Z-Day 2010 - "Be the change we want to see in the world

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You haven't considered the word "stabiliser". Would you consider peaks and troughs a stable plain?



Have you not been paying attention to any of my posts on this website?


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Money is a lot of times included in the classification of natural resources. And it is treated as such.



Only if we accept the constraints of our curent monetary system. Say for example you endure a traumatic ordeal such as a near death experience or death of a spouse, and once recovered you say to yourself "You know what, I'm not gonna waste another second of ther time I have been given. I'm gonna make the most of what I have left. I'm gonna see the world. I'm gonna make sure I don't end up with any regrets". As soon as you are done saying all that, what is one of the next considerations? "Can I afford to?" For a lot of people they cannot afford to take time out of their normal lives and travel the world. Like I said, you are only as free as what your purchasing power allows.



No, The Venius Project has been rejected by those not bothered to consider it because they expect me to do all their thinking for them. You can either make up your own mind and do your own thinking or someone will do it for you. And that is called Fascism.

Exactly. We have enough fluctuation without having to deal with fluctuation within the system to which our functional livelihood depends. We are raised with the mantra "Thats just the way it is". This cripples any possibility of the mind hoping for anything better and breeds an unthinking, unflinching uniformity and compliance with whatever system is thrust upon us.



Imagine you had no money. You were a vagrant with no influence, no hope and no future. Would you still be the moderator of this website?



When you consider my earlier scenario of a shop. That is a bog-standard example of how profit waves its flag at the top of the priority pyramid.

The economy is cyclic. The reasons for this are debated, but it is clear that the cycle is moderated by the central banking system. The peaks and troughs were much more extreme before the implementation of the modern banking system.


Have you presented a viable alternative in any of your posts? I mean, you can say "communism" or whatever, but I think I can be safe in just rejecting communism out of hand for purposes of this discussion.


As a natural resource, or just a resource?


Actually, no, resources are always finite no matter what economic system you have. I shouldn't have to explain this any further.


It's not quite that simple. Replacing fossil fuels as an energy source is not viable in the immediate future, but a lot of work is going towards that goal.


I mean that your claims were factually wrong wherever they were specific enough to have a definite truth value.


Actually, we tried for several pages to get the previous Venus-Project guy to explain what exactly the Venus project advocated. Never did get a non-weasel answer.

Yeah, name-calling us "fascists" is productive. Trust me, I'm hardly a fascist. I advocate total freedom of speech (to a greater extent than is permitted in many Western liberal democracies) and a much broader set of civil liberties than almost anyone outside of libertarians would think sensible.

So you are suggesting that humanity is free of the confines of nature, and should not be subject to the wax and wane of time? One cannot superimpose a stable system on an undulating foundation and expect it to stand solid. The system you suggest does not appear to be different, as it is another system that would be foisted upon the masses. The only way these concepts work is if it done at the personal level; I do not see it practical on a large scale.



While I don't see the correlation, it would still be possible - it would be a matter of priority.



Profit, self-interest, protectionist perspectives - all these are substituted as priorities and goals as necessary by individuals. When one disappears, then another rears it's head. Kind of like global Whack-A-Mole in a way.


M.

So, without mentioning how stupid this or speculating about the bs levels is I will focus on how wrong they are .

They mention race, religion and politics are just annoyances with no meaning. Well duh!? Recognizing such thing is a no brainer and I don't think I should be worshiping or following anyone for pointing such obviousness out. Then they procceed to talk about the Myth of the banking system, monetary system or whatever. Give me a break.

Money is just incredibly easy to exchange. It is very practical and that's the reason we use it. If we were in the stone age, I wouldn't be able to exchange my service as a freelancer with some company miles away through the internet. I would have to carry my tomatoes all day hoping to find someone who actually needs tomatoes...

The probability of finding someone that directly requires your product/service and at the same time can give you a product/service you need is so extremely low that nothing in this world could even work. That's the reason money or something equivalent to it has not only been invented ages ago but that it has transcended time.

Another hideous claim of these guys is that there is abundance of resources so all humans could just get all resources and be happy... News flash: Transporting the resources actually costs. Even if we were to just distribute all the resources to all people, who the heck is gonna pay the people that do the redistribution? This is the reason communism does not work.

You are limited in your choices by the income you get! Welcome to the real world. Now work hard to get that income instead of thinking that everybody will do you the favor of stopping caring about it.

How do you plan to stop conflict if you ignore politics? I'd love to have what they're smoking.

Same here.

Yes it is. That is one of the reasons EXACTLY why it is bad for us. The fact that it is centred around continual cyclical consumption in order to keep it going is ridiculously ass-backwards.



I have never offered up or condoned communism as a solution to ANYTHING. You have not paid attention to my posts.




Both in a lot of cases. Which is ridiculous. Ask the people who believe this to be true.




In our current economic system, yes of course there will be. That is one of the reasons we need to outgrow it.



I was not referring to resources, I was referring to the fact that we are only as free as what your purchasing power allows. Two different things.




And why not? I'll tell you why. Brecause oil and natural gas constitute one of the most profitable and wealthy industries on the planet. And any other means of energy is dubbed as "too expensive" and "not practical". Why do you think they charge more for electric cars and hybrid engine technology? Think about it.



You believe them to be factually wrong. Your belief is not the reality of my facts.




And what would you define as a "non weasel answer"? Maybe you need to consider the fact that since you will ALWAYS be rejecting these ideas then that means you will always be discounting any attempt at explaining them to you to be inadequate and wrong. Your mind has already been made up so it is gonna be impossible for you to admit that any argument for The Venus Project has any basis because you have already sumerily rejected the ideas themselves.




