The Venus Project

   The Venus Project is a big project established by [1]Jacque Fresco,
   already running for decades, aiming for a voluntary and rational
   transition towards an ideal, highly technological and automated [2]society
   without [3]money, scarcity, need for human [4]work, social [5]competition,
   wars and violence, a society in which people would have abundance thanks
   to so called [6]resource based economy, where they would be
   [7]collaborating, loving, respecting the nature, caring for others and
   free to pursue their true potential. It is similar to the [8]Zeitgeist
   Movement and [9]TROM. In its views, goals and means the Venus Project is
   extremely close to [10]LRS and we highly support it, however watch out:
   while the ideas behind the project are good, the project itself is a bit
   [11]sus and may show internal corruption just as the [12]FSF, [13]TROM and
   other projects -- use your brain, follow ideas, not people.

   There is a non-profit organization called [14]One Community that tries to
   pursue goals set by the Venus Project and strive for what they call
   Highest Good. Its website is at https://www.onecommunityglobal.org.

Overview

   { The following is based mainly on my understanding of what I've read in
   Fresco's book The Best That Money Can't Buy. I recommend the book for an
   overall overview of the project. ~drummyfish }

   The project is a child of [15]Jacque Fresco, a [16]generalist futurist who
   sadly died in 2017, who worked on it for many decades with his life
   partner Roxanne Meadows. It has a center located in Florida and is a
   [17]nonprofit organization that performs research, education and prototype
   technology according to their ideas of a future we should strive for.

   Although the project seems to be avoiding specific political labels
   (possibly as to avoid historical associations), it is [18]de facto
   [19]anarcho pacifist [20]communist movement (i.e. politically the same as
   [21]LRS). Very nicely it also seems, at least as of 2022, uninfected with
   the [22]SJW [23]cancer -- [24]fight culture and [25]fascism goes directly
   against their goals and Fresco explicitly stated that we have to stop
   constantly fighting for human rights and rather establish a society with
   human rights built-in.

   Fresco highly criticizes today's society and just as [26]us says it only
   tries to cure the symptoms (search the solutions within the current
   framework and mindset) rather than the root cause of its issues (the
   system itself). He mainly criticizes the presence of the monetary system
   and laws -- currently taking the form of [27]capitalism -- which he
   correctly blames for most today's issues such as artificial scarcity,
   hunger, wars, [28]fascism, lack of social security, poverty, [29]wage
   slavery, destruction of natural environment, waste, energy crisis,
   [30]planned obsolescence, deteriorating psychological health etc. He says
   with the presence of advanced technology we have this system is highly
   outdated (for example it forces artificial scarcity because only scarce
   resources can be sold, unlike for example air) and points out the fact
   that we have more than enough resources for everyone on Earth and could
   live in abundance and peace, practicing [31]collaboration rather than
   [32]competition. Therefore he argues that we have to eliminate [33]money,
   barter and markets from the society and change the very basis of whole
   society, down to our mentality and outdated historical associations (and
   eventually even language which should be closer to the scientific
   language).

   He argues to replace the monetary system with so called [34]resource based
   economy (RBE) which should be a pillar of the future society. RBE is
   called an "economy" but doesn't use any money or barter, it starts by
   declaring that all Earth's resources are a common heritage of all people
   on Earth -- it basically means that "everything is available to everyone",
   i.e. no one can own resources of the Earth, they belong to us all and
   whoever needs something can take it. RBE would be supported by high
   automatization and computer monitoring to deliver resources where they are
   needed. Normies usually can't comprehend that this could work, they say
   "but then someone will just steal everything", but Fresco correctly argues
   that with correct and rational use of our technology we can, unlike in the
   past, already extract as many resources as to satisfy everyone with high
   abundance; basically we can make for example food as abundant as is air
   nowadays -- no one will be (and can be) stealing food when there's more
   free food than anyone can eat, just as stealing air isn't a concern
   nowadays.

   This should therefore also eliminate the need for complex laws -- when no
   one is stealing, we don't need laws against stealing etc. Elimination of
   money and laws will remove the need for [35]bullshit jobs such as lawyers,
   judges, politicians, marketing guys, bankers etc., freeing more people and
   getting rid of a lot of unnecessary work and burden of society.

