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Jacque Fresco has died

nytimes.com

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Re: Jacque Fresco has died

#41

Post by afsina »

barrkel wrote: post #38
afsina wrote: 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 think Murphy is right in so far as in the aggregate humanity will be fantastically wealthy, but the distribution will be such that almost everybody will only subsist due to the benevolence of the wealthy.

Perhaps. However, it is also likely that technological advances will make the level of quality of life quite close whether you are wealthy or not.

Re: Jacque Fresco has died

#42

Post by EGreg »

barrkel wrote: post #32

"if property rights were respected by all, “humanity would become fantastically wealthy.”" This comment by Robert Murphy is a weird non sequitur apropos of not much in the article. If property rights are respected by all, some small fraction of humanity will indeed become fantastically wealthy, but the vast majority would be on the tail end of a very thinly tailed distribution as humans become worthless for productio…

When anarcho capitalists make the jump from the non-aggression principle (NAP) to property rights, they invariably switch from using deontological arguments to consequentialist arguments like everyone else:

"Look communism failed, capitalism produces more wealth"

"Well if everyone has everything they need, who's going to work?"

It sounds like the music industry asking who's going to record songs if copyright isn't strictly enforced.

Re: Jacque Fresco has died

#43

Post by EGreg »

Far more interesting (to me) than a specific Venus project concept art was Jacques Fresco interviews and stories about his life. I once sent them to Noam Chomsky to listen as a fellow elderly guy and child of the Depression from a different perspective.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7e9IdujGy0U

Re: Jacque Fresco has died

#44

Post by worldsayshi »

swalsh wrote: post #15

I think as a whole his vision is little too "non organic". I don't think society can be planned to the degree he wished. However disassembled there were some solid ideas, many of which are becoming realities today. He represents one of my favorite parts of the 50's and 60's. Which struck me as a time where people imagined that it was totally possible to just upend society, and rebuild it in a better way. The level of…

Yeah, the planning part seems to be the major culprit when designing "alternative economical systems". Anyone who would want to propose a serious "alternative to the capitalist system" - which is kind of what it boils down to - would have to figure out how to out-compete the planning efficiency of capitalism.

My personal favorite would be something in the way of a Wiki-like consensus engine with "many-eyeballs" checks and balances. All planning is public, all planning can be corrected by anyone. Sabotage can be avoided by there effectively being significantly more 'reviewers' than editors or through some other mean of making sabotage harder than correction.

It works for Wikipedia, why not for societal planning?

Re: Jacque Fresco has died

#45

Post by Findeton »

boona wrote: post #39

You mean someone who understands the complexities of the markets and the financial system wasn't convinced by Marxism with robots? I can't imagine why.

But it has a new flavour! Planned economy is cool again! (apparently).

Re: Jacque Fresco has died

#46

Post by btg_1987 »

bionsuba wrote: post #23
sebastianconcpt wrote: post #20

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.

1) Overall, yes. 2) Citation needed. 3) Correct, they react to stimuli.

I agree with you on the blank slate theory and that Fresco was not up to date on this. Genetics has an impact on skull formation, brain tissue, etc.

Re: Jacque Fresco has died

#47

Post by xkarga00 »

JackFr wrote: post #19
xenu101 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are interested, they're just not interested in working towards it or giving up things for it. Fresco paints a gloomy picture of the now and the future, but the facts are that "on average", humans are living better lives than they ever have. This progress has not yet stopped. Hence, Fresco predicts we need to wait for the next "bust".

It's not just "on average", people are materially better off today than at any other period in history, at all levels . The poorest people today are better off than the poorest people at any previous era.

That's the problem, we are only _materially_ better. It is sad we still cannot figure that out.

Re: Jacque Fresco has died

#48

Post by rukittenme »

worldsayshi wrote: post #37
igor_filippov wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't make money, entrepreneurship is not for you.

If you can't make money you can't build a better world?

Yes. Please rate the better world: World A (has food) or World B (does not have food).

Money isn't magic. Its an abstraction. Remove it and possessions become currency.

So if your better world does not make "money" (read: food, water, shelter, doctors, raw materials, etc.) then your "better" world will kill all of its inhabitants.

Re: Jacque Fresco has died

#49

Post by EGreg »

afsina wrote: post #30
xenu101 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Fresc…

Property rights certainly requires central calculation and coersion, too.

Look at all the activities undertaken in the name of copyright and patent enforcement. This is "property rights".

Look at cable companies suing cities to not give citizens fast broadband, while they maintain their cartel. This is central enforcement.

A company like Apple can be privately owned. The app store is privately owned. Facebook, Google, Amazon are all privately owned. Disneyworld is privately owned.

The only reason you don't see central enforcement on a huger scale in privately owned fiefdoms is because so far in the real world, people have collectively banded together to have democracies.

Property is a monopoly right to EXCLUDE others from use of a resource. It can range from excluding YOU from changing the color of your FB profile to exclding you from peeing in some woods.

The real relevant thing is how the thing is governed. Democratically (eg employee-run) or command and control (top-down)?

These corporations are technically owned by shareholders in a public stock market. Collective ownership is a major feature of socialism.

Alaska has one of the first basic income checks in the world as the citizens are considered all shareholders in the natural resources of the state.

This "private ownership vs The Government" is a red herring.

Governments exist in all organizations. Rights are those things the organizations recognize as worthy of defending with force, if the peasants are lucky, they codify a consistent policy and enforce them.

Re: Jacque Fresco has died

#50

Post by rbanffy »

boona wrote: post #39

You mean someone who understands the complexities of the markets and the financial system wasn't convinced by Marxism with robots? I can't imagine why.

Maybe he meant someone who is deeply indoctrinated into a set of core assumptions cannot be convinced those assumptions can be changed.
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