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  • In a decaying society, Art, if it is truthful,

  • must also reflect decay.

  • And unless it wants to break faith with its social function,

  • Art must show the world as changeable.

  • And help to change it.

  • -Ernst Fischer

  • ... deadly riots over the government's plan

  • to avoid defaulting on its loans ...

  • is that the unemployment keeps rising

  • and it has to keep rising

  • just because we have an excess supply of goods...

  • this is all borrowed money...

  • and that debt is owned by banks in other countries...

  • M-O-N-E-Y, in the form of a convenient personal loan...

  • ... a filter cigarette that delivers the taste...

  • 45 malt liquor... Are You Hot?!...

  • is the US planning to bomb Iran?...

  • ...America is sponsoring terror attacks in Iran...

  • Now, my grandmother was a wonderful person.

  • She taught me how to play the game Monopoly.

  • She understood that the name of the game is to acquire.

  • She would accumulate everything she could

  • and eventually, she became the master of the board.

  • And then she would always say the same thing to me.

  • She would look at me and she would say:

  • One day, you'll learn to play the game.”

  • One summer, I played Monopoly almost every day, all day long.

  • And that summer, I learned to play the game.

  • I came to understand the only way to win

  • is to make a total commitment to acquisition.

  • I came to understand that money and possessions-

  • that's the way that you keep score.

  • And by the end of that summer, I was more ruthless than my grandmother.

  • .

  • I was ready to bend the rules if I had to, to win that game.

  • And I sat down with her to play that fall.

  • I took everything she had.

  • I watched her give her last dollar and quit in utter defeat.

  • And then she had one more thing to teach me.

  • Then she said:

  • Now it all goes back in the box.

  • All those houses and hotels.

  • All the railroads and utility companies...

  • All that property and all that wonderful money...

  • Now it all goes back in the box.

  • None of it was really yours.

  • You got all heated up about it for a while.

  • But it was around a long time before you sat down at the board

  • and it will be here after you're gone: players come, players go.

  • Houses and cars...

  • Titles and clothes...

  • Even your body.”

  • Because the fact is that everything I clutch and consume and hoard

  • is going to go back in the box and I'm going to lose it all.

  • So you have to ask yourself

  • when you finally get the ultimate promotion

  • when you have made the ultimate purchase

  • when you buy the ultimate home

  • when you have stored up financial security

  • and climbed the ladder of success

  • to the highest rung you can possibly climb it...

  • and the thrill wears off

  • - and it will wear off -

  • Then what?

  • How far do you have to walk down that road

  • before you see where it leads?

  • Surely you understand

  • it will never be enough.

  • So you have to ask yourself the question:

  • What matters?

  • They're Hot!

  • They're Rich!

  • And They're Spoiled!

  • America's #1 Show is Back!

  • Gentle Machine Productions Presents

  • A Peter Joseph Film

  • When I was a young man

  • growing up in New York City

  • I refused to pledge allegiance to the flag.

  • Of course I was sent to the principal's office.

  • And he asked me, 'Why don't you want to pledge allegiance?

  • Everybody does!'

  • I said, 'Everybody once believed the Earth was flat

  • but that doesn't make it so.'

  • I explained that America owed everything it has

  • to other cultures and other nations

  • .

  • and that I would rather pledge allegiance

  • to the Earth and everyone on it.

  • .

  • Needless to say it wasn't long before I left school entirely

  • .

  • ...and I set up a lab in my bedroom.

  • There I began to learn about science and nature.

  • .

  • I realized then that the universe is governed by laws

  • .

  • and that the human being, along with society itself,

  • .

  • was not exempt from these laws.

  • Then came the crash of 1929

  • which began what we now call

  • The Great Depression”.

  • I found it difficult to understand why millions

  • were out of work, homeless, starving,

  • while all the factories were sitting there;

  • the resources were unchanged.

  • It was then that I realized

  • that the rules of the economic game

  • were inherently invalid.

  • Shortly after, came World War II

  • where various nations took turns

  • systematically destroying each other.

  • I later calculated that all the destruction

  • and wasted resources spent on that war

  • .

  • could have easily provided for every

  • human need on the planet.

  • Since that time,I have watched humanity

  • set the stage for its own extinction.

  • I have watched as the precious finite resources

  • are perpetually wasted and destroyed

  • in the name of profit and free markets.

  • I have watched the social values of society

  • be reduced into a base artificiality of materialism

  • and mindless consumption.

  • And I have watched as the monetary powers

  • control the political structure

  • of supposedly free societies.

  • I'm 94 years old now.

  • And I'm afraid my disposition is the same as it was

  • .

  • 75 years ago.

  • This shit's got to go.

  • [ ZEITGEIST ]

  • [ ZEITGEIST: MOVING FORWARD ]

  • [ Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful

  • committed citizens can change the world.

  • Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. -Margaret Mead ]

  • .

  • [ Part 1: Human Nature ]

  • So you're a scientist, and ...

  • somewhere along the way, hammered into your head

  • is the inevitablenature versus nurture

  • and that's at least up there with Coke versus Pepsi

  • or Greeks versus Trojans.

  • So, nature versus nurture: This, by now

  • utterly over-simplifying view of

  • where influences are-

  • influences on how a cell deals with

  • an energy crisis up to

  • what makes us who we are on the most individualistic

  • levels of personality.

  • And what you've got is this complete false dichotomy

  • built around nature as deterministic

  • at the very bottom of all the causality.

  • Of 'life is DNA' and the 'code of codes'

  • and the Holy Grail, and everything is driven by it.

  • At the other end is a much more social science perspective

  • .

  • which is: We are 'social organisms'

  • and biology is for slime molds;

  • humans are free of biology.

  • And obviously both views are nonsense.

  • What you see instead is that

  • it is virtually impossible to understand how biology works

  • .

  • outside of the context of environment.

  • [ It's Genetic ]

  • One of the most crazy making yet widespread

  • .

  • and potentially dangerous notions is:

  • Oh, that behavior is genetic.”

  • Now what does that mean? It means all sorts of subtle stuff if you

  • .

  • know modern biology, but for most people out there

  • what it winds up meaning is:

  • a deterministic view of life,

  • one rooted in biology and genetics.

  • Genes equal things that can't be changed.

  • Genes equal things that are

  • inevitable and that you might as well

  • not waste resources trying to fix,

  • might as well not put societal energies into trying to improve

  • because it's inevitable and it's unchangeable.

  • And that is sheer nonsense.

  • [ Disease ]

  • It is widely thought that

  • conditions like ADHD are genetically programmed,

  • conditions like schizophrenia are genetically programmed.

  • The truth is the opposite. Nothing is genetically programmed.

  • .

  • There are very rare diseases, a small handful,

  • .

  • extremely sparsely represented in the population,

  • that are truly genetically determined.

  • Most complex conditions

  • might have a predisposition that has a genetic component,

  • but a predisposition is not the same as a predetermination.

  • The whole search for the source of diseases in the genome

  • was doomed to failure before anybody even thought of it,

  • because most diseases are not genetically predetermined.

  • Heart disease, cancer, strokes,

  • rheumatoid conditions, autoimmune conditions in general,

  • mental health conditions, addictions-

  • none of them are genetically determined.

  • Breast cancer, for example. Out of 100 women with breast cancer

  • only seven will carry the breast cancer genes.

  • 93 do not.

  • And out of 100 women who do have the genes

  • not all of them will get cancer.

  • [ Behavior ]

  • Genes are not just things that make us behave in

  • a particular way regardless of our environment.

  • Genes give us different ways of responding to our environment.

  • And in fact it looks as if some of the early

  • childhood influences and the kind of child rearing,

  • affect gene expression:

  • actually turning on or off different genes

  • to put you on a different developmental track

  • which may suit the kind of world you've got to deal with.

  • So for example,

  • a study done in Montreal with suicide victims

  • looked at autopsies of the brains of these people.

  • And it turned out that if a suicide victim

  • (these are usually young adults)

  • had been abused as children, the abuse actually

  • caused a genetic change in the brain

  • that was absent in the brains of people who had not been abused.

  • That's an epigenetic effect.

  • Epimeans on top of, so that

  • the epigenetic influence is what happens

  • environmentally to either activate or deactivate certain genes.

  • In New Zealand, there was a study

  • that was done in a town called Dunedin,

  • in which a few thousand individuals

  • were studied from birth into their 20s.

  • What they found was that they could identify

  • a genetic mutation- an abnormal gene-

  • which did have some relation to

  • the predisposition to commit violence,

  • but only if the individual had also

  • been subjected to severe child abuse.

  • In other words, children with this abnormal gene

  • would be no more likely to be violent than anybody else,

  • and in fact, they actually had a lower rate of violence

  • than people with normal genes

  • as long as they weren't abused as children.

  • Great additional example of the ways

  • in which genes are notbe all - end all.”

  • A fancy technique where you can

  • take a specific gene out of a mouse,

  • that mouse and its descendants will not have that gene.

  • You haveknocked outthat gene.

  • So there's this one gene that encodes for a protein

  • that has something to do with learning and memory.

  • And with this fabulous demonstration youknock outthat gene

  • .

  • and you have a mouse that doesn't learn as well.

  • Ooh! A genetic basis for intelligence!”

  • What was much less appreciated in that landmark study

  • that got picked up by the media left and right,

  • is take those genetically impaired mice

  • and raise them in a much more enriched

  • stimulating environment than your normal mice in a lab cage,

  • and they completely overcame that deficit.

  • So, when one says in a contemporary sense that

  • Oh, this behavior is genetic

  • to the extent that that's even a valid sort of phrase to use,

  • what you're saying is: there is a

  • genetic contribution to how this organism responds to environment;

  • .

  • genes may influence the readiness with which

  • an organism will deal with a certain environmental challenge.

  • .

  • You know, that's not the version most people have in their minds.

  • And not to be too 'soap-boxing'

  • but run with the old version ofIt's genetic!” and

  • .

  • it's not that far from the history of Eugenics and things of that sort.

  • .

  • It's a widespread misconception

  • and it's a potentially fairly dangerous one.

  • One reason that the

  • biological explanation for violence,

  • one reason that hypothesis is potentially dangerous-

  • it's not just misleading it can really do harm-

  • .

  • is because if you believe that, you could very easily say:

  • .

  • Well, there's nothing we can do

  • to change the predisposition people have to becoming violent.

  • All we can do, if somebody becomes violent is

  • punish them- lock them up or execute them-

  • .

  • but we don't need to worry about changing the

  • social environment or the social preconditions

  • that may lead people to become violent

  • because that's irrelevant.”

  • The genetic argument allows us the luxury of ignoring

  • past and present historical and social factors.

  • And in the words of Louis Menand

  • who wrote in the New Yorker, very astutely he said:

  • .

  • It's all in the genes, an explanation for the way things are

  • that does not threaten the way things are.

  • Why should someone feel unhappy or

  • engage in antisocial behavior when that person is living

  • .

  • in the freest and most prosperous nation on Earth?

  • It can't be the system.

  • There must be a flaw in the wiring somewhere.”

  • Which is a good way of putting it.

  • So, the genetic argument is simply a cop-out

  • which allows us to ignore

  • the social and economic and political factors

  • that, in fact, underlie many troublesome behaviors.

  • .

  • [ Case Study: Addiction ]

  • Addictions are usually considered to be a drug-related issue.

  • .

  • But looking at it more broadly, I define addiction as any behavior

  • .

  • that is associated with craving, with temporary relief

  • .

  • and with long-term negative consequences

  • along with an impairment of control over it, so that the person

  • wishes to give it up or promises to do so

  • but can't follow through.

  • And when you understand that, you see that

  • there are many more addictions than simply those related to drugs.

  • .

  • There's workaholism, addiction to shopping,

  • to the Internet; to video games.

  • There's the addiction to power. People that have power but

  • they want more and more; nothing is ever enough for them.

  • Acquisition - corporations that must own more and more.

  • The addiction to oil, or at least to the wealth

  • and to the products made accessible to us by oil.

  • .

  • Look at the negative consequences on the environment.

  • We are destroying the very earth that we inhabit

  • for the sake of that addiction. Now, these addictions

  • are far more devastating in their social consequences

  • .

  • than the cocaine or heroin habits of my downtown Eastside patients.

  • Yet, they are rewarded! And considered to be respectable.

  • The tobacco company executive that shows a higher profit

  • will get a much bigger reward.

  • He doesn't face any negative consequences legally or otherwise.

  • In fact he is a respected member

  • of the board of several other corporations.

  • But, tobacco smoke related diseases

  • kill 5 ½ million people around the world every year.

  • In the United States they kill 400,000 people a year.

  • And these people are addicted to what? To profit.

  • To such a degree that they are addicted

  • that they are actually in denial

  • about the impact of their activities

  • which is typical for addicts, is denial!

  • And that's a respectable one. It's respectable to be

  • addicted to profit, no matter what the cost.

  • So, what is acceptable and what is respectable

  • is a highly arbitrary phenomenon in our society.

  • And it seems like the greater the harm

  • the more respectable the addiction.

  • [ The Myth ]

  • There is a general myth that drugs, in themselves, are addictive.

  • In fact, the war on drugs is predicated on the idea

  • that if you interdict the source of drugs

  • you can deal with addiction that way.

  • Now, if you understand addiction in the broader sense

  • we see that nothing in itself is addictive.

  • No substance, no drug is by itself addictive

  • and no behavior is by itself addictive.

  • Many people can go shopping without becoming shopaholics.

  • Not everyone becomes a food addict.

  • Not everyone who drinks a glass of wine becomes an alcoholic.

  • So the real issue is: what makes people susceptible?

  • Because it's the combination of a susceptible individual

  • and the potentially addictive substance or behavior

  • that makes for the full flowering of addiction.

  • In short, it's not the drug that's addictive,

  • it's the question of the susceptibility of the individual

  • to being addicted to a particular substance or behavior.

  • [ Environment ]

  • If we wish to understand what then

  • makes some people susceptible

  • we actually have to look at the life experience.

  • The old idea- although it's old but it's still

  • broadly held- that addictions are due to some genetic cause

  • is simply scientifically untenable.

  • What the case is actually is that

  • certain life experiences make people susceptible.

  • Life experiences that not only shape the person's

  • personality and psychological needs

  • but also their very brains in certain ways.

  • And that process begins in utero.

  • [ Prenatal ]

  • It has been shown, for example,

  • that if you stress mothers during pregnancy

  • their children are more likely to have traits

  • that predispose them to addictions.

  • And that's because development is shaped

  • by the psychological and social environment.

  • So the biology of human beings is very much affected by

  • and programmed by the life experiences beginning in utero.

  • Environment does not begin at birth.

  • Environment begins as soon as you have an environment.

  • As soon as you are a fetus, you are subject to

  • whatever information is coming through mom's circulations.

  • Hormones, levels of nutrients...

