A Martian lands in Denver on the wrong side of the tracks...

A "medium of exchange" implies things of value are to be exchange.  How does that constitute socialism?

Alternative currencies have been created at various times in U.S. history, and some exist today.

These often involve the exchange of services, I don't see any socialism in exchanging, say, plumbing for painting. I am not aware of any alternative currencies being given out as handouts!

 You appear to presume that people who live in a ghetto (or perhaps are poor, whether or not they live in a ghetto) won't do for themselves.

As an older, college-educated poor person, I reject that presumption.

 While I have a degree, I am short on marketable skills, and lack the money to go to school to get skills.  As an older worker without career-related experience, I am marginally employable in this economy.

As a grunt worker in the minimum wage economy, I and my co-workers work very hard.  Slackers do not last long at my workplace.

You might try working in the minimum wage economy for a living and THEN suggest that the working poor won't do for themselves.

As a person who grew up under circumstances I'd rather not elaborate on publically, which involved ghettos, and exposure to ghettos and the debauchery therein, I endorse this presumption fully.

Sir, in college they do not expose you to the world, merely the learnings of other men. With this, I have first hand knowledge.

I have no problem with a barter system, but with a lack of:
A. Skill
B. Security
C. Civility

You find in Ghettos, it'd be a clear cut case of "risk verus reward" on part of the skilled laborers. This disparity is never going to go away, and I'd not see good labor wasted on those who'd not do for themselves.
Afterall, if they could, they would.
Which is why ghettos are ghettos in the first place.

If you would like to donate your time to go and teach them the skills necessary, I see no problem with that, but I'll not force anyone to *give* aid to those who wouldn't seek it for themselves.
To me, this is socialistic.

To take from people who strive for achievement and work hard for their ascent into mediocricy to be forced to give their success away? Socialistic. I have no problem with disparity in class existing; the moment God shat out the 2nd caveman, some disparity was created between them.

Do you believe in Darwinism? Evolution, as most college educates do?
Because your logic is contradictory to a widely held theory of evolution that can be applied to social principles as well as metabolic organisms.

Cheers!

If you have a chessboard full of queens, she loses her importance.

Resistr just gave every reason to abhore socialism.

You should know better than me how awful your health care system is - that or you've never had a serious matter that needed attended. I live under a system of Socialism, and it's lousy. The health care, free food, training to the lowest common denominator, the "good of the organism" mentality. The worst part of it is, they can lower the quality, and you've got nothing to compare it to!
HaHA! Take that capitalism!

I am a person, and individual, and I don't want to sacrifice myself for the good of society. I hold my opinions, thoughts, characteristics and values as supreme in MY life. I will not force them on anyone else, and they'll not force theirs on me.

How people can so willingly submit their children to a system that controls their ability to decide for themselves, I'll never know.

Equal opportunity beats equal limitations.

Paul,

Odd, you're preaching my shortsightedness when you indeed are set in your own opinion.

To be short, I detest capitalism as well - but until a "new" school of thought is introduced that attempts to solve the problems of socialism and capitalism, I will not be tempted to "switch horses mid-creek", and I'll strongly advise against it to others.

I'll say with some certainty that near everyone on this board grew up in "well to do" families, and have never licked food stamps. I have been on both sides of this fence, and without the ability to do for myself, perhaps would still be stuck on the other.

The GOVERNMENT is not the solution - socialism is a system of thought where governments take control of private business. Oddly enough, those who detract our government would see it given more power to address (with "collective" funds - IE tax money) poverty. As a person who grew up amongst Eastern European immigrants of various backgrounds, I can also say with some certaintly that the abysmal failure that Soviet Russia brought entrenched itself in private lives so that you would not be able to have discussions such as these.

If you think our government would be more "benevolent" than theirs - by all means, have at it.
Don't be blindsided by dellusions of philanthropy. If you don't value my opinion, quite fine. But don't tell me I'm at the wrong website because I hold ideas that are less fanciful and more practical.

Cheers!

Aaron,

are we really talking of 'isms', such as Socialism or Capitalism or, are we talking of 'Self Preservation'. Are we both trying to win an arguement on semantics, which is a rich topic that can be described as a game of hide and seek through facts and figures or, is one of us stuck in a trap of his own making due to a fearful lack of humility? So many people in your mindset are badge wearers. They are drawn to parallells of black and white or left and right when the reality is more of a spectrum of grey, with many of these certainties in your thinking almost romanticised into unfashionable ideals that are failures. The winner in any battle is the one that writes the history remember, does that mean that the winner was on the honourable side or was it won with the backing of ignorance?

