Bronze-level articleThe Venus Project

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The Venus Project is an organisation that promotes architect Jacque Fresco's vision of the future, which involves an economic structure known as "resource based economy." It was actively promoted by the Zeitgeist Movement, and is endorsed heavily in the sequel to Zeitgeist.

Contents

[edit] Overview

The goal of the Venus Project is to create a representation of how society could be designed, if it was built using the economic theory of a "resource-based economy." This entails doing away with capitalism, socialism, and communism; jobs are made irrelevant in favor of automating tasks using technological solutions. It also entails ending the use of money, instead distributing resources using scientific principles. Some of these ideas are similar to the earlier Technocracy movement. This would allow society to arrive at decisions about how resources should be distributed, rather than merely making arbitrary decisions.

Some of the claimed benefits of such a society are:

  • The vast reduction or potential elimination of a dependency on oil and other unsustainable energy sources in favor of alternative and sustainable energy.
  • The primary incentive for criminal behavior is eliminated with the removal of the money system, thus crime rates are vastly reduced.

[edit] Resource-based economy (or cybernated gift economy based on global resource)

[edit] Essential factors

  • Common global ownership [1]
  • Sustainability [2]
  • Cybernated Gift Economy [3][4] (based on global resources, compiled into global manifest of resources, inferring the carrying capacity of the Earth[5], and determining strategies of sustainability and social well-being)
  • Cybernated Maintenance of Routine Governance [6]
  • Integrated Global Culture [7]


[edit] The Concept of a cybernated gift economy based on global resources

In a resource-based economy, resources are allocated into the goods and services in consumer demand, based on factors of availability, sustainability and technological advancement. The role of money would be phased out, instead central computers serve a lineup of goods and services, which citizens may order upon demand; central computers serve the lineup of goods based on sustainability and the latest in technological advancement; obsolete, unwanted, or unused goods would be recycled, reduced and/or reused, resource waste is a burden the system must eliminate to function efficiently. [8]

[edit] Relation to the market economy

A resource-based economy uses machines as labour to deliver goods and services from resource mining to the finished product, distribution centers with drive-throughs for each category that consumers collect and courier home, and there is no cost to them, the cost is the energy and resource used in the process, which fall onto automated machines to regulate, alleviating the workload from consumers.

In the market economy, the one based on the flow of money; labour is required from consumers in sectors of industry to produce goods and services, to manage this there must be scarcity enough to motivate labour, and on needs such as food and shelter that can be kept scarce artificially to maintain a workforce. Those of lavish lifestyle, with the better quality of life, are the ones that manage the labour-consumer market, and as these are the prime vehicles of the market economy, wealth may readily accumulate into their ownership. The most wealthy and powerful hold resources as a bargain-chip to stimulate labour to produce goods and services for society and luxury for the rich and powerful. A dependent relation exists between the worker and the governors that maintains the stability of the market economy, yet simply sustaining the economy may evolve into exploitation of workers, maintaining them at subsistence level while profiting wealth, resource and luxury.[9]

A resource-based economy aims to supplant the market economy as the entity to which people turn for goods and services. It aims essentially to take the market out of the market economy replacing it with automation based on the rationale that machines do not profit and do not maintain an environment of scarcity[10][11] to gain indebtedness and servitude from the population. Machines would act as the mediator to deliver goods and service to people in-place of the market and the government[12][13]. According to Fresco, scarcity is maintained and regulated by the market which leads to an increase in prices [14], and people need to work harder to pay higher prices; the labour and wealth distribution is according to Fresco controlled by markets, people cannot always receive goods and services they need, although Fresco maintains that a superabundance of resource exists in reality[15], he claims greed and power inherent in the market economy denies them access. Fresco argues that the world is rich in natural resources and energy and that, with modern technology and judicious efficiency, the needs of the global population can be met with abundance, while at the same time removing the current limits of what is deemed possible because of notions of economic viability.

Fresco provides an example of this confusion in the following quote:

"At the beginning of World War II the U.S. had a mere 600 or so first-class fighting aircraft. We rapidly overcame this short supply by turning out more than 90,000 planes a year. The question at the start of World War II was: Do we have enough funds to produce the required implements of war? The answer was No, we did not have enough money, nor did we have enough gold; but we did have more than enough resources. It was the available resources that enabled the US to achieve the high production and efficiency required to win the war. Unfortunately this is only considered in times of war."[16]

Fresco states that for this to work, all of Earth's resources must be held as the common heritage of all people and not just a select few; and the practice of rationing resources through monetary methods is irrelevant and counter-productive to the survival of human civilization.

One of the key points in Fresco’s solution is that without the conditions created in a monetary system, vast amounts of resources would not be wasted unproductively.[17] Instead Fresco’s contention is that without the waste of resources on ends that would become irrelevant there would be no scarcity of necessary products such as food and education (environmentalism).

