Quote from: 4v4l0n42 on July 05, 2011, 03:30:16 PM

Quote from: Rassah on July 05, 2011, 03:28:43 PM

That sounds like trying to convince people not to eat fatty foods, not to smoke, or even not to breathe, since seeking to enrich ourselves is pretty much our natural biological function.

That sounds like you haven't been reading much about the RBE.

Regarding your programmed obsolescence, two examples against that come to mind. First is Japanese cars in the 70's vs US cars and Japanese cars in the 90's vs US cars. In the 70's, US cars dominated, because Japanese ones were unreliable clunkers. Japan fixed that, and is now dominating the market with cars that are more durable than US ones. Just 30 years ago, cars were expected to last maybe 50k miles, and were expected to die after 100k. My Civic today has 210k miles on it, and still runs perfectly. Reason for this drastic improvement in durability and efficiency? Japanese companies wanted to be more profitable than US companies (part of the result was US car companies almost going out of business)
Example 2 are power tools. Sure, we have a lot of crappy quality Made-in-China stuff going around, but which companies make the most profit on power tools? The ones promising that their tools are tough, dependable, and won't accidentally kill you on the job.

Finally, if what you propose is free, sustainable, can have people simply volunteering their time, and is a better alternative than what we have, then why doesn't it exist yet? What are the barriers to getting it done? (I'm guessing it needs LOTS of money, or LOTS of people willing to abandon their paying gigs and start doing stuff with no money/food/resource rewards)