The Zeitgeist Movement... why not?

[Mr_Mix]

I'm aware that there are many disagreements on this issue. However, if the TVP people have not investigated it and come up with at least an estimated range containing hard numbers a clear methodology, then they have not performed even the beginnings of due dilligence regarding whether their ideas are at all plausible. It does no good at all to say that there's plenty now and it's just not distributed efficiently. As you have pointed out numerous times, things will change if everyone has plenty without strivation. Currently, a lot of food is being produced, transported and distributed via billions of man-hours of hard labor, a great deal of energy, and using extensive infrastructure that needs to be maintained.

This is interesting. I'm more concerned with the numbers and technical aspect of how this would work as opposed to the sociological aspects and "are humans born evil or this way or that way". Sure that would be an issue to consider but the nuts and bolts of a transition is pretty interesting.
This thread is posted in the economics section after all.

It looks like TVP is pretty much just Jacque Fresco and his assistant so I'm sure they are not capable of doing any kind of world assessment. There would need to be a international agreement to work on the issue of finding out what is need where, what land is capable of growing what and for how long, that kind of thing. Also, there are hydroponics and such.

Obviously, when money, most labor, and fossil fuels are taken out of the picture, you get an entirely different calculation. As long as TVP doesn't actually perform this calculation, they've got nothing but, "Abracadabra, it will be so!"

The original transition would probably use the old means of transportation to get food to eveyone but after the trasition you would live in a city that was built from the ground up for efficiency so trasportaion of goods is not an issue there.

TVP's web site claims that they will first build a model city that embodies all of their principles, and later expand this to many cities, and then to the world. Even for this substantially easier project to work, their first city will have to be 100% self-sufficient, and they'll have to do all of the above calculations and then some on a smaller scale first. Plus they'd have to have some idea of where such a city could be built, how many people it can house, where it's food will be produced, where it's water and energy will come from, how these figures might be altered by weather/climate/geography, etc. With NUMBERS. Have they done any of this? I've seen no evidence that they have; nothing but, "Abracadabra, it will be so!"

Yeah they would need to find out where the demo city would be built. Do you go to a nice country that would consider it and say "Hey we want to build our own little nation city based on TVP and see how it works. Can you let us use some land for the experiment?" And they would have to be convinced. The location would not matter too much because a city like this could be built in a rural or even a back country area. Actually it could be built in the ocean apparently. What would the population be? 10,000 to start? 50? A micro sized TVP experiment? Who would be the citizens and who would that be decided by if anyone? Would Canada allow that ever? US? Sweden? Finland? Probably not, say, Iran...

I think the answers to those questions are written about in Mr Frescos last book so I'll read that and see what’s up. Even if some ideas did not sound good they can always be updated by anyone with a better idea. So far its the most interesting idea about different types of societies that I have heard of after reading about it for years. I think a society like this will be necessary for sustainability in all aspects of human life. I don't think the current system is sustainable and I'm not sure if the upcoming collapse will just be part of another boom bust cycle. Can the system go on like that perpetually? It doesn’t seem right. Is there not a theoretical limit to this type of financial system? Constant inflation and such? I dunno...

 

[Mr_Mix]

Also just because you declare that there is no money, doesn't mean that things don't actually have a cost. Building a maglev from New York to London would have an extreme cost, and simply saying that there is no money doesn't change that.

Good point but the cost would not be measured in money the cost would be measured in resources. That’s what it takes to do that. "How much will it cost?" is what keeps us from doing these things now.

Saying that "Art won't have the same value to it" is ridiculous. So without any creative control or ownership, what is the point of creating? Look some people will create things for free, but Wall-e is a lot different than "sneezing panda", "Star Wars Kid", "Numa Numa" or any of the top tiered internet videos. Oh, and I don't torrent music, because I have enough respect for the artist not to just take their work. Hence I have an iTunes account.

Finding the true monetary value of something is tricky. If you wonder how much something is worth you could look on ebay and the going rate is the going rate but if you were to guess the cost before you looked on ebay you would be going by what you actually think the value is to you. Then you would look on ebay and see that it was higher or lower than what you thought it was. A Picasso may have zero value to a headhunter in the jungle. He might use it for a table or something. I can find out what the suggested value of a painting is but to me I wouldn't really value it if I did not like paintings. Its very hard to talk about the monetary value of something because its different for different people. After all, it is just paint on a canvas even though its creator is talented.

