The Best That Money Can't Buy: Beyond Politics, Poverty, & War

Been meaning to read this book for quite a while. It is quite the "exciting read." He has the breathless wordsmanship of Engels, Marx, Veblen and Galbraith.Though I can emphasize with and uphold his futuristic outlook, it is basically a portmanteau of every Utopian idea that is Left of center for the last 170 years.Issues with the novel,1. There are no footnotes or references throughout the book.2. He never gives credit for his ideas to the authors that he is blatantly taking them from, Buckminster Fuller, Thorsten Veblen, John Galbraith et al.3. His solution to the socialist abundance problem is twofold;A. The elimination of Money & Prices (Proudhon et al).B. The Resource Based Economy (Lenin and Stalin).-How will this all work to bring abundance? No definitive answer, it is only an emotional ideological assertion throughout the book that it will.How will production be done? First you have to count all the resources available in the area and worldwide. How will this help production? No answer, it just will.[This is a blatant misunderstanding of the law of supply and demand. If you know supply and know demand you can balance them. What is missing? The information necessary to truly balance supply and demand-monetary prices. What counting everything does is create worthless unusable data-i.e. economic noise. A Baker has no need to know the amount of wheat, sugar, eggs, milk the world produced last year to bake bread. Nor does the car maker need to know the amount of steel, chrome, wire, computer chips. Knowing the X amount of Y, is useless data unless there is some mechanism for balancing numerous heterogenous demands/needs. Monetary prices do just that. Monetary prices are distributed knowledge, counted resources by bureaucracies are centralized knowledge, giving rise once again to the calculation problem.]How will producers use these counted resources? Well after the magic wand is used to eliminate all monetary prices than production will just continue along using the same productive methods and capital equipment already in place and resources will be delivered to the producers who will then produce efficiently and deliver their product to the next producer up the line until you reach the consumer. (For those of you who have read Mises' book Socialism, you know that this is the sine qua non of all socialist economic ideas-stop capitalism and continue on with equilibrium enforced socialism).If this RBE sounds familiar to you it should, this is the same economy that V.I. Lenin tried to implement in the USSR in the 1920’s which failed dramatically. They had to scrap it and begin the New Economic Program bringing back prices. Stalin in a book before his death said that an RBE is the future. So faithful to Stalin it marches on. (Somehow inexplicably the good Professor thinks this is how production was done by the U.S. during WWII).4. His sources and thinking are all based and confined to the Club of Rome, Limits to Growth, Population Bomb 60’s and 70’s era when Neo-Malthusianism was reified. His futuristic projections are thus tainted with these ideological biases.5. His solution to all problems is Oskar Langue’s solution to Mises’ calculation problem and Hayek’s knowledge problem, “Someday a supercomputer will be invented that can do all the simultaneous equations necessary and will distribute the knowledge simultaneously to all areas that need it.” Complexity Theory destroyed Langue's Hail Mary.Contradictions in the book abound. Most blatant is, “Technology will give us abundance but humanity must be limited to the extant resources of the Earth.” (The Georgia Guidestones) The fact that this is a complete contraction as supported by statistical evidence is ignored, or he was totally unaware of the data (See Dr. Julian Simon, Bjorn Lomborg, Peter Diamandis, Matt Ridley, Keven Kelly, Hans Rosling et al.-NB. The "Cornucopian’s" actually proved the visionary surmise of Marx & Engels against Malthus.) This makes the good professor a Techno-Malthusian, a real contradiction in terms.Another place where he is parroting the Georgia Guidestones is his belief that a new language must be invented that is more succinct and direct then conversational language. Technocrats of the world unite! Esperanto was the new langue of choice and it never went anywhere except among a very small portion of "nerds." Language is evolutionary, just like technology, science and the economy. Technocrats are anti-evolution and love top-down command and control.The unconscious bias of all technocrats driven by ideology is that the world can be made perfect if only… (any and all evidence against their grandiose vision of paradise is a sign of being reactionary and uninformed- not one of the elite).So while I applaud the Star Trekkian outlook, it is unfortunalty based in Utopian Socialist economic fantasies long ago refuted by both history, statistical evidence, valid economics and complexity theory. Though I'd like to keep his futuristic vision it is impossible to do so as its foundation is so flawed both economically and technologically that one is unable to do so.