 We are either the teacher or the taught. How you are seen by me is not the person I believe you think you are. I wonder what your true reasons are for your comments on this forum when they appear to be designed with undermining rather than idea building. This place we are both 'Standing Our Ground' in is a place to learn from. It is a pity that it is such a public place when sabre rattling. I do not care to win...

 ...and this I question where you write :-

"I'll say with some certainty that near everyone on this board grew up in "well to do" families, and have never licked food stamps. I have been on both sides of this fence, and without the ability to do for myself, perhaps would still be stuck on the other."

...such class distinctions is my case in point; one that I won't answer lightly here as to whether a mans value was weighted in the folding in his pocket or his thread-bare shoes - 'He' is still of value providing he hasn't been beaten into such a level of personal revulsion and ignorance he couldn't make eye contact. That, I believe are where we are drawing our line...and where do you suppose I originate from? There was someone on those days that you were struggling that gave you an opportunity of making this 'conversation' possible. Should they have left you to rot for want of a new 'Ism'? Do you really believe in the words, 'Self Made', or in reality, was there help?

How many people have to die from ignorance and selfishness before we wake up to ourselves. If no more bombs were built in America for the next year, the money, if it were re-invested could give fresh clean water to every man woman and child on the planet. But, they're a blite on resources right? They should be given condoms or, better still, they should be left to rot? The picture is bigger than your ideals Aaron. Stop writing and read instead.

Paul

Joe,

I'm sorry, I very much enjoyed the article and appreciate how you expected the comments to form. I've never been a fan of pugilism at the best of times and felt I was defending the article with my previous posts.

It would be a better world if it were possible to implement these ideas beyond the 4000 already in place and, I will be doing my own homework with this to try to make this a possibility in the future. I believe it is only a matter of time before this becomes a reality, don't you? I've already posted the article to atleast 100 people, believing its merrit and for others opinion.

I read and fully understood the feeling you get when a friend offers you money for helping them with a project. In my mind I've always felt repelled and refused to take it on principle. I like the feeling you get when you're rewarded with help in the future when it is offered rather than asked for. It makes me feel as though the friend offering you money for that days work, 'Offered In Kind', thought you had an ulteria motive. I suppose, in the worst possible future imaginable, where currency nolonger existed as it stands today and you were at the brink of starvation, altruism wouldn't hold water when not rewarded with food for a days work. Lets hope for a softer landing than the likes of Richard Heinberg and James Howard Kunstler expect for our future.

If you had the opportunity to make this possible, think how different life would be!! I feel that Bali has many generations with this mindset and, it would take many of our future generations to build this amount of giving and filter out that need for payment and the 'Yin' instead of the 'Yang'. Time I think will tell.

Making a change to peoples thinking is difficult but not impossible. I've seen this at work many times in my life. It requires building something honourable on a foundation of trust. Could I ask what your thoughts were when you found this interview?

Kindest Regards,

Paul

" I am surprise how much a coat of paint
and few flowers will change a neighborhood but people do not care of
their own neighborhood."

Isn't that caused by selfishness induced by capitalism....  brought onto people who have no idea how to cope with capitalism?

It never ceases to amaze me how many sapitalists (HEY I just invented a new word!) so strongly believe that if everyone is given the chance, they can and should all be able to become millionaires.  Well my friends, it ain't so.  Not everyone has the ability to run a successful business (I failed at it), not everyone WANTS to be a millionaire either...

People assume 'we're all the same', when in fact we could not all be more different.  So as I see it, the 'entrepreneurs' (not a French word ) take advantage of the non-entrepreneurs to build their millions.  They end up with everything, and the poor get pissed off.  And all at the expense of the Planet.

It's a pity we can't send all the rich to Mars (surely the free market will work out a way to make Mars inhabitable) while those of us who wish to can tend this garden planet sustainably without the need for money...

Aaron,

Back when I was a feistier person, my wife used to say to me, "It's not what you say, it's how you say it." Took me a lot of years to see the wisdom in her words.

Matrix,

Many years ago I read that if you redistributed all the wealth on this planet equally among all it's citizens, it would not be too many years before the wealth would be concentrated amongst the few once again. (I don't remember the exact time frame - but you get the point.)

That's not what I said at all......

I said everyone's different. 

I actually do believe everyone's equal.

Mike 

Sorry - double post.

Hi Joe,

a few hours of my day is spent writing to people who have no knowledge of "Chris Martenson" and the "Crash Course". Every day, I try to connect with at least 10 people and hope that my message gains some positive result. I wanted you to understand how useful this thread has been to me and wished to share with you one of the replies I gained and how I explained the ideal of a world based on None Fiat Money and No Interest. I appreciate that this thread should have gained a great deal of worthy replies that were scuppered by my debate off topic with Aaron Moyer. I hope these results will play a part in you sharing future items for others to learn from.