  • A great landmark example of this is

  • something called the Dutch Hongerwinter.

  • In 1944, Nazis occupying Holland

  • for a bunch of reasons, they decide to take all the food

  • and divert it to Germany;

  • for three months everybody there was starving.

  • Tens of thousands of people starve to death.

  • What the Dutch hunger winter effect is:

  • if you were a second or third trimester fetus during the starvation

  • your body 'learned' something very unique during that time.

  • As it turns out, second and third trimester is when

  • your body is going about trying to learn about the environment:

  • How menacing of a place is it out there?

  • How plentiful? How much nutrients am I getting

  • by way of mom's circulation?

  • Be a fetus who was starving during that time and

  • your body programs forever after to be

  • really, really stingy with your sugar and fat

  • and what you do is you store every bit of it.

  • Be a Dutch Hunger Winter fetus and half a century later,

  • everything else being equal, you are more likely to have

  • .

  • high blood pressure, obesity or metabolic syndrome.

  • That is environment coming in a very unexpected place.

  • You can stress animals in the laboratory when they're pregnant

  • and their offspring will be more likely to use

  • cocaine and alcohol as adults.

  • You can stress human mothers. For example, in a British study

  • women who were abused in pregnancy

  • will have higher levels of the

  • stress hormone cortisol in their placenta at birth

  • and their children are more likely to have conditions

  • that predispose them to addictions by age 7 or 8.

  • So in utero stress already prepares the gun

  • for all kinds of mental health issues.

  • An Israeli study done on children

  • born to mothers who were pregnant

  • prior to the onset of the 1967 war...

  • These women, of course, were very stressed

  • and their offspring have a higher incidence of schizophrenia

  • than the average cohort.

  • So, there is plenty of evidence now that prenatal effects

  • have a huge impact on the developing human being.

  • [ Infancy ]

  • The point about human development and specifically

  • human brain development is that it occurs mostly

  • under the impact of the environment and mostly after birth.

  • .

  • Now, if you compare us to a horse

  • which can run on the first day of life

  • we see that we are very undeveloped.

  • We can't muster that much neurological coordination

  • balance, muscle strength, visual acuity

  • until a year and a half, two years of age.

  • That's because the brain development in the horse

  • happens in the safety of the womb

  • and in the human being, it has to happen after birth,

  • and that has to do with simple evolutionary logic.

  • As the head gets larger, which is what makes us into human beings-

  • the burgeoning of the forebrain

  • is what creates the human species, actually.

  • At the same time we walk on two legs, so our pelvis narrows

  • to accommodate that. So now we have a narrower pelvis, a larger head- ...

  • .

  • Bingo! We have to be born prematurely.

  • And that means the brain development that in other animals

  • occurs in utero, in us, occurs after birth

  • .

  • and much of that under the impact of the environment.

  • The concept of Neural Darwinism simply means

  • that the circuits that get the appropriate input from the environment

  • will develop optimally and the ones that don't

  • will either not develop optimally or perhaps not at all.

  • If you take a child with perfectly good eyes at birth

  • and you put him in a dark room for five years

  • he will be blind thereafter for the rest of his life

  • because the circuits of vision require light waves for their development,

  • and without that even the rudimentary circuits

  • present and active at birth

  • will atrophy and die and new ones will not develop.

  • [ Memory ]

  • There is a significant way in which

  • early experiences shape adult behavior,

  • and even and especially

  • early experiences for which there is no recall memory.

  • It turns out that there are two kinds of memory:

  • there is explicit memory which is recall;

  • this is when you can call back facts,

  • details, episodes, circumstances.

  • But the structure in the brain which is called the hippocampus

  • which encodes recall memory

  • doesn't even begin to develop fully until a year and a half

  • and it is not fully developed until much later.

  • Which is why hardly anybody has any recall memory

  • prior to 18 months.

  • But there is another kind of memory which is called implicit memory

  • .

  • which is in fact, an emotional memory

  • where the emotional impact and the interpretation the child makes

  • of those emotional experiences are ingrained in the brain

  • in the form of nerve circuits ready to fire without specific recall.

  • .

  • So to give you a clear example, people who are adopted

  • .

  • have a lifelong sense of rejection very often.

  • They can't recall the adoption.

  • They can't recall the separation of the birth mother

  • because there's nothing there to recall with.

  • But the emotional memory of separation and rejection

  • is deeply embedded in their brains.

  • Hence, they are much more likely to experience a sense of rejection

  • .

  • and a great emotional upset

  • when they perceive themselves as being rejected by other people.

  • .

  • That's not unique to people who are adopted

  • but it is particularly strong in them

  • because of this function of implicit memory.

  • People who are addicted, given ...

  • all the research literature and in my experience,

  • the hard-core addicts virtually were all

  • significantly abused as children

  • or suffered severe emotional loss.

  • Their emotional or implicit memories

  • are those of a world that's not safe

  • and not helpful, caregivers who were not to be trusted

  • and relationships that are not

  • safe enough to open up to vulnerably.

  • And hence their responses tend to be

  • to keep themselves separate from really intimate relationships;

  • .

  • not to trust caregivers, doctors

  • and other people who are trying to help them

  • and generally see the world as an unsafe place.

  • And that is strictly a function of implicit memory

  • which sometimes has to do with incidents they don't even recall.

  • [ Touch ]

  • Infants who are born premature are often in incubators

  • and various types of gadgetry and machinery

  • for weeks and perhaps months.

  • It's now known that if these children

  • are touched and stroked on the back for just 10 minutes a day,

  • that promotes their brain development.

  • So, human touch is essential for development

  • and in fact, infants who are never picked up will actually die.

  • That is how much of a fundamental need

  • being held is to human beings.

  • In our society, there is an unfortunate tendency

  • to tell parents not to pick up their kids, not to hold them,

  • not to pick up babies who are crying for fear of spoiling them or

  • to encourage them to sleep through the night- you don't pick them up-

  • .

  • which is just the opposite of what the child needs.

  • And these children might go back to sleep because they give up

  • and their brains just shut down as a way of

  • defending against the vulnerability

  • of being abandoned really by their parents.

  • But their implicit memories will be

  • that of the world that doesn't give a damn.

  • [ Childhood ]

  • A lot of these differences are structured very early in life.

  • In a way, the parental experience of adversity-

  • how tough life is or how easy it is- is passed on to children

  • .

  • whether through maternal depression

  • or parents being bad tempered with their kids because they have

  • .

  • had a hard day or just being too tired at the end of the day.

  • And these have very powerful effects

  • programming children's development, which we know a lot about now.

  • But that early sensitivity isn't just an evolutionary mistake.

  • It exists again in many different species.

  • Even in seedlings, there's an early adaptive process

  • to the kind of environment they are growing up in.

  • But for humans, the adaptation is to the quality of social relations.

  • And so, early life:

  • how nurturing, how much conflict, how much attention you get-

  • is a taster of the kind of world you may be growing up in.

  • Are you growing up in a world where you have to

  • fight for what you can get, watch your back,

  • fend for yourself, learn not to trust others?

  • Or are you growing up in a society where you depend on

  • reciprocity, mutuality, cooperation, where empathy is important,

  • where your security depends on good relations with other people?

  • And that needs a very different emotional and cognitive development.

  • .

  • And that's what the early sensitivity is about.

  • And parenting is almost- quite unconsciously-

  • a system for passing on that experience to children,

  • of the kind of world they are in.

  • The great British child psychiatrist, D.W. Winnicott, said

  • that fundamentally, two things can go wrong in childhood.

  • One is when things happen that shouldn't happen

  • and then things that should happen but don't.

  • In the first category, is the traumatic and abusive

  • and abandonment experiences of my

  • downtown Eastside patients and of many addicts.

  • That's what shouldn't happen but did.

  • But then there is the non-stressed, attuned,

  • non-distracted attention of the parent that every child needs

  • .

  • that very often children don't get.

  • They're not abused. They are not neglected

  • and they're not traumatized.

  • But what should happen-

  • the presence of the emotionally available nurturing parent-

  • just is not available to them because

  • of the stresses in our society and the parenting environment.

  • The psychologist Allan Schore calls that "Proximal Abandonment"

  • when the parent is physically present but emotionally absent.

  • .

  • I have spent

  • roughly the last 40 years of my life

  • working with the most violent of people our society produces:

  • murderers, rapists and so on.

  • In an attempt to understand what causes this violence,

  • I discovered that the most violent of the criminals in our prisons

  • had themselves been victims

  • of a degree of child abuse that was beyond the scale

  • of what I ever thought of applying the term child abuse to.

  • I had no idea of the depth

  • of the depravity with which children in our society

  • are all too often treated.

  • The most violent people I saw were themselves the survivors

  • of their own attempted murder often at the hands of their

  • parents or other people in their social environment

  • or were the survivors of family members who had been killed-

  • their closest family members- by other people.

  • The Buddha argued that everything depends on everything else.

  • He says 'The one contains the many and the many contains the one.'

  • That you can't understand anything in isolation from its environment.

  • The leaf contains the sun, the sky and the earth, obviously.

  • This has now been shown to be true, of course all around

  • and specifically when it comes to human development.

  • The modern scientific term for it

  • is the "bio-psycho-social" nature of human development

  • which says that the biology of human beings

  • depends very much on their interaction with

  • the social and psychological environment.

  • And specifically, the psychiatrist and researcher

  • Daniel Siegel at the University of California, Los Angeles, UCLA

  • has coined a phraseInterpersonal Neurobiology

  • which means to say that the way that our nervous system functions

  • depends very much on our personal relationships:

  • in the first place with the parenting caregivers,

  • and in the second place with other important

  • attachment figures in our lives

  • and in the third place, with our entire culture.

  • So that you can't separate the

  • neurological functioning of a human being

  • from the environment in which he or she grew up in

  • and continues to exist in.

  • And this is true throughout the life cycle.

  • It's particularly true when you are

  • dependent and helpless when your brain is developing

  • but it's true even in adults and even at the end of life.

  • [ Culture ]

  • Human beings have lived in almost every kind of society,

  • from the most egalitarian-

  • hunting and gathering societies seem to have been very egalitarian-

  • for instance based on food sharing, gift exchange...

  • Small bands of people living

  • predominately off of foraging and a little bit of hunting,

  • predominantly among people you have

  • at the least, known your entire life

  • if not surrounded by third cousins or closer,

  • in a world in which there is a great deal

  • of fluidity between different groups,

  • in a world which there is not

  • a whole lot in terms of material culture...

  • this is how humans have spent most of their hominid history.

  • And, no surprise, that makes for a very different world.

  • One of the things you get as a result of that is far less violence.

  • Organized group violence is

  • not something that occurred at that time

  • of human history and that seems quite clear.

  • So where did we go wrong?

  • Violence is not universal. It is not symmetrically distributed

  • throughout the human race. There is a huge variation

  • in the amount of violence in different societies.

  • There are some societies that have virtually no violence.

  • There are others that destroy themselves!

  • Some of the Anabaptist religious groups

  • that are complete strict pacifists

  • like the Amish, the Mennonites, the Hutterites...

  • Among some of these groups, the Hutterites-

  • there are no recorded cases of homicide.

  • During our major wars, like World War II

  • where people were being drafted

  • they would refuse to serve in the military.

  • They would go to prison rather than serve in the military.

  • In the Kibbutzim in Israel

  • the level of violence is so low that the criminal courts there

  • will often send violent offenders

  • -people who have committed crimes-

  • to live on the Kibbutzim in order to

  • learn how to live a non-violent life.

  • Because that's the way people live there.

  • So, we are amply shaped by society.

  • Our societies, in the broader sense, including our theological,

  • our metaphysical, our linguistic influences, etc.,

  • our societies help shape us as to whether or not we think

  • life is basically about sin or about beauty;

  • whether the afterlife will carry a price

  • for how we live our lives or if it's irrelevant.

  • In a broad sort of way, different large societies

  • could be termed as individualistic or collectivist, and

  • you get very different people and different mindsets and

  • .

  • I suspect different brains coming along with that.

  • We, in America, are in one of the most individualistic of societies,

  • with capitalism being a system that allows you to go

  • higher and higher up a potential pyramid and

  • the deal is that it comes with fewer and fewer safety nets.

  • By definition, the more stratified a society is,

  • the fewer people you have as peers; the fewer people with whom

  • you have symmetrical, reciprocal relationships

  • and instead, all you have are differing spots and endless hierarchies.

  • A world in which you have few reciprocal partners

  • is a world with a lot less altruism.

  • [Human Nature]

  • So, this brings us to a total impossible juncture which is

  • to try to make sense in perspective science

  • as to what that nature is of human nature.

  • You know, on a certain level

  • the nature of our nature is not to be

  • particularly constrained by our nature.

  • We come up with more social

  • variability than any species out there.

  • More systems of belief, of styles, of family structures,

  • of ways of raising children. The capacity

  • for variety that we have is extraordinary.

  • In a society which is predicated on competition

  • and really, very often, the ruthless exploitation

  • of one human being by another-

  • the profiteering off of other people's problems

  • and very often the creation of problems

  • for the purpose of profiteering-

  • the ruling ideology will very often justify that behavior

  • by appeals to some fundamental and unalterable human nature.

  • So the myth in our society

  • is that people are competitive by nature

  • and that they are individualistic and that they're selfish.

  • The real reality is quite the opposite.

  • We have certain human needs.

  • The only way that you can talk about human nature concretely

  • is by recognizing that there are certain human needs.

  • We have a human need for companionship and for close contact,

  • to be loved, to be attached to, to be accepted,

  • to be seen, to be received for who we are.

  • If those needs are met, we develop

  • into people who are compassionate and cooperative and

  • who have empathy for other people.

  • So...

  • the opposite, that we often see in our society,

  • is in fact, a distortion of human nature

  • precisely because so few people have their needs met.

  • So, yes you can talk about human nature

  • but only in the sense of basic human needs

  • that are instinctively evoked

  • or I should say, certain human needs

  • that lead to certain traits if they are met

  • and a different set of traits if they are denied.

  • So...

  • when we recognize the fact that the human organism,

  • which has a great deal of adaptive flexibility

  • allowing us to survive in many different conditions,

  • is also rigidly programmed for certain environmental requirements

  • or human needs,

  • a social imperative begins to emerge.

  • Just as our bodies require physical nutrients,

  • the human brain demands positive forms of environmental stimulus

  • at all stages of development,

  • while also needing to be protected

  • from other negative forms of stimulus.

  • And if things that should happen, do not...

  • or if things that shouldn't happen, do...

  • it is now apparent that the door can be opened for not only

  • a cascade of mental and physical diseases

  • but many detrimental human behaviors as well.

  • So, as we turn our perspective now outward

  • and take account for the state of affairs today,

  • we must ask the question:

  • Is the condition we have created in the modern world

  • actually supporting our health?

