- Justin Elkin
- Savannah, GA
- United States
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What are any quarrels regarding the remodeling of civilization on Earth with ideas from The Venus Project?
This is a broad question. Well worth the looksee. Here is the link to the website
http://www.thevenusproject.com/
scott lee
Utopian systems always fail because the application is what defines the result, not the ideas behind it. Marxism is a perfect example of this. It was conceived as an egalitarian effort to free the working class. But to achieve that end people had to violently seize power power and manage the shared resources on the behalf of the populace. The result was the opposite of freedom. The ideas behind marxism became merely ideological fuel for the propaganda of the state.
How would the "resource based economy" be brought into reality? Are the current powers, both private and public to be overthrown? What happens to people that do not want to be part of this economy?
We cannot reinvent the present. We can only build on the past. Instead of envisioning what a utopia would look like, we should think of how we can build on what we have to make a brighter future and solve today's problems
Justin Elkin
http://www.thevenusproject.com/the-venus-project/faq
Robert Winner 50+
Barry Palmer 50+
Random Chance 30+
Mr. Fresco has been working on his project for about 75 years while no one else has developed any kind of a system to be there when things deteriorate to a point at which the masses are either forced: to take virtually any kind of action for mere survival, or are forced by armed force, corralled by those in power, who are just waiting for that day to arrive.
But let's just dismiss Mr. Fresco with a few words. Why? Oh, well, one reason is that, well, his project isn't perfect!
We can't go forward, we can't take a chance, we can't begin, and adjust, unless we have a plan that is perfect.
We have to figure it out perfectly before hand, and have no objections from all 7 billion people before we can begin.
So, yeah, let's not do anything and dismiss everything because none of them are perfect.
Let's see, what else is there? Oh, there's nothing. No one else, including posters here, have done anything at all.
What about voting? Oh, yeah. Forgot about that! Let's vote for someone. Someone who continues to tell us what they will do (we know they won't), what they have done (they haven't really unless it benefits them) while things get worse.
Let's wait some more until resources become scarcer and scarcer and then, hey, another war!! More resource wars!
That will work! Someone makes money on it. Not me. Not you. Not most people.
Well, war isn't perfect but it sure is a hell of lot better than any kind of BS like the Venus Project.
Let's Roll!
Justin Elkin
Barry Palmer 50+
IMO, it makes no good sense to dismiss an attempt at building a better civilization just because it is attempting perfection. It makes no difference whether the goal is perfection or if the goal is something much better than what we have today. What matters are the specific goals and whether the plan is feasible.
Our current 'progress', without any method, is destroying our environment, killing innocents by the millions, and entails widespread suffering. I am wide open to alternatives.
It seems to me that it is very unlikely that our current mix of economies and governments will lead to a significantly better civilization, and there is a good chance that we will kill off the human species by destroying some critical aspect of our environment. The Venus Project might or might not succeed, but it or a similar project may be our best hope.
If The Venus Project fails, we will still learn from it.
By the way, I think your characterization of The Venus Project as an attempt at perfection is not completely accurate.
Justin Elkin
Mitch SMith 50+
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bK6k4NbxPRw
Barry Palmer 50+
Mitch SMith 50+
Justin Elkin
Mitch SMith 50+
Government seems to form up by default.
It is very likely that it's a computational artifact.
To do anything about that one has to understand the system that produces it
i.e. the medium and the active partical that arranges the medium.
And then understand that the system IS the medium - a system of systems.
This is the continuum of the open system.
The instant that you close it, you invite accellerated local entropy - ensuring a "snap-back" as surrounding entropic balance exerts the universal flow - by a rupture of the closure.
So our artifacts must acknowledge the artifacts that surround them.
The universal flow of entropy drives all systems.
Life, and other organising principles modulate entropy - they do not cancel it out.
Efficiency, by that definition, must fail.
A successful system would have to gain an appreciation of the limits of efficiency.
It must therefore be porous - and, I suspect become chaotic because of that.
But chaos is "potential" - one must know the thresholds at which a system becomes unstable. ANd these thresholds cannot be determined in advance.
All one can do is initiate a system that is adaptable enough to encounter chaotic thresholds and survive them long enough to codify them.
This is where the Venus idea fails - it is too static and mal-adaptive.
It also lacks the sytemic "seed" required to catalyse the desired result.
