TVP makes good arguments in some areas, and Spinney also makes some good arguments. I think that TVP's ultra collectivist approach will probably lead to depression and, ultimately, catastrophe. Ultra free-market capitalism would also have the same result. I think that mutualism is the way to go. And Spinney is correct when he says that the only way to really measure value is money. The one thing that TVP tends to ignore is that value is incredibly subjective outside of necessities for life.
Who do I follow and understand in this situation? Jacques fresco,a man who has lived through the great depression,several other disasters,recessions, wars, varying types of economies and has been studying human nature, and behavior all his life. On top of that he has invented several pieces of technology, and designed entire cities and systems.
Or do I trust fucking TinTin here who can't come up with any decent, proposable solutions?
I think we all know who we should have more trust in.
@stratocaster1986able You trust the person who presents a logical argument not trust someone simply because they have a polished resume' they achieved through a system they despised.
@stratocaster1986able Petty attempt at name calling seems childish, but I understand. People thought the earth was the center of the universe because someone with a puffed up resume' said so too. Ignorant people have been conditioned to listen to the men/women society deems as intelligent. Paul Krugman is a good example as is Ben Bernanke. The illusion is shattered when people listen then come to realize they were wrong in their theories.
@stratocaster1986able Pretty funny really, with a username like yours you are contradicting yourself, after all it was the people of the catholic church that thought the sun revolved round the earth, don't give me a history lesson is ignorance my friend, that is just plain contradiction with your belief systems.
@stratocaster1986able Actually it doesn't contradict my belief system. Secondly, nice deflection :) Lastly, the people of that time followed the Catholic Church about the earth being the center of universe is the same reason you follow the Venus project. Smart people are convincing you they have an idea which will work and is totally true; even if you can't understand it. Your lack of critical thinking skills and economic understanding has lead to this trickery.
@YaHuWaHservant Sorry, its just I can't take people who believe in stories of the bible seriously, I have an extremely hard time in doing so. Goodbye.
@stratocaster1986able Sounds like a person problem to me mate; although your preconditioning to write people off who provide contradictory information does help me to understand you leaning towards Marxism.
Everything can be done by computer it's really depends on information that you are using while building such a system. Computer doesn't have meaning of anything so people should be clever enough to insert self sustainable logic in this system, and later if something goes wrong it can be altered with a new knowledge.
The Venus Project proposes means and mechanisms by which to maximize production efficiency and minimize the role of labor, organizing the power of industry on a mass scale and eliminating money as it exists today and dealing in a resource based economy.
The Venus Project does not propose that resources are infinite, it proposes that the value of resources and our production capacity is not reflected in the value of monetary currency. I don't know if Jacob is misunderstanding or lying here.
@Laughingblades You are the one misunderstanding me. I am not saying that the venus project itself proposes that resources are infinite. I'm saying that, because there is no money (aka a method of individuals turning preference into marginal utility), the list of production preferences the people offer will not show marginal utility and thus the list will assume infinite resources.
@JacobSpinney That isn't the way it sounds in your video but ok.
Well the Venus Project basically replaces money with a system it calls energy accounting, kind of a nuanced credit system, it may be completely unrealistic but they're very aware of the limitations on resources and labor, they're simply suggesting that the current system creates massive waste and fails to meet it's potential (which they're right on) and they think they have a better alternative. Not unlike Technocrats.
@Laughingblades I understand that they believe they have a method of scientifically valuing the best uses for limited resources. But this is ultimately the core flaw of their entire philosophy. Values are subjective. Not scientific. They do not advocate a system where humans are given the bare necessities for survival (scientific). Instead, they advocate a system where humans are given the things that allow them to be happy (subjective).
@JacobSpinney This is just incorrect in my opinion Jacob. Human being scientifically need certain things, such as shelter, health care, food, psychologically beneficial environments and stimulus (by which I mean non-violent, well educated, comforting recreations that promote human preference, such as music, games, and other conduit activities that lead to beneficial thinking and behavior.) The value of a monetary system was internal in days of expansion, but today it is obsolete.
@mcmilligan88 Thus, although it does address the problem of consumer production, and meeting human needs, it creates problems that far out weigh the benefits given the situation, such as scarcity, the profit-incentive module that leads to corruption, and the opression of the people to a never ending debt cycle which reflects greed, not value.
@JacobSpinney Where did they propose that the priority is happiness? Happiness will be a result of being freed from (some) labor. I have to shoot down your claim that they do not advocate a scientific system for survival. In fact, that's the cornerstone. Distribute resources amongst the world to survive.stop hunger & famine. Contribute. Restructure social institutions. Share luxuries. I think you need to consider how much heart is needed for this utopian idea.
@Laughingblades Thus, they need a method for the people to communicate their list of marginal utility to decide what products to create with the limited resources they have. This is where it becomes impossible without money, since the very purpose of money is converting mere preference into marginal utility. They seem to not even understand the difference between preference and marginal utility, let alone propose a non-monetary solution.
@JacobSpinney True true, they don't have a very good system devised by which to manage labor, but in terms of value they don't think in terms of monetary value the same way, they think in terms of means, meters & measurements. That they can create models and estimate what is necessary for a task, go about the task, then account for the actual cost of resources/energy afterwards to further improve accounting and maximize production/acquisition. It's kind of an tech-utopian extension of automation
@JacobSpinney I think you project some things in modern society into the venus project. It's an idea to be expanded upon. Whoever said it would even use consumer surveys? If we manage a safe amount of survival supplies and enable our true state of technology, there's not really much more we would need or even want. Another part of it is to minimize waste by sharing luxuries and I think you project our current privatized mass consumption into it. Shame!
@JacobSpinney Even if you want to stick to your guns, I hope it doesn't merely cause you to abandon the idea or hope of a utopia. If you see something that needs to be changed, I suggest you contribute the idea while still encouraging this hopeful paradise.
Thirty pages of comments and not once is the concept of the Economic Calculation Problem brought up by name. Boys and Girls of the Venus Project, you are, by analogy, discussing a perpetual motion machine with no inkling of the second law of thermodynamics. Go look up the Economic Calculation Problem on Wikipedia. THAT is what is going to kill this resource based economics crankery before it gets anywhere near implementation.
Resource sustainability is a RBE software's primary goal. Fulfilling the demands of consumers is the method in which it divides the allocated resource.
The flawed RBE model you're presenting here is akin to purposing that retail stores everywhere should manufacture themselves out of business because their production tracking software can't account for the inventory in their warehouses.
To bad that it actually would work. We dont have a lack of labour NOR a lack of food water or resources ATM to create an equal world for everyone.
We happen to have ENOUGH FOOD; ENOUGH WATER AND ENOUGH RESOURCES. As long as they are dealt out properly.
However, someone chooses to object to this idea because it removes the possbility of becomming rich and using way more then you need to, which is just stupid.
Anyone else think this guy smokes too much crack. Based on the fact that he is trying to wrap his scarce brain power around a concept he obviously doesn't get, due to the finite amount of resources his poor reasoning provides. Meaning of course, What a twit!
i am still learning economics, but shouldn't a resource based economy be calculated for the worth of the individual resources comparatively? furthermore, then devising manners to develop what is needed more
Energy is one of the biggest issues for resources, and we have the technology today to fix the issues, but have not put everything in place-due to the private markets right?
I definitely see your point on the consumers drawing as much of whatever they think they need, regardless of the supply
Also, I think you misunderstand what will be 'surveyed', understandably you're considering this from a capitalistic perspective. You are not going to be given a car catalogue and asked to pick out the one you like best, regardless of how much of a drain on resources it is to produce. Instead, cars are produced based on efficiency of operation and production, with some choice over personal aesthetics. Choice is reduced, but the products are better on average, at least functionally.
Capital and labour are not the resources that matter. Labour matters yes, but capital does not. You seem to be holding onto this notion that loss of money means loss of information. What we are really doing by getting rid of money is getting rid of a misleading source of information, monetary value is only a half-truth when it comes to measuring human needs and desires. Think about how you spend your own money, are you always rational with your spending?
Referring to money. The goods that 'capital goods' refer to are not exclusive to the money system, for example, in a resource-based economy you can create a house without money. The goods don't disappear.
Cost in today's market takes into account: an items supply Supply (resources and labor used in making a product) and Demand. Demand is not purely infinite in all senses. If everyone in this society wants a private jet then that creates a huge demand,. but people pass on the private jet because they cannot afford it so the demand really isn't there in today's society because only the few with lots of money will even consider a private jet. In the Venus Project the values would have to change...
@MacabreManifesto ...because people in today's society, if they are put into a society where anything could be provided for free then they'd have an unreasonable wish-list. But wish lists are shaped by the culture. If your standards for happiness are much more minimalist (not some forced idea of Nirvana, but owning just enough to make you satisfied) then you are more easily satisfied. The idea is that we have the resources to provide for everyone's objective needs as well as subjective wants...
@MacabreManifesto ...if subjective wants were receiving enough goods and services to make a person without intensive artificially imposed demand being thrust upon them through advertising.
@MacabreManifesto In your new world everyone would have to think the same. The fact that everyone thinks different, is what makes the world an interesting place. I don't want everyone to dumb down their standard of living, that's what the NWO want.
@MacabreManifesto I want an island. I NEED privacy, and don't want to be around other people. I need the ocean view, and the serenity and beauty, secure in the fact that nobody will bother me. I need a helipad for my helicopter of course, so I can easily travel to the mainland.
Do I get it? Look, I demand my f*cking island. And servants. I want to be served and pampered. If I don't get it, then I will assault this new society. how will you deal with me? Good luck.
No problem. There are no police. If you want to fuck things up for others, expect to be fucked up yourself. No action is without consequence. Have a nice day.
"Any kind of -isms kills. Each of them does it in a different way truevoice08."
Ism is a general suffix. Quit being so ridiculous. 100 years from now when resource based economies develop somekind of coherent mainstream economic/ political philosophy, someone will attribute an ism to the movement. And thats what it will be called henceforth. Resourcism? fantasticism? Neo-technomarxism?
I mean look at Mubarak. He had 70b dollars of his peoples money, and he just kept it to himself. Without mubarak, eliminating equal opportunity for foreign companies to come and compete in egypt, without Mubarak hogging all the wealth through taxes, Egypt would be a strong free market economy today. The whole point of a free market is that there is no centralized power. No one company, goverment or organization has control. Thats when problems arise.
Mexico destroyed its own economic infrastructure by discouraging competition, centralizing buisness, and the whole thing fell apart because of goverment corruption. Right now economic advisors are advocating they embrace free market policies to help their economy. Africa is full of examples of a centralized controlled economies with corrupt leaders. With powerful goverments siphoning off the wealth, and eliminating competition for backdoor kick backs.
