According to their website, “The Venus Project is a non-profit organization that recognizes the important connection between global resource mismanagement and problems such as war, climate change, poverty, and hunger. In the broader context, these are all detrimental results of the current socio-economic operating system. In response to these challenges, our organization presents solutions through the holistic application of science and technology; two areas in which recent advancements hold the potential to make far-reaching positive impacts.” They propose addressing these problems essentially by joining forces globally and changing from a monetary system to a resource-based economy.
The resource-based economy proposes we take a tally of all the resources we have on the planet and bring together the foremost scientists and engineers to mobilize our collective efforts to ensure housing, food, and travel abundance for everyone. It accomplishes that by automating the jobs humans don’t want to do. When speaking to friends, the most common objection I’ve heard is that people are motivated by money, so if you remove money from the equation, people will do drugs and masturbate all day. Their YouTube documentary, ‘The Choice Is Ours’ (seen at the bottom of this article), summarizes how the scarcity we’ve experienced throughout human history has shaped that perception.
The reason people engage in the previously mentioned escapist behavior is that most people don’t like their jobs (where they spend the majority of their life). Traditionally in Western Society and most cultures around the world, the role of men has been to provide, while women have been homemakers. But many men do not enjoy what they’re doing to provide, and many women want more out of life than (or some are simply not interested in) being homemakers. However, the last few centuries have seen humans make technological advances that could automate many of those jobs, but we’re still using systems developed for a scarce world.
We have had renewable energy and automation for a while. Now, blockchain has been introduced to the world thanks to Satoshi Nakamoto through its initial use in Bitcoin. Blockchain is a key part of the equation because it can be used to secure the sanctity of supply chains and inventory in the most transparent, efficient fashion we’ve ever had available to us. As the most reliable ledger ever created, blockchain makes corruption of the system practically impossible.
How would people spend their time if they weren’t working for money? We could create art, research history, and contribute to making the world a better place by attempting to solve the remaining problems, whether they be social or structural. I am not a proponent of dictatorships, suppression of speech, or communism, but currently, the only country with a lung cancer vaccine, despite millions of people dying from it in capitalist countries, is Cuba. The argument that humans only will work for money ignores love – a feeling/energy that will drive people to sacrifice their own lives to save one of a person they love. It also ignores social status.
In a world of scarcity, people who have resources (most commonly, money) have social status. In a world of abundance, people’s social status would come from people contributing value, whether that’s through creating art, improving the systems we have, or any of the aforementioned activities. If we make the decision, it would have to happen democratically. The change would not be able to happen overnight, but in the meantime, bitcoin provides a means for us to break our dependence on the private entities driving and profiting off the problems in the world.
