What We Know That Isn't So

It sounds like the ONE source you use here just wants us to use NG. Our own natural gas is fine, but you don't need to summarily dismiss everything else in the process. The alternative is to continue to buy foreign oil at whatever future price the market will barely bear, and be left flat footed when it becomes truly scarce. The relative expense of nukes, solar, and wind are in part due to the cost of energy used in manufacturing. The sooner we are able to use alternative energy, the sooner that relative cost will come down.
And the light bulbs? Come on, John. This is within the ability of anyone with basic math skills: 13 watts of CFL does the work of 60 watts of incandescent, and doesn't produce nearly the waste heat, which requires less air conditioning. You you think that people will leave them on FIVE times as long? What happened to the free market? Let them decide...
Our future independence will depend on energy independence. Drill for oil here, use NG by all means please, but don't abandon the other alternatives. They will become viable just as surely as flight, and a car in every garage.

I agree. John needs to have multiple sources in order to make this point more credible . But having worked in the nuclear construction industry, I think the economics point he made was along the lines I saw when working there.

The point made by Mr. Gemoets " The sooner we are able to use alternative energy, the sooner that relative cost will come down." is backwards. The sooner the price of alternative energy becomes competitive, the sooner we will use it. That's why no one is rushing to use those source right now. My concern is that the Feds will increase taxes on our current sources that will make them then as expensive as the "alternative" sources. Ahh, the government loves to drive behavior by taxation.

Like most government subsidies, this one for the nukes will be a waste of money. The government has no business getting into the venture capital business - which is what government subsidies to alternative energy is. Government subsidies such as those to farmers are essentially a gift to isolate them from competition. The nuclear subsidy is the same.

I would like to question the numbers on the amount of oil that could be produced within the US. Given the advancements in technology shale (in and of itself) has the potential to release enough usable energy at a rate that would last between 150 and 400 years(depending on the authorities you read), yet Congress has pretty much banned the exploration and development of commercial shale oil reserves. NG is great, and we have the world's largest outcroppings in the same areas we have available shale oil. There are many untapped and un-utilized petroleum sources in the US. We need to use them all. Yes it would be great to develop the new energy... but where's the infrastructure and delivery system? How much will it cost to implement it and how long will it take? Those are questions that none of the "Greenies" really like to answer. It took about 100 years to develop the ability to produce, ship and distribute petroleum fuels. What makes anyone think it would be different with alternative fuels? Alternative FOOLS?
Regarding CFL bulbs: does Mr. Gemoet understand the extreme impact of mercury on the environment? Has he read the instructions for disposal of CFL bulbs? Does he know how to invest in paper bag factories? A single CFL bulb must be wrapped in a brown paper bag, or similarly tough disposal device, crushed, then repackaged in ANOTHER bag or similar device. If you follow the RULES, you must inform the EPA that you are disposing of Mercury... get the picture? I went out and bought a bunch of cheap incandescents, saved about $3 per bulb and put that on my electric bill. By the way, the majority of my electricity here in South Texas is delivered from both NG and Nuclear plants. Guess I have the best, or worst, of both worlds depending on who you listen to.

Re: Barry Hughes
Yes, just like some other things (batteries, etc), CFLs require proper handling. Here's a balanced source of info: http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/cfl.asp The advantages far outweigh this disadvantage. You would have to put a lot more than $3 per bulb in your electric fund to make up for the energy hogs. See the references. -lg

Re: NH reader
My point re. expense was to do with the general costs of manufacture, economy of scale as demand increases. I expect that just like cars and computers, innovation and competition would lower the costs as demand increases. I absolutely agree that "the government loves to drive behavior by taxation" We need to get to there without being pushed.

Just a "little bit of mercury". Just a little bit of poison. Just a little bit pregnant.

John,
I had the privilege of being on this show and asked the question about LiFTR technology. I was dissatisfied with Jerry Taylor's boilerplate free market answer. The LiFTR technology is largely unknown, even among nuclear engineers. I am a physics Ph.D. and I didn't know about it until recently. It almost seems to good to be true.