I don’t see how one could not have ownership of things they created in a RBE as proposed by TVP.(hey that rhymed)

Speaking of robots, and realizing that this will be the one thing made fun of by the VP proponents. Doesn't anyone see a major flaw in the notion of robots and machines in the VP? Who builds new robots? Robots. Who repairs the robots? Robots. Who designs new robots? Robots. Who determines what should be produced? Robots. OK let me save you some time in reading the endless...robots statements. The problem is that it seems the VP promotes creating a loop. Robots would do absolutely everything, even sustaining themselves. So the VP wants to create a self sustaining and self perpetuating system of machines, without the need for any human intervention. They also seem to be under this notion that they will be able to create intelligent systems and have the ability for forward thought. Well first if you create a self-sustaining and self perpetuating system, without the need for intervention you have created synthetic life. sci-fi, I know, but it gets better. This system is also intelligent and will re-design itself, which means it gets to evolve itself. The question is, how long until such a system would become self-aware? That is to ask the question, when will this intelligence realize that it actually exists? I'm not talking about machines killing us or anything like that. No I am simply bringing up the moral question. Once a machine reaches consciousness, is not immoral to enslave such a machine? Wouldn't the VP fail the minute their technocratic system reached a level in which it decided that it deserves more than just being a slave to humans that contribute nothing to it? A sci-fi outlook I am sure, but it is only fair given the sci-fi pipe-dream that is the VP.

It's made clear here and elsewhere that all machines and robotic systems would need to be installed and maintained my humans. How else would it work? No one believes that it's completely hands off.
I've very skeptical of aware machines. AI may never reach sentience. The singularity is an interesting topic as well but I won't get into that. The robotic systems need not be alive to do the work required. A automobile production line is a good example of that.

 

[bobrayner]

Good point but the cost would not be measured in money the cost would be measured in resources. That’s what it takes to do that. "How much will it cost?" is what keeps us from doing these things now.

That's wrong. Money is a proxy for goods and services.

Building a maglev from New York to London would cost billions; those billions would be spent on the goods and services necessary to build a maglev. If you could remove money by waving a magic wand, building the maglev would still require a very large quantity of goods and services. That's what stops us building a maglev and you can't wish it away.

Price signals are actually very helpful in allocating scarce resources, with prices helping producers decide whether to produce A or B, consumers choosing between X and Y, and so on, efficiently allocating resources. A typical person in a developed country might make dozens or hundreds of decisions each day in which prices are a vital source of information. Without price signals you would need a huge and complex infrastructure to coordinate routine economic activity. Previous attempts have not been very effective or efficient.

People would volunteer. I would. Everything for free and you just work a few hours a day for a few weeks a month? Sign me up!

You will not be able to provide everybody with useful goods & services that they want, if you are relying on volunteers.

Unless you've found a method that creates useful goods and services through masturbation & watching the Simpsons.

 

[fullflavormenthol]

Why would I bother to maintain and install machines when I am equally as able to just sit around drinking my Big Mac and smoking pot? What is the motivation? I could just call myself and artist and draw stick figures because it is so hard to put a monetary value on art, what is the motivation?

An automobile production line is a good case in point. It is a good case for skilled workers whose abilities demand fair compensation. They deserve to actually be paid more than the "artist" who sits on his couch and smokes pot all day. Also it makes no sense whatsoever to be "skeptical of aware machines" given that it is a certainty in the long run. What is self awareness?

Nevertheless this is the weakest of my points given that the strongest is that competition and social stratification cannot be stopped in a "resource based economy" they would still exist because they are completely natural results of the interaction between people. Again...why do anything when there is absolutely no benefit? Why should an individual better themselves when they are artificially made equal to everyone else. Why should I become anything more than a lazy blob in a system that steals my upward mobility and takes away my individual freedom to work for the benefit of the self?

 

[fullflavormenthol]

That's wrong. Money is a proxy for goods and services.

Building a maglev from New York to London would cost billions; those billions would be spent on the goods and services necessary to build a maglev. If you could remove money by waving a magic wand, building the maglev would still require a very large quantity of goods and services. That's what stops us building a maglev and you can't wish it away.

Price signals are actually very helpful in allocating scarce resources, with prices helping producers decide whether to produce A or B, consumers choosing between X and Y, and so on, efficiently allocating resources. A typical person in a developed country might make dozens or hundreds of decisions each day in which prices are a vital source of information. Without price signals you would need a huge and complex infrastructure to coordinate routine economic activity. Previous attempts have not been very effective or efficient.

