TROM
The TROM project “The Reality of Mankind)” is sustained by several volunteers who come from the Venus Project, because they was not satisfied with its internal management, plus other supporters.
Visit their site here: www.tromsite.com
What I don’t like of TROM is that, at least about some themes (private property and jail system) they are strongly biased in direction of extreme-left wing ideology. It is not necessary, in order to build a non capitalistic system.
About criminality and jail system, I agree that without a monetary economy, crimes would drop down hugely, but there will be always a certain quote of criminal people in the population. An insulated, closed place is the only place where these people have to stay, in order to don’t do further damages to the other people. Some people are criminals in their deep inside, in someway in their DNA, and can’t be recovered, it simply belongs to the nature of things. Some people simply born bad.
It is not simply the absence of trade and of a the monetary economy that would make the people better than what they are. If someone is able to kill you to rob you 50$, he/she would be able to kill you also for another reason, if he/she would need. For example to steal you your car park, your boyfriend/girlfriend or just because he/she doesn’t like you.
I disagree with the “do gooding” attitude that gives all the blames to the system and not to the person individually. If I kill someone to rob 50$, the problem is in me, not in the monetary system. And if someone kills you to rob you some money, in other contexts he/she would be able to kill you for some other reason, even if just to experience what killing someone is.
The typical extreme left-winged attitude that says “All people are good, just the system makes them behave bad” is in TROM heavily misused.
It is actually rather the opposite. The most of people (as Homo Sapiens specimens) are bad inside. In the “advanced Countries” they just don’t behave all so bad, because in their social environment it is no more necessary and it would be not convenient.
In other words, never forget that among the human population there are much more “war-criminals” than how you would expect. The most of Nazi criminals soldiers or those in the ex-Jugoslavia, were “normal ordinary people” before the anarchy condition created by the war, gave them the opportunity to do what they could not do before. Such crimes are committed since the begin of the Mankind by the homo Sapiens. Therefore the “do-gooding” vision that sees a perfect world made of all good people with zero bad people closed in jail, is simply out of any possible reality.
There would be much less crimes, but still there would be some. TROM doesn’t tell how those “badly born” people who will anyway commit bad crimes would be treated.
Concerning to the private property, I agree that there is no sense in owning a mountain, but in owning a car or the house where you live, there is nothing wrong. It is not an “illusion”. The matter is only that the extension of the private property should not damage the biosphere. It needs to be limited in someway. The private property has nothing to do with the absurdity of the monetary system. It is a basic concept. That the current jail system needs a lot of improvements, is another question.
Unfortunately at the present lime it is unavoidable, that the first people who are giving efforts in starting in thinking and building a new system, are people coming from that ideological area.
But more people will get aware about the absurdity of Capitalism and the monetary system, the more this “extreme left” bias will vanish in the mass of the people, because the most of people don’t agree with these extreme left-wing concepts.
The problem is that such extreme left-wing concepts keep the most of people away from these projects, when they hear such ideas, like about the private property.
My big concern about TROM is also that they don’t give an idea about of an alternative to the current system could or would work. They only showcase how the current system is bad, but they even don’t try to give you an idea about how a different system would work in the practice. Missing to give an explanation about this is a big fail. You have at least to give an approximated idea about an alternative system could work. Otherwise, you would not capture the interest of the most of people.
The people who watch the documentary, will have to go to work the day after as usual, and go to buy stuff to continue to live. TROM even don’t give hints about what to do, in order to contrast positively the current system. At least, I have done it in my site and i have tried to give a track, about how the alternative could work.
In year 2023 they released a new documentary “TROM II: a message to the aliens”. They go less deep in some “do gooding” part anti-jail and anti-punishments as they did in their previous documentary and in their dedicated books, but also in their new documentary they miss to give and idea about how a trade-free system would work. They simply tell “Without trade, all would be beautiful”.
In some parts of their previous documentary “TROM I: the reality of me” (before 2023), I disagree completely with some statements by some scientists or experts, which sound in direction of anthropocentrism, like the one in the video number 18 “UFO and Extraterrestrial life”, at 3:15 minute, where an alleged expert states:
“If extraterrestrials have a face which can resemble ours, with 2 eyes, 2 ears, 2 nostrils and a mouth, they must be our relatives”
But damn, what a bullshit. Anyone who has a minimal knowledge in zoology knows well the phenomenon of convergent evolution!
What happened here may happens in a similar way anywhere there are similar starting conditions. If an animal has a bilateral symmetry, there is nothing strange if its overall morphology is not dissimilar to us. As well it happens that both fishes and cetaceans have the same shape, but they are very different categories of species!
Of course alien species may have a completely different morphology than us, but it may be, as it may be not.
Another statement which I totally disagree is from the physician Michio Kaku. He makes very good documentaries but he is evidently biased in direction of anthropocentrism. He promotes a parasitic spreading of the human specie, colonizing the galaxy. Is it not enough the disaster which the Homo Sapiens is doing here?
Note that Michio Kaku is American:) The famous physician Stephen Hawking had the same bias and thoughts.
In general, the TROM project is more focused on people and on the problems of people caused by other people (by the system). I am more focused on the problems caused by the people to the biosphere and to the animals. If the people would stop to create problems to the animals and to the biosphere, they would stop also to create problems among each others (shortly summarized).
Anyway, differently than The Venus Project, TROM goes in the right direction, without wasting time and resources in building new cities, and engaging to get people aware about many absurdities of the system where we are living in. On their site you can find many interesting PDF books and audiobooks. I just don’t agree with their approach to some themes.