Staying on message

I have started a new blog - http://colins-rbe.blogspot.com for my musings about Resource based Economies and the other ideas of The Zeitgeist Movement and The Venus Project, keeping this stibasa blog for its original purpose as per its name.

Is your toothpaste giving maximum protection?

This is a line from a TV advert. Thinking about it from Zeitgeist Movement principles, why would there be toothpaste that doesn't give maximum protection? In the current system the reason is price - and this means that people will buy a cheaper toothpaste rather than the best toothpaste. This might be a false economy (it pays to invest in your teeth), but people have to work and they take opportunities to 'save' money, even if it's a bad idea in the long term to use the inferior product.


In a resource based economy toothpaste would be the most effective that the planet's resources could sustain. Why would anyone seriously want inferior toothpaste?


Toothpaste just serves as an illustration - most products have similar problems

Is the Zeitgeist Movement Marxist?

This question was posed at Ben McLeish's talk for the Transhumanist association at Birkbeck College today.

The Zeitgeist movement claims not to be a political movement, but the question misses the point. One person at the talk was an avowed Marxist, so to him to say the ZM is Marxist is a good thing, but I think most of us were supposed to think Marxism = bad.

'Marxism' like any ism is just a label, or really more of a heading (a flagpole for deBono). If we label something 'Marxism' it doesn't make it Marxism, even if Marxism is closely enough defined and the definition widely understood, which it almost certainly isn't. We have to say whether the specific individual ideas of Marxism, or the ZM are good or bad. From a ZM perspective this is not a moral judgement - it would ask how the ideas/aims help us achieve a resource based economy.

It is not up for debate that humans and all life on this planet have to live within the limits of the finite physical resources of the planet. This is not a political idea, but just a fact, true as much for Marxists and Marks and Spencers.If I understand it correctly, the current prevailing moetary/capitalist system says that the best way to do this is to compete for the resources available, which clearly assumes and indeed requires there to be not enough resources to go round. It argues that economic growth causes there to be more to go round, but still suggests that has to be competed for. Clearly, though, the economy cannot grow in any meaningful sense beyond the finite limits of the earth's carrying capacity.

The obvious criticism of the system we have is the vast waste of resources we are witnessing - everything from duplication of products and services to full on pollution, land fill and such more obviously undesirable side effects.

ZM would argue that even if we have to compete for scarce resources, we should use them as efficiently as possible in order to ensure that there's more in total to compete for. The ZM would also make a priority of finding out exactly what we've got to use - we currently don't know.

ZM would further argue that the monetary system requires waste for it to work, because for example if you made a gadget that lasted a long time without needing repair or replacement it would either be too expensive to buy so you would go out of business, or you would go out of business as there would be no market for replacements / repairs. This problem plainly needs fixing.

Secondly, the mechanism for competing for resources is money, which requires people to get money, which in most cases requires work. Therefore, it is necessary to use inefficient human labour rather than efficient automation and tech, so that people can have work, and it pays you to work slowly if you're paid by the hour.

If you work for a drugs company that sells anti-cancer drugs, not only is it in your interest that people get cancer, but also if someone discovered a free or cheap cure you would have to resist its introduction which would put you out of business, or else try to monetize the new treatment so that you could sell it at a profit.

Presumably capitalism thinks these issues are not problems. The competition that is necessary becomes intensified by the effects of the competition itself, becoming yet more necessary, but this is a good thing. It's a dog eat dog world and you compete to survive.

ZM believes that by being more efficient we can ensure there is enough to go round, but seems to me to be silent on what to do if there isn't, whereas Marxism would say that what is there should be shared equally. In ZM's wired up, computerised world, we would have advance information about any particular resources running low and we would at least have more time to address the issue. Under capitalism, if a resource runs low, its price will go up, which is good for profits - hence capitalism craves scarcity?

Impossible to fix the economy?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8702883.stm

Former MP Chris Mullen spent a long time, it says here, trying NOT to have a ministerial car. Now with government cutbacks happening, it seems like a good idea to reduce the amount of chauffeuring round of ministers, except that they work while they're being driven, so provided the price of car and driver is less than the price of the work done while being chauffeured, we're OK.

Here's the thing. The chauffeurs get low wages and rely on overtime to make up their money, so they want more chauffeuring to do. Some ministers, sympathetic to the low wage situation, actually contrive(-d) to get more work or the chauffeurs. Right - we're getting work done that doesn't need doing at all (unnecessary extra chauffeuring) so that the chauffeurs can get more money. It would make more sense just to pay them more in the first place.

But we still have the problem that the chauffeurs want more work to get more money, and the government wants to spend less money. These two are plainly incompatible and an example of a common problem.

