The Venus Project

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About

"The Venus Project advocates an alternative vision for a sustainable new world civilization unlike any socio-economic system that has gone before. It calls for a straightforward redesign of a culture, in which the age-old inadequacies of war, poverty, hunger, debt, and unnecessary human suffering are viewed not only as avoidable, but totally unacceptable."[1]

The Venus Project (TVP) is an organization started by self-educated structural engineer, industrial designer, and futurist Jacque Fresco. Fresco's project aims to restructure society through worldwide utilization of a theoretical design that he calls a resource-based economy. Those ideas use a version of sustainable cities, energy efficiency, natural resource management and advanced automation with a global socio-economic system based on social cooperation and scientific methodology.[2]

The Venus Project was started around 1975 by Jacque Fresco[3] and by former portrait artist Roxanne Meadows in Venus, Florida, United States.[2]

Criticism

Many of the critics from activists of The Zeitgeist Movement who are not committed activists of The Venus Project[who?] criticise TVP's transition model as authoritarian, since it is strongly directed in a top-down approach, with Fresco at the top making ultimate decisions. TZM activists consider this is in stark contrast to the principles and values of a Resource-Based Economy, and that all decisions should either be arrived at or consensuated democratically[vague].

The RBE10K Project considers that the transition approach proposed depends on the wiling participation of power structures who are unlikely to resign their stronghold, and that living in a RBE must be voluntary and cannot be imposed on anyone without creating social conflict.

Other critics registered include:

  • Design and presentation is overly and unnecessarily futuristic, with very little emphasis in the psychology and social values of such arrangement.
  • The aesthetics of designs are too influenced by anachronic aesthetic notions of the 60s and 70s.
  • Despite TVP's plans for the transition, there is no evidence that such plans exist, and TVP keeps very secretive and protective of its ideas, which are in contrast with the open nature of a RBE
  • TVP is overly dependent on the person of Jacque Fresco, who advanced age places the whole project at risk, having not trained anyone else to take his post

References

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