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  • Hello, my name is Franky. I work also with

  • an organization called The Zeitgeist Movement as you already know.

  • I would like to welcome everybody

  • from far and wide; everybody did come. Thank you very much.

  • I would like to take this opportunity to especially thank

  • the teams of The Zeitgeist Movement.

  • Teams meaning the Linguistic Team, the Web Team, the Technology Team,

  • the Activism Team and also the Project Team that

  • coordinated this project.

  • The whole German chapter did a great job

  • with establishing this event within a month.

  • I would like to thank everybody personally.

  • Good to see you here.

  • I think Peter Joseph doesn't need any introduction.

  • I think everybody here knows who he is.

  • So, short and precise: thank you.

  • I hand the microphone over to Peter.

  • [Sustained Applause]

  • You can turn this mic off since I'm not going to use it.

  • Ah, so it's the other mic.

  • How's everybody doing? [Audience in unison] - Good!

  • I really appreciate you all being here.

  • I want to thank Franky and the Berlin team

  • for moving so fast; it's really phenomenal.

  • Having put on many events myself over the years, it's not an easy task.

  • I'm always reminded when I travel these days,

  • that The Zeitgeist Movement is truly a global phenomenon at this stage, right?

  • No matter where any of us end up on the planet,

  • you don't have to go very far to find friends who share similar values

  • in this pursuit of a better world.

  • The title of this talk is "Economic Calculation

  • in a Natural Law/Resource-Based Economy (NLRBE)."

  • For the past five years or so

  • The Zeitgeist Movement has put out quite a bit of educational media

  • with respect to its advocation,

  • and the learning curve has been rather intense.

  • There's been a tendency to generalize

  • with respect to how things actually work technically.

  • This is the contents of this presentation.

  • In Part I and two I'm going to refine

  • the inherent flaws of the current market model

  • regarding why we need to change

  • along with relaying the vast prospects

  • we now have to solve vast problems,

  • improve efficiency, and generate a form of abundance

  • that could meet all human needs.

  • The active term which has gained popularity in the last couple years

  • is called "post-scarcity,"

  • even though that word is a little misleading semantically as I'll explain.

  • In Part III, I'll work to show how this new society

  • generally works in its structure and basic calculation.

  • I think most people on the planet know that there is something

  • very wrong with the current socioeconomic tradition.

  • They just don't know how to think about the solution,

  • or more accurately, how to arrive at such solutions.

  • Until that is addressed, we're not going to get very far.

  • On that note, in a number of months, a rather substantial text

  • is going to be put into circulation, available for free

  • and also in print form or download form

  • at cost (it's a non-profit expression).

  • This will be finished hopefully by the first of the year

  • and will be the definitive expression (in the condensed form)

  • of the Movement, something that's been long overdue.

  • It's called "The Zeitgeist Movement Defined" and it will serve as both

  • an orientation and a reference guide.

  • It will have probably over a thousand footnotes and sources.

  • Once finished, an educational video series will be put out

  • in about 20 parts to produce the material along with a workbook

  • to help people who want to learn how to talk about these ideas because

  • we basically need more people on an international level

  • to be able to communicate, as I try to do.

  • It's a very important thing, and I think the future of the Movement

  • rests in part on our capacity to create a well-oiled

  • international educational machine with consistent language

  • coupled with real design projects and their interworkings.

  • Part I: Why are we even here?

  • Is this type of large-scale change-

  • what the Movement advocates- really needed?

  • Can't we just work to fix and improve the current

  • economic model, keeping the general framework of money,

  • trade, profit, power, property and the like?

  • The short answer is a definitive "No,"

  • as I'm going to explain.

  • If there's any real interest to solve the growing

  • public health and environmental crises at hand

  • this system needs to go.

  • Market capitalism, no matter how you wish to regulate it

  • or not regulate it, depending on who you speak with,

  • contains severe structural flaws

  • which will always, to one degree or another,

  • perpetuate environmental abuse and destabilization,

  • and human disregard and caustic inequality.

  • Put another way, environmental and social imbalance

  • and a basic lack of sustainability both environmentally and culturally

  • is inherent to the market economy, and it always has been.

  • The difference between capitalism today and say, the 16th century

  • is that our technological ability to rapidly accelerate

  • and amplify this market process

  • has brought to the surface consequences which simply couldn't be understood

  • or even recognized during those early primitive times.

  • In other words, the basic principles of market economics

  • have always been intrinsically flawed.

  • It has taken just this long for the severity of those flaws

  • to come to fruition. Let me explain a little bit.

  • From an environmental standpoint,

  • market perception simply cannot view the Earth

  • as anything but an inventory for exploitation.

  • Why? Because the entire existence of the market economy

  • has to do with keeping money in circulation

  • at a rate which can keep as many people employed as possible.

  • In other words, the world economy is powered by constant consumption.

  • If consumption levels drop, so does labor demand,

  • and so does the available purchasing power of the general population

  • and hence, so does demand for goods as money isn't there to buy them.

  • This cyclical consumption is the lifeblood

  • of our economic existence.

  • The very idea of being conservative or truly efficient

  • with the Earth's finite resources in any way

  • is structurally counterproductive

  • to this needed driving force of consuming.

  • If you don't believe that, ask yourself why

  • virtually every life support system on this planet is in decline.

  • We have an ongoing loss of topsoil, ever-depleting fresh water,

  • atmospheric and climate destabilization,

  • a loss of oxygen-producing plankton in the ocean

  • (which is critical to marine and atmosphere ecology),

  • the ongoing depletion of fish populations,

  • the reduction of rain forests, and so forth.

  • In other words, an overall general loss of critical biodiversity

  • is occurring and increasing.

  • For those not familiar with the critical relevance of biodiversity,

  • billions of years of evolution

  • has created a vastly interdependent biosphere of planetary systems.

  • Disturbing one system always has an effect on many others.

  • This, of course, is no new observation.

  • In 2002, 192 countries in association with the United Nations

  • got together around something called "The Convention on Biological Diversity."

  • They made a public commitment to significantly reduce this loss by 2010.

  • And what changed eight years later? Nothing.

  • In their official 2010 publication, they state:

  • "None of the 21 sub-targets accompanying the overall target

  • of significantly reducing the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010

  • can be said definitively to have been achieved globally."

  • "Actions to promote biodiversity receive a tiny fraction of funding

  • compared to infrastructure and industrial developments."

  • (Hmm, I wonder why?)

  • "Moreover, biodiversity considerations are often ignored

  • when such developments are designed.

  • Most future scenarios project continuing high levels of extinctions

  • and loss of habitats throughout this century."

  • In a 2011 study published which was in part

  • a response to an general call to isolate and protect certain regions

  • to insure some security of this biodiversity,

  • found that, even with millions of square kilometers of land and ocean

  • currently under legal protection, it has done very little

  • to slow the trend of decline.

  • They also made the following highly troubling conclusion

  • combining this trend with the state of our resource consumption:

  • "The excess use of the Earth's resources or overshoot is possible

  • because resources can be harvested faster than they can be replaced.

  • The cumulative overshoot from the mid-1980's to 2002

  • resulted in an 'ecological debt'

  • that would require 2.5 planet Earths to pay.

  • In a business-as-usual scenario, our demands on planet Earth

  • could mount to the productivity of 27 planets by 2050."

  • And there's no shortage of other corroborating studies that confirm,

  • to one degree or another, we are indeed greatly overshooting

  • the annual production capacity of the Earth,

  • coupled with pollution and collateral destruction

  • caused by industrial and consumer patterns.

  • Again, this kind of research has been published for many decades now.

  • Why is it that with all this mounting data

  • we can't seem to curb life support depletion

  • and our overshooting consumption trends?

  • Is it because there are too many people on the planet?

  • Is it because we're just utterly incompetent

  • and have no conscious control over our actions?

  • No. The problem is that we have a global economic tradition still in place

  • rooted in 16th century pre-industrial handicraft-oriented thought

  • that places the act of consuming,

  • buying and selling as the core driver of all social unfolding.

  • The best analogy I can think of is to consider the gas pedal on a car:

  • the more consumption of fuel, the faster it goes,

  • and buying things in our world is the fuel.

  • If you slow down consumption, economic growth slows,

  • people lose jobs, purchasing power declines

  • and things become destabilized and so forth.

  • So I hope it is clear that the system simply does not reward or even support

  • environmental sustainability in the form of conservation.

  • In fact, it doesn't even reward sustainability in the form

  • of any kind of earthly or physical efficiency

  • as I will talk more at length of in a moment.

  • Instead, it rewards servicing, turnover and waste:

  • the more problems and inefficiencies we have,

  • not to mention the more insecure, materialistic

  • and needy the population becomes, the better it is for industry,

  • the better it is for GDP, the better it is for employment,

  • regardless of the fact that we may literally

  • be killing ourselves in the process.

  • My friend John McMurtry, a philosopher in Canada, refers to this state

  • as the "Cancer Stage of Capitalism,"

  • a system which is now destroying its host, us and the Earth,

  • almost unknowingly because very few today really understand

  • how unsustainable the core driving principles of the market really are.

  • The second structurally inherent consequence I want to mention

  • is the fact that market capitalism is indeed

  • empirically socially destabilizing.

  • It creates unnecessary and inhumane inequality,

  • along with resulting unnecessary human conflict.

  • In fact, I would say capitalism's most natural state

  • is conflict and imbalance.

  • I would categorize two forms of conflict in the world:

  • national and class.

  • I'm not going to spend much time on the causes of national warfare

  • as it should be fairly obvious to most of us at his point.

  • Sovereign nations which are in part protectionist institutions

  • for the most powerful forces of business have often engaged

  • in the most primal act of competition- systematic mass murder-

  • in order to preserve the economic integrity of their national economies

  • and select business interests which invariably comprise

  • the political constituency of any given country.

  • All wars in history, while often conveniently masked by various excuses,

  • have predominately been about land, natural resources,

  • or geoeconomic strategy on one level or another.