In this case, we have an activity that [arguably] needs doing - moving people from where they are to where they need to be on time and in an environment where they can still be productive. Working on the assumption that the thing needs doing (and is not just being done so people can be paid for it) we need to consider the options of reducing the need to do it and/or using technology to do it so that people don't have to (we don't want to create work for humans just so that we have an excuse to pay them, we want humans to do things for the benefit of humanity (see 'People Need Jobs" on this blog for an explanation).

It would seem to be incredibly complex to optimise the whereabouts of many people so that they are in the same physical location at the same time as others they need to be with. One imagines a network of mobile offices, where in each someone constantly works, whilst the system moves them around in so that they are in the right location relative to others for their meeting. Of course it doesn't matter if they are moving all the time while working alone, but they would have to have enough working alone time for the movements to happen.

The one imagines video conferencing. Why isn't that happening more? But if it was abundant, would there still be meetings in the flesh, by choice? It seems likely.

In this scenario, we may need a further level of abstraction. What are thes politicians doing and why are they having the meetings? the Zeitgeist Movement and Venus project that I am advocating and whose principles I am trying to apply would say that we don't need politicians - only scientists. In systems terms why try to optimise the subsystem (politics / political government) rather than the parent system, which we may be sub-optimising. Peter Joseph, I think would test this for a 'physical referent'. What physical thing is going to happen as a result of the minister going to the meeting?

Futurists, Technology and Cultural Lag

Ben McLeish's presentation at London's Zeitgeist Day 2010 starts by showing how technology has developed exponentially and much of the development has been to the benefit of the human race. The main setbacks are clearly war - ie the use of the most advanced technology we have in killing other people and planned obsolescence - the need to build things that break so that we can maintain the cycle of consumption and keep people in work.

Remove these (and other) aberrations and we can work towards a global, sustainable society, where innovation and development is used to improve our lot physically, not in the pursuit of profit.

Website content guru Gerry McGovern has written about the benefits of technology. Surprisingly close to some of the material used by Peter Joseph - including in his weekly (ish) blog talk radio show on the web (24 March episode), McGovern writes:

"The relentless march of technology-generated evidence is everywhere, from teaching, to medicine, to website management. And what are we learning? That doctors and web managers make much better decisions when they have evidence, data; facts, not opinions. We need to embrace technology and allow it to extend our capabilities. If we resist, and believe in the infallibility of humans, we don’t undermine technology—we undermine ourselves."

McGovern's point of departure is the use of technological aids for football (soccer) referees. He argues that they should not be prevented from benefiting from this technology any more than any other. He scoffs, basically, at the idea that humans should stop extending their capabilities by use of technology - the decision of when to do so must surely be arbitrary.

At the Z-day event in London, one of the speakers recounted how a passenger on the Docklands Light Railway was freaked out by the lack of a driver on the train, such that they had to put someone up front to 'pretend' to drive. This shows the underlying belief that a human is more reliable than a machine - which is patently untrue (perhaps not in every example, but generally overall). We see technological advances in cars from automatic gear boxes, through ABS brakes to SatNav. It is not lack of technology that stops the driverless car appearing, but the mistaken belief that the human must ultimately be in control.

http://newsweaver.ie/gerrymcgovern/e_article001706037.cfm

Resource Based Living

In tune with the Zeitgeist Movement, this blog, in its creator's own words:

"was started to discuss and share the possibilities and solutions to the problems above [see - ahem - below] . It does this in 2 ways:

1. Expose and attack corruption caused by the monetary system.
2. Help to free each and every individual from this corruption by providing solutions based on self sufficiency, sustainability, and technology.

It is therefore quite diverse in its content, but this is for good reason.

As soon as you are dependent on someone else to provide you with shelter, food or energy you leave yourself open to be controlled. This is why this blog contains many resources to help you achieve at least some level of self sufficiency.

The monetary system creates slavery, scarcity, and the devastating consequences of continual consumption. However, technology is finally breaking us free from this corruption.

This blog contains ideas and commentary for bringing about a future of technological abundance and sustainability."

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Here are the problems referred to as the blog has it:

"Say what you like about global warming, but in the “west” we are consuming at a rate that is completely unsustainable at the expense of the third world. We are squandering resources, filling up landfills and polluting our only planet.

Closer to home, our politicians fail us at every turn. Our trust in them is tested daily while crime rates soar and nothing ever gets any better. Yet we’re never given a better choice.

We find ourselves subject to ever-increasing crippling taxes, inflation and interest that keep us in perpetual debt. Unemployment rises exponentially as more and more jobs are lost to automation. All while a select few horde all the money and live a life of luxury."