The Zeitgeist Movement

I've written about this "outgrowth" - to use one of Peter Joseph's favourite words - of the Venus Project before, but thought I'd have a stab at explaining it in my own words - well more in my own words.

There are several starting points, so I'll begin with technnological unemployment. There are many people working in jobs that could be done as well or better by machines. This is because the system says they have to have a job to get money and they have to have money to get food, but why is the system like this? Worse still, there are some people working in jobs that are pointless or counter productive - my example previously was of single mums being constrained to work in fast food outlets - a contradiction of the government's policy that we eat healthily. These single mums are being taken away from the worthwhile job of raising children.

People should be able to have life's essentials (food, shelter, potable water etc) as their birthright and should not have to work for them.

Under the current system people have to work to eat, and of course people have to buy things so that others can be paid. The so-called "cycle of consumption". It's no good making things that would last for ever as people would only buy them once and the people that make them would be out of work and unable to eat. Therefore, we deliberately make things that break or wear out and need repairing or replacing. The repair work is more work for people to do, which is held to be good, and the stuff that's thrown away basically adds to our sickening pile of waste.

The common factor in all this is money, which was necessary when resources were scarce as a way of allocating them, but are resources truly scarce? With rapidly advancing technology, we can in theory know exactly what resources we have at any one time and allocate where need is greatest. Technology can also help us get the best yields of food from land and sea in a sustainable way. Instead of this we have stratification where in one part of the world people are dying of starvation and in another they're dying from the opposite.

The mechanics of money itself are quite ridiculous. All the money in existence is on loan from banks and interest is due on every penny of it. Therefore more money is owed than actually exists to pay it back. Another reason we have to go to work is to earn money to pay back loans to the bank. It is no less than slavery. Every so often the difference between the money owed and the money that exist becomes so apparent /severe that we have a financial crisis, as we are having now.

The argument runs that with no money there would be no incentive to do the things that need doing, but is this really true? People the world over do things voluntarily and would probably do more if they didn't have to work all day too. Many of them are doing voluntary work to "give something back" to society as they plainly don't get that from their paid work. Further, much of our work is to earn enough money for the basics including the loan from the bank that we pay back as rent or mortgage in exchange for a place to live. Some of the basics are things we must buy in order to be able to go to work - transport being the most obvious example. For most people there's not much money left for inessentials or time left to spend it.

The financial crisis we are having is just that - a financial crisis. It's only because money touches so many aspects of our lives that it seems worse than it is. Your house or flat didn't cease to exist at the crunch moment. The sun still shines, plants still grow and every other species on the planet carried on as if nothing happened.

A true economic system is based on real resources - a resource based economy. The monetary system helps destroy and squander these resources - and it has to because it can only work with scarcity. It pays to pollute water because it makes it scarcer and therefore costlier. The fact or belief that mains water is impure or sub standard also creates - along with advertising - a market for bottled water.

In a resource based economy we would conserve our resources, especially the non-renewable ones. This would require us to know what we have, and technology would help us do that. Without money, vast numbers of jobs would disappear - especially the ones that are only about handling money - banking, insurance etc, but also advertising and also the many jobs that are completely unnecessary or could be automated.

The Zeitgeist Movement denies the need for government and politics. Governments can pass laws to make things happen, but other people actually make them happen. If you're ill you go to your GP, not your MP.

Talking of being ill, the pharmaceutical companies are often criticised for making money out of the vital medicines that people - who often can't afford them - need. But they are just working in the same monetary system as everyone else. It just so happens that they're a very pointed example of the absurdity of our current system. It's true that they need money for research and that to get money they have to sell pills and potions. Also, people have to be ill to need the pills and potions. In a resource based economy, knowledge about the beneficial effects of plants, chemicals, minerals, etc, would be shared (pharmaceutical companies have to compete with each other). Jacque Fresco (originator of the Venus Project - see blogs passim) often says that celery juice can reduce blood pressure, but pharam companies can't make money out of it. This absurdity would not occur in a resource based economy. [NB I'm not giving out medical advice - just repeating what Jacque Fresco says. A little internet research will confirm that celery juice is certainly good for you - hardly a surprise.]

Without money we wouldn't be slaves to work and we'd have far more time to educate and enlighten ourselves. Education wouldn't be a competive chase for grades supported by a system that teaches exam passing as a skill, it would be a proper quest for understanding and knowledge as we all know deep down it should be - it's what we mean when we say "education".

The Zeitgeist Movement spends a lot of time pondering how the "transition" from a monetary to a resource based economy will come about. Spreading the word and convincing people is one way in the hope that popular uprising will help bring about the change. If the financial system collapses it will help too, but it seems likely that there will be some suffering before the change comes about. The environment needs saving urgently now. If the biosphere can't sustain life it won't matter what economic system we have!

Even if we're willing to make he change, there's a lot of work to do. Even just getting the information systems in place is a major undertaking, though there's more in place than we might imagine. At the moment the best IT is used for war, which obviously would have no place in a resource based economy, and so all the hardware and human skill that's used for that would be freed up for socially progressive use, but in a co-operative, non-monetary society all computing power could be harnessed to the same ends.

Removing or reducing the residual need for human labour would be another big challenge as so many things are designed to be cleaned/maintained/repaired by human hands. One of the big ideas from the Venus Project is entirely new cities built to last by robots. I must admit the idea is attractive but the possibility seems rather remote or far fetched. But what do I know? Jacque Fresco says it will be more sustainable to build new cities than maintain and repair old ones, which sounds plausible, though the best bits of old ones will be kept as museum cities.

Altogether, the radical ideas of the Zeitgeist Movement / Venus Project offer an attractive and sustainable way to live on the planet. Our current system is neither of these things, but a disgrace.