Skeptic Project

"Finally, I am getting to myself. I have been unemployed for 10 years from the software development field. I consider myself to be unemployed for several reasons. But one of them is because I have problems socially. I mean that knowing how to fit into an organization presents a greater challenge for me, than it does for most people. Knowing how to contribute, and knowing what is expected of me, are the big issues. And I do not think this goes away in a resource based economy. That is the BIG DEAL. But I also think that I would feel less out of place in a resource based economy, because my impression of that world, is that there would not be a concept of employment, so I would not feel so out of the world, like I do now."

http://www.thezeitgeistmovement.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_kunena&Itemid=99999&func=view&catid=231&id=238975

"Would porn stay or go away in a RBE? That is, “the production of videos, photos and art with explicit sexual content”. Are people exhibitionistic enough to do stuff like that without money as a goal?"

Clearly this kid has his priorities straight. He's ensuring that he has beat off material in the utopian future.

Since machines are going to do all the work, I assume there will be robot porn or like CGI porn or something. Maybe robots you can have sex with too.

The Zeitgeist movement had precursors. George Orwell way back in Fresco's youth observed that "'Socialism' and 'Communism' draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, 'Nature Cure' quack, pacifist, and feminist in England."

Replace "socialism" and "communism" with "the Zeitgeist Movement" and "the Venus Project," respectively, and you'd nearly describe the kinds of people drawn to the current retread of utopian fantasy.

@ Sky:

But Trotsky promised that under communism we'd become supermen:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1924/lit_revo/ch08.htm</p>

It is difficult to predict the extent of self-government which the man of the future may reach or the heights to which he may carry his technique. Social construction and psycho-physical self-education will become two aspects of one and the same process. All the arts – literature, drama, painting, music and architecture will lend this process beautiful form. More correctly, the shell in which the cultural construction and self-education of Communist man will be enclosed, will develop all the vital elements of contemporary art to the highest point. Man will become immeasurably stronger, wiser and subtler; his body will become more harmonized, his movements more rhythmic, his voice more musical. The forms of life will become dynamically dramatic. The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above this ridge new peaks will rise.

Is this the line for Lucy Liu bots?

All this crap about Resource Based Economies just makes me think of those old Soviet propaganda films with people all harvesting crops in unison.

@atheist,

I'm really not one of those people who thinks Communism is scary or that Castro is still relevant to geopolitics, but damn, this stuff is just so stupid. All these kids have to do is pick up a history book to see that all of this has already been tried. Hell, the Soviets actually had real engineers with real blueprints that built real technology and look where Stalin took it.

Actually, they don't even need to pick up a book. I am pretty sure there are YouTube videos about it.

@Matt,

I've tried that before they reply with things like "Communist/Marxism/Socialism/whatever is based on scarcity and not on abundance, which makes us different!" A lot of technocrats used this same thing during the cold war just as a way of avoiding the similarities all together, instead of correctly addressing them.

@advancedatheist,

I've heard that a lot, the "no money" thing, particularly from German youth who weren't alive during the reign of the GDR. Other than "it only works on paper," it's definitely one of the points I hate hearing from people. It's basically "Let me oversimplify this to hell..."

BTW, what happens to the servility jobs in retail, restaurants, bars, hotels, etc., in the Venus Project? Does everyone stay at home and cook his own meals, instead of traveling and eating out?

WHERE'S MY LEONARDO DiCAPRIO BOT, DAMN IT??!?!??!?!

Quit being such a robo-sexual.