Thank you. You actually describe this better than what I would have. I remember actually looking into ideas about such a maglev route (from non-VP sources), and the main problem is that resource wise it would take a century or more before the system would actually pay for itself. It seems to me that a better expenditure would be perhaps the air-taxi concept. Instead of having only large airports, have several smaller airports. We could even focus the design on clean airplanes, but the underwater maglev across the Atlantic is insane given that it isn't a realistic or even intelligent use of our money/resources.

 

[Mr_Mix]

You will not be able to provide everybody with useful goods & services that they want, if you are relying on volunteers.

Great point. What people want and need are very different. I think people could have many things they want but not everything of course. Most people do not have everything they want and they never will. What they want is what the dominant social values of their culture have indoctrinated them to want not what has actual value. There are true natural values that everyone wants and needs and there are false ones that a particular culture values because of what is projected onto it by the dominant value system of the culture.
And about the human labor needed and who will provide it I would say that it is such a good deal that I personally would volunteer my time. I'm not sure how it would work yet but perhaps if people wanted to participate inside the city they would need to work a short work day. It seems like an awesome deal compared to what most do now. It would seem to go against ones own well being to not participate and co operate to make a system like that work.

 

[fullflavormenthol]

But why would I want to work even a short work day when all I "need" is already provided for me? Why should I be a slave when I can just exist free and drink a Big Mac on my hover chair? The greater good sounds great in theory, but it sort of sucks when you realize that you are bustin' your butt for people that are either too stupid or too lazy to do it themselves.

And who are you to determine the needs of people? There are certain needs that go beyond simple food and shelter.

Also how is this society going to function when there is still social stratification and competition?

 

[paximperium]

Great point. What people want and need are very different. I think people could have many things they want but not everything of course. Most people do not have everything they want and they never will. What they want is what the dominant social values of their culture have indoctrinated them to want not what has actual value. There are true natural values that everyone wants and needs and there are false ones that a particular culture values because of what is projected onto it by the dominant value system of the culture.

So instead of fulfilling specific human desires, you're going reengineer humanity to not want specific things anymore?
Is that the gist of it?

And about the human labor needed and who will provide it I would say that it is such a good deal that I personally would volunteer my time. I'm not sure how it would work yet but perhaps if people wanted to participate inside the city they would need to work a short work day. It seems like an awesome deal compared to what most do now. It would seem to go against ones own well being to not participate and co operate to make a system like that work.

So now you're going to force people to work?

Who decides the schedule? Who decides who crawls in the sewer and who sits in the office? A boss? Welcome back to "slavery"(as you call it).

 

[bobrayner]

Great point. What people want and need are very different. I think people could have many things they want but not everything of course. Most people do not have everything they want and they never will. What they want is what the dominant social values of their culture have indoctrinated them to want not what has actual value. There are true natural values that everyone wants and needs and there are false ones that a particular culture values because of what is projected onto it by the dominant value system of the culture.

Since people can no longer choose what they want, which dictator is going to choose what will be allocated to them?

And about the human labor needed and who will provide it I would say that it is such a good deal that I personally would volunteer my time. I'm not sure how it would work yet but perhaps if people wanted to participate inside the city they would need to work a short work day.

You appear not to have considered the free rider problem, which would cripple your utopia.

And what if nobody feels like volunteering to do heavy & boring work for a few days when the harvest is ready? Will it rot in the fields? Or will you give people incentives to do whatever work is most needed?

It seems like an awesome deal compared to what most do now. It would seem to go against ones own well being to not participate and co operate to make a system like that work.

Much less productive work would be done, which means much less goods and services available to people. If you're going to abolish money (or at least ignore price signals) then you'll likely have very inefficient allocation of resources too. Doesn't sound like an awesome deal to me.

I'll stay in the real world, where I can work five days a week and earn five days pay which allow me to buy lots of interesting goods & services of my choice. In this real world, the people who provide whatever I want to consume directly & indirectly (farmers, doctors, mechanics, cooks, drivers, teachers, &c) also have incentives to provide more & better goods & services. That's much better.

 

[fullflavormenthol]

I'll stay in the real world, where I can work five days a week and earn five days pay which allow me to buy lots of interesting goods & services of my choice. In this real world, the people who provide whatever I want to consume directly & indirectly (farmers, doctors, mechanics, cooks, drivers, teachers, &c) also have incentives to provide more & better goods & services. That's much better.

