* cost more because the energy it consumes in production consumes money, then so be it, and this will be represented in the final cost. But money is by no means bound by energy consumtion, it just represents it in the cases where energy consumtion is valuble. I can expend next to zero additional resources (compared to my normal day) by sitting on a stage and telling jokes, the production of which cost me negligable resources, and yet, if i was funny, i would receive huge amounts of money represented by ticket sales.

Actually, though you might think you were making a good living, the promoters and the venues would be getting the bulk of the money... And again, what energy one expends bears no relation to the money one makes. The subjective evaluation of the consumer consensus of the final product determines how much money is made. (Thus the lack of discrepancy in shale vs. sweet crude oil.)

Expended energy is only one variable in the formula that = value.

Expended energy is irrelevant to value. Consensus evaluation of final product's worth = value.

And what others are willing to pay is arbitrary.

How many dollars or ounces of gold they are willing to pay may be arbitrary. The value of the gold or dollars themselves is not.

Sure it is. Otherwise there would be no price fluctuation or inflation/deflation.

You can find an average, to be sure. If you had a bunch of $5 offers and one million dollar offers, it just would highlight the arbitrary valuation. You say the painting is worth a million, but I say that is not to. To the BUYER it's worth that much. The buyer is not guaranteed (s)he will get anything for it if (s)he decides to sell it. The arbitrary evaluations of others will determine what the seller gets. Or does a good or service's value fluctuate naturally outside the evaluation of the potential buyer?

If something is only worth what others will trade for it, the BUYER is the only relevant factor in the eyes of the SELLER. The buyer and the seller are the only relevant parties when considering the value of their trade.

Well, sure, if you define value as the number of the moment, sure. Between those two only, the number is what it is. Objectively, even. My point is that if you are trying to establish an OBJECTVE value, just because one person is willing to pay a million dollars does not give it that value to anyOne else. In other words - you can't assign an objective value.

No one is garanteed anything if trading is voluntary. I might not sell you my hockey card collection for a million billion bux. The only way you could garantee the transfer of my hockey cards would be through violence.

Um. True. So?

But it's NOT objective. It's subjective as hell. If it was objective, there would be no such thing as inflation. Things would stay at fixed prices. No one would wait for sales, as there would be no such thing. All it tells us is that people will use money when it is there and they feel confident that the next guy will take it. But there is plenty of evidence that people would prefer not having to worry about it.

If the value of money was arbitrary, and whatever you wanted it to be, you could walk into McDonalds and demand a big mac for 25c, and your arbitrary estimation of the value of those cents would be just as valid as their arbitrary estimation that the big mac was indeed worth $2500. That they post a fixed price, in dollars, on their board, and people, generally, will pay said price, means that both McDonalds and their customers have objectively agreed upon the value in dollars that said big mac will cost. If the value of money were arbitrary, this would not be possible.

[sigh] The CONSENSUS value is arbitrary. This does not mean you can define the value for others. Nor does it mean that you cannot objectively name a number two parties have agreed on. But the consensus value of money is still arbitrary.

Inflation itself is objective. We can all track and define the rate of inflation (an insideous hidden tax), make plans to counteract it, and still buy a cheeseburger, does not make the value of money arbitrary. It simply make the value of money objectively deminishing. But I think youre right, to an extent. The current money system run by fiat by central bankers is certainly, to a degree, arbitrarly decreed by rule of force. Our currencies have lost %90+ of their value over the last century, and this is not because we have all, conciously agreed to downgrage our money. So to the extent that money deviates from is natural form due to the meddling of the evil central banks, that portion of its deviation i think could be called arbitrary.

The causes (more money in circulation) and effects (rising prices) of inflation is objectively defined. Inflation itself is possible because We arbitrarily assigned initial value.

I feel your disgust with fiat currency, and the central bankers. I can tell you, though... The only way we will be rid of Them is if we eliminate the need for Their product. Even if we somehow managed to go back on the gold standard, They would figure out a way around that again, duping us as They did in, what was it? 1913? Oh, yes. They'd think of something.

But this devaluation is only possible because money has objective value to begin with. If Im a milk farmer, and I sell %100 pure milk for $3, and then I slowly begin to dilute my milk with water, but still sell my milk for $3, customers will only pay the original price under the illusion that my milk was still %100. If my milk dropped to %50 milk/water, and people got suspicious and discovered my fraud, they would, at the very least, demand my milk be revalued at half of what i was charging, and that value would be entirely based on the milk value content of my product. Thus my milk, while devalued through fraud, still retains is objective value, just as money, while devalued through fraud, does aswell.