See:
Energy From Thorium: A Nuclear Waste Burning Liquid Salt Thorium Reactor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZR0UKxNPh8

Although it is a nuclear technology, it seems to me to be vastly superior to the current nuclear technologies in that it:
(1) is passively safe (no meltdown risk or expensive safety systems)
(2) is low pressure (no expensive high pressure containment structure)
(3) is generally unsuitable for production of weapons grade materials
(in fact this is why development was originally abandoned)
(4) generates a low volume of radioactive waste with a relatively short lifetime
(5) can burn the waste of the current gen 3 nuclear plants
(7) has a much simpler maintenance requirement
(8) uses thorium which is more abundant than uranium and the U.S. has large deposits in Idaho
(9) has been "proven" in that a test reactor was run successfully for several years
Also on this same show you had Christina Hoff Summers talking about women in science. I found this analysis most illuminating on the closely related topic of the sex gap in mathematics

The Math Sex Gap Revealed
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/math2.htm.

In this article the author shows that "There is a single math ability gap between the sexes, biological in origin, and independent of race, culture and geography ... which accounts for all available data." It is written in a humorous way, but the mathematics analysis seems solid.

Thanks for the great shows!

Hi John,
I've enjoyed many of your reports over the years and you have great insights. I see you promoting the idea that government should get out of people's lives and just let the market take over. This concerns me. In some areas it is the best thing to do. But, in others it can be disastrous. Market forces don't care about human rights. In the case of insurance companies, when they put money as their #1 goal it leads them to reject customers with pre-existing conditions and then those people have an exceedingly hard time getting health care anywhere and it has in some cases caused death.

I've been studying quite deeply on economics for several years and think that you should know about a 3rd way that does not make the serious errors of either the liberals or the conservatives (and avoids the problematic errors of the libertarians as well). Your 40 acres and a mule concept is getting close to the only just economic systems there are, systems that have the support of a wide range of many of the greatest thinkers in the world from many different perspectives: Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Einstein, Confucius, Mencius, Voltaire, Rosseau, Dr. Sun Yat Sen, Tolstoy, Churchill, Helen Keller and so many others.

The problem with socialism is as you said that it sometimes takes money from hard workers and gives it to lazy people who aren't working. This appears quite unfair and tends to cause the hard workers to not have as much incentive to work hard. It can be hard to sustain long term if too many people choose to be lazy and dependent. But, capitalism has just as serious problems if not worse. While it does make money, that money is often for a few people and as time goes by, it works just like the game monopoly. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer and poorer until they go bankrupt. In a game that is not a big problem. But, in real life, when you don't have money for basic necessities, it causes desperation that leads people to immorality, crime, gangster activity, theft, murder, terrorism and it can also be a major factor in nationwide instability and even cause war. For example, it seems that one of the big reasons that Mao was supported by so many Chinese is that the landed gentry held so much of the land and natural resources as well as political power. Many Chinese thought that Mao's new ideas had to be better than the monopolization of land that was causing so much desperation. In this and many other cases, the vast disparity in wealth between the upper class and the lower class was a cause of instability, eventually war and eventually an entire regime change. I believe we are seeing some small echoes of this in America right now, unfortunately some of it incited by unbalanced conservatives like Fox News, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and certain others who do not know or do not tell people about the danger of vast disparities in wealth. I'll let Reagan explain the danger for you:

· “Our founding fathers knew that the American experiment in individual liberty, free enterprise, and Republican self-government could succeed only if power was widely distributed, and since in any society social and political power flow from economic power, they saw that wealth and property would have to be widely distributed among the people in the country ..Could there be anything resembling a free enterprise economy, if wealth and property were concentrated in the hands of a few?“--President Ronald Reagan

Others have recognized the same problem Reagan did—that Democracy is simply nothing but an illusion if economic power is concentrated in the hands of a few.

· “I slowly came to realize that political democracy cannot flourish under all economic conditions. Democracy requires an economic system which supports the political ideals of liberty and equality for all. Men cannot exercise freedom in the political sphere when they are deprived of it in the economic sphere.” --M Mortimer Adler, former professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago

· Rutherford B. Hayes (19th U.S. President) wrote this in his diary between 1881-1891, “December 4 Sunday. In church it occurred to me that it is time for the public to hear that the giant evil and danger in this country, the danger which transcends all others, is the vast wealth owned or controlled by a few persons. Money is power. In Congress, in state legislatures, in city councils, in the courts, in the political conventions, in the press, in the pulpit, in the circles of the educated and the talented, its influence is growing greater and greater. Excessive wealth in the hands of the few means extreme poverty, ignorance, vice, and wretchedness as the lot of the many.”

· Baron M.A. Rothschild understood when he once said: "Give me control over a nation's currency and I care not who makes its laws."

