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Alright, I’m Ben McLeish and as Harvey Milk would say,

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"I'm here to change your mind."

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Who here... hands up whoever, at this point, can understand and agrees

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with what our movement is about

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and who would describe themselves as on board?

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It's the guys who came a long way, isn't it?

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Who would say that maybe in principle they understand the ideas,

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they understand the logic behind it, but maybe

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they have some questions and they are not quite sure...

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There's a kind of a nagging feeling. They're not quite there yet.

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That's good; that's healthy.

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And who here thinks it's an Utopianist cult

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with plans for world domination?

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We kind of covered that one already, but yeah, it's not that.

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Here are some common objections and responses to a Resource-Based Economy.

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First off, it’s not a Utopia,

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as Tom said. There's no such things as Utopia.

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We aren’t under the illusion that we can create a perfect world.

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There is no such thing as “perfect” in a practical world.

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What we are proposing, however, is a whole lot better than what we have now.

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There will always be problems, but a global, emergent system

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where innovation, change and development is put center-stage,

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rather than being hamstrung by the profit mechanisms

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and interests of established power structures of any kind,

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is going to be more able to meet and solve these problems

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than our current so-called “established” societies.

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This is not communism, or socialism

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or any of the "isms" out there.

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Quite apart from the fact that no two people here

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will agree what "communism" is,

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since it is a high order abstraction with no real life referents,

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and with multiple, varied, real-world “versions,”

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even the most boiled-down version of Karl Marx's philosophy

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was still based on money, differential advantage,

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profit, earnings, various degrees of qualities of life and thus,

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social stratification was built into its foundations.

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Communism also pre-supposes property.

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Property, if you remember, is an outgrowth of scarcity.

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Because there may not be enough to go round,

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you need to “own” things to deter their use by others,

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to reserve, essentially, or guarantee

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the things you need and are now conditioned to want.

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Communism also didn’t have access

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to the technologies to create abundance,

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or certainly didn't envision or strive for a world of deliberate abundance,

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and didn’t imagine a world where all labor was automated,

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all necessities were supplied free of charge,

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and where the structure of society is a global, integrated system.

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Marx never considered a global economy based on resources.

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It's just a monetary system with slightly more or less government control

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coupled with varying degrees of romanticism of labor

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or the labor class, which ironically, they then want to get rid of.

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The fundamentals are the same as any other monetary system.

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What we propose and advocate lies outside

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the logical referent of this box of monetary-ism.

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The box itself, we feel, is structurally unsound.

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"Well, if it’s not communism, it sounds like a commune!"

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Well, again, a commune is defined

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by the deliberate artificial separation that we are trying to get past.

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We cannot simply separate ourselves from society and build a Resource-Based Economy.

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The logic of living according to planetary resources and total efficiency

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cannot be anything other than a global, all-encompassing operation:

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one system.

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The logic of efficiency demands it;

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multiple societies attempting to operate separately

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would require duplication of effort, resources and waste,

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as we see in the current system.

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It would also create competition, which would ultimately create war,

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as we fight for resources, space and so on.

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And you know what else? Everything that divides us

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whether be race, religion, or national identity,

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political affiliations, social classes, are false divisions

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invented or promoted by our respective societies

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to get you to buy in and not defect from

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that country or society you happen to be in.

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Why? It's about maintaining a group economy.

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Stability in the face of scarcity, real or artificial.

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Even geographic boundaries, which are at least based in spatial reality,

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are fading fast as we improve transport technologies.

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We are, and always have been, one global human race.

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We must live as such to ensure our survival

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at the maximum quality of life possible.

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Climbing into a forest, shedding all the benefits of technology

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and its advances, and reviving esoteric English witchcraft religions

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isn't going to do anything except devolve us, and only temporarily,

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before necessity forces that separatist society back into

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long-term contact with other human civilizations.

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There really isn’t anywhere left in the world for people

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to be able to do that anyway.

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Life on this planet tends towards complexity and sophistication.

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Communes are artificial, isolated, unsustainable and achieve nothing

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but to stave off large-scale social interactions for brief periods,

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mostly due to protest or divisionary beliefs based on inherited notions.

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Perhaps you think that competition

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would be a better ideology to base society on...

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That competition somehow speeds up innovation, makes pricing fair

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provides choice and so on, and it's generally a good thing.

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But the concept of the Resource-Based Economy

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is based on the same logic as the human body,

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as Jacque said on that video.

