You might find Daniel Quinn extremely worthwhile reading. He has a very interesting explanation for why we're so good at screwing things up.

That explanation might be totally wrong, but it makes a lot of sense to me. Going from your post, I think _My Ishmael_ would be the best place to start. Assuming my recommendation is enough to convince you to find a copy and give it a shot, of course.

Crap. How could I have left out this part?

All hail Discordia!

Now I'm really feeling like a scratched record.

I suspect you'd benefit from reading Daniel Quinn. He's done a lot of thinking along these lines, and he's at least optimistic about the possibilities.

He may also be completely full of it. I still haven't decided. But his perspective is interesting.

As I wrote to Cragen: population follows food supply.

It's a basic, fundamental natural law. Pretty much the entire foundation of "the problem" is that humans believe we're somehow immune to it.

It's a really ugly thing to have to contemplate.

We see people starving. We have extra food. So we share it with them, because we care. Their population grows in response. Now they have more starving people. And, hey, this year we produced more spare food to share.

This has been going on for around 10,000 years now. It's one of the core concepts of our culture. Almost like water to a fish.

I don't have a clue what could be humanely done about it. But it isn't going to get solved if no one even realizes it.

Assuming my explanation holds water. I could be totally out in left field.

I think you're onto something here. But I think it's slightly off-target.

Our culture's built around the idea that food is something to lock up and dribble out in exchange for work. Honestly, there's more than enough food, at least in America. There's no good excuse for pretty much anyone ever going hungry.* And it isn't like food takes up a huge percentage of income for most of us. So we keep getting bombarded with crap we don't need to keep most of us in a scarcity mentality.

Sure, the gadgets are nice. Central air and heat are awesome. But, really...do you think people are generally happier than they were, say, 100 years ago?

Territory will probably always be with us. It probably always has been, to some degree. Solutions that involve changing basic human nature probably aren't going to have any effect in the near future.

* Well, there is, and the implications are horrifying. Population follows food supply. As long as we keep producing more food, we're going to keep producing a surplus of babies. Sooner or later, if we don't come up with a drastic change in our way of life, we will finish off the last bit of sustenance on the Petri dish.

I'm starting to feel like a broken record, but it seems worth it.

I recommend looking into Daniel Quinn. He doesn't really have answers to your questions, and he may be totally full of it. But he has some related points that are extremely thought-provoking.

Daniel Quinn has a lot to say on the topic. He may be totally full of it, but his perspective is very intriguing.

_Ismael_, _The Story of B_, and _My Ismael_ are theoretically a trilogy, but they're really just 3 different frame stories for presenting the same core ideas. I don't have a clue which one might be better to start. Some people identify with one, then totally hate the other two. Others just decide the first one they read is gibberish and move on.

Either way, they're worth investigating for anyone who's interested in the topic.

In a society of plenty, money is pretty much meaningless.

Actually, we could probably live in that kind of society now if enough people even realized it.

But pretty much everyone believes we live in a world of scarcity, so that's what we've created.

All this really takes is free food, shelter, and clothing for anyone who needs it. Sure, most people would probably just subsist on that. But...would that really be all that much worse than having the unemployed rioting in the streets? People could spend their time doing things they enjoy instead of wasting their lives at jobs they hate.

I don't know whether it's a practical idea, or even desirable (I'm all in favor of the free market and very wary of anything that even hints of any form of collectivism). It just seems worth thinking about.

I think we're looking at something fundamentally different, though it does seem kind of like socialism on the surface.

In a true society of plenty, like I think Hatta was talking about, there isn't any real reason for anyone to "work". People can just hang out and do whatever they want. There won't be any real need for central planners, which is one of socialism's biggest flaws.

Its other big flaw, of course, is that people are lazy. If not rewarded for doing a good job, they won't bother. Many won't anyway. But if there's no "job" to do in the first place...

The Native Americans basically had this kind of culture before the Europeans showed up. Part of the justification the Europeans used to steal the land was that the lazy, shiftless Natives weren't "really" using it for much. The thing is, their societies were probably a lot happier than ours, even if they didn't have the same luxuries.

Hatta's definitely correct that this would be a fundamental reorganization, if it's allowed to happen. Our culture has spent pretty much the last 10,000 years building on the idea that food needs to be locked up and then dished out as a reward for work. And wiping out other cultures that prove alternatives are possible.

I don't think we even need the "everything is automated" Utopia if enough people decide to try to make it happen. This may be just pie-in-the-sky nonsense, but I think it's worth pondering.

This is a very interesting point. Our entire culture (the one the vast majority of people on the planet live in) is based around the idea that food should be locked up and then distributed to people who perform jobs. And to some others.

It's a big topic to consider, and has a lot of ramifications that seem completely outrageous until you've had some time to absorb the big picture. If you haven't heard of Daniel Quinn, I suspect you'd enjoy his work. Based on the way you framed your post, I think I can safely recommend _My Ismael_ to you.

It's possible that it's complete gibberish, but I think it's always interesting to take a look at the world from a radically different perspective.

I recently ran across one of those "Way Back When" articles talking about 1911.

The average life span at the time was 35 years.

It hadn't really changed significantly throughout recorded history.

I imagine they'd have the same sort of discussion about miracle drugs that would extend that to 80.

The bands rarely make any money off of album sales.

I watched an interview with the Flaming Lips' front man a few years back. It took 17 years to start getting royalty payments from their first album.