Under Republicans especially that concentration of wealth that directly destroys the fabric of democracy has rapidly accelerated.
“The rich-man, poor-man gap also widened {in 2008} with the nation's top one percent now collecting 23 percent of total income, the biggest disparity since 1928, according to the Economic Policy Institute.” http://66.35.240.8/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/31/EDEC12L3SN.DTL

“Economist Larry Summers, former Treasury Secretary and past president of Harvard University, says that in the last 29 years, those earning the top one percent of income have gained about $600 billion. Those in bottom 80 percent have lost about $600 billion.” http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=news-000002977524
Is there an economic system that solves both the problems of capitalism and of socialism at the same time? Yes, there is. Actually there are two of them. The first is from the Bible and is called the Jubilee system. The second, Land Rent or the Single Tax, is based on the same principles as the Jubilee is but has numerous advocates among America's most famous pioneers and leaders (ranging from Thomas Jefferson to Lincoln to Reagan) as well as many other great thinkers from many different perspectives. More importantly it has been tried in many places in real life and has caused explosive economic growth far, far greater than capitalism does.

The fundamental basic idea of both systems is that land and all natural resources (oil, gold, water, gas, diamonds, airwaves, lumber, etc.) were created by God and not man (the atheist supporters agree that these resources were not created by any human being). Since this is true, it is wrong for them to be monopolized by anyone. It's not just wrong, it's a fundamental violation of their economic human rights. This is something so hidden and almost unknown by modern people that you will need to take some time to think it through and set aside all your education and preconceived notions, since they didn't say anything about this. But, this idea was absolutely crucial to our original founders. Before we briefly summarize the two systems, let's listen to what just a few of them said about this.
· “The land, the earth God gave to man for his home, sustenance and support, should never be the possession of any man, corporation, society or unfriendly government, any more than the air or water.”Abraham Lincoln

· “The fruits of the earth are a common heritage of all, to which each man has equal right." Voltaire

· “The earth is given as a common stock for men to labor and to live on... Wherever in any country there are idle lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. Everyone may have land to labor for himself, if he chooses; or, preferring the exercise of any other industry, may exact for it such compensation as not only to afford a comfortable subsistence, but wherewith to provide for a cessation from labor in old age." THOMAS JEFFERSON (1743-1826), author of the Declaration of Independence and with Ben Franklin the most inventive and intellectual of the Founding Fathers, (Notes on Virginia, 1791)

· "The teachings of Henry George will be the basis of our program of reform... The (land tax) as the only means of supporting the government is an infinitely just, reasonable, and equitably distributed tax... The centuries of heavy and irregular taxation for the benefit of the manchus have shown China the injustice of any other system of taxation." DR. SUN YAT SEN (1866-1925), father of modern China.

· "When the Great Way prevailed, natural resources were fully used for the benefit of all and not appropriated for selfish ends... This was the Age of the Great Commonwealth of peace and prosperity." CONFUCIUS (BC 551-479)

· Mirabeau the Elder (1715-1789) wrote that Land rent {a way to divide natural resources fairly} would be a "social advance equal to the inventions of writing and money."

· "Who can or who could sell us the earth? Actually the earth belongs to these two: the almighty God and all his children who have ever worked on it or who will ever have worked on it or who will ever have to work on it. No generation of men can or could with even the highest solemnity and exertion sell the earth according to any other principle." Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)
· “Whenever the ownership of the soil is so engrossed by a small part of the community that the far larger part are compelled to pay whatever the few may see fit to exact for the privilege of occupying and cultivating the Earth, there is something very much like slavery." Horace Greeley (1811-1872), abolitionist

I will summarize the only two economic systems that I know of that incorporate the wisdom above (neither capitalism or socialism come anywhere close to understanding and utilizing these ideas) and list 3 examples of how it's worked incredibly in real life. Then at the end are several links so you can read more deeply on the topic including ideas on how to implement it in our society now.

TWO SYSTEMS THAT SHARE NATURAL RESOURCES—JUBILEE & LAND RENT
There are only two economic systems that I'm aware of that avoid the evils of enabling laziness and destroying incentive (major problems for socialism) and that also give everyone basic equitable opportunities, a chance for a decent life and prevent wealth from being too concentrated in the hands of too few preserving democracy (major human rights that capitalism often fails to deliver and as a result causes much suffering and crime). Here is a brief explanation of the 2 systems:

A) JUBILEE
1) ADMIRES FREE ENTERPRISE
The Jubilee system strongly emphasized and lauded hard work, creativity, free enterprise, etc. Proverbs 31:16-18 speaks in high praise even of a woman who is buying and selling fields, works vigorously and does profitable trading. Men were expected to be self-sufficient and provide for their families. Ability to gain wealth (a gift from God) was praised and also considered a sing of God's favor.

