If your values are not related to the Earth or realistic, you'll believe in things that aren't so, which will hurt you in the long run, and as a species, too.

War, poverty, corruption, hunger, misery, human suffering will not change in a monetary system. That is, there will be very little significant change. It’s going to take the redesign of our culture and values.

In a monetary system, most of us live near our work with a house, car, and lifestyle we can afford (or, all too often, cannot afford), rather than the one we prefer. We are only as free as our purchasing power permits. Even many wealthy people today select a residence mainly to impress others with their status. Lacking a true sense of self worth, many live to impress others.

What will drive people if they don't have money or reward? The reward is the end of war, the end of poverty, most crime, and the end of begging for medical care. Everyone will be cared for and educated. There will be no taxation, and no advantage group. No technical elitism, or any other kind of elitism. If that isn't incentive enough, then I don't know what is.

If you remain conventional and don't change, you'll get along. You'll get along in the limited forms of insanity that exist out there. You'll never be able to keep a marriage together, you'll never be able to keep anything together, because the whole goddamn thing isn't together.

You cannot advocate decency and ethics, you must design the conditions that eliminate the problems. In scarcity, people will tend to steal. If you make things available, people tend not to steal.

Working with drug addicts, alcoholics, and so-called juvenile delinquents in New York City convinced me that instead of working with individuals, more effective methods would deal with the societal conditions that create dysfunctional behaviors in the first place.