Resource-based economic model

A Resource-Based Economic Model is the theoretical socio-economic system recently proposed by the Venus Project, a social sustainability advocacy organization located in Venus, Florida. The founder and director of the Venus Project, as well as the creator of the notion of a Resource-Based Economy, is structural engineer, industrial designer, and futurist, Jacque Fresco, who has advocated a revolutionary change in global socio-economic organization through a comprehensive series of lectures and public events, in addition to a number of popular films and books. Fresco was recently featured in the 2011 film Zeitgeist: Moving Forward, in which he discussed the perceived flaws in the current capitalist system and, according to him, the methods by which said perceived problems could be reasonably solved.
The concept of a Resource-Based Economic Model is based on several specific principles of social, economical, and political organization, including economic cooperation, ecological sustainability, and technological automation. It aims to decrease unnecessary human suffering by installing a coherent socio-economic framework based on the sharing of resources and the collaboration of nations, as well as attempting to increase the chances of long-term human survival (e.g., on a time-scale of 4-5 billion years) through the worldwide implementation of renewable energy systems, collective hydroponic farms, and structurally efficient cities. In order to be globally realized as such, a Resource-Based Economy would require the end of unnecessary violence and conflict.
The Venus Project
The Venus Project is the social sustainability advocacy organization currently promoting the worldwide implementation of a Resource-Based Economic Model. It operates out of a 21.5 acre Research Centre located in Venus, Florida. Within the center are ten buildings, designed by Fresco, which showcase the architecture of the project. It was started in 1975 by Fresco himself, along with his research partner and former portrait artist Roxanne Meadows. Together and with the help of other volunteers and employees, the two work to manage the Venus Project's activities. As such, the Venus Project was founded on the idea that all nations are fundamentally corrupt and that this corruption comes from the use of money. Fresco instead advocates a socio-economic system in which resources are fairly allocated by a computerized, automated system referred to as the Cybernation. which are as follows:
* Realizing the declaration of the world's resources as being the common heritage of all people.
* Transcending the artificial boundaries that currently and arbitrarily separate people.
* Replacing money-based nationalistic economies with a resource-based world economy.
* Assisting in stabilizing the world’s population through education and voluntary birth control.
* Reclaiming and restoring the natural environment to the best of our ability.
* Redesigning cities, transportation systems, agricultural industries, and industrial plants so that they are energy efficient, clean, and able to conveniently serve the needs of all people.
* Gradually outgrowing corporate entities and governments, (local, national, or supra-national) as means of social management.
* Sharing and applying new technologies for the benefit of all nations.
* Developing and using clean renewable energy sources.
* Manufacturing the highest quality products for the benefit of the world’s people.
* Requiring environmental impact studies prior to construction of any mega projects.
* Encouraging the widest range of creativity and incentive toward constructive endeavour.
* Outgrowing nationalism, bigotry, and prejudice through education.
* Eliminating elitism, technical or otherwise.
* Arriving at methodologies by careful research rather than random opinions.
* Enhancing communication in schools so that our language is relevant to the physical conditions of the world.
* Providing not only the necessities of life, but also offering challenges that stimulate the mind while emphasizing individuality rather than uniformity.
* Finally, preparing people intellectually and emotionally for the changes and challenges that lie ahead.
Philosophical Foundation
As an economic theory, the concept of a Resource-Based Economic Model is based on a particular philosophical conception of reality. As expressed in the 2011 film, Zeitgeist: Moving Forward, the founder and director of the Venus Project, Jacque Fresco, subscribes to a deterministic view of the universe, In accordance with this view of the human condition, the Venus Project sees the fulfillment of human needs as a permeating cultural imperative, and hence provides a socio-economic framework through which this goal can potentially be achieved.
Critique of Capitalism
Since a Resource-Based Economic Model is not predicated on a system of financial control or monetary exchange, it is thus diametrically opposed to current capitalistic economies which are predominantly based on debt, wages, and competition. As such, the Venus Project has criticized capitalistic conceptions of economics for their perceived disregard for long-term socio-economic sustainability and human happiness. In the view of Fresco, capitalism (particularly in its manifested forms) is based on unintelligent principles of rampant consumerism, profit maximization, insurmountable debt, environmental destruction, and systemic unemployment, so that, according to them, the world may have a sufficient opportunity to focus on the realization of a fully optimized socio-economic system. In following with this, a Resource-Based Economic Model would entail a worldwide concentration of industrial capacities on the scientifically guided construction of novel, structurally efficient cities, as well as an intelligent, ecologically motivated societal effort to optimally restore the natural environment to its highest potential. According to him, the practical application of a society based on dynamic equilibrium would involve compliance with several fundamental principles, including the conduction of environmental impact studies prior to the construction of any mega-projects, the conservation of physical resources in proportion to their respective rates of renewability, and the avoidance of unnecessary environmental destruction. In the view of the Venus Project, dynamic equilibrium is essential to the long-term sustainability of both humanity and the planet upon which it is located.
