State of the RBE at the start of 2021

After a 1 year pause, due to the RBE scene literally having nothing to talk about, and also having more productive things to do, I've decided to do another yearly review of the RBE scene.

I also wanted to wait, to see if the Venus Project is gonna make a presentation video for what they are going to do this year.
While they haven't, they have shown something that is useful for me, which i will get to in a moment.

So, let's get back to our favourite fringe collection of movements.

The Venus Project

As before, we start with the originator of the RBE scene, Roxanne Meadows's Venus Project.

Fortunately, while the 2021 plan vid is missing, TVP has preempted my need for a progress report, and made their own progress report(For those curious about progress regarding The Venus Project... | The Venus Project)

So what is in it?

Well, the same things I was criticizing a year ago(RBE progress, after 20 years (rebuking-rbe-myths.blogspot.com))

-"Dissemination of findings and a proposed alternative to our current socioeconomic paradigm" so unsuccessful propaganda as usual;

-A movie progress report from 2018, that kind of died in the water back then(they still raised tens of thousands of bucks for making the movie);

-The Center for Resource Management project, who's progress has stalled 2 years ago;

-The Transcription Project, which raised tens of thousands of dollars, and is at the same 37% it was in the spring of 2020;

-The Sociocyberneering Education Project I mentioned last year as basically the RBE Jehovah Witness program. To sign up, you need to buy the course materials, which cost 300+ US dollars, because of course they do.

I once mentioned that the Venus Project is slowly winding down, and only way TVP could reverse it's decline is by profiting off a coming financial crisis.

While the recession didn't come, what did happen is that the Coronavirus pandemic affected us all, so of course our beloved project said that they would have totally handled the Covid explosion way better, as in all the other fields an RBE would obviously be superior at. 

 

 This has meant the substantial interest in non-capitalistic alternatives
from the previous year has barely made TVP more popular.
I assume the end of the pandemic will mark the 

start of the Venus Project's death spiral

That's pretty much the scope of news in the past year.

So, in practice, The Venus Project didn't do anything in 2020.

The Zeitgeist Movement

The past year has been defined by their constant attempts to reinvent themselves.

Starting from last year's subject, the Zeitgeist.earth project is inactive since forever, and pretty much an abandoned idea.

Fearing the death of the movement, they have been busy making a TZM 2.0, who's center piece is the new community forum...which almost nobody uses.

Almost, the community itself is pretty uncontrollable at times, due to the moderators being very unwilling to step on anyone's toes, even if they spread insane conspiracy material, and refusing to communicate with them.

The chapters themselves(the ones that still exist) have been making some progress on various things.

Netherlands chapter apparently made some proposal for collective, hierarchical decision making that's supposed to be quite clever, but attached to a comatose movement, it's useless.

As regards to chapter activity, instead of chasing groups from wherever, I will use the chapter map thread from their forum(Global TZM chapters map (introduce yourself) - Support - TZM Community Forum) to see who even bothered to communicate with the wider TZM movement(will be updated as time goes on).

Europe: Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Czechia, Hungary, Finland, Lithuania;
Americas: US(New York, Los Angeles), Venezuela, Argentina;

Asia and Oceania: Taiwan, Malaysia, Australia. Also Mongolia, since they are hosting this year's event;

In regards to their web presence, they have slipped even further than the last time.

As regards to Peter Joseph, he has apparently separated himself from TZM, to let it grow independently(but half the time, the movement does social media updates just to promote his tiny podcast).

Speaking of social media, he's still being an immature edgy "thinker" that hates everyone and gets into Twitter fights no one responds to, with people that are much more famous than him(to his eternal butthurt).

Oh, and he's still bleeding followers at a constant rate.

Now, let's see if there is anything new among independent RBE-affiliated movements.

ASIMPAC - still dead since autumn 2018; 

 

Auravana Project - still doing his thing. Now he is doing some stuff with the Portuguese community, and a somewhat New Age-ish communitarian network called Gaianet.