  • Is the bedrock of our socioeconomic system

  • acting as a positive force

  • for human and social development and progress?

  • Or, is the foundational gravitation of our society

  • actually going against the core evolutionary requirements

  • needed to create and maintain

  • our personal and social well-being?

  • [Part II: Social Pathology]

  • So, one might ask where did this all begin?

  • what we have today... really a world in a state of

  • cumulative collapse.

  • [The Market]

  • You get it started with John Locke.

  • And John Locke introduces property.

  • He has three provisos for just private right and property.

  • And the three provisos are:

  • There must be enough left over for others

  • and that you must not let it spoil

  • and that you, most of all, must mix your labor with it.

  • It seems justified- you mix your labor with the world

  • then you are entitled to the product.

  • And as long as there's enough left over for others

  • and as long as it doesn't spoil

  • and you don't allow anything to go to waste then that's okay.

  • He spends a long time on his famous Treatises of Government

  • and it's since been the canonical text

  • for economic and political and legal understanding.

  • It is still the classic text that's studied.

  • Well, ... after he gives the provisos

  • and you're almost thinking at the time

  • whether you are for private property or not-

  • he has given a very good and plausible and powerful defense

  • of private property here-

  • Well, he drops them!

  • He drops them like that. Right in one sentence.

  • He says, 'Well, once the introduction

  • of money came in by men's tacit consent..." then it became-

  • .

  • and he doesn't say all the provisos are canceled or erased-

  • but that's what happens.

  • So, now we have not

  • product and your property earned by your own labor-

  • oh no- money buys labor now.

  • There is no longer consideration

  • whether there is enough left over for others;

  • there is no longer consideration of whether it spoils-

  • because he says money is like silver and gold and gold can't spoil-

  • .

  • and therefore money can't be responsible for waste...

  • which is ridiculous. We are not talking about money and silver,

  • we are talking about what its effects are.

  • It's one non sequitur after another.

  • Just the most startling

  • logical legerdemain that he gets away with here.

  • But it fits the interests of capital owners.

  • Then Adam Smith comes along

  • and what he adds is the religion to this...

  • Locke started with 'God made it all this way- this is God's right...'

  • .

  • and now we get also with Smith saying 'it's not only God's...'

  • .

  • well, he's not actually saying this but this is

  • what's happening philosophically, in principle-

  • he's saying that 'it is not only a question of private property...'

  • That's all now 'presupposed'- It's Given!

  • And that there's 'money investors that buy labor' – Given!

  • There's no limit to how much they can buy of other men's labor,

  • how much they can accumulate, how much 'inequality'-

  • that's all given now.

  • And so he comes along and what his big idea is-

  • and again it's just introduced in parentheses, in passing...

  • You know, when people put out goods for sale- ... the supply-

  • and other people buy them- the demand and so forth,

  • how do we have supply equaling demand or demand equaling supply?

  • .

  • How can they come into equilibrium?

  • And that is one of the central notions of economics,

  • is how do they come into equilibrium.

  • And he says: it's theInvisible Hand of the Market

  • that brings them into equilibrium.

  • So, now we have "God is actually imminent”.

  • He just didn't give the rights to property

  • and all its wherewithal and its "natural rights"

  • regarding what Locke said...

  • now we have the system itself AS "God".

  • In fact, Smith says, when he talks

  • and you'll never find this quote, and you have to read the whole of

  • the Inquiry into the Wealth of Nations to find it.

  • He says: 'the scantiness of subsistence

  • sets limits to the reproduction of the poor

  • and that nature can deal with this in no other way

  • than elimination of their children.'

  • So he anticipated evolutionary theory in the worst sense...

  • this is well before Darwin.

  • And so he called them the 'Race of Laborers'.

  • So you can see: there was inherent racism built in here,

  • there was an inherent life blindness to kill innumerable children.

  • .

  • And he thought: 'That's the Invisible Hand making supply

  • meet demand and demand meet supply.'

  • So, see- how wise "God" is?

  • So you can see a lot of the really virulent

  • life destructive, eco-genocidal things

  • that are going on now have, in a way,

  • a 'thought gene' back in Smith too.

  • When we reflect on the original concept of

  • the so-called free market capitalist system

  • as initiated by early economic philosophers

  • such as Adam Smith

  • we see that the original intent of a “market

  • was based around real, tangible, life supporting goods for trade.

  • Adam Smith never fathomed that the most

  • profitable economic sector on the planet

  • would eventually be in the arena of financial trading

  • or so-called investment, where money itself is simply

  • ,

  • gained by the movement of other money in an arbitrary game

  • .

  • which holds zero productive merit to society.

  • Yet, regardless of Smith's intent

  • the door for such seemingly anomalous advents

  • was left wide open by one fundamental tenet of this theory:

  • Money is treated as a Commodity, in and of itself.

  • Today, in every economy of the world

  • regardless of the social system they claim

  • money is pursued for the sake of money and nothing else.

  • The underlying idea, which was mysteriously qualified

  • by Adam Smith with his religious declaration of the 'Invisible Hand'

  • .

  • is that the narrow, self-interested pursuit

  • of this fictional commodity will somehow

  • .

  • magically manifest human and social well-being and progress.

  • The reality is that the monetary incentive 'interest'

  • or what some have termed the "Money Sequence of Value

  • has now completely decoupled from the foundational

  • 'life interest', which could be termed the

  • "Life Sequence of Value".

  • What has happened is that there is a complete confusion

  • in economic doctrine between those two sequences.

  • .

  • They think that the Money Sequence of Value

  • delivers the Life Sequence of Value.

  • And that's why they say if more goods are sold,

  • if GDPs rise and so forth...

  • there would be more enhanced well-being

  • and we could take the GDP as being our basic layer indicator

  • .

  • of social health. Well, there you see the confusion.

  • It's talking about Money Sequences of Value-

  • that is, all the receipts and all the revenues

  • that are derived from selling goods-

  • and they're confusing that with life reproduction.

  • So, you have built right into this thing from the beginning

  • a complete conflation of the money

  • and life sequences of value. So,

  • we are dealing with a kind of structured delusion

  • which becomes more and more deadly

  • as the money sequence decouples from producing

  • anything at all. So it's a system disorder.

  • .

  • And the system disorder seems to be fatal.

  • [Welcome to the Machine]

  • In society today, you seldom hear anyone speak

  • of the progress of their country or society

  • in terms of their physical well-being, state of happiness,

  • trust or social stability.

  • Rather, the measures are presented to us

  • through economic abstractions.

  • We have the gross domestic product, the consumer price index,

  • the value of the stock market, rates of inflation,

  • and so on.

  • But does this tell us anything of real value

  • as to the quality of peoples' lives?

  • No. All of these measures have to do with

  • the money sequence itself and nothing more.

  • For example, the Gross Domestic Product of a country

  • is a measure of the value of goods and services sold.

  • This measure is claimed to correlate to the

  • standard of livingof a country's people.

  • In the United States health care accounted

  • for over 17% of GDP in 2009

  • amounting to over $2.5 trillion spent,

  • hence creating a positive effect on this economic measure.

  • And, based on this logic it would be even better for the US economy

  • .

  • if health care services increased more so...

  • perhaps to $3 trillion or 5 trillion,

  • since that would create more growth,

  • more jobs and hence boasted by economists

  • as a rise in their country's standard of living.

  • But- ... wait a minute.

  • What do health care services actually represent?

  • Well, SICK AND DYING PEOPLE.

  • That's right: the more unhealthy people there are in America

  • the better the economy.

  • Now, that is not an exaggeration or a cynical perspective.

  • In fact, if we step back far enough you will realize that the GDP

  • .

  • not only doesn't reflect real public or social health

  • on any tangible level,

  • it is, in fact, mostly a measure

  • of industrial inefficiency and social degradation.

  • .

  • And the more you see it rise, the worse things are becoming

  • with respect to personal, social

  • and environmental integrity.

  • You have to create problems to create profit.

  • There is no profit under the current paradigm

  • in saving lives, putting balance on this planet,

  • having justice and peace or anything else.

  • There is just no profit there.

  • There's an old saying: 'Pass a law and create a business.'

  • .

  • Whether you are creating a business for a lawyer or whatever.

  • So, crime does create business

  • just like destruction creates business in Haiti.

  • .

  • We have now roughly 2 million people incarcerated

  • in this country (USA)

  • and of those many are in prisons run by private corporations:

  • .

  • Corrections Corporation of America, Wackenhut,

  • who trade their stock on Wall Street

  • based upon how many people are in jail.

  • Now that's sickness!

  • But that is a reflection

  • of what this economic paradigm calls for.

  • So what exactly does this economic paradigm call for?

  • What is it that keeps our economic system going?

  • Consumption.

  • Or more accurately- Cyclical Consumption.

  • When we break down the foundation of classic market economics

  • .

  • we are left with a pattern of monetary exchange

  • that simply cannot be allowed to stop

  • or even substantially slowed

  • if the society as we know it is to remain operational.

  • .

  • There are three main actors on the economic stage:

  • the employee, the employer and the consumer.

  • .

  • The employee sells labor to the employer for income.

  • The employer sells its production services and hence goods,

  • to the consumer for income.

  • And the consumer, of course, is simply another role

  • of the employer and employee,

  • spending back into the system

  • to enable the cyclical consumption to continue.

  • In other words, the global market system is based

  • on the assumption that there will always be enough

  • product demand in a society to move enough money around

  • .

  • at a rate which can keep the consumption process going.

  • And the faster the rate of consumption

  • the more so-called economic growth is assumed

  • and so the machine goes...

  • But, hold on-

  • I thought an economy was meant to, I don't know...

  • Economize”?

  • Doesn't the very term have to do with preservation

  • and efficiency and a reduction of waste?

  • So how does our system, which demands consumption

  • and the more the better, efficiently preserve

  • orEconomizeat all?

  • Well... it doesn't.

  • The intent of the market system is, in fact, the exact opposite

  • of what a real economy is supposed to do,

  • which is efficiently and conservatively

  • orient the materials for production and distribution

  • of life supporting goods.

  • We live on a finite planet, with finite resources

  • where, for example, the oil we utilize

  • took millions of years to develop...

  • where the minerals we use took billions of years to develop.

  • So...having a system that deliberately promotes

  • the acceleration of consumption

  • for the sake of so-calledeconomic growth

  • is pure ecocidal insanity.

  • Absence of waste, that's what efficiency is.

  • Absence of waste?

  • This system is more wasteful than all the other

  • existing systems in the history of the planet.

  • Every level of life organization and life system

  • is in a state of crisis and challenge

  • and decay or collapse.

  • No peer-reviewed journal in the last 30 years

  • will tell you anything different:

  • that is that every life system is in decline

  • as well as social programs... as well as our water access.

  • .

  • Try to name any means of life that isn't threatened and endangered.

  • .

  • You can't.

  • There really isn't one and that's very, very despairing.

  • But we haven't even figured out the causal mechanism.

  • We don't want to face the causal mechanism.

  • We just want to go on. You know that's where insanity is

  • where you keep doing the same thing over and over again

  • even though it clearly doesn't work.

  • So you're really

  • dealing with not an economic system

  • but I would go so far as to say an anti-economic system.

  • [The Anti-Economy]

  • There is an old saying that the competitive market model seeks to

  • .

  • create the best possible goods at the lowest possible prices”.

  • This statement is essentially the incentive concept

  • which justifies market competition, based on the assumption

  • .

  • that the result is the production of higher quality goods.

  • If I was going to build myself a table from scratch

  • I would naturally build it out of the best

  • most durable materials possible, right?

  • With the intent for it to last as long as possible.

  • Why would I want to make something poor

  • knowing I would have to eventually do it again

  • and expend more materials and more energy?

  • Well, as rational as that may seem in the physical world,

  • when it comes to the market world

  • it is not only explicitly irrational

  • it is not even an option.

  • It is technically impossible to produce the best of anything

  • .

  • if a company is to maintain a competitive edge

  • and hence remain affordable to the consumer.

  • Literally everything created and set for sale

  • in the global economy is immediately inferior

  • the moment it is produced,

  • for it is a mathematical impossibility

  • to make the most scientifically advanced

  • efficient and strategically sustainable products.

  • This is due to the fact that the market system

  • requires thatcost efficiency

  • or the need to reduce expenses

  • exists at every stage of production.

  • From the cost of labor, to the cost of

  • materials and packaging and so on.

  • This competitive strategy, of course,

  • is to make sure the public buys their goods

  • rather than from a competing producer

  • ...which is doing the exact same thing

  • to also make their goods both competitive and affordable.

  • This immutably wasteful consequence of the system

  • could be termed "Intrinsic Obsolescence".

  • However, this is only one part of a larger problem.

  • A fundamental governing principle of market economics,

  • one you will not find in any textbook by the way, is the following:

  • .

  • Nothing produced can be allowed to maintain a lifespan longer

  • than what can be endured in order to continue cyclical consumption.”

  • .

  • In other words, it is critical that stuff break down,

  • fail and expire within a certain amount of time.

  • This is termed - “Planned obsolescence”.

  • Planned obsolescence is the backbone of the underlying market strategy

  • of every goods producing corporation in existence.

  • While very few, of course would admit to such a strategy outright

  • .

  • what they do is mask it within the

  • Intrinsic Obsolescence phenomenon just discussed,

  • while often ignoring, or even suppressing new advents in technology

  • .

  • which might create a more sustainable, durable good.

  • So, if it wasn't wasteful enough

  • that the system inherently cannot allow

  • the most durable and efficient goods to be produced,

  • Planned Obsolescence deliberately recognizes

  • that the longer any good is in operation

  • the worse it is for sustaining cyclical consumption

  • and hence the market system itself.

  • In other words, product sustainability

  • is actually inverse to economic growth

  • and hence there is a direct, reinforced incentive

  • to make sure life spans are short of any given good produced.

  • .

  • And, in fact, the system cannot operate any other way.

  • One glance at the sea of landfills now spreading across the world

  • show the obsolescence reality.

  • There are now billions of cheaply made cell phones,

  • computers and other technology

  • each full of precious, difficult to mine materials

  • such as gold, coltan, copper,

  • now rotting in vast piles

  • usually due to the mere malfunction or obsolescence

  • of small parts which, in a conservative society

  • could likely be fixed or updated and the life of the good extended.

  • .

  • Unfortunately, as efficient as that may seem in our physical reality

  • living on a finite planet with finite resources,

  • .

  • it is explicitly inefficient with respect to the market.

  • To put it into a phrase:

  • Efficiency, Sustainability, and Preservation

  • are the enemies of our economic system.”

  • Likewise, just as physical goods need to be constantly produced

  • and reproduced regardless of their environmental impact,

  • .

  • the service industry operates with an equal rationale.

  • The fact is, there is no monetary benefit

  • to resolving any problems

  • which are currently being serviced.

