Jacque Fresco and the Venus Project

[jts]

This doesn't seem to fit in any category in OL. I figure the closest is art, selective recreation of reality according to the artist's values.

I listened to a whole bunch of Fresco videos, some of them lengthy. These are selected as not too long and more interesting.

Jacque Fresco is a multi-talented guy, engineer, artist, inventor. He has a wonderful imagination.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacque_Fresco

He has wonderful utopian ideas, which I think might be improved upon by a free market. No one genius can equal a free market. He is vague about how his ideas can be implemented without the profit motive. Wonderful dreams; lousy way to get there.

There is nothing wrong with inventing a utopia, if:

1. It is only an act of imagination and is not imposed on the world like Stalin and Hitler tried to do.

2. It is understood that the reality, created by a free market, can produce something far better than anything any one person can imagine.

Perhaps utopia inventing has some resemblance to Ayn Rand's definition of art.

He sounds too socialist and anti-capitalist. I hope this Venus Project stuff is not part of Agenda 21.

[Kyle Jacob Biodrowski]

There was a very long discussion about The Zeitgeist Movement on RoR, a few years back.

Here's the link

One of my friends was really into it. I don't know if he's still into it, to this day, though.

[Selene]

There was a very long discussion about The Zeitgeist Movement on RoR, a few years back.

Here's the link

One of my friends was really into it. I don't know if he's still into it, to this day, though.

There is a thread on OL on it...

The Zeitgeist Movement

[Kyle Jacob Biodrowski]

There was a very long discussion about The Zeitgeist Movement on RoR, a few years back.

Here's the link

One of my friends was really into it. I don't know if he's still into it, to this day, though.

There is a thread on OL on it...

The Zeitgeist Movement

Beat my thread by a few months, but a real-live movement member posted on my thread. It made for some interesting posts.

Now that's how you one-up the competition.

[Selene]

There was a very long discussion about The Zeitgeist Movement on RoR, a few years back.

Here's the link

One of my friends was really into it. I don't know if he's still into it, to this day, though.

There is a thread on OL on it...

The Zeitgeist Movement

Beat my thread by a few months, but a real-live movement member posted on my thread. It made for some interesting posts.

Now that's how you one-up the competition.

No competition intended, just an FYI...

[Derek McGowan]

I went to Kyle's link on Rebirth of reason and I began reading the comments. One statement from Post 11 caught my attention.

He was talking about direct barter and said "...that maybe it could work on a limited, local commune basis like the Amish. Nothing is wrong with the Amish but I can't imagine all of America functioning as the Amish. In fact, I can't remotely imagine how one constructs anything remotely like a NYCity based on Amish sensibilities and commerce."

I agree, well I dont think it would be impossible, but the probabilities of an Amish community creating a skyscraper, let alone a hundred of them, is extremely extremely low. But then I thought, without the government controlling and directing tax dollars, what are the probabilities that private industry would have sent a man to the moon? I'm certainly sure that private enterprise would have sent up satellites even if we weren't prompted by the government program that sent up Sputnik, but would it have ever sent a probe out of the solar system, or robots to Mars? The odds are fairly low but I suppose they might lay in the 10% range. But the probabilities of private enterprise creating the Large Hadron Collider? Infinitesimally small.

Of course one could say that we don't need those programs, but then one could say that we don't need New York City. I guess the answer lays in the fact that NYC WAS created by private ambition and the LHC was not, period. So that would automatically mean that NYC is more important to our specific society than the LHC is. I suppose that I personally just find that to be sad.

testicles

that is all ....

[BaalChatzaf]

I went to Kyle's link on Rebirth of reason and I began reading the comments. One statement from Post 11 caught my attention.

He was talking about direct barter and said "...that maybe it could work on a limited, local commune basis like the Amish. Nothing is wrong with the Amish but I can't imagine all of America functioning as the Amish. In fact, I can't remotely imagine how one constructs anything remotely like a NYCity based on Amish sensibilities and commerce."

I agree, well I dont think it would be impossible, but the probabilities of an Amish community creating a skyscraper, let alone a hundred of them, is extremely extremely low. But then I thought, without the government controlling and directing tax dollars, what are the probabilities that private industry would have sent a man to the moon? I'm certainly sure that private enterprise would have sent up satellites even if we weren't prompted by the government program that sent up Sputnik, but would it have ever sent a probe out of the solar system, or robots to Mars? The odds are fairly low but I suppose they might lay in the 10% range. But the probabilities of private enterprise creating the Large Hadron Collider? Infinitesimally small.

Of course one could say that we don't need those programs, but then one could say that we don't need New York City. I guess the answer lays in the fact that NYC WAS created by private ambition and the LHC was not, period. So that would automatically mean that NYC is more important to our specific society than the LHC is. I suppose that I personally just find that to be sad.

testicles

that is all ....

One way of measuring the complexity of a society and the feasibility of barter is to get the number of item-types (SKU s) that an average consumer has access to. If the total number of item types is just a few hundred then the society is simple and barter could work. If the number of SKU s numbers in the hundreds of thousands then money is required and the society is complex.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Selene]

But the probabilities of private enterprise creating the Large Hadron Collider? Infinitesimally small.

Derek:

My feeling is that you raised an intriguing question...

Here is the funding...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CERN

it is under Member States and Budget.

A...

[dldelancey]

Derek, I was hoping you'd check out that discussion. I kept thinking of your book while I was reading it and wondering if/how you address the issues raised. (Don't tell me, no spoilers please!)

I generally have a more optimistic outlook on private industry than I think you do. It may have taken longer to get started, but I think space exploration would have been just fine on its own in the private domain. In fact, once started, I imagine it would be farther along by now than it is. Of course, we'll never know for sure.