In the wild west movies, or Lucky Luke comic strips, there is often a little town which is "owned" by a single man. That is a useful example. When someone, or a group, is the owner of the big business, the food stores, the saloons, all major workplaces, the judge and the sheriff, the other people in that town are pretty much forced to follow his will. The property becomes power over other people.

Some people might say that earning, or stealing, so much money shows great intelligence, so it is only right that the people should do what he tells them to do. Earlier we actually had voting systems based on that assumption, the more you earned or owned, the more voting power you had.

Later we have come to realize that such a system is both undemocratic and dangerous, because when the important decisions about our future society are taken in secrecy by one man, or a few people, they often abuse their power, or make mistakes which can not be corrected, because there is no openness and critical debate is not possible.

So property can be good, I want my own tothbrush, and bad, when property means power over other people.

The best solution to this problem must be that we draw a line between private property which can be used for power and that which really is for private use.

The owner of a factory or a railroad have power over other people, the workers and the travellers, so the running of such property should not be left to a private owner who can exert power over other people without any democratic control.

Real private property is the apartment/house I live in, my car, my bed, my stereo, my computer.

The need for private property is about the same for all of us, I need about as much food every day as you, and I need just as many apartments and cars as you.

So the best solution I can see is that the future society should have equal rights to private property for everybody, and all greater properties, like railroads factories etc, should be run by an open democratic process.

Or does anybody have a better idea? ------

I am not proposing socialism, or any other political system. I just point out that property is a problem for the democracy when somebody has too much of it.

How can we assure everybody personal freedom if rich people can push others around with the power of their money?

And I give a solution to the problem. We can differentiate between private property which is for private use, and property which influences other peoples lifes. Let everybody do whatever they want with their personal property, and let all other property be used under democratic control by all of us.

> If there is no significant reward for a greater degree of effort, why > exert oneself?

The pressure to perform well comes from all people who are depending on a particular social service. They will watch the operation very carefully, and say their meaning if they think things are handled badly. The higher classes in school can be very interested in how the distribution of food, building of railroads etc is handled.

This will be possible IF we have a control system which allows such participation. That is why I propose such a system.

Why do millions of programmers program free programs? Why do graffiti painters paint? Because they like to do what they do, and because they want to earn recognition.

There are many more reasons why people choose to do valuable work even if they are not forced to do it. To get out and meet people, to feel useful, because they are interested in a certain occupation, because they want to help.. etc.

Let's take the environmentalists as an example, they have been hunting polluters for decades now, and the world has become cleaner. When people start checking up on the system the system has to clean up its act and do better. Whether it be pollution or economic decisions.

If we have an open democratic process a lot of people can keep an eye on those who are making the decisions. If people are allowed to help make better decisions they will. This is often not the case in todays private corporations, so we need a better system.

I think both socialism and capitalism has to go, none of them is good enough.

So I am taking up the most important questions, like property, democracy, personal freedom, and I try to find a solution which takes care of all of those areas. ----

> Are you proposing socialism?

Socialism is a very vague word, do you mean the social democrats, who are now in power in most european countries? (The american democrats are also some kind of social democrats, so you could say that they are in power in USA too.) The social democrats accept capitalism but imposes a lot of regulations, like public insight and co-power, and workers right to have a say in the board rooms of big corporations.

The social democrats have a system which approaches my suggestions, but they are still very much tied to the capitalist system.

I try to show how we can develope from the social democrat system, which is now the leading political system in the world.

I just point out that property is a problem for the democracy when somebody has too much of it.

How can we assure everybody personal freedom if rich people can push others around with the power of their money?

Utopia is not communism. In Soviet, they let one class of people, the party, rule the country to their own benefit, just like the western capitalism. There was no openness, no possibilities for people in general to check up on the decision making or participation in the process.

The respect for individual freedom was very low in Soviet Union, it was a command economy ruled by a few people. I suggest a completely other system, an open democracy, where everybody has the right to know what is going on in the board rooms, town councils, school boards etc, and where all interested people can participate in the decision making.

If we gave everybody free housing and free material necessities a lot of people would work for free. So why not give everybody the same amount of personal property? Then we wouldn't have to think about material needs anymore, so we are all free to do whatever we like.

The productivity in the modern society is so high that we can afford lots of lazy people who do no useful work.

