I would like a barter system, except we dont really have the same resources to rely on as we once did, or farmers, or butchers, or dairy farmers, or any of those who really produced the necessities to barter with.

So then, they can fire the "bad teachers" who have been sitting in the "rubber rooms" for the last few years, drawing full pay, but not allowed to teach or be around the students, ALL AT TAX PAYER EXPENSE?

Gee, thought I knew! If only the unions were'nt so currupt.....

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/16/nyregion/16rubber.html

Shame isn't it, what this great nation has become thanks to the bankers!

Unless we severely limit their power,it doesn't matter who will sit in those Chambers!

Thanks to Sellout-Politicians!
If they did not have the Power to grant those Favors to the Bankers,the Bankers would have to count Hundreds,instead of Billions!
It's the Politicians who are selling out the Nation!
For a Pottage of Soup!

I must thank Ladylid2012 for placing this in another post earlier so I didn't have to look it up .....

It applies because it was President Woodrow Wilson who implemented the "Federal Reserve Act of 1913"....

I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world — no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.

~Woodrow Wilson~

President Kennedy's speech.....2 months later, he was assassinated...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaaUC8Mtjw4

Not true on the laziness part at all. Most people are not lazy, nor will they choose the lazy road.

I was Union and I busted my hump at work. Never did I even think about how hard it was to get fired. I and "lots" of others did a good job because I wanted to know that I did a good job.


Assumptions suck big time.

Well, to treat this fairly would be far outside of the scope of this conversation. I urge caution against the fallacy of choosing between extremes. I know individuals who are highly motivated without being money motivated; I don't claim this does or would apply to a majority, only that it could.

You mention heart surgeon - heart surgery is better left to robots - who never have a bad day, never allow emotions to interfere with their work, are continuously informed of every minute detail of the patients condition, who can access a vast database of information, who can make optimal decisions instantly, who can simultaneously manipulate a dozen implements.

If our civilization is still around in 500 years, and if we continue to make progress as we have, I predict heart surgery will be done exclusively by robots.

People are motivated by getting the esteem of their peers, they are motivated by pride in their work, they are motivated by the desire to prove themselves, to make a name for themselves, they are motivated by the values that they hold and the opportunity to serve them, people are motivated because they like learning new things, or the like the social aspect of their work - there are many, many things which motivate people towards excellence besides money.

You know, I had a job once where I could watch movies all day. After two months I got bored, and starting asking around for opportunities to help people with their projects while I was at work, and I started taking classes so I could at least study at work.

The guy who manages the kitchen where I volunteer has a serious job of it. He really works hard, and sometimes he is just as stressed out as any restaurant manager. What motivates him?

Most of the jobs I've had in my life grew out of volunteering, or doing something for fun. I would take a volunteer assignment, work really hard (for the pleasure of working hard!), and someone would offer me a similar job. I'd figure: if I'm doing it anyway, why not accept money for it? But what motivated my volunteering?

Consider that long ago, probably 90% of all of human labor was directed towards providing ourselves with food and shelter. Today, its probably less than 5% of all human labor in industrialized nations. And now most of us take survival-level food and shelter completely for granted... beans and rice isn't good enough for us, anymore... and we expect our homes to have running water and electricity. Extrapolate from this! With further technological innovation, and maturation of our culture, it seems very possible to me that the kind of economic disparity we have today will be a non-issue.

'Maybe not everyone' is the key phrase there.

You may be right that there will always be people who, given the choice to be lazy, they'd be lazy. And that if you threatened that same person with poverty and starvation, they'd get off their *** and work.

But that doesn't mean we must always have economic inequity.

This is like a convo in a primitive society:

"One day, we will never have to worry about predators... or running after our own food."

"That'll never happen. If it did, everyone would become fat lazy slobs. You know that running after his food is the only thing that keeps Grog thin. That lazy bum would spend his whole day eating grubs on the rock, if he could."

There is some truth to the counter argument... yet, here we are. And we do have obese people watching TV all day - but this is partially a cultural thing (just look at the difference between the midwest and southern cal).




All the trust fund babies I met were avid volunteers!



Of course they quit! Our economic realities forced them into a job that didn't inspire them. Ask how many of them continue to work or volunteer in some capacity - many of them do!



Again, this is cultural. In California, its horrible. I'm told in other places its not as bad. That in some places, people are publicly ashamed to be on welfare.

I am deeply personally offended by how wrong this specific argument is.

The ipod is complete ****. The ipod was not an advacement - the portable media devices that preceded the ipod were better.

The ipod was not an 'invention', it was an extrapolation of previous existing technology - which were assembled from pre-existing inventions.

e-ink - now that was a new invention.

The ipod slowed down innovation. Just look at the pace of innovation there was before the ipod, when a DOZEN companies were competing with each other - once apple gained 60% market share, everyone else dropped out of the game except sansa and a few others - then microsoft entered the game with the zune.

You are correct that this is ONE want that our tech advances, but its not the only way.

College students LOVE inventing and designing new things. At my school, I knew a dozen people involved in the the solar car project, the autonomous car project, and the hybrid car project. (That was long ago, before hybrids were on the road!).