No... You product still retains the consensus assigned value. If consensus were to shift - say to believe that 100% was worth $3 but 50%, being very unsatisfying, is only worth $1 (not $1.50), you would not sell your 50% milk - unless you dropped it to $1. But frankly... If you were to love money so much as to dupe your customers by "filling" with water, your goal would be to keep the deception hidden, and only "fill" to a point you could plausibly still claim it's 100%.

That precious metals are currently skyrocketing in relation to paper dollars should show you the objective standard of value - gold and silver are simply responding to the massive inflation and devaluing of paper currency. If money were arbitrary, no such relationship could exist.

On the contrary, the metals boom shows me the very arbitrary relationship between dollars and metals. If it was not arbitrary, but set by some definition, there would be an unchanging relationship. All value is arbitrary.

Are you suggesting we cannot use one tool relative to another? That is the only way I can make sense of this statement. I mean, what is your point here?

My point is that money is a tool, and an extremely advanced one at that. Even in an abundance of paperclips, money is still the most useful tool to determine how many should be made and where they should go.

Money is a tool and a very archaic one at that. The rest of this makes no sense. We have a lot of paperclips. Therefore money should be used to determine how many we make (none, if there is an abundance, right?) and where they should go (he who hath money may have paperclips in exchange). Better, I say, to let quantity available determine how many We make and need to determine who gets them.

I think I will go back and count how many times you have accused me, directly or, as in this case, obliquely, of saying money is evil.

Youve said countless times that money causes most if not all of humanities ills. If not the object itself, our desire for it is to blame. To eliminate money, you claim, would resolve the worst ills that face humanity.

Yes. Cures will not be suppressed - that's a big one. Pharma doesn't want Us cured. No money in it. They want Us sick and buying "medicines" which they have patented. Love of money.

Cannabis will be no issue - legaization again is a BIG threat to Pharma, but also a threat to paper forest investments, cotton, textiles, insecticide companies, fertilizer companies, sellers of contraband, the prison industrial complex, income to the legal system, and others.

Waste will be virtually eliminated: robots to wash dishes - no paper, products will be made to last - no planned obsolescence, "theft deterring" packaging will be unnecessary, and "energy waste" will be meaningless.

No One will have motive to steal - They can have necessities richly provided upon request.

No One will have a motive to defraud for financial gain.

No One will have motive to kill (barring the very small nuber of such crimes that are purely passion-motivated).

Taxes will vanish.

In fact, though I have posted this list in this thread earlier, I will post it again. These will be the observables:

• Money falling into disuse
• Motivation from the heart as opposed to profit
• “Greed” becomes meaningless
• Peace
• Abundance for everyone
• Elimination of corruption
• Power over others supplanted by power over self
• Elimination of GMO’s
• Great reduction in violence
• Creative pursuits increased greatly
• A healed planet
• Reduced or eliminated hoarding
• Value placed on human-created art, textiles and products
• Focus on cures, not patentable chemicals that sicken for profit motive
• Human interaction with only those whose company is enjoyable (reduced social friction)
• Robotic stewardship of the planet
• Increased love and compassion
• Greatly reduced stress
• Wondrous works
• “Live and let live” behavior
• Most “laws” become unnecessary
• Corporate power eliminated
• Products made to last – no “planned obsolescence”
• Waste reduced to virtually nil
• Food nutrition increased for all
• One’s reputation becomes the “coin” one uses
• Personal responsibility for one’s own behavior
• Spiritual growth
• Slavery (outright or wage-slavery) abolished
• Human dignity encouraged
• Increase in charitable behavior
• Self autonomy
• Things are done because someone cares – from raising children to caring for others


(continued next post)

Im simpy saying that this is not the case, and indeed is the opposite. Money has allowed for the comfortable life you and I enjoy, which is basically a utopia in our own little bubble if a time traveler from the past were to see us. Money, and the exchange of values it represents, has brought to your fingertips the most incredible advancements in our standards of living that our ancestors could literally never have even dreamed of. Voluntary exchange of value, respresented by money, is *entirely* responsible for this, and if your robot utopia is ever to come into existence (which I hope it will) it will only do so incentivised by the productive wealth and capital humans produce, represented by, you got it, MONEY.