Currently, we are in the grips of a system-closing system called "money" that results in a system dynamic called "economy" - it is certainly adaptive and has survived for a few millenia.
A much more intelligent way to "fix" the problems in humanity would be to tweak the monetary system to eliminate the toxic "efficiency" in it.
I.E. to make it porous to surrounding systems.
In other words, to re-open humanity to interact with the environment.
The caveat is that it must include adaptability in the wider frame.
Justin Elkin
Mitch SMith 50+
I've been looking at the Venus project, Zietgeist and RBE ideas for a while.
But my entry point might differ a little.
I enter at the point of social capital.
Martin Pearson evokes the "folk crowd".
This is a phenomenon I've been observing for about 8 years. It is almost entirely social-capital based. Small cities "errupt" periodically at things called "folk festivals". And they are entirely different from other "festival" events. A folk festival requires a lot less regulation and produces a far more coherent community dynamic than you will see in default settlements or interest gatherings such as pop-festivals. I think this occurs through the significance of the "attractor". Folk music has imbedded in it a thread of tradition - not a formal tradition, but a lineage of history and value. It is automatically imbued with the dynamic of value propogated through the medium of community. Those who have become acquanted with this rolling community can very easily percieve the power of anarchy - how there is a need for structure, but not a lot of need for hierarchy - mostly only needd in the organisation of voluntary contribution - for many, the payment for their contribution is the event/community itself. In fact, hierarchy seems to be a transitionary imperative in the context of a deeply hierachial social environment that currently surrounds.
Entropy enters the "folk-festival" social system in the form of money, but becomes a lot less relevant within the event itself.
This is where I identify 2 things:
1. Community is a default dynamic that requires little, if any, imposed hierarchy.
2. Money is a non-porous value system - a true community has no requirement for strict efficiency in value exchange - because value itself is independent of exchange - it is an artifact of community, not individuals.
We could collaberate on designing a new system that might result in something like the Venus project - but is must be evolutionary - not ideological.
Mitch SMith 50+
What I propose is to design a system that results in a 'Venus-like" outcome, but has a system dynamic that achieves the result rather than a top-down design definition wich required external imposition?
To begin with, the new system has to have a defined "membrane" to determine inside/outside of the active community, but a membrane designed to expand by bringing outsiders in. It has to have a method of modulating entropy without cancelling it, and it has to have an energy/value exchange mechanism that is based on community multi-flows rather than binary transaction (money).
Where to from there?
Justin Elkin
All the proposals are from a sort of intellectual evolution. In America, Mr. Fresco more or less had to put a name to this intellectual property but the ideas are from a consortium of wisemen both alive and dead and their work as well as Mr. Fresco's. I like what your saying, Mitch, especially of a new community driven use of money but we have to realize the ease of backsliding and inherent dangers in money itself.
Mitch SMith 50+
However, one uses an ideal only as a landmark to measure progress .. or a template to measure fit.
Once the system is up and running, it will go towards the ideal under its own power without the need of the ideal to sustain it.
We can know a couple of its components:
* flexible exchange beyond simplistic binary.
* Adaptive range within the template (or because of it).
* Expanding membrane.
* Chaotic dynamics understood - i.e. entropy modulation cycles controled by self-limitation to driving parameter - keeping it centred in a stable periodicy. In other-words, avoiding boom/bust.
It will need another thing:
The ambient system is not linear - it's "lumpy" containing many other systems, some of which are robust and potentially hostile.
There are only 2 ways to kill a community dynamic - either by obsolescence, or by direct extermination. Most of our ambient social systems maintain their membrane through murderous violence (millitary and police).
The new model will need to have an adaptive membrane to deal with this. SO it might need transitory military, subversive and camoflage techniques - that are inherent in the system.
The closest model I can think of is the Ottoman empire. And I think islam itself was an attempt to do exactly what we propose. The trick will be to have the system instantly mobilise defenses at need, which disolve when not needed. Pre-emptive challenges might be countered by superior pre-emption - as in the ninja code. SO the best membrane defence would be to contain a prize that no one will attempt to destroy - and anyone who does is attacked by their own community.
AS you can see, the model is looking a lot like a religion - and I propose that all religions are exactly this - based on the assumption that our ancestors were, at least, as intelligent as we are.
Justin Elkin
Mitch SMith 50+
From the resulting definition, you could then identify which bits people agree to easily, and which are harder. Then work on the hard bits to make them easier - the goal would be to have a system into which people just default into - or have direct imediate benefits that cannot be easily ignored.
