You haven't presented anything logical. You've presented an idealistic dream that's reliant on tearing down our current system and is dependent upon all the richest and most powerful people suddenly becoming true altruists. It's also dependent upon everyone being of equal high ability and self motivated. My viewpoint doesn't demonstrate that i'm holding onto anything other than experience of real life and observations of people in the public and private sectors. You seem to be continually missing the point that "worth" or "value" is relative....there is no complete measurement or calculation that would be accurate for all. Furthermore given that society is not at a plateau any potential calculation made may be rendered obsolete at any point.
Nowhere did I claim that the system is dependent on the richest and most powerful people suddenly becoming true altruists. That is an assumption you are making and continue to make regardless of it's logical merit. The same goes for your claim that it is reliant on everyone being of equal high ability and self motivation. You see, the point is this; given the use of replication technology, greed and altruism essentially become indistinguishable. This is observable not only in
open-source software movements such as
GNU/Linux,
Wikipedia,
Firefox,
Chrome, etc, but also in physical space, such as with self-replicating
3D printers like
RepRap. This distinction between making something for yourself and making something for everyone disappears when replication reaches the point of total abundance, and all that is left is ambition. Regardless of whether you wanted to do it for yourself or for the world, you still do it, and you still upload your work to the rest of the world. Do you know when this stops? When money gets in the way. When money makes it NECESSARY for you to charge for your product and gate it off to the rest of the world, just so you can have a chance at keeping your home, food, and family. In other words, when money enforces scarcity.
Will it require a cultural revolution? What WILL be required to make this happen? I don't know for sure, but I think it starts with showing people the state of technology and having them realize that we don't need to enforce scarcity when such incredible abundance is possible.
And as far as "experience of real life and observations of people in the public and private sectors" goes, this is citing of
anecdotal evidence, and as you can see from the link, it is illogical.
The evidence? You haven't presented any evidence...just a video. Are there extant communes living like this interacting with the world around them and thriving? But wait, your net sentence implies the only evidence is the video....nothing else? I can't watch a video and since there's no documented peer reviewed articles published on this i'm a figurative blind man? Obviously that video must be critical to the whole argument.
You assume that the video cannot be evidence, when it is, in fact, a compilation of evidence that produces a case. You are a figurative blind man because you cannot watch this compilation of evidence.
Regardless, I will now
link to the study the video refers to. As for the video on the front page of the Venus Project website, Paradise or Oblivion, that is merely a summation of the information provided on
www.thevenusproject.com, so you have every opportunity to determine what you're attacking ACTUALLY is compared to what you think it is. When you are able to cease throwing (perhaps unintentional, but still uninformed)
straw men, we can move this conversation forward with my actual position.
This is, by the way, in stark contrast to how you have not linked to anything in any of your posts, or sourced any of your claims thus far, period.
The Middle Ages saw resource based economies thrive across Europe. As populations grew and trade increased the economies changed and money became more popular again. And that article on the collapse of the Russian economy skims over the realities of the situation at the time...there was no real economic recovery following Stalin's death and what plagued the USSR was the concentration on the Military rather than domestic goods. Additionally the corruption within many of the private firms responsible for armaments and the lack of Russia's reach to other supportive systems, coupled with civil unrest and massive class divisions meant that whilst the military was the first wobble everything else went down around the same time. Blaming money for the collapse of the USSR is shortsighted. A Technocracy boils down to being a form of meritocracy...and they've most certainly existed before. Ultimately they can only succeed properly if each individual is unselfish...something that is generally far from common. Most people can't help but put themselves first in however small a way.
Once again, you have clearly demonstrated your lack of ability to read what is written and discuss my actual position. I had very, very clearly stated in my first post that a resource based economy is not barter, which is what you seem to think it is.
Some clarification before I go on; I'm using "money" as shorthand for "any system of resource distribution which relies on the use of scarcity "value". This includes capitalism, communism, and any sort of barter system. It doesn't even matter whether it's fiat or "silver/gold standard". Any system at all that uses the scarcity of an item relative to the desire for it as "value" is fundamentally flawed, yet almost entirely unquestioned. A disclaimer, as well; this isn't to say it wasn't, at one point, a useful invention. It is simply irrelevant given our current level of technology and what we have been able to do as a society for nearly a century.
You know, I would think that after all of these posts that you've made and all the times I've asked you to read my posts thoroughly, you would have actually researched the position and ceased to skim. It really would make for a much more efficient conversation.
A resource based economy, as envisioned by the Venus Project and what I refer to when I use the term, would have never been possible in the middle ages. It makes use of technology not available at the time, and uses a worldview that virtually no one had then, that being that the Earth and the resources available to us were finite. Not to mention that you make a huge historical claim about the soviet union without backing it up, which is just another instance of your failure to meet your burden of proof. I will tally what burdens of proof you have to meet at the end of this post.
A Technocracy does not "boil down" to a meritocracy. There are vastly many more intricacies in how it is built and how it functions, inherent in it's engineered design and scientific principles. The only thing that is "boiled down" here is your understanding of it, which I can only presume came from your apparently chronic habit of skimming.
It's a resource because it's provides historical contact with an important event. It may be a commodity too but to certain people it's just as much a resource. As i noted earlier it comes down to perspective which isn't equivalent across the world.
Which is why it belongs in a museum for everyone to observe and grant historical contact with, not made equivalent to something that can feed and house hundreds of other people and traded as such.
Actually i'm pretty sure it's short-sighted if you think that's actually what's going to happen. Perhaps if you wear a tin foil hat, but for most normal people they'll recognize that strategies adapt and evolve to deal with prevailing political and economic changes. I don't think that Wall-E is a true view of the future.
