The State vs. Abundance

I'm sure you're probably aware of the currently established recording and movie industries attempts to snuff out pirating. They've used every tactic from fear mongering to guilt trips to protect their profits, which is entierly within their rights under Federal Copyright Law. It's understandable, within a profit-based system, that if your average person can effortlessly duplicate a product that the producers of said product would want to thwart this behavior.

Why get the Federal Government involved at all?

Well, I am just thrilled that you thought to ask that! The Government has a vested interest in protecting the economy. As side effect of this, if infinite abundance of a product is capable of being produced there is no need to purchase it any longer and the economy suffers. While this all seems right and good on the surface the result is the holding back of technology. Did you know that the Recording Industry Association of America fought to make the cassettes-recorder illegal? They feared if the customer had the ability to record their own music that it would kill radio. In the same way when the VCR came along the Motion Picture Association of America fought it for fear that it would kill television, and the cinema. Both of these companies felt they had legitimate reasons to fight the technology because their business model was threatened by it. Today the internet is the new technology on the chopping block. The internet has amazing potential to create an abundance of information, entertainment, and education... and because of this there are several economic-entities that are trying to impose controls on it.

Abundance, efficency, and sustainability are the enemies of the economy.

Is there anyway to allow for abundance?

No, not within a social-economic system that is driven by money. Abundance is a great thing for people, but is a negative thing for profits - or "the economy." Imagine if we had the capacity to download and print objects. As the recording industry has so artfully put it "You wouldn't download a car would you?!" This seems like an unresolvable issue upon first glance, but I assure you it's not. In order to solve this problem we need to find the root cause of the problem. Which, if you haven't figured it out yet is money.

Within a monetary system scarcity is encouraged because it drives prices up. If abundance were to be achieved in anything (food, water, energy, anything!) the business or businesses that sold said things would collapse - and if abundance were achieved in everything the entire system of money would come crashing down to the ground.

The crossroads...

Humanity stands at a cross-roads at this time in history. One road is the continuation of the monetary-system and the allowing for the violent intervention of the state to protect the economy holding technological advances back - and thus maintain the artificial scarcity of goods and services. The other road is one that has never before been traveled in all of recorded history; that is to abolish the monetary-system allowing for technology to advance at an ever-increasing rate, permitting abundance in every aspect of our lives. If this path were to be pursued the violence of the state, and the scarcity it maintains would be obsolete. In this scenario, which seems too fantastic to be possible, everyone will have food, shelter, clean energy, transportation and the ability to realize their full potential.

Earlier I mentioned the theoretical capacity to download and print objects. I've also mentioned how scarcity within the money supply holds back technology. Brace yourself for this one: we can print objects. The video shared under this paragraph is but a tiny example of the capacity of our current technology. If money were obsoleted and no longer allowed to control our lives via artificial scarcity 3D printers could be an every-day reality. We could use this technology to produce an abundance of metal and plastic goods. Another thing, the objects that 3D printers create can be broken back down into powder-form and 100% recycled.

Our potential future...