I'm a Utopian idealist - prove me wrong!

One key point in my theory is that there exists such a superabundance of everything that it need not be you-or-me. My opponent resisted this with regard first to water, then with regard to population, then with regard to farmland. He has now graciously conceded this aspect of the debate, so I will consider the question as settled. These resources are the building blocks of the post-scarcity society. With them in place, let's now move on and look at the organizational and psychological aspects – = HUMAN MOTIVATION TO WORK = My opponent says, apparently in full seriousness, that he worries about what will happen if no one is "forced to work for other's entertainment". This brings us to an important point. What motivates human beings to work? What do we know about why people do what they do? My opponent (like most economists, business managers and politicians of the old guard) assumes that people work only if tempted by rewards or coerced by poverty or threats. To get people to do something, you offer them a shiny something; to get them not to do something, you threaten to take away their stuff. I call it the carrot-and-stick theory of human motivation. It resembles the most primitive forms of behaviourist psychology. It may be true of some lower mammals - gerbils or something - but it doesn't explain the complexity of even a rat's behaviour, and it is hopelessly oversimple when it comes to explaining Man's behaviour. Why have people spent a hundred million hours editing Wikipedia? Why do people, when they are fully fed and clothed and sheltered, go looking for something to do? Why not just sit around? Why do people jump out of planes, do adventure races across South America, or climb Mount Kilimanjaro? Why do people train tens of thousands of hours in ballet or music or meditation? Why did I spend more than twenty hours last week working on open-source projects that don't stand a chance of making me money? I once heard about a sadhu who travelled from Delhi to Lumbini, pushing a radish along the ground with his nose the whole way. Clearly, there is more to human motivation than money. My opponent argues that no one will dance or sing or write if they are not forced to by harsh economic conditions. Ridiculous! Do you think that Dante wrote The Divine Comedy because his month's rent was due? Every psychological theory of motivation since at least the 70s has recognized that people have needs beyond bodily and material needs: Maslow's theory, Heider's, Bandura's, Reiss's, Herzberg's, Alderfer's, Robbins's, etc. etc. etc. The carrot-and-stick theory of motivation has gone the way of the dinosaurs and rightly so, because the evidence against it is overwhelming. It explains nearly nothing about our lives. While most economies hitherto existing have used mostly carrot-and-stick motivation, it is clear that Man has other desires than just stuff. Man has the need for a purpose, a mission. Man has passions. Man can be moved by empathy, compelled by compassion or stirred by passion. My opponent argued that if you take away the economic carrots and sticks, you take away motivation. The opposite is true: by taking away the drudgery caused by money and by incomplete automation, you create an environment in which people can pursue their real motivation and live according to their real passion. = THE MONEY QUESTION = "The fact is that you create a paradox, as being independent to money due to self-serving industry would require an enormous amount of money to create at first aspect." Maybe I'm missing something here; are you claiming that it's somehow logically impossible to use money to get rid of money? Say a fat guy lifts weights, gets in shape, and so loses weight. Is that a paradox? I mean, he couldn't possibly have used weights to get rid of weight, right?! Can ivy choke trees? Or is it too "paradoxical" for plants to get rid of plants? We are building free resources from ones we paid for. It is not a paradox. It's not even news to anyone. Most of the readers of this have probably done it themselves. Someone buys a computer, buys some CDs, and shares the music for free on the Internet. They have created free resources by spending money. And all over the world, hour-by-hour, more and more free resources are becoming available. The Internet is doubling in size every two years (http://www.singularity.com...) and before long it will contain (nearly) all useful knowledge, including designs for useful machines, medical knowledge, scientific data, complete educational curricula etc. It can be done surprisingly cheaply, as the workers are mostly volunteers. And there are millions of good people working at this. Many of them - like Alan Kay or Jimmy Wales - are rich. There is big, big, big money going into researching and developing the enabling technologies to a post-scarcity society. Take nanotechnology: in 2008, $18.2 billion was spent on nanotech R&D (http://www.whitehouse.gov...). In solar power: the US government gave $237 million in 2009 for solar R&D (http://www.photon-expo.com...). The EU is giving fifty billion euro – fifty billion! – over seven years to photovoltaic research companies (http://www.rdmag.com...). Private sector funding likely matches that, and China are certainly spending hundreds of millions, or billions on solar R&D. You are right that it requires money to develop technology (under the current system). But, if you think that financial obstacles are stopping either free resources or new technologies from being created, you have the facts strongly against you. = CH-CH-CH-CHANGES = SX23: "the changes proposed by the theory requires large amounts of investments" AdCiv: "Let's be specific: The "changes" my thesis requires are some successful open-source projects, ones that will create free education, free healthcare, free fabrication etc. If my opponent was referring to some other "changes", I would ask him to be specify what changes he means." SX23: "Your theory is inviable in the next few decades as it would require hundreds of change in actual industries" .... "too many factors would require massive amounts of change within the current society." This is the only part of the debate I haven't demolished yet, and you are being incredibly vague. My theory won't work because it requires too many changes? I would be grateful if you could show me the specific changes it requires that aren't already happening. Post-scarcity requires automation; automation is happening. Post-scarcity requires a massive stockpile of free digital resources; this too is happening. Post-scarcity requires the development of small, cheap, self-replicating digital fabrication technologies; this is happening. = AUTONOMOUS NUCLEAR REACTORS = My opponent asks for examples of autonomous power stations. Alright, there's the Toshiba 4S and the Small Sealed Transportable Atomic Reactor (SSTAR), both of which I believe are on the market now. They are fully autonomous. The Soviets apparently had hundreds of autonomous nuclear microreactors powering remote lighthouses (http://englishrussia.com...) (though that didn't end well).