Peter Joseph's non violent communication

Letter from dear leader Fresco

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

This was a letter sent by YouTube user JacqueFresco to lengthyounarther:

"In this response I clarify the role of innovators, correct your claim of a "State", address anarchism in both a free enterprise and an RBE, and replace the price mechanism with new methods.

THE SOCIAL ALGORITHM AND INNOVATORS

The concept of ownership is not only tricky, it is unjustifiable. No argument can demonstrate the validity of the concept. Even if the validity could be demonstrated, it has no authority. This is because human life is not governed by intellect, by which concepts are validated. Human life, and all life, operates *ESSENTIALLY.* -Meaning that everything occurs necessarily. To say, "I own this," or, "This is my property!" really has no basis in the reality of human life. Without a single governmental sovereign state and its laws, "property" and "ownership" has no means of persisting. In the free-for-all enterprise system, property becomes what Hobbes described. Property is anything and everything that one can wield power over, even the bodies of others. Indeed, at some point, it could become essential, i.e. necessary, to own the "property" of another person, as well as the person, regardless of whether it is voluntary or not. No intellectual agreement will change this. If it becomes necessary, it will happen. To believe that anarchism is possible in a free enterprise is not only a dangerous thought, it is overloaded with a dumptruck of problems, and with burden of explanation for the contrary of this claim.

The scientific perspective reveals that property and ownership do not exist, but instead exist within the delusions of human imagination. "Ownership" and "Property" are the products of humans attempting to conceptualize phenomena in the world they experience. The closest description of the same phenomena, in scientific terms, is to describe the movement of material by the behavior of the human organism, often referred to as power or control. If property and ownership is rooted merely in power and control, then the basis of property and ownership is war and victory, NOT consent and contract. And if it is war and victory, then no one "earns" their property. The concept of "Earn" is again a delusion of the human imagination, and does not actually exist in a world that operates *essentially". Anything "earned" is subject to the encroaching power and control of someone else.

The result is: no one has any "right" to anything whatsoever, OR the alternative is: every person has every right to everything. Ownership is inapplicable to an RBE. Instead, "Usership" exists as a purely natural and demonstrable concept. Usership occurs at all levels of nature, whereas ownership does not. All resources are not the property of a "central authority" as you say. What is the central authority you speak of? The authority is the algorithms built into the computer systems with which humans have an interface for input and feedback. The flow of information is the government. The global technological complex facilitates this flow. Money is no longer necessary as an information processing technology. All processing occurs in a different technology, and in the terms of new metrics of accounting - no longer by Price.

Regarding the projects of innovators, When you say, "the ideas it approves", what do you mean by "it"? There is no "IT". The approval of projects comes from the degree to which a project satisfies criteria. This criteria is predicated upon principles upon which all people will likely agree, one being: minimum expenditure : maximum gain. See Fuller's concept of Ephemeralization. This is the formula for abundance. Expenditure and gain is measured only in scientific units (the only means by which one can be sure to yield practical results). And if an innovator cannot fashion his project in these terms, then how the hell is he going to succeed? and what the hell is he trying to produce? In a free market, projects are not defined in terms of units that measure the project's contribution to the social system. This is why I say it is haphazard. Instead, they are measured in financial terms used only for individual self-preservation, not system gain and system preservation. As you said, "Entrepreneurs do not need the assent of the world state to act. They can act whenever they manage to voluntarily exchange for goods." However, the projects of these entrepreneurs have unaccounted costs that they do not pay for. Therefore, they essentially steal from other people without anyone realizing it, usually not until much later. Fortunately, in an RBE, these costs are accounted for by calculating the total gains and losses for the total system, according to the information available at that time.
In "vetoing" ideas/projects, innovation is not stifled. This is due to our estimations of how people will behave when their basic needs are satiated. If our estimations of human nature are correct, then under proper conditions people will become innovative, creative, and productive. A population of self-actualized people will give rise to projects with a wide range of variations, just as it occurs in a free market. These projects will have varying performance ratios. Those at the top (those with min. expenditure and max. gain) will be granted execution. Just as in a free enterprise where projects with minimum expenditure and maximum gain (for both producer and consumer) ultimately prevail over other projects.

The very fact that a person's proposal is rejected gives them incentive to improve it! Bolster their intellectual capital (for which all information is free!) so that their project can once again be proposed with improved performance ratios.