2) NO WORK-NO FOOD, LAZINESS REPRESSED
The Jubilee System also had a law saying that, "If a man will not work, he shall not eat." 2 Thessalonians 3:10 This law is directly against socialism's error of enabling laziness by taking from hard workers and giving to those who are unemployed and refuse to work.

These 1st 2 laws are solidly capitalistic and frequently cited by conservatives. But, there were several more important principles.

3) SHARE NATURAL RESOURCES EQUALLY
The land was divided in such a way that each family had an equal share (Deuteronomy 15, Leviticus 25). This land could be leased, but never sold permanently and always reverted back to the original family every 49 years. This guaranteed that every family and person would have something to work on to make a living from. Principle #2 above is not possible to implement unless there is work guaranteed for every person able to work.

This sharing of natural resources is absolutely essential and foundationally crucial to any ethical economic system. Natural resources were not made by anyone and no one has a right to monopolize these things for their selfish benefit alone. How can it be considered fair or just for one lucky person to buy a piece of land for a few thousand dollars and then he and his descendants alone benefit from something that they did not create for the rest of human history? This just does not make any logical or moral sense. Capitalism unfortunately completely ignores and refuses to recognize this most basic of human rights. Without recognition of this human economic right and basic justice, no economic system can be just or fair or create a stable society long term. In fact, if this is not done, or an equivalent replacement is not given to all, it is a violation of their economic human rights and extremely serious theft.

Conservatives love to allege that taxing the rich heavily is stealing from them. But, if natural resources, which for most of history have been the most essential means of production, are not divided equitable, it is in reality those who have monopolized these resources (which also include oil, gas, gold, diamonds and even airwaves and much more) who are some of the most gigantic thieves in history. This theft ranks in the trillions of dollars if not much, much higher. So, the allegation of conservatives about stealing from the rich is some of the worst propaganda imaginable and the reverse is actually true and is the most massive theft that has ever happened.

4) CHARGING INTEREST IS FORBIDDEN
God banned charging interest in the Bible. Investing is honored in the Bible since it is win-win for both sides. But, for one person to profit at another's suffering and tragedy is completely against every principle that the Bible teaches. Charging interest is one of the biggest ways that the financial stability of the poor is destroyed and their wealth is siphoned off to the rich. Thus God condemned it as an unauthorized redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich.
“If you lend money to any of my people who are in need, do not charge interest as a money lender would Exodus 22:25
“Those who lend money without charging interest, and who cannot be bribed to lie about the innocent. Such people will stand firm forever.” Psalm 15:5

Now if an entity such as a bank makes profits for example, then it's right and biblical for it to pay dividends to those who entrusted it with money. Investing is a valuable aspect of Bible economics and helps money be used much more efficiently. Ecclesiastes 11:2, for example, tells us to “Divide your investments among many places, for you do not know what risks might lie ahead.” But, for a person to make money when another is suffering is immoral and that's why it's forbidden.

5. CANCEL DEBTS EVERY 7 YEARS
God made laws that debt must be cancelled every 7 years. Some people say this is unrealistic. But, we actually do almost the same thing by allowing people to declare bankruptcy. There should not be abuse of this on either side. But, people should not be forced to spend their whole lives as slaves to debt, esp. debts that they got that were not their fault as in the medical bankruptcy cases at the site at the beginning.
“At the end of every seventh year you must cancel the debts of everyone who owes you money.” Deuteronomy 15:1-3

Dr. J.W. Smith writes about some powerful reasons to follow the principle of canceling debts and not charging interest:
“There are compelling reasons for paying attention to this potential for catastrophe as, every debt crisis in history since Solon of Athens has ended in inflation, bankruptcy or war, and there is no cause to believe we've solved this one, even if it has been postponed.”(George, Fate Worse Than Debt, p. 196.)

This is particularly important in our treatment of undeveloped nations since 1 child is dying every 3 seconds solely due to extreme stupid immoral poverty and yet the real truth is this.
“An honest accounting would find the developed world owing the developing world for the destruction of their social wealth, the earlier enslavement of their labor, and the long term underpayment for their labor and resources.” (http://www.ied.info/books/ed/debt)

Thus canceling their debts is a way to avoid horrific violence and it's just basic morality in numerous cases.

