Well, this is where you are wrong, as someone said, "the worst financial mistake you can make is to believe you are working for someone else." Sure, I need to work to provide myself income, but that's much much different than slavery.

The world was created that way. It's the natural state of things. We eat other animals, and they eat us if they can.

Randomized? So then the person who wants a puppy gets a cat, and the person who wants a cat gets nothing. Sounds brilliant.

Because the threat of hunger (and the allure of money) inspires many artists.

Except for customers living in areas whose incumbent home ISP has decided to "slow-lane" any traffic that doesn't pay the prioritization toll. See previous stories about Comcast's "congestion by choice".

How can someone usefully publish any application at any time for an iOS device without the blessing of Apple, or any application at any time for a game console without the blessing of the console's manufacturer?

If the gatekeeper model has "been discarded", then why do iOS and the game consoles still use it? And why haven't end users "discarded" them en masse in favor of Android and living-room gaming PCs? I think I know why: consoles are easy.

I'm trying to figure out the best way to jump in and reap benefits without running the risk of being bankrupted or worse. For example, I don't want to write a song and then get hit with a $150,000 copyright infringement lawsuit for having accidentally recreated something from decades ago.

More than likely, in a world without PHP, another language with similar benefits and drawbacks to PHP would likely have been invented.

The true purpose of HR is revealed!

Yeah. Out of all the ideas that came out of the banking crisis, there is only one that I wanted implemented (and suggested by Paul Volcker): "Any bank that is too big to fail is too big to exist. If a bank needs money from the government (and the only reason it would is because failing to give it money would ruin the economy), then it should be shut down or broken up and sold off in pieces."

Elizabeth Warren talks bad about banks, but her actions (supporting Dodd Frank, for example, which ensures banks will get a bailout in the future) are the opposite. If she really is against Wall Street, then lets hear her say that banks will be broken up if they get government money.

So that's a good point, the open source is the closest to post-scarcity communism that the world has ever seen.

Still, I don't think 'competency' is enough of a measurement (although I wouldn't mind getting a competent president). A person can be highly competent at something that people don't value. How would that situation be handled?

Not if you have to pay hush money to copyright trolls who claim that your work is a derivative of theirs. And not if a monopolist gatekeeper or a cartel of gatekeepers controls the means of distribution of your art to the public, such as Apple or the major video console makers.

I dream of a world in which Sony, on the sly, seeds a few torrents of the movie. Holy plausible deniability!

It'll never happen, of course...

Are you sure? When did that happen? Last time I checked U3 still includes people who are looking for work.

Another way to look at it: Marx under-estimated the value of people who know how to allocate resources (capital). Those who don't do it well lose their capital.

Man, even in Star Trek, some people got to wear blue shirts, and some people had to wear red shirts. Apparently there was a shortage of blue thread or something, but red thread doesn't seem to protect very well.

Does not compute.....

How will you divide resources? How will you deal with the fact that some people will value some resources, and other people will value others? How will you deal with the fact that not everyone can have exactly the same stuff, no matter how hard you try? (some people are going to live closer to the railroad station, others farther).