The document is a transcript of slides from an Ignite talk given in 2010. It discusses fundamental problems facing today's society like war, poverty and environmental destruction. It argues these problems stem from scarcity of resources and how our economy and social values are built around perpetual growth. The talk proposes adopting a resource-based economic model, referencing the Venus Project, to establish a global system that addresses the root causes of problems by optimally allocating and sharing resources through applying the scientific method. The overall goal is to inspire people to think of solutions focused on fundamental societal issues.

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21. Text accociated to the slides:
Slide 1: A short disclaimer: You might classify many ideas I will tell you in the next 5 minutes as utopian dreaming. Please remember that
most of the things we have around us today were utopian at some point. The future needs dreams.
Slide 2: Today’s society suffers global problems like war, poverty, destruction of the environment, crime, psychological stress and
widespread but neglected diseases.
Slide 3: Part of the problem is how we handle problems in general. Too often we look only at symptoms and do quick and dirty
short-lasting fixes.
Slide 4: How we deal with SPAM is an example: SPAM exist due to the fact that there are uneducated people and other people exploit
them to make money that they need for their living. We try to tackle the problem at the very end by filtering messages ... with little
success.
Slide 5: We are trapped in a mental cage and don’t think enough out of the box. We have to take a step back and have a look at our
fundamental problems.
Slide 6: The underlying problem is scarcity - the limitation of resources. This leads to egoistic and anti-social behaviour.
Slide 7: And we need to hurry up as the problems grow. The Hubbard curve is well known for describing our global oil resources but can
be applied to many other resources, too. In many cases we don’t know at which stage we are currently.
Slide 8: Additionally the world’s population is growing exponentially. And with it pollution and consumption.
Slide 9: Our economy is even built on this insane growth and relies on inefficiency, planned obsolescence and cyclic consumption.
Slide 10: Due to the limited resources we are programmed from an early stages of our life to behave egocentric and competitive. It has
become part of our value system.
Slide 11: People with aberrant and anti-social behaviour make most of the profit. Think about the weapon industry, exploitation of
natural resources and corruption.
Slide 12: But there are proposal for solutions: Already in 1948 B. F. Skinner’ published a novel called “Walden 2” in which he projected
the consequences of his research to a more of less isolated community.
Slide 13: The community is constantly questioning the status quo, is testing new solutions and by doing so gets rid of many burdens of
the todays society.
Slide 14: What we need today is “Walden 3” - A global system approach to tackle the underlying problems of our world.
Slide 15: We need to know and we have to share the full amount of our physical and intellectual resources in a wise manner.
Slide 16: We have to apply the scientific method to question the status quo and all of our current behaviour. We have to benchmark any
action regarding its effect on the society.
Slide 17: There are grass root organisations that are one this track: The Venus Project and the associated Zeitgeist Movement are
promoting a so called Resourced Based Economy.
Slide 18: Jacque Fresco and Roxanne Meadows - the minds behind the Venus Project - came up with many social and technical solutions
in the last decades.
Slide 19: But we should not consider this as finished but as the starting point and a platform for more end even better ideas.
Slide 20: My intention is to make more people to think in this way and to focus on solution for the fundamental problems of toady’s
society. I hope you feel inspired. Thank you.
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22. These are the slides of the Ignite 2010 talk given by Konrad U. F¨rstner.
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