If an accepted project failed, then it was a waste indeed. (In fact, the accounting system considers all projects as waste until the projects succeed). But it can't be any more wasteful than a free enterprise where so much information is monopolized and secretive. In an RBE, all information is shared. Therefore, waste from failed projects will be far less often and the decision systems are far less likely to be in error. There also won't be duplicated projects.

In a free enterprise, where an entrepreneurs project fails, not all of his capital is reallocated. Indeed, much (not all) of the material, human, and financial capital is reallocated. However, so much of it loses value. And sometimes the material capital has no utility and hence destroyed. In addition, much of the information capital is not reallocated. Research information is often destroyed.

When an entrepreneur does succeed, society is not always better off. I'm not sure society is better off by an entrepreneur successfully selling toys and candy (or fastfood, alcohol, tobacco, etc. anything adverse to health). They succeed at this because they have situated themselves to answer demand. However, there are tremendous costs unaccounted for in this affair. Regardless of such costs, society is not improved by these industries. These industries are essentially parasitic. They prey on irrational demand. Though such demand is perfectly natural, it does not contribute to the health of the social system.

Meanwhile, in an RBE, though there is likely also irrational demand, there is no incentive to answer it! This is because there is no exclusive individual profit that benefits self-preservation. No one's life is secured or maximized by developing a project to produce lollipops; not the creator nor the consumer. Therefore, there arises a tendency to only answer rational demand, in which the innovator satisfies his complex needs by seeing his project come to fruition, and consumers satisfy a need by the utility of the product. Feel free to give me an example in which an innovator will have incentive to produce a product objectively detrimental to people or the environment.

An innovator has incentive to improve inter-continental transportation simply because his needs are satisfied by conquering the problem, or because he simply wants improved transportation for his own utility. Execution of this project benefits both himself and anyone else wherever it is utilized. The innovator does not need to "own the fruits of his labor" because his self-preservation does not depend on it. His existence is assured and secure by the providence of abundance and the innovators that manage to conceive of production and distribution systems with superior performance ratios. The only vested interest an innovator might have is the imperative of having his own complex needs satisfied. Therefore, such vested interest might lead him to sabotaging the project of another innovator who's project proves superior due to his enormous intellectual capital. However, the innovator, seeking to sabotage the other, will sabotage his own existence, because he loses out on the benefits the other innovator could have provided via his superior project. However, even if this did happen, a similar project with second best performance ratio falls next in line for execution. And the sabotaging innovator may be no closer to having his project executed than before. Therefore, the more prudent answer is simply to improve his own design. The likelihood of sabotage is up to you to judge.

Furthermore, the only differential advantage that might exist arises from an innovator's intellectual capital. This is because he accumulates nothing else, and therefore cannot harness anything else other than his own sheer intellectual competence against anyone else. Lastly, there is simply no more self-preservation orientation. Instead, people become oriented toward self-actualization/cultivation. All interest turns toward that when basic needs are satiated.

There is no "appeal" to the "state." A project is granted execution if it succeeds in maximizing its performance ratio above others. Submission of the specifications of the project and its performance ratios activates sequences in the technological complex that initiate the development of the project. Ripples flow through the entire global technological complex as the innovator inerfaces with the consultation system, and the project nears its completion. Availability of the innovation is announced. Utilization can thus commence. Coordination, synchronicity, interactivity, only possible by instant information and automated processing systems.

CALCULATION PROBLEM

Regarding the calculation problem. There are several methods proposed for overcoming the problem. One has been to obligate a consumer to work in proportion to the sumtotal of their consumption of resources. Essentially, they are billed in terms of work hours. They could be assigned to general management of data processing centers, or more ideally, assigned to problem solving, i.e. reversing the scarcity of those resources they consume. Thus, the degree to which they value their free time and the degree to which they value consuming a particular item will determine how much they consume. Due to great abundance and low cost, work hours would still be very little. Perhaps 4 hours a week. Items priced in Milliseconds of work time, the amount depending upon their absolute scarcity. With this method, corruption is much less possible, because there is no currency that is traded. The only problems might be one person stealing items from another person who has been billed for those items, so that the other person can avoid going to work. BUT, because all items for individual consumption are produced on demand, therefore reducing people's tendency to stockup, the chances of a person having the opportunity to steal another person's items is quite low, because a person will demand the item and use it soon after.

