Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • - We live in a world of perpetual warfare and crime and corruption.

  • Protest after protest, that continue to go perpetually. It seems that we need a different approach

  • How does The Venus Project approach this?

  • - If you really wish to bring an end to war, poverty, hunger, and most crimes,

  • what we have to do, eventually through education,

  • is declare all of the earth's resources as the common heritage of all the world's people.

  • I see that as the only means. So, this is what we have to strive toward.

  • I don't say this can be accomplished in one swoop. It's a slow process of education.

  • - Why do you propose such a radical change?

  • - Well, I would like to see an end to war, poverty, unnecessary human suffering,

  • and I can't see it within a monetary-based system

  • I see a constant repeat of the same series of events: war, poverty, recession

  • - Is monetary economics at the root of the problem and can it be fixed?If it can't be fixed, why not?

  • - Frankly, within this system, in order to survive, you have to submit to the methods of this system.

  • A lawyer is not out there to help you always. There is money in it for the law firm.

  • In other words, the motivation is not what you would call based on human concern.

  • It's based on the bottom line.

  • The motivation in most industries, the bottom line is profit, not the betterment of humanity;

  • and they would feel that that is a by-product of this system. I don't believe that.

  • It's that the rules of the game were invented so many years ago,

  • they no longer fit the economic circumstances of the times.

  • What we would like to do is update our system, so that it fits the new technology.

  • - Would the election of people with higher moral content solve the problem?

  • No, because even if we succeeded in electing people of unquestionable moral character,

  • if we ran out of resources, there would be lying, cheating, stealing, and artificialities.

  • It isn't moral character that we need. It is the intelligent management of the earth's resources.

  • The real future depends on our ability to solve scarcity problems,

  • overcome those problems through our own creative ingenuity.

  • - What is a resource-based economy, and how does that compare with a monetary-based economy?

  • - In a monetary based economy, we use money as a medium of exchange.

  • Now, money doesn't represent our capacity to produce.

  • It just represents a method designed hundreds of years ago and established within the system.

  • In the monetary-based system, it's wealth, property and power, and that is the main directive.

  • Now, today we say "How much will it cost?" That is not really the question.

  • The real question is "Do we have the resources to build that kind of project?"

  • Yes, we do. "Do we have the money? " No, we don't.

  • but we have more than enough resources available to build anything we want to build.

  • If you have difficulty with that, consider this:

  • Suppose all the money in the world disappeared tomorrow morning.

  • As long as there are farms, water, building materials, we can build anything we want to build.

  • It isn't money that people need; it's access to resources.

  • In other words, it was necessary, a hundred years ago, to use a monetary system for the distribution of products.

  • Today, we have the technology to make those things available. What are we chiseling off each other for?

  • A resource-based economic system does not use money, barter, trade, or any of the older systems that were prevalent.

  • It's based on designing a culture that fits in with the carrying capacity of the world's resources.

  • Anything else other than that will not work.

  • It's like sending people to the moon without water, without food, operating on the assumption that the moon will provide.

  • It has to be based... All science and technology must be based upon resources.

  • Without resources, whatever planning you do, if you don't have the resources, is invalidated.

  • So, the resources must coincide with the industrial potential.

  • - How does that offer a different approach to our society?

  • - It would change the basic outlook of people.

  • There will be no such thing as unemployment, no such thing as war, no police, no prisons, no banks, no money;

  • but people would have access to new housing, education, health care,

  • and all of the things we don't have access to today without putting out a great deal of money.

  • - If I read you correctly, no money, no credit, no borrowing, no debt, no bartering?

  • Where is the incentive?

  • - No war, no territorial disputes, crime reduction by about 90%,

  • the end of fear of economic deprivation or losing your home

  • or illnesses which you can not afford economically to take care of.

  • All that comes to an end. If that isn't a good enough incentive, I don't know what is.

  • A lot of people are brought up to believe that money is the driving force that generates incentive.

