GOD DAMN IT! It is not someone's wealth that is the problem, it is the CLIMATE OF ATTITUDE.

Far too many people think that as long as they got theirs, and claim that having no limits wont hurt others, IS WHAT IS HURTING and in the process buy government to keep it that way. Not all wealthy people do this, but far too many.

It should not be a class war but it IS and it is not because of the middle class or the poor. It is the fault of corporate America masturbating jealously over the profits of China and India and the slave labor they use to beat us.

I don't see free trade as a problem. In normal circumstances, if there is a trade imbalance, the currencies move up or down to correct the imbalance.

But the USA debt is so huge now that the only way to service it is sell it to foreigners. So our dollar go out to buy from other countries, then the dollars come back to buy or massive debt at all levels federal, state, business and personal.

So it pretty much a vicious cycle, the foreign dollars are not coming back to fund jobs but to buy debt. Every time this has happened before in history, it inevitable leads to more an more crisis until we just default on all the debt.

So if there is going to be reform after the crash, we need to stop being a nation of debt.

There is no real free trade. Free trade is just an ideal that some people at least seem to believe in. It only works if everyone really believes in it, but not everyone really believes in it. Some groups just pay lip service it while seeking to game the system towards their own advantage. Even if everyone did believe in the ideals of free trade it would still not work in the long run because the underlying assumptions are flawed. Free trade will not always make things better for everyone because resources are limited, and sometimes one person’s gain is another person’s loss. When resources are plentiful this isn’t true as often, but when resources become scarce the ideals of free trade become a liability. I believe that we are entering into such a time right now. I know that my views about this are in a minority on this site, but there are other people who share my thinking. If you want to learn more about it you should check out this site. Right now other countries, like France and China, seem to be trying to prepare for the future. Other countries seem to be hardly registering that there is a serious problem. America seems to be completely in denial. I think that the high prices that resource constraints are causing are responsible for a large part of the recent stagnant economic growth, and I believe that things aren’t going to get better without addressing the underlying problems. I know that everyone has some group or ideology they blame, but I think that by ignoring the very real physical challenges that are facing all of us they aren’t getting a clear picture of how things really are.   

I agree with the OWS that lending money that depends on garnishment of one's future labor should be made illegal. The student loans, mortgages and payday advance loans that keep the working man in debt just are not working out for anyone. Ownership of natural resources which require not labor to create should be banned.

But a lot of people get rich from government money. The leftist insist on programs like medicare, they money ends up in pockets of big pharmacy or billionaires like Ross Perot. We need a system where money is only transferred for necessary labor or wise investments. Taxation facilitates a money for nothing economy.

This is where your theory of human behavior fails you. People need a big carrot and a big stick to motivate them to do a good job. What is to motivate these 'experts' to do a good job? The problem is the 'experts' have no skin in the game.

Good investment require good do diligence. So if a government official isn't going to lose money or lose his job when an investment goes bad, why should he bother with doing the hard work to find out if the people he gives money or in the case of RBE resources is a good idea. That's why are schools are failing, no one loses their job or their pension when they do. Solyndra was a bad investment, but does any of the 'experts' lose their job and pension over it? No.

And societies need to dump the archaic idea of needing a leader. Be a leader of your own life. Politicians need to be public servants that can be fired when they screw up.

But science tells us that humans are not motivated by morals or ethics. We just want to experience pleasure and avoid pain. We're all just essentially drug addicts looking for a fix.

Suppose advanced technology could create a device that could introduce heroine or oxytocin into my system every time I was generous, loving and caring, they way you believe I should behave. Pretty soon I'd turn into a bleeding heart leftist, help everyone I saw in need and join OWS in camping out. So, would I be practicing 'advanced ethics' or am I just a junkie doing whatever I can to get my next fix? But isn't this just pretty much the way we always behave? Social pressure is like this morality drug because it controls behavior by making people feel good or bad.

The other reason people can have 'advanced ethics' is that we are essentially rats in a cage without mandatory birth control.

Why should I care about the poor of the world if the world is not willing to do what it takes to end it?

Who would be motivated to create such technology if you don't reward them? Why would people worry about crashing their car or having their house go up in flames? The government gives you a new home.

Sounds like RBE would be like Soviet Communism, the government steals everything there is so there is nothing left for the regular theives to steal. Yes I can see RBE eliminating theft.

Another byproduct of too many people chasing too few opportunities.

Well when the 'globe' decides that it is a collective responsibility to do family planning, I'll give a shit.