Another proposal has been to implement an artificial daily, weekly, or monthly point system, in which points symbolically represent a person's consumption, waste, reuse, and generation of resources. This is similar to the Technocracy system in which energy credits are proposed. In this case, a person is given a set amount of points, and as production capacity and efficiency increases, everyone's purchasing power (points) increase in proportion. Eventually, it is believed that the abundance of resources used to satiate basic needs will be so great, that the points a person is given would far exceed what they would ever practically consume. With such a point system, consumption rates can be calculated against the supply of resources. Some items may still have high cost, due to inefficiencies of production or scarce resources, and people would indeed be limited by the point/credit limit. However, it is precisely this high cost that motivates innovators to submit their projects for execution, if they believe they can reduce the costs by powerful innovations. Such innovation projects do not subtract from the individual innovator's point allowance. Instead, the project is taken on by the system, in a separate domain of valuation and criteria. Resources used for projects are more likely to be less abundant and more vulnerable to exhaustion. The resources withdrawn for Projects are calculated by a difference system of appraisal. Therefore, the individual point system no longer applies. This method is better, but efficacious only if resources are as abundant as estimated. However evidence today suggests that even the presently existing production capacity is sufficient to satiate the basic needs of people. Therefore, thanks to Captialism, we can now satiate people's basic needs all over the world, and now reorganize our social system so that it may anarchistically rests in the hands of the higher levels of human nature, in which new needs, tendencies, and behavior eclipses the historical self-preservation that once interfered with social cooperation and individual cultivation. We believe Capitalism has produced sufficient security for the reorganization we propose.

Lastly, another proposal answers the calculation problem, and could incorporate the point system mentioned above, though not necessarily. In this case, supply is tracked in two ways. One way is to seek to always maintain a supply always above a fixed threshold. For instance, maintaining a secure supply iron would consist of measuring the total supply of iron against the average of all withdrawal. The availability of a resource can then be accounted and conveyed in various ways. One way would be to tag every item/resource with a availability expectancy. For example, perhaps, given the rates of consumption for a shower head, and given the consumption rate of all other items that draw from the same raw and recycled resources, a shower head might have an availability expectancy of 5 years before the supply begins to fall below the secure threshold. By that time a new innovation will be needed to render unnecessary the materials used in the shower head by either obsoleting such a technology or developing substitute materials. As a supply is threatened and approaching the secure threshold, this becomes an issue of public alarm. Such indications prompt the projects of innovators, which are completely voluntary. A shower head is perhaps a poor example, because its necessity is disputable. In a voluntary system, rescuing shower heads may be no one's priority. Therefore, my next point is indicated. In such a system, not only is rational demand answered, the innovations that emerge will most likely be oriented toward necessities. Innovators would more likely feel prompted to find substitute material for food automation systems rather than a shower head, because their own existence is threatened by neglecting the food problem, and because the projects of those innovations are more likely to be favored in the cost-benefit analysis criteria.

Furthermore, merely indicating estimated/projected availability expectancy is not enough. A concrete measurement of an item's burden on total supply must be measured and indicated, much like a Price does. If our premise is accurate, then it should be possible to account for all resources on the planet by conducting a survey of global conditions. If an inventory can really be composed, then measuring the resources withdrawn in producing an item should be possible to measure by means of deduction. Therefore, the aforementioned shower head will have an additional tag that indicates the percentage of resources withdrawn from the total supply. This would be expressed in a numerical sequence dependent upon the composition of the shower head, as well as the scientific understanding of the time. The best expression is still something to be debated, but can be worked out just as all other scientific standards have been. I'm sure you can theoretically conceive of a chart that communicates the composition of the shower head and the individual percentages that it withdraws from the respective resources of the global supply. But because a chart would be inconvenient, all of the percentages can be unified as one single numerical expression by *weighting* the quantities withdrawn to the relative quantities in the total global supply for each resource. Therefore, a cumulative weighted percentage can be given to every single item produced, as long as we can account for all production input and account for the total quantities of all resources. Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, innovators will be prompted to propose projects that reduce the resource withdrawal percentages if such percentages begin to rise above safe thresholds. As long as sufficient information and feedback can be supplied, Innovators become the immune system protecting against scarcity.

Though items will be tagged with other calculated information, only those mentioned above are among the proposals intended to replace the functions of prices.