But who are we to judge others, some of those lazy people might be thinking about something important, a new theory of relativity or whatever. Variation is the basis for evolution, so it is very good if we can let people be different.

More and more people in this world learn how to get information, think independantly, and express thir ideas. The possibilities for everybody to participate in the democratic process are developing fast with computers and internet. The society must follow this development. The old systems, where a few people made decisions alone and above the heads of the people are gone. We need to adjust the political systems to the participation of all people.

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I am working for a development of this society. I want more openness, more participation of people in the institutions like government, corporations, sport clubs, transport systems etc.

> So the community can decide to take property away from the individual?

Nobody should take your private property from you, but a large corporation should not be a private property to do with as he wishes for the owner. Many people are depending on such big enterprises so we all must be able to influence it.

> How can we assure everybody personal freedom if the neighbors, can push the individual around and decide how much he will be paid for his services?

Your neighbors have nothing to do with you in a modern society, unless you disturb them somehow. I am not proposing that we should go back to a tribe system, or the chinese block system. We have gained a lot of personal freedom in the modern democratic world, and I want to show how we can get even more personal freedom and democratic rights.

> Why are one million uninformed people wiser than one expert?

Experts can be wrong. Millions of eyes see more than two. It is not only a question of efficiancy, this is also about democracy. Do we want our fates to be in the hands of a few corporate directors and some young yuppies on the money market, or do we want open debate and common sense to steer our world?

> If a doctor wants an NMR scanner, and the community doesn't understand the reason for it?

If the majority of the hospital board thinks it's a good idea to get an NMR then they should go ahead and try to get one. This is how it works already in most civilized countries.

We will never have full equality, some people are happy, some sad, some have found an occupation which is interesting and some don't. Some people have emotional problems, some don't. Material things are just a small part of a persons happiness, we can just as well give everybody the same living standard, and thereby avoid all problems which come from having different material levels in a society. Material differences must be enforced and that means a repressive society.

In a modern society, like Sweden or Germany, nobody really HAS to work. You can study or just collect welfare and do what you like. A lot of people are already working because the feel like it. ------

> You're making is the assumption that people are basically altruistic and cooperative. Some are. But the majority are selfish and given freedom to act will manifest that selfishness.

I don't know where you have made your experiences, but I feel sorry for you if you have such a depressing view of other people in general. I have lived a long life among all kinds of people, and I have been travelling a lot in Europe and Asia. I have always met people who are kind and helpful, and try their best to get along without hurting other people.

Are you sure you are talking about your own experiences? Or have you been watching TV too much?

If, as you suggest, some gangs appear and try to sabotage the society we simply put them in jail, like they do in all societies in the world already, in USA, in Italy and in Poland.

Open democracy does not mean anarchy. Look at the political system in Germany, France and Sweden. That is open democracy. (a few things could be even better, but basically that is what I mean.)

> What is this "same amount of personal property" ?

People already have personal property, houses, apartments, cars, boats, and you can go to the car register and check who owns what car. So we just have to put up a maximum for private property, the average of all private property, and give everybody the same level. Which means that those who today have more than the average will have to give up some of their property, and those who have less can have more for free.

This can be regulated in law, and most people will accept the new laws. Most people will get more property in this way, so very few of those will make any objections. A few both stupid and rich people will try to keep more than average, like many cheat with the taxes today, but in the long run they will have to accept the new society too.

> >The productivity in the modern society is so high that we can afford lots of lazy people who do no useful work.

> What are the productive ones going to think of the lazy ones?

I can't tell people what to think, but personally I would think that it is good that they are free to pursue their own kind of happiness. I'd rather see people do nothing and be happy, than have a lot of discontented and unhappy people around me.

What is most hindering to an understanding of this are preconcieved opinions. Like "man is lazy by nature", and other ideas which the old systems, religion, capitalism etc, spread out to justify their own dominance.

I have heard all these arguments many times before and I know that most people don't really have those views in their personal life. It is often just opinions they have read somewhere or seen on television.

You just have to realize what is the difference between aquired opinions from the media world and your own real experiences.

Did you see the Oprah Winfrey show about a young kkk member who suddenly realized he had nothing against black people when he got to meet them in real life? He is a typical example of people who can discuss vehemently using arguments and views which they just have read somewhere. But when they start to think about real life they realize that they don't have those views, it was only an idea they had fallen for.