Did I personally call you a fascist? No. I stated that you need to do your own thinking, coz as far as I am concerned, to have your own mind, and to use it how you wish is true freedom of thought.

My point is that you hold me up and demand for me to provide all the amswers for you. I get the impression that you cannot even be bothered to check it out for yourselves, and so you expect me to do all the brain-work for you. I am not gonna do that. Coz you have to do your own thinking. I am not a fascist. And I don't wish to force your mind either way no matter how much you cajole me into explaining things at great length and trying the futile task of providing an explanation that will satisfy your impossibly closed mind. (As far as these ideas are concerned).

I don't understand your reply here. Could you clarify? Unless I am severely misunderstanding you, it doesn't seem as though what you wrote here has any connection to what you are quoting.


OK, fine. Have you offered an alternative? If so, what is it?


No, there literally always will be. You can not possibly escape the fact that resources are limited. (Incidentally, these sort of comments from you are why I brought up communism- what you are saying is very similar to typical communist talking points)


OK. But purchasing power is tied to resources. It is impossible for everyone to have everything they want, simply because there is a limited quantity of many of the things people want. All you are establishing by your claim that "we are as free as our purchasing power allows" is that complete freedom is impossible, at least as defined by you.


Probably because those are actually more difficult/expensive to produce. Right now, fossil fuels are still cheaper and more reliable than solar power, although if current progress continues that should change fairly soon.


One that is sufficiently specific to demonstrate how the Venus Project is different from other ideas and that allows an analysis of it based on what specific measures it promotes.


Actually, that's a fairly reasonable stance. If you come and advocate a fringe ideology, you are expected to do the legwork in providing information to back up that ideology rather than expecting other people to take significant time to do exhaustive research on a topic that is very likely to be a waste of time.

This "Zeitgeist" thing has nothing to offer. All I have seen in your original post is rhetoric, thus making it as fictional as the zombies and vampires. Even those Zeitgeist websites were too full of rhetoric to gain any kind of true understanding about it. All I got from it was somekind of vaguely Green policy.

Well that's your perpective. Just because it is foreign to your frame of reference doesn't make it any less valid. When you view the information with a open mind and an unbiased view, you will see something different.

Ok, but his perpsective is about matters that are somewhat intersubjective, such as information content relevant to pragmatic implementation. I mean, heck, it seems very obvious to me that if this were a serious idea that it would be easy to present in a manner enlightening to people. I mean, there is a difference between not respecting an idea and considering it a steaming load, and I think a lot of people are in the latter camp at the moment.

As it stands, I don't think anyone sees content in the idea.

@Orwell: In a nutshell, the Venus project advocates a resource based economy, where machines replace menial work, and the world uses renewable energy for survival. It abolishes the concept of money, law & order, and advocates an educational system which encourages self-development rather than succumbing to a partisan way of thinking. It also advocates anarchy.

It is also very anti-religion, looking at religion as restricting the mindset of human beings. My belief is completely the opposite - religion slowly progresses mankind, depending on the age and social situation.

Personally, I compare it to Plato's concept of an 'ideal' state. Not possible to implement, but it does serve as a basic model for future societies, as far as I'm concerned. It does have its pros and cons.

If one told nomadic society few thousand years ago that the world would evolve into settled agricultural based economies, they would have been mocked at. Likewise, if pre-industrial society was told that the world would have begun evolving into service based economies, that too would have been mocked at. Looking back at the mindset of that era, the following questions would have popped up: Who would till the soil? How can working at a bank or advertising firm run the country? Etc.

I would personally suggest researching a theory with a healthy dose of skepticism and optimism as well, balancing the pros and cons. It does help to understand more than rubbish everything blindly as mere claptrap.

Right, but the issue is that all of these issues are matters of criticism, if only in the actual implementation, but certainly further than that.


Plato sucks, and if he ever posted on this forum, I would criticize his ideas harshly as well.


Right, but the issue is that none of the changes we have made were ever consciously chosen. They happened. People found ways to get it to happen. Even democracy didn't just appear overnight because some crazed man felt like it should. Attempts to make things happen though often tend to be very bad, like with the French Revolution. Is this a relatively conservative and anti-utopian view? Sure, but it has some foundations.


The worlds needs people who are willing to toss things into the scrap heap where this is necessary. I doubt this is a matter of utter blindness on anybody's part either, but rather that most of us vaguely see this view that you see and consider it stupid.

Well, Awesomelyglorious, you know I don't argue.

Just offer my inputs here and there and move along.

There we go, a brief and cogent synopsis of the aims of the Venus project. Anyways, each aspect of that platform has plenty of potential criticism, but I think I'll wait for Adam to get back in case he takes issue with your characterization.


But then I would have to do the same with communism, objectivism, anarchism, fascism, technocracy, primitivism, and a whole slew of other fringe ideas. It is a useful heuristic to lump all "probably false" stuff together in one pile and not bother with it until someone gives a serious reason for me to do so.

Eh, I think that more variation could be useful. After all, there are ideas that are just wrong, and there are ideas that can be stripmined for useful concepts that can be applied to other, better ideas or where the concepts can raise new questions.

I'd probably say that communism, anarchism, moderate fascism, and primitivism *could* potentially be useful to examine just to remove ideas from them. I wouldn't bother with Objectivism or Technocracy nearly as much though, as I don't think they've merited as much attention from intelligent minds in the first place.