And I'm saying that with the addition of plenum energy, it IS the case. More energy = more richness. (Effectively) infinite energy = (effectively) infinite richness. (Effectively) infinite richness = no need for money. Yes, while energy has been scarce, money was the best way of accounting for it while giving the flexibility that barter lacked, allowing uUs to progress to where we are. But it is not the ONLY way to get things done. And it has hindered progress (as people hide advancements and cures that threaten profit) as much as it has helped. But no, voluntary exchange of value, respresented by money, is NOT entirely responsible for this. It's not responsible at all. Human drive for Betterment has been, using the tool of money and perceived value exchange.

Please quit calling it a utopia. Again (yet another repeat!) it is a pragmatic solution to make things much better for billions. Not perfect. Not without problems. Just a whole hell of a lot less of them. (Maybe it is a utopia... A world where there are no tax forms to fill out or an IRS threatening to punish any error.)

And speak for youself on that comfortable life. Because of money (lack of), my life is very UNcomfortable.

So if money falls into disuse of its on downward momentum, so be it, but until then, lets not throw the baby out with the bathwater, eh?

No throwing. Introduce plenum energy and money WILL fall into disuse. Without a structure, however, the chaos will be difficult to confine. (Nothing wrong with chaos - unlike randomness, chaos has hidden order that emerges, like leaders of the moment in solving problems.) That is why I wrote both The End of Entropy and this piece, The Ethical Planetarian Party Platform. I am offering it as a suggestion for that structure.

It is THE LOVE of money that promotes evil. THAT is the deeper cause.

I think YOU're being obtuse here. The root of production is the Human desire to improve the environment because of personal satisfaction/pride, prestige, fame, desire to fill a need or solve a problem, reputation...or, if it's there, money.

But money, in many ways, symbolizes the previous virtues you mentioned.

How does a tool symbolize anything? I suppose that if One chooses to assign money as a symbol for something, then it symbolizes that to that person. But there is nothing inherent in money that connects it specifically to any of those.

And if We start assigning money as a symbol of such intangibles, I assign it as a symbol of greed, of sociopathy, of lying, of cheating, of stealing, of war, of murder, of bribery, of subjugation, of slavery, of social injustice, of secrecy, of betrayal, of oppression. Of course it's not money itself that causes these behaviors - just the LOVE of money it spawns. Just as it is not money that causes the feelings of or valuing of personal satisfaction/pride, prestige, fame, desire to fill a need or solve a problem, or reputation. Money just happens often to accompany these feelings.

But I can assure you that a volunteer at the Red Cross gets personal satisfaction/pride and has a desire to fill a need or solve a problem. They may not get fame or prestige from that, or wide reputation - but They might. But money is not driving that volunteer, and so does not "symbolize" in any way their personal satisfaction or desire to fill a need.

Money in no way symbolizes anything.

Yes. If you weren't born to a mother that could get you access to a computer lab when such things were very rare, you won't become Bill Gates. If you weren't born of parents who can send you to Harvard and there is no scholarship, you aren't going to graduate from Harvard, even if it's a dream you had since you were a child. Think of all the money you lose being born to parents who can't send you to Harvard and instead send you to community college!

Must we delve into the number of rich who didnt even go to college? For every 'lucky' sob born with a silver spoon, theres an unlucky one born dirt poor.

No. What would be the point? One's life path has more to do with luck than anything else. And the reason I am pointing this out is that the lie pervades our society that all it takes is hard work to succeed. Given that I know a great many people who tried like hell (myself included), luck was not with them and they did NOT succeed. Thus We condemn people, look down our noses at the struggling poor, when virtually all of them are there because they were unlucky.

And if We can lift Them all, We should. They are merely Humans who wound up in the unlucky bunch - because in a money system, that natually creates vast poverty and a power elite, the vast majority HAS to be unlucky. And since We now have all the pieces We need to get rid of money and (in a sense) giving luck to all, Ethically We are even bound to do so.

Not that it matters. If im 'lucky' enought (or skilled enough) to be able to give my children an awesome advantage in early life that I was never afforded, no blame on my child can be assigned. To improve on your own circumtances throught your offspring is one of the most essential functions of all life.

