A question to Communists:

[Traitorfish]

DUDE. I have already covered this. I specifically said, that while I was in college, lots of other students put themselves through college WITH NO HELP FROM THE PARENTS. My first year, one of the guys two rooms down was a refugee from Afghanistan. No wealthy parents. No upper-class pedigree. He paid for college with work. His work. Nobody else's.

It's never impossible for a disadvantaged person to put himself or herself through college. I SAW IT DONE MANY, MANY TIMES.

I'm not debating that. What I'm saying is that A) not everyone can do that and B) it isn't fair that some people should have to work that much harder simply because daddy couldn't pay their way.

The human race started out with precisely this. The system was called The Wilderness. The ultimate free market.

Yes, but I meant everyone in the world all starting out totally equal, all at once, not 10,000 years of social evolution from that point.
Besides, if you equate a paleolithic tribal society to the free market, then you obviously have a very crude understanding of... Well, too much to list, really.

And those wealthy classes came from........where???

In the beginning, before recorded history, they did not exist. Somebody had to work themselves out of poverty the hard way.

No, they didn't. Anyone with even a nodding acquaintance with the history of human society knows that until the industrial era, society was dominated by warriors or by their descendants. Social class was dependent on hitting people and taking their stuff, hitting people unless they give you their stuff or getting people to give you stuff in return for hitting someone else.
Besides, the hard work of "somebody's" living four thousand years ago, or, for that matter, fifty years ago, doesn't entitle a present-day individual to a single penny.

So why don't you do that? Get yourself a tradeschool education and find something that pays decently. Save up enough to give your kids an education better than you had. The only thing stopping you is your own laziness.

Good idea. However, is it a fair one?
Believe me, I know that economic advancement is possible. My great, great grandfather was an Irish immigrant labourer, my great grandfather was a panel beater, my grandfather was a sales manager, my dad's a teacher and I'm study architecture. Climbing the ladder and all that . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. (Of course, I'm lucky enough to live in a county that values education, so the last three generations had their education paid for- or, in my case, partially subsidised- by the state.) But is that particularly fair? Why wasn't the great, great grandfather entitled to the same education that his descendants got? (Apart, of course, from the fact that, in those days, the Irish weren't considered worthy of serious education.)

Besides, Scandinavia subsidises the hell out of their educational system, and, if common sense tells us anything, it's "do like the Scandinavians do".

 

[Newbunkle]

3) This assumption that there are no lazy people in capitalist society. There are! The idle rich is still around. George W. Bush is a good example of this. There is also lazy people in all groups, from the unemployed worker hiding from their ReStart officer to the career jobsworth working the bare minamum to avoid being fired. The capitalist society can carry them, a true communist one can too.

Of course there are, but the "idle" rich are not as much of a burden on society as a lazy person would be in a communist society. The rich still pay taxes, and will be likely to send their kids to private schools, and use private hospitals (avoiding a drain on public services).

 

[mdwh]

You get what you deserve.

You don't work very hard and put in minimum supposrt to the community. You should be refused some of the higher up 'luxuries' that promote further laziness.

Seeing as you feel the minimum is acceptable you are to be givin the minimum ammount of quality food. You should be refused things such as game consules and you could probably be given the least quality housing.

Well this is one of the questions I have of communism - it's "to each according to his needs", but how do you decide who gets what beyond that?

You say that lazy people won't get that - but who decides this, and how is it measured? Whilst people who refuse to work at all might be easy to spot, what about among people who do do some work?

 

[mdwh]

As I sit here reading, just a few points float into my brain...

1) It is perfectly possible for money to still be around in a true Communism. Instead of it being it being the be-all and end-all for life, it will instead simply be a ration ticket for goods and services. It will be valued by how much it costs to produce, rather than how much capitalism will get away with charging. If I want to spend my £x on subsriptions to the Adult Channel, cider and kebabs, I can. My call. A tool itself is not evil - only the ends it is used for. Money is a tool like no other.

Money is a tool in capitalism too - it's not the be-all and end-all for life, it is a ticket for goods and services.

Now, I can see how communism might work if money was rationed out - but I'm not so sure about prices being determined by how much it cost to produce. How do you determine the cost of production - how much for labour, and what about natural resources which weren't made? What about land?

What happens if demand is greater than supply - how do you decide which of the people willing to pay the price receive the item?

