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A solid argument for a Resource Based Economy
  • GandalfTheRainbow February 2012 +1 -1
    For those who don't already know, a resource based economy is the system advocated by groups like the zeitgeist movement and the venus project, where machines take over most of labour leaving humans to pursue art and science and stuff. Still can't say if I trust those groups, but I came across this book written by a RBE advocate and I was pretty impressed (link: http://db.tt/JgPrPmMN). It actually makes a really good, logical argument for that system and references tons of actual scientific articles. The part I was most impressed with is that the author actually bothers to engage some economic arguments that tzm/tvp members usually avoid (economic calculation problem for example), and devotes a big chunk of the book just to addressing objections and making helpful clarifications.

    There's also some stuff about how the system could be tested, but its a bit vague and still doesn't really give any specific answers about how a transition would happen (also it's just a really boring part to read). Anyways I can say that after reading this book Im convinced that a RBE would probably work and it would probably function really well, but Im still not convinced that we could actually transition into it. I encourage everyone to read this book and really consider what's being said, in addition to talking about RBE it has a lot of really interesting things to say about human civilization in general. Also it's less than 100 pages which is always nice.

    Maybe if occupy starts taking this idea more seriously we might be able to come up with a transition plan of our own but I don't know how likely that would be.
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