After reading and listening to much of the Venus Project and The Zeitgeist Movement material I agree with many of the concepts they present. Industrial productivity has greatly increased while labor costs have dropped. Automation is moving into the service sector and has the potential to eliminate many more jobs.
The middle class has already shrunk tremendously and the gap between rich and poor broadens yearly. Ironically, the quest for increased profits is leading the commercial world to a point where there are very few consumers left that can buy their products.
I do, however, have a problem with centralized control, the system they propose may or may not be better than what we have now. The concept of a centralized computer system organizing what is best for us humans through scientific principles may sound good in theory, but in practice there is no such thing as untainted scientific principles in areas where control of populations are concerned. As long as computers are programed by people there is no such thing as an unbiased computer program.
I wouldn't be able to abide the conformity the system wishes to establish. In this society we are subjected to pressure to conform, most of us do. There are still some who follow the road less traveled. Those who shuck the 9 to 5 and the house with the white picket fence. I guess it's probably a chain link fence now. There are those who live on the open road. Those who live off the land in some remote local. The world would be diminished without these nonconformists in my opinion.
As idealistic as Jacque Fresco is, and no mater how high minded the plan appears, giving control of all the resources to a centralized control system always will end in corruption. Lord Acton, in 1887, said "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." It's every bit as true today and I'm sure will be true tomorrow.