  • At the end of the day

  • the last thing the medical establishment really wants

  • is the curing of diseases such as cancer,

  • which would eliminate countless jobs and trillions in revenue.

  • And since we are on the subject,

  • crime and terrorism in this system are good!

  • Well, at least economically.

  • For it is employing police,

  • generating high-value commodities for security,

  • not to mention the value of prisons

  • that are privately owned- for profit.

  • And how about war?

  • The war industry in America is a huge driver of GDP-

  • one of the most profitable industries-

  • producing weapons of death and destruction.

  • The favorite game of this industry is to blow things up

  • and then go and rebuild them! For profit.

  • We saw this with the windfall billion dollar contracts

  • made from the Iraq war.

  • The bottom line is that socially negative attributes of society

  • .

  • have become positively rewarded ventures for industry.

  • And any interest in problem resolution

  • or environmental sustainability and conservation

  • is intrinsically counter to economic sustainability.

  • And this is why

  • every time you see the GDP rise in any country

  • you are witnessing an increase in necessity

  • whether real or contrived.

  • And by definition, a necessity is rooted in inefficiency.

  • Hence, increased necessity means increased inefficiency.

  • [ Value System Disorder ]

  • The American dream is based on rampant consumerism.

  • .

  • It is based upon the fact that

  • mainstream media and

  • especially commercial advertising-

  • all corporations who need this infinite growth-

  • have convinced us or brainwashed

  • most people in America and hence the world

  • that we have to have X number of material possessions

  • and the possibility of gaining infinitely more

  • material possessions, in order to be happy.

  • That's just not true.

  • So why do people continue to buy in this way

  • which is ultimately eco-genocidal

  • in its systemic effects cumulatively?

  • And it just is classical operand conditioning.

  • You simply put inputs of conditioning into the organism

  • and you have outputs of desired behaviors

  • or goals or objectives.

  • And it has all the resources of technology.

  • And they boast about how they get into the minds of infants;

  • .

  • what they hear is already making them

  • conditioned to the brand.

  • Then you see, that's how people have been such fools.

  • .

  • In a way, they have been taught to be fools.

  • It's a value system disorder.

  • You know, if there is any testament

  • to the plasticity of the human mind;

  • if there is any proof to how malleable

  • human thought is and how easily conditioned

  • and guided people can become

  • based on the nature of their environmental stimulus

  • and what it reinforces:

  • the world of commercial advertising is the proof.

  • You have to stand in awe

  • at the level of brainwashing

  • where these programmed robots known as "consumers"

  • wander the landscape

  • only to walk into a store and spend, say-

  • $4000 on a handbag

  • that likely cost $10 to make

  • in a sweatshop overseas.

  • Only for the brand status it supposedly represents

  • in the culture.

  • Or perhaps the ancient communal traditions

  • which increase trust and cohesiveness in society-

  • which have now been hijacked

  • by acquisitive, materialistic values where now annually

  • we exchange useless crap a few times a year.

  • And we might wonder why so many today

  • have a compulsion to shopping and acquisition,

  • when it is clear that they have been conditioned from childhood

  • to expect material goods

  • as a sign of their status with friends and family.

  • The fact is, the foundation of any society

  • are the values that support its operation.

  • And our society, as it exists

  • can only operate if our values support

  • the conspicuous consumption

  • it requires to continue the market system.

  • 75 years ago consumption in America

  • and much of the first world was half

  • of what we see today, per person.

  • Today's new consumer culture

  • has been manufactured and imposed

  • due to the very real need

  • for higher and higher levels of consumption.

  • And this is why most corporations now spend

  • more money on advertising

  • than the actual process of product creation itself.

  • They work diligently to create a false need for you to fill.

  • And it happens to work.

  • [ TheEconomists” ]

  • You know economists, in fact, are not economists at all.

  • They're propagandists of money value.

  • And you will find that all of their models basically

  • get down to token exchanges that are true to profit

  • .

  • of one side or both sides or whatever.

  • But they are completely disconnected from the actually

  • existing world of reproduction.

  • In Ohio, an old man failed to pay his electric bill;

  • you may be familiar with the case.

  • And the electric company turned off the electricity and he died.

  • The reason they turned it off was because

  • it wouldn't have been profitable for them

  • to keep it on because he didn't pay his bill.

  • Do you believe that was right?

  • The responsibility really lies not on

  • the electric company for turning it off

  • but on those of this man's neighbors and friends and associates

  • .

  • who were not charitable enough to enable him, as an individual

  • .

  • to meet the electric bill.

  • HMMMMMM...

  • Did I hear that right?

  • Did he just say the death of a man caused by not having money

  • .

  • was the responsibility of...

  • other people...

  • or, in effect, charity?

  • Well then, I guess we're gonna need a whole lot of infomercials,

  • little miserable coin slot donations for bodega counters

  • .

  • and a bunch of pickle jars

  • for the billion people now starving to death on this planet

  • .

  • because of the very system Milton Friedman promotes.

  • Whether you are dealing with the philosophies of Milton Friedman,

  • F.A. Hyack, John Maynard Keynes, Ludwig von Mises

  • .

  • or any other major market economist

  • the basis of rationale rarely leaves the money sequence.

  • .

  • It is like a religion.

  • Consumption analysis, stabilization policies,

  • deficit spending, aggregate demand...

  • it exists as a never ending, self-referring

  • self-rationalizing circle of discourse

  • where universal human need, natural resources

  • and any form of physical life supporting efficiency

  • is ruled out by default,

  • and replaced by the singular notion that humans

  • seeking advantage over each other for money alone,

  • motivated by their own, narrow self-interest,

  • will magically create a sustainable, healthy, balanced society.

  • There is no life coordinate in this whole theory, this whole doctrine.

  • .

  • What are they doing? What are they doing??

  • What they are doing is tracking the money sequences.

  • That's all it is, is tracking money sequences

  • presupposing everything that matters:

  • One: There is no life coordinates...

  • Whoa- ... no life coordinates!

  • Two: That all the agents are self-maximizing preferences seekers.

  • .

  • That is, they think of nothing other than themselves

  • and what they can get most for themselves.

  • That's the ruling notion of rationality: self-maximizing choice.

  • .

  • And the only thing that they are interested in self-maximizing

  • is money or commodities.

  • Well, where does social relations come in?

  • It doesn't, except in the exchange to self-maximize.

  • Where do our natural resources come in?

  • They don't, except to exploit.

  • Where does the family come in as being able to survive?

  • It doesn't. They have to have money in order to purchase any good.

  • .

  • Well, shouldn't an economy deal somewhere with human need?

  • .

  • Isn't that what the fundamental issue is: to satisfy human needs?

  • .

  • Oh, "need" isn't even in your lexicon.

  • You dissolve it into "wants".

  • And what is a want? That means money demand that wants to buy.

  • .

  • Well, if it's money demand that wants to buy

  • it has nothing to do with need

  • because maybe the person has no money demand

  • and desperately needs, say, water supply.

  • Or, it may be money demand wants a gold toilet seat.

  • Well, where does it all go? To the gold toilet seat.

  • .

  • And you call this economics?

  • Really, when one thinks of it, it's got to be the most bizarre

  • .

  • delusion in the history of human thought!

  • [ Monetary System ]

  • Now- so far we have focused on the market system.

  • But this system is actually only half of the global economic paradigm.

  • .

  • The other half is theMonetary System”.

  • While the Market System deals with the interaction of people

  • gaming for profit across the spectrum of labor,

  • production and distribution,

  • the Monetary System is an underlying set of policies

  • set by financial institutions

  • which create conditions for the market system, among other things.

  • .

  • It includes terms we often hear

  • such as interest rates, loans, debt,

  • the money supply, inflation, etc.

  • And while you might want to pull your hair out listening

  • to the gibberish coming from the monetary economists:

  • "Modest preemptive actions, can obviate the need

  • of more drastic actions, at a later date."

  • ... the nature and effect of this system

  • is actually quite simple:

  • Our economy has- or the global economy has-

  • .

  • three basic things that govern it. One is fractional reserve banking:

  • .

  • the banks printing money out of nothing.

  • [2nd] It's also based upon compound interest.

  • When you borrow money, you have to pay back more

  • than you borrowed which means that you, in effect,

  • create money out of thin air,

  • again which has to be serviced by creating still more money.

  • [3rd] We live in an infinite growth paradigm.

  • The economic paradigm we live in now is a Ponzi scheme.

  • Nothing grows forever. It's not possible.

  • .

  • As a great psychologist James Hillman wrote:

  • The only thing that grows in the human body

  • after a certain age is cancer.”

  • It's not just the amount of money that has to keep growing

  • it's the amount of consumers. Consumers to

  • borrow money at interest to generate more money and obviously,

  • .

  • that's not possible on a finite planet.

  • People are basically vehicles to just create money,

  • which must create more money

  • to keep the whole thing from falling apart,

  • which is what's happening right now.

  • There are really only two things anyone needs to know

  • about the monetary system:

  • 1: All money is created out of debt.

  • Money is monetized debt

  • whether it materialized from treasury bonds,

  • home loan contracts or credit cards.

  • In other words, if all outstanding debt

  • was to be repaid right now

  • there would not be one dollar in circulation.

  • And 2: Interest is charged on virtually all loans made,

  • and the money needed to pay back this interest

  • does not exist in the money supply outright.

  • Only the principal is created by the loans

  • and the principal is the money supply.

  • So, if all this debt was to be repaid right now,

  • not only would there not be one dollar left in circulation,

  • there would be a gigantic amount of money owed

  • that is literally impossible to pay back, for it does not exist.

  • The consequence of all of this is that two things are inevitable:

  • Inflation and Bankruptcy.

  • .

  • As far as inflation, this can be seen as a historical trend

  • in virtually every country today,

  • and easily tied to its cause,

  • which is the perpetual increase of the money supply

  • which is required to cover the interest charges

  • and keep the system going.

  • As far as Bankruptcy,

  • it comes in the form of debt collapse.

  • This collapse will inevitably occur with a person,

  • a business or a country

  • and typically happens when the interest payments

  • are no longer possible to make.

  • But there is a bright side to all of this...

  • well, at least in terms of the market system.

  • Because debt creates pressure.

  • Debt creates wage slaves.

  • A person in debt is much more likely to take a low wage

  • than a person who isn't,

  • hence becoming a cheap commodity.

  • So it's great for corporations to have a pool of people

  • that have no financial mobility.

  • But hey - that same idea also goes for entire countries.

  • The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund,

  • which mostly serve as proxies for transnational corporate interests,

  • .

  • give gigantic loans to troubled countries

  • at very high interest rates. And then,

  • once the countries are deeply in the hole and can't pay,

  • .

  • austerity measures are applied, the corporations swoop in,

  • .

  • set up sweatshops and take their natural resources.

  • Now that's market efficiency.

  • But waitthere's more:

  • You see, there's this unique hybrid

  • of the monetary and market system

  • called the stock market.

  • Which rather than, you know, actually produce anything real,

  • they just buy and sell money itself.

  • And when it comes to debt, you know what they do?

  • That's right- they trade it!

  • They actually buy and sell debt for profit.

  • From credit default swaps and

  • collateralized debt obligations for consumer debt,

  • to complex derivative schemes used

  • to mask the debt of entire countries,

  • .

  • such as the collusion of investment bank Goldman Sachs and Greece,

  • which nearly collapsed the entire European economy.

  • So when it comes to the stock market and Wall Street,

  • we have an entirely new level of insanity

  • born out of the Money Sequence of Value.

  • All you need to know about markets

  • was written in an editorial in the Wall Street Journal

  • a couple years ago. It was called

  • "Lessons of the Brain-Damaged Investor".

  • And in this editorial, they explained why

  • people with slight brain damage do better as investors

  • .

  • than people with normal brain functionality.

  • Why? Because the slightly

  • brain-damaged person has no empathy.

  • That's the key. If you don't have any empathy

  • you do well as an investor.

  • And so Wall Street breeds people who have no empathy.

  • To go in there and to make decisions

  • and to make trades they have no compunction about

  • and no thought whatsoever as to how what they are doing

  • might affect their fellow human being.

  • So they breed these robots.

  • These people who have no souls.

  • And since they don't even want to pay these people anymore-

  • they are now breeding robotsreal robots

  • real algorithmic traders.

  • Goldman Sachs in the high frequency trading scandal:

  • They put a computer next to the New York Stock Exchange.

  • This computer, thisco-locatedcomputer, as they call it:

  • it front-runs all the trades on the exchange and

  • hits the exchange with volumes of orders

  • in ways that "scalp"

  • pennies and nickels away from the exchange.

  • It's like they're siphoning money all day long.

  • They went one quarter last year

  • 30 or 60 straight days without a single down day

  • and made millions of dollars every single day?

  • That's statistically impossible!

  • When I worked on Wall Street, the way it works is

  • everyone kicks upstairs to bribes.

  • The brokers bribe to the office manager,

  • the office manager bribes to the regional sales manager,

  • the regional sales manager

  • bribes to the national sales manager.

  • It's a common understanding.

  • At Christmas, who gets the biggest bonus at Christmas

  • in an average broker job? The compliance officer.

  • The compliance officer sits there all day long; he's supposed

  • to be making sure you don't violate any of the margin rules

  • .

  • and you're "complying" with the law.

  • Of course, yeah, to the extent that

  • you can bribe the compliance officer-

  • yeah, that's right, you are complying with the law!

  • So how has fraud become the system?

  • It's no longer a byproduct.

  • It is the system.

  • It's like that old Woody Allen joke. He says:

  • Doctor, my brother thinks he's a chicken.”

  • And the doctor says, “Take a pill

  • and that should cure the problem.”

  • And he says, “No doctor. You don't understand.

  • We need the eggs.”

  • Okay? So ...

  • the trading of fraudulent claims back and forth

  • between banks, to generate fees, to generate bonuses,

  • .

  • .

  • has become the GDP-producing

  • growth engine of the United States economy-

  • even though they are essentially trading fraudulent claims

  • that there is absolutely no hope of ever paying back.

  • They are processing, generating and re-securitizing nothing.

  • If I write $20 billion on a cocktail napkin

  • and I sell it to J.P. Morgan and J.P. Morgan writes

  • $20 billion on a cocktail napkin

  • and we swap those two cocktail napkins at a bar,

  • and we each pay ourselves a quarter of 1% in a fee,

  • we make a lot of money for our Christmas bonus.

  • We each have on our books a $20 billion cocktail napkin

  • which has no real value, until such time as

  • the system is no longer able to absorb

  • bogus cocktail napkins, in which case we go to the government

  • to get bailed out.

  • And because of Wall Street and the global stock market

  • there are now conservatively about 700 trillion dollars

  • of outstanding fraudulent claims,

  • known as derivatives,

  • still waiting to collapse.

