Andrew Buxton's Blog @ The Venus Project Design: What is "The Venus Project" (Updated)

The Venus Project is an organization that proposes a plan of action for social change, a vision of what the future might be if we apply what we already know in order to achieve abundance and sustainablity for all the world people while protecting the environment.

All nations are facing a common threat; energy shortages, ecological disasters, environmental pollution, water scarcity, overpopulation, technological displacement of human labor by automation. This problems will remain unsolved as long as a few powerful nations and financial interests maintain control of and consume most of the world's resources and the monetary system prevails.

Today we have highly advanced technologies and we could easily create a world of abundance for all. It is no longer necessary to perpetuate the conscious withdrawal of efficiency by planned obsolescence, perpetuated by our old and outworn profit based system. Earth is abundant and has plentiful resources but our practice of rationing resources through monetary control is no longer relevant and is counter-productive to our survival.

This is why we advocate a Resource-Based Economy. It utilizes existing resources - rather than money - to provide an equitable method of distribution in the most humane and efficient manner. It is a system in which all goods and services are available to everyone without the use of money, credits, barter, or any other form of debt or servitude.

To better understand a resource-based economy, consider this. If all the money in the world disappeared overnight, as long as topsoil, factories, personnel and other resources were left intact, we could build anything we needed to fulfill most human needs. It is not money that people require, but rather free access to most of their needs without worrying about financial security or having to appeal to a government bureaucracy. In a resource-based economy of abundance, money will become irrelevant.

The aim of this new social design is to encourage an incentive system no longer directed toward the shallow and self-centered goals of wealth, property, and power. These new incentives would encourage people toward self-fulfillment and creativity, both materially and spiritually.

Here are some links, some of these you may have already seen but ill put them here just in case you havent.

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Additional Info in response to some frequent valid concerns but also some common misconceptions/projections of the current value system into this new system.

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The Venus Project isnt a "Ruling Elite" there to tell you what you can and cant do, its an egalitarian social design that uses the scientific method (not science) for social concern - its a very simple concept.

The Scientific Method:

Ask a Question
Research
Construct a Hypothesis
Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment
Analyze Your Data and Draw a Conclusion
Communicate Your Results

And its how all human beings naturally learn but are indoctrinated into established systems of left brain structured learning once we enter schooling age.

When a child knocks over a glass of water, they are learning about real physical phenomena like gravity and fluid dynamics, which helps them to interact with the world in a relevant way.

When a child watches mummy making jelly they are learning about the various states of liquids, from boiling the kettle producing steam, to solidifying certain materials by cooling them etc.

This is truly the most natural way of learning, unlike our established systems that teach conformity and deminish creativity and true understanding of our connection to not only the environment but each other.

Money, Barter and TVP Cities:

We wish to outgrow the need for Politics and the Monetary System because these outdated systems of control and distribution of goods and services as they are detrimental to the wellbeing of people and the planet as a whole.

We have a global population of 6.7 billion people, the best way to economically manage resources, goods and services for such large populations which is growing excponentially is in cities, where such services can be provided locally to large numbers of people simultaneously.

It is not logistally economic to have every human being living a mile away from each other with no centralised distribution of goods and services, we left that kind of culture thousands of years ago with the hunter/gatherers

You would not be "required" to live in a TVP city, but there would be numerous benefits to doing so, such as fast and easy access to healthcare, goods and services provided within the cities, education access to resources, technology etc (i.e where those goods and services would be produced etc)

The Venus Project is a social and economic system developed to allow us to intelligently manageme the earths resources, and distriibution of goods and services to benefit people in the most efficient, ecologically friendly and humane way possible using the best technologies and methods we have available to us using a systems approach instead of the outdated systems of politics, business and money.

If you choose to live outside the city but wish to benefit from the servicves etc that city provides then you simply go to the city and use / get what you need.

If you decide you want nothing to do with a RBE or TVP then you simply live wherever you want, you become self sustaining and you do what you like, your not forced to be a part of or use the goods and services provided by the cities. If you need help building your home or creating your renewable energy or farming or w/e then im sure the egalitarian people of the cities would be only too happy to help you out, unless you prefered no help or contact with those who live in a RBE / TVP city.

If people want to barter when everything is available free its down to them, though it kind of loses its relevancy in this system when the very foundations of the whole system is to provide people with access to all goods and services free of charge, and provide thre basic neccesities of life (Clean Water, Nutrional Food, A Relevant Education, Housing and Clean Renewable Energy as a basic human right instead of seomthing you have to earn

The aim is to improve the lives of people, not control them. And with a democracy based on ideas and contribution not personal wealth or power there would be no means by which to control people.

People will still work, they just wont be working on irrelevant jobs like banking, finance, law, security services, advertising, most service industry jobs, most manufacturing jobs and anything else that can be automated.

People will study any field they have an interest in, most people will probably learn a multitude of relevant jobs that interest them as there will be no limits on education i.e cant afford to study, or tied into one field etc, because you can work wherever you want on whatever you want assuming you have the required skillset to enable you to do so safely and competently.

If you want to be a marine biologist during the summer, and train to be a brain surgeon in the evenings, and be a ski junky in the winter then you would do just that. The idea is to free people not constrain them as in the current system.

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Videos & Books

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Jacque Fresco

1. Research and Development – Jacque Fresco Discussion- Find here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EP85I0up4OU&p=DD163685C5F97DD6&playnext=1&index=14

2. No Utopia – Jacque Fresco Discussion- Find here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zr7jKt7fWLU&feature=related

3. Being Responsible – Jacque Fresco Discussions- Find here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLbxe0COFIw

4. Documentary of My Life – Jacque Fresco – Directed by William Gazecki- Find here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3cBXHLgC7s&p=00FF044598854463&playnext=1&index=10

5. Generalism and Change – Jacque Fresco Discussions- Find here: