What do you think about the idea of a "Resource Based Economy" (The Venus Project)?

It's not only possible, it is essential that humanity transition to such a system. Capitalism is failing and the problems it is creating are only getting worse. Capitalism will lead to catastrophe and misery like the world has never known. It won't be any single person or group's fault. Greed, complete disregard for sustainability, and insane waste are inherent parts of our current monetary economy.

When you've got about 15 minutes, check out this series of 3 short videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5HNXNXUzz8

The first one is just 3 minutes long and can pretty much be skipped. It's mostly just photos of various places on Earth.

The next two parts are great. It's a dialog between two people: one guy from our modern capitalist world talking to another guy from an ancient hunter-gatherer society. It debunks most of the myths people hang on to about why a RBE could not work. As a bonus, it's cleverly amusing.

Very interesting question, I wish this was a discussion forum. Well, first of all I doubt that a "resource based economy" would be possible unless the entire world goes through a process in which all nations change their economy to a resource-based one. Why? If your economy is not based in a monetary system, how would you trade with other countries? If you give them a portion of your resources, they would pay you back with money, which would be useless. And exchanging resources and services from nation to nation would be very impractical. Also, if you isolate your community and produce only what you consume, that would be the same as subsistence farming, or, in other words, extreme poverty. Finally, I don't really think that after millenia of using currency, we humans are going to be ready now or in the future to assimilate such a style of life. I actually agree on what Fresco says about technology benefitting more people and making more resources available to more people if it were developed disregarding profitability. But sincerely, what Fresco says about reducing greed, individualism and making people "help each other out" is just pure fantasy. Such a system has never once existed in history and sadly or not, will never exist.

"it's not possible to transmit and process the information as to what is needed, by whom, when, where, and how much".

Er, we have the internet to transmit the information. In the current system price might signal how much of something to produce to make a profit, but we want to know how much we need. Price isn't telling us that.

We also have masses of computers calculating loads of things. All the supermarkets have them. If we didn't have competition between supermarkets, all that power could be put to proper good use. Also, all the best tech/computing power is being wasted on wars. Imagine what GOOD we could do with it.

If hunter-gather societies co-operated internally for the best ends, and now countries do something similar, why can't the whole planet? What's the ideological objection to that - I accept that there may be practical difficulties

The RBE is the only sane idea I have heard that works for the people. However, this idea based on the mayan calendar should take a while to come into tution. It could be 3 or 4 years but realistically around 2050 and maybe even into the 22nd century.

Such a system would be a certain failure precisely because it does away with money. Without money and a responsive price mechanism, any economy would be doomed to miserable inefficiency and poverty, because it's not possible to transmit and process the information as to what is needed, by whom, when, where, and how much. Just a bunch of blind people producing whatever the want regardless of whether it's needed. This silly project does not even recognize that reality, much less do anything to overcome the problem. Every minute spent thinking about the "resource based economy" is a minute of your life that is totally wasted for no purpose. I hardly call THAT sustainable.

I completely agree with bkyle, if we don't transition out of this competition based monetary system then eventually we'll probably go extinct. We should be able to pursue our dreams and passions without a price tag. All mediocre jobs would be replaced by robots, which would give us all the freedom to do what we really want.

Sounds unrealistic and unobtainable. Greed is an inherent human function, which the resource-based economy disregards and unassumes

Edit: I think you'll find that greed is apparent since the dawn of human civilisation, well before the birth of the monetary system

History is full of Utopian cults, but that doesn't stop people from drinking the Kool Aid.