The Venus Project

The Venus Project, Inc is an organization that promotes Jacque Fresco's visions of the future with the goal to improve society by moving towards what they call resource-based economy and the design of sustainable cities, energy efficiency, natural resource management and advanced automation, focusing on the benefits they claim it will bring to society. The organization was started by Jacque Fresco, Roxanne Meadows and Sam Laurie in 1995. It currently works alongside The Zeitgeist Movement, which functions as an activist network, allowing members to communicate and work on projects within the movement. Future by Design, a film about the life and work of Jacque Fresco, was produced in 2006. The name of the organization originates from Venus, Florida, where its 21-acre (8.5-hectare) research center is located, near Lake Okeechobee. Within the center are ten buildings, designed by Fresco, which showcase the architecture of the project.

Theory

File:Fresco circular city.jpg

Circular city

According to Fresco, poverty, crime, corruption and war are the result of scarcity created by the present world's profit-based economic system. He theorizes that the profit motive also stifles the progress of socially beneficial technology. Fresco claims that the progression of technology, if it were carried on independently of its profitability, would make more resources available to more people by producing an abundance of products and materials. This new-found abundance of resources would, according to Fresco, reduce the human tendency toward individualism, corruption, and greed, and instead rely on people helping each other. Fresco believes it is now possible to achieve a society in which people would live "longer, healthier, and more meaningful lives." Fresco believes the monetary system and the processes associated with it, such as labour and competition, damages society and holds people back from their true potentials. He states his ideas would maximally benefit the greatest number of people. He claims some of his ideas stem from his formative years during the Great Depression. Fresco believes the current global economic situation, being similar to —though not as severe as— the Great Depression, will lead people away from free-market economics and capitalism and make them lose confidence in the monetary establishment.

Fundamental to the project is the elimination of the current money-based economy in favor of what Fresco calls a "resource-based economy".

Trademark issues

On 17 September 2009 The Venus Project filed a Trademark claim on the term "Resource Based Economics" also known as RBE with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. On 6 January 2010 this was disputed by The Promethean Workers Association and was filed with the P.T.O. On 11-Jan-2010 the P.W.A. dispute was recognised as an official and valid dispute claim, so the term Resource Based Economics was deemed an illegitimate patent for T.V.P. to hold and therefore denied . The Venus Project were left with 6 months to carry out a further dispute of this matter to prove they had valid claim and argument to hold it, but this did not occur.

See also

• Technocracy Movement
• Cultural Creatives
• Telesis
• Project Cybersyn

External links

• The Venus Project – Official website
• Future By Design – film about Jacque Fresco with virtual images of The Venus Project visions
• Zeitgeist Movement Lecture – Peter Joseph's July 25, 2009 lecture in London, UK
• Atlas City Project - Non-Profit Group building a transitional RBE called 'Atlas City' in the USA