If you were lucky enough to be (or become) skilled enough... I surely wouldn't blame anyone. Not sure why you brought this up. In abundance, your children might increase your prestige by virtue of the fact that you showed them how to find the education to follow their bliss into medicine and the find a cure for some disease that had been eluding cure. "Look at my daughter! She cured diabetes!" Or something like that.

I can't tell you how lucky I feel when I solve a problem. I was lucky I thought of the solution. I'm lucky it was ME who solved the problem. I'm lucky I was smart enough.

So you dont believe in free will?

Within parameters. It is my free will whether I act on the solutions I see to bring them to others. It is my free will to try to come up with a solution. But it is not my free will to actually come up with a solution - otherwise everyone who wanted a solution would think of one. Actually coming up with a solution is luck.

What do you hope to achive by debating with me, if Im not at all responsible for my arguments? (as it was sheer luck that led me to them) Are you hoping to 'get lucky' and convince me of the validity of your position?

No, you are responsible for your free will presentations (arguments), irrespective of the fact that by luck you are who you are. And I hope to leave a body of work (by free will - though by luck I am who I am) showing responses that may help others, those Ones lucky enough to read, how the paradigm functions and why it will work. All in the hope of being lucky enough to have the paradigm spread to the tipping point and we proceed forward into a far freer, far richer future.

Nope. One has to be lucky to succeed in any large measure.

Even if this is the case, does my 'luck' invalidate any of my achivements? Does my 'luck' invalidate my arguments? If so, why argue? Does your 'luck' validate yours? If youre just lucky to have defeated my reasoning, what could possibly be gained from that? If you bested me in debate, it would be no different than a landslide crushing my car, while leaving yours unscathed. Certainly, either way, you could make no claim to 'rightness' as luck determines all action and cause.

No, your luck does not invalidate your achievements or your arguments. No, my luck has nothing to do with the validity of mine. What I am saying is that a lot of luck went into you being in a position TO achieve. A lot of luck went into me being able to construct a solution. A lot of luck went into Bill Gates being able to create Microsoft. A lot of bad luck went into creating that situation for the arthritic old lady who was laid off and no one will hire her. It's not that she is inherently valueless. Or unskilled. Or uneducated. She just has the bad luck of competing with a huge pool of unemployed 20- and 30-somethings. And believe me...employers hire 20- and 30-somethings over creaky old ladies in a heartbeat.

So if you have won, in your mind, you just got 'lucky' and thus no validity can be claimed, just as it would be absurd to claim victory if the landslide crushed my car and not your own.

Well, I haven't "won" and we have dispensed with this "luck" thing. If I "won" (don't know how that would be determined), it would be skill and understanding used under free will - both of which I am lucky I have.

Yep. I am lucky enough to be pretty sharp and capable. I am lucky enough to have been taught how to read and write. I am lucky that the clarity of thought and analysis are mine to offer ideas that have merit. I am lucky to have the Interweb to convey the ideas. I am lucky to have personal knowledge of elements some dispute (plenum energy). I am lucky to have what it takes.

So you take no responsibility for any of your actions?

How do you get me being lucky in happenstance equating to a lack of responsibility for actions? It is happenstance that I am sharp and capable. It is happenstance that reading and writing were available to me to learn. It is happenstance that I have clarity of thought and am capable of analysis. It is happenstance that there is an Interweb. It is happenstance that I was born to the father such that I have personal knowledge of plenum energy. It is happenstance that I have what it takes.

Of course I take responsibility for what I DO. I take responsibility for the use of my sharpness and being capable. I take responsibility for using the skills of reading and writing. I take responsibility for using my clarity of thought and ability to analyse. I take responsibility for using the Interweb. I take responsibility for expressing the knowledge I have. I take responsibility for DOING what it takes.

If I murdered one of your loved ones, would you simply say 'he was unlucky to be born a murderer'?

No. I would say, "He was unlucky to have been born such that he was motivated to murder, but he is responsible for what he actually chose to do, he is responsible for the murder."

Pretty much, yes - as long as you have enough energy, technology and a structure.

These things are a product of money.

No. Plenum energy itself is free and exists irrespective of money. Technology, though facilitated in growth by money in this scarcity paradigm, is the product of Human desire to understand and solve problems. And structure is independent of money - unless the structure includes money. But structure is not a PRODUCT of money. The Ethical Planetarian Party Platform is a structure. It doesn't include money. Wrong on all three counts.