Some would argue marxism hasn't really manifested itself either. Besides its a fair point, both are stateless societies, with a centralized means of productions. Some social libertarian or communist ideologies were against money.
Ofcourse what you fail to mention, is that historically when indigenous people met people from merchantilist or capitalist society, they wanted what they had. The fur trades of the americas are a good example of this. The only thing this argument is good for, is to demonstrate ignorance is bliss. You can be blissfully ignorant of what modern society offers, but its extremely rare for people to reject it once you know of it.
@CarstenIQ Exactly, there's no benchmark for comparison. It's just like Marxism. It can't actually EVER be tried so the dreamers will never admit to their wrongs. The result is 65 million killed in Soviet Union and the Marxists say that it wasn't really proper socialism. All utopian ideologies wanting to push man to a new level of existence require COERCION to get there.
@CarstenIQ I'm actually from Southeast Asia. From my experience and knowledge of history in this region I can attest that Marxism IS evil! If you admit that you are a Marxist then I will no longer discuss with you anymore since I would assume you to be hopelessly delusional. Marxism has been proven wrong too many times to count. And I have witnessed firsthand the lengths people go to maintain their fantasies.
@CarstenIQ I do not support Monsanto. Your error is that you conflate corporatism (which is really a form of socialism) with capitalism. You do not understand that capitalism is based on voluntarism and NOT coercion hence you do fail to address my arguments. Wikipedia is an example of individual collaboration and NOT collectivism. Contributions in wikipedia are not compensated in money simply because they do not need to. But energy production, where value can be measured through price, different
@ Of course there's no collective ownership in technology in a monetary economy. Collective ownership contradicts the whole purpose of ownership, that is, to exclude. You might think that is evil when in fact you depend on it to survive. It upsets me that you sound like you haven't even seen the video you are commenting on. And if you think RBE is not utopian, your even more delusional than I imagined.
@CarstenIQ High technology capital goods only emerged in history because of savings which were invested according to consumer demand reflected in prices which require -yes - money. You can pretend to ignore history and economic theory all you want, but the fact is that RBE is just Marxism with Robots. It is equivalent to believing in pink unicorns.
@CarstenIQ You obviously don't understand my comment. You need to learn some economics. Technology doesn't just come out of nowhere to be collectively owned by the masses. There is such a thing as structures of production and capitalist investment, important stuff which utopians such as yourself do not understand.
@CarstenIQ Your statement is problematic. What technology? Who to build it? Where to get resources? All this require profit and loss mechanism and its precursory requirement of economic calculation which depend on money prices. Venezuela has nationalized its energy industry (w/c means price mechanism is destroyed). Does Venezuela have cheap energy? Nope, only exorbitantly high taxes. Are its means of energy production not centralized? Don't make me laugh! Taking the cash nexus away means poverty
@CarstenIQ Nobody doubts that people can live without money. The libertarian contention is that civilization cannot be erected without money. If you want to live in your primitive moneyless commune then so be it But you cannot force me, who wants a high standard of living, to give up using money.
No Resources aren't infinite but they are recyclable. The demand would be pretty minimalist and goods would not be owned. So demand is not just: how many people want to own this type of thing? It is: What is the maximum number of units of this item that will ever be in use at one time? Netflix isn't going to say: over the next month, 500,000 people are going to rent Inception so we need 500,000 more copies of Inception. They are probably going to guess: What is the highest number of copies...
@MacabreManifesto ...of Inception that will ever be checked out at one time? This is an entirely new type of demand. You could own a whole household of stuff but then you'd have to deal with a household of stuff, when it is so much easier to live a minimalist lifestyle, where the only things you really own, you use very frequently. This drastically reduces consumption. You may only be limited in calling dibs on such things as a city, that is just an absurd request that the society just could...
@MacabreManifesto ...not handle. And what the society could handle: like a giant mansion wouldn't create new demand because 1: Anyone could snap their fingers and get a mansion also so calling dibs on a mansion isn't all that impressive. And 2: That is such an inefficient waste of space, life is so much easier in this house where everything is in a few steps of the center and there is no clutter at all because the system neatly manages all sources of utility that I may need off site.
@JacobSpinney the cred to your arguments seem to come from the basis of someone who fully understands (is indoctrinated) by monetary economics. I as well come from the business and economics field; however, I have to inform you that your logic is fundamentally flawed here. You are using facts from a completely different emergent property (monetary econ) to argue an other (resource-based econ). From the context of Monetary Econ your statements are 100% correct, however, have no referent for RBE.
You keep repeating the same argument - "prices are a way to communicate scarcity to the consumer"
I agree. And in a monetary system, it is true.
However, in a resource based economy there is abundance, therefore prices are not required. Resources are managed by everybody, not some mystical circle of dictators. Peoples would not have an "infinite wishlist of things" because the population understands the concepts of sustainability. Greed becomes irrelevant.
Now there are items that can only be used once. How do we ration those? How do we ration those within Capitalism? Money. What does money represent? Societal contribution, among other things. So if there's only 100 bottles of medicine and 101 people need them in Capitalism the person with the most money gets the medicine. In an RBE the person who contributes the most gets it, if we can't make more. Each situation varies, and it's hard to have a set policy about this.
@cogar48 Well, in a truely free market (where you can't lobby the state for special favors), the amount of money one makes, is roughly a reflection of how much one contributes. So there you go.
@janc71 I disagree. A garbage man makes less than Justin Bieber but I'd say that society needs a garbage man more than JB. In a mutualist society maybe.
@cogar48 Society here, can be summed up as our collective preferences, and preference is subjective. There are no needs, only 'wants'.
I don't care for JB, but if we change the example from JB to Lenny Kravitz, I'd choose Lenny every day over a garbageman (I'd get rid of the garbage myself).
You are entitled to your opinion, but it's just that: An opinion. You can't determine these things for other people, let alone force them into something they don't want.
@cogar48 If you *need* something to stay alive (food), then it's still conditioned upon the *want* to stay alive.
So sure, most people would prefer food over Justin Bieber, but it still up to every individual for himself to decide where he wants to spend his money (that is time, energy, labor) on.
@cogar48 I'm not ignoring that. I'm just letting people decide for themselves how much money (time, labor, energy, etc.) they want to spend on food, the garbageman and/or Justin Bieber. It is not up to you, me or even the majority.
@janc71 Let me put it this way, if you want to listen to Justin Bieber you must be alive. Therefore you value your life equal to both what you want to do, and what you are doing. So unless you want to do nothing everyone values life. So a person who provides food contributes more to society than Justin Bieber, because without that person you wouldn't be able to listen to Justin Bieber, but in Capitalism Justin Bieber makes more money.
@cogar48 1. You are ignoring the fact that the cost of a resource is not merely its scarcity, but the opportunity cost of using it for something else. Without a price system, it is impossible to determine this opportunity cost, and thus what the total cost of the resource should be, since you need a bidding process to determine its best use.
@cogar48 2. This is completely irrelevant to the point. Should you make those 100 boats more efficient at the expense of making something else less efficient, or not available at all? Or the opposite? Without prices, such decisions are arbitrary and cannot allocated resources in the most economically efficient way that best satisfies consumers.
@JacobSpinney 2. What utility do the two objects serve? A boat vs. a car. Which is used more? In an area where boats are used more you make the boats more efficient. In an area where cars are used more you make cars more efficient.
@cogar48 Ah, I see. So your society would not necessarily allocate resources in the way that best satisfies consumers. Your society would just arbitrarily dictate what's good for us and allocate resources in that way, and if consumers aren't satisfied, then they're just stupid. Yes?
@JacobSpinney "Your society would just arbitrarily dictate what's good for us and allocate resources in that way, and if consumers aren't satisfied, then they're just stupid. Yes?" What? If I use my computer more than my tv I obviously value my computer more. I really don't get your point. In an area where people use cars more than boats they value cars more than boats. So the consumers are in fact deciding what is good for them.
@cogar48 Yes. You might be able to determine crude things. Like if people are living in boat houses on a lake, it's probably a good idea for them to use boats rather than cars. But in what way should you allocate resources to make those boats? That can only be decided by a price system.
@JacobSpinney "Yes, you might be able to decide how to allocate resources, but how will you decide how to allocate resources?" As I said, we allocate according to use. How do we decide whether a TV or a Computer is made out of the longest lasting material? We look at it's rate of use and depletion.
@cogar48 And as I keep saying, use by a consumer when all prices are free will not tell you their list of marginal utility. It will only tell you their wish list in a world with no scarcity. Prices are how scarcity is communicated to the consumer. Without prices, they cannot know how they wish to allocate resources in the way that best meets their wishes AND scarcity. Instead, you'd need to treat humans like babies and make all of their decisions for them thinking you know what's best.
@JacobSpinney Your problem only exists within ownership. If everyone hoarded things like they do now we wouldn't know what they valued more without price. But if people could use things and then put them back, we can track their use. Since time is scarce, the value of the object to the consumer is still communicated to production. The opportunity cost of watching tv is not using something else. So we can find what people value, based on what they use.
@cogar48 Again. You are ignoring the rudimentary problem. Yes. Time is scarce. But if renting out the $10,000 widget for a day is the same price to me (zero) as renting out the $1,000,000 widget, then how am I supposed to tell the difference? I would merely decide which one I like more based on my usage of it. NOT on the market price of it; a market price which is determined through a bottom-up supply and demand bidding process, something that cannot be dictated from the top down.
@JacobSpinney "Without knowing what people value we can't know where to allocate resources." A. We can objectively determine which resources are best for a certain item. B. We can determine which good to allocate these resources to(assuming the options are mutually exclusive) by finding out which people value, we can determine this by looking at what they use. "But if renting out the $10,000 widget for a day is the same price to me (zero) as renting out the $1,000,000 widget,"...
@JacobSpinney ...the price is not zero. The price of using a $10,000 widget is not using the $1,000,000 widget. I'm assuming both of these items use the same materials.
You are still talking about consumers - which implies that you are looking at this problem from the wrong perspective. Since businesses as we know them wouldn't exist in a resource based economy, the goals of industry change
The goal of the venus project is not to satisfy consumers. It is to create sustainability and maximize efficiency.
with regard to the boats question - are you assuming that planet-wide limitations on resources will create problems maximizing efficiency?
@TheRyantherenegade Of course. Efficiency comes at a cost. Over and over again, I see the venus project making plans of how to allocate resources as if resources were infinite. Although I'd love to live in that world, that simply is not the case. Resources are finite. And because of that, we cannot simply pretend that we have enough resources to make everything 100% efficient. The day we can just will products into existence, I'd jump right on board with you guys. But that is not reality.