Ethics .. well, by Aristotle, that's "the kinda guy people say you are". I don't think it's a good basis for a community because it can be falsified so easily .. I think a better definition of ethics would be based on something a bit more demonstrable - something that does not attach to single individuals. The understanding we currently have of Ethics/reputation is a form of property - which might be a good replacement for other forms of property .. perhaps. At the moment, the only thing that can be defensively owned is one's time .. or more idealistically, one's potential agency. I would like to see the notion of potential agency replace the word "freedom", and "advantage" replace "free-will" - and "fitness" replace "strongest".
If nothing has value in the present, it has no posterity. The thread of tradition and culture must be unbroken and capable of adapting to unknown circumstance - while still delivering value.
If such a seed model were to be successful, I can't see the current notion of "god" having any part of it .. any such deity would require sigificant re-definition to remove the toxic baggage attaching to the old modes. That done, one could then consider the re-unification of church and state.
But to get it rolling, one would need a demo community. from there it would just subsume everything.
Mitch SMith 50+
Where is your image of "Burning Man" coming from?
Justin Elkin
Mitch SMith 50+
I suppose that's an extreme example. But some of these guys cross over into fanciful nostalgia - like the medieval fairs. I'm thinking more of the folk music festivals - a lot of celtic music gets played, and that's a living tradition. I just got back from one.
No, I don't think anything needs to be so radical that it can only be expressed as an exception.
With our Celtic music, the festivals kinda don't stop with the events, we all attend local music sessions that get attended once a week - there's one in most towns in the western world.
There's a kind of fractal separation going on in human society - threads and whorls of culture, and if you are not in a particular thread, you can't see it - and these threads are all inter-mixed .. a bit like the whorls of smoke that rise from a cigarette. These threads have different qualities, but I've found with the folk music thread that there is no pretense and little observance of the binary transaction culture that we call globalism, even though we are global.
Tradition is a gret spine for a culture, but it has to be forward looking to become any more than dead bones.
peter lindsay 30+
Barry Palmer 50+
peter lindsay 30+
Barry Palmer 50+
Barry Palmer 50+
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-06-01-toilet_N.htm
peter lindsay 30+
Mark Meijer 100+
Although I think it's possible that this will take care of itself. I guess we'll only know for sure by doing the experiment. But imagine public toilets getting dirty because nobody wants to clean them. Soon nobody wants to use those toilets. That's the beauty of a truely free society, you make your choices and you live with the consequences. If you want clean public toilets, you will go and clean them, and arrange for something with other members of the community who also want clean public toilets. If nobody cares about clean public toilets, then apparently we don't need them anyway.
In this way incentives take care of themselves. Chores only need doing because we want them to get done. We think we need a system of artificially imposed incentives, but that already shows we want certain things to get done, right? So there are already natural incentives. If we really want a chore to get done, it will get done. If we don't, then it didn't need doing in the first place. This may certainly be a process where we have to learn from our own mistakes and neglect, but I don't see anything wrong with that, it's how you grow up. Who knows, maybe people will start to give a shit... No pun intended ;)
Ken brown 30+
Resource system Plus or Negative,what do you do with the negative?
Justin Elkin
peter lindsay 30+
Gail . 50+
Perhaps the day is inevitable when humans will all be living in filing cabinets in grand, super-efficient cities. But what if my personhood cannot be adequately explored in that context? I saw no provisions for the "individual" - the one who marches to a different drummer.
My biggest problem with the Venus Project is its hard-line atheist perspective. Now, don't get me wrong. I am an atheist in that I don't believe in "God". But I am a spiritual being, connected with the greater reality in very meaningful ways. If I lose that, I lose my humanity.
Studies have been done using mice and monkeys. PUt them in a fixed space. Feed them sufficient food to allow unlimited procreation. Watch what happens. All studies show that as the population grows, the males start forming violent gangs, who rape and fight and in other ways attempt to establish their powerful place in the world. This is not addressed by the VP.
I can't imagine anything worse for me at this time, than living with neighbors all around me unless each unit is so COMPLETELY soundproofed & thought-proof that I am afforded the privacy I need, and each unit has a private outdoor living space sufficient to meet more than just my most minimal needs.
