Hi, have to respectfully disagree with you:
First of all, I AM one of the people described here. I already live WITHOUT Credit Cards (even their ads on television give me the willies...which is one of the reasons I've turned off cable and don't watch tv anymore), hardly ever use a bank account which I am considering giving up completely if I cannot find a good reason to have one (still looking). I do not own a home and my car is paid for...old, but paid for. I do not borrow EVER. I have no health or life insurance (don't want any, either!). Heal myself when it is necessary. Even thinking about giving up my vehicle, since according to Tenavision the State owns it anyway. (A friend has offered me a mule and I have a bicycle...both are a lot more fun than a car anyway...except in the winter when I'll just have to prepare to be snuggly and warm next to the fire with my kettle of stew and my writing instruments to keep me company)

And I'm not unique. Where I come from probably a good 1/3 of the people live similarly. Many homeschool their children as well because they are tired of being told that all children must act like automatons or be 'straightjacketed'. They all grow their own gardens, some have a few chickens scratching in the back yard. What they all have in common is that they have never given up their ability to RELY on themselves. These people are artisans, ranchers, cowboys, business owners, writers, even a rather renowned sculptor. What most of them have found is that if you use your creativity FIRST, you will always get what you need. Period. It is as though it must be a natural law because it is as true as air.

I guess what I am trying to say is that to suggest that ANYTHING is beyond the Human Spirit is ridiculous. Good heavens, if you knew that a comet were on its way towards Earth and would hit tomorrow and life as we know it would vanish, would you still suggest that we can't leave our structured lives? Of course not. It is all relative. In fact, we can do ANYTHING we want to, if we just put 'will' behind our 'desire'.

Besides, considering the mess we are in, it is going to take 'Impossible' Solutions to solve it. But as Rogers and Hammerstein said: "Because some daft and dewy-eyed dopes keep building up impossible hopes, Impossible things are happening every day!"

Indeed, Impossible Solutions do not breed despair in me. Rather, tell me what I cannot do, and I will prove to you it can be done...if, of course, I WANT TO do it. ;-) Weren't you raised like that? I certainly was!

I had a friend at the Bank of America who had been shot through the head while in Viet Nam. They told him he wasn't going to live. He told them what they could do with themselves...
He was one heck of a CAN DO kind of guy. Indeed, I remember the day he went into his boss and told him about an idea he had. "Can I do it?" He asked. "No." Said his boss. "Never been done before."
"Okay, thanks" replied my friend, "Now I know how hard I have to work to get it done..." And of course, he did it.

What I got out of PuzzlePieces posting was this: Leave the System. You don't HAVE to live in it. YOU CAN stop. It is just an addiction, after all. One we pay dearly for. I can see hundreds who have stopped. Some have even gone 'cold turkey'. That means there must be thousands and even millions who ARE in the process of leaving.

After all, the system exists because we give it OUR energy. If we stop. Just stop. Stop using checks and credit and numbing our brains with television and destroying the next generation with an unworkable school system. Stop working for Mr. Big Corporation. Do you realize that in one week we could bring the entire System to its knees? We could MAKE them listen to us... That is HOW powerful we are potentially.
"...once there was a little ol man...wanted to move old mean Uncle Sam. Now everyone knows a man can't move old mean Uncle Sam...but he had High Hopes...he had High hopes...High in the sky, apple pie hopes..."
Okay, you're going to say that one little guy can't change the system. You may be right. One little guy can't change the system...for everybody else...but he CAN Change it for himself...he can 'dump it'; get rid of it. Stop using its 'implied benefits' and STOP letting IT take care of him!
Yup, one little guy...can change HIS/HER OWN WORLD. I know. I did it.
Smiles,
Esclarmonde

: >

: Inflation is a manipulated game strategy: Buckminster Fuller
: proved some decades ago that industrial conglomerates
: constantly improve the efficiency of their works and
: processes, thus always lowering the real cost of the
: products they produce, and usually improving the quality
: along the way. Any price increases which do not reflect
: major improvements in quality are either arbitrary or
: dictated by the blood-sucking bankers of the City of
: London.

: There ought not to be a CPI at all.

: Inflation serves the real or occult purposes of the Federal
: Res. by keeping us good chilluns down here on de plantation
: in a state of indenture known as "sharecropping."
: Except that where, before the dot-com era, sharecropping
: was akin to farming, after the dot commies up and died, it
: means ... 'they paid me in shares and I got cropped.'

: What you propose here is virtually impossible right now --

: 1. Do not borrow.

: 2. Burn credit cards.

: 3. Cash paychecks and pay-as-you-go

: 4. Purchase money orders when necessary to transact business
: over distance.

: No one can buy a business or a home these days without
: borrowing.
: No one can rent equipment or open a video rental account
: without a credit card of some kind or another.

: Number three is always a good idea, until you get to the bank
: at 4:02 and find the doors locked at 4:00:30 and I do mean
: locked.

: Finally, why should a person have to pay a fee to transact biz
: when cash money is supposed to be legal tender? Paying to
: use your own money is the first principle of fractional or
: reserve banking, isn't it? So we are to quit using banks
: except when it is necessary for us to use banks?

: Not the best advice I have ever heard, and not practical at
: all.

: Impossible solutions only breed despair. Try again.