I think you've misinterpreted the venus project. The entire goal of the venus project is to teach the population that resources are NOT infinite, that sustainability and efficiency would increase without the profit motive because cost cutting corners would not be taken.
In fact, it is the current system that assumes we have infinite resources - this is why products are made with a deliberate short term shelf life for a short term profit, which is a very wasteful system.
@TheRyantherenegade You are thinking of everything in terms of scientific efficiency. I am trying to show you the cold realization that what is scientifically efficient is not necessarily economically efficient. Science deals with an ideal world of unlimited resources. Economics deals in the real world with limited resources. They are two different ballparks.
I disagree with your points about scientific efficiency versus economic efficiency.
You are assuming that the current economic model accounts for real world resources when the evidence shows that they do not. Although we have a finite supply of oil, for example, production and use of oil continues to increase year after year.
The Venus Projects first assumption is Earths resources are finite. So all economic and scientific models for efficiency are based on that assumption.
@TheRyantherenegade No. We realize that oil is scarce. THAT IS WHY OIL HAS A PRICE! As oil becomes more and more scarce, its price will increase higher and higher, thus causing alternative forms of energy to become more preferable.
I agree to an extent (ignoring factors like monetary corruption, corporate corruption, scientific corruption, etc). But the same would also be true of oil in a resource based economy.
But - the value of money is distorted. It's like the IMF argument that "we have halved the number of people living on 1 dollar a day in the last 20 years" - but fail to mention that the value of the dollar has dropped by 60% in the last 20 years, so they haven't really achieved anything.
So indoctrinated, so misguided, so irresponsible and careless. Yeah, let's keep this free market going buddy. Forget about everything else. Your points are flawed and are seen as valid only from others who share your outdated perspectives. Grow the fuck up, nobody in their right mind will want useless junk in this kind of society. So the issue of scarcity is almost a misnomer. On top of that...PAY ATTENTION. "Strategic access". Ownership doesn't apply in the same sense.
@XSilvenX This is not a free market. It is a corporatized market. Other than insulting me, you have not explained how the venus project can create a list of marginal utility.
You are making an assumption that people will make an assumption that resources are infinite just because what is proposed has never been done before. People won't have "wish lists" where they want everything they can get without regard to resources because they will be conscious of scarcity and will not be brainwashed to consume everything they can.
@fakeham You are missing the point. Without prices, they will not have the correct information of scarcity. They will not know what is scarce and what isn't.
So our idea to survey the resources of the earth won't measure scarcity just because you say money is the only way to do that. riiiiight.... I'll even use your island analogy, if you are on the island and you survey the entire island to see what resources you have (not exactly practical on this scale but whatever) and then you track the amount you use of each resource, how does that not count as knowing what is scarce?
@fakeham No. I did not say that these super computers would not be able to measure scarcity. I said that without prices, it is impossible to relay this scarcity information to the consumer. Unfortunately, individuals cannot be master planners of the earth. We can only become really good at few different things.
If something is scarce, all you have to do is make it out of less scarce materials or just make it recyclable in the first place so that it will not become scarce. There are few resources that are nonrenewable and those that are nonrenewable can be recycled very efficiently.
@fakeham Saying that consuming product X will deplete resource Y, versus consuming product A will deplete resource B, is not information that a consumer can relate to, and thus is not something they can make a legitimate decision about. What you need is a market price to convert these heterogeneous resources into homogeneous ones, since basic arithmetic is far easier for a consumer than world planning.
An educated public could make decisions based on that, you are assuming that people will be clueless like they are today. Ultimately, it is not up to people to decide, if something is becoming depleted, we will make products with something else. Also, there won't be any overpopulation in a RBE and therefore we won't need to supply an infinite amount of products. It doesn't matter what system there is, the resources are still going to be limited so we need to limit consumption.
What are you trying to prove? are you trying to say the Venus project is not as good as the current system? There is no conclusive evidence that it wont work because its never been tried.
so why don't you look at the evidence, in our current free market system we are massively damaging the environment and we show very few signs of stopping because of peoples will to consume and buy materialistic products. The competition for low prices exploits people and causes huge differences in health.
@MrJasonbaxter1987 I'm trying to say that the venus project is economically unfeasible. If you happen to watch any of my other videos, you'd know I say that the current system is just as unfeasible as well. There is conclusive evidence, as I have demonstrated with its inability to make a list of marginal utility.
Our current system is a corporate system. NOT a free market system.
The island analogy is an useless abstraction; the global situation is simply different today - we have technology, the "lost" scenario has no such thing.
Also; sky-rocketing unemployment statistics as well as the countless meaningless jobs that are employing most people today are also two indicators that labor power is less scarce than he suggests.
@selvmordspilot ? You did not understand the analogy whatsoever. I was merely using the island analogy to bring up the topic of marginal utility, and how technology, no matter how advanced, cannot put together a list of marginal utility.
and a fourth point from reading the other comments: A lot of people have made reference to some sort of mystical supercomputer that runs everything and decides things for people in authoritarian way.
The computer systems proposed by the Venus Project are nothing of the kind, in essence they propose an open source database system where everyone is free to input data and nobody would input false data because it would only serve to disadvantage themselves.
1. You're looking at the Resource Based Economy from an Austrian economics viewpoint, which means that all of your assumptions are wrong and thus all of your conclusions are therefore irrelevant.
2. The resource based economy is not a centrally planned economy, it is a system of interlinked decentralized economies where the point of the interlinking is only to moniter the earths resources.
3. The assumption that people have "infinite" needs is a cultural flaw born from capitalism.
You miss some extremely important points. First, there is no 'capital' cost or 'labour cost' involved in any Venus calculation. 'Cost' is 100% composed of resources alone. Second, you seem to neglect the issue that the fundamental needs of humans (housing, food, water, health care etc) are the basic 'goods' which are automatically required by all people. Therefore your argument is based only upon the supply and/or demand for non-essential goods and services. Ergo, you miss the point.
Thirdly, if the free market is a reliable way to control resource wastage, why are landfills full of perfectly serviceable items that are no longer 'fashionable', and why are 'consumer goods' not upgradeable, but instead require a whole new unit to be purchased in order to take advantage of new innovation? Answer, because the free market works on a profit motive, without a profit motive the focus is to provide for needs, not manufactured 'wants, such as the latest 'whatever'.
Which leads to the final point I want to make. Whilst a third or more of the world's population live in dire, life-threatening poverty, what makes you think you have a right to demand whatever luxury goods you desire? Once the NEEDS of all the people on this earth are met, free of the need to be able to 'pay' for those needs to be met with a fictitious 'currency', THEN perhaps speculate on how the WANTS of those still too spoiled by their luck of birth might be satisfied. Not before.
On TZM board they have been trying to confront the economic calculation problem. Their consensus; devoted Marxist Otto Neurath's assessment on the RBE was right, we'll just calculate heterogeneous as if they were homogeneous. "RBE isn't communist" my ass.
the cost/price takes capital and labor into account. without "money/banknotes" youtube.com/watch?v=YIPDJ1Cc_uw share the cow, share the milk. If you have 2 cows and want 1 bull, ask someone for 1 bull. Than give 1 cow to someone else or the same person you got the bull from, depending on: give goods/services 1. who needs it the most for improving human bodily health. 2. how much they have for how much they can give out to each person and for how many people wants it.
Ok let’s see. How do judge the efficiency of the price system to communicate relevant information? The answer must be that a price is not 100% perfect tool. The problem today is that the consumer does not have all the relevant information to make decisions. Additionally you have the problem of external costs and other things like corruption, monopolies etc. In RBE the central computer does something like a life cycle analysis for every product. This information will be much better.
@happyswissman How much information do you need? Information is a good and attainable at a cost. Consumers are the best judges of how much information they need. No tool is 100% perfect. Yet price is one of the best indicators when it comes to gauging how much of a resource to devote to an endeavour. External costs ought to be internalised fully. Guess why they often are not. Monopolies only come into existence with the govt's blessing. The last line is needlessly optimistic.
A political movement needs different ideology and rhetoric to appeal to different target audiences. The ideology needed to appeal to a few academicians and disgruntled socialists is vastly different than the ideology needed to maintain a state. If the TVP city does attract the worst and dimmest of mankind's refuse, then how will that affect their ideology? At the very least, you must admit that, as a state, it requires enforcement at the margins against its own members.
TVP's socio-economic theory teaches that scarcity still exists only because of how resources and production are managed. That the only thing standing between mankind and postscarcity is a few private interests, who manage their property according to their own interests rather than for the higher good. Add to that how they already speak of "need" - that definition-defying anticoncept, which bestows ontological presedence upon their own preferences over all others.
@PanzerDivisionBOM I don't see how small-scale communist production for "need (As an anarcho-socialist, I will admit that VP is communism, though i dunno anything about any supercomputers, Ive only watched the first two movies, which didnt mention a supercomputer) can be that impossible to maintain, especially with our technology it's pretty adhoc, as market allocation is.
@leldoryn It isn't. It may generate inefficiencies as compared to market production but smaller scale endeavours aren't equally subject to the calculation problem as, say, a world government, or even present governments. The existence of capitalistic economies external to the socialist one usually help reduce the level of inefficiency within it (the USSR was an example of this.)
@Holisticism1 I do realize that. What I've been trying to convey is that 1) there is no model to show how a supercomputer's predictions can replace raw data of voluntary market exchanges in order to allocate resources efficiently because, as we discussed, there can still be waste even in post-scarcity theory. 2) The global network cannot be implemented without global acceptance and since no one will know what they're getting into, either force or trickery(coercion's ugly cousin) is inherent.
No, I want your take on it, based on your experience with these people and your best judgment. How far do you think they will push it, and in particular, do you think a popular Projecteer movement could retain its present conviction of nonaggression, even under circumstances such as I described and even though their theory will suggest that the wealth of their neighbors is the direct cause of their own suffering?
@Holisticism1 Are they all paid the same above-minimum wage salary by coincidence? Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds a lot like libertarian socialism. Who decides this wage? Who distributes it? Not free individuals voluntarily interacting with one another, that's for certain.
Well, I agree that, if and when the project does not work out, then they will have to scrap it.
I also posit, based on my understanding of the theory of the firm and my assessment of the problems which they must necessarily face, that they will eventually fail. No state can persist for long unless the vast majority of its host society passively suffers its deprivations, and in the case of TVP, those deprivations will be particularly severe.
- will the Projecteers go to keep their society alive? Will they stop before laying the first brick? After seeing what sort flocks to their city? After a few years of poverty and famine?
