Building spaceships in our backyards

Have you ever wanted to build a space ship? I'm not talking about a make believe space ship made out of pillows and blankets and chairs, the kind of things kids make. I'm talking about a realy outer space rocket that could travel to the moon. I really want to go to the moon. I think that the moon is the next frontier and that we could try to bring some of our home there and make settlements on it. But how long will it really take? Don't you sometimes wish that building a space shuttle or going to outer space could be just as easy as calling your friend on the phone and going to a movie?

Well the truth is that we could all be building space ships in our back yards if we all were friends and cooperated and worked together. After all, if the people at NASA were our neighbors and friends we could just call them up on the phone and ask them for blueprints. We could email each other plans and data. We could truck each other building materials. What I'm trying to say is that money creates a barrier between people that stops them from cooperating with each other. If everyone is expecting money in return for everything, how can we give each other blueprints for data sheets? How can we give each other rocket boosters for airtight windows?

Don't you ever get bored of playing basketball in your back yard or growing gardens? Now that we are living in the space age, why can't we all be building rocket ships and going to the moon? And now that our world is suffering from carbon emissions, why can't we be building new energy efficient cars in our back yards? Why do we have to let all the powerful companies do all of the work? Doesn't it feel like an empty life just working a job to get paid to pay the bills? Haven't you ever wanted to do more and dreamed about how much you could do if there wasn't a price tag on everything?

Journey to a Moneyless World

by David Tavernier

Introduction

Dear world. I want you to quit money. I view it as a bad drug that we are all addicted to. I don’t see why we can’t all just love each other. How can a man write a book about quitting money for profit? This is a question I asked myself while thinking about this book. What would be the point of convincing everyone to stop doing what they are doing and try to embrace each other as people, all for the love of doing what we do for nothing. For more than nothing, we could do what we do for each other and for the love of one another and all mankind. Even for all the little animals and plants and all of creation.

Why not? What is there to lose from giving something up? You could ask the same thing of a drug addict. Why give up crack cocaine? Why give up PCP? Not that these things can’t be fun. It’s just that we are hooked. The system that we live in is oppressive, and yet if we all follow it there is no way out. Every day I watch people, street people, begging for money and hauling cans on shopping carts all over town. Oakland is full of homeless people, poor people, people who have been neglected and left behind to beg. So is Berkeley and so is San Francisco. Why can’t we stop this from happening? What causes people to be homeless in the first place?

I ask these questions because I want the reader to think. I want you to reach out with your mind and try to grasp what life might be like if we didn’t run around all day long trying to pursue money, but instead were doing everything that we were doing for other people. This book is a letter to the world that I feel is trapped in madness. Have you ever watched television and wondered why every ten minutes we need an advertising break? Have you ever left the house without your wallet and felt stranded because you felt like you couldn’t even ask the bus driver for a free ride? I know for a fact that if you ask, sometimes you will get a free ride. And this is because people care for each other and love each other. People need each other and want to get to know each other. So much separates us! But money is one of the biggest things that put a barrier between the people of this world.

Have you ever felt like everyone wants to break out and do something other than they do all day long? Have you ever looked at a barrister or clerk sitting at a desk and imagined them going out dancing or having fun with friend and wondered, “Why can’t we do that all day long?” Well I really think that we can. But I think that money makes it so that we are always doing things for the wrong reasons. Do you enjoy your work? Do you make friends with your co-workers? Money isn’t all we want and need. We need friendship too. Clearly people don’t just want money from a job. They want something to do, some sort of purpose in life. So why the cash? Why do we need money other than the fact that so few people will do anything for anyone they don’t know without asking for something in return, some random faceless, valueless, piece of paper or scan of the credit card that means nothing but means everything because no one will do anything without it. Why live in a world like this? I decided one day that if there was one thing that I wanted to do most in this world, it would be to convince everyone somehow that we don’t need money, and that all we need is love for each other.

Chapter 1, Why money grows on trees

I would like to start off by saying that when people say “Money doesn’t grow on trees,” it is slightly ironic because money is in fact made out of trees. Money doesn’t grow on trees, but it is trees. Do we need to chop down trees for everything we do? It would be nice if there was a mythical tree on which money actually grew, but don’t you think that people would become greedy, and that it would never be enough, and that they would eventually chop down the tree and make it into money anyway! So you see that even in a world where money grew on trees, we would never be satisfied!