All those talented, capable people poured a huge amount of effort into advancing technology! Mostly for the fun of doing so!


Also, there is a little known gaming console which was designed entirely by volunteers. Throughout the design period, no one knew with certainty that it would ever be manufactured, because they didn't know whether there would be a critical mass of interested people to justify batch manufacturing that would bring the costs down (economies of scale) to a reasonably level.

As they neared completely, they put out a call: Who is interested?
If i remember correctly, several thousand people PRE-PAID in order to contract a manufacturer to produce these gaming consoles for like $400 each.


Think about that.

This completely destroys the argument that the profit motive is necessary for the advancement of consumer electronics technology.


Don't get me wrong - as I said earlier, the profit motive is serving us well at this stage of our development as a species.

I just take issue with the absolutism of your reject of the possibility that we may one day do just fine without economic inequality.

The money system is a barter system. We just use symbols to represent past and future barters.

I would prefer a true barter system where we could exchange services and products for other SERVICES and products

as it stand we use money only in exchange for products or service and we are limited by whether others are willing to pay us by that particular barter resource,,

Courtesy of Limbo:

The Politico and the mainstream media has launched an unconscionable, racially stereotypical attack on an independent, self-reliant conservative black because for him that behavior is not allowed. Now, if we had...

I want to look at a couple things today from a different perspective. What would the left be doing right now if, let's say, there were an assault on Obama of this nature. Let's say that some conservative publication ran a story exactly like this: Unnamed sources, 15 years ago, with every detail of Obama sexual harassment. What would the Democrat national committee and what would the media be doing? They would be going after the women. They would be targeting these women, and they would name names, and they would destroy them. That is what the Democrats and the media would do. They would set out to find out who these women are that talked to the conservative publication and they would destroy them.

They would call these women racists for trying to destroy a black politician. They would claim that they're working for the Republican National Committee. They would claim that these two women (or these women, whoever), had been hired by the Republican National Committee to engage in this smear and lie campaign against Obama. They would go after these women. They would destroy them. They would make the women the bad guys. They would dig into every minor thing in these women's lives that they have ever done. They would trash them, they would make them prove the unprovable -- because this is war, and that's how they fight it. Anything goes, as far as they're concerned, and they cannot allow a black or an Hispanic to rise to the top of a political establishment that is not Democrat.

a scandal is a scandal is a scandal

democratic candidates have faced allegations as well as republicans

and this being an issue of a harassment file that was, on record, settled out of court

I doubt its as big a deal to most as the supposed birth certificate, ayers, or reverend wright scandals

, as I recall,

OBama was forced to produce a certificate for public view,

Ayers was not 'trashed' by democrats and hardly interviewed by anyone else, although he did on a rare and random occasion confirm that he and OBama had a professional relationship and were not particularly personal

and OBAMA was forced to throw Wright under the bus

,,,no, this is not exceptional, it is business as usual and Cain will have to step up to the plate everyone else has had to walk to address and or resolve the 'accusations'

lolz. So who is going to produce products for us? Mass productions stops existing in a barter system. What services are you going to do for an electric company to pay for a bill? What services is a gas station going to perform for the oil company to get its gasoline and what are you going to do for the gas station?
You can still have poor people because some people can have more skills or things to barter.

Again people have their opinions on how people are not inherently lazy but no one has challenged my ideas that technology innovation will slow to a crawl. Profits drive research. Interesting how capitalist countries tend to be the most advanced and have the most advanced technologies emerging from there countries.

It's called "rations", based on your needs. Needs fuel demand, demand fuels nessessity. Nothing much changes. Greed will ALWAYS be a factor to any equation, but MUCH harder to cover-up than in a monetary system. If someone is living "beyond their means", you can figure there is some corruption in play.

There will always be a division in "classes", but thru ingenuity and hard work, providing quality goods or services, or meeting demands, ANYONE can prosper.

The rich will always get richer, but they don't usually want to plow their own fields, grow their own food, clean their own houses, and so on.

By the same token, business can not function without workers. People supply the demands, people provide the supplies for those demands, and the circle perpetuates.

Mankind shall not be free until the last king is strangled in the entrails of the last priest.
-- Denis Diderot, Dithyrambe Sur La Fête Des Rois

I must agree. Power over, and Control of the masses is more the goal than money. The quest for "wealth" is just an illusion to keep us enslaved.

You can't just take a system that was designed to work in a non industrialized society and expect it to work in an industrialized one. Barter wont work in industry. No one will be able to get what they need. What are workers going to get paid with? Its totally different in a small society where you grow food or raise animals or something like that.

Lets take some random example. I want someone to mow my lawn. Well he wants extra gas and maybe idk... burgers. Well I don't have any of these so now I have to go to the gas place to barter for gas and with someone to barter for the burgers. This cycle continues until I finally have what someone wants, to trade with the next people, to finally be able to pay for the 1 service I wanted. Now think of this happening in industries that needs hundreds of different parts for different things. It would be a nightmare.