Every human needs to understand this information. A resource-based economy is truly the only intelligent path forward. But be warned: understanding this information will lead to a degree of frustration that is unending as you go through your day-to-day life with an increased sensitivity to inefficiency, planned obsolescence, deceptive advertising, and a completely ignorant public.On a brighter note, I visited Jacques Fresco this past summer. He's 100 years old, but he is still capable of answering questions and dropping knowledge. Just make sure to speak up! And Roxanne Meadows is absolutely incredible!In extensionality...

I think Jacque Fresco was not from our planet or that he was sent to us from another planet or galaxy. But all this really hopefuls and I believe in it but it can’t be implemented when our government do things like now, we all need to understand what Jacque wanted to say. All I mean, we are people, it doesn’t depend of what race you or nationality, just people. I really love this book and will recommend to everyone, just touch a world where we can live, without wars, without hunger, all in peace. And I really believe that we can get it, world like that

Great book. Costs under $12 at Barnes and Noble though.A little out there, but definitely pointing in the correct direction. Using it in an art installation on immigration.

It is not a book that you merely leave it on your bookshelf after reading, but that indeed makes you (more) aware of the unacceptable defects of the current scarcity-based/guided monetary system and gives you an alternative workable system of new civilization that you happily want to be part of and contribute to its realization. Jacque's blueprint is a civilization of abundance that is always evolving, based on the carrying capacity of the earth and the optimal utilization of scientific methods (and technologies) for the increasing maximization of human welfare [for all]. In this civilization, decisions are not made based on mere opinions, but arrived at through a holistic scientific approach of experimentation, i.e. in a way that enable us understand the symbiotic relationship between humans, technologies and the environment. With the at most application of automation for abundant production, we all as individuals of a highly interdependent global society will be free from the chains of monotonous/repetitive jobs and cultivate our potential for the continual betterment of human life. Currently living in a primitively competitive environment of scarcity and under the resultant threats of war, hunger, poverty and environmental destruction with the inappropriate use of technology; we don't have the audacity to refuse this doable resource-based new civilization,but to equally benefit by embracing it. That is what you will understand from this book and why I highly recommend you all to read it - The Best That Money Can't Buy: Beyond Politics, Poverty and War.

The book makes it very hard for even a closeminded person to disagree with the logic and solutions put forth in this book; without exposing their own logical fallacies.The Resource-Based-Economy may not happen anytime soon, yet it's at most; inhumane to suggest that aiming for such a system is meaningless.

There are no words I could put on here that do justice to Fresco's vision for the future. I suppose the best way to describe it would be to use his own words... "If we are sincere and genuinely concerned with resolving our problems, we must strive towards having the earth's resources declared as the common heritage of all the world's people."I'm currently planning a trip to Venus, Florida to visit Fresco's compound. I hope this guy lives to 150.

Did you know that at time of writing this, 97% of the World's money is virtual. Its held in the digital bank accounts of the rich and powerful. They create money out of thin 1's and 0's in the press on a keyboard.However, there IS another way.A resource based economy is one where us humans have learnt to settle differences, to understand that war is created by the same rich and powerful so it makes even more money for them. That resources can be shared for the further advancement of the human RACE..not an individual. It isn't touting the removal of individuality. Its promoting the concept that we should be creating machinery that does its job, and is tested against breaking down every 5 minutes due to poor design or fore thought. Currently, we design to fail or the need to upgrade just to keep the money rolling in.If you feel this book isn't for you, then check out videos on the tube about Jacque and the work he has done. There are numerous lectures and sound bites of the way he sees our broken world.The rich don't want you knowing about a resource based economy as it means their wealth will be worthless. Truth be told, money is man made, and is of no value anyway. The electric car was blocked by the fuel barons as they realised the reliance on their fossil fuel would be reduced. Trains that could travel great distances are possible, Science has proved it this.Check out www.tvpmagazine.com for informative articles regarding Jacque's Venus Project.

This book is a great peek into the world of "The Venus Project". I discovered TVP through a YouTube documentary and then purchased this book after seeing a recommendation. All of Jacque Fresco's ideas, teachings, recommendations for the future and plans are mind-blowing and the added pictures are also intriguing. I love the ideology being supported on this book and it helped me gain a better understanding of what the Venus Project is about.

How do we get this book out there? Our world needs to see this? With all that’s happened in 2020…

Lovely book!

a must read for everyone, especially those disillusioned with the way the world is run