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Jacque Fresco has died

nytimes.com

21–30 of 113 posts

Re: Jacque Fresco has died

#21
Marginal unit cost of production moving closer to zero, the sharing economy, AI replacing human labor, descentralized crypto-currencies, universal minimun income, autonomous transportation, clean energy, space travel.

Fresco was right on the mark.

RIP wise man.

Re: Jacque Fresco has died

#22
I remember speaking with Jacque in Miami at one of his lectures. He was a very honest and sincere man (but not to the point of trying to demean you to get his point across).

He will be missed.

Roxanne Meadows penned a lovely open letter concerning this: https://www.thevenusproject.com/

Their vision and ideology is an interesting one, but may take a few hundred years before viable for implementation. Too many growing pains still involved in earth culture.

Re: Jacque Fresco has died

#23

RIP Fresco. I really like him and his work. But I never understood why he was convinced about the Resource Based Economy. Shouldn't a RBE have the exact same problems as any Central Planned economy? Wasn't this refuted in 1920 by Mises? https://mises.org/sites/default/files/Economic%20Calculation...

I've had the misfortune of listening to Fresco on a podcast, and he came right out and stated that

1. Humans don't have a capacity for reason

2. If reason existed it couldn't lead to any truth

3. That people only find scientific discoveries via chance

So I wouldn't expect him to be dissuaded by a rational argument.

He also believes in the blank slate theory, so not exactly up to date in the science world.

Re: Jacque Fresco has died

#24
I've met his followers in Berlin once, "naive" - the best word I can find to describe them. In the end, they struggled to answer the core question: "Why would anyone take seriously a man, who can't prove his idea in a lean way?". Please, build a city where everyone is happy and everything is handled by the machines, show the rest of the world you're right! Reminds me of wantrepreneurs who can't scrape together 10k to build an MVP for their startup idea. If you can't find money to build a prototype, then no sane investor should trust you.

Re: Jacque Fresco has died

#25
He always reminded me of fellow utopian Paolo Soleri (who died in 2013) -- even though their ideas were impractical (at least in the short term), we really need dreamers like them to make people question whether current society is really as good as we can hope for.

Re: Jacque Fresco has died

#26

I've met his followers in Berlin once, "naive" - the best word I can find to describe them. In the end, they struggled to answer the core question: "Why would anyone take seriously a man, who can't prove his idea in a lean way?". Please, build a city where everyone is happy and everything is handled by the machines, show the rest of the world you're right! Reminds me of wantrepreneurs who can't scrape together 10k to…

> If you can't find money to build a prototype, then no sane investor should trust you.

Sounds like a circular argument to me? I would agree with the notion that the ideas seem naïve. But how could grandiose ideas not be that?

Re: Jacque Fresco has died

#27
This is a true loss for the world. Although his revolutionary ideas were IMHO by times a little over the edge, he envisioned and fought for a world without poverty and war, where earth's resources are not being depleted by hunger for money and power; A resource based economy.

Thank you Jaques Fresco for opening my eyes to this and RIP.

Re: Jacque Fresco has died

#28

I've met his followers in Berlin once, "naive" - the best word I can find to describe them. In the end, they struggled to answer the core question: "Why would anyone take seriously a man, who can't prove his idea in a lean way?". Please, build a city where everyone is happy and everything is handled by the machines, show the rest of the world you're right! Reminds me of wantrepreneurs who can't scrape together 10k to…

> If you can't find money to build a prototype, then no sane investor should trust you. Sounds like a circular argument to me? I would agree with the notion that the ideas seem naïve. But how could grandiose ideas not be that?

No, just put aside some money before quitting your day job and you're fine. Again, if you can't manage to fund development of your MVP, then maybe entrepreneurship isn't for you. I guess the same applies to the "Venus Project".

Re: Jacque Fresco has died

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you can't find money to build a prototype, then no sane investor should trust you. Sounds like a circular argument to me? I would agree with the notion that the ideas seem naïve. But how could grandiose ideas not be that?

No, just put aside some money before quitting your day job and you're fine. Again, if you can't manage to fund development of your MVP, then maybe entrepreneurship isn't for you. I guess the same applies to the "Venus Project".

In other words, if you're not rich entrepreneurship is not for you.

edit: Sure I realize that you can start with something smaller and fund able by smaller means. But how long until you can fund what you really want to create?

Re: Jacque Fresco has died

#30
post #16
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is the relevant piece: https://mises.org/library/venus-needs-some-austrians I think Murphy is quite right.

I quote: "What I am arguing, then, is that in a truly free world, where we all respected each other's property, the rise in living standards would be analogous to our hypothetical boy who moves from the streets of Calcutta to the suburbs of Maine. In that fantastic world, giving someone a "free" heart surgery might be as cheap as giving someone a piece of gum in our current society." His whole article is a huge non-s…

He (and Fresco) is of course talking hypothetically but as he continues:

"If such a world really is technologically possible, we should cut the socialist dreamers some slack. Their fault lies not with their vision, but with their plans for achieving it."

From what I understand Murphy claim that if such a dream is technologically possible their's is not the correct way. I guess main point is that sooner or later Fresco's idea will require coercion and enter the pitfalls of central calculation issues, where as property rights approach does not.

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