If everyone gave what they could, then we'd all have everything we need and then some..

If you pay it forward, it'll come back around.

Thoughts?

I dont understand what you mean, care to expand?

does not seem to work that way on this planet

the Venus Project is working on making the sharing everything idea real, if thats what youre looking for

You can't give away everything and expect survival to continue.

If taken literally at face value, that philosophy would lead to a recursion loop of giving. Get food, give food away, get food, give food away.

You have to actually consume some of the things you acquire.

At that point, you are no longer technically paying it all forward, and at this point, a resource shortage will occur until no more resources exist unless someone (or something in a hypothetical robot future) expends energy to obtain them.

Now you got a dilemma. John produces X units of resources, but requires consumption 2X units of resources to survive. Jane produces 6X units of resources, but only requires X units for survival. Clearly Jane must provide John's missing X for him to survive.

Now, change the situation, where there are three possible end states. High Quality of Life (QOL), Low QOL, and won't survive.

John produces X unites, requires 5X for a high quality of life, 2X for a low quality of life, and anything else he won't surive. Jane produces 6X, requires 5X for a high quality of life, X for a low quality of life, and anything else, won't survive.

Jane now has a choice, have a high quality of life, and let John die (obviously a poor decision), or have a high quality of life and let John survive, or give John a high quality of life and maintain a low quality of life for herself.

What should she do? This is over simplified, but the essential state of the problem. Everyone working together to redistribute resources fairly based on needs hypothetically could produce a higher mode (most common value) for quality of life. However communism's planned economy hasn't had much success in long term survival as an economic model of government, since it eliminates an extremely strong motive to produce more resources (a higher quality of life being that motivation) since it their work no longer has a direct impact on the result. You'd need an internal reward system that rewards production of resources, not personal gain of resources, and we aren't wired that way.

A free market economy exploits that inherent desire as a motivation, leading to larger resource production in the society/species, but a huge gap in quality of life based. Moderated with some socialist policies, it allows an increase in the low resource producers quality of life while still keeping the the resource production motivation there for the high resource producers, ideally creating a net gain in quality of life (assuming that not all resources redistributed from the people they originally came from weren't increasing the quality of life in the same relative amount).

So... if we all payed it forward, ideally, if production did not suffer because of it, and planning was done to ensure all needs were met to give an equal quality of life to everyone, it'd be perfect.

Unfortunately, we aren't wired that way.

it is what i do...... and say what you want. but i have a very happy and fun life.... i think it can work... but ego has to go... we are taught not to be that way.... bigger and more is better..he who has the most toys wins? i know everyone would not work for the same goal. but if you dont want to work.. its fine with me just move over so i can... some like busy, some like lazy, but i believe imo it could work if the population was checked... and we are not wired that way..... but we could start to change i think... what we have is not working... how do you pay it forward? respect.. Oden

Here's a fun interpretation (don't take it too seriously):

We already do pay forward everything we produce. When we sell our output (eg: our labour, for most of us) we accept nothing material in return. We are happy to do work for nothing except bits of paper, and since most of us are paid electronically, we don't even get that. We do labour for someone, and a number changes in a computer database somewhere.

We call that number our bank balance, we think of it as representing money, but money is just an abstract concept! It's not real wealth. Our bank balance is the accumulated goodwill we have received for our services. By abstaining from consumption even longer - that is, by saving - the bank shares the good will around and in return our balance increases. That balance represents how much we have paid forward - ie: it represents real wealth that we could redeem, but have chosen not to. We can draw upon that balance and even go into debt, in which case we will need to pay it back.

If borrowings are paid back, then savings are paid forward.

Of course you will consume what you aquire,you get what you need.But you must be very naive if you believe that there are more people that have less than they need than people that have more than they need

If you'd read the rest of my post instead of stopping once you find something you disagree with, I'd appreciate it.

I do. It is sometimes hard to understand how one person 'walking the walk' can make a difference but I have many stories to tell where my determination made a decent impact to some degree. If you calculate this over a lifetime you will see how embodying the philosophy you follow makes a dramatic impact on your world. One determined person can make a difference.

I often times do this...for instance if I do a favor for a stranger and they try to repay me I'll often times just tell them to pay it forward.

I think it's a beautiful concept and honestly it does seem to work to some degree. Those that are willing to give more
do indeed seem to receive more. Of course if you are only keeping score with money your milage may vary.

Don't let the negative vibes of some ruin your enthusiasm. Just because some lack the vision to imagine a world were everyone took care of everyone else doesn't mean that others can't try to live exactly such a life. In fact those that do tend to raise the entire world up.

For sure it's not likely that any sort of world caring/peace will be achieved in our lifetimes, but there is literally nothing stopping many of us from living as though it were already so...in fact the only way it will ever happen is if individuals embrace it one by one.

Peace.

I stumbled across a nice example of the pay it forward philosophy in action a few weeks back.