========
The above is a basic overview of a few biblical principles (there are more) and it is because modern society has ignored them so completely that we have so many dire economic problems. The above would be best to follow for a host of reasons. But, it seems that it might take a war to change countries to adopt that system. But, there's another system based on the same ideas as the Jubilee that has been tried and is very easy to implement and has been tried in modern times with incredible results and has far outproduced socialism, capitalism and almost every other system that has been tried to my knowledge. The concept is basically this:
1) Natural resources were not created by anyone (religious people believe God created them. Atheists agree that no person created them) and so they must be shared equitably by all.

2) Once this basic economic right is provided to all, then everyone can follow free market economics. So, it provides for the basic needs of ALL and enough for nearly everyone to have a chance at success or whatever dream they wish to follow as well. But, at the same time, it does not support laziness, doesn't steal from the rich or tax profit making businesses out of existence. In its pure form, the government is not allowed to tax anything except natural resources and then use those for the betterment of those who are not able to own any land. These benefits should be designed in such a way as to not enable laziness, but to compel anyone who receives them to do some work for the benefits they are receiving.

3) This system works incredibly well because it gives powerful incentives for EVERYONE to be actively working and contributing to society. It does not support laziness (like socialism does), it encourages maximum entrepreneurship (like capitalism) and eliminates extreme poverty in many national and state examples (unlike modern capitalism which causes disastrous tragedies for many poor due to it's violation of the basic economic rights to natural resources that so many great leaders have recognized). It also reduces crime, the size of government, and causes the maximum number of people to be gainfully employed.

REAL EXAMPLES OF LAND RENT PRODUCING INCREDIBLE GROWTH AND ECONOMIC BENEFITS:
Here are just three of many examples of how it has worked to produce explosive growth and many benefits to nations and states:
1) TAIWAN: Taiwan, 1940s. Old Formosa was mired in poverty and fast breeding. Hunger afflicted the majority of people who were landless peasants. Less than 20 families monopolized the entire island. Then the Nationalist Army, led by Chiang Kai-shek, retreated to Taiwan. General Chiang figured he lost mainland China in part by not reforming land-holding. Chiang did not want to risk losing his last refuge east of that isle lay nothing but open ocean.

A follower of Sun Yat-sen, the father of modern China and an adherent of Henry George, Chiang knew of the Single Tax. Borrowing a page from George via Sun, the new Nationalist Government of Taiwan instituted its "land to the tiller program" which taxed farmland according to its value. Soon the large plantation owners found themselves paying out about as much in taxes as they were getting back as Rent. Being a middleman was no longer worth the bother, so they sold off their excess to farmers at prices the peasants could afford.

Working their own land with newly marketed fertilizers, new owners worked harder. They produced more, and after years of paying taxes to cover the onerous public debt, at last kept more and lived better. From 1950 to 1970 population growth dropped 40%, and hunger was ended. (Altho' Taiwan did receive a billion dollars from the US, it was mostly military aid, spread out over eight years.) Taiwan began to set world records with growth rates of 10% per annum in their GDP and 20% in their industry. (Fred Harrison, Power in the Land, 1983)

2) CALIFORNIA: 1890s. Back then, many farmers and miners went without water because cattlemen like Henry Miller owned 1,000,000 acres of land. Miller could drive his herds from Mexico to Oregon and spend every night on his own land. In 1886 Miller won full rights to the water of the Kern River.

Some people concerned with justice figured the cattlemen had gone far enough. The state government passed the 1887 Wright Act, which allowed communities to create by popular vote irrigation districts to build dams and canals and pay for them by taxing the resultant rise in land value. Once irrigated, land was too valuable to use for grazing, and the tax made it too costly for hoarding. So cattlemen sold off fields to farmers and at prices the farmers could afford.