Yep, and in all of them people had to work. This is no longer the case. Robots can work and Humans can create. Be blissful. Live as the elite of today live if They choose. Only because for the first time in our present history we have robotics, Interweb and plenum energy will a moneyless society succeed.

except for lobster, of course.

Humans can survive without eating lobster, I am led to believe. We will have plenty, high quality food, clothing and shelter. Anything beyond that is icing on the cake.

No. It is meaning which assigns value for any individual. The degree of value is reflected in the amount offered in money. Money still represents energy expended, but it can be used to "shortcut" barter - that was it's purpose to begin with.

Weve demonstrated that energy expended is just one variable in the value of money. Weve agreed that moneys central function is to facilitate voluntary trade of mutual value.

No. YOU keep saying that and I keep refuting it - over and over and over. Energy expended is independent of the value assigned to money. Money's central function is to facilitate exchange of mutually agreed upon value (there is no absolute value and therefore no way to determine "mutual" value except in any given case and based on the agreement of the parties).

I never said it was not effective. I said we don't need it.

HOLY SMOKES!!

If we didnt *need* it, it wouldnt be *effective*~~~~

Wrong. Aspirin can be effective. That does not mean we NEED it. We may be alergic. Feudal lords were effective. Did that mean we needed them? There are many things which are effective as far as they go. That does not mean, as things change (plenum energy, Interweb, robotics), that they remain the MOST effective, nor does it mean we NEED them. It just means we find them useful.

I also said that since we cannot excise the LOVE of money - which would be awesome if we could, as it is the root of all evil - excising money does effectively the same thing. And that can be accomplished by adding plenum energy to the system. Which leads to richness of lifestyle for all who choose it, no poverty, no starvation, and no evil done for the LOVE of money (virtually all evil).

Your argument is comparable to what they inflict on catholic priests - the love of sex is evil, and thus, without sex, they couldnt be evil.

I think you know where that led!

Yes, but that has several issues as an analogy and in being applied here. What the church was saying was that sex itself was evil. Not the LOVE of sex (raping, child molestation, peeping tom, other unEthical behavior). Sex is not evil. Between consenting adults, it's all good. The church took the line that sex itself was evil and to be avoided - which led to great frustrations and then actual evil. In the sects of Christianity where the pastors, priests, whatever are allowed to have sex, very few of these problems have arisen.

And... It is not a biological imparative to have money. It is a biological imparative to have sex.

Therefore, we cannot excise sex but we can excise money. So there is no comparison, really.

Evil is done for the addiction of power, of which money can be one facilitator. Removing money would simply manifest mans evil desire to another object.

Like what? Please give me an example. Please. What else would motivate people to hide cures? Hide energy extraction methods? Keep highly beneficial plants "illegal?" Fight wars? (Most big wars were instigated by war suppliers.)

What could they possibly come up with that would motivate them even to 10% of the evil wWe see today?

I have no attack on sex. I have no attack on money. I have an attack on the LOVE of each. And if we could get rid of sex, it would get rid of the LOVE of it. However, unlike money, which we CAN get rid of, sex is pretty much here to stay.

Just as super technology could obsolete money, so too could it obsolete sex. This does not make it desireable.

Huh? Sex is a biological imperative, and a lot of fun. No reason to get rid of it. Money is not a biological imperative, and the fun it provides the few who have lots of it could be the fun everyone could enjoy without it. I can't see why We wouldn't want to get rid of it - for the sake of Humanity.

And the number of crimes (unEthical behaviors) committed because of the LOVE of sex is statistically nonexistant when compared to the number committed for the LOVE of money.

Me? I hate money. I love all the stuff, though, so I endure money as far as it goes. But I am certainly motivated to get rid of it if I can and eliminate poverty for those so unlucky to be born into it (some lucky few do get out - but they are the exceptions, the lucky ones; some unlucky few - well, many these days - fall into poverty).

You hate money, but you love stuff. Stuff is a creation of money. Thus, another contradiction.

[sigh] Again. Stuff is a creation of Ours. Money in energy scarcity facilitates making and getting stuff.

Eliminate poverty? You know how many millions of chinese and indians have climbed out of poverty in the last decade?

