What do you think of the "Venus Project"?

“Do you believe things like “wars” and “religions” will fade out of the memory of the people that may live in such a system?”

And we will never get sick or know of death?

It is a wonderful utopian scheme, somewhat like the Gaviotas Project in South America. Worth following, maybe even worth giving financial help to. But they don’t need an autistic engineer like myself messing things up.

Fascinating and interesting in concept but overall all I see is the same logic as behind other great ideas like “Communism works, it has just never been executed right!”

it has nothing to do with communism. this is a resource based economy @Anon_Jihad

I don’t think we should write off the venus project just yet, its a work in progress, and all said and done, were gonna need some sort of fall back position when this global economy goes tits up.

@Sebulba
Have you watched the zietgeist movies?

@Pazza yes that is how i learnt about venus project

I think the Romans were on the right track.

@ChazMaz
what, a straight road into oblivion?~

As a bumper sticker once saw said: “Those who beat their swords into plowshares, will plow for those who don’t.”

I haven’t read a whole bunch on this, but what’s to keep someone else from simply invading the Venus folks and stealing all of their resources?

Oh yea… I forgot about that. :-)

But they were touting a utopian idea also.

@Sebulba I know full well what the Venus Project is. I didn’t say it was Communism. I said I felt it was born of the same same thinking that is behind comments of that nature: romanticism of Utopian concepts that never seem to look at the reality of how things are and work.

@grumpyfish we are talking about a world political system. not just for the US or Europe. If not everyone joins and there is real danger of what you suggest then i’m sure there will be technologically advanced defence systems that wouldn’t be a problem
@Anon_Jihad the venus project is pointed at changing this “reality” you say which is a fake mass media reality for me and others and the way and how things are and work now

When I look at life. I look at the human body.

A lot of funky stuff goes on. But is any of it really bad? It is what we call a necessary evil.
But not really evil.

I try to live a harmlees life with minimal environmental impact. But I still want my rifle close at hand. There are predators in this world, many two-legged.

@ChazMaz
I think the romans idea of utopia was a tub of opium and a sauna lol.

@ChazMaz i’m reading your answers man for the last 30 minutes. man wtf are you talking about?

“The Venus Project presents a bold, new direction for humanity that entails nothing less than the total redesign of our culture.”

We are talking about a utopian society? Or are we talking purely about architectural design?

We are talking about everything new that the project brings

Right, and history and life tells plenty of mans actions. Past, present, and future.

I take that into account when looking at someones delusion of grandeur.

Two words: pipe dream.

@Snarp
Yup, and the pipe dream is to put a pipe in everyones back yard and tap clean inexhaustable energy, so even old people don’t have to die in a cold winter.

Also reminds me of “The Truth Machine”—and you’d have to take similar drastic measures there (e.g., killing anyone who opposes your new society) to get everyone one board.

Soylent Green is people!

What nonsense. This is a centrally planned economy all over again. These people may have lofty ideas, but they have no idea how to go about it. They don’t understand what money does. Money and markets allow us to find out what people value. Everyone gets a say, because they all get a vote on what is important (how much they spend on it).

A centrally planned economy like the Venus Project…. oh, do I need to say more about what a failure a centrally planned economy is? This is a bunch of pretty pictures and pretty rhetoric—pablum for the concerned but unknowledgable crowd. This is going nowhere. And doing it awfully fast.

@daloon the venus project will not include money. you think we need money to have a say? my god! people like you live in the same world as me. your opinions are so pathetic that i will not even debate you. i am dissapointed to see you have 22000 lurve. means many other shitheads agree with you.pray money daloon. money is good…money is everything…money money money

Notably, the last time someone tried to establish a centrally-planned economy, the first winter killed around 60 million.

@grumpyfish
Start small, and allow people to get on the happy bus when their ready.

@daloon
You having one of those days again?~
I think if you look closely at the current ‘GLOBAL’ economy, you will find it is a very centrally controlled one. What do you think the world bank and imf are for?
Pretty pictures and pretty rhetoric it may be, but at the end of the day, these people are not offering solutions on a grand scale, just proposals of a different system to the one thats currently stalling and due to fail any time.

@Sebulba
Is attitudes like that, that will ultimately cause the Venus Project to be a non starter, how do you think your gonna get sceptics on board, when all you want to do is bash then on the head with a ‘money is evil’ hammer?

you’re right Pazza. I just can’t believe what daloon says. I can’t!

