Two Quick Points
peterjoseph:
Hello everyone,
I wanted to go through two quick things that I keep seeing around the Internet from both people promoting the movement and denying the movement.
The First Point:
Stop talking about robots and mechanization as though it is THE defining feature of a resource-based economy.
A resource-based economy in and of itself has absolutely nothing to do with mechanization. You will notice that in my second lecture I don't make any comments about mechanization in detail.
Why? Because the system could work perfectly well without mechanization if the values shifted accordingly. A resource-based economy is about resource management and then the re-organizing of labor to be as optimized as possible once the monetary system is removed -- meaning nobody would be forced/enslaved into meaningless occupations which do not have a social role, directly.
So -- if you encounter somebody who says the zeitgeist movement/the venus project is about robots doing everything, do not defend mechanization or anything else. Simply state that mechanization has nothing to do with a resource-based economy in and of itself - rather it is a natural consequence of technological evolution to apply mechanization -it is applied efficiency. The resource-based economy simply carries the trend forward in a more liberal way.
Second point:
When you break it all down -- the only real argument anyone can come up against the movement is the idea that "human nature" will not allow for such a system regardless of how sustainable because there will always be people who want to "abuse you" or whatever. This is classic capitalist free-market/religious propaganda where the illusion is created that anything outside of belligerent self interest as the driving mechanism will generate serfdom and despotic forms of so-called socialism. This is the modus operandi of many subcultures now who have no understanding of anything outside of an old, outdated religious world that views human beings as defined internally and possibly "evil". This is obviously total bullshit and nothing in the world of behavioral science shows such a "non-causal" predisposition. Nothing.
Understanding this -- a resource-based economy defines itself and has no relationship to human society at all in its empirical approach. It does not matter how many human beings there are -- it does not matter how distorted the social climate may be -- it does not matter how many resources there are on the planet -- it does not matter how scarce water is --etc.--the tenants of a resource-based economy still holds true, regardless. The methodology is always the same.
From the standpoint of evolution, I find it extremely improbable that we humans have a "nature" which will not allow us to achieve optimized sustainability on this planet. This is like saying that there is an intrinsic flaw within the human organism which will not allow for it to progress and hence it will self-destruct regardless. It is preprogrammed... there is no evidence for this and again it is extremely improbable.
So- keep those two quick issues in mind as they repeat over and over again out there. I'll add more as they arise.
