In 1974, industrial designer and social engineer, Jacque Fresco, during an interview with Larry King, stated the following: “There are no Negro problems, or Polish problems, or Jewish problems, or Greek problems, or women’s problems—there are Human problems.” Larry then asked him, “No control of the population?” Jacque simply replied, “Population control is dependent upon education. We feel an educated population needs no control.” For over 75 years of his life, multi-disciplinarian Jacque Fresco has been designing the future. Now known as a Resource Based Economy, Fresco’s innovative approach is very unlike every other social design in history on variety of different levels. First, a Resource Based Economy uses no money. Second, The Scientific Method is applied to society with total Human and environmental concern. Third, and certainly not last, technology is intelligently utilized to manage the Earth’s resources and produce access-abundance to the necessities of life through a global cybernated system. These are just three of the many tenets of this truly equitable, sustainable design, but let’s expand upon these concepts:
One of the most difficult concepts to initially grasp when being presented with a Resource Based Economy is the fact that there will be no money; no debt; no barter or servitude of any kind. If you think about it, we have never been taught anything at all outside the context of a monetary/market system. From the time we are small children all the way through our elder years, our lives seem to revolve around the accumulation and transfer of this thing we call ‘money’. We ask our children close-minded questions such as ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?”—as if there is only supposed to be one thing. It is as though we have become so consumed by consumerism that we perpetually fail to ask ourselves one simple question: Is money even a necessity? In his book entitled The Best That Money Can’t Buy, Fresco expands upon an idea that he and his associate, Roxanne Meadows, have been working on for over three decades: Declaring the Earth and all of its resources as the common heritage of all of the world’s people. Now, don’t be surprised if the first thing you think of when you hear this is ‘communism’, or ‘socialism’, or any other –ism that we have been conditioned to believe are the only possible societal structures. Despite what most believe, these quickly turn out to simply be prima facie associations that really have nothing at all to do with a Resource Based Economy. For example, communism has banks, armies, navies, politicians, social stratification, police, prisons—a Resource Based Economy has none of these things. Rather, we view the Human species as a single family; developing with and from Nature; a part of Nature—not separate. As Carl Sagan famously put it in his series Cosmos, “The old appeals to racial, sexual and religious chauvinism and rabid nationalist fervor are beginning not to work. A new consciousness is developing which sees the Earth as a single organism and recognizes that an organism at war with itself is doomed. We are one planet.”
Some of the rather obvious realizations almost completely neglected by collective consumerism are that 1. Money is a figment of our collective imagination; 2. It has absolutely no physical referent; and, 3. It has forced us to become utterly detached from any sense of interdependence with Nature and each other. The other day I was on my balcony and as I watched leaves falling from three trees at the adjacent complex that had been chopped up a few days before, I realized something: We are perpetually trying to shape our environment in an attempt to satisfy some artificial notion of aesthetics by using ever-decreasingly excellent methods—in this case, chainsaws. And, watching the leaves fall, I began to feel an overwhelming stress that could only be but a minute fraction of the stress the global organism known as Earth is feeling. All this, of course, instigated by the meaningless transfer of money between those willing to do literally anything to acquire it. For, in a monetary system, everything is up for sale…everything.—which is why we are constantly declaring war on those ideologies that do not fit well within the established monetary structure—as dictated by the ruling institutions and their representatives. War is the most profitable business ever created besides banking itself. As an aside, it should be no surprise to see Libya’s oil exports to the United States soon rise well beyond the pre-"rebellion" 3% mark considering the fact that the U.S., along with two other former world superpowers—France and Britain—have begun preemptive strikes against a country which holds the largest proven oil reserves in Africa. A Resource Based Economy addresses our addiction to oil with a very simple process of phasing it out entirely as an energy source. Earth is nothing but abundant in resources and energy; but, we waste time checking everything for a price-tag. So, what is the solution? Let’s say we abolish the monetary system.—then what?