When then how can there be universal healthcare if everyone decides that taking care of the sick is 'shitty' work?

So you believe in free will despite all the evidence to the contrary?

I don't agree with Dawkins. As soon a ape ancestors realized that fucking produced babies, we practiced contraception of some form. Either avoiding sex for fear of pregnancy or withdrawal. If you strike out with a woman in a bar, isn't she practicing contraception the old fashioned way? So why didn't it die out in the millions of years of evolution if it works 'against our genes'? Because we're concerned about quality of offspring not just quantity. The pill is just technology to do this.

So evolution produced worthless shit? Are all hormones shit because they make us do things that have nothing to do with being 'socially aware'?

Maybe my parents were cockroaches.

Only scientists with a political agenda would facepalm. I've have or I can give evidence for all the claims I've made. If I'm wrong about something, I want evidence to show I'm wrong. The RBE disciples on the other hand don't try to create a living laboratory to silence the critics.

In the society you want, you replace money with social acceptance, which becomes the carrot and stick. You say this because you don't have evidence, so I'm supposed to come around to your ways out of social shame. Isn't that how it works in an RBE society?

You just told us that insects can't love, but humans and higher mammals can. So isn't this a function of the genetic difference?

The nervous system is not just something that can solve problems. The algorithm that it runs is get pleasure and avoid pain, built for to induce or avoid behaviors that have enhanced survival.

Again I disagree, narcotic addition works because it simulates the sensations than have been normally associated with beneficial behaviors, in this case sex. It stimulates the brain's pleasure centers similarly to orgasm. I don't know where you get this bad scientific information, but I can show you tons of evidence that narcotics simulate sexual pleasure sensations. That is why they are so highly addictive.

But you want a society where there both free, so why not have the baby and try to make me pay for it?

Well I believe the income gap would end if we made the reforms I want to do.

In your system, I agree there will be an even distribution of wealth. Everyone will have nothing.

I can dismiss your arguments as incoherent just by using logic and common knowledge:
Our daily lives are not special, they do not give us many strong stimuli in form of pleasure or pain. This is why we react to pleasure or pain so strongly, it's a relatively rare thing. If they would be more common, people would adjust, they would increase their tolerance. We see it when junkies or terminally ill patients need to increase their doses of opiates. Also, when soldiers return home they feel absolutely unmotivated by the ordinary life, because they get used to much higher levels of adrenaline. They get this attitude of "when the life is not at stake, nothing is at stake".

So the question is, what are our brains doing in the majority of time, when they're not prodded by pain nor pleased by endorphines? THEY fucking LIVE. Vast majority of people avoid extremes of pleasure and pain! They enjoy the small and simple joys of life, because they are sensitive, perceptive and socially aware enough for that. People who alternate between strong pleasure and pain are either low on social scale, mentally unstable or extravagant artists.

RBE is different in the aspect, that people aren't motivated to steal or accumulate anything. If you know there will be another meal at the right time, you've got no reason to snatch the potatoes from table into your pockets. If you can borrow anything from a distribution center and when your room's too cluttered you can return it back, (by automatic delivery service) there is no reason to keep stuff. You can't sell it anyway, without money. 
Also, RBE is based on scientific solutions. Soviet Communism was based on unproven ideology of Marx and Engels. And capitalism is based on equally absurd ideology of equal and free market for everyone and that growth can be sustained forever.

You can not explain the complexity of human behavior by genes and hormones. That is, as Brian says, archaic and simplistic.

As for the carrot and stick, again, archaic and simplistic.

When something flies to my eye and I close the eye sooner than I realize it, that's the rare moment of nerve system taking care of my survival. Otherwise there is really no need most of the time.

As long as you're healthy and satisfied, mind rules over body. With nerds it's all the time, the dictature of the brain. Cerebral prison, that is. Oh, what would I do to release the primitive wild beast in me! The physical reflexes, emotional reactions, it's such a precious and fragile thing under the burden of intellect.

But seriously, why everyone should have nothing? In RBE the production processes will be so automatized and sophisticated, that people would actually have more goods and services available than today. I mean, meaningful goods and services. Today's consumer society overwhelms us with meaningless choices, we have, for example dozens of car brands of exactly the same cathegory and function and we try to sell them to each other. That is a waste and it is a reason why in RBE we will be all more economically secure. What about one electric, silent car-like vehicle rules them all? What about one personal computer that sums up all personal computer uses and is compatible, modular, updateable, repairable and recyclable? What about one raw material for clothes, customizable on the printer with whatever design you want? 

