Archive
A Skeptical Look at The Venus Project
When discussing energy and economics on the internet, you will eventually come across a person or group of people who espouse a cornucopian line of thinking. One of the more common cornucopian associations is the Venus Project (TVP).
The Venus Project, Inc is an organization that promotes Jacque Fresco‘s visions of the future with the goal to improve society by moving towards what they call resource-based economy and the design of sustainable cities, energy efficiency, natural resource management and advanced automation, focusing on the benefits they claim it will bring to society.[1][non-primary source needed][2][unreliable source?] The organization was started by Jacque Fresco[3], Roxanne Meadows and Sam Laurie in 1995.[4][5][note 1] It currently works alongside The Zeitgeist Movement, which functions as an activist network, allowing members to communicate and work on projects within the movement.
The Venus Project is most notable for its appearance in the second Zeitgeist film. If you are unfamiliar with Zeitgeist, it’s content ranges from fanciful religious claims to the 9/11 “truther” movement to an international banking conspiracy to enslave the world.
One of the main tenets of TVP is a resource based economy (RBE).
Simply stated, a resource-based economy utilizes existing resources rather than money and provides an equitable method of distributing these resources in the most efficient manner for the entire population. It is a system in which all goods and services are available without the use of money, credits, barter, or any other form of debt or servitude.
The RBE idea, in reality is nothing more than technocratic communism. Typical TVP RBE talking points go something like this:
We need a current survey of all available planetary resources. The first experimental city or planning center will conduct a global survey of arable land, production facilities, transportation, technical personnel, population, and all other necessities required for a sustainable culture. This survey will enable us to determine the parameters for global planning for humanizing social and technological development, based on the carrying capacity of Earth and the needs of its people. This can best be accomplished with a constantly updated, computerized model of our planetary resources.
TVP operates on a globalist system, where nations cease to exist, borders do not exist, and all resources from any location are available to every other location on the planet. Seemingly, the only difference between Marxist communism and TVP is that TVP espouses that distribution would be handled through “technology” rather than politicians:
We would surpass the need for human participation in the production of goods and services. There is no taxation or obligation of any kind. We advocate no government by human systems. They have always proved inadequate. Computerized systems and cybernetics would be applied to the social system and must comply with the carrying capacity of our global resources.
A typical delusion of the TVP:
In 2020, I envision myself living in a self-sustained, technologically advanced city in a global resource-based economy (RBE). Politics and the notion of nationalism of the present have been long abolished, eradicating the present-day problems of corruption, crime, poverty and war. In its place, a global RBE, where decisions are arrived at through the integration of the world’s knowledge databases, enables Humanity to use its amazing capabilities to solely advance the human and environmental well-being; a far-cry from today, where decisions are usually made to benefit vested interests or based on erroneous opinions, limited by lack of information.
There are several things to address here, the most important being that the advocation that technology can and will be a solution in and of itself to the point that automation will be adopted in all major aspects of society is an emotional appeal. It’s what many people who subscribe to the belief that humanity will proceed on a path à la Star Trek want to hear. The question could be asked why would such technology only come about vis-a-vis an RBE, but as the above quote demonstrates, many TVP proponents adopt a belief that such technology is purposefully shelved and ignored for nefarious and narcissistic purposes by the “power elite”. One could ask where would such technology come from, but that will often play into the RBE proponent’s hands.
Here is a video a TVP advocate put up in response to critical attacks on TVP’s seemingly fantastic (i.e. delusional) visions:
Throughout the series of 6 videos we are shown some fabulously intriguing technology, that when taken on the face, may come across as substantiating the view that the technology TVP asserts may indeed exist. However, what should be noted is the propaganda like format of the videos. What is shown are beautiful pictures of the technologies in question accompanied by inspiring music, as well as some technical points here and there. What is not shown are any scientific peer reviewed studies of the technology in question. Only the positive aspects are addressed. There is no mention of cost (to be addressed in a bit), nor of resources, nor of involved labor, nor of return ratios (e.g. investment, energy, etc). This speaks to a larger psychology of people who fall for a cornucopian viewpoint: they want to hear the positive and never the negative, and it is from this that they establish their beliefs.
Another typical TVP proponent (quoting Envirotech):
The wave of the future is a monetary-free, open-source, efficient and environmentally friendly global culture.