BUILD A HYBRID RBE COMMUNITY NOW - Knight still posting, and people still responding, but otherwise nothing new.

The Brazil Project - dead since August 2019.

Common Heritage Pledge - still dead. Got replaced with a site called rbepulse that is currently at 0,3% of the stated number of active signatures.

Copiosis - I'm not sure what's up with them. They have developed some of the code and algorithm, but it's hard to figure out how implementable it is.

Economia Basada Enrecursos - in the last year, their Facebook page died;

Free World Charter - Turner is doing interesting projects;

Forward Movement - hasn't posted anything November 2019, and before that, tended to post once a year. Dead.

 

Futurist Playground - stopped posting in autumn 2019. Dead.

 

In All Seriousness - the TZM podcast. Still dead. Peter Joseph made a new one Podcast called Revolution now!(uuuu), that's fringe af.

Kadagaya - I fear my prediction my have come true. They have been posting stuff more and more infrequently in the past year.

Koto Coop - surprisingly, they have advanced somewhat. But it's still in the "we are planning things and posting stuff on YouTube about our ideas" phase, though.

Moving Forward RBE Learning Network - from 6-7 likes, now it's 0-2. Usually one, from a guy that I suspect is the creator.

One Community Global - vaguely connected to the RBE scene, and still making their open-source CAD housing and food projects;

 
One Planet Project - same as the previous years, have reduced their frequency to a Peter Joseph/TVP re-post every 4 months, with 0-1-2 likes.

RBE10K - identical to One Planet above. Has now evolved into making a graphic novel about RBE called Peritia. Another dead end.

RBE Technology - still posting Pop-Sci articles.

Paradism - has been turned into a sort of podcast by a guy calling himself Jarel, and only talks about UBI and anti-Covid measures now.

 

Tetra Project-again, is ripping off TVP's project ideas, but practically, only made some pretty sketches;

 

TZM Education - still dead for years;

 

TZM Global Radio - still dead for years; 

 

TROM - Still doing their own trade-free thing, producing free materials. They have something to show for, they aren't dogmatic, and they don't bother anyone, so i don't mind them.

 

Ubuntu Contributionism - the founder has gone full-on conspiratorial, raving about ancient aliens and stuff. But apparently they made some bots or something.

 

V-Radio - apparently it's back, but just talks about 3rd party candidates, and alternative politics in general;

ZeitNews and ZeitNews Germany-domain still belonging to other entities

And now for some new guys, or people i missed last time:

Jacque Fresco Educational Network - some Fresco fanboy that made a website collecting whatever crumbs Roxanne and the gang allow to pass through the cracks, and spamming Fresco quotes with his format that he thinks is unique and special.

And from Facebook:

Resource-Based Economy -what better page than one with a title straight to the point?
It tends to be your typical anti-capitalist meme page;

 

Quantum Transition to a Resource Based Economy - RBE woo combined with New Age woo;

Institute for a Resource-Based Economy - generic slightly conspiratorial anti-capitalist page, who's only poster is a woman called Helga Monas, who's apparently also a part(or maybe leader) of the Quantum transition group. Their site does redirect to the Toronto Tool Library, which is an initiative for tool sharing. So at least something good came out of it.

Resource Based Economy(@RBEglobal) - a tiny group. Tended to spread anti-capitalist memes last year, but nothing in half a year;

RBE Solutions Energy - pop-sci page + some conspiracy stuff about Tesla;

RBE Solutions Transport - pop-sci page;

Natural Law Resource Based Economy(@naturallawresourcebasedeconomy) - A breakaway movement from TZM, made by members exasperated by the above mentioned rampant conspiracy theorism on Zeitgeist social media. Already stillborn by the time it started. Now inactive;

 

If there is any page i missed, please tell me, would love to review it, and add it to the list.

 

So in short, the RBE scene is in a rougher shape than before, mostly stagnating, and only propped up by the current Coronavirus crisis.