Lastly, items that depend upon scarce resources are less likely to be consumed on the individual level, not only because there would likely be a social stigma against doing so, but because of time factors. The excavation and recovery of scarce resources is often more difficult. Production of goods requiring such scarce resources will also utilize recycling systems as much as possible. Therefore, the production process for items using scarce resources will be of longer duration than items that use abundant resources. Therefore, because much of an RBE is a computerized "que economy," consumers will be dissuaded from ordering such goods by their OWN decision! This is because, TIME is finite. Time comparisons become a new, important metric of valuation. If a consumer places an order for a item that uses scarce resources, and the wait time is announced as 3 days, then they will most likely find an alternative, or perhaps, if they foresee themselves needing to order the item often, even going to work on eliminating that problem by submitting designs for a similar item that uses less scarce resources, if they happen to be motivated to do so. However, again, the use of scarce resources in innovation projects is a different scenario than in the scenario of individual consumption. If gains are great enough, lengthy production times might be tolerated by the innovators who have been granted execution of their project.

REMARK

Though a free market may not have artificial scarcity, it does restrain the levy of abundance for all people by keeping profit exclusive and keeping the control of resources diffuse This is not to mention it guarantees social turbulence due to its darwinistic imperatives of self-preservation, and many other problems about which economists know nothing. Knowing how to solve such problems is the only way to design a social system to operate without dysfunction, and absence of consideration for these problems is the weakness of a free enterprise. Cumulatively, an RBE solves more total system problems than a free enterprise because an RBE's considerations are broader in scope. Thus its sumtotal gains are greater. Such is broader and greater because we look at all phenomena of the earth as precisely a system. This is unlike economists who look at only isolated phenomena. When the earth is viewed as a system, new priorities emerge and new methods for social management become necessary. Economists are unscientific because they fail to look at all aspects of the earth as a total system.

ANARCHISM

There is no state. An RBE is anarchistic. It is an anarchy of innovators whose individual power resides only in their competence and intellectual capital. These innovators are emergent just like capitalists. The difference is that innovators are far more transitory because they develop no individual state (b/c they have no property, no self-preservation, and no material differential advantage). Their inventions, their ideas, their proposals, their discoveries are quickly superseded by other innovators pursuing their own project driven by the most resilient and powerful motive: passion onset by complex needs. On the other hand, in a free enterprise, there exists a multiplicity of capitalist states. Though indeed they are superseded by others, their static presence exists far longer than the the projects of innovators in an RBE. The longer the static presence of a single capitalist's state, the greater the detriment to a society. It is a detriment for the same reason national/political states are a detriment. The multiplicity of capitalist states function analogously to the current situation of political states. The only difference is that capitalist states war economically (though political states are learning to do this too). (And I wouldn't doubt capitalist states would war militaristically if left to themselves after political states were abolished). Nevertheless, any static existence is detrimental to the social system. The only thing that must remain static is the mechanism that assures everything else will remain emergent and changing. And that is the foundation of an RBE. An RBE exalts the mechanism that assures no formation of static entities. To assure this mechanism rules, human operation has to be reorganized along the lines drawn by TVP.

That which you have referred to as a "state" is really not an entity. If anything, it is a mode of operation in human relations, a social algorithm, that is supported by a global infrastructure of technology. In other words, the infrastructure becomes the "laws of physics" of society, so to speak. And as all people have access to information, and as all have access to the infrastructure (much like open-source phenomena of today), the infrastructure is never vulnerable to monopoly of use, manipulation, or corruption.
The foregoing has been a description of aspects of a conservative RBE.

I would like to move to criticism of a free enterprise at some point. Weaknesses of a free enterprise are far numerous than an RBE, and I'm curious to hear your defense."

George Galloway on Zeitgeist Economics

Stefan Molyneux's response to Peter Joseph

Sources for the Zeitgeist rebuttal

RBOSE sends letter to Peter Joseph

(OK, here is the part with which we hope let you understand why you act like a last moron [in general and not pointing to any specific person] from our perspective when you talk about tzm)

Working on text to be displayed to users who spam about tzm.gov

This document bellow is meant to explain why we don't want you to bring your crap to RBOSE network. It's build from two parts. First describes how you have been played, and the second explains why we are _against_ what you talk about.