I personally NEED space from the energies of others, which I feel, and which tend to throw me off-balance when immersed in large groups. Studies show that our thoughts (& I think feelings) DO extend beyond our bodies & merge with those of others. I am sensitive to that. Large groupings would drive me insane.
Humans would need to be substantially different or oppressed for that to work.
Justin Elkin
Gail . 50+
Justin Elkin
Gail . 50+
Justin Elkin
Gail . 50+
Justin Elkin
Krisztián Pintér 200+
Justin Elkin
Krisztián Pintér 200+
Justin Elkin
Krisztián Pintér 200+
Justin Elkin
Krisztián Pintér 200+
https://www.google.com/search?q=venus+project+site:ted.com
ps: nobody believing in the v.p. crap can be an independent thinker
Justin Elkin
P.S. you should translate your opposition better
Krisztián Pintér 200+
one minute of thinking reveals the utter nonsensical nature of the venus project. if you believe a word of it, it indicates that you are not willing to invest that one minute of thinking. that makes you a blind follower, not an independent thinker.
Justin Elkin
Mitch SMith 50+
Still waiting for your refutation. Do you have one?
The ad-hominem game is fun, but gets boring after a while.
Mitch SMith 50+
I think anyone clinging to any particular ideology right now will need to update their thinking fairly soon.
Ken brown 30+
Mitch SMith 50+
Specially Fiji - you'll be wanting a military escort.
Solomon islands was interesting - a fellow from the ruling family there wanted to sell me some trees - he was in teh process of ripping the old-growth hardwoods to prevent his island being strip-mined.
And of course, by the end of the century, those islands will be underwater, they might come back with coral growth .. but .. oops coral's all dead .. perhaps new islands will pop-up with earthquakes and volcanoes ... lovely places.
Nah I was thinking about the imaginary battle between the:
techno-topians, the econo-topians the ethno-topians the theo-topians, the ellito-topians etc. they all rely on some kind of god - but end up doing no more than feeding lawyers .. who then become politicians.
Right now, I'll stick with anarchy - my "god" doesn't give a toss about humans, and all the utopias have proven to make things worse, not better.
We are hunter-gatherers - that's what we evolved to be and that's what we should be until we evolve into something else.
Ken brown 30+
This is the best time to go to Fiji,no tourists.I love lawyers,i've had some wild parties with some of them,and they all say the same thing "Be it $40,$400,$4000,$400.000,if someone is not going to pay you then they won't that's when they call us in on both sides"
Barry Palmer 50+
Mitch SMith 50+
Mitch SMith 50+
No. It's a relaxation from all that guff. Anarchy is a journey - not a destiation.
Barry Palmer 50+
I will grant you that Anarchy is certainly not a destination, but IMO it has no more chance of realization as a sustainable basis of civilization than The Venus Project.
Mitch SMith 50+
The Venus project requires large-scale top-down organisation to supplant the incumbent.
Anarchy is a personal choice - it is without investment overhead and can be incremantally applied.
Where is this democracy you speak of? I have never seen it.
pat gilbert 50+
Justin Elkin
pat gilbert 50+
Here is the deal the free market is not conjecture it HAS raised the standard of living for everyone in the world. NO DOUBT ABOUT IT. Yet the Venus project wants to go about problems. The point is there are ALWAYS going to be problems, but it has gotten infinity better over the past 100years.
Watch this video that illustrates what I'm talking about:
http://www.ted.com/talks/peter_diamandis_abundance_is_our_future.html
Justin Elkin
pat gilbert 50+
In a word what is responsible is the free market. NO DOUBT ABOUT IT.
Justin Elkin
Nathanael Dinwiddie
Anyway, a resource-based economy, theoretically, is supposed to be what a free market (or any other system that successfully bolsters production) leads to. Eventually a free market will produce such an abundance, the price mechanism will not be needed to account for most things. With computerized accounting this is especially possible. However, the vested interest of established institutions threatens the realization of this unprecedented human liberation. They will deliberately maintain scarcity to perpetuate the use of the price mechanism to perpetuate their own position of power as a reaction of self preservation.
Just know, an RBE is no antagonist to this system. It is the offspring of this system. But unless we realize it, and reorganize our institutions and governmental strictures, we will remain oblivious to the new possibilities, stumble forth into an foggy future, and find ourselves stupidly exhausted and defeated just as a man who is too stupid to make the right investments.
pat gilbert 50+
What am I missing?