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Were your brain to decide tomorrow that it is the most important organ

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in the body, and demanded more of the resources, oxygen

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than the liver, or the left lung is more important than the right

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and demanded most of the resources itself, you'd rot away in a month.

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Animals live in harmony with their surroundings, not in competition with them.

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Nature has examples of competition within it,

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but in areas where food and resources are abundant for animals,

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you find they don’t fight over food. Nature is symbiotic.

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We must become symbiotic too. To be in competition

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with each other and attempting to “dominate” nature

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or each other, is to ensure our own demise.

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Nature, however, will carry on just fine without us.

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One I hear quite a lot of the time, and it's a fair question, is

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"What would I do in a Resource-Based Economy?"

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Where there's no traditional work or money, what would I do?

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It's a valid question, as we can only presume to imagine

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a massive void of inertia where once a 9 to 5 stood in its place.

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Oddly, I am actually asked this by friends of mine who work in the arts,

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or who have expensive, time-consuming or unusual hobbies.

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Or cab drivers who are amateur scientists.

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Why do you work in the arts? Why do you have hobbies?

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Why do you do favors for others? Why do you give to charity?

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Why did you come here tonight? Why do you do all of these things?

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You did all of these things absent the desire

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to make money, especially if you work in the arts.

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How much more could you do without the monetary restrictions you have now,

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and which you work in spite of?

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In low-power countries where people walk for hours to get water,

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one could imagine them thinking, "Well if I could just turn on a tap

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and get the water instantly and not spend 4 or 5 hours a day

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getting the water, what would I do with the spare time?"

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That's the same kind of logic that people can't seem to make that jump.

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It’s a little bit like being in a cell all of your life,

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a 5 by 5 foot cell.

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Offering a prisoner a way out of his cell, they then turn to you

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and say, “Well, what do I do now?”

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A related point: what about motivation to do anything

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if you aren’t essentially forced by economic pressures, as we are now?

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What will motivate us?

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Your motivation to recycle is not profit driven, in fact,

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it's quite the opposite; it costs you money and time,

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when you only factor in the drive to the bottle bank.

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Or Nikola Tesla... His motivation to create free energy

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the world over was certainly not profit-driven.

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In fact, JP Morgan, his backer, had to shut it down

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because of the impact it would have on the ability

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to profit from this. And what about this?

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The world has written a continually growing, emergent encyclopedia

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of 15 million articles in 272 languages in 9 years.

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Money has nothing to do with it, except for when they run out of it,

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periodically, and have to ask you for more, by those wonderful banner ads

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that we're subjected to.

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Imagine what Wikipedia would look like if they didn't have

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monetary restrictions to deal with; if money were literally no object.

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Imagine what the world would look like if money were no object.

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We already have the motivation, and it's more than money.

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What we are suggesting is a world where this is placed center-stage.

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Let's stick with the Wikipedia example. Who runs the societal infrastructure

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in a Resource-Based Economy? And could they take it over?

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Two big ones I get a lot, and they're valid questions as well,

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because people are worried about being dominated, although is quite ironic

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we live in this system now where we clearly are dominated,

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and we're kind of worried that we would be.

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I find that really bizarre, but it's okay.

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It feels a little cynical today to think that might be true.

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At its core, a Resource-Based Economy's systems, very much like Wikipedia,

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would need very few people to service any parts of the system

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that are not already self-repairing.

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Essentially, systems-maintenance.

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Are those people more powerful than those who live and thrive

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on the system without a direct linking to those kind of interfaces?

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Could they take it over? Well, are the individuals

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who run Wikipedia powerful? Could they "take over" Wikipedia?

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There's nothing to gain by attempting to own or control Wikipedia.

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It's a social system, run in spite of the profit mechanisms and power.

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What benefits us all, including those who maintain aspects of the infrastructure,

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would only hinder everyone, including those maintainers,

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were it compromised.

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The question of people “taking over” a society seems rather a moot point.

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Right now we live in the kind of society that can be taken over, and is

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regularly taken over by corporate interests,

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political powers and groups of wealthy people.

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It is this precise mechanism of dominance that is absent

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from a Resource-Based Economy in the same way it is absent from Wikipedia

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or any similar non-monetary resource.

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Here's a good one.

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Who makes the decisions in a Resource-Based Economy?

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This question actually needs to be rephrased. It’s not: "who makes

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the decisions", but “How are the decisions arrived at?”

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The running of society is a technical process.

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There are very few things that need to be “decided” by human opinion.

