Hello everybody,
I was planning to contribute to the SCIVE blog with a series of reviews about what already exists on the Internet. I'll distinguish between scholar contributions and - it's difficult to find a name that is not a negative like un-academic or not-scholar - applied ones.
The Venus Project looks at first sight as a science fiction work - and a dated one too. However, it's not about science fiction technologies and fantastic buildings. It contains an utopian vision that has to say something on value and on money. I quote from the introduction to the project:
An Obsolete Monetary System
The money-based system evolved centuries ago. All of the world's economic systems - socialism, communism, fascism, and even the vaunted free enterprise system - perpetuate social stratification, elitism, nationalism, and racism, primarily based on economic disparity. As long as a social system uses money or barter, people and nations will seek to maintain the economic competitive edge or, if they cannot do so by means of commerce they will by military intervention. We still utilize these same outmoded methods.
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For example, the U. S. Department of Agriculture, whose function is presumed to be conducting research into ways of achieving higher crop yields per acre, actually pays farmers not to produce at full-capacity. The monetary system tends to hold back the application of these methods that we know would best serve the interests of people and the environment.
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Simply stated, a resource-based economy utilizes existing resources rather than money and provides an equitable method of distributing these resources in the most efficient manner for the entire population. It is a system in which all goods and services are available without the use of money, credits, barter, or any other form of debt or servitude.
By the way, this is a good place to say that one of the main points that make me so enthusiastic about the SCIVE project is because it is utopian. In planning the world, the 20th century has relied on ideologies. Now, depending on the point of view, ideology has gone or has been unified. The problem for the 21th century is to start planning again, and with more freedom of movement. So, I do welcome science fiction.
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