My feelings exactly. I believe that the individual is the best source to determine what to do with their resources, and honestly I don't think of it as slavery to actually work for pay. Even if that is contract work. I believe that people asking me to create very specific things actually helps me grow as an artist, and allows others to see a diversity in my work. Without that I would probably produce the same thing over and over. I actually find myself learning better techniques every time I don't get the job because of what someone else can do better.

Nevertheless I prefer the self determination I have.

 

[quixotecoyote]

My feelings exactly. I believe that the individual is the best source to determine what to do with their resources, and honestly I don't think of it as slavery to actually work for pay. Even if that is contract work. I believe that people asking me to create very specific things actually helps me grow as an artist, and allows others to see a diversity in my work. Without that I would probably produce the same thing over and over. I actually find myself learning better techniques every time I don't get the job because of what someone else can do better.

Nevertheless I prefer the self determination I have.

Being involved in public and private education, I don't mind letting the government act when society is best served with a collective effort and letting individuals/businesses act when private efforts work best. Planned economies simply cannot handle the information necessary to run an economy. Free markets solve the problem by not trying to have any one entity handle the information, instead creating mechanisms whereby we can get by without anyone having to know how best to handle billions of transactions a day.

 

[fullflavormenthol]

Being involved in public and private education, I don't mind letting the government act when society is best served with a collective effort and letting individuals/businesses act when private efforts work best. Planned economies simply cannot handle the information necessary to run an economy. Free markets solve the problem by not trying to have any one entity handle the information, instead creating mechanisms whereby we can get by without anyone having to know how best to handle billions of transactions a day.

And public education still allows for the input of the individual. Also despite the flak public education gets I am myself a product of that system. The best schools know how to identify the students that should be given more freedom in independent study, as I was. Also if I were a parent and didn't like the public school I have the ultimate freedom to educate my children on my own. I figure if I get my Ph.D. no one will get on to me for that decision.

No. There are specific public works that are for the best, and despite qouting Ayn Rand I am actually for many public works. The overall economy is best left to the free enterprise, because I could develop new systems and sell them freely. Nevertheless sometimes the government funding the creation of public works like dams, schools, wildlife preserves can not only benefit the society in the long term; but help the individual workers on those projects in the sort term.

I suppose I let myself fail into a false dichotomy of argument there, but having a balance between public and private works is completely for the best in my opinion.

 

[Mr_Mix]

So instead of fulfilling specific human desires, you're going reengineer humanity to not want specific things anymore?
Is that the gist of it?


So now you're going to force people to work?

Who decides the schedule? Who decides who crawls in the sewer and who sits in the office? A boss? Welcome back to "slavery"(as you call it).

I'm not going to do anything. We all would.
I don't see why anyone would need to crawl in a sewer since the sewer was designed from the ground up to not need human maintenance like they do now.
No one would have a bosses office because there would be no boss.
Hehheh you love to try to trap TVP proponents into the old "you're just created a government" trap. I think thats the fourth time I've read that in your posts.
What I was suggesting or guessing is that people who would like to participate would live in the city and the ones who didn't would not need to. Like The Amish. They would not like to live in one of these city's so they would be free to live outside it. I'm not sure why anyone else would not want to.
There is no hard labor. Robotics and machines in general could do all that but there would be some types of work that still require humans.

You would work much less and have a standard of living that would certainly go far beyond subsistence levels. Work would be easy and reduced by...I dunno...85%?
What do you think of that? *shuts eyes and covers head*

 

[Mr_Mix]

Since people can no longer choose what they want, which dictator is going to choose what will be allocated to them?


You appear not to have considered the free rider problem, which would cripple your utopia.

Well if you have chosen to live in the city you would agree with all the citizens to have a certain plan I suppose. I'll find out what TVP thinks when I read about it in a few days.
Also, its not my utopia or a utopia at all because not everyone will be happy all the time.

 

[fullflavormenthol]

Does anyone else have the feeling that nothing is actually being answered here? You know people are asking legitimate questions about the finite amount of resources. People are asking questions of how and why. But all we are getting is statements about how the VP will solve everything without specifics.

So fine let the VP people live in their own special city, but I will lead the charge to practice tough love and not donate resources to them when their society fails. And I will lead the charge to have military troops stationed outside to make sure no Jonestown incident occurs when people wish to get the hell out of that system.