While you probably never gave it a real thought on your own, we decided to help you and we have few questions, for free.

== THE NEVER ASKED QUESTIONS BY FOLLOWERS ==

* Have you ever seen any single scientific paper released by tvp since they claim to use sicentific method?

* Do you know anybody who have seen such a document?

* Did you ever aksed about money? Where they are comming from? Before you will have all the asnwers born out of your head alone, without seeing any accoutnting sheet, ask yourslef why you belive in first place in so many things? If one single server at tzm.gov costs about $20 000 a year at tzm.gov, and they are using a separated at tvp, if so many people like moderators, admins, global admins and global moderators, developers, are payed, from where all this money are comming from?

* Do you know what you don't know about this project and why you never asked a question?

* Did you ever realized that you believe in story about central computers told by an older guy who knows nothing about computers? He has no smallest idea about software nor hardware, and you decided to believe in it? How naive  are you?

* In age of remote devices (like mobile phones, laptops, pda, etc.) and distributed technologies, why you would like ever to build a city with a central computer? Why are you advocating organizing a scarce area within city, scarce in volume and limited in space access points, while even today you can simply take a computer out of your pocket and access necssery information? Are you sure you know what  you are talking about? Isn't that you look for new church space?

* Why you support proprietary development, keeping all the hypothetical works of TVP closed, without anyone being able to see anything more that just few plastic toys? Are you sure there is something at all? Do you know anybody who have seen it? Or maybe it's time to relaize that you are prone simply to believes since you assumed something is there without seeing it!

* TVP asks for over $200 for a single day visit at Florida and keep selling all their works, excluding one ebook given for free so you can help advertise it. Many people believe (without seing any accounting information) that they do have finacial problems, and often happens that visitors leave them additional money (like $140 DrSoot). While the whole "center" was lebeled for sell, and big banner was the first thing you see visiting their websie, from a private communication we learned that they obviously do not plan to move to any other place due to the fact that Fresco is to old to start anything from scrach. So did you again just believe in some story becasue you want to blieve in it? If you believe in their financial problems, then again from where are all the money comming from?

* What means social enginnering? How that ever happened that you started to believe that mass control and manipulation, spin techniques, are postive phenomenas at all? Did you fall from stairs and hit your head into wall?

* Why you are advocating a centalized institution being a merge of production and goverment power with no one being able to make decissions for them selves?

* Do you understend the neuro linguistic programming of which zeitgeist members are victims?

* If this is all about critical thinking and sicentific method, then how that happened you did not see any material released by the zombie movement about critical thinking, neither you did not learn how to use scientific method in your life. Maybe time to relaize that no science had been done, and you just have seen a new "american dream" where refering to science plays a major role, a fallacy so to speak, of acting as a mesage of authoriy. They know, the guy in white clothes in tooth paste adverts looks more serious, so the feed you with some legends about science. You know nothig about it as long you not try it. Like with sex. It's simple but you need to do it yourself to find how it taste.

* Did you ever asked what the founder of the movement is specialized in? You will find politcs, religion, propaganda (what he calls movies, and he is good at it really), and music. *ding* All his life is about politics and relgion and the other mentioned. No science? Yes. (This is the logical answer meaning "no science".) But he has a nice knowlege about the things to make you feel and see stuff somebody may want you to see, and about how to control people through believes and social pressure. (A suggestion here: you probably know more or less operators "and" and "or" or at least you heard about these words, but never payed attention what they mean. When you do that, please maybe try learn about other 14, so you could understood better what people around you are really talking about.)

* Did the leaders of the movement ever address issue of control? You heard stuff about politicians, corruption by money, but did you ever heard about other things which corrupt people?

* How often you hear in your cult circles that you are building free society and not the central control system which will make all the decisions for you?

== Why people building RBOSE are against crap like yours ==

* We are here working with free and open source solutions. Not proprietary ones.

* We work on decentralization, not centralization.

* We stand against control, not for advocating it.

* We build flat relations with people, not hierarchical ones.

* We believe in development speak for itself, not in adevertising.

* We understand what "free as in freedom" means, you get only what "free as in free beer" means.

* We do not operate with money and not sell our products. We do not act last hypocrits saying one thing and doing another one.

* While you look for a way to support corporate industrial power and organize even bigger production entities, we want every single individual, if they only want, to have the production technologies and not be dependent on institutions you advocate. We want every single person out there be able to produce food, shelter, energy, get clean water and satisified all the needs without the social control systems and pressure you want to impose on society.