In ten years, the Central Valley was transformed into over 7,000 independent farms. Over the next few decades, those tree-less, semi-arid plains became the "bread basket of America", one of the most productive areas on the planet. (magazine of the Historical Society of California)

3) CHINA: Confucius' Great Harmony, Calligraphy by Dr. Ernest Chu Yen
http://www.noogenesis.com/Confucius/harmony.html

Translation:
When the Great Way prevailed, the world community was equally shared by all. The worthy and able were chosen as office-holders. Mutual confidence was fostered and good neighborliness cultivated. Therefore people did not regard as parents only their own parents, nor did they treat children only their own children. Provision was made for the aged till their death, the adults were given employment, and the young enabled to grow up. Old widows and widowers, the orphaned, the old and childless, as well as the sick and the disabled were all well taken care of. Men had their proper roles and women their homes. While they hated to see wealth lying about on the ground, they did not necessarily keep it for their own use. While they hated not to exert their effort, they did not necessarily devote it to their own ends. Thus evil schemings were repressed, and robbers, thieves and other lawless elements failed to arise, so that outer doors did not have to be shut. This was called the age of Great Harmony (Ta Tung)

To conclude, both socialism and capitalism have serious flaws that are very harmful to people in several different ways. Land Rent concept is a concept that many great thinkers, including well known atheists, have agreed solves these problems and it is very similar to the biblical Jubilee system and based on the same principle. Most importantly, these systems have been tried (esp. Land Rent) and work phenomenally better than anything else in history. THAT is the key test. Now when we have extreme economic emergencies is the right time to use this wisest of all economic systems. For more details on this system and how to implement ideas like this, check out these resources:

WEBSITES FOR FURTHER RESEARCH
You can read 100s of thinkers thoughts on the crucial necessity to share natural resources, 30+ places where it has been tried and worked extremely well, practical ways to implement it and more at these sites:
· http://www.eslmission.org/docs/esl/Americas%20founders,%20philosophers,%20the%20Bible%20and%20explosive%20economic%20principles.doc (This is a book that I'm writing on this topic. It's not finished, but it has a lot of useful helps to understanding this topic as well as many links to other good sites on this topic).

· www.ied.info (Go to the free book section and download “Economic Democracy”. This is a phenomenal book that first helped me to understand why sharing natural resources was so essential and so critical to any just economic system. The synopsis is here: http://www.ied.info/books/ed/synopsis.html (This book gives well researched details on how to end poverty in 10 years. Chapter 24 refers to the land problem).

· http://www.landreform.org/reading0.htm (Summary of the Biblical basis for this idea, the Jubilee System.)

http://www.progress.org/geonomy/ Many useful links such as:

· http://www.progress.org/geonomy/geono05.htm (30 examples of land rent being used in cities, states and nations and producing explosive growth)

· http://www.progress.org/geonomy/thinkers.html and (100+ famous thinkers who recommend the land tax. Another good link with many more great quotes is: http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/georgism_01.html)

· http://www.henrygeorge.org/rem0.htm (The land rent remedy explained)

· http://www.earthrights.net/ (A good site developing that gives some nice presentations on the topic of how owning part of the earth is a natural right for all)

If we want to solve the serious problems we have today, one of the wisest things we could do is listen to those who founded our nation and designed it to maximize freedom but also to preserve human rights so that our nation could reach the highest potential possible.

Bryan Bissell

I'm sorry about the lack of formatting above. This site removed all the formatting I had. You can read the above in a much more readable version by downloading this file:
http://www.eslmission.org/docs/esl/Sharing%20Nature-an%20economic%20right%20that%20socialism-capitalism%20ignore.doc

re: Bryan Bissell's post

Please clarify these for me:

with regards to #2 (which later in #3 you say " is not possible to implement unless there is work guaranteed for every person able to work"). There is an infinite amount of work what matters is if a worker feels the reward is greater. If I want someone to mow my lawn, paint my house, etc. are they refusing to work if I offer them $1 an hour?

with regards to #3, what is an equal share of land? Is 10 acres of ocean side property the same as 10 acres of scrub brush? In your world is there inter family marriages because how does one handle the "reversion" to the original family. If I marry a woman and we are both only children does that mean my family now has to original homesteads? How about someone who has multiple siblings, do they each get a share of one homestead while my family now has two? Is that equitable?

with regards to #4 and #5, does it not seem likely that without the ability to charge interest AND a cancelling of debts that you would likely find a much smaller number of people willing to lend money? How would someone borrow money to pay for schooling if they could not find anyone to lend money because of those 2 rules?

Before going on, I could spend hours, I will wait to see if and how you address just these 3 things that are off the top of my head.

Stossel's point of view of alternative energy is right on. However, a REAL alternative energy solution is at hand. I believe the free market could take this ball and run with it and SOLVE this energy problem once and for all in 5 years or so. But the regulations are very prohibitive and increase the risk. So, what is this REAL solution ??? Thorium. Check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHdRJqi__Z8
Regards...