The following is a long list of brainstorming ideas.

Idea number “0″ is of fundamental importance and serves as a basis for the remaining concepts, although they are mostly not dependent on it.  My belief is that without at least acknowledging the individual, there is little point in carrying on.

0. Part A.  Individual Liberty and Misplacing Blame

Do not blame “the free market” for the problems of this world.  A true free market does not exist.  A free market is what results when people are free. It means that people voluntarily exchange goods, services, and ideas. It means that the people involved are not committing fraud, stealing, or utilizing coercion in any way, shape or form.

A moral society demands that all individuals have a right to their own lives, their own liberty, and their own pursuit of happiness.  It took each of us 13.7 billion years to arrive, and we are here for a short time.  No individual, or group of individuals should be so arrogant that they feel that they can morally impose their will on anyone else: Not Ted Kennedy, not George Bush, not Jesus, not Jacobal Lectomen,  nor even Upgrade01A .  Nobody and no machine, no matter how sophisticated,  is qualified to know what is best for you or any individual; only the individual can decide.  The individual is ultimately responsible for her actions.  Not even the “majority” of people have a right to tell you what to do, because that is just mob rule.

To prevent people from stealing from other people (by taking their wealth or by interfering with their individual rights of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness), I propose that we set up an institution that is designed to prevent that sort of thing from happening.  This institution will replace or serve as a modification to existing governments.  This time around, let’s place limits on their power (those in charge of running the institution) in very explicit terms, since the institution has a unique monopoly on power in that they have the authority of the use of force in order to pursue and capture criminals.  Such an institution, with those awesome powers ought not be involved in other activities, less they use these powers on corruptible ways.  So far as I know, this concept has only been tried one time in the history of civilization, but the mistake was that too much power was granted to it, and too many loopholes were written into it’s contract (it’s constitution).
The truth is, regardless of what type of society we have, we need some way to manage criminal activities, thus the same issues and problems and imperfections will apply, so that should be kept in mind when criticizing any plan.  All systems have the core issue:  ”better that N guilty people go free than  to have M innocent people unjustly punished” There is no way around it.  The ideal that has so far not been achieved is to set both M and N to zero.  That is the ideal goal, but is not realistic.  Realistically, for M to be zero, N will be 100% (no institution) and the reverse is true (totalitarian) with M at 100% and all of the guilty holding the keys, guns and whips.
If we cannot protect the minority of the individual, then we have no hope of protecting any minorities, not the least of which are the poor, neglected people in the third world.  A large group of individuals.
Part B.  Consumption Costs and Taking Responsibility for One’s Actions
Something like 80% of the cost of virtually all products consists of the cost of energy.  Since all individuals have equal rights, then each individual is responsible for paying for the cost of any energy she requires in order to produce any goods, services or information.  Once she has paid for everything associated with it’s production and gas done so without violating the rights of anyone else, she has the right to do whatever she likes with what she has produced, including trading it voluntarily with someone else.  I’d anyone interferes with that process, they are immoral and arrogant.  It is at that moment, when the institution we have set up may act.
Now, suppose an individual decides he no longer finds any value with an item, and he decides he would like to dispose of it.  Of course, he is responsible for paying the cost of disposal.  He may find that there is a disposal service that will dispose the item.  The disposal service must do that without interfering with anyone else’s rights.
There is no requirement for any individual to consume more than they freely choose.  They may choose to consume only small amounts of food and large amounts of information.  Only the individual has the right to decide for herself.
Individuals are free to negotiate the price of any goods, services, or information, including giving away the items for free, if they so choose. I do that, for some things, as do most.