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Technical processes aren’t even decided by you now.

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Did you vote on the structural attributes of a bridge?

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Do you vote on which materials are used to construct houses?

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Do you vote on the internal mechanisms or designs of an MRI machine?

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No, because most of us, certainly me, don’t have the knowledge necessary

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to make large decisions like this.

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We already arrive at these decisions based on the best available information

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we have at the time.

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So what about, you know, lazy people?

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If I am busy in a contributory role, or not over-consuming,

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won’t others simply sit around, live off the fat of the land

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that the economy is now producing at no cost to the individual?

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First off, why is it that when people talk to me about lazy people,

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lazy people are always other people?

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I find that quite interesting.

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And if you do know a lazy person, when did they become lazy?

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Was it on their 20th birthday? Were they lazy as a child?

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Who here has toddlers who have chronic laziness?

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Who here remembers the day they became lazy?

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No, it happened over time, didn’t it? Slow, creeping laziness set in.

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You get home tired from work, you crack open a beer,

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you slam on the box and sink into the couch.

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Laziness is an effectual by-product of our society.

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Either we are spent from our jobs, demotivated by the treadmill lives

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so many of us are made to lead, conditioned by advertising

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to sit and consume, or by social inflexibility

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to be able to go out and do the things you want to do.

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In a world of far greater personal freedom, these tendencies

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towards laziness would drop off hugely.

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Even if they did not, a system of technologically-enabled abundance

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would not suffer from lazy behaviours the way it does presently.

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The Pixar film "WALL*E" imagined a world in which

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all the jobs had been replaced,

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but people were still hapless, over-indulgent consumers.

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Note that in the film they actually left the Earth to be massively inefficient

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and non-productive in space.

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The people had not changed in themselves,

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the society behavioral mechanisms had not changed.

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As technology does take over more and more of our jobs,

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so we must adapt to new tasks, and not simply

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to replace the old tasks with a complete void.

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It's a change that we are advocating.

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Coupled with the updating of technology is the updating of our behaviour;

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the abandoning of the over-consumptive, passive behaviors

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so excellently satirized by "WALL*E."

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So, if it's not lazy people, what about dangerous people?

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Bad people?

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Well, here's something you may not have heard before: there is no such thing

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as a bad or evil person, per se.

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Quite apart from the fact those two terms, bad and evil,

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are thoroughly empty terms that could mean anything.

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We are the products of our surroundings. People who commit crimes

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against the rest of humanity, whether it’s violence, theft

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corporate crime, are the products of a sick society

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whose mechanisms either encourage, necessitate or reward those actions.

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If you don’t believe this, why is it that some countries

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have much higher crime rates than others?

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Are there more “bad people” on that landmass?

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Surely if it's human nature were to blame,

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we’d have identical crime figures all across the world.

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We don’t because the situations, the environmental influences,

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are different in each location.

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Everything from the wealth gap, pollution levels

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positive or negative media influences

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right through to the weather, influences our behavior.

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It is the ultimate litmus test of society’s soundness.

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Higher crime rates are symptoms of the flaws of the system.

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Yet, right now we react to crime, not by looking

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at the aberrant behavior as a symptom of our social mechanisms,

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but by blaming the individual and locking them up,

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creating more laws and ultimately creating a less flexible

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and more oppressive society, which then, in turn, feeds the crime rate.

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In turn, the oppressive illiberal society produces

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more crime and a higher prison population.

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Criminals and ex-cons are precluded from successful lives after jail.

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No-one wants to employ a criminal.

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They also seem most likely not to have been given a decent education

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to begin with, or be able to get one afterwards.

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Violent crimes are more prevalent in societies with greater inequality.

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This slide comes from the Equality Trust who are just south of the river.

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It shows the clear correlation between inequality and homicides.

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Remove the underlying cause, inequality

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and the incidences of crime decrease as well.

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Stressed family environments, relationship breakdown, school shootings,

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gang violence, bank robberies, fraud;

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which of these cannot be traced back to social stratification

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based on income, greed or spending power,

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or the ability to gain differential advantage over others?

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If you remove the mechanisms that essentially encourage aberrant behavior

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and reward aberrant human interactions, the behaviors themselves will go away.

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As yet, we have not implemented a system which ever does this.

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Mental health issues, for the most part, stem from monetary issues as well.

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Mental illness can almost always be stemmed back to the environmental

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and economical societal inequality.

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This slide shows the correlation of mental illness with income inequality.