  • A value amounting to over

  • 10 times the gross domestic product

  • of the entire planet.

  • And while we have seen the bailouts of

  • corporations and banks by governments,

  • which, of course, comically borrow their money

  • from banks to begin with,

  • we are now seeing attempts to bailout whole countries

  • by conglomerates of other countries

  • through the International banks.

  • But how do you bailout a planet?

  • There is no country out there that isn't now saturated in debt.

  • The cascade of sovereign debt defaults we have seen

  • can only be the beginning, when the math is taken into account.

  • It has been estimated in the United States alone

  • that income tax would need to be raised to 65% per person

  • just to cover the interest in the near future.

  • Economists are now foreshadowing that within a few decades

  • 60% of the countries on the planet will be bankrupt.

  • But hold on-- Let me get this straight.

  • The world is going "bankrupt"

  • whatever the hell that means

  • because of this idea called "debt"

  • which doesn't even exist in the physical reality.

  • It's only part of a game we've invented...

  • and yet the well being of billions of people

  • is now being compromised.

  • Extreme layoffs, tent cities, accelerating poverty,

  • austerity measures imposed, schools shutting down,

  • child hunger and other levels of familial deprivation- ...

  • all because of this elaborate fiction...

  • What are we, fucking stupid?!

  • Hey! Hey! Mars- my man!

  • Help a brother out, uh?

  • Grow up, kid!

  • Saturn! What's up man?

  • You remember that smokin' nebula I hooked you up with

  • a while back?

  • Uh- listen Earth.

  • We're getting really tired of you.

  • You've been given everything and yet you waste it all.

  • You've got plenty of resources and you know it.

  • Why don't you grow up and learn some responsibility for Christ's sake!

  • .

  • You're making your mother miserable.

  • You're on your own, pal.

  • Yeah, whatever.

  • [ Public Health ]

  • Now, all of this considered

  • from the waste machine known as the market system

  • to the debt machine known as the monetary system-

  • hence creating the monetary-market paradigm

  • which defines the global economy today-

  • there is one consequence that runs through

  • the entire machine:

  • Inequality.

  • Whether it is the market system which creates

  • a natural gravitation towards monopoly and power consolidation

  • while also generating pockets of wealthy industries

  • that tower over others regardless of utility-

  • .

  • such as the fact that top hedge fund managers on Wall Street

  • .

  • now take home over $300 million a year

  • for contributing literally nothing,

  • while a scientist looking for a cure for a disease

  • trying to help humanity

  • might make $60,000 a year if they're lucky-

  • or whether it is the monetary system,

  • which has class division built right into its structure.

  • For example: If I have $1 million to spare

  • .

  • and I put it into a CD at 4% interest,

  • I will make $40,000 a year.

  • No social contribution- no nothing.

  • However, if I'm a lower class person and have to take loans

  • to buy my car or home,

  • I am paying in interest which in abstraction

  • .

  • is going to pay that millionaire with the 4% CD.

  • This stealing from the poor to pay the rich

  • is a foundational, built-in aspect of the monetary system

  • and it could be labeledStructural Classism”.

  • Of course, historically, social stratification

  • has always been deemed unfair, but obviously accepted overall,

  • .

  • as now 1% of the population owns 40% of the planet's wealth.

  • But material fairness aside

  • there is something else going on underneath the surface of inequality

  • .

  • causing an incredible deterioration in public health as a whole.

  • Well, I think people often are puzzled by the contrast

  • between the material success of our societies

  • - unprecedented levels of wealth -

  • and the many social failings.

  • If you look at the rates of

  • drug abuse or violence or self-harm

  • amongst kids or mental illness

  • there is clearly something going deeply wrong

  • with our societies.

  • The data I have been describing

  • simply shows that intuition that

  • people have had for hundreds of years:

  • that inequality is divisive and socially corrosive.

  • But that intuition is truer than I think we ever imagined.

  • There are very powerful psychological and social effects

  • of inequality. More to do I suppose with feelings

  • of superiority and inferiority.

  • That kind of division...

  • Maybe going with the respect or disrespect;

  • people feeling looked down on at the bottom.

  • Which, by the way, is why violence is

  • more common in more unequal societies-

  • the trigger to violence is so often people feeling

  • looked down upon and disrespected.

  • If there is one principle I could emphasize

  • that is, the most important principle

  • underlying the prevention of violence

  • it would beEquality”.

  • The single most significant factor that affects the rate of violence

  • .

  • is the degree of equality versus the degree of inequality

  • in that society.

  • So, what we're looking at is a sort of

  • general social dysfunction.

  • It's not just one or two things that go wrong

  • as inequality increases.

  • It seems to be everything, whether we are talking about

  • crime or health or mental illness or whatever.

  • One of the really disturbing findings out there in public health is:

  • Never ever make the mistake of being poor.

  • Or being born poor.

  • Your health pays for it in endless sorts of ways:

  • something known as the 'health socioeconomic gradient'.

  • As you move down from the highest strata in society

  • in terms of socioeconomic status, every step down,

  • health gets worse for umpteen different diseases.

  • .

  • Life expectancy gets worse.

  • Infant mortality rate- everything you could look at.

  • .

  • So, a huge issue has been:

  • why is it that this gradient exists?

  • A totally simple obvious answer which is

  • 'If you're chronically sick, you're not going to be very productive

  • .

  • so health causes drive socioeconomic differences.'

  • Not that in the slightest- on the very simple level that

  • .

  • you could look at the socioeconomic status of a 10-year-old

  • .

  • and that's going to predict something about their health decades later.

  • .

  • So, that's the direction of causality.

  • Next one- ... 'Oh, it's perfectly obvious:

  • poor people can't afford to go to the doctor; it's healthcare access.'

  • .

  • It's got nothing to do with that, because you see these same gradients

  • .

  • in countries with universal health care and socialized medicine.

  • .

  • Okaynext 'simple explanation':

  • 'Oh -on the average- the poorer you are the more likely you are to

  • .

  • smoke, to drink and all sorts of lifestyle risk factors.'

  • Yeah, those contribute but careful studies have shown

  • that it explains maybe about a third of the variability.

  • So what's left?

  • What's left is having a ton to do with the stress of poverty.

  • .

  • So, the poorer you are- starting off being

  • the person who is one dollar of income behind Bill Gates-

  • the poorer you are in this country

  • on the average, the worse your health is.

  • This tells us something really important:

  • the health connection with poverty

  • it's not about being poor, it's about feeling poor.

  • Increasingly we recognize that

  • chronic stress is an important influence on health.

  • But the most important sources of stress

  • are the quality of social relations.

  • And if there is anything that lowers the quality of social relations,

  • .

  • it is the socioeconomic stratification of society.

  • What science has now shown is that regardless of material wealth

  • .

  • the stress of simply living in a stratified society

  • leads to a vast spectrum of public health problems.

  • And the greater the inequality, the worse they become.

  • Life expectancy: longer in more equal countries.

  • Drug Abuse: Less in more equal countries.

  • Mental Illness: Less in more equal countries.

  • Social Capital - meaning the ability of people to trust each other:

  • .

  • Naturally greater in more equal countries.

  • Educational Scores: Higher in more equal countries.

  • Homicide rates: less in more equal countries.

  • Crime and Rates of Imprisonment: Less in more equal countries.

  • .

  • It goes on and on:

  • Infant mortalityobesity - teen birth rate:

  • Less in more equal countries.

  • and perhaps most interesting:

  • Innovation: Greater in more equal countries.

  • which challenges the age old notion that a competitive

  • stratified society is somehow more creative and inventive.

  • Moreover, a study done in the UK called The WhiteHall Study

  • .

  • confirmed that there is a social distribution of disease

  • as you go from the top of the socioeconomic ladder to the bottom.

  • .

  • For example, it was found that the lowest rungs of the hierarchy

  • had a 4-fold increase of heart disease based mortality

  • .

  • compared to the highest rungs.

  • And this pattern exists, irrespective of access to health care.

  • Hence, the worse a person's relative financial status,

  • the worse their health is going to be on average.

  • This phenomenon is rooted in what could be termed

  • 'Psychosocial Stress'

  • and it is at the foundation of the greatest social distortions

  • plaguing our society today.

  • Its cause?

  • The Monetary-Market System.

  • Make no mistake:

  • The greatest destroyer of ecology,

  • the greatest source of waste, depletion and pollution,

  • the greatest purveyor of violence-

  • war - crime - poverty - animal abuse and inhumanity,

  • the greatest generator of social and personal neurosis,

  • mental disorders - depression, anxiety,

  • not to mention, the greatest source of social paralysis

  • stopping us from moving into new methodologies

  • for personal health, global sustainability

  • and progress on this planet-

  • is not some corrupt government or legislation,

  • not some rogue corporation or banking cartel,

  • not some flaw of human nature,

  • and not some secret hidden cabal that controls the world.

  • .

  • It is, in fact: The Socio-Economic System itself

  • at its very foundation.

  • [ Part 3: Project Earth ]

  • Let's imagine for a moment we had the option

  • to redesign human civilization from the ground up.

  • What if- hypothetically speaking-

  • we discovered an exact replica of the planet Earth

  • and the only difference between this new planet and our current one

  • .

  • is that human evolution had not occurred. It was an open palette.

  • .

  • No countries, no cities, no pollution, no republicans...

  • just a pristine, open environment.

  • So- what would we do?

  • Well, first we need a “goal”, right?

  • And it's safe to say that goal would be to survive.

  • And not to just survive, but to do so

  • in an optimized, healthy, prosperous way.

  • Most people, indeed, desire to live

  • and they would prefer to do so without suffering.

  • Therefore, the basis of this civilization needs to be

  • as supportive and hence sustainable for human life as possible-

  • .

  • taking into account the material needs of all the world's people

  • .

  • while trying to remove anything

  • that can could hurt us in the long run.

  • With that goal ofMaximum Sustainabilityunderstood

  • the next question regards ourmethod”.

  • What kind of approach do we take?

  • Well, let's see-

  • last I checked, politics was the method of social operation on Earth...

  • so what do the doctrines of the republicans, liberals,

  • conservatives or socialists have to say about societal design?

  • Hmmm... not a damn thing.

  • Okay then- what about religion?

  • Surely the great creator had to have left some blueprints somewhere...

  • Nope... nothing I can find.

  • Okay then- so what's left?

  • It appears something calledScience”.

  • Science is unique in that its methods demand not only

  • that ideas proposed be tested and replicated,

  • but everything science comes up with is also inherently falsifiable.

  • In other words, unlike religion and politics

  • science has no ego

  • and everything it suggests accepts the possibility

  • of being proven wrong eventually.

  • It holds on to nothing and evolves constantly.

  • Well, that sounds natural enough to me.

  • So then: based on the current state of scientific knowledge

  • in the early 21st century

  • along with our goal ofmaximum sustainability

  • for the human population,

  • how do we begin the actual process of construction?

  • Well, the first question to ask is:

  • What do we need to survive?

  • The answer, of course, are Planetary Resources.

  • Whether it is the water we drink, the energy we use

  • or the raw materials we utilize to create tools and shelter,

  • the planet hosts an inventory of resources-

  • many of which are demanded for our survival.

  • So, given that reality

  • it then becomes critical to figure out what we have and where it is.

  • This means we need to conduct a survey.

  • We simply locate and identify every physical resource on the planet

  • we can, along with the amount available at each location.

  • From the deposits of copper, to the most potent locations for

  • wind farms to produce energy, to the natural fresh water springs

  • .

  • to an assessment of the amount of fish in the ocean

  • to the most prime arable land for food cultivation, etc.

  • But, since we humans are going to be

  • consuming these resources over time

  • we then realize that not only do we need to locate and identify-

  • we also need to track.

  • We need to make sure we don't run out

  • of any of this stuff; that would be bad.

  • And this means not only tracking our rates of use

  • but the rates of earthly regeneration as well

  • such as how long it takes for say,

  • a tree to grow or a spring to replenish.

  • This is calledDynamic Equilibrium”.

  • In other words, if we use up trees faster than they can be grown back,

  • we have a serious problem, for it is unsustainable.

  • So then, how do we track this inventory

  • especially when we recognize that

  • all of this stuff is scattered everywhere?

  • We have large mineral mines in what we call Africa,

  • energy concentrations in the Middle East,

  • huge tidal power possibilities on the Atlantic coast of North America,

  • the largest supply of fresh water in Brazil, etc.

  • Well, once again, good old science has a suggestion:

  • It's calledSystems theory”.

  • Systems theory recognizes that the fabric of the natural world,

  • from human biology to the earthly biosphere

  • to the gravitational pull of the solar system itself,

  • is one huge synergistically connected system - fully interlinked.

  • Just as human cells connect to form our organs

  • and the organs connect to form our bodies

  • and since our bodies cannot live without the earthy resources

  • of food, air and water, we are intrinsically connected to the earth.

  • And so on.

  • So, as nature suggests, we take all of this inventory

  • and tracking data, and create a “systemto manage it.

  • A “Global Resource Management System”, in fact,

  • to account for every relevant resource on the planet.

  • There is simply no logical alternative, if our goal as a species

  • is survival in the long run. We have to keep track as a whole.

  • That understood, we can now consider production.

  • How do we use all this stuff?

  • What will our process of production be, and what do we need

  • to consider to make sure it is as optimized as possible,

  • to maximize our sustainability?

  • Well, the first thing that jumps right out at us, is the fact

  • that we need to constantly try and preserve.

  • The planet's resources are essentially finite.

  • So it is important that we bestrategic”.

  • "Strategic Preservation" is key.

  • The second thing we recognize, is that some resources

  • are really not as good as others in their performance.

  • In fact, some of this stuff when put into use

  • has a terrible effect on the environment,

  • which invariably hinders our own health.

  • For example: oil and fossil fuels, no matter how you cut it,

  • release some pretty destructive agents into the environment.

  • Therefore, it is critical we do our best to use such things

  • only when we really have to- if at all.

  • Fortunately for us, we see a ton of solarwindtidalwave

  • heat differential and geothermal possibilities for energy production.

  • So we can strategize objectively, about what we use and where,

  • to avoid what could be callednegative retroactions”,

  • or anything that results from production or use

  • that damages the environment and hence, ourselves.

  • We will call thisStrategic Safety

  • to couple in with our "Strategic Preservation”.

  • But production strategies do not stop there.

  • We are going to need an "Efficiency Strategy”,

  • for the actual mechanics of production itself.

  • And what we find is that there are roughly

  • three specific protocols we must adhere to:

  • 1: Every good we produce must be designed

  • to last as long as possible.

  • Naturally, the more things break down,

  • the more resources we are going to need to replace them,

  • and the more waste produced.

  • 2: When things do break down,

  • or are no longer usable for whatever reason,

  • it is critical that we harvest, or recycle

  • as much as we possibly can.