The old generation of scarcity-based thinkers, oil and banking tycoons will die out and a new generation of efficient technology based global thinkers will take over.
The sun shines 24/7. The sun does not charge for it’s shine. Let’s harness that FREE energy for the well-being of everybody on this planet.
Technology is here! It’s now!
Aside from the ambiguity of the reference to the sun shining 24/7 (That the sun may be a continuously active ball of nuclear fusion does not mean that the sun is shining at any given point continuously.), there’s also a false claim made that solar energy is free, which fails to account for material, labor, R&D, and energy costs to produce not only the solar energy collectors themselves, but also the associated infrastructure that would be required to operate and distribute the energy.
The second issue with “believers” of TVP is the concept of scarcity vs abundance. From TVP’s website:
At the beginning of World War II the US 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.
What the above quote demonstrates is a belief that money is the inhibiting factor in production. Unfortunately, what it also demonstrates is a typical logical fallacy of composition. While the above quote may (or may not) be true for that instance, it’s applicability beyond the example is not shown. A second error with the above quote is the idea that the United States did not have enough money. That is absolutely untrue. Equivocation is also abused when the term United States is confused with what was meant to be said: the United States government, for the government of the United States was certainly having financial constraints during the outset of WWII. However, the United States as a country certainly had the money to finance the construction of warplanes. Nor did the United States government have the resources at hand , it was the nation at large that had access to the resources. The shortcoming was the government’s ability to procure adequate funding to allocate resources for the purpose of constructing warplanes, and not as the above quote asserts, that resources were not being exploited by the United States due to lack of money, for indeed they were being exploited, however not for the purposes of constructing warplanes for the government.
It is from unsubstantiated beliefs such as the one shown above that TVP bases the idea that scarcity is merely a artifact of the monetary system, and not due to allocation and physical constraints. Look again at how this viewpoint actually reveals itself to be a belief that a utopia could be achieved if it weren’t for an “engineered society” designed to subjugate humanity:
With scarcity forever abolished through the careful management of the world’s resources as the common heritage of all the world’s peoples, the use of money has been phased out, freeing Mankind from employment. Consequently, professions that deal with finance such as bankers, lawyers etc will be come obsolete. Likewise, following the trends of the last 100 years, automation will almost completely displace human labour from having to provide goods and services to society. As such, Mankind has the unprecedented opportunity to pursue any intellectual, scientific or artistic endeavour. At the same time, the engineered consumer society has faded away since the need to generate perpetual profit via constant consumption has been made obsolete. Henceforth, all products will be made with the best possible materials with the most advanced methods. Any planned or unplanned obsolescence designed in products to fuel cyclical consumption will be remembered as a distorted concept in human history that simply wastes resources.
Notice the verbiage used in the above quote, particularly the idea that humanity needs to be “freed” from employment. The outlandishness and nearly Utopian like description of their vision is typical RBE propaganda designed to appeal to what they believe people want to hear: that the future can be rosy and wonderful, but only if we do xyz. As demonstrated by the previous quote, faith and belief plays a large part in the typical RBE advocate’s viewpoint. What’s not typical of an RBE/TVP viewpoint is skepticism. Skepticism is a large part of scientific foundation and methodology, and so it should be observed whenever critiquing proposals such as TVP. What the TVP/RBE requires is faith. Faith that technology can solve our problems. Faith that scarcity is not an issue. Faith that the entire globe can and will accept a technocratic communist state. However, reality is not obliged to contain that which one believes or has faith in.
Implied scarcity and substitution methodology are often used to defend the idea that scarcity is contrived. The idea of implied scarcity goes something like this:
“Corporation A” sells product X. Product X is necessary for social function. If “Corporation A” implies that product X will be more scarce due to a manufactured reason, then “Corporation A” may see greater profits by doing so, even though the reason for scarcity was false.
The idea of substitution methodology is an extrapolation of the observation that as resources perceptibly become scarce, new methods of production or alternative resources are used to offset the effect of [perceived] scarcity.