Taxation is unsustainable over time, our country and Europe are demonstrating this. Every year more 'needs' that are met by government and less revenue to pay for it.

For both of you your big stick is social shame. You only prove that big carrots and big sticks are the only motivators. The problem is this is a motivator for you, but not for the 'greedy' types.

Way to avoid the question. How are 'experts' going to be highly motivated to do a good job with investing public resources if they have no skin in the game?

The Venture Capitalists in silicon valley studies Solyndra and said no. We all know what greedy bastards they are so if it was a good investment they would have done so. So why did the government 'experts' decide Solyndra was a good investment? Is there another conclusion besides 'they had no skin in the game'?

Maybe I should move there.

I think your understanding of what really motivates people has to start with the brain.

http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/i/i_03/i_03_cr/i_03_cr_par/i_03_cr_par.html

Motivation and learning behaviors is all about neurotransmitters providing stimulation of the nucleus accumbens. When electrodes are attached to stimulate the pleasure center, all animals and humans will prefer this activity over any other including sex, food, etc... This demonstrates that we are not motivated by some ethical standard by only by pleasure and pain. Social hormones that produce pleasure and pain to make us social animals.

http://carterlab.ucdavis.edu/courses/psc261/gingrich_liu_etal_BN2000.pdf

http://brainethics.org/?p=466

When people give to charity, their nucleus accumbens is stimulated:

http://www.brainybehavior.com/blog/2007/06/the-charitable-accumbens/

We know the same thing happens with narcotics like nicotine and cocaine:

So ethical behavior is not about rational altruism, it is about being a junkie getting a fix. This all makes sense because we know we don't have free will.

I think it's all relative. As a middle class American, you don't normally experience the extremes. You're a chemical being so your urges are driven by chemicals. Your motivations are all about pleasure and pain, you don't have any other choice in the matter. That is why I think there is no ethics or morals, it's only how you play the game to feel good and not bad for yourself. But it depends on how your wire, you for example would get more NA stimulation seeing the poor helped out than I would. I would get more stimulation from seeing a world that is logical and everyone can take care of themselves. It's just how we are wired.

So all this being druged up can lead to irrational beliefs. Conservatives consider the leftist to have a mental disorder and visa versa. Only scientific evidence from objective experiments and observations can clear up political conflicts.

Obviously we always want to avoid the pain. People avoid the extremes of pleasure because of the risk. Our society is highly sexually repressed and drug repressed because of the downside. Hoarding is a strategy to avoid potential pain. Why not view it as a natural phenomena rather than a 'moral' failing?

What? Where is the evidence for this?

When the reward centers in the brain are damaged, people loose all motivation. When you loose motivation, you can't be successful at anything. The opposite is true, pleasure and pain are the source of passion for things like art and social status.

But your 'caring' is all about you getting high. It's not about something that actually works to make more pleasure/less suffering.

Harmonious relationships have to be a contract of equivalent contributions to the common good. I'll support the poor of the world when they agree to mandatory family planning.

The why are the OWS folk complaining about there are no jobs when there are pleanty of jobs in healthcare? They don't want to do this work, so they prove that we need money to motivate people to do shitty jobs.

I don't exclusively explain behavior with genes and hormones. Of course environment plays a role in creating behavior patterns. But you seem to believe somehow we are 'spiritual' entities motivated by some magical force other than pleasure and pain. Pavlov's dogs could have been programmed to respond to bell or a whistle, but you still got correlate the stimulant to pleasure and pain.

I don't disagree with Maslow. I disagree with your conclusion that this means someone should put a gun to my head and make me pay for people that can't or won't become self sufficient and that refuse to use birth control.

All your doing is saying it's not fair that I'm at the middle or top of the pyramid while others are below the bottom, so we should all be at the bottom or below.

By calling it 'archaic and simplistic', you are whipping out your stick of social shame. I'm supposed to feel bad now and agree with you.

RBE is replacing money with social reward or shame as the carrot and stick. Am I right? I disagree that this would work.

I've sent you the links on how motivation works. What don't you get?

But you're creating a reward for 'heros' and those that act 'unselfishly'. So their 'noble' behavior stimulates their pleasure centers just like a crack addict. Patting people on the back for a 'Sense of Duty' is a social reward just like feeding Pavlov's dogs.

Who is to define what I need? Maslow showed that human needs are a pyramid, so if I want to move up the pyramid why can't I? Why must I be forced to take care of people that are content at the bottom?