* We want the wealth to be freely copied by everybody today, not tomorrow in an unknown future.

* While you may not see a problem with your operating system which is not free software, we certianly do. This crap holds you back from freedom, but sadly you are not willing to take the  effort to free your self. No comment dude. 

// WALL OF TEXT WILL BE HERE //

* So, next point. WHY THE FUCK you want _us_ to support something what we tottally stand against?

* We've been asked by your cult co-members to setup channel for you at our network. Some showed so little understanding that they proposed money for that! But read this at least twice: we will not have space to host your crap. If you want to get rid of insects, then you don't leave open food in your basement, at least if you don't want to build a trap. People here don't like violence, so it would be just a matter of time before your not-thinking fellows would fill the space with adverts outgrowing the smart stuff around. Then you would ask if we could setup our nice bots to get feeds for you from the tzm.gov or enable other features to host more crap.

* Did i forget about the letter to PJ?

* Did i ever asked at tzm to release ban for RBOSE?
  / did i ever were complainin why RBOSE ppl are banned on    any of the TZM platforms?
  
* What happens if i start a talk in ZM teamspeak / forums that RBOSE is great and ppl should join? (lol GLOBAL BAN)

* Did i ever asked why in zm teamspeak people were banned because they talked about Open source software?
Fianal word:

How blind, naive, or stupid are you? We set up RBOSE to get rid of this crap, so please don't bring it to us, because you will be kicked. There is plenty other space out there where you are free to work on stuff you like, and you should learn how the toilet differs from your bed - not all places are for everything.


If you still really don't get it, please read bellow:

Fukk this shit of yours and please don't argue with us that this is issue of free speech: we setup this project to not talk about this mentioned nonsense.

Roxanne Meadows explains why they are trademarking

Why has The Venus Project the term RBE trademarked?

Why has The Venus Project trademarked the term Resource-Based Economy?

The reason The Venus Project is trade-marking the term Resource-based Economy is Jacque Fresco has been working on this system most of his 93 years. This is an integrated system to provide for humanity holistically which includes all aspects of human need. He has been working toward a resource-based economy in order to do away with the major aberrations of war, poverty, hunger, etc.

Jacque Fresco coined the term Resource-based Economy which is the foundation that provides the parameters for social design. Throughout the years, people have taken The Venus Project’s pictures, designs, architecture, language, and the name Resource-based Economy, to raise funds claiming to build a Resource- based Economy without collaborating with us in any way. They usurp the name, some of the procedures, and models, but use their own interpretation of a Resource-based Economy.

After examining their interpretations closely, we feel the procedures they suggest will not work. The Venus Project cannot take responsibility for other interpretations of our work. Others use the name Resource-based Economy, but interpret it in their own way and then raise funds for a different direction. Riding on the coat tails of Fresco’s work. This is detrimental to our efforts to raise funds for building a new city or making a major motion picture about our aims.

We’d prefer not to trademark, but our predatory society encourages people to capitalize on the efforts of others.

The reason we trademark the name Resource-based Economy is so that the integrity of our direction is maintained. We would not mind people using the term Resource-based Economyand our photos if they consulted and worked with us, and if their efforts promoted the true direction of a Resource-based Economy as proposed by The Venus Project.

Many different groups usurping our name and material for their own purposes, bastardizes our social designs and architecture. If you wish to know more about the proposals of The Venus Project and a Resource-based Economy, please review:

• www.thevenusproject.com
• www.thezeitgeistmovement.com
• www.thevenusprojectdesign.com

David Suzuki disagrees with the Zeitgeist Movement

Letter to David Suzuki – and his RESPONSE

“To Mr. David Suzuki

My name is Cliff Faber.

Current monetary problems can be addressed easily, but NOT by our political system. Our current political system is not set up to deal with TRUE solutions or open to moving in that direction. In fact, TRUE solutions go against EVERYTHING that our current political system stands for in its entirety. So the hungry faces of the millions of citizens looking hopefully toward the government to provide solutions to making the world a better place is never going to happen.

I feel that we need to give people REAL alternatives, so that they, the people, can make better “knowledgeable” choices and not just rely on what the government says.