How will they treat their relatively wealthy neighbors during that time?
You accept that they will refrain from aggression as though it were a foregone conclusion. But if you look at the implications of their socio-economic theory, they actually believe that they could be living in the garden Eden right -
- now, if it weren't for the greed of their fellow men. From my personal experience, where the designs of a Projecteer or her notion of "need" runs contrary to the volition of free men, she will discard the latter as irrelevant, without a moment's consideration.
What sort of mass ideology will rise from that theory, that attitude and from the sort of people who will be drawn to this movement? Can it retain the same peacefulness as now, when it is aimed mostly at a few academicians?
@Holisticism1 It does, I'm just not spelling it out anymore. The question on every free market economists' mind is, how will TVP solve the calculation problem, without prices, for the global economy, after money has been made obsolete across the globe. I don't much care to see how it could manage resources efficiently in a small city while markets still exist in the rest of the world. With that said TVP cannot answer those questions without testing its hypothesis on a global scale.
@Holisticism1 From my understanding, TVP's production model, like a modern production model, would require the use of many resources from all over the world for even for the simplest products i.e. a pencil or a ham sandwich. Production can't exist without exchanges on a global scale and you can't test a supercomputer's ability to calculate the most efficient allocation of resources for the entire globe in a limited laboratory environment such as a village or city so therein lies the impass.
No they don't control the prices... every year there are stories of over abundance of crop which sends prices into the toilet and many farmers would surfer except the speculators assumed the risk and worked it into their economic models. Speculators have much more information on the supply and demand of food than farmers ever could.
Farmers could sell it on their own except there is the risk of not turning a profit.
@pemborsky I'm saying it can't even get off the ground unless it is supported unanimously, not just by "enough" people like you said in your last post. You're right though, you didn't say you were against a voluntary society. That was my mistaken assumption spilled over from a discussion with someone else. My apologies.
@Holisticism1 notice the comma. Labor can still be wasted on something not useful, since time is still valuable, and machine life is limited, so it can be wasted.
You and I might have different experiences with talking to venus projecteers, and I'm open to the possibility that I'm acting under selection bias, but have you heard how they speak of "need"? They hold to it as being an ethical absolute, rendering human choice as it exists in the real world all but insignificant in comparison, each presupposing her own concept of this definition-defying term as an absolute measurement by which all order must be judged.
becomes popular, then they're going to face problems of scarcity, which their socio-economic theory teaches is always a result of prejudice and malice. As all the good land on the planet and most of the oceans are already claimed by some state or another, they'll have to settle for whatever scraps of land they can get. Their bureau of allocation will struggle with problems of calculation, and the promise of equality of outcome will attract the worst of mankind from other societies.
And at the same time, they will see their neighbors, who still engage in global division of labour, prosper, and accumulate property beyond their "need".
Based on your personal experience of conversations with venus projecteers, your knowledge of the histories of similar undertakings and your theoretical understanding of the human sciences, how do you think the project would resolve the means of "nonaggression" with the aim of "control of resources", in such a situation?
@Holisticism1 I understand how TVP can be so appealing because it's so radically different from what we have now, an abysmal failure, to say the least. My question is, why are you so opposed to a stateless society which allows the market to naturally balance itself and provide for the most efficient use of resources economically. Doesn't that seem more sensible than putting all your eggs in one basket, hoping that the supercomputers will be able to predict consumer needs and adjust accordingly?
@Holisticism1 How so? TVP claims to promote the non-aggression principle but it can't begin to enact global change without the consent of EVERYONE. I don't want TVP, nor does any anarchist, libertarian, or anybody who understands central planning squashes individual freedom. So already it fails. That's only the moral argument. As far as prices and calculation, consumer surveys are not enough to determine how to produce. Even given unlimited resources, labor and machine life can still be wasted.
@Holisticism1 Like I said, I'm humoring you. Once again, I'm gonna play devil's advocate and concede that TVP could eliminate scarcity of resources. For that to happen, TVP would have to assume control of those resources, which cannot be done without force. In a free market, however, it is possible to achieve renewable resources once production has advanced to such a level, which it is very close to already. Google 'open source ecology' and see what a voluntary society is capable of achieving.
@Holisticism1 The part I pointed out in the post prior to the previous one. TVP's ability to eliminate the scarcity of global resources is null so long as it exists concurrently with other societies who do not wish to join. That means if one person(hopefully two at least for exchange purposes) wishes to remain in a free-market capitalist society, TVP cannot assume control of those global resources without infringing upon the outsiders. There would probably be more than two though, I'm guessing.
@pemborsky I agree, the whole thing does seem to be an all or nothing proposition. Although "all" doesn't necessarily mean "the entire world", it just means "within a trade boundary". For instance, if a country felt it could be self-sufficient, it could close trade borders and adopt a TVP-like system, but it would definitely require that everyone within the defined trade boundary adhere to the boundary.
@Holisticism1 I should have used a direct quote. Peter Joseph claimed TVP would be voluntary in nature. It's mute because central planning is coercion and 100% of the global population will never volunteer anyway, but I'll humor you. Whilst speaking with Stefan Molyneux, Joseph stated that TVP would start off, idk, somewhere remote outside modern-day society and joining would be voluntary, others would realize blah blah blah. If this is so, TVP will have failed on its own terms from the get-go.
@Holisticism1 Peter Joseph stated that the Venus Project doesn't advocate coercion because it wouldn't be forced upon everybody, but rather serve as a separate alternative society. It would show the world, by example, what science is capable of and if people were so inclined, could follow suit. The underlying problem is that it is impossible to eliminate scarcity globablly without forcefully taking control of the entire globe's resources. The Venus Project will never be voluntary.
My own personal problem with TVP that I haven't seen a real solution for is the idea of needs fraud. Disabled people, for example, would need more resources than people who are not disabled. So how would we fairly determine who really is disabled? How does the computer know? Fundamentally the goal of TVP seems to be fairness and sustainability. Sustainability might be able to be taken care of by a computer, but I'm not so sure about fairness.
TVP makes good arguments in some areas, and Spinney also makes some good arguments. I think that TVP's ultra collectivist approach will probably lead to depression and, ultimately, catastrophe. Ultra free-market capitalism would also have the same result. I think that mutualism is the way to go. And Spinney is correct when he says that the only way to really measure value is money. The one thing that TVP tends to ignore is that value is incredibly subjective outside of necessities for life.
DesecrateConformity 2 months ago
Who do I follow and understand in this situation? Jacques fresco,a man who has lived through the great depression,several other disasters,recessions, wars, varying types of economies and has been studying human nature, and behavior all his life. On top of that he has invented several pieces of technology, and designed entire cities and systems.
Or do I trust fucking TinTin here who can't come up with any decent, proposable solutions?
I think we all know who we should have more trust in.
stratocaster1986able 2 months ago
@stratocaster1986able: You're using logical fallacies to diminish the input by Jacob Spinney.
Provide an argument instead of appealing to some intellectual authority. Hitler was brilliant too.
Deadwind002 1 month ago
@stratocaster1986able You trust the person who presents a logical argument not trust someone simply because they have a polished resume' they achieved through a system they despised.
YaHuWaHservant 3 days ago
@YaHuWaHservant You're right, I do trust the guy with the logical arguement, Jacques Fresco, well done Godlover.
stratocaster1986able 3 days ago
@stratocaster1986able Petty attempt at name calling seems childish, but I understand. People thought the earth was the center of the universe because someone with a puffed up resume' said so too. Ignorant people have been conditioned to listen to the men/women society deems as intelligent. Paul Krugman is a good example as is Ben Bernanke. The illusion is shattered when people listen then come to realize they were wrong in their theories.
YaHuWaHservant 3 days ago
@stratocaster1986able Pretty funny really, with a username like yours you are contradicting yourself, after all it was the people of the catholic church that thought the sun revolved round the earth, don't give me a history lesson is ignorance my friend, that is just plain contradiction with your belief systems.
stratocaster1986able 3 days ago
@stratocaster1986able Actually it doesn't contradict my belief system. Secondly, nice deflection :) Lastly, the people of that time followed the Catholic Church about the earth being the center of universe is the same reason you follow the Venus project. Smart people are convincing you they have an idea which will work and is totally true; even if you can't understand it. Your lack of critical thinking skills and economic understanding has lead to this trickery.
YaHuWaHservant 2 days ago
@YaHuWaHservant Sorry, its just I can't take people who believe in stories of the bible seriously, I have an extremely hard time in doing so. Goodbye.
stratocaster1986able 2 days ago
@stratocaster1986able Sounds like a person problem to me mate; although your preconditioning to write people off who provide contradictory information does help me to understand you leaning towards Marxism.
YaHuWaHservant 2 days ago
Everything can be done by computer it's really depends on information that you are using while building such a system. Computer doesn't have meaning of anything so people should be clever enough to insert self sustainable logic in this system, and later if something goes wrong it can be altered with a new knowledge.
Radamanfz 2 months ago
The Venus Project falls into the same nativity as other technocratic models but Jacob Spinney is woefully misrepresenting it.
Here are some facts relating to the Venus Project and this video
1: The Project does not suggest that either resources nor labor are limitless
2: The Project proposes a resources based economy based on the raw physical means of resource acquisition and exploitation
3: It proposes that Currency has arbitrary value not truly representative of resources or production.
Laughingblades 4 months ago
The Venus Project proposes means and mechanisms by which to maximize production efficiency and minimize the role of labor, organizing the power of industry on a mass scale and eliminating money as it exists today and dealing in a resource based economy.
The Venus Project does not propose that resources are infinite, it proposes that the value of resources and our production capacity is not reflected in the value of monetary currency. I don't know if Jacob is misunderstanding or lying here.
Laughingblades 4 months ago 2
@Laughingblades You are the one misunderstanding me. I am not saying that the venus project itself proposes that resources are infinite. I'm saying that, because there is no money (aka a method of individuals turning preference into marginal utility), the list of production preferences the people offer will not show marginal utility and thus the list will assume infinite resources.
JacobSpinney 4 months ago 2
@JacobSpinney That isn't the way it sounds in your video but ok.
Well the Venus Project basically replaces money with a system it calls energy accounting, kind of a nuanced credit system, it may be completely unrealistic but they're very aware of the limitations on resources and labor, they're simply suggesting that the current system creates massive waste and fails to meet it's potential (which they're right on) and they think they have a better alternative. Not unlike Technocrats.
Laughingblades 4 months ago
@Laughingblades I understand that they believe they have a method of scientifically valuing the best uses for limited resources. But this is ultimately the core flaw of their entire philosophy. Values are subjective. Not scientific. They do not advocate a system where humans are given the bare necessities for survival (scientific). Instead, they advocate a system where humans are given the things that allow them to be happy (subjective).
