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On April 20 2012 22:40 Dekoth wrote: Extreme idealism doesn't work in the real world. /thread
Put into terms that people should be able to understand. You absolutely cannot abolish greed and laziness. These two unquestionable facts eliminate any possibility of something like this being possible. Nothing more needs to be said. Did you see the moving forward?
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On April 20 2012 23:47 AcirA wrote: @ KvltMan thanks, i'll go and check it out. @ Dekoth you didn't listen to Jacque at all. What can prove you that laziness and greed cannot be abolished ? How can you affirm that ? @Dr.Lettuce you have to understand that if the environment changes, the people's mind changes too. That means that it is hard to predict "we will be like this or like that" "people won't do anything". You can't say that because we never explored that environment. What says Zorkmid is true : there are still scientists out there today that do what they do for the thrill of exploration and gaining knowledge.
Seriously, check out those videos because they're very interesting and I think that they answer to a lot of questions. And Jacque doesn't take about an utopia or whatever "ideology". He just says that it is a much better system that what we're currently living in. Period.
I listened. Thousands of years of human civilization have proven it beyond question. People have dreamed of utopian societies since society began. Every single attempt ever made has failed miserably to greed, corruption, and laziness. Again, it sounds wonderful on paper but society has proven time and time again that utopian societies (and that is precisely what it is) do not work.
It isn't even worth discussing beyond that.
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There has never been a society (that i heard of at least) as advanced (technologically) as we are. I'm pretty sure that almost every society you are talking of are society where there is no abundance. So, just by that, TVP presents a new "society". And saying "no i won't work" to something that has never been tested is irrelevant. People didn't believe that man could someday fly.
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I usually just get ghosts for my TVP.
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It's an interresting idea.
Remove the monetary element from society and suddenly a lot of the roadblocks to techological advancement disappear. Money has a way of hindering progress rather than promoting it. It also sounds nice that we just get robots to do all the boring jobs so we can all dance around and be hippies. It's not a bad idea really. Again if you remove money as the chief motivating factor for working, by providing free food, shelter and power then i think a lot of people would have chosen very different careers. I aslo dont think that it would be terrible to free people for job slavery. I guess i just have enough faith in humanity to think that if people dont nessesarily have to be chained to a desk then they would realisticly consider careers in science or engineering instead.
In the end though its just an interresting idea... Nothing more...
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I like his ideas. After watching the brilliant Zeitgeist movies I went visiting the TVP web site. It says in the future we're all going to have an open mind, be comfortable in our sexuality and running around naked. That's such a beautiful idea. I still think people above a certain age should be required to wear some clothes though.
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Tremendous, i don't quite get your idea : what's your point ? :p
Sonic Death Monkey, I never read that part.. could you link me the page where it's written ? :D
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On April 21 2012 01:22 Tremendous wrote: Again if you remove money as the chief motivating factor for working, by providing free food, shelter and power then i think a lot of people would have chosen very different careers.
I agree, I clearly will become this new society's laughing stock for having studied economics.
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On April 21 2012 00:38 Dekoth wrote:Show nested quote +On April 20 2012 23:47 AcirA wrote: @ KvltMan thanks, i'll go and check it out. @ Dekoth you didn't listen to Jacque at all. What can prove you that laziness and greed cannot be abolished ? How can you affirm that ? @Dr.Lettuce you have to understand that if the environment changes, the people's mind changes too. That means that it is hard to predict "we will be like this or like that" "people won't do anything". You can't say that because we never explored that environment. What says Zorkmid is true : there are still scientists out there today that do what they do for the thrill of exploration and gaining knowledge.
Seriously, check out those videos because they're very interesting and I think that they answer to a lot of questions. And Jacque doesn't take about an utopia or whatever "ideology". He just says that it is a much better system that what we're currently living in. Period. I listened. Thousands of years of human civilization have proven it beyond question. People have dreamed of utopian societies since society began. Every single attempt ever made has failed miserably to greed, corruption, and laziness. Again, it sounds wonderful on paper but society has proven time and time again that utopian societies (and that is precisely what it is) do not work. It isn't even worth discussing beyond that. Humans are evolving, especially our brains are. We begin to see things clearly day in and day out. Once upon a time people have thought the only system is kingdoms because people will always fight over ultimate power. But things had to change, people still fight over power but in kinder ways.
The thing is, it may change again, you may call me dumb but i can see this happening even if i won't be seeing it in my lifetime.