The truth is that it is selfishness that divides us. Why do we have to make everyone do what we want, and why can’t we do things together as friends? Have you ever gone out with friends volunteering? I used to plant trees with Friends of the Urban Forest in San Francisco with a friend, and soon everyone I worked with seemed to become a friend sort of. We had a party after we planted trees so we could get to know each other. It was fun. I couldn’t ask for more. So why is it that every day I have to think to myself, “How will I ever do all that I want in life? How could I support my children if I had some?” But why do I need to ask these questions? The world is huge and enormous and we have enough to all live. So why do we all need to compete for what we want? Doesn’t competition turn us into enemies? Even if we love competition, doesn’t it start fights and arguments? People kill each other because they are competing and are jealous and angry with each other. Sometimes I think that we could live in a world where we don’t have to care so much about getting all that we want. If all you do all day long is try to get what you want, what is the point?

But that sad part is that often we never get what we want. We simply spend all our time trying to get there, but we only get tidbits and crumbs. You want to get married and get your PhD? It may be easy to get your PhD because you are a hard working student, but what if you don’t know how to talk to women? Will your friends help you? Can you find time while working your job to get married when you are spending all your time drawing out lesson plans? I think that we like to think so and a lot of times we do. People persevere and get what they want and they end up happy. Or so we’d like to think. However if 50% of marriages end in divorce, perhaps getting what we want doesn’t make us as happy as we would like to think. And that is why I am writing this book. This is a shout out to everyone out there who wants to change the world and make it better. To live in a world where we all realize that we are already rich and have so much more than we want is a world I want to live in. I feel like I have much more than I could possibly get and this is because I want to give. Giving is beautiful because it makes us happy more than getting what we want. And this is because a gift is often more than what we want, and because it is special and given with love. A gift is free and what we desire is always tied down and far away. We have to spend time searching and searching for it, but what we are given is already right there in front of us. How good would a world be where we didn’t have to search and search for what we wanted, and instead we just simply gave to each other what we needed and desired most. And this is love and friendship, and not money.

Chapter 2, Why Communism and the barter system aren’t what I’m talking about.

When you read the title of this book you might say to me, “You are talking about Communism aren’t you? That didn’t work out well and everyone knows that.” I think these things myself sometimes. No I am not talking about Communism. I’ve read about the history of Communism and learned about how it began in High School. I know about how badly Soviet Russia and China have suffered, and I know about how oppressive Communism cam be. I will remind you that Communism isn’t a world without money. Communists had money. They just controlled how it was distributed differently. I don’t want money. I don’t need money. I in fact hate money. Yes I will admit that I don’t like the smell of money. I don’t care too much for anything other than the faces on the money. I admire Benjamin Franklin for his inventiveness and Abraham Lincoln for trying to help us end slavery. But I don’t need to have them in my pocket all of the time. A world without money is different than a Communist world. I hate money! I will repeat this because I really do! Why do I hate money? Because it isn’t free. Because the government produces it and they also give to the banks who have all the money locked away in vaults. Because the rich and powerful hoard it and are so worried about it because they need it to keep all of their businesses running. I hate it because no one will do anything without it and because somehow we all view it as a means to all ends. We can get anything we want with money so why do we need each other? What if we spent our entire lives doing nothing but tracking how much money we had and getting what we wanted? Wouldn’t we miss out on the gift of getting to know each other?

And the truth is so many days I feel like I never get to know anyone new. I go to college and everyone is staring at their computer screens. Everyone is studying because they are so worried about their grades. When I was a Freshman I wondered to myself, “Why is everyone constantly taking so many notes? Do we have to write everything the teacher says down in a book to remember it?” I was frustrated because I loved to draw in class and somehow with everyone taking notes I felt like I had to do the same. Haven’t you ever felt like a robot, doing everything simply because you have to and not because you really wanted? I want to end all this! If there is one thing I could do it would be to change this world somehow so that people could do more of what they want. I have a dream.

My dream all started when I was homeless. Sometimes I slept outside with other people in Berkeley, lovers of trees and lovers of art who lived in tents and in houses and smoked herb and played drums. I lived with them at the Oak Grove above UC Berkeley where they were trying to cut all of the trees down for a new athletics center. I ran around San Francisco staying in shelters and sleeping outside in doorways. I picked berries for food and begged for food and wandered around trying to survive.

