Zeitgeist: Addendum

[Sapiens]

[Rajiv]

Re: Zeitgeist: Addendum

Very good -- Thanks -- well worth watching!

[Sapiens]

Re: Zeitgeist: Addendum

Very good -- Thanks --

Rajiv,

Caveat: the first half in my opinion is good, the second half gave me the willies. My instinct tells me it is a propaganda piece. If you notice there were no drawbacks or negative consequences mentioned to the use of technology.



To all: Please note, that whatever I post, it is for you to make a critical analysis of its contents and does not carry my implied endorsement.

-Sapiens

[JayS]

Re: Zeitgeist: Addendum

The first Zeitgeist movie was less advocacy and more "here's what's happening and why you should act". Zeitgeist II advocates a specific course of action. I think it's very difficult to make a film advocating revolutionary behavior, and have it NOT come across as a little bizarre.

What do you all think of the likelihood of any economy ditching the profit -based system via abundance?

I like the quote "Man made laws are attempts to deal with recurring problems, and not knowing how to solve them, they make a law."

[Rajiv]

Re: Zeitgeist: Addendum

The Venus Project is not the direction I would go in -- to me -- knowing the resource limitations of the Planet, and the intense poverty that the vast majority of humans live in, -- this smacks of a great deal of elitism -- and of elevating technolgy to be the ultimate panacea to the ills of humanity -- whereas I firmly believe that technology is a two edged sword -- and one has to be very careful in how we move ahead.

The numbers just do not add up! The Venus Project will only work if 90% of humanity ceases to exist! -- Maybe that is what you mean when you allude to WWIII

[VIT]

Re: Zeitgeist: Addendum

The second part is too idealistic for me. Looking back to the history this kind of behavior often leads to very very bad outcomes. The problem is that often "idealistic view" people think more about ideas but not about implementation/path forward and analysis. So the real outcome could be very bad.

[Wild Style]

Re: Zeitgeist: Addendum

The second part is too idealistic for me. Looking back to the history this kind of behavior often leads to very very bad outcomes. The problem is that often "idealistic view" people think more about ideas but not about implementation/path forward and analysis. So the real outcome could be very bad.

I agree 100%. Thought the monetary portion was informative. The rest of it was a lot of psycho babble.

[tombat1913]

Re: Zeitgeist: Addendum

whereas I firmly believe that technology is a two edged sword -- and one has to be very careful in how we move ahead.

However, "one" is not in charge of technological progress, nobody is. Science is moving forth at an exponential rate regardless of opinion or regulation, and nothing can stop it short of systemic collapse or self destruction. If we don't extinguish ourselves as a race and the system doesn't collapse then we are undoubtedly going to see some of the most profound scientific advances imagineable. Moral beliefs about stem cells, cloning, genetic modification, etc. are certainly ones right, but futile none the less.

[labasta]

Re: Zeitgeist: Addendum

I liked it.

He is right about the technology thing. I disagree with the no money thing. I think people need some kind of credit system. It would work small scale like on a kibbutz, but the world isn't united enough yet for it to be a world thing. The people with money don't want to lose it as they don't have to work. Everyone else is playing catch up.

Maybe a credit system of value rather than debt would be the answer. No interest, no fractional reserve lending. You would need laws to a certain degree as I don't trust some people to do the right thing. The corporations thing is a problem in the sense of owning patents and doing nothing with them because they would lose money. That is criminal. But then you could blame the inventor for selling out. Having the corporations owning government is a problem as well as a moral inventor would have an uphill battel trying get going. He would get death threats and all the rest. I've read about a lot of those. I'm always really angry when I do. I don't know the answer to that.

What it has shown me yet again is that morality comes first, then technology will follow, but putting the greater good first is impossible under the profit based system of individuality (or is it?). Maybe a credit system which is not profit based, but work based. Would that work? I dunno.

Jesus, the monied guys would hate that being forced to work. The thing is great technology would allow that to happen anyway eventually. I mean think about rich people in the middle ages having access to honey and then later pepper and spices. Anyone can have that now. It'll be the same in the future with great tech where anyone will be able to have any material possession possible without harming the environment at all.

How? I believe the end technology for material science is a matter recombinator. Once we understand how the smaller sub-stomic particles are put together in a praticle way, we will be able to take anything apart and rearrange the atoms to make something completely different. We would then understand if living things have souls. Would be a dangerous thing perhaps, if we discover they do. Would hold great responsibility.

This would make the pursuit of material possessions by lying cheating thieving or working meaningless. We will "work" for other reasons. This world might come in a few hundred years if the greater good is seen as the goal over individual profit. The science world would need a shake up too. It's too academic. Inventors would contribute good tech in the meantime though.

It sure is a fine balance. I wonder if we aren't somebody's computer game where they are balancing different things in the world, making sure nothing get's too far ahead of itself. It wouldn't surprise me if we are managed.

