Good thing, bad thing

Good thing - I'm off for the next week!
Bad thing - the station my train gets into was bombed yesterday!
Good thing - I found some email software for my phone (ProfiMail - completely recommended if you have a Symbian Series 60 phone, like the Nokia 6630).
Bad thing - I left my USB cable for the MP3 player in the office, so I can't get my music sorted out.  Looks like I'll be dropping into the office tomorrow/Monday after all...

More Good News/Bad News

    * Trade discussions in Hong Kong later this year should yield an end date to agricultural subsidies.
    * Britain is to host a 1 November meeting on climate change, to assess progress.
    * $3bn agreed for Palestinian Authority for investment in infrastructure.
    * Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo described the deal as a "success".
    * G8 commits to training 20,000 peacekeepers for Africa.
    * African leaders to commit to democracy and good governance as part of the deal.
    * Debts of the 18 poorest countries to be forgiven.
    * Universal access to anti-HIV drugs in Africa by 2010.
    * US now accepted global warming was an issue.

But on the other hand, there's still a lot of debt out there and an awful lot of work to do, and the date for ending agricultural subsidies will doubtless be in about 10 years and phased out over a further 20.

Still, at least the problems are being acknowledged and movement is being made in the right directions.

Me too!

(From genericus)

You have to tell everyone

about The Dalek Song.

Completely unnecessary warning: contains spoilers for the end of Dr Who.

Question

I'm engaged in discussion elsewhere about money, social systems, etc.  I'm maintaining that:

Money is an abstraction for the value of property. The only way to remove it will be to get rid of the concept of property. The problem is that this leaves you with no way to encourage people to produce things or perform services. Which is fine if you only want to do things with/for your friends, but unless you personally know a farmer, a doctor, a dentist, etc., etc. who are willing to do favours for you, you're going to need _some_ kind of incentive.

Now, I know that there are a variety of social systems - I'm wondering if anyone has managed a non-monetary system with a large group of people for any length of time - is the 'problem' of incentives surmountable, or do-able in any other way?  I've certainly not encountered anything which seemed even vaguely credible.  There's the fudge of socialism - where some of the money is taken away and used for the good of all (and I'm in favour of this, obviously - I like the NHS), but is there a true alternative that's actually liable to work in reality?