People shouldn't have to work

[taxman]

i take it your on the dole yourself another lay about. nice to know my hard earn tax has paid for your computer and internet to post that message

 

This is a forum for discussion. Epiphany started a subject for discussion.

 

Do you see how that works?

[danot]

This is a forum for discussion. Epiphany started a subject for discussion.

 

Do you see how that works?

 

My bold.

 

It doesn't necessarily need to work does it... well, it shouldn't have to do.

[practitioner]

I think I understand somewhat what you mean. When I first heard about the Venus Project in the Zeitgeist movie I thought the idea was great, but the conceptualised art that Fresco produced seemed too 1970's futuristic for my liking- it was his own personal taste- a bit too cold, a bit too functional for me.

 

I didn't like the lack of regional diversity that it was implying either- what's the point of being able to travel the world if the whole world looks the same? In addition the idea of scrapping the old cities and starting again seems too wasteful in a world with diminishing resources.

 

However, why do you feel it would inhibit choice? What types of choices are you thinking of?

 

Its nothing major Im just being picky, i guess there is the trivial stuff like i might not want my books from there, or i may not want my food from there where else would it then be available surely nowhere.

 

as much as i think it would extend humanitys time on earth or indeed earths life, it just wouldn't be anything like it was in the beginning not that it is now, but i have this nostalgic dream that people had more fun without technology I see it in kids and im 23.

 

Also i've only looked in the venus project briefly. is the plan to eradicate money? because if not you will always have some sort of theft/crime and people better of than the others.

[Cavegirl]

Its nothing major Im just being picky, i guess there is the trivial stuff like i might not want my books from there, or i may not want my food from there where else would it then be available surely nowhere.

 

as much as i think it would extend humanitys time on earth or indeed earths life, it just wouldn't be anything like it was in the beginning not that it is now, but i have this nostalgic dream that people had more fun without technology I see it in kids and im 23.

 

Also i've only looked in the venus project briefly. is the plan to eradicate money? because if not you will always have some sort of theft/crime and people better of than the others.

 

One of the main points of the Venus Project is to eradicate money. The whole idea is based upon transitioning from a monetary economy to a resource-based economy.

 

With regard to trivialities let me put it this way- which do you think gives you more choice- The ability to choose whether you buy your books from whatever is in stock at Waterstones or Amazon, or the ability to freely use a library that holds all books ever written?

 

The Venus Project offers the latter scenario, but it goes a step further- it enables you to directly communicate with writers and let them know what type of book you'd like to read. You could also write your own book, perhaps in conjunction with others, and add it to the library/ freely distribute it to anyone else who wanted to read it.

 

The Venus Project idea removes human control and dominance over resources and makes everything available available to all.

 

You do have a very nostalgic view of early human society The Palaeolithic/ Mesolithic period was not a cosy scene of people sat around a campfire singing kumbaya haha. It was a matter of survival with little room for failure.

 

There's evidence of infanticide-

 

Decapitated skeletons of hominid children have been found with evidence of cannibalism. See e.g., Simons, E.L. (1989). "Human origins". Science 245: 1344.

 

Possible evidence of human sacrifice-

 

A fascinating new paper from the June issue of Current Anthropology explores ancient multiple graves and raises the possibility that hunter gatherers in what is now Europe may have practiced ritual human sacrifice. This practice – well-known in large, stratified societies – supports data emerging from different lines of research that the level of social complexity reached in the distant past by groups of hunter gatherers was well beyond that of many more recent small bands of modern foragers.

 

Evidence of over-hunting (ie killing more animals than is necessary for food/ resources)-

 

The frequency of red deer and aurochs declined over the course of the sequence, largely unaffected by climate. Overhunting, at least locally, is strongly implicated by this pattern. The proportion of juvenile gazelle and fallow deer increased in the younger levels. If one accepts the view that juveniles are low-ranked resources, regardless of their abundance on the landscape, their increase points to a decline in encounter rates for higher-ranked adults. This pattern again points to overhunting.

 

From Speth & Clark, 2006, Hunting and overhunting in the Levantine Late Middle Palaeolithic.

 

These are just a few examples.

 

At the end of the day we're clever apes with technology, it's better to make that technology serve us rather than letting other people rule us I think.

[Cyclone]

The Venus Project idea removes human control and dominance over resources and makes everything available available to all.

Sounds all fine and dandy. How exactly do they ensure that there are enough of scarce things to satisfy everyone then?

[Cyclone]

I understand where you're coming from but I think you need to remember that at the moment our current projections are for a future that is essentially the same as our present but with improved technology.

 

If we began now to reset that projection, if we put all of our consideration to transitioning to a stage where technology took over from human labour and money was to be eradicated then I think you'd find that we could make the changes/ improvements needed quite rapidly.

There's a lot of money to be made by solving these problems, so a lot of research happening around this kind of automation. The only reason it hasn't been solved yet is that the problems are very complex, it's not a lack of desire or a lack of people investigating it.

 

Throughout the transition, as more young people continued in education (on a voluntary basis, learning what they wanted to learn) rather than entering the workforce, more and more brains would be focussed on solving each issue as it arose and you'd see an exponential rise in technological and practical improvements.

And less and less people actually doing any work and producing anything.

Society couldn't support such a change without the technology being in place first. It can't happen the other way around.