 

[bobrayner]

I'm not going to do anything. We all would.
I don't see why anyone would need to crawl in a sewer since the sewer was designed from the ground up to not need human maintenance like they do now.
No one would have a bosses office because there would be no boss.
Hehheh you love to try to trap TVP proponents into the old "you're just created a government" trap. I think thats the fourth time I've read that in your posts.
What I was suggesting or guessing is that people who would like to participate would live in the city and the ones who didn't would not need to. Like The Amish. They would not like to live in one of these city's so they would be free to live outside it. I'm not sure why anyone else would not want to.
There is no hard labor. Robotics and machines in general could do all that but there would be some types of work that still require humans.

You would work much less and have a standard of living that would certainly go far beyond subsistence levels. Work would be easy and reduced by...I dunno...85%?
What do you think of that? *shuts eyes and covers head*

You seem to be assuming big innovations that will allow goods & services to be provided with much less labour input - for instance, automation, sewers that don't need maintenance, &c.

However, in the real world, labour costs money so there are already very strong incentives to develop these things. People and organisations have spent a huge amount of time and effort trying to reduce the labour inputs necessary to get any given output. Why do you assume that you can magically achieve much more? Perhaps, if researchers only do 15% of the work they do now, we'll get self-maintaining sewers and massive automation overnight?

Well if you have chosen to live in the city you would agree with all the citizens to have a certain plan I suppose. I'll find out what TVP thinks when I read about it in a few days.

So you're going to ignore the problem of allocation? Unfortunately, in the real world, it's a real problem, and cannot be ignored.

Also, its not my utopia or a utopia at all because not everyone will be happy all the time.

So you're going to ignore the free rider problem? Unfortunately, in the real world, it's a real problem, and cannot be ignored.

 

[bobrayner]

Does anyone else have the feeling that nothing is actually being answered here? You know people are asking legitimate questions about the finite amount of resources. People are asking questions of how and why. But all we are getting is statements about how the VP will solve everything without specifics.

Yes, agreed. It's just wishful thinking.

It's not even thorough as wishful thinking goes.

 

[fullflavormenthol]

You seem to be assuming big innovations that will allow goods & services to be provided with much less labour input - for instance, automation, sewers that don't need maintenance, &c.

However, in the real world, labour costs money so there are already very strong incentives to develop these things. People and organisations have spent a huge amount of time and effort trying to reduce the labour inputs necessary to get any given output. Why do you assume that you can magically achieve much more? Perhaps, if researchers only do 15% of the work they do now, we'll get self-maintaining sewers and massive automation overnight?


So you're going to ignore the problem of allocation? Unfortunately, in the real world, it's a real problem, and cannot be ignored.


So you're going to ignore the free rider problem? Unfortunately, in the real world, it's a real problem, and cannot be ignored.

Dude. You are doing better than I am. Yes of course corporations are trying to reduce the need for human labor. In fact it is part of the reason why I see fault in the theory of the Venus Project. The sewer company actually wants a sewer that will clean itself, there is no reason not to want it. Plumbers and other who deal in **** get paid very well because I wouldn't be able to work through all the vomiting. Of course companies would love a maglev rail that could cheaply move goods across the world at 4000 mile per hour. Why do people assume that the companies don't want space age technology?

The fastest way to get these technologies is to actually encourage the corporations to develop them through the current system.

 

[Mr_Mix]

My feelings exactly. I believe that the individual is the best source to determine what to do with their resources,

But who is the best source to determine what to do with the earth's resources? Politicians? They do not have the know how to come up with those kinds of solutions.

I believe that people asking me to create very specific things actually helps me grow as an artist, and allows others to see a diversity in my work.

You mean telling you to create specific things.

Without that I would probably produce the same thing over and over.

I doubt that.

I actually find myself learning better techniques every time I don't get the job because of what someone else can do better.

A good example of how this system creates its incentive. Competition. Incentive, however, is not always rewarded by monetary gain. That is the only incentive in this society.

 

[bobrayner]

This is interesting. I'm more concerned with the numbers and technical aspect of how this would work as opposed to the sociological aspects and "are humans born evil or this way or that way". Sure that would be an issue to consider but the nuts and bolts of a transition is pretty interesting.

Perhaps you should give us some numbers or technical details, then. So far all you've given us is wishful thinking and excuses. How would you overcome the problems?