I think he has some really interesting designs I would love to see implemented. But some of his social ideas are a bit far reaching and don't seem to take into account human nature.
We have to look at society and understand how we use resources today, and how we determine how those resources are used.
We determine how resources are used by buying products made with those resources. When a product doesn't sell, then generally it is either improved or taken off the market. This is evidence that most people do not prefer a particular product. In some cases, it my also be evidence that a product is too costly to produce.
The Venus product has no way of measuring how resources should be distributed. It assumes that as soon as someone needs something, someone will make it. However, there's no way of determining how much of a product we should have. Expensive products that use rare resources wouldn't have a price to stop it's production, so we could easily watch rarer materials being used in products that don't necessarily require the rarer materials.
For example, imagine if an expensive metal was used for disposable razors. Those razors would be a waste of a valuable resource. In a market where materials have a price that reflects value, a razor made with expensive resources wouldn't sell because they would be too costly to produce, and therefore too costly for people to buy.
Without a pricing mechanism, the Venus Project can not possibly work.
Here's a video where Stephan Molyneux debates about the Venus Project. It's nearly 2 hours long, but anyone serious about getting into the nitty gritty of the Venus Project should give as much of the video a listen as possible.
That was very interesting. I might have to go and rewatch a few parts. One thing that kept sticking in my head watching it it both sides seemed to be far to dismissive of human wants and desires and how that can be manipulated. They just seemed to sweep that under the carpet with "oh well we will just change human wants" or "we will teach people to not be pursued that way" and I don't think that is an issue so easily handled. I think that is a major flaw in both sides of that debate.
Without a pricing mechanism, the Venus Project can not possibly work.
I agree, but I think that we could potentially create a hybrid of both systems. Products that met needs such as food, water, shelter, etc. could be cashless. While products that serve wants could cost money. There could be some layers of this as well, i.e. computers are free but better models cost money. Just a thought.
I'll watch both videos at some point in time but I haven't yet.