  • The state institution has always been driven

  • by commercial and property interests, existing as both a regulator

  • of the basic day-to-day internal economic operations

  • in the form of legislation and as a tool for power consolidation

  • and competitive advantage by the most dominant industries

  • of the national or even, in fact more importantly, global economy.

  • There are many people in the world that still look at this causality in reverse.

  • In some economic views, state government is deemed the central problem,

  • as opposed to the self-interest and competitive, advantage-seeking ethos

  • inherent to market capitalism.

  • As the argument goes "If state power was removed or reduced dramatically,

  • the market and society would be free of most of its negative effects."

  • The problem with this argument is that it forgets

  • that capitalism is just a variation of a scarcity-driven

  • specialization and property-based exchange system,

  • a system which actually goes back millennia in one form or another.

  • Early settlements naturally needed to protect themselves as resource

  • and land acquisition moved forward over time.

  • Armies were created to protect resources from invading forces and the like.

  • At the same time people were working to engage

  • agriculture and handicraft,

  • and it revealed labor and exchange value in a very primitive form.

  • Hence property value, in the midst of this scarcity,

  • demanded regulation and laws,

  • not only to protect property, but to protect commerce

  • and also avoid scams and fraud in transactions.

  • This is the seed of the state!

  • The market is a game and people can cheat.

  • You need regulation.

  • This is the basic problem.

  • The market also allows- and here's the punchline-

  • that regulation to be purchased by money.

  • Therefore, there is no guaranteed integrity.

  • The state and the market both battle each other

  • and compliment each other.

  • You will always have regulatory power centers in a market economy.

  • The state and the market are inseparable;

  • they go hand-in-hand.

  • Now, as an aside, people often challenge this reality

  • with moral or ethical arguments,

  • which, I'm sorry to say, are entirely culturally subjective.

  • In a world where everything is for sale,

  • where the reward reinforcement, the operant condition,

  • is directly tied to seeking personal advantage and gain,

  • who is to say where the lines should be drawn in that process?

  • This is why moral principles without structural reinforcement

  • are useless.

  • In the end, the question isn't what is morally right or morally wrong.

  • The question is what works and what doesn't.

  • And sometimes it takes a great deal of time

  • for the truth of such patterns to materialize.

  • For example, most people, rightly so, see

  • abject human slavery historically as a morally wrong condition,

  • but let's dig deeper into the characteristics and think more deeply.

  • I think it is much more productive to recognize that slavery didn't work

  • in the sense that it was culturally unsustainable.

  • Bigotry in all forms is not just ugly,

  • it is culturally unsustainable because it generates conflict.

  • I'm not aware of any slave-owning society

  • that did not undergo large slave rebellions.

  • It's unstable and again, therefore, unsustainable.

  • Market capitalism is on the same path.

  • There are more slaves in the world today,

  • operating within the bounds of the market economy,

  • than anytime in human history.

  • And I have little doubt that if we get through this rough period of time

  • without destroying ourselves by war,

  • uprisings or ecological collapse,

  • people in the future will look back at our world today with the same disgust

  • regarding our human-rights-violating economic system

  • as we today look back upon the period of abject human slavery.

  • Class Warfare.

  • This leads as well into the subject of class warfare

  • and socioeconomic inequality.

  • The long history of so-called "socialist" outcry has largely been about

  • this constant and inhumane imbalance on one level or another.

  • A great deal of time has been spent by many critics of capitalism,

  • describing how it is indeed a system of exploitation,

  • which inherently separates a society into stratified economic layers

  • with a higher class given dominance over the lower, structurally.

  • It's structurally built right in.

  • If you're one of those people that doesn't agree with this reality,

  • ask yourself why there has been one labor strike after another

  • in the past 300 years, why worker unions even exist, why CEOs

  • often tend to make hundreds of times more money than the common worker,

  • or why 46% of the world's wealth is now owned by 1%,

  • which are almost exclusively of what we could call

  • the capitalist ownership class.

  • Inequality and class separation is a direct mathematical result

  • of the market's inherently competitive orientation,

  • which divides individuals in small groups

  • as they work to compete against each other for survival and security.

  • It is entirely individualistically oriented,

  • driven by a core incentive system based around isolated self-preservation,

  • assuming the need to constantly reinforce one's security financially

  • since the market climate (the environment) gives no certainty whatsoever

  • of well-being in and of itself: fear and greed.

  • The rich get richer because the model favors them,

  • and the poor basically stay the same

  • because the system works against them by comparison.

  • It is structurally classed.

  • Those with more money have more options and influence than those with less.

  • You are only as free, as they say,

  • as your purchasing power will allow you to be.

  • The credit system is a perfect example.

  • Money is treated as nothing more than a product

  • in the credit/banking system.

  • Money is sold by banks via loans for profit

  • which comes in the form of interest.

  • If you miss payments or violate your contract,

  • often the interest rate, does what? It goes up

  • because you are now considered a higher risk consumer.

  • If you fail to meet that interest or future payments,

  • you might default on the loan.

  • Your punishment is the ruining of your credit rating or reputation

  • in the financial circles.

  • Once that happens, your financial flexibility is even more stifled

  • as your economic access is limited.

  • People see this as just "the way things are"

  • but they don't realize how insidious this is.

  • This pounds the lower classes to stay low

  • for reasons and forces of coercion that are built into the structure

  • that are beyond their control! I could give many other examples.

  • Everything in this system works against you if you're not affluent

  • in this society. And guess what?

  • These financial policies were created by ...

  • self-interest-oriented market logic,

  • not some politician or some government.

  • I won't even go into the fact that the interest charged

  • for the sale of money today doesn't even exist in the money supply itself,

  • which creates a kind of system-based social coercion

  • forcing in the inevitability of credit default over time,

  • along with acts of economic desperation such as

  • selling property you rather would not, to meet your basic needs

  • or taking labor positions that you do not appreciate.

  • The market generates desperation as its method of coercion.

  • This leads into another very common "free market" confusion

  • I often see in the very popular laissez-faire community.

  • They talk about free trade as trade that is entirely voluntary

  • as though such a thing could ever exist in an empirical sense.

  • All decisions to trade come from influences and pressures.

  • Only perhaps the super rich, who literally have no need

  • to worry about basic survival due to their wealth

  • could possibly be said to engage in the act of voluntary free trade.

  • For 99% of the world, we either trade or we don't survive,

  • and that pressure is empirically coercive.

  • And no, it doesn't have to be that way,

  • which is the whole point of this new social model.

  • So with all that aside, and with this understanding

  • that wealth inequality is inherent to capitalism itself

  • - you can't regulate it out -

  • the main issue I want to address here has to do with what

  • class separation and social inequality does to us

  • in the context of public health.

  • It isn't just a simple issue of some having more than others,

  • and others suffering the mere material inconvenience,

  • or pressure to engage in labor or trade they'd rather not have to.

  • It goes way beyond that.

  • Socioeconomic inequality is a poison,

  • a form of destabilizing pollution

  • that affects people's psychological and physiological health in profound ways,

  • while also very often accumulating anger towards other groups,

  • and hence, that generation of social instability.

  • The best term I know of that embodies this issue is "structural violence."

  • If I put a gun to someone's head,

  • say a 30-year-old healthy male, pull the trigger and kill him,

  • assuming an average life expectancy of say 84,

  • you can argue that possibly 54 years of life

  • was stolen from that person in a direct act of violence.

  • However, if a person is born into poverty

  • in the midst of an abundant society

  • where it is statistically proven that it would hurt no one

  • to facilitate meeting the basic needs of that person,

  • and yet they die at the age of 30 due to heart disease

  • which has been found to statistically relate to those who endure

  • the stress and effects of low socioeconomic status

  • is that death, the removal of those 54 years again, an act of violence?

  • The answer is "yes, it is."

  • Our legal system has conditioned us to think

  • that violence is a direct behavioral act.

  • The truth is that violence is a process,

  • not an act, and it can take many forms.

  • You cannot separate any outcome from the system by which it is oriented.

  • This is virtually absent from the way people think

  • about cause-and-effect in a socioeconomic system.

  • The effects of market capitalism cannot be reduced-

  • or I should say cannot be deduced- logically

  • from local or reductionist examination.

  • [It's] like things are working like a clock:

  • the market is a synergistic system, the economy is a synergistic system,

  • and the behavior of the whole, meaning large-scale social consequences

  • such as the perpetuation of inequality or violence,

  • can only be assessed in relationship to that whole.

  • This is why there has been one big dichotomy between

  • what market theorists think is supposed to happen in their world

  • and what is actually happening.

  • For example, there is no doubt that poverty and social inequity

  • is and has been causing a vast spectrum of public health problems,

  • both in the context of absolute deprivation, which means not having

  • the money to simply meet up with basic needs such as nutrition,

  • and in the context of relative deprivation,

  • which is a psychological phenomenon related to the stress-

  • the psychosocial stress- of simply living

  • in a highly-stratified society.

  • One of the greatest predictors of reduced public health

  • is now to be found as social inequity,

  • social inequality.

  • If you compare developed nations by the level of wealth inequality

  • you will find that those more equal nations have much better health

  • than those with less equality.

  • This includes physical health, mental health,

  • drug abuse, educational levels, imprisonment, obesity,

  • social mobility, trust or social capital, community life, violence,

  • teen pregnancies, and child well-being on average.

  • These outcomes are significantly worse

  • in more unequal rich countries.

  • Yet, if you tried to reduce and analyze a single person

  • for any of these noted public health factors,

  • you could never know for sure if that person is actually a victim

  • of the psycho-stress or the absolute or relative violence condition itself.

  • The causality can only be understood

  • on the large scale, probabilistically,

  • which is the importance of statistical analysis.

  • So again, the market can only be perceived

  • as a whole to gauge the truth of its effects.

  • This is why our legal system is so base and primitive.

  • That aside, I would like to detail a few more examples of structural violence,

  • as it obviously takes many more forms.

  • When we see 1.5 million children die each year from diarrheal diseases-

  • an utterly preventable problem that isn't resolved

  • due to a financial limitation across the world,

  • we are seeing the murder of 1.5 [million] children by a system

  • that is so inefficient in its process it cannot make

  • the proper resources available in certain regions,

  • even though that they are there.