JacobSpinney 4 months ago 2
@JacobSpinney This is just incorrect in my opinion Jacob. Human being scientifically need certain things, such as shelter, health care, food, psychologically beneficial environments and stimulus (by which I mean non-violent, well educated, comforting recreations that promote human preference, such as music, games, and other conduit activities that lead to beneficial thinking and behavior.) The value of a monetary system was internal in days of expansion, but today it is obsolete.
mcmilligan88 2 months ago
@mcmilligan88 Thus, although it does address the problem of consumer production, and meeting human needs, it creates problems that far out weigh the benefits given the situation, such as scarcity, the profit-incentive module that leads to corruption, and the opression of the people to a never ending debt cycle which reflects greed, not value.
mcmilligan88 2 months ago
@JacobSpinney Where did they propose that the priority is happiness? Happiness will be a result of being freed from (some) labor. I have to shoot down your claim that they do not advocate a scientific system for survival. In fact, that's the cornerstone. Distribute resources amongst the world to survive.stop hunger & famine. Contribute. Restructure social institutions. Share luxuries. I think you need to consider how much heart is needed for this utopian idea.
TrazMatik 2 months ago
@Laughingblades Thus, they need a method for the people to communicate their list of marginal utility to decide what products to create with the limited resources they have. This is where it becomes impossible without money, since the very purpose of money is converting mere preference into marginal utility. They seem to not even understand the difference between preference and marginal utility, let alone propose a non-monetary solution.
JacobSpinney 4 months ago 3
@JacobSpinney True true, they don't have a very good system devised by which to manage labor, but in terms of value they don't think in terms of monetary value the same way, they think in terms of means, meters & measurements. That they can create models and estimate what is necessary for a task, go about the task, then account for the actual cost of resources/energy afterwards to further improve accounting and maximize production/acquisition. It's kind of an tech-utopian extension of automation
Laughingblades 4 months ago
@JacobSpinney I think you project some things in modern society into the venus project. It's an idea to be expanded upon. Whoever said it would even use consumer surveys? If we manage a safe amount of survival supplies and enable our true state of technology, there's not really much more we would need or even want. Another part of it is to minimize waste by sharing luxuries and I think you project our current privatized mass consumption into it. Shame!
TrazMatik 2 months ago
@JacobSpinney Even if you want to stick to your guns, I hope it doesn't merely cause you to abandon the idea or hope of a utopia. If you see something that needs to be changed, I suggest you contribute the idea while still encouraging this hopeful paradise.
TrazMatik 2 months ago
Thirty pages of comments and not once is the concept of the Economic Calculation Problem brought up by name. Boys and Girls of the Venus Project, you are, by analogy, discussing a perpetual motion machine with no inkling of the second law of thermodynamics. Go look up the Economic Calculation Problem on Wikipedia. THAT is what is going to kill this resource based economics crankery before it gets anywhere near implementation.
deepfriedsammich 4 months ago
Resource sustainability is a RBE software's primary goal. Fulfilling the demands of consumers is the method in which it divides the allocated resource.
The flawed RBE model you're presenting here is akin to purposing that retail stores everywhere should manufacture themselves out of business because their production tracking software can't account for the inventory in their warehouses.
PhilipWitte 4 months ago
To bad that it actually would work. We dont have a lack of labour NOR a lack of food water or resources ATM to create an equal world for everyone.
We happen to have ENOUGH FOOD; ENOUGH WATER AND ENOUGH RESOURCES. As long as they are dealt out properly.
However, someone chooses to object to this idea because it removes the possbility of becomming rich and using way more then you need to, which is just stupid.
gulbirk 5 months ago
Does Jacob really not get RBE principles?
thekailbrothers 5 months ago
@TheManInBlackChannel You're a fucking joke. The both of us know that the only true colors that have been shown are yours: Stupidity.
MISTERWONKA7 5 months ago
@TheManInBlackChannel Comebacks: Reference to incest rape > Calling someone and their mom a cunt.
MISTERWONKA7 5 months ago
@TheManInBlackChannel Even if he was a virgin, you were probably raped in the shower by your Dad.
MISTERWONKA7 5 months ago
you just took an online coarse on economics didn't you, How cute.
InPursuitOfALife 5 months ago
Anyone else think this guy smokes too much crack. Based on the fact that he is trying to wrap his scarce brain power around a concept he obviously doesn't get, due to the finite amount of resources his poor reasoning provides. Meaning of course, What a twit!
inthearmynow99 6 months ago
I stopped watching at the part: "first you have to recognize that your labor is a scarce resource"
Labor....island.....scarce?? really, you figured this out all by yourself?
TheDarkFenix 6 months ago
i am still learning economics, but shouldn't a resource based economy be calculated for the worth of the individual resources comparatively? furthermore, then devising manners to develop what is needed more
Energy is one of the biggest issues for resources, and we have the technology today to fix the issues, but have not put everything in place-due to the private markets right?
I definitely see your point on the consumers drawing as much of whatever they think they need, regardless of the supply
kelbykross1 6 months ago
I wanna hear Jacob Spinney say "It is my duty to please that booty."
anotherdrummer23 7 months ago
@JacobSpinney
Also, I think you misunderstand what will be 'surveyed', understandably you're considering this from a capitalistic perspective. You are not going to be given a car catalogue and asked to pick out the one you like best, regardless of how much of a drain on resources it is to produce. Instead, cars are produced based on efficiency of operation and production, with some choice over personal aesthetics. Choice is reduced, but the products are better on average, at least functionally.
blahdelablah 8 months ago
@blahdelablah "cars are produced based on efficiency of operation and production,"
Something that must be calculated.
theBartone9119 6 months ago
@theBartone9119
Your point being?
blahdelablah 6 months ago
@JacobSpinney
Capital and labour are not the resources that matter. Labour matters yes, but capital does not. You seem to be holding onto this notion that loss of money means loss of information. What we are really doing by getting rid of money is getting rid of a misleading source of information, monetary value is only a half-truth when it comes to measuring human needs and desires. Think about how you spend your own money, are you always rational with your spending?
blahdelablah 8 months ago
@blahdelablah
...capital does not matter?
Yeah, I agree...fuck shovels, let's dig with our bare hands. Fuck the cotton gin, let's just pluck it by hand.
johnbenimblef 7 months ago
@johnbenimblef
You seem to have confused the terms capital and technology. Technology can exist without capital.
blahdelablah 7 months ago
@blahdelablah
No, I'm using it in the sense of economics and accounting. That's basic terminology shit.
So are you referring to capital goods or money?
johnbenimblef 7 months ago
@johnbenimblef
Referring to money. The goods that 'capital goods' refer to are not exclusive to the money system, for example, in a resource-based economy you can create a house without money. The goods don't disappear.
blahdelablah 7 months ago
Unassailable. You da man. Bullet-proof.
You might be the next Milton Friedman... all you need to add is his disarming smile, and you could take on the world... :)
RyderSpearmann 8 months ago
Well said brother!
DanMorin007 8 months ago
bullshit.
ubuntuguruCOZA 9 months ago
Cost in today's market takes into account: an items supply Supply (resources and labor used in making a product) and Demand. Demand is not purely infinite in all senses. If everyone in this society wants a private jet then that creates a huge demand,. but people pass on the private jet because they cannot afford it so the demand really isn't there in today's society because only the few with lots of money will even consider a private jet. In the Venus Project the values would have to change...
MacabreManifesto 10 months ago
@MacabreManifesto ...because people in today's society, if they are put into a society where anything could be provided for free then they'd have an unreasonable wish-list. But wish lists are shaped by the culture. If your standards for happiness are much more minimalist (not some forced idea of Nirvana, but owning just enough to make you satisfied) then you are more easily satisfied. The idea is that we have the resources to provide for everyone's objective needs as well as subjective wants...
MacabreManifesto 10 months ago
@MacabreManifesto ...if subjective wants were receiving enough goods and services to make a person without intensive artificially imposed demand being thrust upon them through advertising.
MacabreManifesto 10 months ago
@MacabreManifesto In your new world everyone would have to think the same. The fact that everyone thinks different, is what makes the world an interesting place. I don't want everyone to dumb down their standard of living, that's what the NWO want.
theBartone9119 6 months ago
@MacabreManifesto I want an island. I NEED privacy, and don't want to be around other people. I need the ocean view, and the serenity and beauty, secure in the fact that nobody will bother me. I need a helipad for my helicopter of course, so I can easily travel to the mainland.
Do I get it? Look, I demand my f*cking island. And servants. I want to be served and pampered. If I don't get it, then I will assault this new society. how will you deal with me? Good luck.
RyderSpearmann 8 months ago
@RyderSpearmann
No problem. There are no police. If you want to fuck things up for others, expect to be fucked up yourself. No action is without consequence. Have a nice day.
blahdelablah 8 months ago
This has been flagged as spam show
@blahdelablah "If you want to fuck things up for others, expect to be fucked up yourself. No action is without consequence."
So you advocate war?
theBartone9119 6 months ago
@CarstenIQ
"Any kind of -isms kills. Each of them does it in a different way truevoice08."
Ism is a general suffix. Quit being so ridiculous. 100 years from now when resource based economies develop somekind of coherent mainstream economic/ political philosophy, someone will attribute an ism to the movement. And thats what it will be called henceforth. Resourcism? fantasticism? Neo-technomarxism?