Technological Automation and Collective Farming
One of the key differences between previous systems of social organization and a Resource-Based Economic Model, is that the latter is primarily based on the replacement of unnecessary human labour by technological automation. and, it therefore calls for the long-term cessation of the majority of jobs through the implementation of cybernetically automated machines in both industry and agriculture. In this framework, technology would be used not only for the purpose of societal convenience, but also for the enhancement of human life in general. Additionally, since a Resource-Based Economic Model is founded on principles of both ecological sustainability and societal cooperation, the notion of collective hydroponic farming, or the agricultural use of waterless mediums in a socially collective manner, is also of fundamental significance. Within a Resource-Based Economy, the agricultural sections of constructed cities would contain numerous hydroponic farming systems. Each of these would be utilized in order to grow food for the respective community of people for which the farm was built. After the food is produced as such, it would then be transferred to the strategic access centers located within the city (see below) in which it would be retrieved accordingly by citizens. In addition to the goal of indoor hydroponic farming, however, the Venus Project has also proposed the installation of outdoor agricultural belts that would not be based on the use of pesticides, in order to prevent human disease. According to the Venus Project, such a comprehensive systems approach to economic planning would be exponentially beneficial to both societal well-being and the tracking of resources in general. According to TVP, the reason for this is twofold. Firstly, renewable energy systems are clean and therefore environmentally friendly. Secondly, they can be used continuously over long periods of time, whereas a finite substance such as oil, for example, cannot. This would allow humanity to create a dynamic equilibrium between itself and the natural world, while also increasing its ability to survive in the long-term as well. In addition to the use of renewable energies, however, the Venus Project also promotes the creation of novel, sustainable cities, and contends that the construction of new, technologically advanced urban centers is much more preferable to the materially wasteful redesign of currently extant inefficient ones. Regarding the development of these cities, the Venus Project's website states that, "It would be far easier and would require less energy to build new, efficient cities than to attempt to update and solve the problems of the old ones." He writes, "these idealists are wrong to blame our current, dysfunctional world on capitalism or money per se. On the contrary, if everyone respected each other's property rights — meaning there would be no more petty crime, but also no more taxation, military conscription, or drug prohibition — then humanity would become fantastically wealthy, in material terms." later concluding that, "No matter the brainwashing done, self-interest will reduce any such plan to failure..." to mere inefficient allocation. Market abolitionists may reply that whilst advocates of the Austrian school recognize equilibrium prices do not exist, they nonetheless claim that these prices can be used as a rational basis, and that markets are hence not efficient.
In response to the criticism involving property rights, supporters of a Resource-Based Economic Model may also reply that they are making a clear distinction between private property and public property; while they are calling for the abolition of private property and its transformation into the commons/public property, they nonetheless retain respect for personal property rights.
Other critics of a Resource-Based Economic Model, such as Mike Thomas of the Orlando Sentinel, have suggested that Fresco is a utopian dreamer with too optimistic of a philosophy. As expressed in Thomas' article on Fresco, titled "He's A Dreamer From Venus", the concept of a near-perfect society is a difficult one to imagine, given the numerous conflicts and disagreements which permeate human society. In following with this, Thomas writes, "Jacque is 78, brilliant by his own account, eccentric by mine," later writing that "I am skeptical ."
Alan Feuer of the New York Times, in commenting on a theatrical showing of Zeitgeist: Moving Forward, writes:<ref name="NYT20090316"/> "The evening, which began at 7 with a two-hour critique of monetary economics, became by midnight a utopian presentation of a money-free and computer-driven vision of the future, a wholesale reimagination of civilization, as if Karl Marx and Carl Sagan had hired John Lennon from his “Imagine” days to do no less than redesign the underlying structures of planetary life. In other words, a not entirely inappropriate response to the zeitgeist itself..."<ref name="NYT20090316"/>

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