The Venus Project

The Venus Project

Motto	Beyond Politics, Poverty and War
Type	Wikipedia:Social movement
Website	http://www.thevenusproject.com

The Venus Project is an organization that advocates American futurist Jacque Fresco's visions of the future with the aim to improve society by moving towards a global sustainable social design that they call a "resource-based economy" (WP). Such a system incorporates sustainable cities and values, energy efficiency, collective farms, natural resource management and advanced automation, focusing on the benefits they claim it will bring to humanity.

The name of the organization originates from Venus, Wikipedia:Florida, where its 21-acre (8.5-hectare) research center is located, near Lake Okeechobee. Within the center are ten buildings, designed by Fresco, which showcase the architecture of the project. Future by Design, a film about the life and work of Jacque Fresco, was produced in 2006.

Futurist Jacque Fresco (right) with Roxanne Meadows

History

This article contains content from Wikipedia. Current versions of the GNU FDL article The Venus Project on WP may contain information useful to the improvement of this article

WP

The Venus Project was started around 1975 by Jacque Fresco and by former portrait artist Roxanne Meadows in Venus, Florida, U.S. Its research center is a 21 acre property with various domed buildings of his design, where they work on books and films to demonstrate their concepts and ideas. Fresco has produced an extensive range of Wikipedia:scale models based on his designs.

The Venus Project is a two-part business: a Wikipedia:non-profit company called "Future by Design" and a for-profit company called "Venus Project Inc./Global Cybervisions Inc."

The Venus Project was founded on the idea that Wikipedia:poverty is caused by the stifling of progress in technology, which itself is caused by the present world's profit-driven economic system. Fresco theorizes that the advance of technology, if it were carried on independent of its profitability would make more resources available to more people thereby reducing corruption and greed, and instead make people more likely to help each other. Fresco advocates against a money-based economy in favor of what he refers to as a resource-based economy.

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

Essential factors

• Common global ownership
• Wikipedia:Sustainability
• Cybernated Wikipedia:Gift Economy (based on global resources, compiled into global manifest of resources, inferring the Wikipedia:carrying capacity of the Earth, and determining strategies of sustainability and social well-being)
• Cybernated Maintenance of Routine Governance
• Integrated Global Culture

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, Wikipedia:sustainability and technological advancement. The role of money would be phased out, instead central computers serve a lineup of goods and services (see Wikipedia:Star network), 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.

Relation to the market economy

A resource-based economy aims to supplant the Wikipedia: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 seek profit like people and do not maintain an environment of scarcity 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. According to Fresco, scarcity is maintained and regulated by the market which leads to an increase in prices , 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, 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."

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. 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).

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 Wikipedia: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. Fresco believes it is now possible to achieve a society in which people would live "longer, healthier, and more meaningful lives." 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 Wikipedia:Great Depression. 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. 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.

Transition proposals

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

• 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

Criticism

Slow progress

Sour grapes? Bet they don't have the same criticisms of Public Relations, Advertising, or project planning

Despite the stated goal of building a better world and abolishing the monetary system, the Venus Project does little if nothing to further these goals. The only activities asked of by activists involve producing a new movie and gathering donations to finance a new movie.

Counter-point

According Fresco, after a feature film has been presented around the global to generate awareness and support, and the first city for research built, their first objective is the actualization of a treatise "realizing the declaration of the world's resources as being the common heritage of all people"; which is essentially Wikipedia:common ownership applied globally set apart from the market economy that usually comes with it, such as in the case with Wikipedia:communism. This declaration is a key component of the vision. Comparatively speaking, a key component of the market economy is exclusive ownership of resources that create competition and eventually monopolies on resource ownership by a minorities; all of which keeps the majority in bonds of indebtedness and servitude, as markets manipulate the economy to drive profits at their expense. Consequently, it is an essential step that exclusivity of resource ownership be amended transnationally in law back to the default Wikipedia:common ownership of early human settlements.

Lack of detail concerning its functioning

Opinion

The Zeitgeist movement and the Venus project do not detail the actual process of obtaining goods or services. How would it work? Would we get a ratio of goods and services based on what's needed globally? Are needs going to be different from nation to nation as a result of culture? Many details are going to be left untouched when considering an idea at a general level. However, these untouched details are crucial to the separation of usable ideas and utopias. For instance, consider a transition from monetary system to non-monetary resource based economy. Money is returned to the governments central banks and the banking system then dissolved as the various financial institutions and markets around the world. In order to transition, humanity would have to produce enough machines to replace all workforce worldwide. Not to mention the difficulty of recreating the human factor for some occupations. How would the quality of life be affected?

Anti-market bias

Rorschach blot reading; Caplan writes about something (blot); WP editor sees Venus Project in it

In Wikipedia:The_Myth_of_the_Rational_Voter:_Why_Democracies_Choose_Bad_Policies#Anti-market_bias, Caplan refers to the anti-market bias as a “tendency to underestimate the benefits of the market mechanism.” In Caplan's view, the populace tends to view themselves as victims of the market, rather than participants of it. Corporations, and even small-scale suppliers, are seen as greedy monopolists that prey on the consumer. Caplan argues that all trade is a two-way street. Cheating people is bad for business and the existence of multiple firms offering similar products demonstrates there is competition, not monopoly power.

Parallels

Anarchist communism

Anarchist communism (also known as anarcho-communism and occasionally as free communism) is a theory of anarchism (WP) which advocates the abolition of the state state, Wikipedia:markets, money (WP), private property (WP), and capitalism (WP) in favor of Wikipedia:common ownership of the Wikipedia:means of production, direct democracy (WP) and a horizontal network of Wikipedia:voluntary associations and workers' council (WP) with production and consumption based on the guiding principle: "Wikipedia:from each according to his ability, to each according to his need".

The Zeitgeist Movement

The Venus Project was featured prominently in the 2008 documentary film Wikipedia:Zeitgeist: Addendum, as a possible solution to the global problems explained in the first film and first half of the second film. The film premiered at the 5th Annual Wikipedia:Artivist Film Festival in Los Angeles, California on October 2, 2008, winning their highest award, and it was released online for free on Google video on October 4, 2008. Following the movie, an organization called the Zeitgeist Movement was established to promote the aims of the Venus Project. In 2011, an additional film, Wikipedia:Zeitgeist: Moving Forward, was also released. As of April 2011, the Zeitgeist Movement and the Venus Project have split ways and are no longer functioning as a partnership.

See also

• Wikipedia:Garden City Movement
• Wikipedia:Post scarcity
• Technocracy movement (WP)
• The Zeitgeist Movement

External links

• Template:Official website