So what you're telling me is that it's crazy to think that wasting a vast amount of resources produces a vast amount of waste, and that it's utterly insane to think that a process which wastes resources at an unsustainable rate on a finite planet in which we don't even measure how many resources we have left will result in those resources being scarce to zilch. As far as recognizing that strategies adapt to evolve and deal with prevailing political and economic changes, that is more or less precisely what I'm advocating for, which is to say that the only real solution to not wasting all of our resources is to see how much we have left, how much we're using, and how we can improve it's usage. It's just basic logic when approaching a finite set of necessary resources. Survival, if you will.
Oh, and I'll let your "tin foil hat" comment stand on it's own as a perfect picture of the mindset you bring to each and every post that you have made in this conversation. Your stereotyping and unfounded presumptions about my stance color your perception and cause you to be entirely disabled in arriving at a real, rational conclusion using evidence and reason.
Really? You really don't think that in our evil world of monetary economies that resource management and future proofing tomorrow is occurring? I don't know your educational background but as someone with two science degrees i can tell you with first hand knowledge that people are already doing that. We don't need to abolish our current system to do it any better.
It seems you have managed to combine three logical fallacies; that of
argument from authority, anecdotal evidence, and yet another failure to meet your burden of proof. No, I don't trust you just because you assert that you have two science degrees. Plus, I would think that someone with two science degrees would do a better job at researching his opponent's position and meeting his own burdens of proof, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you have them. Not that it matters as long as your logic is faulty, of course.
The specific burden of proof I refer to is that these projects are going on. So one more for the tally.
We need to abolish, or rather, stop, a process that
demonstrably produces a vast amount of waste, and doing it better means not giving two rips about the profit motive and placing conservation and wise use of our resources as our top priority.
I don't insult subtly. You will know if I'm insulting you, because I will actually go out of my way to do it. It would be in your best interest to not assume that this is the case until it is explicit.
My point was that you continue to ignore my very clear statements about what a resource based economy is, as you have once more. If you find it insulting that I continue to point this out, I would suggest that a good solution is to actually do your research and address my real position.
If we look at human ethology we can see that mankind has always achieved more when spurred on to succeed. Remove an individuals desire for some form of personal success or reward and you eliminate half the impetus to succeed. It is idealistic to assume that everyone is capable of interacting at that high academic standard...it is idealistic to assume that everyone will want to contribute...it is idealistic to assume that everyone is equally motivated. I agree Money is not a resource, but it IS what the world uses as a foundation. It might be theoretically preferable to change that foundation but it's not realistic....therefore it's an idealistic viewpoint. Furthermore, as you stated earlier if the main determinant for arguing a case here is a video there doesn't seem to be much "careful calculation, measurement, experimentation, and scientific rigor."
Here, you once again fail to meet your burden of proof. You claim that human ethology (the entire field, apparently) agrees that we can see mankind has always achieved more when spurred on to succeed. This also goes for your assertion about removing an individual's desire and your assertion about everyone wanting to contribute being idealistic. You provide another logical fallacy in the form of an
argument by assertion in merely asserting that it isn't realistic. Besides, it is hardly a binary state of affairs, which means you have committed yet another logical fallacy in the
false dichotomy. Science often deals in what is not real *yet*, and it is known as the
hypothetical or the
theoretical, depending on it's status as a
hypothesis or a
theory.
Getting back to that calculation, measurement, experimentation and scientific rigor it'd be fantastic to see some peer reviewed published articles documenting the inevitable collapse of civilization you predict, some more documenting successful communes living like this and a set detailing the logical method for equating worth of value for all people around the world. The size of the world precludes one giant ecosystem of the sort you describe so meta-communities would exist...what one community values another based elsewhere in the world may not.
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Given that we have a finite amount of resources and that
they are being rapidly depleted by a profit motive incentive, why do you need a peer reviewed study to tell you that it will eventually run dry much faster than measuring them and watching it's depletion rate would cause it to? Should it not be patently obvious that a continued, sped-up drain on a finite pool will eventually run it dry? Why wouldn't it, exactly? What properties about the profit motive will absolutely ensure that we never run out of resources as long as it is profitable to keep draining and wasting them?
The sad truth of the matter is, there are none who are currently living like this. Why? Because it's impossible in a market economy to do so. Here's the thing, though, and this applies to communism as well; in science, we don't just stop experimenting because something failed in the past. If it is highly plausible that a better solution exists and we have the logic and science to back it up, why would we stop? Our knowledge is never improved by a lack of experimentation.
The fact that one community's culture may value something another's doesn't is entirely irrelevant. They are delivered their resources like anyone else, regardless of if they cherish it more. (Again, look at how it actually works before responding, please.)
So, as promised, I will tally the burdens of proof you have to meet, and as a bonus, I will also summarize the logical fallacies you have made.
Burden 1: Prove that the Soviet Union collapsed in the way you said it did.
Burden 2: Prove that this future-proofing you speak of is happening.
Burden 3: Human ethology agrees that mankind has always achieved more when spurred on to succeed. Actually, kind of that entire paragraph.
Logical Fallacies: Quoting anecdotal evidence, argument from authority, argument by assertion, straw man (uninformed via skimming variant), and false dichotomy.
And lastly, this isn't an insult, but, please, please, PLEASE read up on The Venus Project and my arguments more carefully this time, think closely about meeting your burdens of proof, and thoroughly scrutinize your logic before posting. I really don't want to spend all this time picking through logical fallacies ever again.
(P.S. Hopefully the training you received from those two science degrees will help you.)