Justin Elkin
In humility, Justin
pat gilbert 50+
The market produced the higher standard of living before the social safety net, child labor laws, unions, etc. Regulation if anything has slowed down the free market especially here in Calif
Both of you need to review the video above it is not conjecture
Nathanael Dinwiddie
If you are referring to the past, where regulation was very minimal, safety was also very minimal, resulting in the loss of lives of many immigrants and even children. If the unregulated markets of the past produced wealth, it was at the expense of many lives and the environment.
But irregardless of that claim, markets in America have always been under government and therefore affected in some way. So even in historical examples, we can't say it was pure free market.
As for the present, the market would fall apart without government assistance, whether it be bailouts, grants, subsidies, or development incentives. All corporations today benefit from welfare.
Sure, you can blame government regulation for the instability. But even without government, markets will oscillate with catastrophic results. And some say the function of government is sometimes to ease the momentum of such economic oscillations.
Whether regulation has slowed down improvement is difficult to determine. In some cases it may have, but in some cases it may have been catalyst. In addition, consider the fact that many of the technologies we have today were funded by government, developed by the government itself then released to enterprise (such as the internet) or developed by external corporations who reap the profits following its development and never pay back the public fund.
Keep in mind I am not in defense of government, nor free markets. I recognize both as necessary for the realization of an RBE. The market being a complex of irrational forces leading no where in particular, and the government being a rational force attempting to steer the market in a humane direction. But both the government and the market have to realize the potentials for an RBE.
pat gilbert 50+
You are opining hows about some facts?
The U.S. had very few regulation before the 1900s, in fact it was a free market then.
The great depression was created by the Fedral reserve system (regulation), they regulated the supply of money down to the point of deflation and great hardship for all. One example of many that regulation more often than not does't stabalize at all.
The corporate welfare is a liability to the American people, the citizens would be vastly better off without any of it. You appear to fail to realize that the greatest regulator there is is the free market. The problem with regulation is that it requires constant and astute attention. The government can't do this even if wanted to (which it is indifferent). The individual on the other hand is constantly looking out for his best interests. So when there is too much something the retailer is forced to lower the cost of the product. When there is not enough of something get of the way of the new competitors that want in on the profits. This is called the invisible hand and it works exquisitely unless government meddles with it.
Re the internet, ARPAnet, which became DARPAnet once DoD It served defense contractors and researchers. It was given to the market place in 91at which point millions of times the investment in the internet was made by the private market and 10 times the innovation. Nope sorry that trope doesn't hold water no matter what Al Gore says.
Nathanael Dinwiddie
Justin Elkin
peter lindsay 30+
Wasn't there that stock market thingy? You know what I mean the ah ahh CRASHH that's right a great big CRASHH!! Mostly caused by people trying to make money where there is no value added.
pat gilbert 50+
No, how many companies last forever? How many countries last forever?
Justin
There was no inflation in the U.S. until the 1940's and we went off of the gold standard.
The free market is what brought the standard of living to what it is. Did either one you know it alls even look at the video I linked???
You want to trade in the tried and true (that you don't understand) for some shiny pictures that some one is selling?
Again if I'm so obtuse what am I missing? How many time do have to ask? Or maybe you are ignorant about the whole thing?
Justin Elkin
Nathanael Dinwiddie
pat gilbert 50+
Sarcasm noted however no that were not it.
Even Ben Bernake the current Fed chairman acknowledges that the Fed was the culprit.
All recessions are caused by over investment. This should have been just a garden variety recession. Then along comes Smoot Hawley and FDR and his endless meddling and mostly and mainly the Fed shrinking the money supply and the ensuing deflation and depression.
peter lindsay 30+
I do accept that the aftermath of the crash was managed worse than the crash itself. I guess Smoot and Hawley were two Republicans that weren't fans of the free market.
pat gilbert 50+
What caused the boom was that Harding and Coolidge cut the size of Federal government by 50% it was a bubble just like the housing bubble and the tulip bubble of the 1600's in Holland and was caused by too much credit, sound familiar?. It still was not the cause of the depression whether you agree or not.
Hoover was the president that signed the bill and was a RINO.
peter lindsay 30+
(Is being labelled a RINO a bit like excommunication?)
pat gilbert 50+
Funny thing about treason it goes across the board he was later found guilty of treason with his wife as well. Arnold should be taken out and shot he is a TRAITOR.