Assumptions:


Reasonable people, given the same set of facts will most likely make the same decisions, based on those facts.  The first thing to look at in heading toward Utopia is to lay out on the table as much as we can of what we know about ourselves -- what social, political and economic orders exist or have existed, and what resources are available and will or will not be in the future.  This is a group of precepts that should be closely examined and debated, and that can be added to or changed as such a basis for choosing what direction to go.

It is better to give than receive. Altruism is just a word to far too many people. 
We are mortal --- perhaps it is possible to live a "best" life within the 75 or so years we are on earth? There is no law, contrary to the thoughts of some philosophers, that the human condition has to be a miserable existence, that one must have unhappiness to appreciate happiness. Every moment one is happy is a moment not sad. Ascertaining what makes people happy gives us a chance to aim to make everyone's every moment happy. Finding ways to know and understand what makes people unhappy gives us the ammunition to finesse unhappiness. If unhappiness can be experienced indirectly, then a person has a reference point from which to appreciate his or her happiness. It has been documented that people who laugh more tend to be emotionally and physically better off in the long run. 
While the micro reality is that no one has the exact same idea of what would be a perfect life, there is sort of a (for lack of a better [real] word) macro-distillation, a large overlap across all people, with a gamut of preferences that can be at least be grouped.  It is in our interest to retain a lot of diversity of cultures, ways to look at things, styles of living.  Among the things that overlap are food - clothing - shelter, a need to belong, a desire to contribute, the ability (practiced or innate) to do a few things well, outlets for expression (physical, artistic, of anger, of joy). The actual manifestations will differ widely. 
 

