By Amine SAHRANE – Writer for L’Economiste in Morocco (article published Nov 20, 2017 and translated from French to English).
Original article: http://www.leconomiste.com/article/1020363-le-projet-venus-croit-en-un-monde-sans-crime
- A free society dedicated to learning, exploration and creation
- Without currency, nor debt, nor barter … to create the new Human Being
- Technology and employment: the recipe for disaster
– The Economist: You say that the technology currently available can achieve abundance. Is it really feasible?
– Roxanne Meadows:
Certainly. The problem does not lie in the fact that today’s technology cannot provide for the needs of every person on the planet. The problem is that it is not well used. However, it can build a new environment. Operational with a minimum energy consumption and the cleanest technology possible. A system in harmony with nature that aims to get the highest standard of living possible for everyone. We do not even have enough money to provide each individual with a home, while we have enough resources to easily reach that goal and much more. For this reason, we advocate the Resource Based Economy.
“Our social and environmental problems will remain insurmountable for as long as a small number of individuals have a stranglehold on controlling and consuming most of the planet’s resources.”
Roxanne Meadows
– Jacque Fresco, co-founder of the Venus Project, talks about an inevitable crash in the
capitalist system. How can we defend this point of view?
– The debt system is an establishment that keeps people and nations in a state of servitude. At the same time, a very small group reaps the benefits. The rationing of resources through monetary control is no longer relevant and is even counterproductive to the survival of our species. Our technologies are developing at a staggering speed but our social systems limit our aspirations.
The fuel of this system is consumption, but technology replaces millions of people in the workplace. As a result, people who are unemployed will not have the purchasing power to obtain the goods and services turned out. This is a huge danger to the free enterprise system and we have no idea how to solve it.
As indicated in a special report by “The Economist” in 2016: “Martin Ford, software entrepreneur and author of the bestseller “Rise of the Robots” warns against the danger of a “future without work,” pointing to the fact that most of the work can be fragmented into a series of routine tasks and that more and more of these tasks can be performed by machines.” We have here a recipe for disaster. When enough people find themselves unemployed and unable to survive, lose their homes and their trust in the elected leaders to solve the problems we see, there will be uncontrollable social tensions.
– The resource-based economy is criticized as being communism disguised by technology, what do you say?
– Communism differs considerably from the direction we are advocating. A communist system has a currency, banks, an army, prisons and an elite. It is governed by a form of ideology that does not necessarily relate to human or environmental needs. The Venus Project does not use any currency and makes available goods and services without a price tag, debt, barter or any form of servitude. We use machines and automation to produce and distribute. The goal is to liberate people so they can pursue their own interests and fulfillments, not just their survival.
Where communism is concerned with the working condition of the labor class, The Venus Project main concern is producing products with limited or no work while giving people all the resources for a prosperous and high energy society. Our goal is to produce a society to free people giving them time for learning, exploration and creating.
The Venus Project does not advocate a system of government by human beings either. Cybernetics is implemented within the social system and has to conform to the Earth’s carrying capacity in terms of resources.
The main purpose of the machines is the production and distribution of goods and services while maintaining a clean environment that serves everyone without any individual being able to generate any profit. When people have access to resources, most of the crimes will disappear. The need for police, army, prisons will also eventually be surpassed.
the first men will suffer from obesity. than government propose synthetic food. its not bad. but i don’t believe that kind of world can be in real. people must work for some thing. for competition. but i like your project.
I think what you are referring to is the idea of human nature, the idea that man is competitive in essence and cannot be changed either by environment or education. In reality we see that environmental factors play a hugely significant part of someone’s emotional and intellectual development which can sometimes be confused as someone’s ‘nature’.
I was in the Czech Republic where communism grew from 1968 until the end of 1989 – we are still affected with habits of these days. I am so proud of few people who have took our country back to democracy.
This is the height of stupidity. The end phase of Marx’s communism is a cashless, stateless, “equal” society called critical uptopian socialism, what you speak of is communism. Don’t try to deceive people.
Furthermore, no good argument was given for why “crime” would disappear. Given that crime is a legal term relative to the state using it, I don’t see how something as ambiguous as crime will be abolished by this suposedly utopian system.
For some people When the Mind is Numbed & the Eyes are Blinded & the Ears are Deaf Nothing is POSSIBLE. THEY HAVE BEEN DEEPLY CONDITIONED And you will BE one of those who will not know how to HELP build this New RBE….
I’m just curious as to how something we consider as a crime today, like murder or homicide, be eradicated by the concepts of this project. Humans are not predictable and can kill for any reason (even over a petty argument). Once a human is killed in a TVP-type of society, how would the perpetrator be punished if there are no police, courthouses and prisons?
In certain societies around the world that are ruled by goodness, they find it easier to apprehend such things. If we can pinpoint the error that causes us to commit carnage, we can heal.
WOW. Amazing. You just described Life in North America before the fucking White Man and Jew arrived.
If we had a SMALL community we would have no need of “money” or a currency. We would just barter, because we all relate to anothers need, and we modify that with a sense of equal effort. Modern huge society has created a major reliance on transferrable value by “money”, and specialisation in complex tasks has ecouraged us to create huge societies, as well as our tribal insitncts for large armies.
But WE are the top species now, can we change our manner of living? Or do we keep expanding our populations to equate ith a bigger GDP – the measurement of every western governments success. Meanwhile our expanionist economic paradigm is driving us to extinction by destroying our beautiful blue world…beats me how the blue suits can live with themselvs…maybe we should decide they dont. Too many people is the truth.
You will have to get rid of money and materialism
Reference:
http://www.galactic-server.com/rune/iarga.html
You would have to get rid of: envy, gluttony, greed or avarice, lust, pride, sloth, and wrath.