Who knows...I'll probably call it the latter...
ghostbuddy 10 months ago
@CarstenIQ
I mean look at Mubarak. He had 70b dollars of his peoples money, and he just kept it to himself. Without mubarak, eliminating equal opportunity for foreign companies to come and compete in egypt, without Mubarak hogging all the wealth through taxes, Egypt would be a strong free market economy today. The whole point of a free market is that there is no centralized power. No one company, goverment or organization has control. Thats when problems arise.
ghostbuddy 10 months ago
@CarstenIQ
Mexico destroyed its own economic infrastructure by discouraging competition, centralizing buisness, and the whole thing fell apart because of goverment corruption. Right now economic advisors are advocating they embrace free market policies to help their economy. Africa is full of examples of a centralized controlled economies with corrupt leaders. With powerful goverments siphoning off the wealth, and eliminating competition for backdoor kick backs.
ghostbuddy 10 months ago
@CarstenIQ
Some would argue marxism hasn't really manifested itself either. Besides its a fair point, both are stateless societies, with a centralized means of productions. Some social libertarian or communist ideologies were against money.
ghostbuddy 10 months ago
@CarstenIQ
Ofcourse what you fail to mention, is that historically when indigenous people met people from merchantilist or capitalist society, they wanted what they had. The fur trades of the americas are a good example of this. The only thing this argument is good for, is to demonstrate ignorance is bliss. You can be blissfully ignorant of what modern society offers, but its extremely rare for people to reject it once you know of it.
ghostbuddy 10 months ago
@CarstenIQ Exactly, there's no benchmark for comparison. It's just like Marxism. It can't actually EVER be tried so the dreamers will never admit to their wrongs. The result is 65 million killed in Soviet Union and the Marxists say that it wasn't really proper socialism. All utopian ideologies wanting to push man to a new level of existence require COERCION to get there.
truevoice08 10 months ago
@CarstenIQ I'm actually from Southeast Asia. From my experience and knowledge of history in this region I can attest that Marxism IS evil! If you admit that you are a Marxist then I will no longer discuss with you anymore since I would assume you to be hopelessly delusional. Marxism has been proven wrong too many times to count. And I have witnessed firsthand the lengths people go to maintain their fantasies.
truevoice08 10 months ago
@CarstenIQ I'll look into it if you watch this video /watch?v=Pg5K07c72Tw
truevoice08 10 months ago
@CarstenIQ I do not support Monsanto. Your error is that you conflate corporatism (which is really a form of socialism) with capitalism. You do not understand that capitalism is based on voluntarism and NOT coercion hence you do fail to address my arguments. Wikipedia is an example of individual collaboration and NOT collectivism. Contributions in wikipedia are not compensated in money simply because they do not need to. But energy production, where value can be measured through price, different
truevoice08 10 months ago
@ Of course there's no collective ownership in technology in a monetary economy. Collective ownership contradicts the whole purpose of ownership, that is, to exclude. You might think that is evil when in fact you depend on it to survive. It upsets me that you sound like you haven't even seen the video you are commenting on. And if you think RBE is not utopian, your even more delusional than I imagined.
truevoice08 10 months ago
@CarstenIQ High technology capital goods only emerged in history because of savings which were invested according to consumer demand reflected in prices which require -yes - money. You can pretend to ignore history and economic theory all you want, but the fact is that RBE is just Marxism with Robots. It is equivalent to believing in pink unicorns.
truevoice08 10 months ago
@CarstenIQ You obviously don't understand my comment. You need to learn some economics. Technology doesn't just come out of nowhere to be collectively owned by the masses. There is such a thing as structures of production and capitalist investment, important stuff which utopians such as yourself do not understand.
truevoice08 10 months ago
@CarstenIQ Your statement is problematic. What technology? Who to build it? Where to get resources? All this require profit and loss mechanism and its precursory requirement of economic calculation which depend on money prices. Venezuela has nationalized its energy industry (w/c means price mechanism is destroyed). Does Venezuela have cheap energy? Nope, only exorbitantly high taxes. Are its means of energy production not centralized? Don't make me laugh! Taking the cash nexus away means poverty
truevoice08 10 months ago
@CarstenIQ Nobody doubts that people can live without money. The libertarian contention is that civilization cannot be erected without money. If you want to live in your primitive moneyless commune then so be it But you cannot force me, who wants a high standard of living, to give up using money.
truevoice08 10 months ago
No Resources aren't infinite but they are recyclable. The demand would be pretty minimalist and goods would not be owned. So demand is not just: how many people want to own this type of thing? It is: What is the maximum number of units of this item that will ever be in use at one time? Netflix isn't going to say: over the next month, 500,000 people are going to rent Inception so we need 500,000 more copies of Inception. They are probably going to guess: What is the highest number of copies...
MacabreManifesto 11 months ago
@MacabreManifesto ...of Inception that will ever be checked out at one time? This is an entirely new type of demand. You could own a whole household of stuff but then you'd have to deal with a household of stuff, when it is so much easier to live a minimalist lifestyle, where the only things you really own, you use very frequently. This drastically reduces consumption. You may only be limited in calling dibs on such things as a city, that is just an absurd request that the society just could...
MacabreManifesto 11 months ago
@MacabreManifesto ...not handle. And what the society could handle: like a giant mansion wouldn't create new demand because 1: Anyone could snap their fingers and get a mansion also so calling dibs on a mansion isn't all that impressive. And 2: That is such an inefficient waste of space, life is so much easier in this house where everything is in a few steps of the center and there is no clutter at all because the system neatly manages all sources of utility that I may need off site.
MacabreManifesto 11 months ago
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MacabreManifesto 11 months ago
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@JacobSpinney the cred to your arguments seem to come from the basis of someone who fully understands (is indoctrinated) by monetary economics. I as well come from the business and economics field; however, I have to inform you that your logic is fundamentally flawed here. You are using facts from a completely different emergent property (monetary econ) to argue an other (resource-based econ). From the context of Monetary Econ your statements are 100% correct, however, have no referent for RBE.
jjfalcon84 11 months ago
@JacobSpinney
You keep repeating the same argument - "prices are a way to communicate scarcity to the consumer"
I agree. And in a monetary system, it is true.
However, in a resource based economy there is abundance, therefore prices are not required. Resources are managed by everybody, not some mystical circle of dictators. Peoples would not have an "infinite wishlist of things" because the population understands the concepts of sustainability. Greed becomes irrelevant.
TheRyantherenegade 11 months ago
Now there are items that can only be used once. How do we ration those? How do we ration those within Capitalism? Money. What does money represent? Societal contribution, among other things. So if there's only 100 bottles of medicine and 101 people need them in Capitalism the person with the most money gets the medicine. In an RBE the person who contributes the most gets it, if we can't make more. Each situation varies, and it's hard to have a set policy about this.
cogar48 11 months ago
@cogar48 Well, in a truely free market (where you can't lobby the state for special favors), the amount of money one makes, is roughly a reflection of how much one contributes. So there you go.
janc71 11 months ago
@janc71 I disagree. A garbage man makes less than Justin Bieber but I'd say that society needs a garbage man more than JB. In a mutualist society maybe.
cogar48 11 months ago
@cogar48 Society here, can be summed up as our collective preferences, and preference is subjective. There are no needs, only 'wants'.
I don't care for JB, but if we change the example from JB to Lenny Kravitz, I'd choose Lenny every day over a garbageman (I'd get rid of the garbage myself).
You are entitled to your opinion, but it's just that: An opinion. You can't determine these things for other people, let alone force them into something they don't want.
janc71 11 months ago
@janc71 I really don't have a reply for this. Needs vs. Wants is economics in middle school.
cogar48 11 months ago
@cogar48 If you *need* something to stay alive (food), then it's still conditioned upon the *want* to stay alive.
So sure, most people would prefer food over Justin Bieber, but it still up to every individual for himself to decide where he wants to spend his money (that is time, energy, labor) on.
janc71 11 months ago
@janc71 I agree, but you're ignoring the fact that in order to enjoy Justin Bieber or whoever you have to be alive.
cogar48 11 months ago
@cogar48 I'm not ignoring that. I'm just letting people decide for themselves how much money (time, labor, energy, etc.) they want to spend on food, the garbageman and/or Justin Bieber. It is not up to you, me or even the majority.
janc71 11 months ago
@janc71 Let me put it this way, if you want to listen to Justin Bieber you must be alive. Therefore you value your life equal to both what you want to do, and what you are doing. So unless you want to do nothing everyone values life. So a person who provides food contributes more to society than Justin Bieber, because without that person you wouldn't be able to listen to Justin Bieber, but in Capitalism Justin Bieber makes more money.
cogar48 11 months ago
This video makes 2 points:
1. It is impossible to know what to produce if you have two options if you don't know the cost.
2. If everything is free to the consumer they will consume more than we can produce.
1. You are ignoring objective measures of cost. Resource depletion, energy, and environmental impact can replace monetary cost.
2. You are ignoring Strategic Access. Instead of making 300 boats for 300 people we make 100 boats available to the 300 people when they need it.
cogar48 11 months ago
@cogar48 1. You are ignoring the fact that the cost of a resource is not merely its scarcity, but the opportunity cost of using it for something else. Without a price system, it is impossible to determine this opportunity cost, and thus what the total cost of the resource should be, since you need a bidding process to determine its best use.
JacobSpinney 11 months ago
@JacobSpinney 1. As I said, there is a price system. Energy, resource depletion, and environmental impact.
cogar48 11 months ago
@cogar48 You are ignoring my point.
JacobSpinney 11 months ago
@cogar48 2. This is completely irrelevant to the point. Should you make those 100 boats more efficient at the expense of making something else less efficient, or not available at all? Or the opposite? Without prices, such decisions are arbitrary and cannot allocated resources in the most economically efficient way that best satisfies consumers.
JacobSpinney 11 months ago
@JacobSpinney 2. What utility do the two objects serve? A boat vs. a car. Which is used more? In an area where boats are used more you make the boats more efficient. In an area where cars are used more you make cars more efficient.
cogar48 11 months ago
@cogar48 Ah, I see. So your society would not necessarily allocate resources in the way that best satisfies consumers. Your society would just arbitrarily dictate what's good for us and allocate resources in that way, and if consumers aren't satisfied, then they're just stupid. Yes?
JacobSpinney 11 months ago
@JacobSpinney "Your society would just arbitrarily dictate what's good for us and allocate resources in that way, and if consumers aren't satisfied, then they're just stupid. Yes?" What? If I use my computer more than my tv I obviously value my computer more. I really don't get your point. In an area where people use cars more than boats they value cars more than boats. So the consumers are in fact deciding what is good for them.
cogar48 11 months ago
@cogar48 Yes. You might be able to determine crude things. Like if people are living in boat houses on a lake, it's probably a good idea for them to use boats rather than cars. But in what way should you allocate resources to make those boats? That can only be decided by a price system.
JacobSpinney 11 months ago
@JacobSpinney "Yes, you might be able to decide how to allocate resources, but how will you decide how to allocate resources?" As I said, we allocate according to use. How do we decide whether a TV or a Computer is made out of the longest lasting material? We look at it's rate of use and depletion.
cogar48 11 months ago
@cogar48 And as I keep saying, use by a consumer when all prices are free will not tell you their list of marginal utility. It will only tell you their wish list in a world with no scarcity. Prices are how scarcity is communicated to the consumer. Without prices, they cannot know how they wish to allocate resources in the way that best meets their wishes AND scarcity. Instead, you'd need to treat humans like babies and make all of their decisions for them thinking you know what's best.