Young people often try to develop their own brains by taking a position and trying to fight for it. It doesn't matter much if they really think so themselves in reality, they just identify with those views to train their brains. Most of the activity in these newsgroups is that kind of braintraining.

I am old enough to be serious and I am talking about reality.

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Excerpts from: THE ABOLITION OF WORK (Bob Black)

No one should ever work.

Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Almost any evil you'd care to name comes from working or from living in a world designed for work. In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working.

That doesn't mean we have to stop doing things.

Curiously -- or maybe not -- all the old ideologies are conservative because they believe in work. Some of them, like Marxism and most brands of anarchism, believe in work all the more fiercely because they believe in so little else.

Liberals say we should end employment discrimination. I say we should end employment. Conservatives support right-to-work laws. Following Karl Marx's wayward son-in-law Paul Lafargue I support the right to be lazy. Leftists favor full employment. Like the surrealists -- except that I'm not kidding -- I favor full *un*employment.

If all the ideologues (as they do) advocate work -- and not only because they plan to make other people do theirs -- they are strangely reluctant to say so. They will carry on endlessly about wages, hours, working conditions, exploitation, productivity, profitability.

Unions and management agree that we ought to sell the time of our lives in exchange for survival, although they haggle over the price. Marxists think we should be bossed by bureaucrats. Libertarians think we should be bossed by businessmen. Feminists don't care which form bossing takes so long as the bosses are women. Clearly these ideology-mongers have serious differences over how to divvy up the spoils of power. Just as clearly, none of them have any objection to power as such and all of them want to keep us working.

You may be wondering if I'm joking or serious. I'm joking *and* serious. Play doesn't have to be frivolous, although frivolity isn't triviality: very often we ought to take frivolity seriously. I'd like life to be a game -- but a game with high stakes. I want to play *for* *keeps*.

The alternative to work isn't just idleness. nor is it the managed time-disciplined safety-valve called "leisure"; far from it. Leisure is nonwork for the sake of work. Leisure is the time spent recovering from work and in the frenzied but hopeless attempt to forget about work. Many people return from vacation so tired that they look forward to returning to work so they can rest up. The main difference between work and leisure is that at work at least you get paid for your alienation and enervation.

I am not playing definitional games with anybody. When I say I want to abolish work, I mean just what I say, but I want to say what I mean by defining my terms in non-idiosyncratic ways. My minimum definition of work is *forced* *labor*. Work is production enforced by economic or political means, by the carrot or the stick. (The carrot is just the stick by other means.)

rj ..We're so far ahead we're outta sight..

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> To confiscate has the state in it.

Whatever you call it, and whatever forms it takes, somehow the material commodities have to be transferred from the strong and productive people to the children, the elderly, the handicapped, the studying youngsters.

It can be done via charity, or in the form of taxes, or as "confiscation", or as a law which regulates the system of transfering the food and other things to those who need them but cannot work for them.

Which form do you prefer?

We have democracy in most parts of the world today. People will get more and more informed and they will participate in politics more now when most people learn to handle computers and internet.

This "organization" of free and independent people who know how to find information, think logically and put their ideas into writing will influence this world more than old dogmas. The power of good arguments is the greatest power on earth.

When we start doing what we like and build new structures the old structures will become less and less important.

More and more people are engaging themselves at all levels of our society. The more free time we get, and the more information handling capacity we get the stronger we will be. Society will also start changing. Earlier a country was run by say 20 capitalists and 20 politicians who made their deals in deep secrecy. In the future the society will be run by all of us together.

All of us are talking with each other, directly or via internet, and we each make our individual choice of what ideas we want to further and what party we're gonna vote for. This is how we create our world. This is how we change our world.

The best way to change the world is to go ahead and create a better world, the old one will disappear when it is no longer needed.

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Today we are wasting people's real capaity on things they don't feel they have control over, so their own creativity is seriously hampered. That is one of the reasons why we need more personal freedom.

Imagine if you and I and 200 other people lived on a big farmlike piece of land. We live like in a village. Some people feed the animals, some are electricians and doctors, some are hunting and fishing, and some are mostly lazy. let's say we have agreed on giving everybody full freedom to do what we like.

If one day we realized that the food will not be enough next month/year, what do you think would happen?