Social problems result from scarcity. When a few nations control most of the world’s resources, there are going to be international disputes no matter how many laws or treaties are signed. If we wish to end war, crime, hunger, poverty, territorial disputes, and nationalism, we must work toward a future in which all resources are accepted as the common heritage of all people.

Our problems cannot be solved in a society based on money, waste, and human exploitation. Today, money is used to regulate the economy for the benefit of the few who control the financial wealth of nations. Unless the underlying causes of planned obsolescence, environmental neglect, and outrageous military expenditures are addressed, we are bound to fail. Treaties, blockades, boycotts, and the like used in the past have not worked.

Many believe that ethical standards and international laws will assure a sustainable global society. Even if the most ethical people in the world were elected to political office, without sufficient resources, we would still have the same problems. What is needed is the intelligent management of Earth’s resources for the benefit of all and protection of the environment.

Earth has plentiful resources. Rationing resources through monetary control is dysfunctional and counterproductive to survival. Today, we have highly advanced technologies but our social and economic development has not kept up. We could easily create a world of abundance without servitude and debt through the creation of a global, resource-based civilization.

Please enjoy this DVD.

Thanks,

Cliff Faber”

David Suzuki’s response (typed out underneath):

“Dear Mr. Faber:

I am returning your material. I only read the first chapter but I disagree so much with it that I do not feel it worth my time. We are at a critical point and science and technology have to be part of the solution, but I do not believe we have the knowledge to create the future your project and I disagree with your dismissal of accumulated knowledge and insights over thousands of years. In many ways, we have become savages that are often thought to be what people once were.

David Suzuki”



peterjoseph 

''People often ask me still why we do not "collaborate" so to speak with other activists/ environmental organizations. This is because all of the protocols / traditional approaches of the current activist community, on all levels, are based on an establishment worldview that has and will continue to fail. Mr. Suzuki's response is a case in point of an individual who holds a tremendous amount of weight and hence established view of social change... and hence any thing that challenges that view is like challenging a religion. Most activist groups act like corporations at this stage.

Now, with regard to David's exact points it is an immature and irresponsible refutation which makes no sense whatsoever. First of all, the first "chapter" of the orientation guide which I assume he was referring to since the first chapter of the movie is only about the fractional reserve system, only lays out the patterns of the economic system and says nothing about what a resource-based economy is. So from that point alone he obviously has taken zero time to understand anything.
As far as his statement about a "dismissal of knowledge"...Where did he even get that? what does that even mean? if anything, it's the absolute opposite.

So, I am saddened to see such blind dismissal, especially from people who claim to want real change. No -- they do not want real change. They want the change that they assume is correct and since most of the highly revered activists have successfully acquired a great deal of income support for their work, it is a natural propensity for them to think that the monetary system is okay since they are being supported by it by their so-called activist initiatives. This is the paradox. The bottom line is that the change needed will not come from the pre-existing activist establishments. They are detached from any reference to the wholistic system. This goes for the entire spectrum as I see it. Greenpeace -- Michael Moore -- Annie Leonard and all the other heavily revered social and environmental activists of our time continue to refuse to look at the system from the broadest perspective and see the fatal flaw... either that or they just don't understand it. But frankly believe most blinker it out due to their monetary success.

The activism community on this planet is dead. They are locked into the box and do not see beyond it. They are angry puppies neatly kept in their state run kennel. Even more, all activism over the past five decades has failed time after time. nothing has changed in any substantial way. The civil rights movement while helping over all was replaced by an economic form of violence/ segregation. voting rights for women and minorities was overcome by the propaganda machine of the state and the patterns/values of voting have not changed at all. the environmental community pretends it has progress when it is a fact that every life-support system is (still) in decline on this planet and getting worse.

So, I challenge any activist group to tell me where their true progress is both from a broad social and environmental standpoint- long term. They use the legal system and the legal system is open for perpetual change based on the whims of any new politician. It doesn't matter how many ships Greenpeace boards -- it doesn't matter how many slave labor camps are shut down -- it doesn't matter how many antiwar protests emerge on the streets of Washington-- it is simply a matter of time before new methods of abuse and exploitation and advantage crop up... just like roaches coming out from under a refrigerator because the spoiled food/socioeconomic system is still there.''

Conventional Economics is a form of brain damage.

- David Suzuki

— Zeitgeist Movement (@tzmglobal) August 17, 2012