  • It also generates incentive for corruption, embezzlement,

  • taking care of your brother-in-law, unfair practices, racial discrimination.

  • I'm saying that, yes, money does produce incentive, but it also produces all the other factors, which are generally left out.

  • I would say the people we remember in history are not the people who made a buck or made a lots of money.

  • They are people that have given their lives to benefit the lives of other people without financial gain.

  • I'm saying, the real people that we admire are the people who did public works,

  • not because of the monetary incentive. I'm afraid of people that do things for money. I don't feel secure about it.

  • - What about 'human nature'?

  • I think that environment shapes values and behavior.

  • Genetics, to a certain extent, set the propensity, but they do not give us a value system.

  • Genetics is not responsible for greed, bigotry, racism, prejudice. All that is learned.

  • If you don't alter the condition that generates that, I don't see a solution.

  • What The Venus Project advocates is the redesign of our culture, so that those conditions no longer exist.

  • - What about scarcity? Can that be eliminated?

  • Do we have enough resources to satisfy the growing population in the world?

  • Yes, today we have more than enough, and it is incontestably proven that we have more than enough.

  • It's just that the ways we manage our resources are wasteful.

  • We change the design of automobiles every year, so people will buy new cars.

  • We change the spring fashion, the fall fashion, the winter fashion, so you will buy things and constantly be involved in purchasing things.

  • So, we will engineer, innovate, and make newer things designed not to wear out and break down

  • - What does The Venus Project represent?

  • One world working in one direction,

  • the intelligent management of resources, and upgrading the standard of living for all the world's people

  • with profits to none and service to everyone.

  • - So how do you envision a transition into this type of system?

  • If you keep bringing in machines and replacing human beings,

  • the majority of people throughout the world will not have the purchasing power to buy goods or services.

  • This will bring an end to the old monetary system.

  • I would see economic collapse as the only system that would bring people around to say:

  • "Gee, I see that the people I've elected into political office are not competent enough to get us out of this problem,"

  • and they will be looking for other possible alternatives.

  • The more people know about it, the more likely that it may be installed.

  • The Venus Project does not say "This is what the future will be." All it says is "This is what the future can be.

  • And that is what The Venus Project has to offer:

  • the methodology of how to achieve a higher standard of living for all the world's people

  • without the creation of the uniformity or standardization, or subservience to an elite form that manages government.

  • - What problems stand in the way of us implementing of this type of transition?

  • - Traditions, habits, indoctrination, propaganda.

  • We are all propagandized to accept our system as the best system.

  • We are all given stories about the culture, our cultural history, and which has left out the detrimental aspects.

  • All societies tend to support the dominant values of that society.

  • There is no such thing as an 'objective society'.

  • If there were, you couldn't have German scientists,

  • American scientists, British scientists, Dutch scientists, French scientists working in serving their government.

  • Real science has no allegiance to government. It only has allegiance to methodology.

  • So, this is not a loyalty to the Fresco system, or loyalty to The Venus Project. I'd be against that.

  • You have loyalty to the Earth and all the people that live on it.

  • - Who decides what the future will be?

  • - I don't think anyone ought to decide what the future will be,

  • but we ought to decide where we wish to go and what kind of world we wish to live in,

  • and do we have the facilities and resources to build such a world?

  • he answer to that is "Yes, we do have the ability and resources to build such a world."

  • There is no way for you to make it on your own. Either we think globally or we perish individually.

  • We Welcome your criticism of The Venus Project

  • We welcome the participation of everybody and the contributions.

  • We have no idea of what the ideal society would be, nor do we entertain such views as Utopia.

  • We feel that all systems will constantly change to whatever conditions are necessary to fit the needs of the times.

  • We have no fixed blueprints, so we invite participation, and we invite recommended changes

  • because the history of civilization is the story of change.

  • Subtitles by the Amara.org community

- We live in a world of perpetual warfare and crime and corruption.

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it