>>My "Oh boy" comment was in response to Rick changing the subject
>>to exhorting me to go out and volunteer, do good works for mankind,
>>and so on. That came out of left field and had nothing to do with the
>>discussion.
>
>
>Instead of our lives being solely about the pursuit of money, go out and do
>something to help people directly. Use your hands on a hammer and a nail
>rather than rewriting a new algorithm someone else wrote last week but is
>now hoarding. Such free time would be made available by sharing.
>
>The model of giving away your work mandates that we have a new economic
>model not related to money, but rather to gifts of works.
>
>Ie... It is a God-centered, God-focused model of love ... and not capitalism.

In the REAL world it can take money to actually help people, especially if you're trying to accomplish something on a huge scale. Perhaps if all the valuable land that is occupied by churches were used to help people - or all the fine art and gold in these churches were sold to generate funds to actually help people. The catholic church and it's leaders seem to me more interested in creating a monopoly and are more greedy than just about any institution there is. Of course seeing how it's tyranny that has existed for 2,000+ years I suppose that is to be somewhat expected. I think part of your problem here Rick is that either you simply don't understand human nature, or you do and just don't like it - so rather than work within the confines of reality and actually come up with practical and realistic solutions, you'd rather belittle the entire human species The net result of course is that you accomplish nothing (other than a false feeling of self-superiority) and merely irritate everyone around you to the point where if you actually even DID come up with something practical and realistic it would go no where because by then you've burned all your bridges. It's like if there is a pothole in the road you expect everyone to get together and hold hands, maybe have a prayer meeting or two about it, and then everyone go out and fix the pothole. Not call the city, or send the city a check to fix the pothole, or have a neighborhood fund raiser to fix the pothole...hell no you want to shoot for the most bizarre stupid never-gonna-happen plan - then when it does not work (duh) you're ready to blame all the evil people who did not pray and are going to burrrrrn in hell for all eternity! They're allll wrong and wrong! Its was the gay couple down the street that are to blame! waaaaah! Meanwhile your pothole is still not fixed, while I am driving down the nice smooth street taking my time to toot my horn at my neighbors - which by the way are not pissed at me like yours either. Now come on - which methodology is going to actually get more accomplished? The realistic one, or the lets-change-all-people idea?