  • Drug addiction, which has become a plague

  • of modern society across the world, not only causing death,

  • but also a spectrum of suffering, has been found to have roots in stress.

  • It has to do with a lack of support which creates

  • a psychological chain reaction that leads to

  • fill your feelings of pain with self-medication.

  • You will rarely find a study on addiction patterns

  • that does not see a direct correlation

  • to unstable life conditions and stress.

  • What is perhaps poverty's most dominant psychological feature?

  • Feelings of insecurity and humility.

  • Even the vast majority of behavioral violence as we know it

  • arises due to preconditions which have been tied

  • to poverty-induced deprivation and abuse.

  • Former head of the Study of Violence at Harvard, Dr. James Gilligan,

  • was a prison psychiatrist for many decades

  • analyzing the reasons for extreme acts of murder and the like.

  • In virtually all cases, high levels of deprivation, neglect, and abuse

  • occurred in the life history of the offenders. And guess what?

  • Poverty is the single best predictor

  • of child abuse and neglect.

  • In a US study, children who lived in families

  • with an annual income less than $15,000

  • are 22 times more likely to be abused or neglected

  • than children living in families with an annual income of $30,000 or more.

  • Aristotle said "Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime."

  • Gandhi said "Poverty in the worst form of violence."

  • The interesting thing about all this is

  • is that we are all possible victims of its effects,

  • for every time you hear about an act of theft,

  • violence, murder, or the like,

  • chances are the origins of that behavior were born

  • out of a preventable form of deprivation.

  • I say preventable because today

  • there is absolutely no technical reason for any human being

  • to live in poverty and resource deprivation.

  • Solving social inequality is not just a nice thing to do,

  • it is a true public health imperative.

  • Just like making sure our water isn't polluted,

  • so we don't get diseases.

  • And each of us have no idea when we might be subjected to say,

  • the violence bred by this deprivation.

  • It's a form of blowback.

  • Just like how some social theorists think about the reasons

  • for modern terrorism from abused countries.

  • A country like the United States bombs some town;

  • the people in that town lose everything. Certain people are deeply affected

  • and find no other emotional recourse

  • but to act in the most violent way that can in revenge.

  • The next thing you know, a bomb explodes at a coffee shop in your city,

  • killing your sibling.

  • In short, if you want to produce a violent criminal or gang mentality,

  • let them be raised in an environment where they are reinforced

  • with the sense that society doesn't care about them.

  • And hence they have no need to care about society.

  • This is the trademark,

  • this is the core characteristic,

  • of the capitalist social order.

  • As a final aside before I move on, I find it incredibly interesting

  • that the vast majority of the civil rights institutions today,

  • or human rights institutions today,

  • which still demand more race, gender, creed and political equality,

  • tend to do very little to address the roots of economic inequality.

  • It's a very interesting contradiction. I'm firmly convinced

  • that as time moves forward, economic equality will morph

  • into the same role as gender and race equality,

  • where meeting human needs and facilitating a high standard of living

  • will be an issue of human rights, not market expedience,

  • and the social Darwinism to which it is based.

  • Part II: Post-Scarcity.

  • I would like to spend a moment clarifying

  • what an "Abundance Focused Society" actually means

  • and give some tangible, statistical extrapolations

  • to confirm this potential.

  • A Natural Law/Resource-Based Economy is not a utopia.

  • The Zeitgeist Movement seeks a high, relative, sustainable abundance

  • relieving the most relevant forms of scarcity.

  • Many who hear such distinctions immediately dismiss

  • such qualifications as mere opinion.

  • The fact is, it's not opinion when it comes to life support

  • or empirical human needs.

  • Relative sustainable abundance

  • means seeking more than enough to meet all human needs and beyond

  • while keeping ecological balance.

  • The most relevant forms of scarcity means we differentiate

  • between scarcity as it relates to human needs

  • and scarcity as it relates to human wants,

  • as they are not the same.

  • Unfortunately, market logic pretends that they are.

  • The market cannot separate needs from wants.

  • And this gets to the root of the life-blind, value-system disorder

  • which continues to distort our culture.

  • The logic goes like this: If there exists

  • any form of scarcity of anything on any level,

  • then we need money and the competitive market to regulate it.

  • Let me explain this a little bit more.

  • One of our international lecture team members, Matt Berkowitz,

  • did a radio interview with a very popular Austrian economist a little while back,

  • and when the subject of scarcity came up this economist responded with

  • "Not everyone can have a fancy steak or a Ferrari!"

  • This was his definitive view of what scarcity means.

  • Now that may be true. Not every human being

  • can have a 500-room mansion with three jets parked in the front lawn,

  • with half the continent of Africa as his or her back yard.

  • In theory, we could conjure up anything

  • and use such luxury-based scarcity defenses

  • to support the existence of the competitive market.

  • So what are human needs? Are they subjective?

  • Human needs have been created

  • by the process of our physical and psychological evolution.

  • Not meeting these virtually empirical needs results, as noted before,

  • in a statistically predictable destabilizing spectrum

  • of physical, mental and social disorders.

  • Human wants, on the other hand, are cultural manifestations

  • which have undergone enormous subjective change over the course of time,

  • revealing in truth something of an arbitrary nature.

  • This isn't to say neurotic attachments can't be made to wants,

  • so much so that they start to take the role of needs.

  • That's a phenomenon that occurs readily in our materialistic society, in fact.

  • This is exactly why the previously noted wealth-imbalance issues,

  • namely the psychosocial-stress response

  • resulting from social comparison, is what it is.

  • It's a part of our evolutionary psychology in many ways.

  • But this is partly why more unequal societies also

  • are the more unhealthy societies, because we perpetuate it.

  • The Zeitgeist Movement is not promoting an infinite universal abundance

  • of all things, which is clearly impossible on a finite planet.

  • Rather, it promotes a "post-scarcity'" or "abundance" worldview,

  • with an active recognition of the natural limits of consumption

  • on the planet while seeking equilibrium.

  • And what separates the world today from the world of the past

  • is that our scientific and technological capacity

  • has reached an accelerating point of efficiency

  • where creating a high standard of living for all the world's people

  • based on current cultural preferences, in fact,

  • is now possible within these sustainable boundaries

  • without the destructive need to compete through the market mechanism.

  • This is made by what has been called "ephemeralization,"

  • a term coined by engineer R. Buckminster Fuller,

  • and the recognition is very simple.

  • The amount of resources and energy needed to achieve any given task

  • has constantly decreased over time,

  • while the efficiency of that task has increased, paradoxically.

  • An example is wireless satellite communication

  • which uses exponentially less materials

  • than traditional large-gauge copper wire

  • and is more versatile and effective.

  • In other words, we are doing more with less continually,

  • and this trend can be noticed in all areas of industrial development

  • from computer processing or Moore's Law

  • to the rapid acceleration of human knowledge or information technology.

  • And it isn't just physical goods.

  • It also applies to processes or systems.

  • For example, the labor system, via automation today,

  • shows the exact same pattern.

  • Industry has become more productive with less people,

  • ever-increasing machine performance,

  • with ever-decreasing energy and material needs over time per operation.

  • As a brief tangent, some might have noticed

  • I keep saying this phrase

  • "High Standard of Living." What does that mean?

  • Who is to say what a high standard of living should be?

  • The answer to that question is not "who," it is "what."

  • And "what" determines our standard of living

  • is the current state of technology in many ways,

  • and what is required to keep

  • social and environmental sustainability on a finite planet.

  • That's basically the equation.

  • If we as a society wish to keep the value of constant materialism,

  • growth, and consumption, promoting the virtue of having infinite wants

  • then we might as well just kill ourselves right now,

  • as that is going to be the end result if we continue to push past

  • the limits of the physical world with respect to our resource exploitation

  • and the loss of biodiversity.

  • So I want to make it very clear: this new economic proposal

  • isn't just about seeing how the market is obsolete per se,

  • given our new powerful awarenesses of technical efficiency;

  • it is also about the fact that we need

  • to get out of the market paradigm as fast as we can

  • before it causes even more damage.

  • OK, Post-Scarcity.

  • The four categories I want to cover in detail regarding this

  • are food, water, energy, and material goods.

  • Please note that for food, energy, and water

  • this is actually a very conservative assessment,

  • using statistics and measures based only

  • on existing methods that have been put into industrial use,

  • not theoretical things that people talk about all the time.

  • And all I'm going to do is scale this out,

  • applying a systems theory context.

  • Food.

  • According to the United Nations, one out of every eight people on Earth-

  • nearly one billion people- suffer from chronic undernourishment.

  • Yet it is admitted that there is enough food produced today

  • by traditional market methods alone,

  • to provide everyone in the world with at least 2,720 kilocalories per day

  • which is more then enough to maintain basic health for most.

  • Therefore, just in principle right now,

  • the existence of such a large-scale number of chronically hungry people

  • reveals at a minimum that there is something fundamentally wrong

  • with the global industrial and economic process.

  • According to the Institution of Mechanical Engineers,

  • "It is estimated that 30-50% of all food produced

  • never reaches a human stomach

  • and this figure does not reflect the fact that large amounts

  • of land, energy, fertilizers, and water have also been lost

  • in the production of foodstuffs which simply end up as waste."

  • While there is certainly an imperative to consider the relevance

  • of these waste patterns, it appears that the most effective

  • and practical means to overcome this global deficiency entirely

  • is to update the system of food production itself

  • with the most strategic localization

  • in order to reduce the waste caused by inefficiencies

  • in the current global supply chain.

  • Perhaps the most promising of these arrangements is something called

  • vertical farming which I assume many are familiar with.

  • Vertical farming has been put to test in a number of regions

  • with extremely promising results regarding efficiency and conservation.

  • This method of abundant food production will not only

  • use less resources per unit output, causing less waste,

  • have a reduced ecological footprint,

  • increase food quality and the like,

  • it will also use less surface of the planet,

  • uses less land area than we're doing today.

  • It can even be done offshore- it's that versatile-

  • enabling types of food as well, that certain climates and regions

  • simply couldn't produce because it's enclosed.