Some of the highest paid occupaitons are ones which directly serve the elite - the lawyers to protect their power and wealth, and the bankers and stockbrokers to make this wealth grow larger. It's not like they are completly usless, it's just that there are far too many of them for the some 85% of the opressed people.

If there are too many of them, why are they paid so much?

7) Every capitalist elite starts out with a few self-made men. They pass their wealth and advantages to their children, and a few more self-made men join their 'club'. A few generations pass, with this happening. This group beomes completly seperate with the rest of society, and finally becomes large enough to become self-replicating, actully needing no new blood from below.

This is a problem with inheritance, not capitalism. It's been a problem throughout history with all economic systems. You could fix it with a large inheritance tax, but still have a capitalist society.

But think - what would happen if every family in the world demanded one? Or every adult on earth demanded a new car every three years? It would be an utter enviomental catasphophy! It is phyically impossible for the whole world's populations to have the same standard of living as the US.

This would be true in any economic system.

 

[mdwh]

As I sit here reading, just a few points float into my brain...

1) It is perfectly possible for money to still be around in a true Communism. Instead of it being it being the be-all and end-all for life, it will instead simply be a ration ticket for goods and services. It will be valued by how much it costs to produce, rather than how much capitalism will get away with charging. If I want to spend my £x on subsriptions to the Adult Channel, cider and kebabs, I can. My call. A tool itself is not evil - only the ends it is used for. Money is a tool like no other.

Money is a tool in capitalism too - it's not the be-all and end-all for life, it is a ticket for goods and services.

Now, I can see how communism might work if money was rationed out - but I'm not so sure about prices being determined by how much it cost to produce. How do you determine the cost of production - how much for labour, and what about natural resources which weren't made? What about land?

What happens if demand is greater than supply - how do you decide which of the people willing to pay the price receive the item?

Some of the highest paid occupaitons are ones which directly serve the elite - the lawyers to protect their power and wealth, and the bankers and stockbrokers to make this wealth grow larger. It's not like they are completly usless, it's just that there are far too many of them for the some 85% of the opressed people.

If there are too many of them, why are they paid so much?

7) Every capitalist elite starts out with a few self-made men. They pass their wealth and advantages to their children, and a few more self-made men join their 'club'. A few generations pass, with this happening. This group beomes completly seperate with the rest of society, and finally becomes large enough to become self-replicating, actully needing no new blood from below.

This is a problem with inheritance, not capitalism. It's been a problem throughout history with all economic systems. You could fix it with a large inheritance tax, but still have a capitalist society.

But think - what would happen if every family in the world demanded one? Or every adult on earth demanded a new car every three years? It would be an utter enviomental catasphophy! It is phyically impossible for the whole world's populations to have the same standard of living as the US.

This would be true in any economic system.

 

[mdwh]

As I sit here reading, just a few points float into my brain...

1) It is perfectly possible for money to still be around in a true Communism. Instead of it being it being the be-all and end-all for life, it will instead simply be a ration ticket for goods and services. It will be valued by how much it costs to produce, rather than how much capitalism will get away with charging. If I want to spend my £x on subsriptions to the Adult Channel, cider and kebabs, I can. My call. A tool itself is not evil - only the ends it is used for. Money is a tool like no other.

Money is a tool in capitalism too - it's not the be-all and end-all for life, it is a ticket for goods and services.

Now, I can see how communism might work if money was rationed out - but I'm not so sure about prices being determined by how much it cost to produce. How do you determine the cost of production - how much for labour, and what about natural resources which weren't made? What about land?

What happens if demand is greater than supply - how do you decide which of the people willing to pay the price receive the item?

Some of the highest paid occupaitons are ones which directly serve the elite - the lawyers to protect their power and wealth, and the bankers and stockbrokers to make this wealth grow larger. It's not like they are completly usless, it's just that there are far too many of them for the some 85% of the opressed people.

If there are too many of them, why are they paid so much?

7) Every capitalist elite starts out with a few self-made men. They pass their wealth and advantages to their children, and a few more self-made men join their 'club'. A few generations pass, with this happening. This group beomes completly seperate with the rest of society, and finally becomes large enough to become self-replicating, actully needing no new blood from below.

This is a problem with inheritance, not capitalism. It's been a problem throughout history with all economic systems. You could fix it with a large inheritance tax, but still have a capitalist society.

But think - what would happen if every family in the world demanded one? Or every adult on earth demanded a new car every three years? It would be an utter enviomental catasphophy! It is phyically impossible for the whole world's populations to have the same standard of living as the US.