There was one night that was so cold it was amazing how I could even sleep. But somehow I curled up in a doorway and pulled my shirt over my head and slept all night long. When I woke up the Muni train was passing by.

“Can I have a free ride?” I asked. “I’m homeless.”

“Actually the Muni is free today. Today is Spare the Air day.”

It was one of the greatest days of my life because it felt like I had somehow been saved. I could ride all around town and go anywhere I wanted without begging for free rides, being turned down and begging again until I found a nice bus driver who would let me on.

Then I thought to myself, “If I could spend all day long riding everywhere all over town for free, why not eat for free? Why not sleep inside for free? Why don’t people do everything for free? Is the air the only thing we need to spare? What about all of the poor people who have nothing and sit and beg. Don’t they need to be spared too?”

Note that earlier in the introduction I state that it is ironic to sell a book about getting rid of money. What would I do with all of the money I got anyway? I would give it to the poor in all honesty. But not just that, I would try to get people to stop caring for money. Why do we need it? Why do we want it? If you love movies, you need money to watch them, but are movies actually made of paper? No they are highly advanced photos made with silver and other chemicals. Genius science and not just pulping paper. Not just a plastic card. I want to instill these questions into people so that they can understand what a revelation I had riding the busses and trains that day as a young homeless man. It was as if I had been given the gift of freedom for a day and it wasn’t because someone had given me a fat check. It was because people actually decided to do something for free! Imagine a world where we could all do everything we did for free, without any expectation or any reward, just because we loved each other and wanted each other to be free.

So you can see that what I am talking about is different that Communism. It isn’t the barter system either because we wouldn’t have to constantly be exchanging one thing for another. What I’m asking for is for people to let go of their selfishness and try to embrace each other. What I would like for people reading this is to wonder what it would actually be like in a world where we did everything for free. What if you could go around town on the busses for free, eat at restaurants for free, see movies for free, sleep in a house for free, do science for free? What if you could do everything you wanted all without a penny? The truth is that we can do these things! Food isn’t made of paper or gold. Records aren’t printed on silver. Cars aren’t made of gold or silver either. This is all simple common sense. Everyone knows that it is impractical to make a car out of gold because gold bends and breaks too easily. And paper tastes awful. Would you ever eat your money if you became hungry enough? I wouldn’t! I would look around for berries.

The barter system is selfish because we still can’t just do what we want to do out of the goodness of our hearts. Haven’t you ever felt overcome by how much badness there is in the world and how selfish people can be and wanted to help everyone who is in need? Do you need someone else’s DVD player to scoop some ice cream for them? That would be ridiculous if everyone ran around trading DVDs for food wouldn’t it? So that is not what I’m talking about either.

I’m addressing these questions because I feel like people have said to me that it has all been tried before and that somehow we are living as best as we can and that there is no point in changing. But a moneyless world is not a world of Communism or a world on the barter system. I don’t want those worlds either. I don’t want to run around trading chickens for nails or DVDs for ice cream. I don’t want to trade my car for a college education. I want a car and I want DVDs and I want food and I want family. I want to know how the Universe works and want to study science.

I just hate that everything has a price tag. Once I was in the elevator in the physics department at San Francisco State, and a man mentioned to me how everything was going to hell and all the money was going away from physics. I remember thinking and I wish that I had told him that physics is about much more than money. Physics is worth more than all the money in the world! That’s just how interesting physics is! Anyone out there who studies physics of all kinds should know what I’m talking about. There’s astrophysics, molecular physics, theories of gravity, theories of time travel. The field is so complex and is basically the study of how the Universe works. If God told me one day, “You can have money, or you can have physics.” I would take physics. Why? Physics is a beautiful field of mathematics and science and money is just an age old method of getting what we want. Is having everything that you want worth more than what you love? Isn’t love more valuable than money?

Chapter 3, So what are the advantages of doing things for free?

So what are all of the advantages? Why should we stop caring about money? Why should we just apply ourselves to do things for free? Would you still want to wait tables at a restaurant without getting a paycheck? Would you want to keep on doing your job? I think the truth is that some jobs are boring and no one wants to do them. Or at least that is what we all say. But sitting around the house can be boring too. The fact is that doing the same thing all the time is almost always boring. So working any job is almost always boring. But doing nothing but partying is boring too. Hangovers are killer and I think that people actually want more than just celebration. We all have wants and needs. We want wives and husbands and children. We want to go to outer space.

