Description of a resource-based economy can be found here: http://www.thevenusproject.com/a-new-social-design/resource-based-economy
Is the idea of a “Resource-based Economy” actually feasible? I don’t see how it could work as intended. How could the economy possibly function without money unless an omnipotent state oversees the distribution of goods and resources? That just seems like a recipe for disaster in my opinion.
What do you guys think?
Mises proved the impossibility of a rational economy without money. see his book :Socialism.
as for resource-based economy. the name seems superficially silly. what economy does not involve actors utilizing resources?
Mises proved the impossibility of a rational economy without money.
I’m not sure what influence Mises, or perhaps even Mises’ predecessors, had on this, but even the most mainstream economists tend to agree that money is the best rationing device.
Jonathan, its the Calculation Argument…
In other words, it rejects private property rights completely. This brings up the immediately problem that in order to consume something you must own it. When you eat an apple nobody else can use it.
If it is not the state who owns everything (state communism), and it is not private individuals who own things (anarcho-capitalism), then what is left is anarcho-communism.
They should call it by it’s proper name, because as already been said, the term ‘resource-based economy’ is like saying a ‘wheel-based car’. A car is wheel-based and an economy is resource-based, any economy. After all, as humans we need to consume, and in order to consume we need resources.
Jonathan, its the Calculation Argument…
I am well aware of the fact that it forms the basis for the socialist calculation problem. My point is that the mainstream recognizes money as the most efficient method by which to coordinate an economy. I think that the idea of money as a rationing device was developed earlier than Mises’ Socialism, although it’s very possible that Mises had a great impact on the mainstream idea of money. In any case, the idea of money as a rationing device led to Mises’ development of the calculation problem, which is a much broader argument against alternative forms of rationing. So, while a mainstream economist might not recognize the impossibility of calculation with money, Mises did.
The Venus Project/resource-based economy is a bunch of crap. When you debate Venus Project advocates you eventually get to a point where they start saying “robots will do all the work and people will be free to do what they want and get what they need from giant free stores.”
Yeah, the Venus Project people are… well, spaced-out. They assert that scarcity is an artificial creation of capitalists.
Clayton -
Is anyone familar with their arguments as to why scarcity exists only under capitalism?
They probably think what other socialistic types think in that capitalists create scarcity just to gain a profit and exploit the workers. I have heard the claim “scarcity does not exist in the real world!” so many times while debating these Venus Project-types.
Jesse,
Is anyone familar with their arguments as to why scarcity exists only under capitalism?
I don’t know much about the Venus Project, but from what I can find on the internet the argument is that under capitalism resources are used inefficiently. They argue that if all the resources were to be collectivized, then they could be used to create a super-abundance of necessary goods. Jacques Fresco uses the example of the production of 90,000 aircraft during the Second World War as evidence that you can centrally plan a super-abundance of a certain good. He doesn’t seem to take into consideration that that directly takes capital away from other industries, and the fact that resources are limited themselves (even renewable resources are limited at a particular instance in time), and therefore are just as scarce as finished products.
How are they any different than marxists?