This would be true in any economic system.

 

[BasketCase]

Of course, enforcing these measures is a completly diffrent story, this is all just my opinion and I believe its a damn good alternative to the Gulag.

You score ten points for not stepping in the trap I set.

This is exactly the problem with socialism (and with anarchy): enforcement. Other posters have raised only three solutions: enforce the rules with a system of authority, use money, or simply ignore the problem. Only one of these solutions works. Authority is a violation of the basic principle of a classless society (or an anarchy); and if you simply ignore the problem, unproductive citizens will take advantage of the system and drain it until there isn't enough left for the honest citizens.

That leaves money.

Conclusion: socialism and anarchy cannot work. Some aspects of socialism are actually practical--but either concentration of power or money (usually both) are required for a society to survive.

We let you get cheap treatment for your depression.

Any idea how . .. .. .. . life is when you're long-term unemployed?

Been there. Done that.

Being unemployed is AWESOME. And I'm not the only one, either. My roomie lost his job a few months ago, and only recently got a new one. His take on unemployment? AWESOME. But not possible over the long term because he needed money to pay off his house.

They became rich by obtaining control of shared assets.

Consider all the Russian billionnaires who bribed officials
to transfer industries to them for a mere pittance.

Same problem yet again: where did those billionaires get the money with which to bribe people??? Chicken or the egg.

No, they didn't. Anyone with even a nodding acquaintance with the history of human society knows that until the industrial era, society was dominated by warriors or by their descendants. Social class was dependent on hitting people and taking their stuff, hitting people unless they give you their stuff or getting people to give you stuff in return for hitting someone else.

Where did the warriors get the axes with which to hit people?? Where did aggressive nations get resources to field an army with which to take other peoples' belongings???

You guys are making the same mistake again and again. You're not working far enough back in the chain of events. The first step in getting yourself out of poverty is always the same: hard work.

 

[Swedishguy]

Being unemployed is AWESOME. And I'm not the only one, either. My roomie lost his job a few months ago, and only recently got a new one. His take on unemployment? AWESOME. But not possible over the long term because he needed money to pay off his house.

Really. My big sister is of an other opinion.

 

[sanabas]

Conclusion: socialism and anarchy cannot work. Some aspects of socialism are actually practical--but either concentration of power or money (usually both) are required for a society to survive.

Or you could have a third option, that there are no people consciously choosing to sponge off the system. If people are capable of enforcing things on themselves, you don't need a concentration of power or wealth to make sure the system is followed.

Where did the warriors get the axes with which to hit people?? Where did aggressive nations get resources to field an army with which to take other peoples' belongings???

You guys are making the same mistake again and again. You're not working far enough back in the chain of events. The first step in getting yourself out of poverty is always the same: hard work.

But why does the hard work have to be selfish? If an individual can be driven enough to do whatever hard work is required to reach the goals they want, why can't a group be driven enough to do whatever hard work is required to reach the group's goals, without wasting time and energy on making sure everyone else is doing their fair share?

 

[LightFang]

Or you could have a third option, that there are no people consciously choosing to sponge off the system. If people are capable of enforcing things on themselves, you don't need a concentration of power or wealth to make sure the system is followed.

Too bad that will never happen. It's idealism interfering with realism. Sure, communism works - in an ideal world. But in this world we live in, it's impossible, as Bill's pointed out.

 

[BasketCase]

Or you could have a third option, that there are no people consciously choosing to sponge off the system. If people are capable of enforcing things on themselves, you don't need a concentration of power or wealth to make sure the system is followed.

Stanley Milgram and other scientists blew the lid off this one a long time ago.

Wild animals are already well-known to steal whenever the opportunity presents itself. This has been observed not only in captivity (where monkeys and other primates demonstrate a surprising ability to con and hoodwink human zookeepers!) but also in the wild. Animals are always trying to steal food from each other; cheetahs, especially, suffer a great deal, losing about half of their kills to competing animals.

If you take away the government, the natural order--look out for Number One--will quickly reassert itself.

Stanley Milgram's work goes even further. Milgram's highly controversial experiments proved that most people willingly torture other people when ordered to do so. There are no excuses here; Milgram's results held true across ethnic, gender, and social boundaries. The human instinct to obey authority figures is far stronger than our compassion for our fellow humans; this result is inescapable.