I'm connecting MGhandi's excellent reprint article that was made into a thread on the 14th of January here :-

http://www.peakprosperity.com/forum/teh-zeitgeist-movement/11668

...which I believe relevant and connected to this thread...

:-

Hi Rob,

I'm still with you and get where you are where you say :-

"In my case, I was with them up until about midway in "Zeitgeist: Addendum". I began to disagree with the second half of "Zeitgeist: Addendum" where the eggheads of The Venus Project called for a total elimination of money and work. Why? Because that will be impossible to achieve in the real world. Sure, it would be nice if robots could do all the work in society and we all could just lay back on some beach somewhere, drinking Pina Coladas all day, but who is going to make you that Pina Colada and who will serve it to you on the beach? Is it a resort? Who owns it? Who runs it? Who maintains it? Who will serve you at a restaurant and cook the food the waiter brings to your table? Will the waiter and the chef simply work for nothing, for free, without any pay or compensation? Of course not.They too want to kick back and not work if no one else is going to work. Why should they? They're not suckers and work while everybody else sits on their fat lazy asses and does nothing. See my point? These examples point out how ludicrous and ridiculous The Venus Project's lofty pie-in-the-sky goals (i.e. no more work or money) are nothing but fanciful pipe dreams that can never be achieved in reality. "

..........

I think there was the idea where money no longer was a need because money as a measure of energy is proven in this system to be nothing more than the beginings of a systemic collapse to that system when you try to make it run in link-step with energy.

I'll try and explain myself. If you build debt into something that is purchased in the way that America sells a power station to a south American country, complete with its grid and all fixtures and fittings with a loan over 25 years, with a built in disguise of wealth from these developments, when in reality 90% of the people do not benefit and end up loosing 40% of all they earn and later loosing there resources because the debt goes into deficit, you end with a country that has no control and a larger country raping it for all it is worth. Suppose instead you used your own resources and the population worked together for the benefit of everyone rather than the normal 10% profiting on projects other than a belching coal-fired power station and, all you used were the resources and accumalated no debt and didn't pay the builders anything but the betterment of that society; that society would grow to be an amazing place.

Look at the education system that has been created over the last 90 years in America. The whole system is wracked with expenses that far outway the education standard at its finished result. It is completed with a system where the educated begin the job they were trained to do already in a massive amount of debt. Imagine a world where education was something that was designed without money and based on creating for others what 'You' were blessed with.

Lets build the picture. Suddenly your community is 40% better off already where resources are no longer being burnt up to pay for interest. You would gain an amazing level of structure on this system very quickly. A structure that was based on only using the sustainable resources at your fingertips. Creating a learning base out of honest humility wouldn't be created on the basis of getting one over on your neighbor, because he would be equal.

If you remember, 'Fresco' said that any system isn't perfect and does have flaws but, you'd have to say that it appears to be better than the one we're living through right now.

Its difficult to adopt any new ideal to the mix when the public are so busy creating 'Isms' to everything about this form of utopia. Many would state it worked in a great many parts of the structures to socialism. Others enthuse it to be a kind of communism. Its a point of view built on parodimes that are black and white, when the realties are very much shades of grey.

This link below, I feel, will blow your mind when you get to the bottom of it and will clarify the thoughts I'm trying to describe to you. I must insist that I don't feel that this will come about in either of our lifetimes because, the world needs to evolve. It will take many many generations. The truth is, if you really think about it, we've been brought up on films that make space travel seem easy. We use computers that run at incredible high speeds through advancement from where they were in development within our lifetimes; maybe only a decade or two. Yet, the industrial revolution was only 180 years ago, when steam trains began being fed coal to create motion and, the rest as they say is history. Look at it this way, if you take away natural gas and nuclear as creators of electricity, we still use coal for about 75% of all our electricity needs worldwide and, thats just an over-sized steam engine!!

Are we really so advanced, or do we just think we are, with nothing brighter or more inteligent than this 'Winning' species to tell us otherwise?

On the evolutionary front, when you look at our ability to live and work in vast cities with a million people in them, we're creating a giant science project because, every day we're winging it, because every day is another day where we survived to tell the tale.

Lets visit Bali and find out about 'Yin' and 'Yang' :-

http://uazu.net/money/lietaer.html

Take Care,
Paul
..........................

Hi Paul,

I don't disagree with any of your points and I too would love it if The Venus Project's aims were achieved. It irks me to no end when I think how much more advanced a society we would be having right now -- and enjoying, if Man had done it the right and correct way from the get go.

I think had Man not wasted his time, his talents and his resources on devising better ways to destroy other men and the environment, but rather had decided to build a better world for all fellow men (and not just for the wealthy), I think we may have been living in a man-made paradise...