All money is debt, debt is legalized as a currency. If people won't borrow money, there will be no money. But sure as hell there will be a global financial breakdown. The government is all totally in debt to banks and will spend the tax money as bankers say, as Mr Obama demonstrated. 
In case you wondered why Joker in the movie Dark Knight burned a few tons of dollar bills. He had more sense than our economists and politicians combined.

Unlike you probably think, I do not deny the power of neurotransmitters, electrodes and drugs. But under normal (non-extreme) circumstances these are only means and effects, NOT causes. Brain secretes these substances as a response to external events AND our thoughts and emotions. 

The first study describes the function of chemicals and primitive brain centers, which is DUH (implicit). The second study is on voles, which leaves out the influence of human motivations, which is very significant. The third article is about externally added oxytocin, which has no relevance for the society. The fourth article describes, that nucleus acumbens is activated in very many pleasurable activities. So WE choose the particular activity, the nucleus acumbens does not care, as long as it is pleasant. Stimulation of nucleus acumbens will not make us choose a particular charity organization or recreation activity out of many.
As for cocaine, that's another form of direct stimulation, which totally overrides the usual brain activity and therefore tells us nothing about motivations of our behavior.
 

You have mistaken effects for causes. The primitive parts of brain control release of drugs and neurotransmitters, but the modern, conscious parts of brain determine when and how. They contain our personality, intellect and idea of our culture and these are the deciding factors of our motivation. This modern brain of ours is in charge, as long as the conditions are not extreme. Only primitive people do not have a sufficient control over the primitive brain centers and their motivation is therefore different. They are, however, in minority.

This is why primitive savages do not think much over survival or diplomacy, better if it's us than them and sex is pretty straightforward. But a man or woman of our modern culture can suffer elaborately over subtle nuances of love, etiquette and duty, or even commit a suicide. Similarly we can experience pleasure out of the obscure artistic impressions and other cultural gimmicks. 

The cause of problem in religion and politiis a distorted thought model of reality that these people have. This is why the chemicals excrete as they should, but for wrong reasons. And it is a function of intellect and emotional attachment, not of pleasure and pain.

Yes, it is all a natural phenomenon, but calling it natural is DUH. It's too implicit and imprecise. We have this elaborate terminology to distinguish chemistry, biology, sociology and psychology, to get ideas across precisely. Morality is, for example, a term from psychology. Psychology is a layer of abstraction, that does not correspond exactly to biology, this is why it is a separate field. Each successive field is characteristic by many more modes of interaction than the previous one. We can go deeper and compare the two, but to equate them would be just silly. 

I may believe we are spiritual entities, but that is not the point, my notion of a spiritual entity is just another layer over personality. Freud described three distinct persons in us, the id, ego and superego. In my experience, there is one more layer, the "spiritual" one, but in most of people it does not show at all. 
When most of people talk about spirituality, they mean their emotions. If I may be blunt, most of people do not even use the intellect, unless they work. And the "spirit" is even above the intellect. No wonder this side of ourselves manifests so little in our lives. No wonder it is so little understood. There probably are just several million people in the world who could serve as subject for such a study.

As for the pyramid of needs, you can move up. But if those above do not help those below, then ascending is more diffcult for everyone, including you. Secondly, even if you ascend on the pyramid because you're an exceptional person, you will be very lonely. Exceptional people are regularly dispersed in population and they rarely meet. You'd feel like me, a great young thinker, momentarily stranded in a poor region of churches, pubs and heavy industry
 

Why should the 'experts' care about their reputation. Even if it is shit, they government still takes care of all their needs. There is no penalty for failure, no reward for success therefore no motivation.

They are part of the addiction cycle. The brain is either pre wired or learns that a certain activity with cause pleasurable sensations. So we are motivated to get our fix while avoiding pain. They are the reward or the punishment so the cause all behaviors to continue or cease in expectation. This is why when people get addicted to welfare and charity it is so hard to break the cycle. So why ever start?

It should be obvious that there is no motivation except stimulation of the pleasure centers while avoiding pain.

We don't have free will. We 'choose' a particular activity based on exception of pleasure not pain.

Just like a crack addict, excessive oxytin stimulating the nucleus accumbens will cause one to choose the most immediate and strongest fix. Any with a cerebral cortex should know that there are tons of charity scams and phony beggars. But they exist to get the giver high, not to help those asking for charity.