  • So the production design must take this into account directly

  • at the very earliest stages.

  • 3: Quickly evolving technologies, such as electronics,

  • which are subject to the fastest rates of technological obsolescence,

  • would need to be designed to foreshadow

  • and accommodate physical updates.

  • The last thing we want to do is throw away an entire computer system

  • just because it has only one broken part, or is outdated.

  • So we simply design the components to be easily updated,

  • part by part, standardized and universally interchangeable,

  • foreshadowed by the current trend of technological change.

  • And when we realize that the mechanisms of "Strategic Preservation”,

  • Strategic SafetyandStrategic Efficiency

  • are purely technical considerations

  • devoid of any human opinion or bias,

  • we simply program these strategies into a computer

  • which can weigh and calculate all the relevant variables,

  • allowing us to always arrive

  • at the absolute best method for sustainable production

  • based on current understandings.

  • And while that might sound complex

  • all it is, is a glorified calculator,

  • not to mention that such multi-varied

  • decision making and monitoring systems,

  • are already used across the world today for isolated purposes.

  • It is simply a process of scaling it out.

  • So...

  • Now, we not only have our Resource Management System,

  • but also a Production Management System,

  • both of which are easily computer automated

  • to maximize efficiency, preservation and safety.

  • The informational reality is that the human mind

  • or even a group of humans, cannot track what needs to be tracked.

  • It must be done by computers, and it can be.

  • And this bring us to the next level: Distribution.

  • What sustainability strategies make sense here?

  • Well, since we know that the shortest distance

  • between two points is a straight line,

  • and since energy is required to power transport machines,

  • the less transport distance, the more efficient.

  • Producing goods in one continent and shipping them over to another

  • only makes sense if the goods in question

  • simply cannot be produced in the target area.

  • Otherwise, it is nothing but wasteful.

  • We must localize production, so distribution is simple,

  • fast, and requires the least amount of energy.

  • We'll call this theProximity Strategy”,

  • which simply means we reduce

  • the travel of goods as much as possible

  • whether raw materials or finished consumer products.

  • Of course, it might also be important to know

  • what goods we are transporting and why.

  • And this falls under the category of Demand.

  • And demand is simply what people need to be healthy

  • and to have a high quality of life.

  • The spectrum of material human needs

  • range from core life supporting necessities

  • such as food, clean water and shelter,

  • to social and recreational goods which allow for relaxation

  • and personal, social enjoyment:

  • both important factors in human and social health overall.

  • So, very simply, we take another survey.

  • People describe their needs, demand is assessed,

  • and production begins based on that demand.

  • And since the level of demand of different goods

  • will naturally fluctuate and change around different regions,

  • we need to create a “Demand / Distribution Tracking System"

  • so to avoid overruns and shortages.

  • Of course, this idea is old news;

  • it is used in every major store chain today

  • to make sure they keep up with their inventory.

  • Only this time, we are tracking on a global scale.

  • But, wait a minute. We really can't fully understand demand

  • if we don't account for the actual usage of the good itself.

  • Is it logical and sustainable for every single human to say,

  • have one of everything made? Regardless of their usage?

  • No. That would be simply wasteful and inefficient.

  • If a person has a need for a good but that need is only for say,

  • 45 minutes a day on average, it would be much more efficient

  • .

  • if that good was made available to them

  • and to others when needed.

  • Many forget that it isn't the good that they want,

  • it is the purpose of that good.

  • When we realize that the good itself

  • is only as important as its utility,

  • we see thatexternal restriction”,

  • or what we might call todayownership”,

  • is extremely wasteful and environmentally illogical

  • in a fundamental, economic sense.

  • So, we need to devise a strategy called: “Strategic Access”.

  • This would be the foundation of our

  • "Demand / Distribution Tracking System

  • which makes sure we can meet

  • the demand of the population's needs

  • for access of whatever they need, when they need it.

  • And as far as physically obtaining the goods,

  • centralized and regional access centers

  • all make sense for the most part,

  • placed in close proximity to the population

  • and a person would simply come in, take the item,

  • use it and when finished, return it when it is no longer needed...

  • sort of how a library works today.

  • In fact, these centers could not only exist in the community

  • in the way we see local stores today,

  • but specialized access centers would exist in specific areas

  • where often certain goods are utilized,

  • saving more energy with less repeat transport.

  • And once this Demand Tracking System is in order,

  • it is tied into our Production Management system,

  • and of course, into our Resource Management system.

  • Hence creating a unified, dynamically updating,

  • global economic management machine,

  • that simply makes sure we remain sustainable.

  • Starting with securing the integrity of our finite resources,

  • moving to make sure we only create the best,

  • most strategic goods possible,

  • while distributing everything

  • in the most intelligent and efficient way.

  • And the unique result of this preservation-based approach,

  • which is intuitively counter to many,

  • is that this logical, ground up

  • empirical process of preservation and efficiency

  • - which can only define true human sustainability on this planet -

  • would likely enable something never before seen in human history:

  • Access Abundance.

  • Not just for a percentage of the global population,

  • but the entire civilization.

  • This economic model, as was just generalized...

  • this responsible, systems approach

  • to total Earth resource management and processes,

  • designed, again, to do nothing less

  • than take care of humanity as a whole

  • in the most efficient and sustainable way,

  • could be termed:

  • a “RESOURCE-BASED ECONOMY”.

  • The idea was defined in the 1970s

  • by structural engineer Jacque Fresco.

  • He understood back then that society was on a collision course

  • with nature and itself, unsustainable on every level,

  • and if things didn't change,

  • we would destroy ourselves, one way or another.

  • Are all of these things you are saying Jacque,

  • could they be built with what we know today?

  • Or, ... are you guessing

  • based on what we know today?

  • No. All of these things can be built with what we know today.

  • It would take 10 years to change the surface of the earth.

  • To rebuild the world into a second Garden of Eden.

  • The choice lies with you.

  • The stupidity of a nuclear arms race,

  • the development of weapons,

  • trying to solve your problems politically

  • by electing this political party or that political party,

  • that all politics is immersed in corruption.

  • Let me say it again:

  • Communism, socialism, fascism, the Democrats, the liberals-

  • we want to absorb human beings ...

  • all organizations that believe in a better life for man!

  • There are no Negro problems or Polish problems

  • or Jewish problems or Greek problems

  • or women's problemsthere are human problems!

  • I'm not afraid of anybody, I don't work for anyone;

  • no one can discharge me.

  • I have no boss.

  • I am afraid to live in the society we live in today.

  • Our society cannot be maintained by this type of incompetency.

  • It was great- the free enterprise system-

  • about 35 years ago. That was the last of its usefulness.

  • Now we have got to change our way of thinking or perish.

  • The horror movies of the future will be our society-

  • the way it didn't work-

  • and politics ...

  • would be part of a horror movie.

  • Well, lots of people today use the term 'cold science'

  • because it's analytical,

  • and they don't even know what analytical means.

  • Science means: closer approximations

  • to the way the world really works.

  • So, it's telling the truth- is what it is.

  • A scientist doesn't try to get along with people.

  • They tell them what their findings are.

  • They have to question all things.

  • And if some scientist comes up with an experiment

  • that shows certain materials have certain strengths,

  • other scientists have to be able to duplicate that experiment

  • and come up with the same results.

  • Even if a scientist feels that an airplane wing

  • due to mathematics or calculations

  • can hold up a given amount of weight

  • they still pile sandbags on it

  • to see when it breaks, and they say

  • 'you know my calculations are right' or 'they are not correct.'

  • I love that system because it's free of bias

  • and free of thinking that math can solve all the problems.

  • You have to put your Math to test also.

  • I think that every system that can be put to test

  • should be put to test.

  • And that all decisions should be based upon research.

  • A Resource-Based Economy is simply

  • the scientific method applied to social concern-

  • an approach utterly absent in the world today.

  • Society is a technical invention.

  • And the most efficient methods of optimized human health,

  • physical production, distribution, city infrastructure and the like

  • reside in the field of science and technology-

  • not politics or monetary economics.

  • It operates in the same systematic way as, say an airplane

  • and there is no Republican or Liberal way to build an airplane.

  • Likewise, nature itself is the physical referent we use

  • to prove our science, and it is a set system-

  • .

  • emerging only from our increased understanding of it.

  • In fact, it has no regard for what you

  • subjectively think or believe to be true.

  • Rather, it gives you an option:

  • you can learn and fall in line with its natural laws

  • and conduct yourself accordingly-

  • invariably creating good health and sustainability,

  • or you can go against the current- to no avail.

  • It doesn't matter how much you believe you can just

  • stand up right now and walk on the wall next to you;

  • the law of gravity will not allow it.

  • If you do not eat- you will die.

  • If you are not touched as an infant- you will die.

  • As harsh as it may sound, nature is a dictatorship

  • and we can either listen to it and come in harmony with it

  • or suffer the inevitable adverse consequences.

  • So, a Resource-Based Economy

  • is nothing more than a set of proven,

  • life supporting understandings

  • where all decisions are based upon

  • optimized human and environmental sustainability.

  • It takes into account the empiricalLife Ground

  • which every human being shares as a need

  • regardless, again, of their political or religious philosophy.

  • There is no cultural relativism to this approach.

  • It isn't a matter of o

  • Human needs are human needs.

  • And having access to the necessities of life, such as clean air,

  • nutritious food and clean water,

  • along with a positively reinforcing, stable,

  • nurturing, non-violent environment,

  • is demanded for our mental and physical health,

  • our evolutionary fitness,

  • and hence, the species' survival itself.

  • A Resource-Based Economy

  • would be based upon available resources.

  • You can't just bring a lot of people to an island

  • or build a city of 50,000 people without having access

  • to the necessities of life.

  • So, when I use the term 'a comprehensive systems approach'

  • I'm talking about doing an inventory of the area first

  • and determining what that area can supply-

  • not just architectural approach-

  • not just design approach-

  • but design must be based on all of the requirements

  • to enhance human life.

  • And that's what I mean by an integrated way of thinking.

  • Food, clothing, shelter, warmth, love-

  • all those things are necessary.

  • And if you deprive people of any of them

  • you have a lesser human being, less capable of functioning.

  • As previously outlined, a Resource-Based Economy's ground-up

  • global, systems approach to extraction, production and distribution

  • is based upon on a set of true economic mechanisms, or 'strategies'

  • which guarantee efficiency and sustainability

  • in every area of the economy.

  • So, continuing this train of thought regarding logical design,

  • what is next in our equation?

  • Where does all this materialize?

  • Cities.

  • The advent of the city is a defining feature of modern civilization.

  • Its role is to enable efficient access to the necessities of life

  • along with increased social support and community interaction.

  • So how would we go about designing an ideal city?

  • What shape should we make it?

  • Square? Trapezoid?

  • Well, given we are going to be moving around the thing

  • we might as well make it as equidistant as possible for ease,

  • hence the circle.

  • What should the city contain?

  • Well, naturally we need a residential area, a goods production area,

  • a power generation area, an agricultural area.

  • But we also need nurturing as human beings-

  • hence culture, nature, recreation and education.

  • So lets include a nice open park,

  • an entertainment/events area for cultural purposes and socializing

  • and educational and research facilities.

  • And since we are working with a circle

  • it seems rational to place these functions in belts

  • based on the amount of land required for each goal

  • along with ease of access.

  • Very good.

  • Now, let's get down to specifics:

  • First we need the consider the core infrastructure

  • or intestines of the city organism.

  • These would be the water, goods,

  • waste and energy transport channels.

  • Just as we have water and sewage systems under our cities today,

  • we would extend this channeling concept

  • to integrate waste recycling and delivery itself.

  • No more mailmen or garbage men.

  • It is built right in. We could even use

  • automated pneumatic tubes and similar technologies.

  • Same goes for transport.

  • It needs to be integrated and strategically designed to reduce

  • or even remove the need for wasteful, independent automobiles.

  • Electric trams, conveyors, transveyors

  • and maglevs- which can take you virtually

  • anywhere in the city, even up and down,

  • along with connecting you to other cities as well.

  • And of course, in the event a car is required,

  • it is automated by satellite for safety and integrity.

  • In fact, this automation technology is in working order right now.

  • Automobile accidents kill about 1.2 million people every single year,

  • injuring about 50 million.

  • This is absurd and doesn't have to occur.

  • Between efficient city design and automated, driverless cars

  • this death toll can be virtually eliminated.

  • Agriculture.

  • Today, through our haphazard, cost-cutting industrial methods-

  • using pesticides, excessive fertilizers and other means-

  • we have successfully destroyed

  • much of the the arable land on this planet,

  • not to mention also extensively poisoning our bodies.

  • In fact, industrial and agricultural chemical toxins

  • now show up in virtually every human being tested, including infants.

  • Fortunately, there is a glaring alternative:

  • the soil-less mediums of hydroponics and aeroponics,

  • which also reduce nutrient and water requirements

  • by up to 75% of our current usage.

  • Food can now be organically grown on an industrial scale

  • in enclosed vertical farms,

  • such as in 50-story 1-acre plots,

  • virtually eliminating the need

  • for pesticides and hydrocarbons in general.

  • This is the future of industrial food cultivation:

  • efficient, clean and abundant.

  • So, such advanced systems would be, in part,

  • what comprise our agricultural belt,

  • producing all the food required for the entire city's population

  • with no need to import anything from the outside,

  • saving time, waste and energy.

  • And speaking of Energy,

  • the Energy Belt would work in a systems approach

  • to extract electricity from our abundant renewable mediums-

  • specifically wind, solar, geothermal and heat differentials-

  • and if near water potentials- tidal and wave power.

  • To avoid intermittency and make sure

  • a positive net energy return occurs,

  • these mediums would operate in an integrated system

  • powering each other when needed,

  • while storing excessive energy to large super capacitors

  • under the ground, so nothing can go to waste.

  • .

  • And not only does the city power itself,

  • particular structures will also power independently

  • and generate electricity through photovoltaic paints,

  • structural pressure transducers, the thermocouple effect,

  • and other current but underutilized technologies.

  • But of course, this begs the question:

  • How does this technology, and goods in general,

  • get created in the first place?

  • This bring us to Production:

  • The Industrial Belt, apart from having hospitals and the like,

  • would be the hub of factory production.

  • Completely localized overall,

  • it would, of course, obtain raw materials

  • by way of the global resource management system just discussed,

  • with demand being generated by the population of the city itself.

  • As far as the mechanics of production,

  • we need to discuss a new, powerful phenomenon

  • which was sparked very recently in human history

  • and is on pace to changing everything.

  • It's called Mechanization

  • or the automation of labor.

  • Well, if you look around, you'll notice that

  • almost everything that we use today is built automatically.

  • .

  • Your shoes, your clothes, your home appliances, your car and so on...

  • they are all built by machines in an automatic way.