   Fresco supports this by the fact that human behavior is determined by the
   environment and upbringing -- nowadays we have criminality mostly because
   firstly people are poor, i.e. pushed into illegal activity, and secondly
   nurtured by the competitive propaganda that teaches them, right from
   little children, to [36]fight and compete with others. In a caring society
   that provides all their needs and raises them in the spirit of
   collaboration and love towards others criminals will be almost non
   existent, there will simply be no gain from it.

   The project further seeks to eliminate the need for human [37]work: all
   work, including complex decision making, would be automated. Bullshit jobs
   would be removed and [38]maintenance reduced to minimum. People would be
   free to pursue their true interests and could fully and freely devote
   themselves to it. Again normies usually say something like "BUT THEN
   NOBODY AIN'T GONNA WORK". Well, firstly that wouldn't be an issue since no
   human work would even be needed anymore, and secondly Fresco correctly
   answers by saying that competition and force isn't the only drive of human
   activity, people are motivated for work and creative activity by other
   phenomena such as curiosity, sense of accomplishment, boredom, moral
   values etc., and usually even perform better than when forced to it.
   [39]Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is a well known psychological model that
   says that once basic needs such as food and shelter are satisfied (which
   RBE will accomplish), people start voluntarily pursuing higher needs such
   as art, science and other creative work. People did work and create long
   before money and jobs existed. The idea of reducing or eliminating human
   work is already being considered nowadays in the form of [40]universal
   basic income -- experiments have been confirming that it works.

   Venus Project stresses the important of [41]science -- their approach is
   strictly scientific -- technology (such as [42]AI and sensors all over the
   Earth) and [43]rationality and argues for application of technology to
   everything as that, in their opinion, will allow RBE and remove the need
   for human government. There should be no human governing the society,
   decisions will be made mostly by machines in a network of decentralized
   cities all over the Earth ("technophobes" are informed that even nowadays
   we put our lives into the hands of machines, e.g. in planes or with
   pacemakers, and they do better job than humans). Technology should be
   sustainable, respect the nature and be aligned with it, i.e. not fight
   against it but rather direct its forces towards good causes. Protection of
   the environment and integration of natural elements in cities is stressed.
   Only clean and safe energy would be used. Earth carrying capacity should
   be respect, i.e. people would avoid overpopulation by voluntary birth
   control.

   The project is for absolute freedom of information -- there would be no
   [44]intellectual property (copyright, patents, ...), no trade secrets,
   state secrets and probably also no personal secrets, as in a
   non-competitive society there wouldn't be a danger of abusing personal
   information. They argue that despite computer sensors being present
   everywhere, there would simply be no need for surveillance of people as
   there would be no corporations, no criminality etc.

   It also opposes nationalism, racism and other forms of privilege and
   inequality. However this shouldn't be forced in the [45]SJW style, it
   should rather come naturally thanks to fixing the the root cause of these
   issues (removing competition, governments, money etc.).

   Education would play a huge role in the society -- again, it wouldn't be
   forced on children, they should want to go to school because education
   would be [46]fun and give them freedom to pursue their interests. There
   would be no grades and it should teach high scientific and critical
   thinking, rational discussion, nonviolent resolution of conflicts,
   collaboration through group project and collaborative games, love towards
   nature (e.g. by projects involving growing plants) etc. [47]Generalism
   would be preferred before hyper [48]specialization (which we see
   nowadays).

   Fresco also addresses the fear of some people of people becoming too
   uniform and losing individuality -- he stresses that individuality would
   be focused on, uniformity would only lie in common goals and caring for
   all humans and nature. Unlike in current society, each human would have
   the freedom to pursue his true interests and goals.

   The project claims it has years of research and seems to have a great
   number of specific ideas for what the technology might look like, how we
   would harness energy, travel etc. There are many 3D visualizations. Fresco
   claims that in the new society everyone would have a higher living
   standard than the rich have nowadays.

   The transition towards this society should be peaceful and evolutionary,
   NOT revolutionary. It has to be voluntary and rational. The initial stage
   -- building the first center with the project ideas in mind -- has already
   been completed in Florida. Raising funds and educating the public should
   continue, then more cities in the spirit of the project should start to
   appear, interconnect and prove the ideas in practice. Then slowly the new
   cities and ideas would start to replace our current system.

Comparison With LRS

   We, [49]LRS, highly support and agree with the Venus Project as an idea,
   in its analysis of current society, goals and means of achieving it. At
   least as of 2022, we can't know if any single project will become corrupt
   in the future (e.g. with [50]SJWs). We may still disagree on some details,
   focus a bit more on different areas etc. Here are a few points about that.

