The Zeitgeist Movement: Any questions?

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You know, reading all this does make me curious to hear what proposals for an alternative economic model you guys have. Just a thought. Perhaps you should have the courage of your convictions and create a thread for it so we can hound you to hell and back about it. Just a thought. Juuuuust a thought.

Economic planning IS possible: the ancient Inca's and Aztecs did it.

Cool, what sort of thing did you have in mind? Would you have any questions about an RBE?

Why do I need an alternative? The current system is flawed, but it is functional.

I am a big cynic of using ancient cultures to tell us about possible modern cultures. The reason being that ancient cultures tend to have cultural traits that we now reject, they tend to have simpler and less fluid economies than the modern economy, and GDP wasn't growing very much in those days, and well.... so long as our technology improves, our GDP should be expected to grow simply as a function of displaying the increases in productivity.

I agree. I think mostly free markets with some degree of government regulation is functioning ok. The problems seem to be that the exact balance of how much or how little regulation is always shifting and we are always playing catch-up, adjusting the government regulation up and down constantly. But I don't see that as a fundamental flaw. I see that as maintenance work that just needs to be done routinely to keep an economy functioning. To me it's like driving. Sometimes you have to hit the gas. Sometimes you have to hit the brakes. But the fact that you are obliged to shift between gas and brakes depending on what's going on in the road doesn't mean that cars are a fundamentally flawed transportatiobn system. It just means that constant adjustments are part of what is needed to make a system run....and that's ok.

Let me sum up the responses for you Adam.

The questions people have about the Zeitgeist Movement revolve around the plan of implementation and operation of a RBE. After nearly six pages of posts it is becoming clear that there is no plan. Until there is one, there will be nothing to discuss.

I have taken great care and time to answer this in my Q&A that I will be airing in the near future on Blogtalkradio.com. I can provide the answers people ask for, the formality I'm aware of is the fact that it is impossible to convince someone of something they have no intention to consider. It is in fact impossible to convince someone who does not want to believe in god, to believe in god, just like it is impossible to convince someone to fall in love with you if they have already made their mind up about you and they don't wanna, and hense CAN'T love you.

Likewise it is impossible to convince someone who does not want to see the validity and feasibility of an RBE, to see the validity and feasability of an RBE.

This is the point that myself and Matthew are making. If you project into this idea, you are gonna contaminate your perception of it, and hense, to use a colloquial term, you ain't gonna get it.

This works with anything. So as I have said, I can provide the answers to your questions, however your choice to accept them or not, is contingent more upon your own personal will to recognise feasibility, or not. It is impossible to convince someone of this if they don't wanna know, THAT is why I don't bother.

Now I'm always looking for questions delivered in a civil, unbiased, and unprojecting manner.

That's a convenient excuse.

I'd love to see your face when I broadcast. hehehe.

Do you think anyone other than JosephMathew is going to listen to it?

It is good that you found a way to broadcast your opinions over the internet without having to listen to any responses. Enjoy yourself.

I'm flattered but I'm sure anything would be better than just ranting at a computer screen alone.

Do I even need to list the people awaiting it? Tell you what, I'll send you a link to it when it's done.

As for voicing my "opinions" that isn't in fact the case, and if you review previous threads on here, you will see that I have spent too much time explaining this direction under fire from the most critical of people. A practise that I'm no longer prepared to do. In addition to this, my radio show is gonna be monthly so I wholly encourage further questions as responses to my answers so I'm not at all afraid of responding to responses.

I hope you enjoy the show, and feel free to send me any posers.

Your policy of only preaching to the converted isn't going to work if you want to convert 6 billion people to your way of thinking. Spare me the "think for yourself" speech. The only way this plan could possibly work is if people decide to stop thinking for themselves and instead think the way you want them to.

There is precedent for this in organized religion. Your task- which you are unwilling to accept- is to insert a meme in peoples' heads that will make the dissolution of all national boundaries, all current government and in fact the very concept of property seem like a good idea. Organized religion is very good at meme insertion. It's what they do. No religion has ever succeeded in converting literally everybody although many have tried so you would be wise to learn from those that have tried. The religions that have been most succesful with meme insertion-Christianity and Islam- have both followed a two-pronged approach. This has been to convert all who were willing to convert and killing those who weren't. Since you claim to be unwilling to use violence, you will really have to step up your conversion plan.

You know those evangelical Christians who go door to door amongst the "non- believers" and try to convince them with arguments and emotional appeals? You have to do what they do but you have to do it a whole lot better. They know that a policy of sitting in your church and waiting for people to show up doesn't get you very many people. You absolutely need to come up with good and convincing arguments that win over the people who really don't want to hear it. Although none of those arguments have worked on me yet (and I always waste their time by engaging them in debate when they come to my door), they do have a well crafted answer for every conceivable objection. You don't. You aren't even trying to convince people who don't already agree with you. Christian evangelicals thrive on attempting this and now and then they may actually get a convert that way. But you won't even try. And yet you are trying to win over far more people than they are. They understand meme insertion so you should learn from them.

Or you could stick with your plan of only discussing this with people who already agree with you. Organized religions know that is a meme-insertion-fail. If you can't convince half a dozen people who don't agree with you, how are you going to convince 6 billion? You need to practice your argument chops. I know that one of the reasons the evangelicals are so willing to debate with me when they come to my door is that they realize that even though they won't convince me, they are practicing their chops so that they are in good argumentative shape for the next person. You would do well to learn from them.

there are certainly visionary aspects that are appealing. i believe there was an episode of star trek-t.n.g. in which the subject matter was of the lack of a monetary system on earth and aptitude was key to one's 'success'.

alas, not gonna happen. it's more likely that the catholic church will become the dominant force on the planet ala dan simmon's hyperion novels. human greed and hunger for domination over others needs some sort of genetic change to make social and economic variants possible.

so, plan for the far future. humans are certainly going to destroy most everything on the planet. take 'the book of eli' as a model. just make sure the book is not a bible, but a blueprint of your liking.

I understand somewhat how you & others have arrived to such conclusions. However, such reasoning is only true in systems of scarcity.

It may be difficult to imagine, but try to realize that most of our history we've been fighting over resources; both natural scarcity and, as the case today, artificial scarcity.

Such, the first inclination looking at our violent past is to simply think that's "just how we are" but provably that's not just how we are. The "need for dominance" you reference and think is ingrained behavior, is a natural response to scarcity of environment.

To say, behavioral studies have proven that if you put human beings into an environment where their base needs are met and are not encouraged to compete over resources, we're not violent, we're more benevolent, sharing, caring, etc. Studies show the opposite is also true.

What we learn from this is that our "nature" is not geared towards violence, but rather it is our nature to adapt to our environment. Darwin is often misquoted on this; it was never about "strongest" surviving, but instead those "most adaptive to change" will survive; you can call this a strength, but it no longer has anything to do with muscles, weapons or force.

Such when we effectively eliminate scarcity, our behavior changes; like a virus dies without a host. This dynamic is key to understanding the common concept of "human nature" is really just "human behavior stemming from environment".

As mentioned, modern sociological research supports this notion, and I recommend you look into it further as the topic is very revealing. Combine this with the fact that today we have effective solutions to solving our resource issues where previously we hadn't (can share more on this aspect if interested).

The result is a new understanding of our behavior, and as our understanding grows, so do the possibilities for change. Think about it?