Society

Society
Lets rid ourselves of the excess evils of capitalism; combine what's left with some good of socialism? My theologian friend sez lets have Christian-socialism since the book sez the early Xtns took all things in COMMON!!!! - the root word for Communism...BUT alas! the failed "experiments" of USSR et al is not any good example. Care to suggest any good ones? or make one up now??? Note; this paragraph doesn't seen to go onto the files and show? someone please help me get it to show...i am not up on puters; sorry, am neo-luddite!!! -socialchangeagent@large

''Writing hint: Indenting paragraphs puts them in a box, and then they end up all on one line unless you put the line breaks in yourself. BTW Welcome, I'm a crypto luddite. I just love technology but think it inherently dangerous.JC 18:54, 29 December 2006 (UTC)''

Discussion
Edit hint: convert this from thread mode later

Chet's Snow's four futures (from future trance voyaging):


 * New Age style settlements.
 * High-tech cities dependent on artificial environments.
 * Space farers.
 * Primitive isolated survivor communities.

Survivor outposts looks like a waste of potential, so let's plan a future which avoids it. I think New-Agey living, High-Tech and Space-Faring could all be fun to live in and are compatible. All could coexist at the same time. Any dissenters?

Moving away from 'capitalism'? We need to move away from traditional 'money' that is we need to move away from a single currency of exchange. Biological systems use multiple currencies, sugars, carbohydrates, building blocks and energy and much more subtle currencies. These act as checks and balances. Biological systems 'know' where the money comes from. In current society we don't care where money comes from. That's bad. Society is too big for us to know whether someone's money was obtained by fair means or foul. We shouldn't be in a position where we sell for a fixed price. Transactions should be personal. We simply shouldn't deal with crooks. In biological systems each exchange is also trading information, regulating the system as a whole. With only one currency you have a much more primitive self-regulation. That's one of the reasons the system is so out of balance.

Money is a great invention but it does have drawbacks. Communism floundered because 'communal ownership' was translated into ownership by the politically corrupt. Money with anonymity about its origins promotes that. 'Money is power'. Money makes it possible for people to grab ownership without having earned it. It's not ownership itself that is the problem.

Does this mean back to barter? If transactions are more personal, does that mean a demolition of the economy of scale of mass-production? I don't know. But I do know we should look at how biological systems manage their transactions. How and what one cell exchanges with another. It's probably wrong to formulate that solution in terms of currencies. It's a broken way of looking at it. If we can get away from money, we have perhaps taken a very important step away from a society built on cpitalism, or indeed also a step away from a communist society where corruption can go on the rampage unchecked.

Initial version of discussion by: JC 18:54, 29 December 2006 (UTC)