   Venus Project seems to only focus on humans, unlike LRS which is based on
   the love of all life, i.e. also animals, possibly even alien life etc.
   Venus Project mentions that in the future there would possibly be fish
   farms -- for us this seems unacceptable as we advocate [51]vegetarianism,
   even the lives of fish are precious to us. In a highly advanced society
   artificial meat (which we accept) would probably be available and replace
   meat from any living animals so we would eventually align with Venus
   Project, but the human-centeredness of Venus Project is still there.

   It may seem we also focus on simplicity of technology (e.g.
   [52]sucklessness) while Venus Project seems to advocate [53]bloat and
   overapplication of technology. This may not be such an issue because a
   truly good technology that Venus Project advocates should converge towards
   simplicity naturally thanks to minimizing maintenance, maximizing safety
   (minimizing dependencies), removal of bullshit features etc. In other word
   even hi-tech advocated by Venus Project can be done in a suckless way, for
   example the automation would work on top of [54]Unix operating systems.
   Still the future from LRS point of view may look less hi-tech, we might
   prefer simple buttons to voice recognition and so on :-)

   And a bit more criticism: the project doesn't seem to practice [55]free
   culture and [56]free software, even though of course it would implement
   them in their society -- it kind of makes sense as they seem to be trying
   to be above current movements, they simply think we should focus beyond
   them. We might disagree and say that even looking into the far future we
   should still keep an eye on the now, education about free culture can
   greatly contribute to education about the advantages of information
   freedom etc. Furthermore they are selling some videos on their site, which
   we don't really like but the project justifies it as raising funds for
   their operation. To their credit they have many gratis videos and
   educational material, even the books can be found as "free download".
   Another criticism comes towards the materials themselves which are
   sometimes a bit unprofessional which is a shame (e.g. the book has many
   typos and is not so readable). Also there seems to be a bit of personality
   cult around Jacque and Roxanne, their faces are all over the place and
   even though they seem like really great people and even though it may
   simply be due to the lack of other "strong personalities", this makes the
   movement look like a religious cult to some critics. Tio, the guy behind
   [57]TROM who collaborated with Venus Project also expressed slight
   criticism of organization of the project, that they were too concerned
   about control over their materials and that he even met a few toxic people
   there, though he says the experience was till mostly positive. We have to
   keep in mind that people, teams and projects are imperfect, they can
   become spoiled and fail, however this changes nothing about the ideas the
   project presents, which we support. As always, we have to separate ideas
   and people -- the situation here is perhaps similar to [58]free software
   as an idea, which we fully support, vs [59]free software foundation as a
   project and team of people, which has a few issues.

History

   TODO

See Also

     * [60]less retarded society
     * [61]trade-free
     * [62]Trash Magic
     * [63]Zeitgeist Movement
     * [64]TROM
     * [65]One Community
     * [66]Positive Revolution

Links:
1. jacque_fresco.md
2. society.md
3. money.md
4. work.md
5. competition.md
6. resource_based_economy.md
7. collaboration.md
8. zeitgeist_movement.md
9. trom.md
10. lrs.md
11. sus.md
12. fsf.md
13. trom.md
14. one_community.md
15. jacque_fresco.md
16. generalism.md
17. nonprofit.md
18. de_facto.md
19. anpac.md
20. communism.md
21. lrs.md
22. sjw.md
23. cancer.md
24. fight_culture.md
25. fascism.md
26. us.md
27. capitalism.md
28. fascism.md
29. wage_slavery.md
30. plenned_obsolescence.md
31. collaboration.md
32. competition.md
33. money.md
34. resource_based_economy.md
35. bullshit.md
36. fight_culture.md
37. work.md
38. maintenance.md
39. maslows_hierarchy_of_needs.md
40. ubi.md
41. science.md
42. ai.md
43. rationality.md
44. intellectual_property.md
45. sjw.md
46. fun.md
47. generalism.md
48. specialization.md
49. lrs.md
50. sjw.md
51. vegetarianism.md
52. suckless.md
53. bloat.md
54. unix_philosophy.md
55. free_culture.md
56. free_software.md
57. trom.md
58. free_software.md
59. fsf.md
60. less_retarded_society.md
61. trade_free.md
62. trash_magic.md
63. zeitgeist_movement.md
64. trom.md
65. one_community.md
66. positive_revolution.md