Yeah, yeah, I know--you tell yourself you'd never buckle if a guy in a lab coat ordered you to torture somebody. Most of the participants in the Milgram experiments said the same thing in pre-experiment interviews. 80 percent of them were wrong. The test subjects knew what they were doing was wrong, but they just couldn't bring themselves to make a break with authority.


Theft and obedience to authority are natural and instinctive. You cannot base a society solely on human good nature. Now go cry for fifteen minutes. Get it out of your system and don't post any "yeah but" posts at me.

 

[BasketCase]

Really. My big sister is of an other opinion.

I am not your sister. I like being unemployed, and I have met many others who feel the same way; therefore some people like being unemployed, and your sister is irrelevant to the question.

 

[LightFang]

BasketCase, I have a question for you:

Why are you so willing to argue with these people who so clearly don't get it? I mean, it's pretty hopeless. They're stuck in Communist "everything-will-turn-out-awesome!" land, and you're trying to get them to see that the world just doesn't work like that.

Why do you keep doing it? It looks incredibly discouraging.

 

[sanabas]

Stanley Milgram and other scientists blew the lid off this one a long time ago.

Wild animals are already well-known to steal whenever the opportunity presents itself. This has been observed not only in captivity (where monkeys and other primates demonstrate a surprising ability to con and hoodwink human zookeepers!) but also in the wild. Animals are always trying to steal food from each other; cheetahs, especially, suffer a great deal, losing about half of their kills to competing animals.

Yeah, but I think you're confusing 'have been observed to lie, and to steal' with 'are well known to steal whenever they can possibly get away with it.' You're also confusing stealing from others with stealing from the group you're a part of. Stealing from the group, lying to the group, selfish behaviour withing the group have all been observed, but it's news to me that it's well known that this behaviour happens at every opportunity.

If you take away the government, the natural order--look out for Number One--will quickly reassert itself.

Crap. You're telling me that the only reason people obey laws and/or make moral decisions is through fear of punishment?

Stanley Milgram's work goes even further. Milgram's highly controversial experiments proved that most people willingly torture other people when ordered to do so. There are no excuses here; Milgram's results held true across ethnic, gender, and social boundaries. The human instinct to obey authority figures is far stronger than our compassion for our fellow humans; this result is inescapable.

Yeah, yeah, I know--you tell yourself you'd never buckle if a guy in a lab coat ordered you to torture somebody. Most of the participants in the Milgram experiments said the same thing in pre-experiment interviews. 80 percent of them were wrong. The test subjects knew what they were doing was wrong, but they just couldn't bring themselves to make a break with authority.

Yeah yeah, I'm confident I would be in the 20%. I don't respond well to authority figures even when they're not telling me to torture someone. Besides, if there are no authority figures, and no need for authority figures, why does how I'd respond to an authority figure matter?

Theft and obedience to authority are natural and instinctive. You cannot base a society solely on human good nature.

Sure you can. You can even base a successful society on it. But with the current attitude of humanity, it would be extraordinarily difficult to base a large, successful society on it. Which is a long way from 'Can't work. In any fashion. Ever.'

Now go cry for fifteen minutes. Get it out of your system and don't post any "yeah but" posts at me.

Is there a point to ending your post by flinging rubbish like that, other than to undermine your own credibility?

 

[sanabas]

BasketCase, I have a question for you:

Why are you so willing to argue with these people who so clearly don't get it? I mean, it's pretty hopeless. They're stuck in Communist "everything-will-turn-out-awesome!" land, and you're trying to get them to see that the world just doesn't work like that.

Why do you keep doing it? It looks incredibly discouraging.

Assuming that's at least partly pointed at me, what is it that I clearly don't get? How am I in Communist "everything-will-turn-out-awesome!" land? Just because I disagree that a concentration of power and/or wealth is a requirement for any society, on any scale, to be able to function? And because I disagree that socialism or anarchy cannot work for any society, on any scale, because they think that neither power nor wealth need to be concentrated?

How does that equate to me believing communism is a great, practical system to use, and if we all used it the world would improve out of sight?

 

[BasketCase]

BasketCase, I have a question for you:

Why are you so willing to argue with these people who so clearly don't get it? I mean, it's pretty hopeless. They're stuck in Communist "everything-will-turn-out-awesome!" land, and you're trying to get them to see that the world just doesn't work like that.

Why do you keep doing it? It looks incredibly discouraging.

I'm not here for those knuckleheads. I'm here for me.