1. Encourage telecommuting  (I am working from home at the moment, and my company encourages it).  You save lots of energy and resources that way.
2. Reduce interventionism, starting be pulling out of Iraq.  Gradually phase out intervention in the 130 or so countries we live in now.
3. Create charities that help people live in there own countries.  The Bill Gates Foundation is a wonderful example of this, where the foundation is working on wiping out malaria.  Warren Buffet, Obama’s chief economic adviser is the largest contributor (other than the Gates family).  Most of these countries need plenty of pure drinking water, which I get to later down my list.
4. Legalize Hemp.  Legalize medical marijuana.
5. Teach children around the world how to use the internet to do research.  Follow the model of MIT and create free, online, open source schools with language translation software, high-speed connections.  Encourage “out-of-the-box” brainstorming and thinking.  Encourage ideas like the ones here, some are good, some not so good. Some will stimulate other ideas that will work better.  We should no longer be restricted to working in one narrow field.  All of us have ideas.  Some will spark others.  Let the memes replicate!!!!  Let them mutate!  Write open source storie!  Write open source poems that include links to other ideas including music, science and poetry! Write open source philosophy!  Make your own movies and tv shows! Think of new ways of storing and manipulating data.
6. Come up with ways to create products directly in the home or at something like a Kinko’s.  Print your products and contribute to the design.  Print your own chairs.
7. this is an idea I have been thinking about by integrating various known technologies:  Instead of pumping carbon into the air, when burning coal to generate electricity, for example,
(a) pump the pre-scrubbed gas directly into a large cavern under the ground.  The cavern will be quite large and deep.  The cavern may contain an algae pond at the bottom
(b) punch thousands of tiny holes at the top of the cavern over a few acres of land so that the gas may escape over several locations spread out evenly.  There may be
air pressures involved, causing gradients that may be exploited for additional energy recapture.
(c) Populate the ground above the ground with carbon-loving bacteria and thousands of soil eating earthworms closer to the surface.
(d) cover the ground with a ground plant that loves carbon
(e) cover the ground with trees.  research the best trees
(f) cover the roof of the coal plant with solar panels, if they are efficient in the area where the coal plant is, which should be built very close to the actual coal deposits.  Use the
solar panels to generate the power consumed by the plant itself
(g) float helium-filled generators over the roof, at least 300 feet above, to the height where the wind is always blowing to generate additional power.
(h) supplement the trees with air-carbon extraction units.
8. Another idea I have thought about: Build a fish-recognition “net”.  Just as Las Vegas Casinos, have very sophisticated face-recognition technology, we could develop fish-recognition software to do this.   High-protein, common fish would be directed down one path.  Fish of interest to scientists would be sent down
another path (very wide tube).  This path can be activated and deactivated so that it captures only a certain number of fish of any kind desired.  Endangered fish and dolphins could be directed into another direction.
9. Stop corn subsidies since it is a waste and based on the same logic as a perpetual motion machine, stop tobacco subsidies, stop water subsidies to alfalfa growers in California.  Not only does the alfalfa suck up a lot of water, since the farmers can get their water on 10 cents on the dollar, it makes red meat much cheaper which is bad for health in large quantities.  Animal-based food is less efficient than directly eating plants.  Cutting off subsidies will automatically be reflected in price differences.  Meat will be more expensive
10. Utilize ocean water for the toilet facilities that are near the ocean.
11. Recycle water like the Toyota Financial Services facility in Torrance does.  They filter the water and reuse it to wather their landscape and to use in their fountains and toilets.
12.  As we pull out of oil producing counties and as we use up more oil, the prices will naturally rise.  Once it hits $200 per barrel, then solar power technology as of the year 2000 becomes economical.   Surely the progress in this field is improving so that the newer technologies will become cheaper and cheaper.  There is much work in this area, where the entire spectrum of the sunlight can be used.
13.  There are new and improved technologies that are much more economical to desalinate ocean water and others that can use any water (see the guy who invented the Segway’s invention).  Utilize these technologies as a carrot to countries in Africa and Asia to help find terrorists like Bin Laden.  The point is to encourage the capturing of criminals and discouraging the bad war paradigm that does not work.
14. Since Global Warming will cause the ocean levels to rise, we should be using technologies to help us remove this excess water and make use of it.  One is converting the ocean water into drinking water, another is capturing the minerals such as salts and gold using nanotechnology.  A giant space station will need billions of gallons of water to protect life from gamma ray and other cosmic ray bursts.  We can build electro-magnetic rails inside near-vacuum tubes that will have very low friction to create extremely high-speed rails to slowly increase the speed of a rocket full of supplies, such as water, into space. The external engines could be attached to the end of the rail launcher and attached to the rocket at the last moment.  The launching tube could be several miles long, on the equator to exploit the high speed of that location due to the rotation of the earth.
15. Private space exploration can retrieve Helium-3  from the moon and economically harnessed to generate non-radioactive fusion power (when combined with with deuterium – FROM THE OCEAN mostly)
16. Build a city on the ocean to integrate many of these ideas.  Oceanographer would work side-by-side with other scientists to study the earth’s ocean, extract deuterium, generate wind power, develop new battery technology, capture protein from fish, purify drinking water, extract hydrogen.  The city would be a series of specially design craft able to link together and separate, so that many parts of it could move to different areas.  It would be situated outside of major storm areas.  Microorganisms could be filtered, captured and converted into nanomachines of various types.  The city could be covered with solar nanopaint.  Windmills could be covered with solar panels and used as another type of hybrid energy generator.  They could be attached to new battery technology or air pressure chambers – both can store energy for later use.
17. Exploit resources on asteroids.  Start by going after the ones that are close to Earth and may someday threaten the Earth.
18. Exploit resources on Mars, on comets, on Jupiter’s moons.
19 Utilize already existing technology to project holograms of people so that they need not travel to give presentations.
20. Synchronize traffic lights and include integrated technology inside cars. Have the cars slow down, but avoid stopping as much as possible. Synchronize the cars so that they do not need to stop most of the time.  Volvo already has breaking technology that could be adapted for this.  They use AI neural nets modeled after dragon fly brains that are used to avoid collisions by automatically applying the breaks.
21. Put motion detectors on street lights, so that they need not stay on all night.  One motion could trigger a chain of lights in front of the driver who may be the only one on the road at 3 AM.
22. Utilize technology to eliminate the need for assembly line technology.  Use little robots to move the inventory around.  This is already being done in some situations
23.  Develop a robot that can put a pillow case on a pillow.  Develop a robot that can change the oil on your car and do simple repairs on its own.  These are two hard problems, much harder than playing chess or even walking.
24. Have electric charging “slots” at traffic lights.  A little latch (like a those on a slot car) can lower itself down and recharge the car while it is waiting.  Wireless recharging could be utilized even cheaper.  This is new technology that is almost ready for prime time.

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