I was reading this blog post from Delusion Damage's soon to be permanently deleted blog: http://delusiondamage.com/hidden-truths/...d-economy/
Towards the end he begins to espouse his beliefs that humankind would be better off if we adopted a resource based economy instead of a market based one.
This idea is advocated by Jacques Fresco, and his group The Venus Project
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacque_Fresco
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Venus_Project
For those too lazy to read the post, I've quoted the later half of it below for you all, but the first half is golden in itself.
Now, I've only just discovered all this myself and I don't know what to make of the idea of a Resource based economy. Thoughts? Opinions? Analysis? Has anybody here already heard of it?
Towards the end he begins to espouse his beliefs that humankind would be better off if we adopted a resource based economy instead of a market based one.
This idea is advocated by Jacques Fresco, and his group The Venus Project
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacque_Fresco
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Venus_Project
For those too lazy to read the post, I've quoted the later half of it below for you all, but the first half is golden in itself.
Quote:Quote:
Decades ago, a man named Jacque Fresco started talking about something he called a “resource-based economy”.
Here’s the main idea of a resource-based economy: instead of the Earth’s natural resources being divided into pieces privately owned by competing corporations according to whose great-grandfather managed to chase everyone else away from a particular resource with his shotgun, which is how it is now, we should view them as the common heritage of all people and use them in a way that would provide what we need and want without destroying each other and the planet in the process.
We could get rid of money and debt, and basically just get everything for free or for a small fraction of the work we do today. Many people are so used to things “having to be” the way they are that they have trouble believing this.
Is it possible to provide relaxed, abundant, and even luxurious lifestyles for everyone on Earth without consuming more resources than the Earth can produce? The equations say yes.
Hard to believe? If there’s so much wealth on our planet, why are nearly a billion people starving? It’s not that there isn’t food – it’s only that those people don’t have money to buy food. If we could all live in abundance, why do most of us have to work every day? It’s not because that much work is necessary – it’s just because most of our effort is wasted.
What kind of waste could be eliminated in a resource-based economy?
Planned obsolescence, that’s a big one. Planned obsolescence is when companies design consumer products to break down after the warranty expires so you’ll have to buy a new one. Industrial products are made to last as long as possible, because companies use them and stuff breaking down is bad for profits. If everything produced was “industrial strength”, huge amounts of wasted resources and energy could be saved.
Today, everyone needs to own one of everything because you can’t just go and use other people’s property when you happen to need a specific item. In a resource-based economy, specialty items like video cameras or downhill skis could be borrowed from library-like facilities for free and returned when you’re done with them. Just think about how many items you own that you use less than once a week. Almost all of those would not have had to be produced in a resource-based economy.
Crime is rampant because people need or want stuff and can’t buy it. With all material goods being accessible for free, crime would go way, way down and much of today’s law enforcement work would become unnecessary.
Many items are produced with faulty designs simply because the better design is patented by someone else. In a resource-based economy, everything could be produced in the best way that anyone anywhere has ever invented.
Today, countless variations of the same product are produced to compete with each other in the marketplace. Instead, just a couple of the best designs could be produced in bigger lots, which would reduce production costs (where by “costs”, I mean resources, not money).
Cities could be planned centrally, with useful (and free) public transportation systems, so no one would need to own a gas-burning car. High-tech private transportation vehicles (think “sci-fi movie cars”) could be borrowed from the library if you needed to go outside the subway network’s reach.
Almost everything could be automated. Of the various jobs we work today, machines could do 75% with just the technology that’s already been developed, and that number is rising every day. Construction, manufacturing, trains, coffee shops, and countless other things could function without a single human employee. Did you catch yourself thinking “then who would make sure you don’t take coffee without paying for it?” That’s the next thing…
All the money-guarding, money-handling and money-acquisition jobs would simply disappear. Cashiers, bankers, stock traders, insurance brokers, safe and bank vault manufacturers, armored transport personnel, sales personnel, advertisers, marketers, people who put up advertising at bus stops, etc… say bye-bye to your daily grind!
There would be no more need for countries, politics, border controls or the unbelievable amount of military spending that today literally blows up huge amounts of our work and resources.
It all sounds pretty good, right? All the stuff you need, all the stuff you could even want, produced by computerized robotic factories, free to consume or use! To many people it just sounds way too good to be true, but it’s been researched and the math has been done and the fact is that this is all completely doable, just with what we already have today.
Now, I've only just discovered all this myself and I don't know what to make of the idea of a Resource based economy. Thoughts? Opinions? Analysis? Has anybody here already heard of it?