The Choice is Ours - Interviewees

The Venus Project is pleased to introduce some interviewees from our forthcoming series I'm Jeff Hoffman. I'm professor of aerospace engineering in the department of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT. Prior to coming here, I spent 25 years at NASA as a NASA astronaut and made five flights in various space shuttles. I was the first astronaut to log 1,000 hours on the space shuttle, and I was one of the crew in the rescue mission for the Hubble Space Telescope back in 1993. All over the world there are places where we can see the artificial borders that humans have put up and the different ways that we take care of the land on either side of the borders. So, it's like the many other impacts the Human race has had on our planet. It's a situation where we've affected our planet in ways that are visible from a cosmic perspective, and it should give us pause. I'm Karen Hudes. I'm known as the World Bank whistle-blower. I'm working with a team of other whistle-blowers, both from the World Bank and outside the World Bank, to tell you what's been hidden from you—deliberately hidden from you. The Federal Reserve system is a private system—it's not a central bank. And these bankers are all part of a system called 'The Bank for International Settlements'. They own 40% of the assets of the 43,000 companies that are traded on the capital market, and they pull down 60% of the annual earnings. They bought up all our media; and that media is hoodwinking the citizens. At the vanguard of this new wave of automation is the field of robotics. But instead of serving us, we find them competing for our jobs, and, according to MIT professors Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, one of the reasons for the jobless recovery. I’m Erik Brynjolfsson. I’m a professor at MIT and the director of the MIT initiative on the digital economy. Every new technology both destroys jobs and creates jobs. There are winners and there are losers. There’s disruption, and that’s certainly true with this wave, even as it creates record wealth. We’re now at $77 trillion with record productivity and record GDP. There are a lot of people who are actually worse off than they were before. My name is Abby Martin and I am a journalist for mediaroots.org and a host of Breaking The Set on RT America. The media’s morphed into just peddling the corporate interests of the money masters that control the political establishment. I don’t even consider us to live in a democracy at all; there’s a corporatocracy that’s running the planet, and under this corporatocracy, we have them (corporations) using the state as a tool of the market. And so, we’re at a state now [where] all of their interests [are] bleeding into the media. My name is Paul Wright and I’m the executive director and the founder of 'The Human Rights Defense Center'. I’m also the editor of 'Prison Legal News', and I've published and edited three anthologies on mass incarceration, starting with 'The Celling of America: An Inside look at the U.S. Prison Industry', followed by 'Prison Nation: The Warehousing of America’s Poor', and 'Prison Profiteers: Who Makes Money from Mass Incarceration'. Generally, the laws in this country are written by the wealthy and the powerful because, by definition, that’s who controls legislatures and the commanding heights of the power system in this country. The government is not a neutral agent; it serves the class that holds power. My name is Mark Jacobson. I’m a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, and I build computer models to simulate climates, air pollution, and weather on global, regional, and local scales. I also study and develop solutions to the problems of global warming, air pollution, and air-pollution health problems with the goal of trying to provide energy stability for years to come. There’s no technological or economic limitation to solving these problems; it’s a social and political issue, primarily. My name is Dylan Ratigan, I am the recently retired host of 'The Dylan Ratigan Show' on MSNBC. It was the highest rated non-primetime show on the network. Prior to that, I was the host and creator of a program on CNBC entitled 'Fast Money', which was the single highest-grossing, highest-rated show in the history of CNBC. I have resigned all those positions 18 months ago in order to follow the leadership of recently-returned Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans who have explained to me that the necessary solution to global conflict is the tactical application of global resource management, and I have devoted my life to helping them achieve that goal. My name is Erin Ade. I’m a reporter for RT television and host of 'Boom Bust', a financial and economic show on RT. Yes, there might be idealistic politicians who got into the game to change the world, but, if they’re any good at their job, they’re no longer changing the world; they’re serving the interests of their donors to rise in the world of politics. That’s a scary reality because you can pay your way into having laws implemented that serve you and your corporation as you would like them to serve. I'm Paul Hewitt. I’m well-known for a textbook I’ve written: 'Conceptual Physics' and also for screencasts that are on YouTube right now called 'Hewitt Drew-it! Physics'. Science has a self-correcting method of making sure that people give their best, and honestly. Exceptions? Of course. Corruptions here and there? Of course. But in general, it’s the best way of looking and interacting with the world — rationality. What will Earth look like 50 years from now? It’s something scientists, sci-fi fans, and a lot of kids daydream about. But, there’s also a big dreamer right here in Florida who may just be the oldest living futurist. Jacque Fresco has a vision, a very serious vision, for the 21st century. It’s all in keeping with his life’s work: The Venus Project. We’re not civilized yet. As long as we have prisons, police, armies, and navies, we’re not civilized. We want to build a world that takes care of everybody. Well, there’s no such thing as utopia; just a better system than this one. No [political] system on earth is any good; they are all corrupt. If you don’t want war and you don’t want hatred and unemployment, you have to change the way we think. You have to change the culture. Stay tuned for Episode 1 Coming Soon