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On April 21 2012 01:37 Sonic Death Monkey wrote:Show nested quote +On April 21 2012 01:22 Tremendous wrote: Again if you remove money as the chief motivating factor for working, by providing free food, shelter and power then i think a lot of people would have chosen very different careers. I agree, I clearly will become this new society's laughing stock for having studied economics.
Not just you bro... Everyone in advertizing, accouting, sales, banking etc. =)
but just think about it.. if money didnt exsist, what you be doing ?
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On April 21 2012 01:33 AcirA wrote: Tremendous, i don't quite get your idea : what's your point ? :p
Sonic Death Monkey, I never read that part.. could you link me the page where it's written ? :D
It's in their FAQ #106.
http://thevenusproject.com/en/the-venus-project/faq
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On April 21 2012 01:46 Tremendous wrote:Show nested quote +On April 21 2012 01:37 Sonic Death Monkey wrote:On April 21 2012 01:22 Tremendous wrote: Again if you remove money as the chief motivating factor for working, by providing free food, shelter and power then i think a lot of people would have chosen very different careers. I agree, I clearly will become this new society's laughing stock for having studied economics. Not just you bro... Everyone in advertizing, accouting, sales, banking etc. =) but just think about it.. if money didnt exsist, what you be doing ? I would do art instead of web designing. I would still design thought but just spend more time on music,acting and writing. Even the image of being able to find time for all these things without the worry of money feels great.
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You don't know 'cuz money exists. If money didn't exist everything'd be different, so saying "what would i be doin' ?" is kinda irrelevant imo :p There's always something you like to do : would it be reading, writing, teaching, learning, discvoering, moving, playing, talking, thinking, searching etc...
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On April 21 2012 01:46 Tremendous wrote:Show nested quote +On April 21 2012 01:37 Sonic Death Monkey wrote:On April 21 2012 01:22 Tremendous wrote: Again if you remove money as the chief motivating factor for working, by providing free food, shelter and power then i think a lot of people would have chosen very different careers. I agree, I clearly will become this new society's laughing stock for having studied economics. Not just you bro... Everyone in advertizing, accouting, sales, banking etc. =) but just think about it.. if money didnt exsist, what you be doing ?
I feel like people are too attached to money, and if money didn't exist, they would feel like they were working for nothing (which is not actually the case).
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On April 21 2012 00:51 AcirA wrote: There has never been a society (that i heard of at least) as advanced (technologically) as we are. I'm pretty sure that almost every society you are talking of are society where there is no abundance. So, just by that, TVP presents a new "society". And saying "no i won't work" to something that has never been tested is irrelevant. People didn't believe that man could someday fly.
The point you are just missing and or outright ignoring is human motivation. We have thousands of years of proof that the things I mentioned would stand in the way of something like this ever working. Technology is an irrelevant argument.
1) Some people are just pathetically lazy and will do as little as possible. If you provide free food and shelter for the they will never lift a finger. We already have overwhelming proof of that in our welfare system.
2) Some people are greedy and power hungry, elimination of money doesn't stop this.
3) The last point I didn't mention and thought was implied is that some people are just sheep. They will follow those greedy/power hungry people no matter what.
Once again, technology is a completely pointless argument. The human factor is what kills any chance of idealism like this succeeding and we have thousands of years of empiric data on human behavior. It hasn't changed and it is not going to change. Until something like this can provide a demonstrable use case that human behavior can be modified on a large scale, then it is a useless idealistic project that makes a small handful of people feel like they are doing something meaningful with their lives (they aren't).
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Thanks Sonic Death Monkey I never read that. It's interesting :D
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On April 20 2012 23:09 Dr.Lettuce wrote:Show nested quote +On April 20 2012 22:53 niteReloaded wrote: Lettuce, I don't get how you chose your criteria for dismissing people. You ask them what's wrong with the system, and if they don't answer, you label them as dumb or w/e?
Why don't you pull out the aces out of the sleeve, and ask "how are you going to solve this this and this?"