I think we would discuss this problem, and we would try to find ways to get more food to our small society. Maybe we can find ways to increase production, or some of those who work with other things will volonteer to work to increase the food resources for a while. I think we could solve the problem without forcing anybody. We could solve the problem without sacrificing our high ideals, to give everybody a maximum of personal freedom.

I doubt very much that we would starve because most of us didn't care about it, or because they would rather starve to death than do something about it. That seems very unlikely to me.

But in this modern world there is no food shortage at all. If people starve in some african country it is not because there is not enough food in the world, it is only because the food is in the wrong place.

In Europe farmers have been paid off for centuries for NOT producing food. We are destroying lots of food each year, to keep the prices up. Some power plants are even driven by burning wheat, yes we'd rather burn it than give it away, such are the laws of economics.

In Sweden the farms were abolished en masse some 20 years ago. The banks stopped all loans to small farmers and 100 000:s of people had to sell their farms and move to industrial cities.

Today the few big farmers who survived that crisis are given money to stop producing food and start producing other things, like fast growing energy forests, or tourist attractions etc.

All over Europe we see the same process. So we have far too much food, not to little.

In the modern world we can produce life's necessities with very little manpower, so we will never again be starving or having to live in caves etc.

The material problems are over for this world, we can afford to let people decide for themselves what they want to do.

As I see it we can always discuss and find solutions to the serious problems, but the need for forcing anybody is very small and is getting smaller for every decade.

What is interesting today is if is more important to build spacestations or get more oil for our cars or writing music or make better computer programs.

As none of those things are really necessary for our survival, I see no need to force people to work in those areas. We can afford a society built on personal freedom so people can decide for themselves what they want to do and what they think is important.

If nobody thinks something is important enough to do something about, then it obviously is not so important. Of course in todays world things can be important just because of the system we live in. For example an owner of a small business can get very upset if the bank loans are not payed, and people in the firm will not do a little extra to save the business. But that problem comes from the system. It would be no problem if we had no money, and nobody would be hurt if the people in the firm would take a week off and go fishing.

This system is often forcing us to push each other to do things. It would be a lot easier to keep good social relations if that pressure was removed.

I am trying to show people a way to come to such a society.

The word utopia has been used in seceral meanings, an impossible dream, a better future, something which is very hard to reach but very attractive. I have chosen to use this word for the future society built on personal freedom, which means no money, no work, material equality and democracy. These ideas are in line with earlier utopian writers so I think it is natural to use this name. We need a name for this set of ideas because it will make it easier to find information about it and easier to discuss it.

Here are the first lines in the utopia manifest I have written:

Utopia.

A simple program for a better future. Can you imagine a world without money?

Basic program for utopian associations and parties.

We are peaceful and legal organizations working for:

1 Open democratic parlamentarism.

2 Upholding and furthering of civil rights.

3 Material equality and equal rights to private property for everybody.

4 Abolishment of the monetary system and the power of money.

5 All work shall be voluntary. Give the individual real freedom.

Points 1 and 2 are already accepted principles in most advanced democracies (but seldom fully implemented) and probably need no more discussion.

Points 3,4 and 5 are unique for the utopia program, and they replace raw capitalism with a human society and individual freedom. Instead of stepping on human values for the sake of money, as the monetary system forces us to do, we can help each other and live in freedom and happiness. Utopia will let us individually take responsibility of our own life's. We do not need the whips and carrots of the monetary system anymore.

Actually, we cannot afford to keep the monetary system. It is destroying people and human values and it is the single most destructive factor on the planet today.

We do not need money anymore, and it is really easy to abolish it.

Today, in the capitalist-democratic world, money is seen as the primary driving force for all development. We do not accept this myth. For example, most doctors study very hard for more than 20 years before they can start to work, and keep on studying for the rest of their life's, and work 50-70 hours per week, under enormous pressure and responsibility, for about the same salary as the average restaurant owner. Money is NOT the driving force for most people who study and do very valuable work for the society. Instead it is the personal interest which drives most people to study and work in intellectually demanding professions.

1. This movement is totally peaceful and legal. As long as we have freedom to work for our ideas, as we have in most countries in the world today, there is no need for underground or illegal actions. Furthermore, utopia can never be achieved with violent means, or against the will of the majority, so the only way forward is through information, discussion and letting everybody think and decide for themselves.