Quote from: MoonIsBlue on December 10, 2017, 12:21:48 AM

Was sure I heard of this before, then I see it. ''Venus project'' unfortunately it assumes that man is not inherently greedy by its nature, that man is not selfish. It's a cool theory, but I think thats what it will always be, a theory. Also some places are just naturally more abundant than others. Take Japan they basically got nothing and have to import everything. It's like the idea of unconditional giving/sharing, works only if you assume it goes both ways. But likely someone will take advantage of another before we see peace on earth.

People naturally compare themselves to others, their productivity and welfare. This theory doesn't account for any of the psychological factors which capitalism actually does. It recognizes that we are competative and tries to leverage that to get the most out of humans. I don't necessarily agree with capitalism but I also don't necessarily agree with communism. All these theories are great on paper, capitalism, communism, resource based economy. But practically they seldom work out well because being human is more complex than economics and ideology.

The venus project has made several documentaries in which they interview psychologists and other social anthropologists and the general consensus is that humans aren't inherently anything. Our dominant trait is that we are malleable. We aren't born being racist or greedy, the world we grow up in, and the way our parents and peers treat us, shape us into creatures with some of these traits. Capitalism is at it's very core is a competitive ideology and it pits people against each other to fight for scarce resources, so in roder to survive we grow into greedy people. Add on top of that all the companies exploiting our tribal inheritance of social dominance through image and sex, and you really ingrain greed and consumerism into a society.
One of the most important points here is the scarcity point. Whilst resources truly are scarce then money as a price mechanism makes sense, there is always a loser but that' because we don't have enough. Scarcity now however is just manufactured scarcity, we easily produce enough food and goods everyone to eat and live good lives, but the huge imbalance of wealth skews the whole global economy and leave a billion people below the poverty line.
A universal basic income is the first step towards a resource based economy as it removes the wage slave element of work, and this will be necessary as automation removes even more people from, the global workforce. The block chain and cryptocurrency will have a role to play in this story.