Few - but then they didn't have plenum energy, the Interweb and robotics in tandem (still don't yet). They all have been living the scarcity paradigm.

What have you ever actually done, in your own life, to eliminate poverty? An an employer, I can speak to the subject in non theoretical terms, as my action has led directly from people rising out of poverty.

Try to spread ideas that will life Us all out of poverty.

Actions > Words.

That's why I'm out spreading ideas.

You show me where I said that. In fact I may count the times I have said just the opposite. The LOVE of money...

LOVE of sex...

Yeah. And so? That is irrelevant to what is done for the love of money.

And since we can't excise the LOVE of money, but CAN excise money, let's excise money to eliminate the problem of LOVING it.

I love it. Not seeing the problem.

No. You enjoy (the things you can get/do with) money. If you LOVED it you would be screwing people over for it. Lying, cheating, stealing, defrauding, killing people, keeping thenm sick and controlled, all to gain money/power/energy.

Yeah. He needs a LOVE of sex. He needs to put sex before Human value. What's your point?

So lets get rid of sex!

Are you listening to youself!?

Are you? I have said (over and over and over) that sex is not a problem. The LOVE (unEthical behavior relative to it) of sex is a problem. And it is YOU saying to get rid of sex, not me. AND... I have no interest in getting rid of it. It's problems are like a grain of sand compared to the orb of the sun when comparing the problems inherent in a system that retains money, for the LOVE of money is always attendant in such a system.

Surely will plays a part - without it, any luck has no chance. But you judge harshly people who are in poverty, as if they "just didn't TRY hard enough" or are necessarily lacking in intelligence. Because YOU made it, everyone else should be able to, I guess. But the fact is that statistically all people are poor and a large chunk are in poverty because the luck of the draw landed them there, and no matter how much will they brought to bear, they were stuck.

So free will is superior to luck, and luck is secondary to purposful action. Earlier you proclaimed that luck was the be all and end all. Again, contradictions = error.

How did you get this from what I said??? Free will is an apple. Luck is an orange. Luck is happenstance. Will drives what you choose to do. Just because you have free will to do things, does not mean you will have luck go your way. I did not say luck was the be all and end all - you putting words in my mouth (again!!!). I said that the people who are successful (using money as measure - many people are successful by other measures) are successful mostly because they were lucky.

Who said I 'made it'?

Well, I guess it depends on how that is defined. But from my standpoint you made it. You have enough money for some leisure and can afford that leisure as well. I would love to have that.

We are all unlucky to be born into debt slavery. We are all responsible for how we react to this.

Yeah.

100% But their actions cannot guarantee success. A very large part of life is luck.

So are we not to act because we might end up 'unlucky'?

Again, how do you get this from what I said. It's the same obtuseness that led you to argue that because I said money = energy expended that I must be saying that energy expended = money. Thus the "pogo stick" questions. Just because I say a large part of life is luck does NOT follow that I am saying we should give up. If asked whether we should give up, I would say unequivocally No. Just saying that you can't judge a Human by what "caste" (s)he is in. They may be the most awesome person but luck slapped them down.

I wouldn't throw luck in there unless we're talking about the luck that I was born such that I could become aware enough to make a value judgment. How I judge is irrelevant to luck.

Arrrrg! But you *just said* not a few paragraphs above that all you skills, talents, abilities and intelligence is entirely decided by luck! How you judge is based on these qualities!

Why don't we reinsert what this was in response to. Maybe it will make it clear:

I said: Oh, I don't buy tickets. My point is that the valuation is arbitrary - we don't think it appropriate, but clearly others do. And enough of them, at that.

You said:

And I suppose youre 'lucky' enough to know better.

To which I gave that response up there. You pulled it out of context and then tried to link it to something unrelated. In context I haven't deviated in what I was saying in the least.

Or rather to those controlling the government...impelled to do so by a LOVE of money/power/energy.

So without government these compulsions would have no foundation.

No. Without MONEY these compulsions would have no foundation. Any government would therefore be more effective because the only motivation left once money is removed is Betterment.

I am going to doubt that. All the pollution I have ever seen is either littering, cars, or coming from some private industry plant. And they get by with it by greasing palms.

And whos palms are they greasing?! The ones with the gun in the other hand!

Maybe, maybe not. But surely someone in a position with power to give Them what They want in exchange for "favors..."