Throughout our daily lives, whether or not we realize it, each and every one of us uses The Scientific Method. From brushing our teeth all the way to choosing a life-altering decision, our complex associative memory is hard at work deciphering the endless streams of information coming through our sensual receptors and thus are interpreted based upon the information we have been given up until now. To understand the information, we utilize this particular method which can be summed up in three fundamental steps: 1. Arrive at a problem or make an observation of a certain phenomenon. 2. Formulate a hypothesis to explain and predict the problem or phenomenon. 3. Test and re-test the hypothesis rigorously.
To some certain extent, this method is consistently used by Humans on a daily basis—even if we have never heard of these three steps. However, we have never actually applied this method intelligently to designing society. As Jacque explains, “We have never given scientists the problem of ‘how do you bridge the differences between people and nations?’” Unfortunately, this is a sad reality. And so, according to Dr. Robert Sapolsky, we now have soldiers sitting at computers at Nellis Air Force Base flying drones on the other side of the planet dropping bombs on whom they have been taught are our ‘enemies’; and that what they are doing is something we call ‘patriotic’—which is really just a euphemism for ‘we murder you to keep us all safe from you before you ever do anything because you are a terrorist. And after we indiscriminately blow the shit out of your pitiful, little country, we are going to have our central banks forcefully loan you money so that you can use that money to pay our corporations to come in and rebuild the infrastructure while installing a bourgeoisie comprador oil cartel as president of the new so-called “democracy. Let freedom reign… or was it ring? Freedom...!”’. This all, of course, is the result of a supreme failure at the second level of this method; for, when our hypotheses do not contain an alternative to our current monetary-based, socioeconomic system, we are depriving ourselves of a well-rounded series of possible solutions—namely, that of a world without money. A world without money could translate into a never-before-seen spike in the already-exponential increase in machine automation technology—given that we no longer would have to submit ourselves to employment that contributes nothing to society or ourselves and would be free to pursue self-fulfillment in life anywhere on the planet; anytime; no money; no debt; no barter; no servitude. Everywhere you go you have access to the necessities of life.
If we step back and examine our level of understanding in regards to Natural processes, as well as our rapid technical innovation, we see a new phenomenon arising over the past few years known as technological unemployment. Simply stated, technological unemployment occurs when advancements in technology allow Humans to be displaced by more reliable, more productive, and more cost-efficient machines. The logic is sound: Machines do not require wages, pensions, breaks, or insurance and can be programmed to extract, manufacture and distribute goods and services all day, every day. But, there is one key element that breaks the logic and causes this house of cards to collapse: If workers are continually displaced by automation, so too will their purchasing power. And, soon the entire economic structure—which is predicated on the perpetual transfer of wealth—will reach a stalemate, halt and fold on itself. But, what if we allowed and encouraged automation to happen in as many different job sectors as are possible? Couldn’t it be considered socially offensive not to automate? We are clinging onto a wage-slave system that is literally thousands of years old. To sum it up in one sentence: I am talking about the intelligent management of the Earth’s resources through the liberal application of technology.
A common assumption is something to the extent of “What if once we automate everything, machines decide that Earth would be better off without Humans and start massacring us?” First of all, this is a Hollywood projection. Secondly, and I am using another Fresco quote here, “If I took a computer and smashed it in front of ten other computers, they are not going to sit there and say ‘we’re gonna get you! If it’s not today, next week or next year; we’re gonna get you!’ Machines have no feelings.” Lastly, this is just another personification being utilized as a rationalization for us to keep working our useless slave-jobs to perpetuate cyclical consumption and not question so-called ‘authority’. As much as I would like to go on and on and on about these topics, it seems as though I am out of time here. If you would like more information regarding a Resource Based Economy, please check out http://www.thevenusproject.com/ and join The Zeitgeist Movement at http://www.thezeitgeistmovement.com/. And so, I leave you with a quote from Egyptologist Gerald Massey, “They must find it difficult… those who have taken authority as the truth, rather than truth as the authority."
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