Where should we begin? It may be suitable to start from an error that had the biggest influence on the popular collectivistic movements including Marxism until today, which was shared by almost all ancient and modern collectivists as well as most supporters of The Venus Project, but was not mentioned in the body. It is the theory of exploitation; an argument that laborers are being deprived of values they produce by entrepreneurs or capitalists and living under quality of life far less than quality of life they could have enjoyed without such exploitation. Marx even argued that in a developed capitalistic system, laborers will only receive survival wage to just maintain their livelihood - often referred to as labor reproduction cost by Marxists - as reward.
Of course, the theory of exploitation is not treated as important by Fresco. His major point is that the currency economy is wasteful, not that it exploits laborers. Nevertheless, Fresco seems to be not free from the influence of this famous error created by Marx. This is because he definitely says the following in his book, The Best That Money Can't Buy: "During the thousands of years of monetary system, most workers have been paid just enough to make it necessary that they return to work, even when higher wages have been possible. How else can the wage-payer keep the workers coming back? If the employees received wages that allowed them to work a few weeks and then take time off for a world cruise, an extended vacation, or some other luxuries, production schedules would suffer."
This argument surely is ridiculous. Assume that a laborer who can product a value of 15 is receiving a wage of 11. Other corporations will try to scout this laborer, perhaps by offering him a wage of 13. [1] It is not a surprise that all serious economists who discussed this topic came to a single conclusion. Wage is equivalent to marginal production of labor.
However, it may be unnecessary to make use of economics to refute the argument by Fresco and Marx because their argument is simply beyond all reasons. Let us consider the case of so-called minimal nation in which the nation hardly spends any resources. All final products produced by laborers must be sold to someone. If they are not purchased by the very laborers who take up the majority of population, who can purchase them? (In fact, the amount consumed by entrepreneurs is negligibly small.) Clearly, total amount of currency wage received by all laborers must be sufficient to buy almost all final products produced by all laborers. If not, competition between entrepreneurs to get rid of inventory will drop the price until all consumer goods are sold.
It is a fact that entrepreneurs are gaining enormous profit. However, they do not spend such profit in purchasing consumer goods. It is invested into the capital goods industry to help entrepreneurs produce more consumer goods in the future. This is exactly the most helpful thing for laborers, who are said to be exploited by entrepreneurs. This will produce greater quantity of consumer goods in the future, which will mostly be returned back to laborers. Entrepreneurs behave in this way because they anticipate follow-up profit. But at the same time, an entrepreneur acts like this in order to keep up with his competitors. You really can't survive long without doing so under free market system.
Capitalism is a system that serves for the general public more than any other systems in the history. As expressed by classical economists, this point becomes extremely clear when we look at the situation from real perspective by removing the curtain of currency. Is there a reason we cannot reversely apply the logic of Fresco? If an alien that does not know what currency is sees earth today, he will soon realize that almost all resources and labors in the society are being used to make goods to be spent by the general public or to make production goods necessary for making goods to be spent by the general public. He will find out that managers - entrepreneurs - in charge of managing production of each industry are placing utmost efforts to satisfy the general public, and for some reason, that those who fail to satisfy the taste of the public suffer pain and are sometimes driven out. On the contrary, managers successful in satisfying the taste of the public will enjoy great honor. He would not understand why many people claim to be experiencing a so-called exploitation.
At last, like the modern Marxists, Fresco concludes that laborers today are living with greater quality of life compared to the past because "survival wage" has increased, for one reason or another: "Even the highly educated and affluent who live in expensive homes and drive expensive cars have to appear at a place of work if they wish to maintain their standard of living. All of us, even top executives, are slaves of the monetary system. Most of us lack a meaningful existence." However, it would be a waste of time to get into further details on the gibberish of Fresco about this topic. (Readers who wish to learn about the actual changes that would occur in the market economy when productivity of labor is increased by technological development should look at 10-10~12.)