  • A vertical farm system in Singapore, for example,

  • custom built, a transparent enclosure,

  • uses a closed loop automated hydraulic system

  • to rotate the crops in circles between sunlight

  • and organic nutrient treatment,

  • costing only about $3 a month in electricity for each enclosure.

  • This system also has reported to have 10 times

  • more productivity per square foot than conventional farming,

  • again, using much less water, labor, and fertilizer.

  • Students at Columbia University in the US

  • determined that in order to feed 50,000 people, a 30-story farm

  • built on the size of a basic city block would be needed,

  • which is about 6.4 acres.

  • If we extrapolate this in the context of the city of Los Angeles, California

  • (where I'm coming from) with a population of about 4 million,

  • with a total acreage of about 318,000

  • it would take roughly 78 structures to feed all residents.

  • This amounts to about 0.1% of the total land area of Los Angeles,

  • to feed the entire population.

  • If we apply this extrapolation to the Earth

  • and the human population of 7.2 billion, we end up needing about

  • 144,000 vertical farms to feed the whole world.

  • This amounts to about 921,000 acres of land to place these farms

  • which, given about 38% of the Earth's land

  • is currently being used for traditional agriculture,

  • we find that we only need about 0.006%

  • of the Earth's existing agricultural land

  • to meet production requirements.

  • Let's be a little bit more consistent.

  • Within that 38% land-use statistic for agriculture,

  • much of that land is also used for livestock cultivation,

  • not just crop cultivation.

  • So, if we were to theoretically take

  • only the crop production land currently being used,

  • which is about 4 billion acres, replacing land-based cultivation

  • by dropping these 30-story vertical farms side-by-side in theory,

  • the food output would be enough to meet the nutritional needs to feed

  • 34.4 trillion people.

  • Given that we only need to feed about 9 billion by 2050,

  • we only need to harness about 0.02% of this theoretical capacity, which

  • it could be argued, makes rather moot any seemingly practical objections

  • common to the aforementioned extrapolation.

  • In short, we have absolute global food abundance potential.

  • Water.

  • According to the World Health Organization about 2.6 billion people-

  • half of the developing world- lack proper sanitation

  • and about 1.1 billion people have no access

  • to any type of clean drinking sources.

  • Due to ongoing depletion, by 2025,

  • it is estimated that almost 2 billion people

  • will live in areas plagued by water scarcity

  • with 2/3 of the entire world population living

  • in water-stressed areas.

  • The cause? Obviously waste and pollution.

  • But I'm not going to talk about that-

  • the details, causes and prevention; that's not the point of this.

  • Rather, let's take again, a technological capacity approach only,

  • considering modern purification and modern desalination systems

  • on the macro-industrial scale.

  • Purification.

  • The average person today globally uses about 1,385m³ of water per year.

  • This factors in all industrial activity as well, such as agriculture.

  • For the sake of argument, let's consider what it would take to purify

  • all the fresh water currently being used in the world on average annually.

  • Given the global average of 1,385m³

  • and a population of 7.2 billion,

  • we arrive at a total annual use of about 10 trillion m³.

  • Using a New York State USA UV-disinfection plant as a base measure,

  • which has an output capacity of roughly 3 billion cubic meters a year,

  • taking up about 3.7 acres of land,

  • we would need 3,327 plants

  • to purify all the water used by the entire global population,

  • taking up about 12,000 acres of land.

  • Needless to say, there are many other factors that come into play,

  • such as power needs, location, and the like. That's fair enough.

  • However, this is a minor inconvenience.

  • 12,000 acres is nothing compared to

  • the 36 billion acres of land on the planet Earth.

  • To give this a more practical example, the US military

  • alone has about 845,000 military bases

  • and buildings, I should say, as well.

  • This has been reported to take up about 30 million acres of land globally.

  • Only 0.04% of that land would be needed

  • to disinfect the total fresh water use of the entire world

  • if that were even needed, which of course it is not.

  • Desalination.

  • Let's run the same theoretical extrapolation on desalination.

  • The most common method of desalination used today is called reverse osmosis,

  • and according the International Desalination Association,

  • it accounts for 60% of the installed capacity globally.

  • There are a lot of other methods that are emerging quite rapidly

  • with high levels of efficiency [which] can move water much more quickly.

  • But I'm not going to talk about that. I want to stay only

  • within the common methods applied today.

  • But keep in mind that everything I'm speaking of

  • has dramatic improvements coming very soon.

  • There's an advanced reversed osmosis

  • seawater desalinization plant in Australia

  • that can produce about 150 millionof fresh water a year

  • while occupying about 50 acres.

  • Given the total annual water use of the world today,

  • - it's about 10 trillion cubic meters again -

  • it would take about 60,000 plants to produce

  • current global water usage in total.

  • Using the dimensions of that plant, which is quite large,

  • such a feat would take about 18,000 miles of coast land,

  • or about 8.5% of the world's coast land.

  • Obviously, that's not really ideal, that's a lot of coast land,

  • but this exercise is about proportion.

  • Clearly, we do not need to desalinate all water used,

  • nor would we bypass the use of purification processes

  • or ignore the vast reforms needed to preserve efficiency and fresh water

  • or, equally as important, the reuse schemes that are coming to fruition

  • where buildings are able to use water in multiple ways

  • by recycling water that comes from a sink into toilets,

  • and other mechanisms that unfortunately go unused for the vast majority.

  • Let's do a slightly more practical real life extrapolation,

  • combining only purification and desalination

  • with actual regional scarcity statistics.

  • On the continent of Africa, roughly 345 million people

  • lack access to freshwater.

  • If we apply the noted global average consumption rate

  • again of 1,385m³ a year,

  • seeking to provide each of those 345 million people that amount,

  • we would need about 480 billion cubic meters produced annually.

  • If we divided this number in half and use purification systems

  • for one section and desalination for the other,

  • the desalination process would need about 1.9%

  • or 494 miles of coastline for desalination facilities,

  • and only about 296 acres of land for purification facilities,

  • which is a minuscule fraction of Africa's total land mass

  • of about 7 billion acres.

  • So, this is highly doable even in this crude example.

  • In all cases, we would strategically maximize purification processes

  • since it is clearly more efficient

  • while using desalination for the remaining demand.

  • In short, it's absurd for anyone on this planet

  • to be going without freshwater, not to mention, as an aside,

  • 70% of all freshwater used today

  • is used in agriculture in our grossly wasteful agricultural methods. 70%!

  • If we, for example, apply again vertical farm systems

  • which have been noted to reduce water by upwards of 80% in comparison,

  • we would see an enormous freeing up

  • of this unnecessarily scarce resource as well.

  • Moving on to Energy.

  • We live in one massive perpetual motion machine known as the Universe.

  • The fact that we still use polluting fossil fuel stores in the Earth

  • or the incredibly unstable nuclear phenomenon

  • which gives very little room for human fallibility

  • is truly frightening.

  • There are four main large capacity

  • "base-load," as they would say, renewable energy means

  • which are currently most ideal

  • as per our current state of technological application.

  • These are geothermal plants, wind farms,

  • solar fields, and water-based power.

  • Due to time I'm not going to explain what these mediums are

  • as I assume most know. I'm just going to run through

  • the abundance comparison.

  • Geothermal.

  • A 2006 MIT report on geothermal found that

  • 13,000 zettajoules of power are currently available in the Earth

  • with the possibility of 2000 zettajoules being harvestable

  • with improved technology.

  • The total energy consumption of all the countries on the planet

  • is only about half a zettajoule a year.

  • This means literally thousands of years of planetary power

  • could be harnessed in this medium alone.

  • Geothermal energy also uses much less land than other energy sources.

  • Over 30 years, a period of time commonly used to compare

  • the life cycle impacts from different power sources,

  • it was found that a geothermal facility

  • uses 404 m² of land per gigawatt hour

  • while a coal facility

  • uses 3,632 m² per gigawatt hour.

  • If we were to do a basic comparison of geothermal to coal

  • given this ratio ofto GWh

  • we find that we could fit about 9 geothermal plants

  • in the space of one coal plant.

  • And that isn't accounting for the vast amount of land

  • that is currently used for coal extraction-

  • you know, those huge holes that we see in the earth.

  • By the way, the beauty of geothermal, and in fact,

  • all of the renewables I'm going to speak of, is that extraction

  • or the harnessing location is almost always the exact same place

  • as processing for the power distribution as well.

  • All hydrocarbon sources on the other hand require both extraction

  • and power production facilities almost always in separate locations,

  • sometimes refineries as well, in separate locations.

  • In 2013, it was announced that a 1,000 megawatt power station

  • was to begin construction in Ethiopia.

  • We're going to use this as a base, theoretical for extrapolation.

  • If a 1000-megawatt geothermal power station operated at full capacity

  • 24 hours a day, 365 days a year,

  • it would produce 8.7 million MWh a year.

  • The world's current annual energy usage is about

  • 153 billion MWh a year, which would mean it would take in abstraction

  • about 17,000 geothermal plants to match global use.

  • There are over 2,300 coal power plants in operation worldwide today.

  • Using the aforementioned plant-sized capacity comparison

  • of about nine geothermal plants fitting into one coal plant,

  • the space of 1,940 coal plants would be needed in theory

  • to contain the 17,000 geothermal plants

  • or 84% of the total in existence.

  • Also, given that coal accounts for only 41%

  • of today's current energy production,

  • this theoretical extrapolation also shows

  • how in 84% of the current space used by coal plants,

  • geothermal could supply 100% of total global power supply.

  • Wind Farms.

  • It's been calculated that today with existing turbine technology,

  • which is improving rapidly, that Earth could produce

  • hundreds of trillions of watts of power, many more times

  • than what the world consumes, overall.

  • However, breaking this down, using the 9,000 acre

  • Alta Wind Center in California as a theoretical basis,

  • which has an active capacity of 1,320 MW of power,

  • a theoretical annual output of 11 million MWh is possible.

  • This means 13,000

  • 9,000-acre wind farms would be needed to meet

  • total global demand of 153 billion MWh.