Implied scarcity may be true to an extent, however what has done far more damage to society than implied scarcity is an implied abundance. It was the idea of abundance that was largely responsible for the tremendous waste of resources during the previous century, and it still continues today. Examples are the constant references to “hundreds of years of resources left” implying that current trends of growth and lack of conservation are acceptable. If TVP propositions called for strictly conserving the dwindling natural resources of the planet, they’d be moving in the right direction, however that is not one of TVP’s talking points. Instead, the usual cornucopian nonsense is spouted that there are plenty of resources and/or that technology can substitute for them. Yet, neither the arguments for implied scarcity nor for substitution methodology themselves dismiss the probability of resource scarcity nor of diminishing marginal returns associated with increased complexity. It should be noted that for most problems, there are solutions. However, it is a question as to whether the cost of the solution is worth the benefit. This is particularly poignant when the cost is being demanded of one aspect of society (or region), but the benefit is largely for another. What this is is wishful thinking designed to pander to those who don’t want to change or question their ways of living, to the optimists, and to those who refuse to acknowledge the implications of resource scarcity.
The aspect of a unified globe under TVP is another point one should be skeptical about for a number of reasons. Using the example of oil, for instance, we have a commodity that modern civilization is absolutely dependent upon, however that resource exists in select regions around the globe in finite quantities. In a global RBE, those finite resources are allocated out of their native countries to the rest of the globe with a return that is not congruent with the volume of export. What is witnessed is a drainage of regional wealth for global benefit (also known as redistribution of wealth).
The process for determining what projects receive resources and attention is going to create disunion and competition. Although I would potentially support a rationing measure of resources, doing so is not going to be an attractive feature. What if one segment of society was so persistent in obtaining resources for a certain need, but the rest were not willing to allocate the appropriate resources? Putting this situation on a global scale is going to increase the potential number of such instances. Here’s a thought. Let’s say a region of extensive forest is asked to provide timber to the rest of the planet. The region, by providing timber would have a marred landscape. Why should they submit to this, especially when there are no benefits for doing so? This type of situation can be multiplied across the planet, for whatever need for a resource or resource harvesting you can imagine. Unity in such an instance is going to be very difficult to achieve.
For a global RBE to even be remotely possible without rebellion and dissolution is a conversion of identity from regional/ethnic/national to a global identity. One should be extremely skeptical on that point, as one should be with the idea that society would continue to function with no reward system (e.g. monetary) for foundational sectors of mundane employment (of course there would be robots to do that).
Once again taking a skeptical perspective, if TVP did not live up to it’s claims of a work free world, how would society manage to value goods and services with the abolition of the evil monetary system?:
Many will argue money isn’t evil and that it’s people that misuse it or are corrupted by it. This sadly isn’t so. The system we exist in is the problem, for as long as currency dominates our thought patterns we have an attachment. This creates an imprisonment psychologically and arguable spiritually.
The usual response to the question is some vague variation of automation/computers dictating production levels:
Technology intelligently and efficiently applied, conserves energy, reduces waste, and provides more leisure time. With automated inventory on a global scale, we can maintain a balance between production and distribution.
Yet even with this “system” a numerical value is going to be placed on goods/services in some fashion because even in an RBE, you need some way of comparing the value of goods, be it the caloric value, the energy cost, or the value of the cost of human labor for production purposes. Even if the individual person was totally and completely aloof from decision making in regards to value, something, be it a robot/computer or a governmental body will still be applying values to things and making decisions about the direction of society based upon those values. It just so happens that is exactly the purpose of a monetary system (and there are ways to address the issues of debt/credit expansion beyond doing away with the monetary system altogether).
As a final note, a resource based economy is entirely capable of existing, and should TVP proponents wish to live in an RBE, there is nothing stopping them from doing so. The standard of living within the RBE is based entirely on the availability and allocation of resources, but not on the resources themselves (e.g. one does not need oil to have an RBE, however having oil adds to the standard of living within the RBE). What the typical RBE advocate actually wants is a form of “having their cake and eating it,too.” They wouldn’t want to live in an RBE that didn’t have doctors, so to them, it couldn’t exist without doctors, much like they could live in an RBE where there weren’t robots designed to feed, clothe, and shelter them and where those things would have to be supplied by the participants, but then that would mean a decline in the participants standard of living, so to the proponents, it couldn’t exist until the whole world was subsumed to their “vision” (and thus be able to maintain their living standards).
IronHelix
Plots and Complots 