The reason I mentioned about the theory of exploitation first here is to turn our attention to how some arguments commonly accepted by the so-called critical people can be helplessly wrong. This is not limited to the theory of exploitation. We have already seen in 3-10~16, 9-136~139, Appendix A, and frankly throughout the entire body that things emphasized by Jacque Fresco and Peter Joseph using expressions like "A fundamental governing principle of market economics one you will not find in any textbook" without hesitation are fundamental errors. We verified in Chapter 4 that Fresco is trying to criticize the rule of law without even understanding its basic ground of reasoning, and Chapter 9 showed how the opinions of Fresco and Peter Joseph about scientific topics are distanced from opinions of actual scientists.
However, how many supporters of The Venus Project understood such discordance? How many of them clearly recognized the fact that the opinions of Jacque Fresco, Peter Joseph and psychiatrists casted by them are exactly opposite of the mainstream opinions in modern genetics? How Also, how many of them knew that boring speeches of Fresco about ideology and language have existed for over 100 years and that ancient and modern scholars such as Popper and Mises regarded them as treason against science and reason?
Jacque Fresco and Peter Joseph's economics was completely covered long time ago by free market economists such as Adam Smith, Say, Bastia and Mises. Nonetheless, there were so many supporters of The Venus Project who were so critical as to gladly find and review refutation against such economists. How many supporters of The Venus Project treated everyone who does not accept The Venus Project as pitiful sheep brainwashed by the system, without even recognizing the existence of such economists, letting alone refuting them? Fresco accepts arguments by the most ridiculous money cranks that the fact that we could supply 90,000 airplanes by creation of currency and inflation instead of using tax during the Second World War demonstrates "lack of currency" and "abundance of resources". He even used this as an evidence to show that scarcity does not exist. Where were supporters of The Venus Project who could criticize such vulgar errors that cannot even be compared with the theory of exploitation?
Correct alternative can only come out of correct knowledge. However, we cannot obtain correct knowledge without placing equivalent effort. Yet unfortunately, most supporters of The Venus Project do not know about economics and science well enough to discuss an alternative. (This does not mean that supporters of The Venus Project are totally ignorant. Someone ignorant about a field may have sufficient knowledge in another field.) Instead of investing their intellectual efforts to obtain correct knowledge, they trusted Jacque Fresco and Peter Joseph as sufficiently wise and good people and unquestioningly accepted the most ridiculous arguments.
Supporters of The Venus Project might think that since arguments made by economists are so obviously wrong, it is a waste of time to read such arguments. However, we cannot learn about their arguments without reading them. Jacque Fresco and Peter Joseph might argue that they rebutted free market economics, but they are actually repeating errors that were refuted long before. Study the actual free market economy instead of the version distorted by collectivists. Someone will be astonished by how things being argued by Jacque Fresco as new things have existed for long and how precisely they were rebutted. You can also read the opinions of modern geneticists about human nature at a bookstore. From Edward Wilson who tried to apply the method of natural science to sociology before Fresco and published famous books like Consilience to Richard Dawkins famous for The Selfish Gene (though there are exceptions such as Gould and Lewontin), who can deny the fact that most scientists are hostile to the opinion of Fresco about human nature?
I would like to take this opportunity to send a word of gratitude to a supporter of The Venus Project who told me that "Building a better society is not about to win or to lose, it's about to share and to work cooperatively." This writing would not have existed without his comment. Of course, the problem we are facing is not about to win or to lose. It is about whether we and our descendants will live in a much more abundant and liberal world than now or return back to the times of constraint and subordination. Somebody might say that this is a problem of living or dying. Nonetheless, the body concentrated too much on complete logical rebuttal of Jacque Fresco's ideas that it was relatively negligent about the truly important problem, which is to persuade and encourage supporters of The Venus Project so they can use their energy correctly.
The prospect of our civilization is not so bright. Under the economic crisis today, governments and central banks of each nation are selecting the very policies that created and extended the Great Depression in the past. This is likely to bring a greater crisis. An economic crisis accompanied by large-scale unemployment forecasted by Fresco may actually occur. The greater problem is that under today's intellectual atmosphere, such phenomena are always understood as internal flaws of the free market, despite the fact that they are created by failure of government policies. We know that unemployment in 1930s was not caused by mechanization and automation. Our experience in 1970s and 1980s provide counterevidence. But we cannot make a reference to the future history. The future crisis that we might encounter can be regarded by many collectivists including Jacque Fresco as evidence that their prophecy has come true. Even if their radical alternative will not be accepted, what would happen if such intellectual atmosphere continues and, as a result, anti-market policies are adopted?
