The economy.

You propose a future in which such an economy is in effect.

The future is fiction until it happens.

It is well known to Trekkers that the technological feasibility of this that or the other plot-device is largely irrelevant, the question is not do we need to wait for replicators, transporters and faster than light travel before we can implement such an economy.

The more important question, getting more and more important as 2063 approaches, is whether it is in fact necessary that a period of world wide devastation / devastating world scale conflict occur in order to proceed to the proposed economic model?

Way back when, it presumably seemed to the authors that such an economy so soon in our future would not be at all possible barring such worldwide devastation or devastating conflict.

It is known that current technology should suffice as far as any physical engineering in concerned.

Portraying the proposed society as a far fetched fiction is a piece of social engineering.


Filling in the timespan between now and the actual world wide deployment of such an economy is going to take some figuring out of how utterly fictional the concept of actually accomplishing such a deployment is going to actually turn out to be.

Many people consider it very far-fetched, such that packaging it alongside ray guns and starships has historically served as a practical way "flying under the radar of such people" to get the ideas "out there" to a more receptive demographic.

As we come closer to whatever desired target date we wish to set as to when exactly we wish to complete the deployment it becomes more and more important / urgent to solve the social engineering problems to which the futuristic technology props serve as smokescreens.

The Venus Project seems to basically propose that we should by now or soon be able to cease pretending we are talking about an imaginary future economy but are in fact working toward actual deployment of such an economy.

The more the intent is perceived as real and realistic the more likely it might be that whatever kind of social upheaval / devastation that opponents of such ideas might find convenient to oppose such ideas with might also be deployed.


It would be nice to proceed without the kind of upheaval / devastation the original-series timeline suggested might turn out to be required.

Toward that end, this Venus thing does seem interesting and maybe, who knows, it could even turn out to be useful.

Admittedly a lot of fandom seems to just shrug at the proposed period of devastation, preferring to look forward to 2063 and beyond without seeming concern about preceding devastation. Likely that tends though to be the portions of fandom least likely to be regarded as actual Trekkers.

-MarkM- (Imagining fiction to be irrelevant to its topics seems weird/shortsighted, counterexamples are probably rife throughout literature.)

P.S. It seems ironic that you are dismissing so lightly the very dream/ideal you claim to espouse and one of possibly its largest and most dedicated groups of fans...

The resource based economy is desribed using stuff right out of Star Trek, like each individual being free to develop their potential. Star Trek seems to be a "resourcce based economy" and it is one that already has gone through a whole lot of the problems of trying to use movies to promote such a society, including such tactics as pretendig it is a far distant / purely imaginary future in order not to scare people who might object to a suggestion that it is just around the corner.

Supposedly the latest movie tried changing a lot in order to again find a way to get "normal people" instead of people who already bought into the idea of resource based societies to watch the shows/movies.

Also progressively attempts have been made to move the portrayals back in time closer to our current time, possibly because of a perception that one maybe need no longer pretend to be speaking about a time centuries away when speaking of a resource based economy.

This a a whole lot of investment and a huge body of trekkers some quite dedicated all aimed at the concept of a resource based economy.

Even putting it into a fiction surrounded by all kinds of "unbelievable" technology doesn't seem to go very far though in defusing people's ingrained / conditioned disbelief in such an economic model. It seems that to some people the proposed economy is maybe even harder to believe possible than faster than light transportation (which is afterall "merely a technical innovation or breakthrough").

The technical innovations / gadgets are mere metaphors and plot devices, one would hardly credit a person as actually being a Trekker if they were unaware that getting from "here" to "there" is not a matter of physical engineering but, rather, one of social engineering.

-MarkM-

Okay, what resources are available that are not being utilized?  What sources of renewable energy, and what technologies, can be used to power machines like cars and steel mills for example?  How high of a standard of living can your ideal society produce given current technology?  Is it something along the lines of India/China or more like Western Europe?

That is one of the best arguments that I have heard on the Government subverting Capitalism. And it will work, until the people start to speak up. Or worse, start creating their own products. The underground market, if you will.

The biggest problem I see with the system is it is now focused on maximizing profits and forgot about competing. As we will shortly find out, the businesses that got it right and the ones that got it wrong when the cards come collapsing down.

Anyone who buys an old pager system, can start a near free texting service for a town. That will compete with cell phones.

I am waiting for communities to kick into high gear in the face of the Big State.  It always amazed me that every house in a development had a riding lawn mower, where if they all kicked in $5 dollars a month in a 100 house development, they could buy their own lawnmowers and a central shed for everyone to use. But we don't "Trust" each other "YET".  A little scheduling and some trust and the country world will change.

Hell yes! It seems we want the same things, but this is what I call capitalism. Maybe we're simply talking about the same things?

When are they going to build something?

JSON API is not intended to rpcminer.
I do not even know why a rpcminer used statusurl

exp - exponential function
magic number - constant number, this constant just limit score growth within round time.
In faster pool (like slush) this number something like 300, in slower pool - this number bigger.

Human resources.

Okay, what resources are available that are not being utilized?  What sources of renewable energy, and what technologies, can be used to power machines like cars and steel mills for example?  How high of a standard of living can your ideal society produce given current technology?  Is it something along the lines of India/China or more like Western Europe?

Along those lines, I'd like to know what constitutes a "resource".  Is it just raw materials?  Refined materials?  Produced goods?  Services?

And if it includes goods and services, then how do you propose to produce them in abundance?  Forced labor?  Zero-point energy generators?

A question for the RBE folks: How is any economic system not ultimately based on resources? If we're not living in a paradise as promised by RBE proponents, it's not because there's a conspiracy to hold back resources (although there is a lot of waste caused by governments). Prices are not arbitrary; they reflect actual availability of resources as well as demand for those resources. Simply asserting that "resources are abundant" will not magically make it so, and to the extent that any practitioners of RBE follow the principles of mutual exchange and trade then they are actually following capitalism (though probably not what they think of as capitalism). To the extent that they go against the principles of mutual exchange and trade then they are simply following statism, which might be fine for them but isn't fine for me. We have enough of that as it is.