JacobSpinney 11 months ago
@JacobSpinney Time is a price. When you are watching tv you're not outside walking. Time is scarce.
cogar48 11 months ago
@JacobSpinney Your problem only exists within ownership. If everyone hoarded things like they do now we wouldn't know what they valued more without price. But if people could use things and then put them back, we can track their use. Since time is scarce, the value of the object to the consumer is still communicated to production. The opportunity cost of watching tv is not using something else. So we can find what people value, based on what they use.
cogar48 11 months ago
@cogar48 Again. You are ignoring the rudimentary problem. Yes. Time is scarce. But if renting out the $10,000 widget for a day is the same price to me (zero) as renting out the $1,000,000 widget, then how am I supposed to tell the difference? I would merely decide which one I like more based on my usage of it. NOT on the market price of it; a market price which is determined through a bottom-up supply and demand bidding process, something that cannot be dictated from the top down.
JacobSpinney 11 months ago
@JacobSpinney "Without knowing what people value we can't know where to allocate resources." A. We can objectively determine which resources are best for a certain item. B. We can determine which good to allocate these resources to(assuming the options are mutually exclusive) by finding out which people value, we can determine this by looking at what they use. "But if renting out the $10,000 widget for a day is the same price to me (zero) as renting out the $1,000,000 widget,"...
cogar48 11 months ago
@JacobSpinney ...the price is not zero. The price of using a $10,000 widget is not using the $1,000,000 widget. I'm assuming both of these items use the same materials.
cogar48 11 months ago
@JacobSpinney
You are still talking about consumers - which implies that you are looking at this problem from the wrong perspective. Since businesses as we know them wouldn't exist in a resource based economy, the goals of industry change
The goal of the venus project is not to satisfy consumers. It is to create sustainability and maximize efficiency.
with regard to the boats question - are you assuming that planet-wide limitations on resources will create problems maximizing efficiency?
TheRyantherenegade 11 months ago
@TheRyantherenegade Of course. Efficiency comes at a cost. Over and over again, I see the venus project making plans of how to allocate resources as if resources were infinite. Although I'd love to live in that world, that simply is not the case. Resources are finite. And because of that, we cannot simply pretend that we have enough resources to make everything 100% efficient. The day we can just will products into existence, I'd jump right on board with you guys. But that is not reality.
JacobSpinney 11 months ago
@JacobSpinney
I think you've misinterpreted the venus project. The entire goal of the venus project is to teach the population that resources are NOT infinite, that sustainability and efficiency would increase without the profit motive because cost cutting corners would not be taken.
In fact, it is the current system that assumes we have infinite resources - this is why products are made with a deliberate short term shelf life for a short term profit, which is a very wasteful system.
TheRyantherenegade 11 months ago
@TheRyantherenegade You are thinking of everything in terms of scientific efficiency. I am trying to show you the cold realization that what is scientifically efficient is not necessarily economically efficient. Science deals with an ideal world of unlimited resources. Economics deals in the real world with limited resources. They are two different ballparks.
JacobSpinney 11 months ago
@JacobSpinney
I disagree with your points about scientific efficiency versus economic efficiency.
You are assuming that the current economic model accounts for real world resources when the evidence shows that they do not. Although we have a finite supply of oil, for example, production and use of oil continues to increase year after year.
The Venus Projects first assumption is Earths resources are finite. So all economic and scientific models for efficiency are based on that assumption.
TheRyantherenegade 11 months ago
@TheRyantherenegade No. We realize that oil is scarce. THAT IS WHY OIL HAS A PRICE! As oil becomes more and more scarce, its price will increase higher and higher, thus causing alternative forms of energy to become more preferable.
JacobSpinney 11 months ago
@JacobSpinney
I agree to an extent (ignoring factors like monetary corruption, corporate corruption, scientific corruption, etc). But the same would also be true of oil in a resource based economy.
But - the value of money is distorted. It's like the IMF argument that "we have halved the number of people living on 1 dollar a day in the last 20 years" - but fail to mention that the value of the dollar has dropped by 60% in the last 20 years, so they haven't really achieved anything.
TheRyantherenegade 11 months ago
So indoctrinated, so misguided, so irresponsible and careless. Yeah, let's keep this free market going buddy. Forget about everything else. Your points are flawed and are seen as valid only from others who share your outdated perspectives. Grow the fuck up, nobody in their right mind will want useless junk in this kind of society. So the issue of scarcity is almost a misnomer. On top of that...PAY ATTENTION. "Strategic access". Ownership doesn't apply in the same sense.
XSilvenX 11 months ago
@XSilvenX This is not a free market. It is a corporatized market. Other than insulting me, you have not explained how the venus project can create a list of marginal utility.
JacobSpinney 11 months ago
You are making an assumption that people will make an assumption that resources are infinite just because what is proposed has never been done before. People won't have "wish lists" where they want everything they can get without regard to resources because they will be conscious of scarcity and will not be brainwashed to consume everything they can.
fakeham 11 months ago
@fakeham You are missing the point. Without prices, they will not have the correct information of scarcity. They will not know what is scarce and what isn't.
JacobSpinney 11 months ago
@JacobSpinney
So our idea to survey the resources of the earth won't measure scarcity just because you say money is the only way to do that. riiiiight.... I'll even use your island analogy, if you are on the island and you survey the entire island to see what resources you have (not exactly practical on this scale but whatever) and then you track the amount you use of each resource, how does that not count as knowing what is scarce?
fakeham 11 months ago
@fakeham No. I did not say that these super computers would not be able to measure scarcity. I said that without prices, it is impossible to relay this scarcity information to the consumer. Unfortunately, individuals cannot be master planners of the earth. We can only become really good at few different things.
JacobSpinney 11 months ago
@JacobSpinney
If something is scarce, all you have to do is make it out of less scarce materials or just make it recyclable in the first place so that it will not become scarce. There are few resources that are nonrenewable and those that are nonrenewable can be recycled very efficiently.
fakeham 11 months ago
@fakeham Saying that consuming product X will deplete resource Y, versus consuming product A will deplete resource B, is not information that a consumer can relate to, and thus is not something they can make a legitimate decision about. What you need is a market price to convert these heterogeneous resources into homogeneous ones, since basic arithmetic is far easier for a consumer than world planning.
JacobSpinney 11 months ago
@JacobSpinney
An educated public could make decisions based on that, you are assuming that people will be clueless like they are today. Ultimately, it is not up to people to decide, if something is becoming depleted, we will make products with something else. Also, there won't be any overpopulation in a RBE and therefore we won't need to supply an infinite amount of products. It doesn't matter what system there is, the resources are still going to be limited so we need to limit consumption.
fakeham 11 months ago
What are you trying to prove? are you trying to say the Venus project is not as good as the current system? There is no conclusive evidence that it wont work because its never been tried.
so why don't you look at the evidence, in our current free market system we are massively damaging the environment and we show very few signs of stopping because of peoples will to consume and buy materialistic products. The competition for low prices exploits people and causes huge differences in health.
MrJasonbaxter1987 11 months ago
@MrJasonbaxter1987 I'm trying to say that the venus project is economically unfeasible. If you happen to watch any of my other videos, you'd know I say that the current system is just as unfeasible as well. There is conclusive evidence, as I have demonstrated with its inability to make a list of marginal utility.
Our current system is a corporate system. NOT a free market system.
JacobSpinney 11 months ago
The island analogy is an useless abstraction; the global situation is simply different today - we have technology, the "lost" scenario has no such thing.
Also; sky-rocketing unemployment statistics as well as the countless meaningless jobs that are employing most people today are also two indicators that labor power is less scarce than he suggests.
selvmordspilot 11 months ago
the analogy is flawed; obviously there's no advanced technology on an island.
selvmordspilot 11 months ago
@selvmordspilot ? You did not understand the analogy whatsoever. I was merely using the island analogy to bring up the topic of marginal utility, and how technology, no matter how advanced, cannot put together a list of marginal utility.
JacobSpinney 11 months ago
@JacobSpinney : i see, i misunderstood you then. Sorry if i read into you.
selvmordspilot 11 months ago
You really have no grounds to comment seeing how you literally have no understanding about the workings of a RBE proposed by the venus project.
xRA1D32x 11 months ago
and a fourth point from reading the other comments: A lot of people have made reference to some sort of mystical supercomputer that runs everything and decides things for people in authoritarian way.
The computer systems proposed by the Venus Project are nothing of the kind, in essence they propose an open source database system where everyone is free to input data and nobody would input false data because it would only serve to disadvantage themselves.
TheRyantherenegade 11 months ago
3 points:
1. You're looking at the Resource Based Economy from an Austrian economics viewpoint, which means that all of your assumptions are wrong and thus all of your conclusions are therefore irrelevant.
2. The resource based economy is not a centrally planned economy, it is a system of interlinked decentralized economies where the point of the interlinking is only to moniter the earths resources.
3. The assumption that people have "infinite" needs is a cultural flaw born from capitalism.
TheRyantherenegade 11 months ago
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@TheRyantherenegade : true, true and true.
selvmordspilot 11 months ago
You miss some extremely important points. First, there is no 'capital' cost or 'labour cost' involved in any Venus calculation. 'Cost' is 100% composed of resources alone. Second, you seem to neglect the issue that the fundamental needs of humans (housing, food, water, health care etc) are the basic 'goods' which are automatically required by all people. Therefore your argument is based only upon the supply and/or demand for non-essential goods and services. Ergo, you miss the point.
FrenchRuby 11 months ago
Thirdly, if the free market is a reliable way to control resource wastage, why are landfills full of perfectly serviceable items that are no longer 'fashionable', and why are 'consumer goods' not upgradeable, but instead require a whole new unit to be purchased in order to take advantage of new innovation? Answer, because the free market works on a profit motive, without a profit motive the focus is to provide for needs, not manufactured 'wants, such as the latest 'whatever'.
FrenchRuby 11 months ago
Which leads to the final point I want to make. Whilst a third or more of the world's population live in dire, life-threatening poverty, what makes you think you have a right to demand whatever luxury goods you desire? Once the NEEDS of all the people on this earth are met, free of the need to be able to 'pay' for those needs to be met with a fictitious 'currency', THEN perhaps speculate on how the WANTS of those still too spoiled by their luck of birth might be satisfied. Not before.