  • This requires about 119 million acres of land

  • or 0.3% of the Earth's surface

  • to power the world in abstraction.

  • However as some may know, offshore wind

  • is typically much more powerful than land-based.

  • According to the Assessment

  • of Offshore Wind Energy Resources for the United States, a report:

  • 4,150 gigawatts of potential wind turbine technology-

  • turbine capacity- from offshore wind resources

  • are available in the United States alone.

  • Assuming this power capacity was consistent for a whole year,

  • we end up with an energy conversion of 36 billion MWh a year.

  • Given the United States in 2010

  • used 25.7 billion MWh,

  • we find that offshore wind harvesting alone

  • could exceed the national use

  • by about 10.6 billion MWh or 41%.

  • And axiomatically, extrapolating this national

  • level of capacity to the rest of the world's coast lines,

  • also taking into account the aforementioned land-based statistics,

  • it is clear that we can power the world many, many times over

  • with wind, and quite practically.

  • Solar Fields.

  • If humanity could capture 0.1% of the solar energy striking the Earth,

  • we would have access to six times as much energy

  • we consume in all forms today.

  • The ability to harness this power depends on technology

  • and how high the percentage of radiation conversion is.

  • The Ivanpah Solar Electric System in California:

  • it's a 3,500-acre field

  • with an annual stated generation of about one million MWh.

  • If we were to extrapolate using this as a theoretical basis,

  • it would take about 142,000 fields or about 500 million acres of land

  • to theoretically meet current global energy use.

  • That's about 1.5% of total land on Earth.

  • Deserts cover about 1/3 of the world or about 12 billion acres,

  • and they tend to be fairly conducive to solar fields,

  • while often less conducive to life support for people.

  • Given the roughly 500 million acres

  • theoretically needed to power the world as noted,

  • only 4.1% of the world's deserts would be needed

  • to contain these fields,

  • land that pretty much just otherwise sits there.

  • Water-Based Power.

  • There are five dominant types of water-based power: wave, tidal,

  • ocean current, osmotic,

  • ocean thermal, and water course.

  • Overall, the technology for harnessing ocean in general

  • is in its infancy, but the potential is vast.

  • And based on traditional estimates

  • here is what the accepted global potentials

  • have been estimated at using existing methods;

  • we're not applying advanced technology that's not in application yet.

  • This all figures up to be about 150,000 TWh/year

  • or 96% of current global use

  • of the half of a zettajoule,

  • pretty much enough to power the world in one medium alone if applied.

  • However to give a sense of growing technological potential

  • (because I think this is important considering how technology

  • and water-oriented power is deeply in its infancy)

  • recent developments in 'ocean current' harnessing technology

  • (the currents that go underneath the ocean)

  • which can embrace much lower speeds now than they used to,

  • it has estimated that ocean current alone could now

  • theoretically power the entire world if applied correctly.

  • So, let's recap.

  • Wind, solar, water and geothermal have shown,

  • as large scale, base-load renewable energy mediums,

  • that they are capable, individually, of meeting or vastly exceeding

  • current annual global energy consumption at this time.

  • And obviously a systems approach, harmonizing an optimized fraction

  • of each of those renewables strategically is the key

  • to achieving a global, total energy abundance.

  • For example, it's not inconceivable to imagine

  • a series of man-made floating islands

  • off select coastlines which are designed to harness, at once,

  • wind, solar, thermal difference, wave, tidal and currents,

  • all at the same time and in the same general area.

  • Such energy islands would then pipe their harvest back to land

  • for storage and distribution.

  • It is only up to our design ingenuity to figure things like this out.

  • Localization and Reuse.

  • The final energy factor I want to mention,

  • which builds upon this systems-thinking explicitly,

  • has to do with localization and re-use schemes.

  • Localized energy harnessing isn't given a fraction

  • of the attention it needs today.

  • Smaller scale renewable methods which are conducive to

  • single structures or small areas

  • find the same systems logic, regarding combination.

  • These local systems could also, if need be, connect back into the larger

  • base-load systems, creating a total, mixed medium, integrated network

  • which happens sometimes today with solar.

  • There are many localized systems out there which can draw energy

  • from the immediate environment: there's solar power arrays,

  • there's small wind harvesting systems,

  • localized geothermal heating and cooling

  • and even architectural design that just simply makes

  • natural light and heat/cool preservation more efficient.

  • Buckminster Fuller was great with his dome structures

  • and how they actually contained energy quite well. Same idea.

  • Extending outwards to city infrastructure

  • we see the same wasted possible efficiency almost everywhere.

  • A simple technology called piezoelectric

  • is able to convert pressure and mechanical energy directly into electricity.

  • It's an excellent example of an energy reuse method with great potential.

  • Existing applications have included power generation

  • by people simply walking on these engineered floors and sidewalks,

  • streets which can generate power as automobiles cross over them,

  • and train rail systems which can also capture energy

  • from passing train cars through pressure.

  • It has been suggested by people who have studied this

  • that a stretch of road less than one mile long,

  • four lanes wide, a highway,

  • and trafficked by about 1,000 vehicles per hour

  • can create about 0.4 Megawatt of power,

  • which is enough to power 600 homes.

  • Now extrapolate that out to the bulk of all the highways in the world;

  • you have a very, very powerful regenerative energy source.

  • Overall, if we think about the enormous mechanical energy wasted

  • by vehicle transport modes and high-traffic walking centers alone,

  • the potential of that possible regenerated energy is quite substantial.

  • It's this systems-thinking once again that is needed

  • in order to maintain sustainability,

  • while also pursuing this global energy abundance.

  • The final more complex subject, energy aside,

  • will be the subject of material abundance

  • and creating life-supporting goods.

  • Unlike the prior, more simple post-scarcity categories of food,

  • water and energy, the creation of a broad material abundance

  • of all basic goods, which comprise the current average, you could say,

  • of what is culturally considered a 'high standard of living' today

  • is substantially more radical in its need

  • for industrial revision and change.

  • As expressed before, the current highly inefficient methods

  • we use in industrial design, production, distribution and regeneration

  • is one of the main reasons we are in a constant state

  • of global resource overshoot

  • and destabilizing biodiversity loss.

  • Also as noted prior, there is no market incentive

  • for advanced states of efficiency,

  • as efficiency always reduces the amount of labor,

  • resources and service needed for a given purpose;

  • and hence, reduces monetary circulation.

  • I can't reinforce that enough.

  • Therefore, a new synergistic systems-view of industry

  • focused explicitly on material and labor efficiency,

  • along with an optimized strategy for sustainability, is in order.

  • For the sake of time and as a lead-in to the final section on calculation,

  • I'm going to focus on a few principles or protocols

  • and how each protocol assists efficiency

  • towards this post-scarcity abundance.

  • Otherwise it would take an enormous amount of time;

  • it's not as simple as the prior extrapolations.

  • However, in this book that I mentioned there will be a whole chapter

  • dedicated to this issue in great detail.

  • (1) Access, not property.

  • A property-based society incentivizes the preference to own

  • a given product, rather than rent,

  • or gain access to as needed.

  • I'm a filmmaker and while I do rent some things occasionally,

  • it's much more cost-effective and smart to buy things

  • because they have resale value.

  • This incentive of universal ownership is incredibly wasteful

  • when we examine actual use time of a given good.

  • Facilitating a means of access where things can be literally shared

  • will allow many more to gain use of goods they otherwise could not,

  • along with there being less production of those goods in proportion.

  • In a Natural Law/Resource Based Economy

  • we seek to create an access abundance, not a property abundance

  • which is inherently wasteful.

  • As an aside, it's also important to note that property

  • is not an empirical concept.

  • Only access is empirically valid.

  • Property is a protectionist contrivance.

  • Access is the reality of the social and human condition.

  • In order for you to truly say "own" a computer,

  • you have to have had alone

  • come up with the entire technological process that made that thing

  • along with the ideas that comprise the tools

  • you might have used to make that computer.

  • This is literally impossible

  • and is what destroys the early labor theory of value

  • (property is stuff that's put forward by classical economists).

  • There's no such thing as property. There is only access and sharing,

  • no matter what social system you employ.

  • (2) Designed-in Recycling

  • Contrary to our intuition, there is no such thing as waste

  • in the natural world.

  • Not only from the standpoint of the biosphere which reuses

  • everything in its process,

  • the 92 main naturally occurring elements in the periodic table

  • that comprise all matter cannot be exhausted.

  • Humanity has given very little consideration to the role

  • of material regeneration, and how all of our design practices

  • must account for this recycling.

  • In fact, as some may know, the highest state of this recycling

  • will eventually come in the form of nanotechnology.

  • Nanotechnology will eventually be able to create goods

  • from the atomic level up and disassemble them right back down

  • to the almost virtual starting point.

  • It is the ultimate form of recycling. By the way, I'm not suggesting this.

  • I'm not suggesting that nanotechnology is even needed at this time,

  • as though that that's what we're doing right now.

  • It's just [that] this is a great principle to reference

  • as far as regenerative importance.

  • Today, industry has little sense of synergy in this context.

  • Recycling is an afterthought. Companies continue to do things

  • such as blindly coat materials with chemical paints, and the like,

  • that distort the properties of those materials,

  • making the materials less salvageable,

  • or maybe completely unsalvageable, to current recycling methods.

  • It happens all the time. So long story short,

  • strategic recycling just might be

  • the most core seed of a continued abundance.

  • Every landfill on earth is just a waste of potential.

  • Number 3: Strategic conformation of good design

  • to the most conducive

  • and abundant materials known.

  • You will notice this efficiency qualification in what I just said:

  • conducive and abundant.

  • Conducive means most appropriate based on the material properties.

  • Abundant means you weigh the value of conduciveness

  • against the value of how accessible and low-impact the material is,

  • compared to other materials which may be more or less conducive.

  • This is a synergistic efficiency comparison.

  • (I'm sorry if the language sounds a little bit complicated.)

  • Probably the best example of this is home or domicile construction.

  • The common use of wood, bricks, screws and the vast array of parts

  • that is typical of a common house is comparatively, vastly inefficient

  • to more modern, simplified pre-fabrication or moldable materials.

