{"id":1055,"date":"2015-11-09T00:28:01","date_gmt":"2015-11-09T00:28:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/?p=1055"},"modified":"2015-11-09T00:29:03","modified_gmt":"2015-11-09T00:29:03","slug":"common-heritage-of-humanity-shared","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/11\/common-heritage-of-humanity-shared.html","title":{"rendered":"Common heritage of humanity: sharing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"common<\/a><\/p>\n

Much that was once expensive is cheap. Much that was once priced\u00a0is now free. It’s already a reasonable prediction in futurist\u00a0circles that everything will someday be free, recognised as a common heritage of humanity.<\/h2>\n

This is often seen as\u00a0Utopian\u00a0reasoning, but it is already the basis on which information is already published\u00a0and shared today. The advent of online publishing has meant that subscription fees and costly services delivering information to your door are obsolete.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Many physical prizes in the world are also increasingly easy to come by. The total computing once only available to a the most powerful states can now be held in a person’s pocket. As I argued in an article at Beliefnet<\/a>, it is when technology works to increase sharing in the world and move us away from the selfish system of private property and violence\u00a0that technology can be described as a good, even sacred object.<\/p>\n

One theory holds that resource abundance is being gradually reached with technology. Already there is a vast surplus in the ability to supply\u00a0the world’s food. There is absolutely no inherent need for millions to be starving in poverty-stricken regions of the world. They starve because it\u00a0is more profitable for corporations to let them starve, than to dole out the costs of preserving and transporting the world’s food surplus to them. A profit-driven system will create scarcity, thirst and hunger even in the midst of abundance, because profit-driven means it depends necessarily on killing people by denying them\u00a0what they need to live.<\/p>\n

I, like many others, have maintained an interest in Jacque Fresco’s work, The Venus Project (TVP), having written an op-ed for their magazine<\/a> at one time. It is not the project itself but the philosophy to which it belongs, that I wanted\u00a0to be the object of praise when I relate to it. The Venus Project calls for the world’s resources to be declared a common heritage of humanity, doing away with models of scarcity perpetuated with\u00a0monetary economics.<\/p>\n

The vision of a world of universal sharing by recognising the common heritage of humanity means people will\u00a0no longer be assessed by the value they have as economic units in artificial states.\u00a0Instead, they will be\u00a0protected for their inherent value as human beings. No matter what has been said of the immediate economic viability of such a philosophy, in its eventual effects it\u00a0will be a source of good<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Political systems are trapped in an obsolete paradigm that keeps everyone on a treadmill. Proposing an end to the degrading evaluation of people as economic contributors rather than human beings is no different than arguing for abolishing slavery, but sometimes it will feel like we’re arguing that\u00a0case from the arenas in ancient Rome.<\/p>\n

It is already economically feasible to abolish currency (a major call from The Venus Project), or to provide a universal basic income, but the political and financial elites\u00a0won’t allow that. Authorities\u00a0who spent their lives training for this system will make no secret of their hostility to someone who wants to abolish it, for the plain and simple reason that it would put them out of a position of privilege and apparent usefulness.<\/p>\n

Not all is futile for that sort of brand of futurist activism, however. The facts on the ground are getting increasingly friendly to a big shift in how societies are governed<\/a>, and the shift is being brought about by rapid pace of technology itself rather than its enthusiasts and futurologians. Let’s hope the shift is towards sharing the world’s resources as a common heritage of humanity, undoing all divisions of the emaciated\u00a0and the endowed\u00a0once and for all.<\/p>\n

\"hjb<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Much that was once expensive is cheap. Much that was once priced\u00a0is now free. It’s already a reasonable prediction in futurist\u00a0circles that everything will someday be free, recognised as a common heritage of humanity. This is often seen as\u00a0Utopian\u00a0reasoning, but it is already the basis on which information is already published\u00a0and shared today. The advent…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":577,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,8,63,37,153,66,43,40,61,45,69],"tags":[1283,11,935,1284,5,50,1286,1285,189,360],"class_list":["post-1055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alter-globalization","category-antistatism","category-futurism-2","category-history","category-lordre-2","category-politics-2","category-post-scarcity","category-publishing","category-science","category-techno-progressivism","category-violence","tag-abundance","tag-anti-statism","tag-economics","tag-food","tag-futurism","tag-jacque-fresco","tag-postscaricty","tag-slavery","tag-the-venus-project","tag-us-government"],"yoast_head":"\nCommon heritage of humanity: sharing - L'Ordre<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Much that was once expensive is cheap. Much that was once priced is now free. Is this a big shift redefining property as the common heritage of humanity?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/11\/common-heritage-of-humanity-shared.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Common heritage of humanity: sharing - L'Ordre\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Much that was once expensive is cheap. Much that was once priced is now free. Is this a big shift redefining property as the common heritage of humanity?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/11\/common-heritage-of-humanity-shared.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"L'Ordre\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-11-09T00:28:01+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2015-11-09T00:29:03+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/files\/2015\/11\/Cartoon-sunburst.png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Harry J. Bentham\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Common heritage of humanity: sharing - L'Ordre","description":"Much that was once expensive is cheap. Much that was once priced is now free. Is this a big shift redefining property as the common heritage of humanity?","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/11\/common-heritage-of-humanity-shared.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Common heritage of humanity: sharing - L'Ordre","og_description":"Much that was once expensive is cheap. Much that was once priced is now free. Is this a big shift redefining property as the common heritage of humanity?","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/11\/common-heritage-of-humanity-shared.html","og_site_name":"L'Ordre","article_published_time":"2015-11-09T00:28:01+00:00","article_modified_time":"2015-11-09T00:29:03+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/files\/2015\/11\/Cartoon-sunburst.png"}],"author":"Harry J. Bentham","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/11\/common-heritage-of-humanity-shared.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/11\/common-heritage-of-humanity-shared.html","name":"Common heritage of humanity: sharing - L'Ordre","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/11\/common-heritage-of-humanity-shared.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/11\/common-heritage-of-humanity-shared.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/files\/2015\/11\/Cartoon-sunburst.png","datePublished":"2015-11-09T00:28:01+00:00","dateModified":"2015-11-09T00:29:03+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/#\/schema\/person\/576f5919c442d93e18909ed47628846e"},"description":"Much that was once expensive is cheap. Much that was once priced is now free. Is this a big shift redefining property as the common heritage of humanity?","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/11\/common-heritage-of-humanity-shared.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/11\/common-heritage-of-humanity-shared.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/11\/common-heritage-of-humanity-shared.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/files\/2015\/11\/Cartoon-sunburst.png","contentUrl":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/files\/2015\/11\/Cartoon-sunburst.png"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/11\/common-heritage-of-humanity-shared.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Common heritage of humanity: sharing"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/","name":"L'Ordre","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Harry Bentham","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/#\/schema\/person\/576f5919c442d93e18909ed47628846e","name":"Harry J. Bentham","description":"Harry J. Bentham is a British futurist blogger who has been a contributor at a number of think tanks including the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies since 2013. His work at Press TV and the L'Ordre blog featured at the multi-faith Beliefnet website has gained increasing attention and praise, including in the international media. Commentaries on political and ethical controversies by Bentham have been published at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, H+ Magazine, Dissident Voice and numerous other publications. He edits The clubof.info Blog (http:\/\/www.clubof.info\/search\/label\/Harry_J_Bentham).","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Harry-J.-Bentham\/e\/B00D4MSEY0\/"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/author\/hbentham"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/577"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1055"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1055\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1063,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1055\/revisions\/1063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}