FrenchRuby 11 months ago
On TZM board they have been trying to confront the economic calculation problem. Their consensus; devoted Marxist Otto Neurath's assessment on the RBE was right, we'll just calculate heterogeneous as if they were homogeneous. "RBE isn't communist" my ass.
machwon 11 months ago
the cost/price takes capital and labor into account. without "money/banknotes" youtube.com/watch?v=YIPDJ1Cc_uw share the cow, share the milk. If you have 2 cows and want 1 bull, ask someone for 1 bull. Than give 1 cow to someone else or the same person you got the bull from, depending on: give goods/services 1. who needs it the most for improving human bodily health. 2. how much they have for how much they can give out to each person and for how many people wants it.
nicesocialgirl 11 months ago
Ok let’s see. How do judge the efficiency of the price system to communicate relevant information? The answer must be that a price is not 100% perfect tool. The problem today is that the consumer does not have all the relevant information to make decisions. Additionally you have the problem of external costs and other things like corruption, monopolies etc. In RBE the central computer does something like a life cycle analysis for every product. This information will be much better.
happyswissman 11 months ago
@happyswissman How much information do you need? Information is a good and attainable at a cost. Consumers are the best judges of how much information they need. No tool is 100% perfect. Yet price is one of the best indicators when it comes to gauging how much of a resource to devote to an endeavour. External costs ought to be internalised fully. Guess why they often are not. Monopolies only come into existence with the govt's blessing. The last line is needlessly optimistic.
Moragauth 11 months ago
@Holisticism1
A political movement needs different ideology and rhetoric to appeal to different target audiences. The ideology needed to appeal to a few academicians and disgruntled socialists is vastly different than the ideology needed to maintain a state. If the TVP city does attract the worst and dimmest of mankind's refuse, then how will that affect their ideology? At the very least, you must admit that, as a state, it requires enforcement at the margins against its own members.
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PanzerDivisionBOM 1 year ago
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TVP's socio-economic theory teaches that scarcity still exists only because of how resources and production are managed. That the only thing standing between mankind and postscarcity is a few private interests, who manage their property according to their own interests rather than for the higher good. Add to that how they already speak of "need" - that definition-defying anticoncept, which bestows ontological presedence upon their own preferences over all others.
PanzerDivisionBOM 1 year ago
@PanzerDivisionBOM I don't see how small-scale communist production for "need (As an anarcho-socialist, I will admit that VP is communism, though i dunno anything about any supercomputers, Ive only watched the first two movies, which didnt mention a supercomputer) can be that impossible to maintain, especially with our technology it's pretty adhoc, as market allocation is.
leldoryn 11 months ago
@leldoryn It isn't. It may generate inefficiencies as compared to market production but smaller scale endeavours aren't equally subject to the calculation problem as, say, a world government, or even present governments. The existence of capitalistic economies external to the socialist one usually help reduce the level of inefficiency within it (the USSR was an example of this.)
Moragauth 11 months ago
@Holisticism1 I do realize that. What I've been trying to convey is that 1) there is no model to show how a supercomputer's predictions can replace raw data of voluntary market exchanges in order to allocate resources efficiently because, as we discussed, there can still be waste even in post-scarcity theory. 2) The global network cannot be implemented without global acceptance and since no one will know what they're getting into, either force or trickery(coercion's ugly cousin) is inherent.
pemborsky 1 year ago
@Holisticism1
No, I want your take on it, based on your experience with these people and your best judgment. How far do you think they will push it, and in particular, do you think a popular Projecteer movement could retain its present conviction of nonaggression, even under circumstances such as I described and even though their theory will suggest that the wealth of their neighbors is the direct cause of their own suffering?
PanzerDivisionBOM 1 year ago
@Holisticism1 Are they all paid the same above-minimum wage salary by coincidence? Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds a lot like libertarian socialism. Who decides this wage? Who distributes it? Not free individuals voluntarily interacting with one another, that's for certain.
pemborsky 1 year ago
@Holisticism1
Well, I agree that, if and when the project does not work out, then they will have to scrap it.
I also posit, based on my understanding of the theory of the firm and my assessment of the problems which they must necessarily face, that they will eventually fail. No state can persist for long unless the vast majority of its host society passively suffers its deprivations, and in the case of TVP, those deprivations will be particularly severe.
The question is, to what length -
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PanzerDivisionBOM 1 year ago
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- will the Projecteers go to keep their society alive? Will they stop before laying the first brick? After seeing what sort flocks to their city? After a few years of poverty and famine?
How will they treat their relatively wealthy neighbors during that time?
You accept that they will refrain from aggression as though it were a foregone conclusion. But if you look at the implications of their socio-economic theory, they actually believe that they could be living in the garden Eden right -
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PanzerDivisionBOM 1 year ago
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- now, if it weren't for the greed of their fellow men. From my personal experience, where the designs of a Projecteer or her notion of "need" runs contrary to the volition of free men, she will discard the latter as irrelevant, without a moment's consideration.
What sort of mass ideology will rise from that theory, that attitude and from the sort of people who will be drawn to this movement? Can it retain the same peacefulness as now, when it is aimed mostly at a few academicians?
PanzerDivisionBOM 1 year ago
@Holisticism1 By the by, semi-cooperative = semi-coercion which is not okay with me and mine.
pemborsky 1 year ago
@Holisticism1 It does, I'm just not spelling it out anymore. The question on every free market economists' mind is, how will TVP solve the calculation problem, without prices, for the global economy, after money has been made obsolete across the globe. I don't much care to see how it could manage resources efficiently in a small city while markets still exist in the rest of the world. With that said TVP cannot answer those questions without testing its hypothesis on a global scale.
pemborsky 1 year ago
@Holisticism1 From my understanding, TVP's production model, like a modern production model, would require the use of many resources from all over the world for even for the simplest products i.e. a pencil or a ham sandwich. Production can't exist without exchanges on a global scale and you can't test a supercomputer's ability to calculate the most efficient allocation of resources for the entire globe in a limited laboratory environment such as a village or city so therein lies the impass.
pemborsky 1 year ago
@PinkPussytune
No they don't control the prices... every year there are stories of over abundance of crop which sends prices into the toilet and many farmers would surfer except the speculators assumed the risk and worked it into their economic models. Speculators have much more information on the supply and demand of food than farmers ever could.
Farmers could sell it on their own except there is the risk of not turning a profit.
KurzLuppii 1 year ago
@pemborsky I'm saying it can't even get off the ground unless it is supported unanimously, not just by "enough" people like you said in your last post. You're right though, you didn't say you were against a voluntary society. That was my mistaken assumption spilled over from a discussion with someone else. My apologies.
pemborsky 1 year ago
@Holisticism1 notice the comma. Labor can still be wasted on something not useful, since time is still valuable, and machine life is limited, so it can be wasted.
4lifejackhammer 1 year ago
@Holisticism1
You and I might have different experiences with talking to venus projecteers, and I'm open to the possibility that I'm acting under selection bias, but have you heard how they speak of "need"? They hold to it as being an ethical absolute, rendering human choice as it exists in the real world all but insignificant in comparison, each presupposing her own concept of this definition-defying term as an absolute measurement by which all order must be judged.
If this movement
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PanzerDivisionBOM 1 year ago
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becomes popular, then they're going to face problems of scarcity, which their socio-economic theory teaches is always a result of prejudice and malice. As all the good land on the planet and most of the oceans are already claimed by some state or another, they'll have to settle for whatever scraps of land they can get. Their bureau of allocation will struggle with problems of calculation, and the promise of equality of outcome will attract the worst of mankind from other societies.
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PanzerDivisionBOM 1 year ago
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And at the same time, they will see their neighbors, who still engage in global division of labour, prosper, and accumulate property beyond their "need".
Based on your personal experience of conversations with venus projecteers, your knowledge of the histories of similar undertakings and your theoretical understanding of the human sciences, how do you think the project would resolve the means of "nonaggression" with the aim of "control of resources", in such a situation?
PanzerDivisionBOM 1 year ago
@Holisticism1 I understand how TVP can be so appealing because it's so radically different from what we have now, an abysmal failure, to say the least. My question is, why are you so opposed to a stateless society which allows the market to naturally balance itself and provide for the most efficient use of resources economically. Doesn't that seem more sensible than putting all your eggs in one basket, hoping that the supercomputers will be able to predict consumer needs and adjust accordingly?
pemborsky 1 year ago
@Holisticism1 How so? TVP claims to promote the non-aggression principle but it can't begin to enact global change without the consent of EVERYONE. I don't want TVP, nor does any anarchist, libertarian, or anybody who understands central planning squashes individual freedom. So already it fails. That's only the moral argument. As far as prices and calculation, consumer surveys are not enough to determine how to produce. Even given unlimited resources, labor and machine life can still be wasted.
pemborsky 1 year ago
@Holisticism1 Like I said, I'm humoring you. Once again, I'm gonna play devil's advocate and concede that TVP could eliminate scarcity of resources. For that to happen, TVP would have to assume control of those resources, which cannot be done without force. In a free market, however, it is possible to achieve renewable resources once production has advanced to such a level, which it is very close to already. Google 'open source ecology' and see what a voluntary society is capable of achieving.
pemborsky 1 year ago
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pemborsky 1 year ago
@Holisticism1 The part I pointed out in the post prior to the previous one. TVP's ability to eliminate the scarcity of global resources is null so long as it exists concurrently with other societies who do not wish to join. That means if one person(hopefully two at least for exchange purposes) wishes to remain in a free-market capitalist society, TVP cannot assume control of those global resources without infringing upon the outsiders. There would probably be more than two though, I'm guessing.
pemborsky 1 year ago
@pemborsky I agree, the whole thing does seem to be an all or nothing proposition. Although "all" doesn't necessarily mean "the entire world", it just means "within a trade boundary". For instance, if a country felt it could be self-sufficient, it could close trade borders and adopt a TVP-like system, but it would definitely require that everyone within the defined trade boundary adhere to the boundary.
allmhuran 1 year ago
@Holisticism1 I should have used a direct quote. Peter Joseph claimed TVP would be voluntary in nature. It's mute because central planning is coercion and 100% of the global population will never volunteer anyway, but I'll humor you. Whilst speaking with Stefan Molyneux, Joseph stated that TVP would start off, idk, somewhere remote outside modern-day society and joining would be voluntary, others would realize blah blah blah. If this is so, TVP will have failed on its own terms from the get-go.
pemborsky 1 year ago
@Holisticism1 Peter Joseph stated that the Venus Project doesn't advocate coercion because it wouldn't be forced upon everybody, but rather serve as a separate alternative society. It would show the world, by example, what science is capable of and if people were so inclined, could follow suit. The underlying problem is that it is impossible to eliminate scarcity globablly without forcefully taking control of the entire globe's resources. The Venus Project will never be voluntary.
pemborsky 1 year ago
My own personal problem with TVP that I haven't seen a real solution for is the idea of needs fraud. Disabled people, for example, would need more resources than people who are not disabled. So how would we fairly determine who really is disabled? How does the computer know? Fundamentally the goal of TVP seems to be fairness and sustainability. Sustainability might be able to be taken care of by a computer, but I'm not so sure about fairness.
allmhuran 1 year ago