  • A traditional 2000 square-foot home requires about

  • 40 to 50 trees, about an acre.

  • Compare that with houses that can be created in prefabrication processes

  • with simple, earth-friendly polymers,

  • concrete, or other easily formable methods.

  • 3D printing, for example, is on pace.

  • These new approaches have a very small footprint as compared to

  • our destruction of global forests which continue, for wood.

  • Home construction today is one of the most resource intensive

  • and wasteful industrial mediums in the world,

  • with about 40% of all materials collected for construction

  • ended up as waste in the end.

  • Number 4: Design conduciveness for labor automation.

  • Now this is very foreign to many.

  • The more we conform to the current state

  • of rapid, efficient production processes,

  • obviously, the more abundance we can create.

  • If you read texts on manufacturing processes,

  • they typically divide labor into three categories.

  • There's human assembly, there's mechanization and there's automation.

  • Human assembly means handmade,

  • mechanization means machines assist the laborer,

  • and automation means no human action.

  • Imagine if you needed a chair and there were three designs.

  • The first is elaborate and complex, and could only be done by hand.

  • The second is more streamlined where its parts could be made

  • mostly by machines, but would need to be assembled by hand.

  • The third chair is produced by one process, fully automated.

  • The latter chair design would be the design goal

  • in theory of this new approach.

  • What this would do is reduce the complexity of the automation process

  • with little to no human labor.

  • Imagine a production plant that not only produces cars,

  • it can produce virtually any kind of industrial product

  • comprised of the same basic shared materials.

  • This is very feasible.

  • This would increase output substantially.

  • In other words, we are optimizing the means of production.

  • And as an aside, many who see stuff like this

  • think that this means there's not going to be any variety in the future,

  • that it's just going to be cold and uniform and everyone gets the same thing.

  • No. I'm just using this as an example to make an efficiency point.

  • Being conducive to automation does not mean universal uniformity

  • of design because the incredible amount of variance possible

  • in our current automation technology is amazing and accelerating.

  • Modular robotics, there's many different self-changing machines

  • that can create a great amount of variance.

  • All this means is the existing processes in their current state

  • should be respected to ease production.

  • Don't confuse this with the idea that everyone just gets the same everything.

  • What they get is the same basic sustainability principles,

  • which come in many different forms, if you can understand that.

  • These four parameters set in motion, along with the basic intent

  • to assist the trend of ephemeralization on all levels,

  • there is little doubt that every human being

  • could have a very high standard of living.

  • It is simply about converting all of the inefficiency we have

  • straight into productivity, strategically.

  • I will conclude this section by noting that R. Buckminster Fuller

  • is probably the only human being that has ever attempted

  • to account and quantify the state of resources and their potential

  • within the past hundred years and, while primitive,

  • he was able to arrive at the following conclusion in 1969:

  • "Man developed such intense mechanization in World War I

  • that the percentage of total world population that were industrial 'haves'

  • rose by 1919 to the figure of 6%.

  • This was an abrupt change in history.

  • By the time of World War II, 20% of all humanity

  • had become industrial 'haves.'

  • At the present moment the proportion of 'haves' is at 40% of humanity.

  • If we up the performances of resources from the present level

  • to a highly feasible overall efficiency of 12% more

  • (increasing by 12%, our use, holistically, on average)

  • all humanity can be provided for."

  • The exponential increase in information technology since 1969,

  • along with the applied technology and advanced

  • synergetic understandings we have today,

  • I suspect, now far exceeds-...

  • we are way beyond the 12% efficiency increase that he saw as needed.

  • The problem now is conforming to industrial conduciveness appropriately

  • which is currently not done.

  • This leads us to Part III: Economic Organization and Calculation.

  • If you're wondering why I spent so much time

  • on the prior points of post-scarcity

  • and those two core problems inherent to market capitalism-

  • social imbalance and environmental imbalance-

  • it's because you cannot understand the logic of the economic factors

  • involved in this model without those prior awarenesses.

  • A Natural Law/Resource Based Economy is not just a progressive outgrowth

  • of our increased capacity to be productive as a species,

  • as though we would just gradually evolve out of the market system

  • step-by-step into this approach.

  • No. The dire need for this system's removal

  • needs to be realized once again.

  • It has to become a part, in fact,

  • of the incentive structure of the new model:

  • the historical understanding that if we do not adjust in this way

  • we will revert right back into this highly unstable period

  • we are in right now.

  • An economic model is a theoretical construct

  • representing component processes by a set of variables or functions,

  • describing the logical relationships between them.

  • Basic definition.

  • If anyone has studied traditional or market-based economic modeling,

  • a great deal of time is often spent on things such as price trends,

  • behavioral patterns, utilitarianistic functions,

  • inflation, currency fluctuations and so forth.

  • Rarely, if ever, is anything said about public or ecological health.

  • Why? Because the market is, again, life-blind

  • and decoupled from the science of life support and sustainability.

  • It is simply a proxy system.

  • The best way to think about this economy is not in the traditional terms,

  • but rather as an advanced production,

  • distribution and management system which is democratically engaged

  • by the public through a kind of participatory economics

  • that facilitates input processes, such as design proposals

  • and demand assessment, while filtering all actions

  • through what we will call sustainability and efficiency protocols.

  • These are the basic rules of industrial action

  • set by natural law, not human opinion.

  • As noted prior, neither of these interests are structurally inherent

  • in the capitalist model, and it is clear that humanity needs a model

  • that has this type of stuff built right into it for consideration.

  • Structural System Goals.

  • All economic systems have structural goals

  • which may not be readily apparent.

  • Market capitalism's structural goal, as described, is growth

  • and maintaining rates of consumption high enough to keep people employed

  • at any given time, and employment requires also a culture of real

  • or perceived inefficiency, and that essentially means the preservation

  • of scarcity in one form or another. That is its structural goal.

  • And good luck getting a market economist to admit to that.

  • This model [NLRBE] goal is to optimize technical efficiency

  • and create the highest level of abundance we possibly can

  • within the bounds of earthly sustainability,

  • seeking to meet human needs directly.

  • System Overview.

  • One of the great myths of this model is that it's centrally planned;

  • I'm sure many of us have heard this.

  • What this means based on historical precedent is that it is assumed

  • that an elite group of people basically will make the economic decisions

  • for a society.

  • No. This model is a collaborative design system: CDS.

  • Not centrally planned.

  • It is based entirely upon public interaction

  • facilitated by programmed, open-source systems

  • that enable a constant dynamic feedback flow

  • that can literally allow the input of the public on any

  • given industrial matter whether personal or social.

  • Now a common question, when you bring that up they say

  • "Well, who programs this system?"

  • The answer is: Everyone and no one.

  • The tangible rules of the laws of nature as they apply

  • to environmental sustainability and engineering efficiency

  • is a completely objective frame of reference.

  • The nuances may change to some degree over time,

  • but the general principles remain.

  • Over time, the logic of such an approach will also become more rigid

  • because we learn more as we perfect our understandings,

  • and hence, less room for subjectivity

  • in certain areas that might have had it prior.

  • Again I'll be describing this more so in a moment.

  • Also the programs themselves will be available in an open source platform

  • for public input and review, absolutely transparent.

  • And if someone noticed a problem

  • or unapplied optimization strategy, which will probably be the case,

  • it is evaluated and tested by the community

  • kind of like a Wikipedia for calculation,

  • except much less subjective than Wikipedia,

  • without the moody administrators.

  • Another traditional confusion surrounds the concept

  • which has become to many the defining difference

  • between capitalism and everything else.

  • And it has to do with whether the means of production

  • is privately owned or not.

  • This is replete throughout tons of traditional

  • literary treatments on capitalism when they describe

  • how it's the ultimate manifestation of human behavior, of society.

  • If you don't know what this means, the means of production

  • refers to the non-human assets that create goods such as machines,

  • tools, factories, offices and the like.

  • In capitalism, the means of production is owned

  • by the capitalist by historical definition, hence the origin of the term.

  • I bring this up because there's been an ongoing argument for a century

  • that any system which does not have its means of production owned

  • as a form of private property is just not going to be as economically efficient

  • as one that has or maybe not even efficient at all.

  • This, as the argument goes, is because of the need for price:

  • the price mechanism.

  • Price, which has a fluid ability

  • to exchange value amongst virtually any type of good

  • due to its indivisibility of value, creates indeed a feedback mechanism

  • that connects the entire market system in a certain narrow way.

  • Price is a way to allocate scarce resources amongst competing interests.

  • Price, property and money translate, in short,

  • subjective demand preferences into semi-objective exchange values.

  • I say "semi" because it is a culturally relative measure only,

  • absent most every factor that gives true technical consideration

  • to a given material or good.

  • It has nothing to do with what the materials or goods are;

  • it's just a mechanism.

  • Perhaps the only real technical data, in fact,

  • that price embraces very crudely

  • relates to resource scarcity and labor energy.

  • Resource scarcity and labor energy.

  • You can basically find that in price.

  • So in this context the question becomes:

  • Is it possible to create a system that can

  • equally, if not more efficiently,

  • facilitate feedback with respect to consumer preference, demand,

  • labor value and resource or component scarcity

  • without the price system, subjective property values or exchange?

  • And, of course, there is.

  • The trick is to completely eliminate exchange

  • and create a direct control and feedback link

  • between the consumer and the means of production itself.

  • The consumer becomes part of the means of production

  • and the "industrial complex" becomes nothing more than a tool

  • that is accessed by the public to generate goods.

  • In fact as alluded to prior, the same system

  • can be used for just about any societal calculation,

  • virtually eliminating the state government, in fact,

  • and politics as we know it.

  • It is a participatory decision-making process.

  • As an aside, as far as the fact that there will indeed always

  • be scarcity of something in the world,

  • which is the very basis of existence of price, market and money,

  • human beings can again either understand the dire need

  • to exist in a steady-state relationship with nature

  • and the global human species for cultural

  • and environmental sustainability, or not.

