Jacque Fresco has died
nytimes.com
Jacque Fresco has died
1–10 of 113 posts
Re: Jacque Fresco has died
#2RIP Fresco.
Re: Jacque Fresco has died
#3I remember when I watched the Zeitgeist documentaries and had my first contact with this 'resource based" society. Weeks later I had dinner with a friend who was a director in a Spanish consulting firm specialized in the banking sector. I tried to impress him with what I had seen in the documentary. In the end, it was like having an atheist trying to convince the pope about his convictions.
Re: Jacque Fresco has died
#4>>Robert Murphy, an associate scholar at the Mises Institute, which promotes the teaching of Austrian economics, wrote in 2010 that idealists like Mr. Fresco were “wrong to blame our current dysfunctional world on capitalism or money per se.” Instead, Mr. Murphy wrote, if property rights were respected by all, “humanity would become fantastically wealthy.”
I read this sort of claim by the 'serious and sober' and realize they're even more gassed up than the 'idealists.'
Re: Jacque Fresco has died
#5>>Robert Murphy, an associate scholar at the Mises Institute, which promotes the teaching of Austrian economics, wrote in 2010 that idealists like Mr. Fresco were “wrong to blame our current dysfunctional world on capitalism or money per se.” Instead, Mr. Murphy wrote, if property rights were respected by all, “humanity would become fantastically wealthy.” I read this sort of claim by the 'serious and sober' and real…
Austrian Economics is an ideology; if one is dividing the world into "serious and sober" and "idealists", Austrian-school adherents are emphatically the latter rather than the form.
Re: Jacque Fresco has died
#6I remember when I watched the Zeitgeist documentaries and had my first contact with this 'resource based" society. Weeks later I had dinner with a friend who was a director in a Spanish consulting firm specialized in the banking sector. I tried to impress him with what I had seen in the documentary. In the end, it was like having an atheist trying to convince the pope about his convictions.
I was also pretty juiced up and into the venus project for a while until I realized nobody is interested in living in such a world. Then I gave up.
Re: Jacque Fresco has died
#7While Mr. Fresco idea seems very reasonable, I think his mistake is attributing altruistic traits to everyone. Not everyone is altruistic. If there's a computer system governing everything, there will be a strong incentive to build bias into it, or use for mass surveillance or even tyranny. Then, there are aspects in which radial cities would not be good:
- Epidemiology: you have everyone in this nice dome sharing objects. But one of them has a serious infectious disease. Now the entire population is at risk.
- Defense: An adversarial force including but not limited to extremists would just target the center dome, a place accessible by everyone.
You could argue that everyone would have what they need because of this egalitarian system, and there would be no violence. But take a look at communist countries and see what happens in practice.
However, it is true though that we are very inefficient and wasteful in terms of how resources are used.
Re: Jacque Fresco has died
#8While Mr. Fresco idea seems very reasonable, I think his mistake is attributing altruistic traits to everyone. Not everyone is altruistic. If there's a computer system governing everything, there will be a strong incentive to build bias into it, or use for mass surveillance or even tyranny. Then, there are aspects in which radial cities would not be good: - Epidemiology: you have everyone in this nice dome sharing ob…
Would be worth a try though, wouldn't it? The main idea is also to reduce manual labour as fast as possible so more people can afford to be altruistic.
Re: Jacque Fresco has died
#9While Mr. Fresco idea seems very reasonable, I think his mistake is attributing altruistic traits to everyone. Not everyone is altruistic. If there's a computer system governing everything, there will be a strong incentive to build bias into it, or use for mass surveillance or even tyranny. Then, there are aspects in which radial cities would not be good: - Epidemiology: you have everyone in this nice dome sharing ob…
He didn't believe humans were altruistic by nature, he believed they could be nurtured to be in an environment that rewards it.
He was very much into behaviorism (B.F. Skinner) and similar concepts.
The question whether such an environment can be designed and sustained is still open. However, if it requires a "societal collapse" to have his ideas adopted, then I'd rather expect the outcome to be more like a totalitarian communist regime.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Re: Jacque Fresco has died
#10I remember when I watched the Zeitgeist documentaries and had my first contact with this 'resource based" society. Weeks later I had dinner with a friend who was a director in a Spanish consulting firm specialized in the banking sector. I tried to impress him with what I had seen in the documentary. In the end, it was like having an atheist trying to convince the pope about his convictions.
I was also pretty juiced up and into the venus project for a while until I realized nobody is interested in living in such a world. Then I gave up.
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".