@Sebulba
You betta brace yourself for a lenghtly bashing from dallon, I think you will have put a sizable bee in his bonnet!.....

oh i am leaving now going out for a beer…(Greece here nice time for a beer…) thank god i’ll read what he said to me when i’ll be on a better mood

@Pazza That doesn’t account for the people who want to kill you because you have a utopia. Ergo, you have to kill everyone who doesn’t want to be a part of your utopia, or they’ll nuke you off the planet.

Look, I’ll be honest, I’m not going to wade through all that crap because it only takes a glance to see that it is a Utopian pipe dream, so maybe I’m missing something, but it sure sounds like some form of Marxism to me. Whether you want to call that Communism, or Marxism, or a centrally planned economy, I don’t care. They aren’t particularly clear on what exactly a “resource based economy” is, but just getting rid of money changes exactly nothing. Money just takes us away from a barter system and allows a more flexible economy. If we are all just trading resources it just means that I have to work enough for a chicken this week, I can’t save up for a chicken in a month.

Now I’m all in favor of figuring out a better system than what we have now, but I expect that a better system will not be thought of as a grand plan, it will just happen. I also expect that any large change in the nature of the global economy (like doing away with money) cannot happen without a major catastrophe. Until the entire system completely collapses, there is no way to create the momentum to replace it wholesale.

And you said wtf.

@Snarp venus project doesn’t include working at all
advanced technological systems will provide us automated resourses production

@Sebulba Clearly you don’t know what money is. I’ve written about this over and over, so I won’t flesh it out here, but the idea is that money is a metaphor for value.

I will absolutely agree with you that people who just run after money as if it was valuable in itself are pathetic. They are missing the point just as you are, only in the opposite direction.

We have to be able to have a conversation about what is important if we are to include everyone in making decisions about where the human race should go. I don’t know how you plan to have that conversation without a metaphor for value that is easily traded. If you got rid of money, you’d only reinvent it.

How else do you plan for 6 billion people to discuss with each other and come to mutual agreement on what is important? An electoral system? Please! Do you feel like you have a say when your Rep speaks for you?

Nope. Money is just a metaphor, and you have no clue about what you’re talking about. Of course, when I was 20, I was saying the same thing. I was and am totally committed to making the world a better place. It’s just that I know more now about how things work.

And @Pazza You are equally as uninformed (or deluded) as @Sebulba. If you think the world bank and the imf have any significant power, I’ve got a bridge to Brooklyn I can sell you cheap. That notion is so silly, it’s not even worth the few words I’ve written here. But then, you like to run around spouting off all kinds of nonsense without having done an ounce of credible research. (Conspiracy theory websites don’t count as credible—nor are they well documented).

I should ask a question about money. People have so many cliche but wrong ideas about it.

@Sebulba If no one works, who fixes the machines?

grumpyfish this can be done once a year! this is not considered working! and something else. people will be free to learn and do whatever they want. there will be people that want to be engineers. There won’t be any bankers for example. But engineers many and the greatest!
@daloon i’ll answer to you tomorrow

@Sebulba How is fixing a machine not considered working?

it is not considered working cause they’ll get no money from it nor pressure to do anything. they’ll do it cause they want to

@Sebulba Right, so the society expects that people will want to fix the machines, for fun. But what if nobody wants to? Societies are funny that way.

I would want to fix it for example. I am an engineer. I would certainly choose to be an engineer no matter the political system. and i know many others who would think like me

i am very sorry i am leaving this conversation but i have to go. bye

The notion that every job that needs doing will naturally be done by people just because they want to is absurd. Even more absurd is the notion that the people who have the expertise to do a job will want to do it all the time just for the fun of it. There will be days when not enough people with the skills happen to feel like fixing all the machines that break down. What then?

But in the end, all you have to realize is that this: “It is now possible to have everyone enjoy a very high standard of living with all of the amenities that a prosperous civilization can provide.” Is a bald faced lie.

@Sebulba Ok. But, you’ve been raised in the current society.

Just one futher comment:

You’re getting awfully close to “From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs”

Enjoy the beer of your economic slavery =)

@grumpyfish
Thats were the wonder of Geothermal comes in.

@Sebulba
What is your definition of work? I think you’ve totaly missed the point of the venus project! Using machines to free us from labour (human resource) is not freeing us from work! whos gonna wash your socks laddie?