How is it 'direct' and others not. Cocaine acts similarly as sex. When someone is addicted to cocaine, all they are motivated to do is get more. So I think it tells us all we need to know.

Going back to the dogs, it is the EXPECTION of the reward that motivates. Since the reward follows the behavior, of course it can't be the cause. But the reward causes the learned behavior or addiction. So, I"m not confusion cause and effect.

When the primatve parts of the brain associated with pleasure and pain are damaged, even though people can still reason. When the cerebral cortex is damaged, it doesn't affect motivation only the ability to do things language, communication, problem solving, etc...The 'modern' parts of the brain evolved to enable us to have more complex skills and strategy, but the name of the game is still survival.

And doesn't RBE reward 'primitive' behaviors while punishing 'advanced' behaviors via wealth transfer to the 'primitive' people?

I don't think so, try stubbing your toe and deciding it doesn't hurt like shit.

The name of the game is survival, not culture. The cerebral cortex made it possible to complex tasks. But the motivators are still food, sex and anything to survive. Things like social cooperation have been beneficial too our survival, so of course we get a hormone that increases human bonding and trust(oxytin). A new means of stimulating the motivation center. Language had to develop along with this.

When you take away the dopamine, motivation is progressively lost.

If religion isn't based on activation of the pleasure and pain centers in the brain, why do they need to teach heaven and hell? They need heaven and hell because we're only motivated by carrots and sticks, expectation of pleasure or pain. So they invent a really big carrot and a really big stick and walla, you can control motivations. Politics kind of works the same way with your RBE paradise or capitalist hell. And of course we can't demonstrate RBE with evidence(aka a living laboratory) we just have to take it on faith.

This 'sense' is that this is what will bring you the most pleasure. We could stick you in the MRI like the people giving to charity and see your NA light up when you are doing what 'calls you'. Same as heroine junkie feels called to shoot up.

And in RBE, we put the politicians in charge of everything and give them all the money and resources. This is why individuals must have the power and wealth.

The problem is one can survive and procreate by just staying at the bottom. That is what evolution rewards right, not self-actualization? So without mandatory birth control, everyone stays at the bottom.

I probably don't have as much natural oxytin in my system as you. I guess I need a pill to be more trusting.

Why should being lonely necessarily feel bad? Take drugs and treatments for depression.

It's not trivia because it tells us that if we want to change human behavior, it has to be correlated with increase in pleasure. So it should change the approach to economics, sociology, politics, etc... Make solving the problems one of increasing the sensations of pleasure with less pain for all participants. We know what really motivates people, so engineer society around this fact.

They soon will. Science is treating autism with oxytocin.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/AutismNews/love-hormone-oxytocin-shows-promise-autism/story?id=9843745

Perhaps they could lower your levels so you would be less trusting that people will do the right thing.

WE don't have free will. We may learn that a particular activity is pleasurable or painful and adjust our behavior accordingly. But you can't decide eating garbage is pleasant, you're not wire for this. But a rat is. So if we put you in a garbage dump your NA stimulation would be pain, the rats' would be pleasure.

The NA doesn't choose. That's more in the outer brain that learns to expect if an activity is pleasurable. I think you should study voting in neural networks.

If you get a rush from a particular activity, you learn to expect pleasure again from similar activities. If you turn off all pleasure and pain sensations, all motivation goes away as we learn to correlate.

Crack seem to be more like the high from orgasm. Oxytocin more like the good feels of love/social acceptance. Like a different color of pleasure.

Eating garbage is pleasurable to a rat. People are all over the map with the correlation of activities with pleasure/pain. We don't have free will to decide any of this.

What we can do with technology is change this correlation. We already do this with mood changing drugs.

Most people would react with anger if given Cocaine involuntarily, just as they would sex. Of course people are all over the map with pleasure and pain from sex. Orgasm can be intense pleasure and cocaine act in a similar manner.

Technology. It's changing the correlation of activities with pleasure/pain. We try to do this now with shame, money, prison. Isn't that the real purpose of money, to corellate our behaviors so with pleasure/pain? For RBE to work, you'd need to remap the present correlation.

No. Alleviation must go hand in hand with an increase in pleasure for all participants in society. We're not motivated by meaningfulness. We only assign meaning to things if there is a corellation pleasure/pain factor.

But it's how we're wired. It's like you want people to like garbage the way a rat does. You can't do this without technology. Just words ain't gonna cut it.

