As many are aware at this time, both our societal integrity and ecological integrity are in serious question. The current economic system is falling apart at an accelerating rate with the prospect of worldwide unemployment and destabilization occurring possibly on the largest scale ever seen. Simultaneously we are cording the point of no return in regard to the destruction of the environment. Given the current state of affairs, many of which will be addressed in the first part of this presentation, the viewer should find that we not only need to move in another direction, we have to.

In order to understand where we are and how we have gotten to this point in history, we need to address those societal attributes which have greatly effected our social conduct. The most important observation of this regard is our use of a monetary system. In this section we are going to address the mechanisms of our world monetary system, pointing out the consequences this type of organizational structure has produced.

A monetary system’s foremost motivating principle is profit, or more generally income. All people must seek out a strategy to acquire more money. A wage earner seeks out the best possible pay he can get for his services, while the employer seeks to constantly reduce costs in order to maximize their profit. This competitive mentality extends into all facets of society and it should be no surprise that those who are in positions of great wealth are often the most ruthless and indifferent.

The pursuit of profit almost always comes before human concern. And a simple glance at the cancer causing preservatives in our foods, the planned obsolescence of nearly everything manufactured, along with a healthcare industry that charges $300 for a single antibiotic pill will indicate that the profit incentive is actually a detriment.

We are being afflicted with a new disease of which some readers may not yet have heard the name, but of which they will hear a great deal in the years to come – namely, technological
unemployment. This means unemployment due to our discovery of means of economizing the use of labor outrunning the pace at which we can find new use of labor. John M. Keynes

Energy is the cornerstone of society today. It is one of the most critical factors to all social functionality. The age of oil and fossil fuels along with all the resulting pollution is coming to a close. There is no reason to burn fossil fuels at all anymore, other than the profit oriented vested interest that keeps new clean energy prospects at bay. Remember, the last thing the energy industry wants is abundance for that translates into a loss of profit in the monetary system.

A resource based economy utilized existing resources rather than commerce. All goods and services are available without the use of currency, credit, barter or any other form of debt or servitude. The aim of this new social design is to free humanity from the repetitive, mundane, and arbitrary occupational roles which hold no true relevance to social development while encouraging a new incentive system that is focused on self-fulfillment, education,social awareness and creativity as opposed to the shallow and self centered goals of wealth, property and power which are dominant today. The Venus Project recognizes that the Earth is abundant with resources. And that our outdated methods of rationing resources through monetary control are no longer relevant. In fact they are very counter productive to our survival.

Then along came the corporation. Now the reason the corporation looks bigger than the government is that the corporation is bigger than the government. Of the 100 largest economies on Earth now 51 are corporations. And as the corporation has grown in size and power we’ve seen a change in the government where they’re a little more concerned in making sure everything’s working out for those guys than for us.

80% of the planet’s original forests are gone. In the Amazon alone we’re losing 2000 trees a minute. That is seven football fields a minute. And what about the people who live here? Well according to these guys, they don’t own these resources, even if they’ve been living there for generations. The done own the means of productions and they’re not buying a lot of stuff. And in this system ,if you don’t own or buy a lot of stuff, you don’t have value.

Globally 200,000 people a day are moving from environments that have sustained them for generations, into cities, many to live in slums… looking for work no matter how toxic that work may be.