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It illustrates this point more than amply. Greater inequality

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facilitated by the narrow self-interest, the internal logic

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of a monetary system and the differential advantage and competition,

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directly negatively affects everyone in the population,

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including rich people.

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Based on 30 years of research by the Equality trust,

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if the UK were more equal, we'd be better off as a population.

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For example, the evidence suggests that if we halved inequality

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there would be: half the murder rates,

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mental illness would reduce by two thirds, obesity would halve,

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imprisonment would reduce by 80%,

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teen births would reduce by 80%, levels of trust

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would increase by 85%.

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Imagine how little crime there would be

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if we put true equality into practice in this country.

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And were there a global equality and partnership, can you imagine

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how quickly war would disappear?

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So what about the law?

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Legal restrictions are present in our society to limit problems

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that we've not been able to solve through technological means.

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We have drink-driving laws because our cars will crash

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if we’re drunk behind the wheel.

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But if we build cars that can’t crash into each other

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via GPS guidance systems, and with pendulums

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built into the base that correct a swerving motion,

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drink driving laws become irrelevant. You can get really hammered

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go out and drive.

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It is technologically more than possible. We already

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fly to the moon by remote control.

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But we don't do it because it is “too expensive.”

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A society structured around resources, equality and efficiency will mean

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the automatic redundancy of laws pertaining to finance and money,

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property, crime and socially offensive behaviors.

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Having a lot of laws is not the sign of a well-adjusted society.

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It is a demonstration of the flaws that society has.

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Laws attempt to patch up the inabilities

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to function correctly within that society.

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Perhaps... And you're not going to like this one.

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Perhaps you think that we can solve our problems with politics.

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We are not a political movement. We will not stand for election

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in both senses of that, I'm afraid. Why is that?

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Michael Ruppert said it best when he said that politics is economics by other means.

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Politics is simply another power outgrowth. To be elected,

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or even run for election, requires a large amount of money to canvas support.

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Once you are beholden to large corporate donors,

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it is literally impossible to fulfill real change in a society,

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since the wishes of your backers need to be fulfilled first.

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Those wishes are always to produce favorable laws and fiscal policies

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that will benefit those very donors and corporations,

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the promise of which was their sole reason for backing your party in the first place.

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Why do politicians break promises? Is it because they are “bad people”?

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No they aren't.

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Politicians are not here to change things. How could they be?

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They are raised, conditioned, promoted

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and admitted by the current established societal notions.

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They are not technical experts.

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How could they solve society's problems, which are technical?

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Most of them come from a legal background, which is semantic manipulation

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and nothing else. They aren't qualified to make changes.

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This man is an economist by trade.

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Given that he is absolutely indoctrinated into a monetary system,

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how is he going to bring about the change

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that he promises? The same is with every other politician.

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We cannot achieve lasting, real and meaningful change through politics.

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We need to move beyond politics.

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The simple fact is that politicians are not there to enact real change

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to the underlying root causes of society.

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Constrained by relatively short voting cycles and financial pressures,

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even the best, the most worthy and honest "leaders"

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have to operate within the system.

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It's time to take the next step in our social evolution.

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It is time to evolve along the only path that is relevant,

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one rooted in the real world, one that is truly possible.

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We have outgrown the needs for the mechanisms to manage scarcity.

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We have outgrown scarcity, itself.

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We have outgrown the need for war, poverty and profit at all cost.

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It's time to ditch the false divisionary notions based on belief,

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opinion, hearsay, surmise, and any and all inherited assumptions.

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Human beings are amazing. On this tiny pale blue dot

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we have come from the simplest of organic life, against all odds,

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to our present state of sophistication and consciousness.

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We have put to task our ingenuity and our creativity

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to produce astonishing results.

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It's only money now that is holding us back.

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We must not let our own failings to continue our evolution destroy

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the most valuable thing we have: ourselves.

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You don’t join us by voting for us. You don’t join us by canvassing for support.

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You don’t join us by signing up for a mailing list.

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And you don’t join us by buying a book, or a T-shirt, or a DVD.

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As mentioned before, any and all information we disseminate

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is offered completely free of charge.

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And you certainly don’t join us by giving us donations.

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We won’t accept them. You join us up here, in your head.

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You join us by realizing the logical limitations of our current lifestyle

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and calling for a new global model.

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We all join by breaking down the barriers

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we have imposed on ourselves or have imposed on us,

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to rejoin the other members of the human race

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waiting on every other side. Thank you.

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[applause]