  • We can either continue down the same path we are now

  • or become more aware, responsible to the world and to each other,

  • seeking post-scarcity and using natural law rules of sustainability

  • and efficiency to decide how to best allocate our raw materials, or not.

  • But I think the former is the most intelligent path.

  • I state that because again, this resource argument

  • always comes down to the abstractions ... of scarcity.

  • It never qualifies what scarcity is in certain contexts.

  • It doesn't separate scarcity and that's its fatal flaw,

  • between human needs and human wants.

  • Also, I want to point out another fallacy,

  • which of this private ownership of the means of production,

  • a fallacy of this broad concept is its culture lag!

  • Today we are seeing a merger of capital goods,

  • consumer goods and labor power.

  • Machines are taking over human labor power,

  • becoming capital goods, while also reducing in size

  • to become consumer goods.

  • I'm sure almost everyone in this room has a home paper printer.

  • When you send a file to print from your computer,

  • you are in control of a mini-version of a means of production.

  • What about 3D printers?

  • In some cities today there are now 3D printing labs

  • which people can send their design to print, in physical form.

  • The model I'm going to describe is a similar idea.

  • The next step is the creation

  • of a strategically automated industrial complex

  • localized as much as possible

  • which is designed to produce, through automated means,

  • the average of everything any given region has found demand for.

  • Think about it: on-demand production on a mass scale.

  • Consider for a moment how much storage space,

  • transport energy and overrun waste

  • is immediately eliminated by this approach.

  • I think the days of large, wasteful mass producing economies

  • of scale are coming to an end, well, if we want them to.

  • This type of thinking: true economic calculation,

  • by the most technical sense of the term, I can't reiterate that enough.

  • We are calculating to be as technically efficient and conservative

  • as possible which again, almost paradoxically, is what will facilitate

  • a global access abundance to meet all human needs and beyond.

  • Structure and Processes.

  • I'm going to walk through the following 3 processes:

  • (1) the collaborative design interface and industrial schematic,

  • (2) resource management, feedback and value

  • and (3) general principles of sustainability and the macro-calculation.

  • The collaborative design interface is essentially the new market;

  • it's a market of ideas.

  • This system is the first step in any production interest.

  • It can be engaged by a single person; it can be engaged by a team

  • if you have friends and you want to put it together, sort of like

  • how businesses think; it can be engaged by everyone.

  • It is open source and open access,

  • and your concept is open to input from anyone interested

  • in that good genre or anyone that's online that cares to contribute.

  • Obviously it comes in the form of a website, as I stated;

  • and likewise, whatever exists as a final decision,

  • whatever is put into production, even though in theory

  • everything will be under modification at all times,

  • but what has been approved, if you will, is digitally stored

  • in a database which makes that good available to everyone.

  • Sort of like a goods catalog,

  • except it contains all of the information digitally

  • that is required to produce them.

  • This is how demand is assessed.

  • It's feedback and it's immediate.

  • Instead, of course, of advertising

  • and the unidirectional consumer good proposal system, which it is,

  • that we have today where corporations basically tell you what you should buy

  • with the public generally going with the flow,

  • favoring one good component or feature, using price,

  • if they don't like something then clearly they won't produce it anymore

  • to weed out supply and demand.

  • This system works the opposite way.

  • The entire community has the option of presenting ideas

  • for everyone to see and weigh in on and build upon.

  • Whatever isn't of interest simply won't be executed to begin with.

  • There's no testing here such as you would see with marketing,

  • which is incredibly wasteful. It's as simple as that.

  • The actual mechanism of proposal

  • will come in the form of an interactive design interface

  • such as we see with computer-aided design, or CAD as it's called,

  • or more specifically computer-aided engineering

  • which is a more complicated synergistic process.

  • As an aside, some see computer-aided design programs as they exist

  • as having an enormous learning curve, and they do.

  • But just as the first computers

  • were very difficult code-based interfaces

  • which were later replaced by small little programs

  • in the form of graphic icons that we're all so familiar with

  • the future CAD-type programs could be oriented in the exact same way

  • to make them more user-friendly.

  • Obviously, not everyone has to engage in design.

  • Some people, like most people today, appreciate what's been created prior.

  • They absorb and they use what other people have come up with.

  • So there's a diminishing law of returns in a lot of ways, if you will.

  • Not everyone has to get in there and has some role to do this.

  • But many will and many will enjoy the process.

  • And you can customize things as you go which is a great point.

  • There's minor things that can happen with a product that someone doesn't know

  • anything about, but maybe they just want to change the color and that's it.

  • Obviously, that doesn't take a lot of education.

  • More importantly, technically speaking,

  • the beauty of these design and engineering programs today

  • is that they incorporate advanced physics

  • and other real-world, natural-law properties.

  • So a good isn't just viewable in a static 3D model.

  • It can be tested, right there, digitally.

  • And while some testing capacity might be limited today,

  • it's simply a matter of focus to perfect such digital means.

  • For example, in the automotive industry, long before new ideas are built,

  • they run them through similar digital testing processes,

  • and there's no reason to believe

  • that we will not eventually be able to digitally represent

  • and imitate and set in motion virtually all known laws of nature in time,

  • and being able to apply them to different contexts.

  • Similarly, and this is critical,

  • this design that's proposed in this system is filtered

  • through a series of sustainability and efficiency protocols

  • which relate to not only the state of the natural world

  • but also the total industrial system,

  • in as far as what is compatible.

  • Processes of evaluation and suggestion would include the following:

  • strategically maximized durability,

  • adaptability,

  • standardization of genre components,

  • strategically integrated recycling conduciveness, as I mentioned before,

  • and strategically conducive designs themselves,

  • making them conducive for labor automation.

  • I'm going to go through these, each quickly.

  • Durability just means to make the good as strong and as long-lasting as relevant,

  • the materials utilized comparatively assuming possible substitutions

  • due to levels of scarcity or other factors

  • would be dynamically calculated

  • likely automatically, in fact, by the design system

  • to be most conducive to an optimized durability standard.

  • Adaptability.

  • This means that the highest state of flexibility

  • for replacing component parts is made.

  • Has anyone seen this thing called "phonebloks?"

  • Brilliant.

  • In the event a component part of this good becomes defective

  • or out-of-date, whenever possible the design facilitates

  • that such components are easily replaced

  • to maximize full product life span.

  • Standardization of genre components.

  • All new designs either conform to or replace, if they're updated,

  • existing components which are either already in existence

  • or outdated due to a comparative lack of efficiency.

  • Many don't know this, but a man named Eli Whitney in 1801

  • was the first to really apply standardization in production.

  • He made muskets and back then they were handmade,

  • and they were not interchangeable, so the musket parts,

  • if anything broke, you couldn't take a part from something else.

  • He was the first to actually make the tools to do this,

  • and he basically started the entire process of standardization,

  • and the US military was now able to buy huge things of muskets

  • and interchanged them and, much more sustainable,

  • even though they were killing people.

  • Which is interesting for the military because if you think about it,

  • the military is one of the most efficient systems on the planet

  • because it's absent the market economy.

  • If you really want to look to where industrial efficiency was born,

  • as much as I dislike it, the military is where it becomes,

  • where it's been harnessed the most, excuse me.

  • Anyway, this logic not only applies to a given product,

  • it's applied to the entire good genre: standardization.

  • By the way, this efficiency will never happen in a market economy

  • with its basis in competition, as proprietary technology

  • removes all such collaborative efficiency. No one wants that.

  • No one wants to share everything like that.

  • Otherwise, people wouldn't have a need to go back to the root company

  • and buy the part; they would go somewhere else

  • where they'd have access to it through other means.

  • Recycling conduciveness.

  • As noted before, this means every design must conform

  • to the current state of regenerative possibility.

  • The breakdown of any good must be anticipated

  • and allowed for in the most optimized way,

  • and made conducive for labor automation.

  • This means that the current state of optimized

  • automated production is directly taken into account

  • seeking to refine the process-

  • excuse me- seeking to refine the design that's submitted

  • to be most conducive to the current state of production

  • with the least amount of human labor or monitoring.

  • We seek to simplify the way materials and production means are used

  • so that the maximum number of goods can be produced

  • with the least variation of materials and production equipment.

  • It's a very important point.

  • These five factors will be what we can call in total

  • the optimized design-efficiency function, if you want to be technical.

  • Keep this in mind as I'm going to return to all of this in a moment.

  • Moving on to the industrial complex, the layout.

  • This means that the network of facilities, which are directly connected

  • to the design and the database system I have just described.

  • Servers, production, distribution, recycling is basically it.

  • Also, we'd need to relate the current state of resources,

  • critically important, as per the global resource management network,

  • another tier, which I'm going to also describe in a moment.

  • Production- this means of course actual manufacturing-

  • would evolve, as expressed before, as automated factories

  • which are increasingly able to produce more

  • with less material inputs and less machines: ephemeralization.

  • If we were to consciously design out unnecessary levels of complexity,

  • we can further this efficiency trend greatly

  • with an ever-lower environmental impact and resource use

  • while maximizing, again, our abundance-producing potential.

  • The number of production facilities,

  • whether homogeneous or heterogeneous, as they would be called,

  • would be strategically distributed topographically

  • based around population statistics, very simple stuff.

  • It's no different than how grocery stores work today

  • where they try to average distances as best they can

  • between pockets of people and neighborhoods.

  • You could call this the 'Proximity Strategy'

  • which I'll mention again in a moment.

  • Distribution.

  • This can either be directly from the production facility

  • as in the case of on-demand custom one-off production,

  • or it can be sent to a distribution library

  • for public access en masse,

  • based on demand interest in that region.

  • The library system is where goods can be obtained.

  • Some goods can be conducive to low demand

  • and custom production and some will not be.

  • Food is an easy example of a mass production necessity,

  • while a personal tailored piece of furniture

  • would come directly from the manufacturing facility once created.

  • I suspect that this on-demand process,

  • which will likely become equally as utilized as mass production,

  • will be an enormous advantage.

  • As noted, on-demand production is more efficient

  • since the resources are going to be utilized for the exact-use demand,

  • as opposed to the block things that we do today.

  • Distribution Library.