[Aussie]

Re: Zeitgeist: Addendum

G. Edward Griffin's opinion on "Zeitgeist Addendum"

I don’t like to criticize anything that is helping to spread the truth about the Federal Reserve and 9/11 but I must agree with the substance of what you have said about this video. I watched it two nights ago and was deeply disturbed by its message. At first, I thought it would be best to just let it play itself out in expectation that most viewers would cross it off as whacky. However, the production value is high, the effects and sound score are compelling, and there is enough truth embedded in the beginning to capture the attention and possibly the trust of many within the freedom movement. So here are my comments on a few items of concern:

1. The information about the Federal Reserve is, for the most part, right on target. However, I practically fell out of my chair when the program repeated that old, silly argument about the Fed not creating enough money to cover the cost of interest on debt; and, therefore, the world must forever be in debt. I knew right there that the writer did not read The Creature from Jekyll Island or, if he did, he forgot my analysis of this common myth. For those who are interested in that topic, it is fund on pages 191-192 of The Creature.

2. The next jolt came when the program praised Civil War Greenbacks, calling them debt-free. Actually, Greenbacks were contrary to the U.S. Constitution and, although they were not fiat money issued by the banks, they were fiat money issued by the government. That was better than paying interest on nothing to bankers, but they still wiped out the purchasing power of American money through massive inflation. They can not correctly be called debt-free, either, because they represented debt on the shoulders of the government, which means, of course, on the shoulders of the taxpayers. It never ceases to amaze me how people think that the solution to money created out of nothing by those big, bad bankers is to have money created out of nothing by those nice, trustworthy politicians. Yet, that is what this program supports.

3. There is a lengthy segment in which the author of I Was an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins, tells the story of how propagandists in the U.S. manipulated public opinion to support military action against several Latin American countries. Then Perkins says that these propagandists scared Americans by telling them that the leaders of these countries were Marxists who were aligned with the Soviets. This, of course, is a half truth that is just as dangerous as a total lie. It is true about the propagandists and their strategy to scare the public into supporting military intervention in those countries, but it is false to portray those dictators as great humanitarians who cared only for the well being of their people. That is total bunk. They WERE aligned with the Soviet Union and they WERE part of a Marxist/Leninist strategy to dominate Latin America; a strategy that continues to this day.

There was plenty not to like on both sides of that struggle, but objective historians would never depict the Rhodesians (the CFR crowd in the U.S.) as bad guys but depict the Soviet puppets as good guys. In his book, Perkins reveals this same slant. He exposes the foul tactics of international corporations, the IMF, and World Bank, but he never mentions a Leftist dictator, such as Fidel Castro or Hugo Chavez without praising them. Perkins is a collectivist aligned with the Left, and that strongly influences his telling of this story. Yet the producers of the video make no mention of this bias and give him an inordinate amount of time to present his slanted view without challenge.

4. Perhaps the biggest insult to our intelligence is the main theme of the program. It is that profits are the root of all our problems today. That being the case, we must change mankind to reject profit and we must work together on some other basis. It is never quite clear what that basis is, but, whatever it is, it will be administered and directed by an elite group, at least in the beginning. I was stunned by the fact that this is pure Marxism. Marx theorized that people had to be re-educated (in labor camps, if necessary) to cleanse their minds of the profit motive. He and his disciples, such as Lenin and Stalin and Khruschev, said that, eventually, the character of man would be purged of greed, and then the state would wither away because it no longer would be needed. Sure! We saw that in the Soviet Union and China, right? Yet this Marxist nonsense is exactly what is offered in this video program. It is Communism without using the name.

The profit motive is neither good nor bad. It can be applied either way depending on social and political factors. The desire for profit is merely the desire to be compensated for our labor, our creativity, our knowledge, or even for our risk. Without profit, very little would be accomplished in the world - not even if everyone spent a few years in labor camps to be re-educated. It is a basic part of man’s nature and is the mainspring of human progress, as Henry Grady Weaver described it in his book by that same title. Throughout history, whenever man lived in a system that allows him to be rewarded for his work, there has been great productivity and abundance. By contrast, where social engineers gained control of the state and restricted people from receiving the fruits of their labor, productivity fell, and scarcity was the norm.

The profit motive functions differently in different political systems. In a free system where government does not intervene in the market place, the profit motive always will manifest itself as competition, each person or each company trying to deliver better quality products and services at lower prices. That was how it used to be in the early days of America, and that is what led to the greatest outpouring of productivity and abundance the world has ever seen. However, in a collectivist system where government controls every conceivable aspect of economic and commercial activity (the system that now exists in America), the profit motive always manifests itself as a quest for political influence and laws to favor one group over another. The net effect is to eliminate competition in the market place. Under collectivism, success is achieved, not by creating better products and services for less cost, but by controlling legislators and government agencies. It is a system of legalized plunder, as Frederic Bastiat called it in his famous treatise, The Law. Unfortunately, it is the system that dominates most of the world today.