Haven’t you ever wanted to do something but felt cut off? Truth is I would love to work at NASA, but the degree I’m working on is Biomedical Engineering. And the truth is that I want to try to cure illnesses to. So just changing my degree doesn’t help. Sure I could get two degrees but that would take a lot of time and in all honesty studying can be very boring. Have you ever been in class and wondered why you have to listen to everything the professor has to say and can hardly say anything back? Don’t you like interacting with people and wish sometimes that you could just get straight to work without having to earn a degree?

In my ideal world I would toss out degrees and diplomas too. Why? Because they are the same thing as money. All they are is another piece of paper that gets in the way of human inventiveness.

What if you could just go to college and work on what you wanted to immediately without having to sit through boring lectures? In fact our system of education is all about money and paying all of the staff. But a lot of the staff would love to just do their research and never teach, and some of the staff would love to do nothing but teach. So why are we always finding ourselves caught in situations we don’t like? I say why not let the teachers teach and the researchers research. Some researchers might someday want to teach all about their findings. But often while researching they never teach about what they do and always have to teach a specified curriculum. Shouldn’t our teachers be able to teach what they really want to teach and not have to teach some boring curriculum specified by other people?

I’m going to all this trouble because I really think that we could live in a different world not really motivated by greed and competition but by cooperation. When I grew up I watched Sesame Street and other children’s programs on KQED and they always talked about cooperation and sharing. We always tell all our kids how important it is to share and play with each other. But how come when we grow up all of a sudden no one can share and everyone has to compete for all the resources? Why are we teaching our kids to live differently than the way we live ourselves? Isn’t it because we don’t really like our lifestyle and want to see our kids live differently. So why don’t we live the way that our children live? Children don’t chop down trees, pulp them, ink them, come up with elaborate designs and methods to prevent counterfitting. They don’t need any of these things. So why do we adults need so badly to protect ourselves? Are we really that bad?

Think about what it would be like to wake up and every day was the weekend. Didn’t you love the weekend as a kid and how finally you could stay home and watch cartoons and play with friends? Well the world could be like that. We live by a schedule that is constantly asking us to do whatever necessary to get the money we need to pay for everything we need. What if some day all of this could end and we could finally live every day without a schedule? What if instead of constantly going where we are supposed to be going, we were going where we wanted to go, and we could leave if we wanted to leave?

Well the world is like that in some ways. We have our freedom to earn what we want by working and slaving away. We call this freedom, but is it really freedom? Can you call a world free where everything has a price tag? Isn’t it ironic that we think that capitalism is freedom, but we are really just locking everything up and putting pricetags on every single thing? Sure we have everything that we want. It’s right there on the store shelves. But didn’t we already have everything we wanted already? Do we really need to box everything and price everything in order to give what we need to each other?

I love Christmas and I’m not too religious but I love it because it is all about giving gifts. Instead of trying to get what we want, we run around asking each other what we want and get it for each other. It seems so much more fun than running around getting everything for ourselves. And this is because we want to know each other and please each other. Pleasing yourself is so hard, but sometimes just a hug or a bite to eat for a friend is enough to make them happy. Do you get really happy every time you buy a cup of coffee for yourself? I don’t think so. But sometimes buying a cup of coffee for a girl can make a good date and you can fall in love.

At the office, what if you could play whatever music you wanted instead of whatever is on the musak? There are homeless people who carry boom boxes and play music on the streets. I once met a homeless guy who had a solar panel attached to a laptop and all he did was blast music to the distress or pleasure of everyone else. I loved that guy. Why? Because he was trying to free the world. Think of what the world would be like if you could carry a boom box to work and blast work and blast what you wanted while you ran around doing what you had to do. Why is this possible without money? Because if your boss was your friend and you were working with each other and not for each other you could even get to know each others musical style and preference. Why do we have to sit around listening to musak and all the popular hits? No one loves everything that is popular. Everyone has their own taste and wants to express that.

Sometimes I wonder why we have so many rules. Why can’t we eat and drink on the busses and trains? Why can’t we play music out loud? Why do we have to sit in silence and boredom? Sound is how we communicate. Isn’t controlling the soundwaves of the world removing our freedom? Haven’t you ever wanted to shout in the Library because everyone is being so quiet? Do we really need complete silence to read? I could read at a rock concert so why not have a rock concert in the Library? There are so many innovative ideas that I have that I feel like money crushes and destroys. It isn’t hard to clean up food messes so why can’t we eat on the bus or train? Why can’t we listen to music out loud? There is an oppressive force in the world that has everyone doing what they are told and fearing punishment. If we break a rule then someone will write us a ticket and we will lose what we love. But if there were no money then there would be no tickets or fines. We could play whatever music we liked or eat wherever we wanted. We could all ride the busses for free and we wouldn’t need so many cars or so much pollution.