 

As money was eradicated you'd also gradually see the Third World catch up with the west/ Asia and world society would become more balanced. High standards of education have been correlated with a lowering of birth rates so the world population would become more in tune with resource availability without need for draconian measures such as China's one child policy.

Higher levels of education worldwide is certainly something to be desired, and it probably would have the affect you suggest. I'm not sure that a communist utopia is required for this to happen though.

A money free society would only be possible if every resource were effectively unlimited in availability. They aren't though, so we either have to barter or use money as an abstraction to bartering.

 

I definately think this is a brighter prospective future than just thinking that we can continue to rape the world's resources for profit and to hell with the consequences.

Rape is an emotive term to use, it suggests force and a lack of consent. It's meaningless in this conversation though, the world is just a big ball of rock with some biology on it, it isn't an entity and can't consent or not consent to anything.

[Cavegirl]

There's a lot of money to be made by solving these problems, so a lot of research happening around this kind of automation. The only reason it hasn't been solved yet is that the problems are very complex, it's not a lack of desire or a lack of people investigating it.

 

I've been reading some of Ray Kurzweil's books over the past 6 months-

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil

 

If you're not aware of him, he's one of those extraordinarily gifted people, he's worked at MIT, with the American military, been a successful entrepreneur and invented a number of A.I. software programs. He believes that we are rapidly approaching a 'singularity' with regard to A.I. which is the point where computers become more effective inventors and technologists than humans. He also discusses the huge potential of nanotechnology in extending/ improving human life and solving wide-ranging environmental issues. It's fascinating and if only half of it's true then I think we're much much closer to robots potentially taking over mundane tasks than most people appreciate.

 

And less and less people actually doing any work and producing anything. Society couldn't support such a change without the technology being in place first. It can't happen the other way around.

Higher levels of education worldwide is certainly something to be desired, and it probably would have the affect you suggest. I'm not sure that a communist utopia is required for this to happen though.

 

I'm not suggesting that a transition would be simple. It would have to be piecemeal, happening at different rates in different parts of the world, but this is the way that world society has always changed- from the adoption of agriculture in the Neolithic to the Industrial Revolution. It's not about people producing less, it's about robots producing more as people produce less- it's more balanced than you imply.

 

It's wrong to imply that it's a communist utopia, it's not based upon Marxist theory, it's not about collective ownership, but more about acknowledging that both private and collective ownership are wasteful in a world with finite resources and that material goods are better shared than owned. It's terribly wasteful of resources to own a car because you don't use that car 24 hours a day, you could share the car with your neighbours, but what if everyone wanted to use it at once? The Venus Project suggests a systematic computerised approach is used to determine how many cars are needed to satisfy everybody's needs whilst using the least resources necessary to limit wastage.

 

A money free society would only be possible if every resource were effectively unlimited in availability. They aren't though, so we either have to barter or use money as an abstraction to bartering.

 

Rape is an emotive term to use, it suggests force and a lack of consent. It's meaningless in this conversation though, the world is just a big ball of rock with some biology on it, it isn't an entity and can't consent or not consent to anything.

 

I think the point is that money leads to inequality both in and across societies. The rich can afford to be wasteful to the detriment of the poor. The reason I use such an emotive term as 'rape' is because a large part of our economy is based upon planned obsolescence, the purposeful wastage of resources, in a world where resources are finite along with the current western perspective, enforced through decades of media propaganda, that want is as, or more important, than need.

 

Resource availability needs to take priority over human desires because we are running out of them. If we continue to let humans rule the planet we are subjected to all the emotional irrationalities and power seeking/ hoarding that humans tend to be prone to. However, if we put in place a rational system of sharing resources based upon egalitarian principles then you let every human reach their full potential through education whilst having full opportunity to participate in leisure events, generally improving their lifestyles.

 

As I say, the Venus Project is a good first step towards making people think this way, but perhaps an even better idea will develop as more people consider the ideas of making money redundant, equalising society and thinking about the issue of diminishing resources in real world terms.

[Cavegirl]

Sounds all fine and dandy. How exactly do they ensure that there are enough of scarce things to satisfy everyone then?

 

The Venus Project advocates using global surveys of raw material resources to fill computer databases. These databases would then determine what resources are made available.

 

I've created and used a few GIS databases, I know they're not simple or easy to create/ use, but the majority of the work has already been done with regards to geology and other environmental resources, it really just needs a lot of finesse.

 

Again I see issues with this idea, but I do think it's a good start.

[Cyclone]

You're only considering raw resources, I'm not likely to want much iron ore, I might want a car though, and if it's all the same then I'll have a ferrari.

Of course many people will need to work quite hard to make that car, and they'll be wanting something to show for their efforts. Or alternatively people will stop building ferrari's as there's no incentive to do so.

[Cavegirl]

You're only considering raw resources, I'm not likely to want much iron ore, I might want a car though, and if it's all the same then I'll have a ferrari.

Of course many people will need to work quite hard to make that car, and they'll be wanting something to show for their efforts. Or alternatively people will stop building ferrari's as there's no incentive to do so.

 

Haha, fight reason with Ferrari's- that's novel.

 

As you rightly say, raw materials go into products- that's why a survey would begin with raw materials. The rest is up to the people of the world's imagination and creativity, and this could go a whole lot further if resources were not limited by money and greed and people's time was not absorbed by mundane labour.