  • Can we say that the society has not been influenced

  • by these major technological advancements?

  • Of course not.

  • These systems really dictate new structures

  • and new needs and they make a lot of other things obsolete.

  • So, we have been going up in the development

  • and use of technology in an exponential way.

  • So, definitely automation is going to continue.

  • You cannot stop technologies that just make sense.

  • Labor automation through technology is at the bottom

  • of every major social transformation in human history.

  • From the agricultural revolution and the invention of the plow,

  • to the industrial revolution and the invention of the powered machine,

  • to the information age we live in now,

  • through essentially the invention

  • of advanced electronics and computers.

  • And with regard to advanced production methods today

  • mechanization is now evolving on its own:

  • moving away from the traditional method

  • of assembling component parts into a configuration,

  • into an advanced method of creating

  • entire products in one single process.

  • Like most engineers, I'm fascinated by biology because it is

  • so full of examples of extraordinary pieces of engineering.

  • What biology is - is the study of things that copy themselves.

  • As good a definition of life as we've got.

  • Again, as an engineer, I have always been intrigued

  • by the idea of machines copying themselves.

  • RepRap is a three-dimensional printer -

  • that's to say it is a printer that you plug into your computer and

  • instead of making 2-dimensional sheets of paper with patterns on,

  • it makes real, physical, 3-dimensional objects.

  • Now there's nothing new about that.

  • 3D printers have been around for about 30 years.

  • The big thing about RepRap is that it prints most of its own parts.

  • So, if you've got one, you could make another one

  • and give it to a friend as well as being able to print

  • lots of useful things.

  • From the simple printing of basic household goods in your home

  • to the printing of an entire automobile body in one swoop,

  • advanced, automated 3D printing now has the potential

  • to transform virtually every field of production,

  • including home construction.

  • Contour Crafting is actually a fabrication technology-

  • .

  • the so-called 3D printing- when you directly build

  • 3D objects from a computer model.

  • Using Contour Crafting, it will be possible

  • to build a 2000 square-foot home

  • entirely by the machine, in one day.

  • The reason that people are interested in automating construction

  • is that it really brings a lot of benefits.

  • For example, construction is pretty labor-intensive.

  • And although it provides jobs for a sector of the society

  • it also has issues and complications.

  • For example, construction is the most dangerous job that there is.

  • It is worse than mining and agriculture,

  • that has the highest level of fatality in almost every country.

  • Another issue is the waste.

  • An average home in the United States has 3 to 7 tons of waste.

  • So this is huge if we look at the impact of construction,

  • and knowing about 40% of all materials in the world

  • are used in construction.

  • So, a big waste of energy and resources

  • and big damage to the environment as well.

  • Making homes using hammers and nails and wood

  • with the state of our technology today, is really absurd

  • and will go the way of our labor class

  • in regards to manufacturing in the United States.

  • Recently, there was a study by economist David Autor of MIT,

  • that states that our middle class is obsolete

  • and being replaced by automation.

  • Quite simply, Mechanization is more productive,

  • efficient and sustainable than human labor

  • in virtually every sector of the economy today.

  • Machines do not need vacations, breaks, insurance, pensions,

  • and they can work 24 hours a day, everyday.

  • The output potential and accuracy

  • compared to human labor, is unmatched.

  • The bottom line: repetitive human labor is becoming obsolete

  • and impractical across the world.

  • And the unemployment you see around you today is fundamentally

  • the result of this evolution of efficiency in technology.

  • .

  • For years, market economists have dismissed this growing pattern

  • which could be calledTechnological Unemployment”,

  • because of the fact that new sectors always seemed

  • to emerge to re-absorb the displaced workers.

  • Today, the service sector is the only real hub left

  • and currently employs over 80% of the American workforce

  • with most industrialized countries maintaining a similar proportion.

  • However, this sector is now being challenged increasingly

  • by automated kiosks, automated restaurants,

  • and even automated stores.

  • Economists today are finally acknowledging

  • what they had been denying for years:

  • Not only is technological unemployment exacerbating

  • the current labor crisis we see across the world

  • due to the global economic downturn,

  • but the more the recession deepens

  • the faster the industries are mechanizing.

  • The catch, which is not realized,

  • is that the faster they mechanize to save money-

  • the more they displace people-

  • the more they reduce public purchasing power.

  • This means that, while the corporation

  • can produce everything more cheaply,

  • fewer and fewer people will actually have money to buy anything

  • regardless of how cheap they become.

  • The bottom line is that thelabor for incomegame

  • is slowly coming to an end.

  • In fact, if you take a moment to reflect

  • on the jobs which are in existence today

  • which automation could take over right now if applied,

  • 75% of the global workforce

  • could be replaced by mechanization tomorrow.

  • And this is why, in a Resource-Based Economy,

  • there is no Monetary-Market system.

  • No money at all...

  • for there is no need.

  • A Resource-Based Economy

  • recognizes the efficiency of mechanization

  • and accepts it for what it offers.

  • It doesn't fight it, like we do today.

  • Why? Because it is irresponsible not to,

  • given any interest in efficiency and sustainability.

  • And this brings us back to our city system.

  • In the center is the Central Dome, which not only houses

  • .

  • the educational facilities and transportation hub,

  • it also hosts the mainframe

  • that runs the cities technical operations.

  • The city is, in fact, one big automated machine.

  • It has sensors in all technical belts

  • to track the progress of agriculture,

  • energy gathering, production, distribution and the like.

  • Now, would people be needed to oversee these operations

  • in the event of a malfunction or the like?

  • Most probably: yes.

  • But that number would decrease over time as improvements continue.

  • .

  • However, as of today, maybe 3% of the city population

  • would be needed for this job when you break it down.

  • .

  • And I can assure you: that in an economic system

  • .

  • which is actually designed to take care of you

  • and secure your well being, without you having to submit

  • .

  • to a private dictatorship on a daily basis

  • usually to a job that is either technically unnecessary

  • or socially pointless,

  • while often struggling with debt that doesn't exist

  • just to make ends meet...

  • I guarantee you: people will volunteer their time left and right

  • to maintain and improve a system that actually takes care of them.

  • .

  • And coupled with this issue of 'Incentive'

  • comes the common assumption

  • that if there isn't some external pressure

  • for one towork for a living

  • people would just sit around, do nothing

  • and turn into fat lazy blobs.

  • This is nonsense.

  • The labor system we have today

  • is in fact the generator of laziness, not a resolver of it.

  • .

  • If you think back to when you were a child-

  • full of life, interested in new things to understand,

  • likely creating and exploring...

  • But as time went on, the system pushed you

  • into the focus of figuring out how to make money.

  • And from early education,

  • to study at a university, you are narrowed.

  • Only to emerge as a creature which serves as a cog in a wheel

  • .

  • in a model that sends all the fruits to the upper 1%.

  • Scientific Studies have now shown that people are, in fact,

  • not motivated by monetary reward

  • when it comes to ingenuity and creation.

  • The creation itself is the reward.

  • Money, in fact, appears only to serve as an incentive

  • for repetitive, mundane actions

  • a role we have just now shown can be replaced by machine.

  • So when it comes to innovation- the actual use of the human mind-

  • .

  • the monetary incentive has proven to be a hindrance,

  • interfering and detracting from creative thought.

  • And this might explain why Nikola Tesla, the Wright Brothers,

  • and other inventors who contributed massively to our current world

  • .

  • never showed a monetary incentive to do so.

  • Money is, in fact, a false incentive

  • and causes 100 times more distortion than it does contribution.

  • .

  • Good morning class. Please settle down.

  • The first thing I would like to do is go around the room

  • and ask what everyone would like to be when they grow up.

  • Who would like to go first?

  • Okay, how about you Sarah?

  • When I grow up I want to work at McDonald's like my mom!

  • Oh, family tradition, eh?

  • How about you, Linda?

  • When I grow up, I'm going to be a prostitute

  • on the streets of New York City!

  • Oh! glamour girl, huh? Very ambitious.

  • .

  • How about you, Tommy?

  • When I grow up, I'm going to be a rich, elitist businessman

  • who works on Wall Street and profits

  • .

  • off of the collapse of foreign economies.

  • Enterprising... and great to see some multicultural interest!

  • .

  • [Victims of Culture]

  • As stated before, a Resource-Based Economy

  • applies the Scientific Method to social concern

  • and this isn't limited to simply technical efficiency.

  • It also has the consideration of human

  • and social well-being directly and what comprises it.

  • What good is a social system if, in the end,

  • it doesn't produce happiness and peaceful coexistence?

  • So, it is important to point out

  • that with the removal of the money system

  • and the necessities of life provided

  • we would see a global reduction in crime

  • by about 95% almost immediately-

  • for there is nothing to steal, embezzle, scam, or the like.

  • 95% of all people in prisons today are there

  • due to some monetary related crime or drug abuse

  • and drug abuse is a disorder- not a crime.

  • So what about the other 5%?, the truly violent...

  • .

  • often seeming to some as being violent

  • for the sake of being violent...

  • are they justevilpeople?

  • The reason that I frankly think it's a waste of time

  • to engage in moral value judgments about people's violence

  • .

  • is because it doesn't advance by one iota

  • our understanding of either the causes

  • or the prevention of the violent behavior.

  • People sometimes ask if I believe inforgivingcriminals.

  • My answer to that is

  • No, I don't believe in forgiveness

  • anymore than I believe in condemnation.”

  • It's only if we, as a society,

  • can take the same attitude of treating violence

  • as a problem in public health and preventive medicine

  • rather than as a moral "evil"...

  • It's only when we make that change

  • in our own attitudes and assumptions and values

  • that we will actually succeed in reducing the level of violence

  • rather than stimulating it, which is what we do now.

  • .

  • The more justice you seek, the more hurt you become

  • because there's no such thing as justice.

  • There is whatever there is out there. That's it.

  • In other words, if people are conditioned to be racist bigots-

  • if they are brought up in an environment that advocates that-

  • why do you blame the person for it?

  • They are a victim of a subculture.

  • Therefore they have to be helped.

  • The point is, we have to redesign the environment

  • that produces aberrant behavior. That's the problem.

  • .

  • Not putting a person in jail.

  • That's why judges, lawyers, “freedom of choice”-

  • such concepts are dangerous!

  • Because it gives you mis-information

  • that the person isbad”, or that person is a “serial killer”.

  • Serial killers are made

  • just like soldiers become serial killers with a machine gun.

  • They become killing machines,

  • but nobody looks at them as murderers or assassins

  • because that's “natural”.

  • So we blame people.

  • We say, “Well, this guy was a Nazi- he tortured Jews.”

  • No, he was brought up to torture Jews.

  • Once you accept the fact that people have individual choices

  • and they are free to make those choices- ...

  • Free to make choices means without being influenced.

  • .

  • And I can't understand that at all.

  • All of us are influenced in all of our choices

  • by the culture we live in, by our parents

  • and by the values that dominate.

  • So we're influenced- so there can't befreechoices.

  • 'What's the greatest country in the world?' - the true answer:

  • 'I haven't been all over the world and I don't know enough

  • about different cultures to answer that question.'

  • I don't know anybody that speaks that way.

  • They say, "It's the good old USA! The greatest country in the world!"

  • .

  • There is no survey... 'Have you been to India?' - 'No.'

  • 'Have you been to England?' - 'No.' 'Have you been to France?' - 'No.'

  • .

  • 'Then what do you make your assumptions on?'

  • They can't answer, they get mad at you. They say,

  • 'God dammit! Who the hell are you to tell me what to think?!'

  • .

  • You know... Don't forget: you're dealing with aberrated people.

  • They are not responsible for their answers;

  • they're victims of culture and that means

  • they have been influenced by their culture.

  • [ Part 4: Rise ]

  • When we consider a Resource-Based Economy

  • there are often a number of arguments that tend to come up with...

  • [ EH! ] (Interrupted)

  • [ Eh! Hey! ]

  • [ Now hold on just a minute! ] - Yes?

  • [ I know what this is. This is called Marxism, buddy! ]

  • [ Stalin killed 800 billion people because of ideas like this... ]

  • [ My father died in the Gulag! ] - All right, hold on, hold on ...

  • [ Communist! Fascist! ]

  • [You don't like America you should just leave!]

  • All right, everybody just calm down...

  • [ Death to the New World Order! ]

  • [ Death to the New World Order! ]

  • And as the irrationality of the audience grew,

  • shocked and confused, suddenly

  • the narrator suffered a fatal heart attack.

  • And the seemingly communist propaganda film was no more.

  • [System Error]

  • [Backup Initiated - Restored]

  • But you know, I've said that sort of thing to people

  • in think-tank type of situations,

  • you know these Club of Rome types and so forth...

  • they say 'Marxist!'

  • What? Marxist? Where did that come from?

  • They just got this icon they hold onto- It's their Holy Grail

  • .

  • and it's such an easy one, you know.

  • People ask if I'm a Socialist or a Communist or Capitalist.

  • And I say I am none of the above.

  • And why do you think that those are the only options?

  • All of those political constructs were created by writers

  • who assumed we lived on a planet of infinite resources.

  • .

  • Not one of those political philosophies even contemplates

  • that there might be a shortage of anything!

  • I believe that communism, socialism, free enterprise, fascism

  • are part of social evolution.

  • You can't take a giant step from one culture to another-

  • .

  • there are in-between systems.

  • Before there's anyism”, we've got a life ground.

  • And the life ground is as I've just described most easily

  • as all the conditions required to take your next breath.

  • .

  • And that involves the air you breathe, the water you get,

  • the safety you have, the education you can access

  • .

  • - all these things that we share and use

  • and that no life, in any culture, can do without.

  • So we've got to reset down to the Life Ground

  • and the life ground is no longer anyism”.

  • It's “life value analysis.”

  • [ Beyond The Pale ]

  • It's simply a matter of historical fact

  • that the dominant intellectual culture

  • of any particular society reflects the interests

  • of the dominant group in that society.

  • In a slave owning society

  • the beliefs about human beings and human rights

  • and so on will reflect the needs of the slave owners.

  • In the society, which again is based on

  • the power of certain people to control and profit from

  • the lives and work of millions of others,

  • the dominant intellectual culture

  • will reflect the needs of the dominant group.

  • So, if you look across the board,

  • the ideas that pervade psychology and sociology

  • .

  • and history and political economy and political science

  • fundamentally reflect certain elite interests.

  • And the academics who question that too much

  • tend to get shunted to the side or to be seen as sort ofradicals”.

  • .

  • The dominant values of a culture

  • tend to support and perpetuate

  • what is rewarded by that culture.

  • And in a society where success and status

  • is measured by material wealth- not social contribution-

  • .

  • it is easy to see why the state of the world is what it is today.

  • We are dealing with a value system disorder

  • - completely denatured -

  • where the priority of personal and social health

  • have become secondary to the detrimental notions

  • of artificial wealth and limitless growth.

