At 10:52 AM 5/11/99 -0600, David Musick wrote:
>
>Providing one's physical needs is actually quite easy. I have lived on
>about $600 a month for the past few years, and I have lived quite
>comfortably. This level of income is well into the "poverty" level, yet
>I am not impoverished. This is why I say there are enough resources in
>the world to provide for everyone's basic physical needs. Nearly
>everyone can earn at least $600 a month.
Okay. So it is trivial for people to earn the money required to provide their basic needs. I'll agree with this.
>Of course, our physical needs are the easiest needs to fulfill, and they
>can be provided by others for free. Emotional, Intellectual and
>Spiritual needs cannot be given for free; they must be developed by
>individuals themselves, with some support from those around them.
Wait just a minute. "...and they can be provided by others for free."
Who is "they"? So I have to earn $1200 a month, $600 for my "basic needs" and $600 for someone else's basic needs? How is this supposed to work? Thanks, but no thanks; I'd just as soon sit around the house and have my "basic needs" provided for free. Same benefits, but a lot less work. "Free" as in "free beer" is an invalid economic construct anyway.
If earning the money required for a persons basic needs is so trivial, then I can't fathom why anyone else should be allowed to take the money I earn. Additionally, if the number of people who can't provide for themselves is so small, I would expect that charity and altruism would pick up the slack more than adequately.
How does your idea fit into the real world? Can you resolve the disparity between the number of people who can't provide their own basic needs and the number of people who *choose* not to? This disparity is the downfall of most forms of socialism.
-James Rogers (who already has more than half his earnings "provided for
free")
jamesr@best.com