If progress has taught us anything is that we often spend too much time arguing at the leaf level when what is needed is to back a branch or two toward the trunk and make a change there.
Moving out of Monarchy and Feudalism to Democracy was a sea change that overthrew everything before it. We managed it and are much happier because of it. While I don't agree with Fresco's vision entirely, it's not because fundamental changes aren't feasible or even, possibly, necessary.
I believe we need to take that a lot of that techno-communist stuff to some degree and actually combine it with decentralized perspectives. Because we _are_ currently doing a horrible job of measuring and acting holistically -- and certainly on some level we need to be able to have sort of total measurements of things and limitations in different regions, etc.
And we can use technology to make gathering these holistic measurements, as well as acting cooperatively, more feasible, to the degree it is wise. For example, common information systems or schemas for large-scale public data mining of natural resource usage, or simply fair tax reporting, etc.
But at the same time, I feel that the biggest pitfall of both competitive (capitalist) and cooperative (communist) approaches is over-centralization. Here we can also look to new technologies like block chains, Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc. that enable decentralized large-scale trust/databases.
The problem we have now is that we actually do have a smooth transition to basically what Fresco was envisioning, except he forgot how problematic it can be to have massive governments or corporations or AIs with a centralized monopoly on production. We are headed towards that actually now -- Google for organizing and searching all information, Walmart for distributing goods in stores, Amazon for everything else, youtube for video, Uber for getting around, etc. Because these monopolies are so powerful (I call them 'technopolies') they are basically de facto government entities -- except worse.
So anyway again the way out of this is to decentralize all the things again, using technology so that we can have a common platform, common total measurements, etc., but also do it in a robust way that has room to evolve and is not dependent upon over-powered nodes.
Fresco paints a gloomy picture of the now and the future, but the facts are that "on average", humans are living better lives than they ever have. This progress has not yet stopped.
Hence, Fresco predicts we need to wait for the next "bust".
I think we have taught ourselves that we rather suffer and keep things as they are rather than actually improving them in a radical way like in trying out new economic models.
I think it's just a matter of this, demonstration. It won't attract everyone, there's a lot of very confused people in a lot of nations who think their way of life can't be topped (especially the US).
The likelihood of 1 person like me who agrees with Fresco's vision netting billions of dollars to begin is higher than a bunch of people on their iPhones suddenly agreeing to the idea in an awakening. It can happen, without a nuclear holocaust "awakening" too. Just need the Elon Musk of the Venus Project to start small.
Jacque did a lot of hard work to get the idea out there.
Also material betterment doesn't scale, we can't focus on material betterment for all because until we figure out fusion and get our own Dyson Sphere going, we have finite resources.
Is this actually established? It's my understanding that the work-leisure dichotomy didn't really exist in medieval Europe. Also, considering how much of the fruit of your labour ended up supporting local and distant aristocracy, I can't imagine mental health being particularly high for a lot of people.
* For source, I've seen Yuval Noah Harari and Peter Gray writing about it.
As Oscar Wilde put it:
Now and then, in the course of the century, a great man of science, like Darwin; a great poet, like Keats; a fine critical spirit, like M. Renan; a supreme artist, like Flaubert, has been able to isolate himself, to keep himself out of reach of the clamorous claims of others, to stand ‘under the shelter of the wall,’ as Plato puts it, and so to realise the perfection of what was in him, to his own incomparable gain, and to the incomparable and lasting gain of the whole world. These, however, are exceptions. The majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism – are forced, indeed, so to spoil them. They find themselves surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous starvation.
That hasn't changed. If you're referring to the poorest in your particular nation state, consider they're probably not the poorest in the world, which we're all using in some way.
I don't think I have an overly rosy picture of the present. Rather I think your picture of the past is too romantic.
There are more people (in real numbers) starving than ever before. Looking at this in terms of percentages is misleading
Um, per capita is the important metric.
If there are 2 million people on your planet and 1 million of them are starving, then in a few generations there 100 million people and 2 million of them are starving you have drastically reduced the rate of starvation. Malthusian predictions of the past have said that the rate of starvation/bad things happening would increase as the population increased. It has not.
The true number of starving people is not an important metric?
The architecture proposed has no individualism about it, this is like a cartoon version of collectivism where there is no opportunity for self-actualization.
I wouldn't want to live in that world, but even if I did I'm sure it would quickly morph into something else entirely.
The resource idea is nice at first glance, but it only considers needs and not wants. The Soviet Union had the issue where production was always lagging behind trends and demands, China started growing when they cut loose entrepreneurial forces (though those are still heavily guided at macro scale, much like seen in postwar developed countries during the Keynesian era).
Basically poor Jacque was 40 years ahead of his time.
I think a better analogy might be "reading a single article on the internet, then projecting yourself as an expert".
I fully expect that the Pope could debate your average atheist into submission.