``In the United States, throughout all 24 hours of every day of the year -- year after year -- we have an average of 2,000,000 automobiles standing in front of red stoplights with their engines going, the energy for which amounts to that generated by the full efforts of 200 million horses being completely wasted as they jump up and down going nowhere."

      Fuller and oil geologist Francois de Chandenèdes, calculated the amounts of heat and pressure nature uses to convert Sun into life and, over time, into fossil fuels. At current kilowatt/hour electric rates, it costs nature a million dollars a gallon to make petroleum. In this very real "cosmic accounting system" people are burning several million dollars worth every week going to work. "It doesn't take a computer to tell you that it will save both Universe and humanity trillions of dollars a day to pay them handsomely to stay at home," says you-know-who.

      After World War II, the G.I. Bill offered returning vets an all-expense-paid trip to college. Many took it. And those educated minds made the United States the most prosperous nation this world had ever known.

      What if humanity no longer needs the few watts of muscle-power an individual can generate? What if we no longer need people to work at jobs they consider meaningless? What if we put the whole world on the G.I. Bill and make educational tools available in every home (via VCR, Internet, etc.).

      Sure, some will go fishing. But others ``will start thinking `What was it I was thinking about when they told me I had to "earn my living" -- doing what someone else had decided needed to be done? What do I see that needs to be done that nobody else is attending to?'"

      One person with a better rice strain or improved transistor can pay for the life-support of the next 1000, or even 100,000 people. (And what's wrong with fishing, says Fuller, it clears the mind. ``And that's what we need: people to think clearly.")