The Greatest Visionary You Never Heard of: Jacque Fresco

By Steve Kinsman, 3rd Aug 2012

Jacque Fresco, a visionary futurist, has a workable vision for a new and transformed world.

Jacque Fresco was born March 13, 1916, in the Bensonhurst neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, to Turkish immigrant parents. Growing up, he was bored in school, feeling that public education was less than challenging. In his teens he dropped out of school and began educating himself. When he witnessed the dire poverty of the Great depression, Fresco began thinking that there must be a better way to organize society so that scarcity and poverty would cease to exist.
Early career

Fresco design

Jacque Fresco traveled to Los Angeles in the 1930s and began his career as a structural designer in the aircraft industry. Drafted into the army in 1942, he was given technical design duties and was soon producing up to forty designs a day. His many ideas for advanced aircraft design earned him a reputation in the aircraft industry for being “a man twenty years ahead of his time.”
After the war

Fresco design 2

After the war Fresco worked for many companies as a technical consultant, designer and advisor – to the motion picture industry, to the Art Center School in Hollywood, in medical device design and many other areas. By the 1970s he turned his attention almost exclusively to formulating ideas on how to create a better, more effective and more humane way to create society.
His vision

Fresco design 3

The Venus Project is based on Fresco’s ideas for anew, transformed sustainable societal model that works for everybody. Here, in his own words, quoted from his web site, is the essence of his vision:

“All socioeconomic systems, regardless of political philosophy, religious beliefs, or social customs, ultimately depend upon natural resources, i.e., clean air and water, arable land and the necessary technology and personnel to maintain a high standard of living. Simply stated, a resource-based economy utilizes existing resources rather than money and provides an equitable method of distributing these resources in the most efficient manner for the entire population. It is a system in which all goods and services are available without the use of money, credits, barter, or any other form of debt or servitude.”

“Earth is abundant with plentiful resources; today our practice of rationing resources through monetary methods is irrelevant and counter-productive to our survival. Modern society has access to highly advanced technologies and can make available food, clothing, housing, medical care, a relevant educational system, and develop a limitless supply of renewable, non-contaminating energy such as geothermal, solar, wind, tidal, etc. It is now possible to have everyone enjoy a very high standard of living with all of the amenities that a prosperous civilization can provide. This can be accomplished through the intelligent and humane application of science and technology.”
“To better understand the meaning of a resource-based economy consider this: if all the money in the world were destroyed, as long as topsoil, factories, and other resources were left intact,we could build anything we choose to build and fulfill any human need. It is not money that people need; rather it is free access to the necessities of life. In a resource-based economy, money would be irrelevant. all that would be required are the resources and the manufacturing and distribution of the products.”

The Venus Project

Fresco Sea City Design

Jacque Fresco, along with his partner Roxanne Meadows, created in the 1990′s, The Venus Project, in central Florida. Here he has designed and built mockups for his cities of the future. I would encourage everyone who reads this to check out thevenusproject.com, to see precisely how Fresco’s vision for a new future can be created.

Jacque Fresco is now 96 years old, and he travels all over the world, giving lectures, doing radio and television interviews, and conducting workshops. Please click on the brief video below to hear Jacques Fresco explain his vision.

Link: A World Without Money is Possible

Preview photo from wikimedia commons
All other photos from thevenusproject.com