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In economics there is a phrase, "guns and butter", which refers to the way a country can spend its resources.  The more it produces consumables ("butter"), the less capacity there is to provide militarily ("guns").  It takes a lot to provide a military: not just the personnel and equipment, but also all support necessary to maintain them.  A world without nationalistic tendencies would mean only a small military, relative to the scale of the world of the turn of the second millennium, would be needed.  That would make for a lot more "butter"
How much do we need, and how much effort is it right to demand that each individual contribute?  Certainly it makes sense to expect that a person contribute as much effort as the equivalent effort put in by those providing the food, clothing and shelter he uses over the course of his life (which is more than what he can produce during the prime producing years of his life).  And perhaps he owes a bit to those who come afterwards to carry forward all the civilization that was present when he was born.  If Utopia achieves total mechanization of laborious work, what would we do instead?
A pecking order exists among people, and would emerge over time even if people were to start as equal. It is a physical reality that people differ in many respects which cannot be overridden by "nurture".  The more this can be diffused the smaller is the range between the "haves" and "have-nots". 
Economics (what occurs in the "market" over time, or on a simplistic level, Adam Smith's invisible hand) can be compared to the steady force of water flowing to the ocean, able to cut huge canyons over time; politics (taxes, laws, incentives, controlling interest rates, price controls, etc.) can be viewed as the dams that society puts up to try to direct that flow --- people can erect the dams much more quickly than economics can cut through them. 
Civilization rests squarely on the shoulders of an accumulation of all that has come before. No person can rightly claim to be able to exist as a purely independent individual with neither need of help from, nor any obligation to, anyone else.  The very young and the very old are two undeniable, universal examples.  Ayn Rand not withstanding, the people who produce must by definition of our humanity produce more in sum than what is sufficient for what the producers want in sum.  The producers were once helpless children, and they will become the helpless aged.  And there will always be accidents -- of life, of nature -- that will preclude some from being effective producers, in terms of both time and capability. 
Competition can just as easily be for the higher art of the venue, whatever the venue, as be for victory over an opponent. Perhaps it is possible to beat the sword of survival into the plowshare of beauty without destroying the vigor of life. 
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As long as we are making what we need for day-to-day and long-term life, we might as well put in the extra effort to make everything as well as possible so that everything made is wanted until it falls apart into dust. And that dust should be recyclable. 
The best way to be sure to know we are actually getting ahead is to measure our GROSS WEALTH (cumulative) or NET PRODUCT (incremental) as opposed to measuring GROSS PRODUCT.   Otherwise we don't notice we are spinning our wheels doing duplicated effort, creating obsolescence, producing shoddy goods, arguing and performing other forms of "work" that end up not contributing to wealth and the good of all in the long run.  Making a highly valued item and simultaneously creating pollution that will take more to clean up than the value of the item is a negative sum. 
Life is what you focus on, so if everyone focuses on betterment, it is easier to align efforts and there is less entropy. Those already embarked on a common goal can go farther more effectively if there is communication and cooperation. 
The light of day cures many evils. If all people were to live their lives as if they were on TV, they might act a bit differently. 
There may always be people who, for whatever reason, do not have the self-control to refrain from actions that harm people or things that should not be harmed. 
Hate, fear and terror; and greed, envy and jealousy are powerful motivators -- a legacy of eons of surviving.  The question is are we better off without them?  Are there enough positive things to strive for that preempt the need for them?  Does human nature ultimately dictate that we must have some sort of stick behind us as well as a carrot in front of us to keep going? 
Instilling in people the will always to do what is right cannot be legislated, but it would be much more likely to come about if everyone were aware of what the consequences to other people would be and what they would feel as a result of any action. This is the basis of morals, and civilization has the need, right and obligation to teach this thinking. 
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Education needs to be engaging, and needs to begin within a few days of when a child is born. The scale has to be appropriate, and everyone should be so attuned to the benefits that they will assuredly do it on their own and not need it to be institutionally force fed. If most of the ingrained learning a person does is accomplished in the first few years of life, that is when they should be exposed to as much knowledge as possible. It is also when a desire to learn ought to be instilled in everyone in such a way that all seek to continue learning for the rest of their lives, albeit at a different level of learning. 
The sphere of human knowledge, though large, is certainly many orders of magnitude smaller than the total knowledge available in the universe. As the surface area of the sphere of our knowledge expands, pushing it farther will become exponentially trickier because everything is holistically interrelated.  And as individuals in their lives each contribute a given amount of knowledge that expands the sphere in whatever area, the larger the sphere becomes. The expanding virtual area of the sphere means that individuals will only be able to know a smaller and smaller part at the farthest reaches of the shpere (not to mention all the details held inside the sphere).  So an individual is only able to expand the sphere by a smaller and smaller percentage of the total surface area. 
As we know more and believe more in ourselves, it is still no one's right to deny others' belief in any religion of their choice as long as that religion does not call for negative actions towards anyone. 
The surface of this earth is finite and humans have only been on it for the blink of an eye in geological terms. We owe it to the earth that spawned us, to the other creatures with which we share the earth, to ourselves and to our children to make as small a footprint as possible on the earth so that as much wilderness and biodiversity as possible is left intact. Sending our progeny and sustaining agriculture into space to keep from overwhelming earth should be one alternative we seriously consider. Pollution, habitat destruction and overpopulation are becoming the seeds of our destruction. 
Legal hair splitting can destroy togetherness and squander time.  If we are all working toward basically the same final outcome, we should recognize that there is far too much to be done to waste time arguing. 
Fossil fuels are finite. Humankind's harnessing of energy energy spawned the industrial revolution. We have based most of our energy consumption on fossil fuels, including both the fertilizer and fuel for agricultural equipment. Almost every industrial process is based on fossil fuel. This is very serious "writing on the wall" that we continue to ignore.  The industrial revolution, and the harnessing of technology are based on the ready availability and supply of cheap energy.
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There is a balance between producing items when demand for them is low and producing the technology to mass produce items when demand is high. Foregoing immediate consumption of direct production allows the benefit of much higher supply with less actual work done by people, freeing them up to work on the next highest priority items. 
Loans (with their cost measured by the ensuing interest) are made by institutions on the promise that the institutions will be repaid over time for use of things now.  The entity (person, company, etc.) taking on the loan does so because he does not have enough stored value to pay for the needed item at the outset. 
Money allows us to incrementalize values on many things and to elevate barter into a completely indirect transaction.  The evil perceived in money is actually based in greed, in wanting the power that can be wielded by one who possesses a large amount of money, or in abusing that power to make other people incremental, indirect slaves. 
Genetic engineeringin humans will soon be a reality, regardless of what laws are passed prohibiting its use and development. 
Utopia must be a place where each person wants to be by choice.  Members should be free to leave at any time, for any reason, with no restrictions. 
Conversely, Utopia should have the ability to accept anyone who wishes to join, as long as the person can speak the main language and can and will contribute toward what all Utopians have determined to be the sum of all needs, wants and desires. 
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Diversity is valuable -- it provides multiple perspectives and environments.  To function cohesively, people need to be able to interact using a common set of rules in addition to a common language.  If someone does not want to maintain his cultural heritage, it is not his obligation to do so.  However, if a culture is losing its members, we should do our best to capture the essence of that culture for historical purposes -- in case someone a generation or two after a culture has disappeared wants to know or try and revive the culture. 
Life often places us in situations that are not clearly right or wrong -- there is a gamut of shades of gray in between.  It is often not possible or even desirable to polarize a situation into black and white, and so sometimes there can be several "right", although possibly painful, courses of action for a situation.  Situations where a choice must be made between the lesser of two evils should be examined to see if they can be avoided in the future.
The value of guns is constant.  They provided settlers with provisions necessary for survival.  This need is obsolete.  They provide "sport", but perhaps in the interest of making hunting and target shooting true sport, other weapons might be more appropriate.  Guns provide the military of the nations of the world with one method of defending themselves.  If we no longer had wars, this need would be obsolete as well.  For now, we have a long way to go to get there.  Police need guns because criminals have guns.  Criminals should not have guns, and as long as they do, it is marginally rational for those who wish to posess a gun to do so.  However, we have the technology to keep track of guns owned for defense, as well as the technology to render the guns useless to anyone other than the owners.  Requiring this technology is an absolute mandate immediately, with or without any other progress toward Utopia.  A goal of Utopia is to reach a level of civilization that will obviate the need for guns.
There are more and more people.  This forces us to live in closer proximity to one another and to come in contact with and interact with one another more.  These higher density environments require that we make more individual compromises.
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