It's like I say to you, I have a car that's better than yours in areas A, B and C. And then you come in "Tell me one thing that's wrong with it?". I stay silent, and you happily conclude that your car is better ? Seems logical... Horrendous analogy. Never mind. First off problems with the current system- corruption, abuse of power blah blah blah. There is absolutely no rhetoric control to stop the prevalent world problems occurring in this new system. Who is to stop the creators and more powerful individuals behind this project becoming corrupt assholes? Humans are self-interested. I would argue it's a human ingrained trait. TvP relies on the fact that people will not compete with each other. That makes no sense at all. Coupled with the fact there is no basic monetary system, self incentives are now non-existent. Why would you work hard? Why would you go the extra mile, why innovate? Why be different if it leads to nothing. So much research and progress will slow down, not to a halt but to seriously below modern age levels. Now you could argue that people will do things for the good of other people and developing society as a whole. Admirable? Very. Realistic? Not a chance. These are the basis of the main problems with this system. I could go on and on and on, literally. -Open to corruption. Does not fix upon old model. Still controlled by much more powerful individuals. - No replacement incentive to the current monetary system. 2 underlying huge problems. There are incentives beyond monetary ones and even beyond material ones. The material incentive is just one of many. Its strength relative to the other ones is as far as I know poorly studied subject and thus saying strong statements about incentives in whichever system seems unsupported.
As for OP, the system seems to be rather naive, lacking in-depth enough explanations of how are they going to solve myriad of problems arising in their propositions. There are so many problems apparent that presenting general critique is nearly impossible as to nearly every statement , you can ask : "And what about that ?", "How exactly?", "How is this assumption supported ?".
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On April 21 2012 00:38 Dekoth wrote:Show nested quote +On April 20 2012 23:47 AcirA wrote: @ KvltMan thanks, i'll go and check it out. @ Dekoth you didn't listen to Jacque at all. What can prove you that laziness and greed cannot be abolished ? How can you affirm that ? @Dr.Lettuce you have to understand that if the environment changes, the people's mind changes too. That means that it is hard to predict "we will be like this or like that" "people won't do anything". You can't say that because we never explored that environment. What says Zorkmid is true : there are still scientists out there today that do what they do for the thrill of exploration and gaining knowledge.
Seriously, check out those videos because they're very interesting and I think that they answer to a lot of questions. And Jacque doesn't take about an utopia or whatever "ideology". He just says that it is a much better system that what we're currently living in. Period. I listened. Thousands of years of human civilization have proven it beyond question. People have dreamed of utopian societies since society began. Every single attempt ever made has failed miserably to greed, corruption, and laziness. Again, it sounds wonderful on paper but society has proven time and time again that utopian societies (and that is precisely what it is) do not work. It isn't even worth discussing beyond that. You first need to show that it is in fact utopian. You stated that without anything supporting the statement. And even though I agree with you, neither of us showed that it is in fact utopian proposition.
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On April 21 2012 01:52 Dekoth wrote:Show nested quote +On April 21 2012 00:51 AcirA wrote: There has never been a society (that i heard of at least) as advanced (technologically) as we are. I'm pretty sure that almost every society you are talking of are society where there is no abundance. So, just by that, TVP presents a new "society". And saying "no i won't work" to something that has never been tested is irrelevant. People didn't believe that man could someday fly. The point you are just missing and or outright ignoring is human motivation. We have thousands of years of proof that the things I mentioned would stand in the way of something like this ever working. Technology is an irrelevant argument. 1) Some people are just pathetically lazy and will do as little as possible. If you provide free food and shelter for the they will never lift a finger. We already have overwhelming proof of that in our welfare system. 2) Some people are greedy and power hungry, elimination of money doesn't stop this. 3) The last point I didn't mention and thought was implied is that some people are just sheep. They will follow those greedy/power hungry people no matter what. Once again, technology is a completely pointless argument. The human factor is what kills any chance of idealism like this succeeding and we have thousands of years of empiric data on human behavior. It hasn't changed and it is not going to change. Until something like this can provide a demonstrable use case that human behavior can be modified on a large scale, then it is a useless idealistic project that makes a small handful of people feel like they are doing something meaningful with their lives (they aren't). Well it can work, if noone has to work for society to function. Basically in some post-scarcity society where human work is no longer needed to provide all people with big enough amount of goods similar system can work. But we are rather far from achieving that, so in near future that system seems naive and unworkable.
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I have had the pleasure to meet Jacque a few years ago. I usually end up discussing his ideas in these types of settings until someone tires out and drops out of the conversation :D
What it boils down to is environment. He explains that he has encountered some native tribes that do not even comprehend the concept of stealing just because of the ubundance of resources, while others have never experienced forms of physical abuse of women because these tribes didnt make such a big deal out of sex. He also saw that some societies created beautiful art just to give it to strangers. It just goes to show that the way we are is not inherent in humans, it would be a big mistake to say TvP can never happen, it's just a change which will most likely not happen very soon.
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