• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

what do the Socialists think of the resource based economy

Crosis

Member
[youtube]9rAQeBx22cU[/youtube]
YouTube - Zeitgeist: The Summary

To transcend these limitations, The Venus Project proposes we work toward a worldwide, resource-based economy, in which the planetary resources are held as the common heritage of all the earth's inhabitants. The current practice of rationing resources through monetary methods is irrelevant, counter-productive, and falls far short of meeting humanity's needs.
Simply stated, a resource-based economy utilizes existing resources - rather than money - to provide an equitable method of distribution in the most humane and efficient manner. It is a system in which all goods and services are available to everyone without the use of money, credits, barter, or any other form of debt or servitude.
To better understand a resource-based economy, consider this. If all the money in the world disappeared overnight, as long as topsoil, factories, personnel and other resources were left intact, we could build anything we needed to fulfill most human needs. It is not money that people require, but rather free access to most of their needs without worrying about financial security or having to appeal to a government bureaucracy. In a resource-based economy of abundance, money will become irrelevant.
We have arrived at a time when new innovations in science and technology can easily provide abundance to all of the world's people. It is no longer necessary to perpetuate the conscious withdrawal of efficiency by planned obsolescence, perpetuated by our old and outworn profit system. If we are genuinely concerned about the environment and our fellow human beings, if we really want to end territorial disputes, war, crime, poverty and hunger, we must consciously reconsider the social processes that led us to a world where these factors are common. Like it or not, it is our social processes - political practices, belief systems, profit-based economy, our culture-driven behavioral norms - that lead to and support hunger, war, disease and environmental damage.
The aim of this new social design is to encourage an incentive system no longer directed toward the shallow and self-centered goals of wealth, property, and power. These new incentives would encourage people toward self-fulfillment and creativity, both materially and spiritually.
 

work in progress

Well-Known Member
What happens when the resources run out?
This is old, but I was thinking something similar after watching the movie.

A friend was impressed with the first Zeitgeist movie and wanted me to watch it. But I found it to be a total mishmash of one theory of Christianity's origins, 9/11 conspiracy theory, and the ponzi scheme of international banking and finance....and it didn't even explain how the three themes fit together! So Zeitgeist III had no where to go but up.

Zeitgeist III does a very good job showing us how a lot of problems we think are separate issues: global warming, overpopulation, resource depletion, income and wealth gaps, social isolation, and a whole host of other issues are all symptoms of the modern capitalist system that dominates the world.

Some of us have been asking economic and financial experts for a long time, how an economic system that depends on continuous growth can be accommodated forever on a finite planet....and we never get a straight answer!

When I turned on my radio this morning, the dweebs who do the local talk shows are asking one so called expert after another: 'when will the U.S. economy start growing again?' 'When will European and other major economies start growing?' No one gets to ask:'have we reached the ends of growth?' and they never will.

Whenever there is something resembling a debate between economists on TV, it's one of the assortment of Chicago-school disciples of Hayek and Friedman arguing with a Keynsian like Paul Krugman. Both the conservative and the liberal accept the basic framework of capitalism; the only difference between the liberal and the neoliberal is whether controls should be placed on capitalism. No one asks if the system itself has to go.

And that's the problem for socialism in the West -- the ideas and principles of socialism are never brought to the attention of the average MSM consuming public. And that may be why a lot of people who agree with the prognosis of Zeitgeist III, and are in general agreement with what this secretive "Peter Joseph" and the more open futurist - Jacques Fresco, advocate for creating a better life for the majority of humanity, and save us from destroying ourselves in the next century, are still a little agitated by their insistence that they've created something totally new with "resource-based economics." And their claims that it is not socialism any more than it is conservative or liberal.

To me, if you're talking about distributing wealth equitably for a society, you're on the socialist track whether you admit it or not, and might as well make it part of what could be a wider socialist movement, instead of having little cult-like groups led by Peter Joseph and Jacques Fresco.
 

illykitty

RF's pet cat
Zombieing an old thread, I know. The OP probably won't see this as he hasn't logged in for a long time. I don't know if anyone will be interested to read this, but it just caught my attention. I never knew anyone else brought it up.

The Zeitgeist Movement has grown a lot since then. They're reaching out to any other group that has similar values, not a closed-group. There's even festivals called Z-day every year. I haven't been to one yet.

Anyway, I'm a supporter of those ideas. As for the question "What happens when the resources run out?" well, if we don't screw up, they don't. A resource based economy is made in a way that we don't use more than we need, make sure it's sustainable (Earth regeneration rates into account), use alternatives if the resource in question is rare and/or recycle. Ideally there would be no waste, things would be built to last and in the case of electronics, upgradable and recyclable.

Anyway, if there's questions, I'll answer to the best of my ability, which isn't great, but better than nothing. Explaining isn't my forte but I know a few links, so I might be able to link or quote relevant stuff.
 

Baladas

An Págánach
I am definitely for a resource-based economy. In my opinion, it is the end-goal - the ideal economy. First though, I want to see full (ideally Libertarian) Socialism. I firmly believe in the Marxist principle "From each according to his ability; to each according to his need."
 
Top