What would happen if you were put into a store that had everything you needed or wanted or could possibly use and were told just take what you need or want and the only thing you had to do was leave something of value there. Either something you made or grew or some service you can provide. No money or anything. Just something useful.

Well we are nearly at that point now with our technology.  Not just here but in every developed country in the world. We can make and produce and provide in vast quantities almost enough stuff to make life unbelievably boring for nearly everyone in this country as well as most of the rest of the world. That there is still hunger in so many places is not due to an inability to produce food but an unwillingness to distribute it without compensation.

We are still using an economic model that is over a hundred years old. That worked very well when Production of what ever was needed pretty much equaled the people's need for it. Now (and for quite a bit of time) our ability to produce vastly outstrips the need. So what do we do ? First we try to generate more need artificially.  And when that no longer works we attempt to curtail production some which way. But that causes as many problems as the over production does since curtailing production keeps people from being able to consume which leads to a slump and the whole damn mess just repeats itself. On and on ... Ad infinitum.  Not only that as the technology improves, this will occur more and more often and be worse each time. 

GM nearly went under not because they did not produce decent cars but because they could and did produce an order of magnitude more than they could sell. Maybe even give away.  The housing market crashed not just because people could not buy houses but fewer people wanted them. We keep grains and other food stuffs in warehouses to make sure the farms don't go broke because of surpluses.  We have the technology to produce vast amounts of solar and wind energy and eventually other forms as well so our need for fossil fuels will get less and less.  Electric cars will last twice as long as gas or diesel.

All this is going on now and will continue, yet we insist on patching together and ancient economic system MacGyver style with duct tape and paper clips and hope it will keep working. After reading the text of the State Of The Union, I am left with another impression of rerun of MacGyver economics.  The sad part is that neither party sees this. The republicans think that an unencumbered market will do the trick. That it will curb itself when the last 20 years has show that this has never been the case. And the democrats think all they need to do is change the color of the duct tape and size of the paper clips.

I wonder just what it will take to change this mind set not only in the politicians but the public at large.