= allocating resources as a utility, without money

URL = http://www.thevenusproject.com/resource_eco.htm

Description

1. Excerpt copied (and edited) from the Venus Project site:

"A Resource-Based Economy is a system in which all goods and services are available without the use of any system of debt or servitude like money, credits or barter. All resources become the common heritage of all people[1], not just a select few. The premise upon which this system is based is that the Earth is abundant with plentiful resource; our practice of rationing resources[2] through monetary methods[3] is irrelevant and counter productive to our survival.

Money is only important in a society when certain resources for survival must be rationed and the people accept money as an exchange medium for the scarce resources[4]. Money[5] is a social convention, an agreement if you will. It is neither a natural resource nor does it represent one. It is not necessary for survival unless we have been conditioned to accept it as such." (http://www.thevenusproject.com/resource_eco.htm)

2.

"when futurists refer to ‘resource based economics’ today, in a post-industrial context, they’re usually talking about systems where global resources are managed rather like municipal utilities and as a result currencies become redundant. No one ‘owns’ water. Communities create facilities for its collection and distribution as a public utility. Imagine that all resources and many commodities were treated this same way and you have part of the picture of what a resource based economy means. Such systems are anticipated to evolve from global digital networked market systems that become ‘commoditized’ by the trends in decentralization of production. In other words, because production is local, markets stop trading in finished products and labor and start dealing in a broad spectrum of commodities in increasingly fractionalized unit volumes evolving toward just the Periodic Table plus energy. Soon they become so efficient -as commodities markets tend to if left to their own devices- that they come to ‘know’ in an algorithmic sense the full extent of world resources and demand and their respective cycles and ‘bandwidth’, eliminate currency as a metric of market values by allowing resource values to be indexed relative to each other, and eliminate profit and speculation by compelling capitulation (the tendency of participants in a market to conform collectively to its trends) and driving the market toward equilibrium. At this point the system stops being a market for resources and commodities and becomes an Internet (an open-Internet) for them instead, compelling the relinquishing of individual control of resources and the management of their exploitation to the system itself as a world utility driven by demand. The result is a money-less society where all resources are free, within reason, and distributed automatically in response to demand. This is what futurist Jacque Fresco has dubbed Cybernation; world resources managed as a global societal commons by a demand-driven computer-based world utility." (http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/eric-hunting-on-post-industrial-resource-based-economic-systems-with-social-credit/2008/10/22)

Interview

Interview of Stephanie Smith, founder of the We Commune software project, by Allison Arieff of Shareable magazine [6]:

Interview:

“AA: Explain the idea of the Third Economy.

SS: The Third Economy is a group-based resource-sharing economy. I coined the term in order to give shape to the informal exchanges that are beginning to happen as a result of the failures of the first (cash) and second (credit) economies. Economies are constructs (Visa created/implemented the credit economy with the help of Madison Avenue ‘Mad Men’ about 50 years ago).

I think it’s time to work together to build a new one; one with a different set of underlying values that are more in tune with our times, and one that is built from the bottom up by people who have intimate knowledge of, and experience with, the needs and desires of their local communities.

Allison Arieff: I think it’s so important to develop online strategies that extend to offline. Tell us about the tools you’re creating, and how they might start to take shape on the street.

Stephanie Smith: The first tools we’ll launch over the next six months or so include a Facebook app that helps users post and manage a “share,” barter or group barter (i.e., a dog walking club or childcare co-op), and a digital bulletin board tool that people working in cafes and co-working environments can use to post real-time resource-sharing opportunities.

A third tool we’re working on is a surplus re-allocation tool designed for urban districts that allows anyone to create a free shelf, box, table, or room, and add it to a map so that others can find and use it; they can take something, leave something, or both.

AA: There’s a lot of this share/trade/barter stuff happening now, especially in more progressive cities like Portland and San Francisco. Is there hope for this sort of momentum elsewhere?

SS: I’m always excited when progressive people in urban centers pioneer new approaches. We’re watching, participating and learning from many of these pioneers, especially on the west coast. What’s interesting about the Third Economy, however, is that it’s happening informally across America, in cities, suburbs and rural areas, as people confront our new economic reality. For instance, the numerous childcare co-ops and wholesale buying clubs that are started by average folks every day to get some of their economic needs met in a group format.

The best way to build on this momentum, both among pioneers in progressive urban centers, and by average people across America, is to make these informal resource-sharing behaviors one notch more formal. Give them a name – Third Economy, and let people know that when they share resources as a group in order to save money and build deeper community, they’re actually participating in a structured, economic system that has value and meaning.” (http://shareable.net/blog/the-third-economy-allison-arieff-talks-with-stephanie-smith)

Discussion

The RBE definition by the Venus Project and Zeitgeist Movement is politically naive and dangerous

By Robin of sharewiki:

"In a Resource-Based Economy, people do not make decisions; they arrive at them through the use of advanced technological tools that incorporate The Scientific Method. There is no ‘Republican’ or ‘Liberal’ way to design an airplane… so why do we use these outdated worldviews in society today? When we recognize that society is a technological invention, with its component variables really no different than the component variables of an airplane, we then see that our orientation towards so called “government” should be purely scientific. ‘Politics’ is now outdated, for its processes are largely subjective and without scientific reference. Politics is an outgrowth of the monetary system and scarcity. We now must work towards a new, emerging paradigm – moving from a period where the central problem was the sharing of scarcity, to the problem now being one of creating and distributing abundance." (http://www.thezeitgeistmovement.com/The%2520Zeitgeist%2520Movement.pdf page 58 )

Robin replies on what this really means:

1. All Hail to "The Scientific Method." Science is objective! There are no values! Everything our machines say is Truth. Who are you to disagree? You can't disagree with the Truth! 2. Society is NOT a technical construction as what they argue, but instead a social construction. Basic science. 3. Politics is about who gets what when and how. It is about the distribution of power. States are the monopolization of power. These are two different things. Venus wants the state by abolishing politics.

More Information

See how it is related to Social Credit Systems

Key resources

Description of resource based economy at the Venus Project site: http://www.thevenusproject.com/a-new-social-design/resource-based-economy
The Venus Project
RBE Foundation
The Zeitgeist Movement

References

Resource-Based Economy

Contents