The Venus Project-Scarcity, Justice, Transition, Resource Based Economy

Let's say it rained gold for one day. People would empty all their drawers, fill it with gold, the attic and everything but if it kept raining gold for months, they'd sweep it up, throw their rings away. Scarcity. They save the gold because it has a value now but it only has a value as long as it's scarce. But if we find a whole mountain of gold, it would lose its value. Scarcity is one of the main operating characteristics that produces on a large extent '*** for gold'. Wherever you've got the history of the diamond, you've got all kinds of horrors behind it. In the future people will be ashamed to wear things like that. Roxanne's father was a jeweler, always trying to give her things to wear. She doesn't want any of that *** but there are people who feel that this diamond is worth $100,000. They would never achieve peace because there's always somebody that's got a bigger diamond than they have. If you put up the largest building in the world then another guy will beat your building by 200 feet. And you say "God damn it! I'm going to put up another building." This sickness that we have, there's no end to it. The richest man in the world... I would be ashamed if I were the richest man in the world because I know that the public made me the richest man in the world. I'd want to build schools and hospitals with the money. I would see no other use for it but to give back to society what I've taken. - We feel that within a monetary system the system cannot be just or equitable. There'll always be haves and have-nots. A Resource-Based Economy would eliminate that. The problems that we have today will continue to go on. There'll always be busts and booms, markets going up and down and people manipulating for their own advantage and this will never go away within a monetary system because there'll always be people with advantage. Within a Resource-Based Economy, what we want to do is to eliminate the causes of the problems, eliminate the processes that produce greed, bigotry, prejudice people taking advantage of one another, elitism and really eliminating the need for prisons and welfare. When you make things available to people you don't have the problems that you have today. We've always had these problems because we've always lived within scarcity barter and monetary systems that produce scarcity. We're talking about a Resource-Based Economy which makes things available to everyone. - I look at this system differently. I see a tough job ahead; it's not easy. I see a lot of assassination and a lot of imprisonment and cops beating people that are good. And the cops not knowing any better. Because they've joined the police force they believe they're holding law and order. In their heads they're doing the right thing. Whenever you're in trouble you call a policeman. All of these built-in systems are going to have to be surpassed. - The only thing I can see that's really negative of this system that we talk about a Resource-Based Economy, is getting from here to there. We have a lot of things we have to do to take care of the detrimental things that we did in this society. We have to clean up the environment, the oceans, the air and clean up the detrimental values that people have from this society of greed and embezzlement and 'me for myself,' not caring about anyone else. The hardest thing will be... That's what the problems will be for sociologists and people who care about other people: to change values and to start afresh from children to care for others and take care of the Earth. That's what our education will be like. - There's no way of you, in a given culture, saying "I'm not going to remain a gypsy; that's ridiculous to wear these earrings and headbands." If you walk over to Seminole Indians and you say, dancing around the fire "LALALALA," to Iroquois or any other Indians. That's ridiculous! The Indians say "That's a hell of a good point, LALALA. " That doesn't mean anything. You can't do that. It's no more possible to take a group of cannibals, headhunters and say "What you're doing is ridiculous ," and the chief saying "You know, that's a great in-depth concept." He doesn't have that associative system. People think "If I, as a Christian, I just can get there and tell them about the sacrifice of Christ..." You can take Polynesians that have food and all of that, and they're eating they'll go do anything and listen to anything and you can condition them to worship Jesus or anybody, or Allah but you go to a scarcity country where people are not eating and try to give them Christ without food... The church, if it doesn't provide food, has no attendance so the early churches provided dinners and food for starving people so that some of them went to church. You've got to have gimmicks. It's a fishhook! Bait, and that's what commercials are. Fine print is an attempt at deception. I know of no other way except presenting information, real [information] and if our system is not sophisticated enough or you don't have enough time left before we come to the point of no return... We've damaged the oceans and the environment to such an extent that we don't have the means and the organizations to do away with that. And that means a miserable death for most people the end of our civilization. That's why Roxanne and I... We have no power. People say "When are you and Roxanne going to build this new world? I get calls "I'd come with my suitcases, be happy to live in it!" We don't need that. We need your participation and support to make it happen. You have an avenue which may work. There's nothing else out there.