Well, while I was scribbling off line, Arthur, as usual, has said it well.
It is an issue of "effective demand": Plenty of goods (too many for Earth
to sustain, probably); plenty of people willing to acquire them
(unfortunately, and largely because of advertising only), yet no
"effective" way to get the plentiful goods to the people who want them.
"Money" in the old sense just won't do any more. "Credit", which was
invented to fill in the money gap, is on the verge of stifling further
consumption (and will at the next major turndown in the "economy" when
people are forced to stop acquiring and start paying off debts, which
will spiral the system downward, given the massive heights of the
myriad mounds of debt). "Barter" and "volunteering" covers only part of
the problem.
What to do?
If I am basically correct in what I just wrote, then viable solutions are
not too difficult to derive conceptually, but since almost no one is
willing to accept the analysis, they find it impossible to consider viable
solutions seriously.