@daloon
We are having a bad day!........
I know exactly what money is, and what gives it value me’owl’cocka.
Ps. I don’t think Michael Perenti or Greg Palast are conspiracy theorists.
But hey’ho your intitled to your oipinion, even if its as ignorant and scathing as Sebulba’s. You have a nice chill pill now, and some quiet time.

Oh and by the way, if you’d like to point out my nonsense’s feel free. You really are da’loon tonight sonny jim.

@Pazza Which part is the wonder of geothermal? The fixing of the machines?

Anyway, Geothermal cannot be the answer for the level of technology they’re talking about.

So, the earth is currently cooling from when it formed, once the magma solidifies, we end up with a geologically dead planet. That may not be the end of the world, but it’ll certainly change certain processes we’ve got going on. If you increase the rate at which the earth cools, (I) this atmospheric heating we’ve been seeing the last century will continue, (II) you’ll have unexpected side effects (or possibly, expected side effects).

I’m not sure what would happen if we stopped plate tectonics, but I sure don’t want to find out.

Geothermal is a limited resource. It provides a limited amount of energy in limited areas. Same is true of solar and wind. I would really like to see more of all three used, but it isn’t going to fundamentally alter the ability of this planet to sustain it’s population. This planet cannot support it’s current population at the standard of living of the average American. Probably not even the average European. For anything like this to have a remote chance of success would require drastically reducing the population. Good luck with that (back to @grumpyfish‘s comments regarding war and nuclear bombs).

It’s pure physics. Namely the first and second laws of thermodynamics.

Lets look at it this way.

A city that is a self contained machine that needs no maintenance.
Providing all your needs and wants.

Could it at that point allow us all to come together and live in harmony.

Or is it just human nature to one up, one another?

@ChazMaz Every sci-fi story like that I’ve read, always ends with everyone dying when the machine stopped working and nobody knew how to fix it for 10 generations, or it turning out that the “machine” was really just a bunch of slaves. =)

Not to say it won’t work, but I think human element can be shaped over generations into a Roddenberry-like-utopian society. There will always be one-up-man-ship, but if you keep that separate from classism, there’s a chance you might end up with something really cool.

@grumpyfish – I didn’t say there be no maintanance!.......
I’m not a full advocate of the venus project, I have to agree with the monetary system to a degree, tho I wouldn’t put a Queens head on it, and you wouldn’t have to pay back extortionate amounts of fictional inflatory interest.

@Snarp
Geothermal is a limited resource?...Only if your planning on being as old as God, or are you saying you can’t tap enough heat right now?

An anyway theres always the water hammer and Stanley Mayer’s water splitter, and I wouldn’t right off magnet motors just yet.

@Pazza – um, yeah, I’m saying we can’t tap enough heat now. Not tomorrow, not in my lifetime, not in your lifetime, not likely in a hundred generations.

@Snarp
So, we can’t dig deep enough to get hot enough?

@Pazza – Let me know when you’ve got a working vaguely possible technology that can supply all the energy needs, not just of everyone on the planet living at the level of the average American, but also with a significant increase in energy consuming technology, all from geothermal energy.

@Snarp
I’ll tell you what, take all the money they just spent on the LHC and spend it on developing Geothermal an lets see what we come up with.

My problem is that if there is maintenance, someone needs to be employed to do that maintenance. Maybe they’re not paid money for it, but it’s possible their rations are docked, or they’re thrown in jail, if they don’t do it. That reeks of the antithesis of the project’s thesis.

The thing about geothermal: The current leakage rate of geothermal energy from the earth is 42 TW, current world generating power is something like 20TW. The US (the target standard of living) has 5% of the worlds population, and about 5TW of power.

Assuming the entire world switches over to the US’s power consumption, and completely geothermal power use, that would be 100TW of power.

The nuclear decay driving geothermal energy produces roughly 30TW, so we’d be sapping energy out of the earth at 70TW (continuously).

The earth has 3*10^15 TW·hr of heat capacity available. Assuming that we’re only tapping 70TW above that (the other 30TW being replenished through radioactive heating), we’ve only got 4.8 billion years of heat available.

@grumpyfish
In the words of Bill Hick’s I’m ‘Not a physics major!’
4.8 billion years seems like a lot?

@grumpyfish
Wow there horsey, you said leakage, thats not tappage?

Yep—we’re tapping a few hundred GW currently.

However, I suspect that we’d see a lot of geological, ecological, and climate problems long before the earth goes cold at 4.8 by. Probably just pulling an extra 70TW out of the earth will cause all kinds of interesting local problems.