Resource based economies: brave new thinking or Brave New World?

A resource based economy advocates a departure from our profit-driven, monetary economy (no more money) to one where Earth's resources are shared, equally, by all it's inhabitants.

Is this purely the misty eyed dream of a select number of idealists or, looking at the global financial and political picture, a very real alternative? What are the realities of achieving such an overhaul? What are the realities when we get there? Could it really be a society in which we would want to live? 

There are many critics of this kind of theory, citing basic human greed and corruption as the main barrier to a utopia of this scale ever being realised who are dismissive of such an idea.

Rather than go into the lenghty theories and debate myself, I shall leave you in the capable hands of a man at the bleeding edge of thought in this area: American social engineer/futurist and founder of The Venus Project, Jacque Fresco.

This is part 1 of 6 of a lecture he gave in London in October and makes for interesting viewing. Is a theory like this actually workable? Is it desirable? I just hope the embedded thing works!

Phil Nelms

<object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/_R9q-NO6BBc&hl=en_GB&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/_R9q-NO6BBc&hl=en_GB&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object>

Dammit! Ok, so the embed thing didn't work like I'd hoped, but the link is good. Watch it.

PN