  • And, like a virus, this disorder now permeates every facet of

  • .

  • government - news media - entertainment - and even academia.

  • And built into its structure are mechanisms of protection

  • .

  • from anything that might interfere.

  • Disciples of the Monetary-Market religion-

  • the Self-Appointed Guardians of the Status Quo-

  • constantly seek out ways to avoid any form of thought

  • which might interfere with their beliefs,

  • the most common of which are Projected Dualities.

  • If you're not a Republican, you must be a Democrat.

  • If you are not Christian, you might be a Satanist.

  • And if you feel society can be greatly improved

  • to consider, perhaps - I don't know - taking care of everyone?

  • .

  • you're just a “Utopianist”.

  • And the most insidious of them all:

  • If you are not for the "free-market"

  • you must be against freedom itself.

  • I'm a believer in freedom!

  • Every time you hear the word 'freedom' being said anywhere

  • or 'government interference' said anywhere, it means, decoded:

  • .

  • blocking maximization of turning money

  • into more money for private money possessors.

  • That's it. Every other thing they'll say:

  • 'Oh, we need more commodities for people';

  • 'Oh, this is freedom against tyranny' and so forth,

  • every time you see it, you can decode it down to that.

  • And I think you'll find a one-to-one correlation

  • with every time they use it.

  • And this, in a sense, in which we might call- ...

  • It's a Syntax. A governing syntax of understanding and of value.

  • So it governs beneath their own recognition of it.

  • So they might say: 'Oh, I didn't mean that at all!'

  • but in fact, that's what they do.

  • Just like you may speak a grammar

  • and you have rules of grammar you follow

  • without recognizing what the rules are...

  • and so what we have is what I call theRuling Value Syntax

  • that underlies this. So, every time they use these words:

  • 'government interference'; 'lack of freedom' or 'freedom'

  • or 'progress' or 'development'

  • you can decode them all to come back to mean that.

  • Of course, when you hear the word 'freedom'

  • it tends to be in same sentence with something called 'democracy'.

  • .

  • It's fascinating how people today seem to believe

  • that they actually have a relevant influence

  • on what their government does,

  • forgetting that the very nature of our system

  • offers everything for sale.

  • The only vote that counts is the monetary vote

  • and it doesn't matter how much any activist

  • yells about ethics and accountability.

  • In a market system, every politician, every legislation

  • and hence, every government- is for sale.

  • And even with the $20 trillion bank bailouts starting in 2007-

  • .

  • an amount of money which could have changed say,

  • the global energy infrastructure to fully renewable methods-

  • .

  • instead going to a series of institutions

  • that literally do nothing to help society,

  • institutions that could be removed tomorrow with no recourse...

  • .

  • the blind conditioning that politics and politicians

  • exist for the public well-being still continues.

  • The fact is, politics is a business,

  • no different than any other in a market system,

  • and they care about their self-interest before anything else.

  • I don't really, honestly, deep down believe in political action.

  • I think the system contracts and expands as it wants to.

  • It accommodates these changes.

  • I think the civil rights movement was an accommodation

  • on the part of those who own the country.

  • I think they see where their self-interest lies;

  • they see a certain amount of freedom seems good

  • -an illusion of liberty- give these people a voting day every year

  • so that they will have the illusion of meaningless choice.

  • Meaningless choice- that we go, like slaves and say

  • Oh, I Voted.” The limits of debate in this country

  • are established before the debate even begins

  • and everyone else is marginalized and made to seem

  • either to be communist or some sort of disloyal person-

  • a “kook- there's a word...

  • and now it's “conspiracy”. See- they made that

  • something that should not be even entertained for a minute:

  • that powerful people might get together and have a plan!

  • Doesn't happen! You're a “kook”! You're a “conspiracy buff”!

  • And of all the mechanisms of defense of this system

  • there are two that repeatedly come up.

  • The first is this idea that the system has been thecause

  • of the material progress we have seen on this planet.

  • Well...No.

  • There are basically two root causes

  • which have created the increased so-calledwealth

  • and population growth we see today.

  • One: the exponential advancement of production technology;

  • hence scientific ingenuity.

  • And Two: the initial discovery of abundant hydrocarbon energy-

  • which is currently the foundation of the entire socio-economic system.

  • The free-market / capitalist / monetary market system

  • - whatever you want to call it -

  • has done nothing but ride the wave of these advents

  • with a distorted incentive system and a haphazard

  • grossly unequal method of utilizing and distributing those fruits.

  • The second defense is a belligerent social bias

  • generated from years of propaganda

  • which sees any other social system

  • as a route to so called "tyranny

  • with various name droppings of Stalin, Mao, Hitler,

  • and the death tolls they generated.

  • Well, as despotic as these men might have been

  • along with the societal approaches they perpetuated,

  • when it comes to the game of death-

  • when comes to the systematic

  • daily mass murder of human beings-

  • nothing in history compares to what we have today.

  • Famines- throughout at least the last century of our history-

  • have not been caused by a lack of food.

  • They have been caused by relative poverty.

  • The economic resources were so inequitably distributed

  • that the poor simply didn't have enough money

  • with which to buy the food that would've been

  • available if they could have afforded to pay for it.

  • That would be an example of Structural Violence.

  • Another example: in Africa and other areas-

  • I'll particularly focus on Africa-

  • tens of millions of people are dying of AIDS.

  • Why are they dying?

  • It's not because we don't know how to treat AIDS.

  • We have millions of people in the wealthy countries

  • getting along remarkably well

  • because they have the medicines that will treat it.

  • The people in Africa who are dying of AIDS

  • are not dying because of the HIV virus.

  • They are dying because they don't have the money

  • with which to pay for the drugs

  • that would keep them alive.

  • Gandhi saw this. He said:

  • The deadliest form of violence is poverty.”

  • And that's absolutely right.

  • Poverty kills far more people than all the wars in history,

  • more people than all the murderers in history,

  • more than all the suicides in history.

  • Not only does Structural Violence kill more people

  • than all the Behavioral Violence put together,

  • Structural Violence is also the main cause of Behavioral Violence.

  • .

  • [ Beyond the Peak ]

  • Oil is the foundation of

  • and is present throughout, the edifice of human civilization.

  • There are 10 calories of hydrocarbon energyoil and natural gas

  • in every calorie of food you and I eat in the industrialized world.

  • Fertilizers are made from natural gas.

  • Pesticides are made from oil.

  • You drive oil-powered machines to plant, plow,

  • irrigate, harvest, transport, package.

  • You wrap the food in plasticthat's oil. All plastic is oil.

  • There are 7 gallons of oil in every tire.

  • Oil is everywhere; it's ubiquitous. And it's only because of oil

  • that there are 7 billion people or almost

  • 7 billion people on this planet right now.

  • The arrival of this cheap and easy energy

  • which is equivalent, by the way,

  • to billions of slaves working around the clock,

  • changed the world in such a radical way over the last century

  • and the population has gone up 10 times.

  • But by 2050, oil supply is able to support

  • less than half the present world's population

  • in their present way of life.

  • So, the scale of adjustment to live differently is just enormous.

  • The world is now using 6 barrels of oil for every barrel it finds.

  • Five years ago it was using 4 barrels of oil

  • for every barrel it finds.

  • A year from now it is going to be using 8 barrels of oil

  • for every barrel of oil it finds.

  • What's disturbing to me is the lack of any real effort

  • from governments worldwide

  • and industry leaders worldwide to do something different.

  • We have these, sort of, attempts to build more wind power

  • and to maybe do something with Tide...

  • we've got attempts to make our cars a little bit more efficient.

  • But there's nothing which really looks like a revolution coming along;

  • these are all pretty minor, and that I think is pretty frightening.

  • .

  • And the governments who are driven by these economists

  • who don't really appreciate what we're talking about

  • are trying to stimulate consumerism to restore past prosperity

  • in the hope that they can restore the past.

  • They're printing yet more money lacking any collateral at all.

  • So, if the economy improves and recovers

  • and the famous growth comes back, it will only be short-lived

  • because within a short period of time,

  • counted in months rather than years,

  • it will hit the supply barrier again;

  • there will be another price shock and a deeper recession.

  • So I think we go into a series of vicious circles.

  • .

  • So you have the economic growth going up

  • -price spike- everything shuts down. That's where we are now.

  • Then it starts to come up again but what we have now is this area

  • where there's no more ability to produce cheap energy.

  • We're at the peak- we're on the down slope of oil production.

  • No way you're going to get any more out of the ground any faster

  • which means that things shut down, the price of oil drops

  • which it did in early 2009 but then as you have a “recovery

  • the price of oil starts to come back.

  • It's recently been hovering at about $80 a barrel

  • and what we see is that at even at $80 a barrel now,

  • with the financial and economic collapse,

  • people are having a hard time affording that.

  • World oil production right now is about 86 million barrels a day.

  • Over 10 years, you're looking at roughly 14 million barrels a day

  • having to be replaced.

  • There's nothing around which can come even

  • within 1% of meeting that sort of demand.

  • If we don't do something pretty quickly

  • there's going to be a huge energy deficiency.

  • I think the big mistake is in not recognizing a decade or so ago

  • that a concerted effort needed to be made

  • to develop these sustainable forms of energy.

  • .

  • I think that's something our grandchildren

  • will look back on with total disbelief.

  • 'You people knew you were dealing with a finite commodity.

  • How could you possibly have build your economy

  • around something which was going to disappear?'

  • For the first time in human history

  • the species is now faced with the depletion of a core resource

  • central to our current system of survival.

  • And the punchline of the whole thing

  • is that even with oil becoming more scarce

  • the economic system will still blindly push

  • its cancerous growth model,

  • so people can go out and buy more oil powered cars

  • to generate GDP and jobs, exacerbating the decline.

  • Are there solutions to replace the edifice

  • of the hydrocarbon economy? Of course.

  • .

  • But the path needed to accomplish these changes

  • will not manifest through the Market System Protocols required

  • since new solutions can only be implemented

  • through the Profit Mechanism.

  • People are not investing in renewable energies

  • because there is no money in it in both long and short term.

  • And the commitment needed to make it happen

  • can only occur at a severe financial loss.

  • Therefore, there is no monetary incentive and in this system,

  • if there is no monetary incentive, things do not happen.

  • And on top of it all,

  • Peak Oil is just one of many surfacing consequences

  • of the environmental-social train wreck gaining speed today.

  • Other declines include fresh water

  • -the very fabric of our existence-

  • which is currently showing shortages for 2.8 billion people

  • .

  • and those shortages are on pace to reach 4 billion by 2030.

  • Food Production:

  • The destruction of arable crop land,

  • from which 99.7% of all human food comes from today

  • is occurring up to 40 times faster than it is being replenished.

  • And over the last 40 years, 30% of the arable land

  • has become unproductive.

  • Not to mention that hydrocarbons

  • are the backbone of agriculture today

  • and, as it declines, so will the food supply.

  • As far as resources in general,

  • at our current patterns of consumption,

  • by 2030 we will need 2 planets to continue our rates.

  • Not to mention the continual destruction

  • of life supporting biodiversity causing extinction spasms

  • .

  • and environmental destabilization across the globe.

  • And with all of these declines

  • we have the near exponential population growth

  • where by 2030 there might be over 8 billion people on this planet.

  • .

  • Energy production alone would need to increase 44%

  • by 2030 to meet such demand.

  • And again- since money is the only initiator of action,

  • are we to expect that any country on the planet

  • is going to be able to afford the massive changes

  • needed to revolutionize agriculture

  • water processing, energy production and the like?

  • When the global debt pyramid scheme

  • is slowly shutting the entire world down?

  • Not to mention the fact that the unemployment you currently see

  • .

  • is going to become normality, due

  • to the nature of technological unemployment.

  • The jobs are not coming back.

  • And finally, a broad social perspective:

  • From the 1970 to 2010, poverty on this planet

  • doubled due to this system.

  • And given our current state,

  • do you honestly think we will see anything less than more doubling,

  • .

  • more suffering and more mass starvation?

  • [ The Beginning ]

  • There is not going to be any recovery.

  • This is not some long depression

  • that we're some day going to pull out of.

  • I think the next phase that we are going to see

  • after the next round of economic collapses is massive civil unrest.

  • When unemployment checks stop being paid

  • because the states have no money left.

  • And when things get so bad that people lose confidence

  • in their elected leaders, they will demand change

  • if we don't kill each other in the process

  • or destroy the environment.

  • I'm just afraid that we might get to the point of no return

  • and that bothers me to no end.

  • We do all we can to avoid that condition.

  • It's clear that we're on the verge of a great transition in human life.

  • That what we face now is this fundamental change

  • of the life we've known over the last century.

  • There has to be a link between the economy

  • and the resources of this planet-

  • the resources being of course, all animal and plant life,

  • the health of the oceans and everything else.

  • This is a monetary paradigm that will not let go

  • until it's killed the last human being.

  • The "in" group will do all it can to stay in power

  • and that's what you've got to keep in mind.

  • They'll use the army and navy and lies

  • or whatever they have to use to keep in power.

  • They're not about to give it up

  • because they don't know of any other system

  • that will perpetuate their kind.

  • [ Live from New York ]

  • [Global Protests Shut Down World Economy]

  • [ London - Live ]

  • [ China - Live ]

  • [ South Africa - Live ]

  • [ Live from Spain ]

  • [ Live from Russia ]

  • [ Canada - Live ]

  • [ Saudi Arabia - Live ]

  • [ Western Crime Rates Soar ]

  • [ UN Declares State of Global Emergency ]

  • [ Global Unemployment Hits 65% ]

  • [ Fears of World War Continue ]

  • [ Debt Collapse now causing food shortages ]

  • ♫ ♪ [ Guitar strums ] ♫ ♪

  • Take a straight and stronger course to the corner of your life

  • Just remember that the goal

  • Is for us all to capture all we want

  • [ Take it Back ]

  • Don't surround yourself with yourself

  • Move on back two squares

  • Send an instant karma to me

  • Initial it with loving care ... for yourself

  • (Don't surround yourself)

  • ♫ 'Cause it's time is time in time with your time and its news is captured

  • ♫ ...for the queen to use! ♪

  • [ While no violence has been reported

  • as the unprecedented protests continue...

  • it appears that the equivalent of trillions of dollars

  • are being systematically withdrawn

  • from bank accounts across the world

  • and in turn, evidently now being dumped

  • in front of the world's central banks. ]

  • [ World History ]

  • ♫ I've seen all good people turn their heads each day so satisfied I'm on my way

  • [ Repeats ]

  • [ THIS IS YOUR WORLD ]

  • [ THIS IS OUR WORLD ]

  • [ THE REVOLUTION IS NOW ]

  • [ WWW.THEZEITGEISTMOVEMENT.COM ]

In a decaying society, Art, if it is truthful,

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