Wouldn’t you like to work a job where everyone could blast music and eat and have fun even while working? Why do we need so many rules? I say that it is because we are so concerned about our wallets and our budgets. We are so concerned about taking other peoples’ money that we want to create an image that will get them to pay us as much as they will. We are really deceiving each other and putting on a show to get paid in cash. But the truth is that these corporate images are really boring and hardly as creative as what we could come up with if we actually cared for the world and not our wallets. Haven’t you ever seen a mural of nature and wondered why it is so beautiful? What about mankind and our technology, science fiction and the future, robots and electronics? We live in a truly beautiful world. So why does everything have to be stamped with corporate logos? Why do we need slogans and names and signs and advertisements everywhere that are boring and deceptive? Sometimes I get tired of all of the billboards and wonder what better creative ideas we could come up with.

Have you ever watched the Jetsons or Star Trek and wished that we could be in the future right now because of all of the crazy ideas? The truth is that we have to build the ideas and devices of the future ourselves! But if we spend all of our time trying to sell each other the same old thing or product, where will be the innovation? Sure there is innovation now, but there are days where I wish that I myself was already a robot with a cybernetic brain and metal arms and legs. There are times where I wish that the streets played music and moved by themselves. Did you ever go to an airport and walk on the conveyor belts and wish that they could be everywhere? Isaac Asimov, a well known Sci-Fi writer wrote about how in the future we could walk on these moving strips everywhere. Whenever I hear about plane crashes, I wonder why they happen, and often I think that it is because we are constantly making the same planes and need to develop safer models. What is a safer plane? I’m not sure. There are people who want to develop anti-gravity or methods of propulsion that don’t rely on combustion. These methods may be safer and lead to less crashes.

People argue that competition drives our creativity, and this may be true, but competition does not necessarily require money.

God and a moneyless world

What does the bible have to say about money? It says that it is the root of all evil in this world! Believe it or not, Jesus himself said that you cannot both serve God and money at the same time. Satisfying our own need for money can never come before God. Jesus also noted that in his time God was not the man on the face of the coin. So God himself does not claim to own money or want money. God in fact gave us this entire world all for free. Does God ask us anything in return for the air we breath or the food and water we drink? No. He only asks for our thanks and praise. For or love and worship. For our friendship.

So why should we live in a world where we demand more from each other? If God, the greatest being in all creation does not demand more than love, why should we? I see so many people suffering day after day because of money, because we lock up everything that everyone needs behind closed doors and force people to slave away or beg for everything they need. What if we opened those closed doors? Can you imagine how many people could live in all of the office buildings and all of the stores and all of the cafes?

Live in cafes, live in department stores? I know what you are thinking. This doesn't make any sense. How could you imagine that some people would live inside of stores? The truth is that when I was homeless, all I could imagine was a warm place to sleep. There were times when I would sleep out in the cold without any blankets, simply stuffing my head into my shirt and sleeping in doorways. What I wanted most was an open door when all the doors were locked. Imagine how happy I would have been if one of those department stores could have left their doors open so that I could sleep in some place warm. I wanted so badly to sleep in a store! Can you imagine what it would be like being homeless, and every where you go all the doors are locked? All you want is an open door. All you want is warmth. During the daytime you can lie in the sun and be warm, but night for a homeless person is real suffering, especially if you don't have blankets and you have to sleep in a doorway out on the concrete.

This is why I beg the world in the name of God to forget about money! Listen to God if you will listen to no one else and understand that it really is the root of so much evil between men. I want to inspire people to think beyond their wallets and understand that money really is just paper. Aren't trees more amazing than a dead piece of paper? God tells us that we should not kill, and so shouldn't we respect the trees and understand that killing trees isn't the lightest matter? We need shelter, we need warmth, but do we really need money? Why do we have to put a value on everything when God gave it all to us for free? And don't you sometimes feel like America is hypocritical in calling itself a “free country”, “of the people by the people and for the people,” when everything in America has a price tag and so many of the people in America are homeless and poor, have no job, and are abandoned on the streets