Wednesday 16 June 2010

ZM/TVP from first principles

Why does The Zeitgeist Movement (TZM) appeal to me and so many others:

(1) It recognises that the creatures on this planet have to live within the finite resources of this planet. This is a plain, unalterable fact, though you wouldn't think so from the waste we produce and the lie that is continual growth and continually increasing consumption. This is the starting point of the idea of a resource based economy.

(2) It embraces technology. We were all told that technology would give us more free time. Hmm. Some are unemployed because of technology - and therefore poor. Those working in the information economy are working just as hard, if not harder, but just producing more. The idea of technology freeing us up to do what we're good at and want to do is - frankly - wildly exciting. Jacque Fresco and thus TZM refers to cybernation - a slightly quirky word meaning computerisation, automation, mechanisation combined (probably).

(3) It clearly denounces the perversity of money. People have to have it. If you go into a shop to buy something, it is unlikely that the shopkeeper will tell you that you can get a better and/or cheaper equivalent in another shop. If you work in a tobacconist's you want more people to take up smoking. If you work in the arms industry, you want more war. [I say "you want" in each case - more precisely I should say "it is in your interest for there to be"]. I'm not sure that this perversity can be cured by monetary reform, even if the problem of money supply and money as debt could be. All the while we have to compete for the necessities of life through the proxy of money we have a problem.

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