Dammit, meant to send to the list again. On Fri, Oct 30, 2015 at 11:02 AM Sean Lynch <seanl@literati.org> wrote:

On Fri, Oct 30, 2015 at 10:33 AM Razer <Rayzer@riseup.net> wrote:

...

I think there's a place for individualism within collectivism but the collective comes first.

This I can't really agree with. There is no collective without the individual, and why should any individual be part of such a thing if it doesn't benefit him or her?

I recognize that we share the planet and that we all benefit from the existence of society, but I think the only obligation that places upon us is to give at least as much as we take. But at the end of the day the only people qualified to make the determination of whether an individual's contribution is adequate is the individual and anyone considering entering into some kind of exchange/relationship/whatever with that individual. It is the sum total of these decisions and interactions from which society emerges.

My longer term hope is that sharing the planet is just a temporary constraint that we'll eventually overcome. There is a lot of room in the galaxy and even the solar system. "If you don't like it, leave" is a lot more realistic of an option when the choices and resources available are practically infinite. This is not to say I'm sympathetic to the Venus Project and its' ilk; I don't think they're wrong about a future of abundance, I just think their language and thinking is rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of the meaning of economic scarcity.