[edit] Critical Theory of the Market Economy

According to Fresco, poverty, crime, corruption and war are the result of scarcity created by the present world's profit-based economic system. He theorizes that the profit motive also stifles the progress of socially beneficial technology. Fresco claims that the advance of technology, if it were carried on independently of its profitability, would make more resources available to more people by producing an abundance of products and materials. This new-found abundance of resources would, according to Fresco, reduce the human tendency toward individualism, corruption, and greed, and instead rely on people helping each other.[18] Fresco believes it is now possible to achieve a society in which people would live "longer, healthier, and more meaningful lives." [19] Fresco believes the monetary system and the processes associated with it, such as labour and competition, damages society and holds people back from their true potentials. He states his ideas would maximally benefit the greatest number of people. He claims some of his ideas stem from his formative years during the Great Depression.[20] Fresco believes the current global economic system will have to see a major crisis before people start to lose the confidence in the monetary system and start looking for other directions.[21] Fundamental to the project is what Fresco calls a "resource-based economy". Such a system uses existing resources, rather than money, to provide an equitable method of distribution in the most humane and efficient manner. It is a system in which all goods and services are available to everyone without the use of money, credits, barter, or any other form of debt or servitude.[22]

[edit] Transition proposals

The proposed was to transition to a resource based economy is as follows: [23]

  • Phase One - build a research centre ✔
  • Phase Two - produce a full-length feature film to premiere globally
  • Phase Three - construct an experimental research city (test prototype)
  • Phase Four - build a theme park

The Venus project makes verbal agreement that all funds raised go back to developing the project, which provide a viable alternative to the market system, for when the market economy falls their solution will provide. As mentioned by Jacque and Roxanne, it is imperative that a motion picture be made before Jacque dies, so that the vision will be readily and easily accessible and apprehensible into the far future. This would continue the cause into building a research city founded on principles laid out by Jacque, establish through years research, experience and experiment.[24]


[edit] Criticisms

Most people view this solution as a "utopian" vision that does not seem to be grounded in reality; in particular because it depends on the idea that people will not always sabotage or compete with one another. Critics of the idea often cite that human self-interest is a deeply ingrained human trait, whereas the Venus Project claims that self-interested behavior is a socialized condition. Critics will also cite the commonly-held belief that just because one does a day's work, that somehow gives them the right to get paid,[25] and that people will always demand compensation when contributing labor or investing any of themselves into the progress of society. The conclusion is that without some form of monetary compensation, people will have no motivation to participate or contribute in society.

Additional criticisms are based on the idea that even if the system could work in theory, it is highly susceptible to abuse by those in power. To support this, critics cite the historical examples of societies that came the closest to the vision of a centrally planned society, communism, where many goods were only available in sufficient quantity on the black market, because the intelligent resource distributors had decided that the proles did not require bourgeois luxuries, such as shoes. However, Fresco claims that there will be no power structure, as decisions will be entirely "arrived at" by non-humans.

"Who makes the decisions in a resource based economy? No one does. The process of arriving at decisions in this economy would not be based upon the opinions of politicians, corporate, or national interests but rather all decisions would be arrived at based upon the introduction of newer technologies and Earth's carrying capacity. Computers could provide this information with electronic sensors throughout the entire industrial, physical complex to arrive at more appropriate decisions." (Source: The Venus Project FAQ)

[edit] External links

[edit] Footnotes

  1. [1], In Phase 3 point 1; it states a prime foal is a treatise declaring the common heritage of the worlds aka common global ownership of resources
  2. [2], Sustainability is maintained as a prime component
  3. [3],Question 52 - What is the role of CYBERNATION as Decision Makers? - Includes economics and routine goverance
  4. [4],Queston 66 - Will people who do more WORK, such as doctors, demand more resources then someone like an artist? - mentions that goods and services are gifts aka without a price tag
  5. [5],Zeitgeist Addendum @ 1h.12m.13s
  6. [6],Question 52 - What is the role of CYBERNATION as Decision Makers? - Includes economics and cybernated maintenance of routine governance
  7. [7],See Phase 3 - Point 2; states the merging integration culture in an essentially Integrated Global Culture
  8. [8], Resource-Based Economy
  9. [9],Outlines the problem and solution to exploitation inherent to the monetary system
  10. [10],FAQ - 6: What are some of the detrimental effects of The Monetary System?
  11. [11],Essay
  12. [12],FAQ - 52: What is the role of Cybernation as Decision Makers?
  13. [13],FAQ- 48: How are Resources Distributed Equitably?
  14. [14],FAQ - 6: What are some of the detrimental effects of The Monetary System?
  15. [15],Resource Based Economy
  16. [16],Resource-Based Economy
  17. [17], Jacque Fresco on Larry King Live (Full - 1974)
  18. [18],Zeitgeist: Addendum
  19. [19], The Future and Beyond
  20. [20]
  21. [21], Red Ice Radio - Jacque Fresco & Roxanne Meadows - Pt 1 - The Venus Project
  22. [22], Frequently Asked Questions From Over 25 Years
  23. [23],Phases of the transition are expressed
  24. [24],About Donations and how they are used
  25. Apologies to Richard Curtis and Ben Elton.
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