Zeitgeist Addendum ignores this reality. At one point the narrator even says that the greatest evil in the world today is "the free enterprise system." That’s an incredible statement, especially inasmuch as the free enterprise system has been dead for several decades. It lives in name only. The whole world now is in the grips of non-competitive monopolies and cartels that have forged partnerships with governments. All of the evils to which this program alludes are the result, not of the free enterprise system, but of the abandonment of free enterprise and the adoption of collectivism. This program creates a mythological boogeyman and then advocates more of the very thing that has brought us to the mess we are in today.

The enemy of mankind is not profit. It is a political system of big government. Yet, this program is supportive of some of the most notable big-government collectivist on the planet. Marxist/Leninists may be enemies of collectivists in Washington, DC, but they are collectivists in their own right. The Communist model is no better than the Nazi model.

There is much more that could be said about other program topics such as technology supposedly being our salvation, about the a future world in which no one has to work, and about common ownership of land, oceans, natural resources, etc. but, for the most part, these merely are sub issues to the ones already described, so I will spare my readers the pain of further discourse.

In summary, this program does NOT offer a cure. It offers a mega dose of the disease itself.

Ed Griffin, 2008 Oct 9

[xtronics]

Re: Zeitgeist: Addendum

Some of the problems identified are for real - the solutions are insane - but becoming more widely accepted as PC (scary stuff!). I don't think it is accidental that we have made a huge move towards socialism (under the Republicans!).

Jim Rogers wrote about how the NGOs exploit developing countries and I thing he hits a bulls-eye. Uncle Sam has not been above board - what most of these countries want and need is acess to our markets - not enslaving debt. The bit of exploiting other countries I think has more than a little truth in it.

The memes spread in this film should scare us a bit - the idea that automation is bad - when it really does up the standard of living - is only one socialist falacy put forth here. I found it insulting that they used a clip of Ron Paul at the begininning - he wouldn't advocate any of this film's adjendas.

The public is getting fed up with the coruption in Washington, and is ripe to grab on to propaganda as presented here - this should be a wake-up call.

The current election - between two canidates that have both promissed even more deficit spending are obviously not qualified for the job - I suppose things will have to get worse before there is a chance they can get better... Other than Ron Paul I've not heard anyone promoting anything that might fix the underlying fundemental ecconomic problems.

[xtronics]

Re: Zeitgeist: Addendum

Sorry for the spelling errors above - this site somehow turns off Firefox's spell check at times - I noticed to late...

[marvenger]

Re: Zeitgeist: Addendum

griffin keeps on saying that this is pure socialism, but the head of the venus project repeatedly says he hates capitalism and he hates socialism, he thinks they're both very similar becasue they both operate under the system of scarcity produced by money. Seems weird that Griffin doesn't mention this.

I think Griffin is more worried about the obvious need for a technological elite. I'm not so sure that this is a problem. Science is science and although its not as objective and infallible as many think if there is no profit motive and you're just trying to make things as efficiently as possible then it works even better I think. So the resource based economy would monitor how many people there are and their eating habits and choices and grow whatever varieties and quantities are needed to maximise meeting of demand and minimise waste. This would be a fairly objective process I would think, the technocrates would have exactly the same access to the benefits of the system as anyone else.

Rajiv is worried about population already being too high for something like this. I'm very unsure of the science but the venus project guy reckons that if we harnessed our technology properly we could more than provide for the current population. Obviously at some point population needs to stop growing but hopefuly by then people are having maximum of two kids, or maybe we go colonise other planets.

[Nervous Drake]

Re: Zeitgeist: Addendum

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[marvenger]

Re: Zeitgeist: Addendum

I liked it that zeitgeist tried to put to bed the notion of self reliance and the all importance of the ego; instead emphasising the need for a revolution of the mind where the reality of being interconnected with everything is understood, or increasing this knowledge becomes the goal for mankind.

I think it uses, i haven't seen it in a bit maybe I saw this somewhere else, the analogy of organisms and nervous systems to highlight the advantages of building cities whose components are in consant communication with eachother and having a cpu/brain to create efficient and adaptable cities. I realise this could have some libertarian issues, but i think the point of the system is for it to produce abundance so you can have more time to spend on your own personal endeavours.

So I thinks its about creating abundance but you need to be able to rely on others in order to do this. I'm sure it would have problems but the automated system producing this abundance having no ability to discern between individuals in allocating scarce resources would be a very good way to keep personal influence out of it, also the whole idea is to produce abundance so there are no scarce resources, hard to imagine that being possible for everything though.