We're not discussing mathematics here--there are no hard numbers. We can't pluck X, Z, and Q out of the thread and add them together to find out whether Communism is good or bad. (Well, we could compare the gross national product of competing countries, but the question is a lot larger than that--and most of the successes and failures are intangible things that can't be measured with numbers)

In an environment like this, the only way to know whether an idea is a good one is to find a problem with it. For me, CFC Off Topic is mostly a big ol' smelter. I throw ideas in, and let people hammer away at them to see if they hold up. I've been doing this since 1992, when 9600 baud was actually considered fast and the BBS phone line was where the action was at. I've had a ton of practice, so most of the ideas I post today are as solid as the frontal armor on an M1A1 Abrams tank.


And also I browse in here because I pick up new and interesting ideas.

 

[BasketCase]

Theft and obedience to authority are natural and instinctive. You cannot base a society solely on human good nature. Now go cry for fifteen minutes. Get it out of your system and don't post any "yeah but" posts at me.

Yeah, but

RRRRRRRRGGGHHHH.....

Yeah, but I think you're confusing 'have been observed to lie, and to steal' with 'are well known to steal whenever they can possibly get away with it.' You're also confusing stealing from others with stealing from the group you're a part of. Stealing from the group, lying to the group, selfish behaviour withing the group have all been observed, but it's news to me that it's well known that this behaviour happens at every opportunity.

Did I say that behaviour "happens at every opportunity"? No. You're reading stuff into my text that is not there.

Theft and other selfish behaviors will not happen at every opportunity, but when there is no authority in place to stop them, they happen frequently. Wild animals are known to beat up and rape females. Is that acceptable behavior? No. What do we do when we catch humans doing that? We throw them in the slammer. Personally I'd prefer to see rapists executed.

 

[BasketCase]

Yeah yeah, I'm confident I would be in the 20%. I don't respond well to authority figures even when they're not telling me to torture someone.

Everybody in the Milgram experiments said the same thing.

Most of them were wrong. Including myself, frankly. I've had a few real-life incidents where my sense of morality told me to break ranks, and some of the time I failed to do it. Fortunately, none of these incidents involved people being tortured.

You say you would be in that 20%, but I don't believe it. The odds are heavily against you. If you ever do end up in such a situation, hopefully my cynical blabbering will ring in your head and give you the extra push to do the right thing. I'll never know, of course. But best to be on the safe side and do the cynical blabbering now.


Edit: Okay, I think at this point I've written something like half the posts in this entire thread. Scuse me for being so verbose. I need to go play Civ 4 or something.

 

[sanabas]

RRRRRRRRGGGHHHH.....

Awwww, you noticed. And I did start my post that way just for you.

Did I say that behaviour "happens at every opportunity"? No. You're reading stuff into my text that is not there.

Wild animals are already well-known to steal whenever the opportunity presents itself.

What's the functional difference between 'at every opportunity' and 'whenever the opportunity presents itself'?

Theft and other selfish behaviors will not happen at every opportunity, but when there is no authority in place to stop them, they happen frequently. Wild animals are known to beat up and rape females. Is that acceptable behavior? No. What do we do when we catch humans doing that? We throw them in the slammer. Personally I'd prefer to see rapists executed.

You want to judge wild animals & what is & isn't acceptable behaviour based on our current laws?

And again, are you implying that the only reason you don't resort to your natural 'look out for number one' imperative, or even your unacceptable wild animal instinct driven behaviour, such as beating up and raping females, is that you're worried about what the authorities might do?

Most of them were wrong. Including myself, frankly. I've had a few real-life incidents where my sense of morality told me to break ranks, and some of the time I failed to do it. Fortunately, none of these incidents involved people being tortured.

You say you would be in that 20%, but I don't believe it. The odds are heavily against you. If you ever do end up in such a situation, hopefully my cynical blabbering will ring in your head and give you the extra push to do the right thing. I'll never know, of course. But best to be on the safe side and do the cynical blabbering now.

Don't think your blabbering would have much affect somehow. The desire to be able to come back here, resurrect an old thread, just to give a completely unverifiable 'SEE, TOLD YOU I'D RESIST!!!' wouldn't really be a deciding factor. 4:1 odds aren't that heavily against me, assuming there's no other evidence. And as I've said, I've been known to argue with authority figures in the past, over things I find much less problematic than torturing someone. I see no reason why that wouldn't change.

I might have to do some more research on the experiment though. I wonder how much, if any correlation there was between where people profess to get most of their morals, and how they responded to an authority figure telling them their morals were wrong, the authority's were right?

