FREE Been to the library lately? I've been a patron for a long time. I can't get over the way it's changed. I never thought I'd live to see the day when you could fight over a parking space at a public library. It is truly unbelievable. It's all about the internet of course. The free internet service is hard to turn down. The tables of monitors with internet access are always full, often with a waiting list. But, you know, somehow it seems appropriate. I mean, after all, the library has always been the place where you've been able to go and get free stuff. Frankly, I'm amazed that anyone buys books any more. I donate my own books to the library. I think I'd feel sort of guilty about selling them while the library system is more or less giving them away. The library concept reminds of a similar idea (albeit a bit more radical, namely, the possibility everything being free. I've always dreamed of such a day (when everything will be free). It looks like the internet is heralding the way. I'm amazed at how much free stuff is available on it. My own personal guru, Alan Watts, turned me on to this idea years ago. He pointed out (in an essay entitled Wealth vs Money) how plentiful resources are, enough for every family on the planet to have a home, and food to eat. So why doesn't it happen? Why are there homeless and starving people? Only because of some crazy mixed up idea we commonly refer to as an economic system (driven by currency). Yes, it is a system that allows some people access to those resources and keeps others away from them. Maybe, in the interests of avoiding sheer pandemonium, there is no other way to do it. But I somehow think there is. It would take an iron hand, a sort of benevolent dictator, to accomplish it, but it could be done. As I've said before, one of the biggest obstacles to universal free distribution, or free access, is the very thing we always seem to be fighting for: freedom. The rich always seem to have a way of using freedom as a smoke screen to hide behind, a way to justify their successful access to (ever-dwindling) resources. I've always considered this unfortunate. Freedom is a resource itself, one that we all should be able to share on a perfectly equal basis, in much the same way we can all vote, and know that our votes are all counted equally. Your vote is not worth more than mine, nor mine yours. We should somehow be economically free in the same way. You should not have any more access to resources than me, nor me than you. If you are a doctor, your vote does not count any more than my vote. They are perfectly equal. The choice of profession, or lack of one, matters not one whit. The same should apply to the use of resources. It should make no difference whatsoever if you're a doctor, lawyer or successful entertainer. You should have the same access to resources as a school teacher or a car mechanic. There is only one thing that prevents this equality of resource distribution from happening: a system. Too bad it's not more like the library system.
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