We may really be standing at an important turning point in the history of mankind. There were times during which people could freely pursue studies and works in the field they want, leaving politics and economics only to those who are interested. However, the situation has changed so much that even I, who used to think so more than anyone else, am now willing to recommend everyone to study and think about the true cause of and proper solution to the economic crisis.
Supporters of The Venus Project are extremely positive in one aspect. That is, I believe that they recognize the fact that the problem we are facing is extremely important, and that they are ready to openly spend their time and effort to create a better society. Who would doubt that supporters of The Venus Project have greater passion about the truth than anyone else and that they are placing greatest efforts to correctly understand the world today? If they were to stop unquestioningly trusting the arguments made by Jacque Fresco and Peter Joseph, and to start using their energy and passion to accumulate knowledge and correctly understand the crisis we are facing now, who would deny the fact that they can play a key role in creating a better society by guiding the civilization moving in the wrong direction to a correct one?
You can easily find almost all books I mentioned and cited in the body and annotations on the internet as pdf files. The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker is the most perfect book on human nature, and it deserves to be read thoroughly despite the enormous contents. It is superior to all other books that discussed the same topic, both in terms of scope of discussion and preciseness. It not only provides massive evidence supporting opinions and arguments of different scientists but also introduces knowledge about the history of science on the topic of human nature. They are beyond imagination of supporters of The Venus Project. End The Fed by Ron Paul focuses on the biggest problem of our system today. All of those who have critical mind about the current system and think that an alternative is necessary to resolve repeatedly occurring economic crises must read this book.
The failure of the new economics by Henry Hazlitt is mainly about Keynesianism, but supporters of The Venus Project must read it. One might be startled if they notice that most of things we have thought about market economy are no more than mercantilist fallacies which were rebutted by classical economists. If you are looking for a detailed explanation applied to modern economic crisis, refer to Meltdown by Thomas E. Woods Jr, though it is not introduced in the body. Anyone who reads this book to the end won't have any doubt about the fact that financial bubbles were formed by artificial supporting policies by the government, not by spontaneous creation in the free market.
Books that were cited most often in the body were probably The Road to Serfdom by Hayek and The Open Society and Its Enemies by Karl Popper. They are the greatest criticisms on collectivism, and they are still maintaining their value decades after being published. Although significant portion of these books is composed of criticism on other collectivistic ideologies not applied to Jacque Fresco and The Venus Project, still another significant portion is effective for all collectivistic planned economies including The Venus Project. Readers might be surprised to find out how old the several slogans – for instance, production for use instead of production for profit - and assumptions made by Jacque Fresco are. Look at Human Action by Ludwig von Mises for overall economics. This book explains the basic principles of economics, and at the same time effectively refutes many myths about currency and free market.
I arranged the books introduced above in an order most effective for supporters of The Venus Project to remove the delusions created by Fresco and Peter Joseph and to seek for the direction that we must truly pursue. If possible, please read the books mentioned above in the order as they are introduced. In addition, I selected some quotations from each book and included them on a separate page. Though they do not include all of important contents of each book, they should be sufficient to motivate any interested readers to read the books. Always remember; correct alternative is born from correct knowledge. However, we cannot acquire correct knowledge without making necessary efforts.
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[1] The assumption that there are unemployed persons in all directions cannot change this conclusion. No entrepreneur will stand still when there are plenty of laborers who can product a value of 15 and only demands a wage of 11. Entrepreneurs will expand their business and only stop the expansion when the market value of good they product becomes so low that it is exactly identical to wage. Laborers will then produce a value of 11 and receive a wage of 11. Wage and marginal production of labor become the same once again. (Realize the fact that laborers have not actually experienced any loss! Since price of goods has decreased, their net wage has increased.)
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