 

[Mr_Fusty]

I've allways wondered what's the point of people discussing a topic when their minds are not open to reasoning....

1) As I'm not at home, I'll dig out those statistics on social mobility vis a vis USA and UK for tomorrow. They make quite interesting reading.

1) I can read Marx, as well as Chaucer. It's just that both Marx's style of writing and the complexity of some of his work notoriously 'dense'. Many people are put off by this.

2)

4) Yes, the USA is elegitarian. I've heard this many times. Shame it is not really true anymore.

(I know it is bad form to quote yourself, so please forgive me!)

I stand by this. In the very early years (when the first settlers threw down towns on the Atlantic seaboard) their society was quite elegitarian due to the social makeup of the colonists and the priviations of living on the edge of 'civilization' as they thought it. Over the next couple of centuries, quite a few people made their fortunes there, with piracy, slave-plantations, ripping down forests, pilliging the natives for wealth and trading with the homeland as common routes to wealth.

However, events kept it kinda elegitarian. Firstly, the frontier continued to expand, which meant that there was a constant need for manpower to exploit it. Secondly, a fair preportion of the elite went back to the old county later, as they could now be part of 'polite society', which is what they wished for. That meant there was much room at the top, the size of the population meant that the rich were much more isolated outside of the largest towns so they socialised more with the rest, and there was much less social division between the classes. Of course, as the colony gained in size, populaiton, prosperity and age the social barriers would start to harden. One of the reasons for the rebellion in the colonies in the 1770's was the fact that the colonial elite was not granted much political power to match their economic power.

3) It is possible to agree on one particlar point when disagreeing on everything else. As George Orwell wrote, even the most insane can have flashes of truth. From what I had read, it seemed that BasketCase was stating that many of the details between a co-op and a typical capitalist corparation were identical, which is correct. Perhaps I should of made it a tad clearer on the differences and/or the logical conclusion of these differences then, so I will now.

-The Traditional Company looks after it's shareholders as #1. If it is nice to consumers, or the enviorment etc, it is only doing this because it will mean they make more money for 'ol #1 in the long run.

-A socialised company will look after the public at large as #1. It will look at it's products/services demand by everyone, and how vital that need is. It does not have to worry about their quarterly results on profit, and it can use their profits to subidise unprofitable parts of the business because the benifits it would have for society as a whole, such as rural rail lines, free medical care for the poor and free school meals.

-A Co-Op is a company will look after their workers as #1. Many Co-Ops are run by people with left-wing leaning and/or high ethics, and will also believe on looking after the poor and their consumers is #2, such as the co-operative society in the UK. It will often trade profit margins for ethics.

The similarities is that they will all use economics to work out how much to charge, what to supply, when to supply and all sorts. They just come at it at different angles.

4) Do we really want to have a discussion on the emergance of the industiral elite and their links to the traditional landed nobility in the 18th-19th Century? I'm game, but methinks it would be of real limited interest for this thread. That, and it would be very long.

5) There is a problem in Scandinavia which is called 'tall poppy syndrome'
Can't be arsed to explain....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy

6) Nephrite, that is a problem! When the elite are living in gated communities, sending their children to privite schools and employing their own army to guard them, the process of seperation is complete. Eventully they will refuse to pay the taxes they owe to the state, because they will argue that they don't consume anything.

7) Most people don't strain and strive for money per se in capitalist society - they strive for the goods and services that money can buy. These goods and services, over-advitised, over-packaged, over-branded and built with the aim of breaking apart after it's shelf life deemed by the company (often criminaly short) There is also the media drumming in the issue of money - most families on TV and films live a hell of a lot better than their income would allow in real life (From Fraiser, the Simpsons to the Gallagers in Shameless)

8)

How do you determine the cost of production - how much for labour, and what about natural resources which weren't made? What about land?

Simple one there - the same way as we do now! Only differences being that other issues would be taken into account, such as enviormental damage, total known reserves of particular products (our modern use of oil-based plastics is one of the biggest evils ever) and a decent wage for the workers who were involved in it.

You may think that is exactly the same, but when packaging, advatising and other costs are removed, the products will be cheaper. Items would also be built to last - not just good cars, but everything from socks to TV's. Electrical shops will have to re-learn the lost art of repairs and uprading, so a TV can last for 20 years rather than 2. It is the only way that we can a) give the whole world a taste of the good life and b) not utterly destroy our planet within 50 years.