  • Inventory is accessed in a dynamic direct feedback link

  • between production, distribution and demand.

  • If that doesn't make sense to you, all you have to think about is

  • how inventory accounting and tracking works

  • in any major commercial distribution center today

  • with, of course, a few adjustments made in this model.

  • We're already doing this type of stuff already.

  • Regardless of where the good is classified to go,

  • whether it's custom or not, libraries or to the direct user,

  • this is still an access system.

  • In other words, at any time the user of the custom good

  • can return the item for reprocessing,

  • just as the person who obtained something from the library can, as well.

  • Since, as noted, the good has been pre-optimized

  • (all goods are pre-optimized for conducive recycling)

  • odds are the recycling facility is actually built directly in

  • to the production facility or the genre of production facility,

  • depending on how many facilities you need to create the variety of demand.

  • So again, there's no trash here: whether it's a phone,

  • a couch, a computer, a jacket, a book,

  • everything goes back to where it came back from, for direct reprocessing.

  • Ideally this is a zero-waste economy.

  • Resource Management, Feedback and Value.

  • The computer-aided and engineering design process

  • obviously does not exist in a vacuum.

  • Processing demands input from the natural resources that we have.

  • So connected to this design process, literally built into the

  • optimized design-efficiency function noted prior,

  • is dynamic feedback from an Earth-wide accounting system

  • which gives data about all relevant resources

  • which pertain to all productions.

  • Today, most major industries keep periodic data

  • of their genre materials as far as how much they have,

  • but clearly it's difficult to ascertain

  • due to the nature of corporate secrets and the like.

  • But it's still done.

  • To whatever degree ... technically possible this is,

  • all resources are tracked and monitored,

  • and in as close to real time ideally as possible.

  • Why? Mainly because we need to maintain equilibrium

  • with the Earth's regenerative processes at all times

  • while also, as noted before, work to strategically maximize

  • our use of the most abundant materials

  • while minimizing anything with emerging scarcity.

  • Value.

  • As far as value, the two dominant measures,

  • which will undergo constant dynamic recalculation

  • through feedback as industry unfolds,

  • [are] scarcity and labor complexity.

  • Scarcity value without a market system

  • could be assigned a numerical value, say one to 100.

  • One would denote the most severe scarcity

  • with respect to the current rate of use, and 100 the least severe.

  • 50 would mark the steady-state dividing line.

  • For example, if the use of wood lumber passes

  • below the steady state level of 50,

  • which would mean consumption is currently surpassing the Earth's

  • natural regeneration rate, this would trigger

  • a counter-move of some kind,

  • such as the process of material substitution,

  • hence the replacement for wood in any given future productions,

  • finding alternatives.

  • And of course, if you are a free market mindset listening to this,

  • you are likely going to object at this point by saying "Without price,

  • how can you compare value of one material to another or many materials?"

  • Simple: you organize genres or groups of similar-use materials

  • and quantify, as best you can, their related properties

  • and degree of efficiency for a given purpose,

  • and then you apply a general numerical value spectrum

  • to those relationships, as well.

  • For example, there are a spectrum of metals

  • which have different efficiencies for electrical conductivity.

  • These efficiencies can be quantified,

  • and if they can be quantified, they can be compared.

  • So if copper goes below the 50 median value regarding its scarcity,

  • calculations are triggered by the management program

  • to compare the state of other conducive materials in its database,

  • compare their scarcity level and their efficiency,

  • preparing for substitution, and that kind of information

  • goes right back to the designer.

  • Naturally, this type of reasoning might indeed get extremely complicated

  • as again: numerous resources and numerous efficiencies and purposes

  • which is exactly why it is calculated by a machine, not people.

  • And it's also why it completely blows the price system out of the water

  • when it comes to true resource awareness and intelligent management.

  • Labor Complexity.

  • This simply means estimating the complexity of a given production.

  • Complexity, in the context of an automated-oriented industry,

  • can be quantified by defining and comparing

  • the number of process stages, if you will.

  • Any given good production can be foreshadowed

  • as to how many of these stages of production it will take.

  • It can then be compared to other good productions,

  • ideally in the same genre, for a quantifiable assessment.

  • The units of measurement are the stages, in other words.

  • For example, a chair that can be molded in three minutes

  • from simple polymers in one process will have a lower

  • labor complexity value than a chair which requires automated assembly

  • down a more tedious production chain with mixed materials.

  • In the event a given process value is too complex

  • or inefficient in terms of what is currently possible in production,

  • or too inefficient by comparison to an already existing design

  • of a similar nature as well, the design, along with other parameters,

  • would be flagged and would be re-evaluated.

  • And again, all of this comes from feedback from the design interface;

  • and there's no reason to assume that with ongoing advancement

  • in AI (artificial intelligence),

  • we wouldn't be able to feedback not only the highlight of the problem

  • but would also create suggestions or substitutions

  • for you to understand in the interface.

  • [Macro]-Calculation.

  • Let's put some of this reasoning together.

  • I hope everyone can bear with me.

  • If we were to look at good design

  • in the broadest possible way with respect to industrial unfolding,

  • we would end up with about four functions or processes

  • each relating to the four dominant, linear stages of design,

  • production, distribution and recycling.

  • The following propositions should be obvious enough as a rule structure.

  • All product designs must adapt to optimized design efficiency.

  • They must all adapt to optimized production efficiency.

  • They must adapt to optimized distribution efficiency,

  • and they must adapt to optimized recycling efficiency.

  • Seems redundant, but this is how we have to think about it.

  • Here is a linear block schematic and the symbolic logic representation

  • which embodies the subprocesses or functions

  • I'm now going to very generally break down.

  • Process 1: The Design.

  • Optimized Design Efficiency.

  • A product design must meet or adapt to criteria set

  • by what we have called the current efficiency standards.

  • This efficiency process has five evaluative subprocesses,

  • as noted before earlier in the presentation:

  • durability, adaptability, standardization,

  • recycling conduciveness, maximized automation conduciveness.

  • Further breakdown of these variables and logical associations

  • can be figuratively made as well, of course,

  • which I don't think is conducive for this type of presentation

  • because we're going to get lost in ever- reductionist minutia.

  • But for more detail this stuff will be developed much more and be put

  • into this text as I've just described which will be available for free.

  • I'm going to try to do my best to give the general efficiency process here.

  • In the end, when it comes to this Design Efficiency process set,

  • we end up with this design function at the top.

  • Just to see it, I'll list all of the function meanings at the end.

  • We move on to process 2: Production Efficiency.

  • In short, this is the digital filter

  • that moves design to one of two production facility types.

  • One for high demand or mass goods

  • and one for low demand or custom goods.

  • The first uses fixed automation,

  • meaning unvaried production ideal for high demand,

  • and the second: flexible automation

  • which can do a variety of things, but usually in shorter runs.

  • This is a distinction that's commonly made

  • in traditional manufacturing terms.

  • This structure assumes only two types of facilities.

  • Obviously there could be more, based on the production factors.

  • But if the design rules in the process are respected,

  • as expressed before, there shouldn't be much variety.

  • Over time things get simpler and simpler.

  • So to state this, I'm just going to run through it for those that

  • like to hear things spelled out like this.

  • All product designs are filtered by a

  • demand class determination: process D;

  • the demand class determination process filters

  • based on the standards set for low demand or high demand.

  • All low consumer demand product designs

  • are to be manufactured by the flexible automation process,

  • all high consumer demand product designs

  • are manufactured by the fixed automation process.

  • Also both the manufacturing of low consumer demand

  • and high consumer demand product designs

  • will be regionally allocated as per the proximity strategy

  • of the manufacturing facility. This simply means

  • you keep things as close to you as possible, as close to the average

  • of any given demand as far as what type of facility you're using.

  • And this will change over time as populations change,

  • so you keep updating.

  • Process 3.

  • Once process 2 is finished, the product design is now a product

  • and it moves towards optimized distribution efficiency.

  • In short, all products are allocated based on the prior

  • demand class determination as noted before,

  • so low consumer demand products follow a direct distribution process,

  • high consumer demands follow the mass distribution process

  • which would likely be the libraries in that case.

  • Both low consumer demand and high consumer demand products will be

  • regionally allocated per the proximity strategy, as noted before.

  • And process 4, very simple, the product undergoes its life span.

  • Ideally it's been updated and adapted; ideally it's been used

  • to the highest degree and made as advanced as it could within its life cycle.

  • Once it's done it becomes void and moves on to process 4

  • which is simply optimized recycling efficiency.

  • All voided products will follow a regenerative protocol

  • which is a subprocess that clearly I'm not going to go into

  • because it's deeply complicated

  • and is the role of engineers to develop over time.

  • This is just a simple macro representation;

  • again these subvariables or subprocesses go on to quite a large degree.

  • Keeping all of this in mind, again, a lot of this will be in the text

  • and hopefully others, I think, can see this stuff,

  • that are fluent with this type of thinking, and hone in

  • and perfect these equations and relationships.

  • What I tried to do here is to give a broad sense

  • of how this type of thing unfolds.

  • As a concluding statement, more or less, the way

  • this extrapolation of sustainability and efficiency-

  • it's really quite a simple logical thing.

  • You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see how things work on this level.

  • Creating a real program that can factor in

  • what are hundreds if not thousands of subprocesses in algorithmic form,

  • as they pertain to such an economic complex is indeed

  • a massive project in and of itself, but it's more of a tedious project.

  • You don't need to be a genius to figure this stuff out.

  • I think this is an excellent think-tank program

  • for anyone out there that's interested in projects.

  • I have a number of little projects that I'm trying to get going

  • when I have time; one is simply called The Global Redesign Institute,

  • which is a macroeconomic approach to redesign

  • the entire surface of the planet, basically.

  • And in this other programming concept, we create an open-source platform

  • where people can begin to engineer this very program

  • that I'm describing.

  • That's it. I was going to make a conclusion to this talk

  • but it was already way too long.

  • So I just hope this gives a deeper understanding of the model,

  • how it could work and thank you for listening.

  • [Applause]

Hello, my name is Franky. I work also with

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