The problem is now we use shame, prison and most of all money to control behaviors not make them socially beneficial and not harmful. I'm just saying if you want things to get better there must be better technology than they old fashioned methods.

You seem to think change can occur with just propaganda and encouragement. I don't think so, people have to expect an advantage in the area of pleasure/pain in order to change their behaviors. I think this is the implication of being with a soul, spirit or free will. I know you like to think we can do things for noble reasons, but it just ain't so.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/think-tanked/post/occupy-wall-streets-accomplishments-candidates-and-civics-and-more-am-briefi...

The deck has been stacked. (http://news.google.com/news/section?pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=topic:occupy_wall_street&ict=clu_bl This was the first relevant link I could find in Google News)

The only thing left to do is wait for everyone (more or less) to practice some of that keen 20/20 hindsight on OWS.

But I understand your point, if I think of gypsies and people like them. Such people must not get anything for free, because it spoils them. In their case there must be stricter education, focused on communal or even tribal life and manual creative activities. Shortly said, they must be kept busy, because they won't do it by themselves. The point is, such education or keeping people busy should be done deliberately, not out of necessity to keep the economy going. The needs of economy must be met of course, but unlike today, RBE does not require all education to be tied into this. And it is a good thing.

The only "problem" with RBE is, that it leaves people with a large amount of free time. Maybe you view that as a problem, but I see an opportunity. An opportunity equal to the one when hunters and gatherers settled down to farming, farmers built cities, cities formed states, states formed alliances and eventually United Nations. 
There is an increasing evidence, that people must undergo a radical change of behavior, otherwise we will destroy ourselves. Free time is what we need to stop and think and to figure out why are we really here. And we are definitely NOT here to run the economy. The economy is here to serve us, not vice versa. It should keep us alive and well, not keep us dubiously motivated by consumerism. Entertainment and motivation must belong to other areas of society, like education, travel, volunteering and culture. That way the motivation of people will not cost us many resources. People must be primarily motivated by immaterial cultural values, not material goods. 
For example, I do not use up many material items, but I have a large consumption of books, music, games, films and other cultural material copied as freely available data. And I'd be even more motivated by social relationships, should I find any. I hope you get the idea, people can be motivated and quality of life achieved without material spending.

Furthermore, there is actually not that many artists and musicians. It takes talent and inspiration. Can't we just believe in the invisible hand of random genetic generator of brains, to provide people with right tendencies to do jobs in the society?

As for the original point, if food is as necessary for life as water and air, why should there be a compensation for it? (of course, given the RBE hydroponic vertical farms) And what kind of compensation?

So I think I can't really appreciate or understand the Hedonistic imperative. I know it's a wonderful thing for medicine and I believe that we are perfectly entitled to eliminate all physical suffering and all medical causes of mental suffering. But if anything can be done about the society to achieve that end, it must be done. What we feel must be no substitute for what we do, otherwise that it be no better than praying for hurricane victims. We all deserve chance to live actively and die with a justified feeling of achievement.

And then of course, I am concerned about my "supernatural" worldview. There is more to us that meets the eye, I have some evidence that there is at least our bodily counterpart, made probably of dark matter. 99 % of visible matter is plasma and dark matter out there probably too, but here on planetary scale it does interact with biologic organisms and underlies passively every material object. And processes that go on in our etheric double may be just as important for our health, probably more. Every occultist knows that. Something tells me that making the dense material body go out of sync with the etheric is not a good idea. There are many valuable potential abilities we may lose by careless meddling without even noticing. 

This is a similar argument to yours. I do not want food to be paid, because it is a vital necessity like air or water. But this endless hedonistic pleasure is not a necessity. It's important how we feel inside, but it's just as important how we live. Bliss must be achieved through right living and self-realization, not just given out for free whatever we do. Most of people would not handle that, they would end up like on alcohol or TV, only worse. I think it requires a strong character and deep motivation to have some structure in life, despite of such a powerful distractions. 

Another example. When someone works on taming bad dogs, he has a pack of his own dogs, well-trained and loyal to him. They warn the trainer of the bad dog's mood and also they teach the bad dog proper manners. Also, I noticed that lazy people in a group of hard workers become hard working too, just to fit in.

In RBE politics will disappear, or in a sense, it will step onto a whole new level. Spewing endless laws, budgets and scandals will be replaced by positive cultural inspiration through personal example. Such a non-decadent equivalent of celebrity cult, I'd say.

So as for the technology, it might not work as you imagine. Here's why:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk8x3V-sUgU&feature=related