Going over my list of the concerns people have expressed about the RBE ideas, the most common is that we will end up with the planet run by a techno-scientific elite. While this should not be an issue, it does need to be talked about.

First, what do we have now? In most nations we have a political elite making all those decisions. While some people feel like their vote controls who that political elite is, many of us recognize that, at best, our choices are limited to players considered acceptable to the political elite.

I just read a book called The First Civilization. It is an introductary look at the ideas of an RBE. I found the book on the TZM blogs but have attached a copy here for your conveninence.

The book doesn't really deviate from the ideas of Jacque Fresco but, for many, it is hard to get started with Fresco's ideas. After all, he has had about 80 years to refine them.

Then years ago, when I escaped from the US to Central America, I said I was transitioning from preventing bad to doing good. To me, what that meant was not a change in my job as it was already doing good. It was a change in my other activities—the things I did in my spare time to make the world a better place.

I had years of what one would call activism time.

A friend just sent me info about a new program with Bill Moyers. That's the good news and the information can be found at http://www.aptonline.org/catalog.nsf/vLinkTitle/MOYERS+COMPANY complete with a 30-second video blurb about it.

I always appreciated the work of Bill Moyers. Why? Not because I always agreed with his position but because he always made me think. As proof of concept the following quote appears in the 30-second blurb. "The opposite of poverty is not wealth. The opposite of poverty is justice."

While I don't know who said it, it did make me think.

Up front, let me say that I think information should be free. I even believe that if it was this would be a better world.. The fact that information is not free tends to support the divisions between rich and poor.

That said, how can we discriminate between peer-to-peer sharing that is legal vs. illegal? It just seems all too complicated. Even the rules within one country are complicated so what about on a global level?

My understanding is that in the US, using your VCR to time-shift a TV program is legal.

Here is the title from an email message I just received: The Best and Most Surefire Way of Building Wealth in Troubled Times:. It is but one of many messages I have seen recently on wealth. It is, in my opinion, a diversion from actually living on the planet. It is overhead.

While we/the system continue to accept that building wealth both can be done and is what should be done, it is really fiction. You can build a house, a boat or even a piece of software. But, you cannot build wealth.