The Zeitgeist Movement - Give me your best shot.

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I am not aware that I've pointed out arguments you have skipped in this argument. If I did, it would be on the basis of the fact that you are defending a position and thus are obligated to defending it from significant attacks.

I mean, when skipping is justified and not justified can be complicated, but clearly you don't actually understand the rational workings. I didn't do anything wrong though.

I appreciate you bringing this back to what's relevant.

An RBE is not a world without resource limitations. Just a world that manages those finite resources far better through the use of automation and sustainable consumpton habits which actually economise. It is characterised by a value system that brings supply and demand into equilubrium. People instead of generating superficial wants (which are creted by advertising and social pressures) start orienting their standard of living on meeting their needs. Just think how much demand in the current system is non-essential to human survival but a mechanism that exists for the benefit of currency circulation due to perpetual consumption.

In a world where there is no need for money, there is no basis for all the cyclical practises which is required in the current system. Thus there is no need to make people want things they don't even need. The amount of resources which are saved by no longer perpetuating that practise is dramatic. Of course that's just one angle on this.

Last edited by Adam-Anti-Um on 08 Jul 2012, 6:42 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I think I am having issues reading you, but I suspect I would agree.

Now that you mention it I can see what you mean. I think a lot of ZGM is based on serious and potentially incorrect assumptions about the future. The Earth is not the only place we will be getting resources, and that is something ZGM's sometimes view with hostility, since it might negate the future centered on their beliefs which they desire, if their finite resource arguments prove inconsequential in the long run. Though more efficient use of resources and automation is something I am in support of.

Actually, there's nothing in our material which even suggests "hostility" towards terraforming of other planets or the mining of cosmic bodies for resources. I would love for you to actually provide evidence to this assertion.

In fact, we recognise that eventually we have to get off this planet because our sun won't last for an eternity.

I was actually thinking of you. The first time I ever communicated with you, you expressed extreme hostility to space colonization. If you have changed your views since then, I think that is a good thing. Another thing to clarify, is that I was not suggesting that the actual material is anti-space, but the actions of certain individuals give me the impression many within the movement have this view

Then that is your mistake of assuming that the stance of one single individual represents the tenets of a social movement as a whole.

I have never been against the notion of space colonisation. You may be confusing my assertion that such a wonderful endeavour will not be possible in a monetary system when we can't even look after our own planet. Let alone afford to find another to colonise. If you can show me evidence of such a claim, then I will concede that I have expressed "hostility" towards space colonisation.

If you think about it, scientists have been thinking in terms of an RBE for decades when it comes to space colonisation.

*Note that the following is directed at AG so I'm using economic terms unrelated to AA's RBE.

Sorry, I know I can be unclear, so let me try and clarify.

Supply is normally limited by material resources + labor, however but in his world, it seems that Demand is always < the cost of material resources + labor

Which would result in an equation (and if you had any idea how much I HATE the fact that WP does not have equation support)

D <= RM+L

This requires both RM and L to always grow by a larger percentage than D on a constant variable, in effect supply demand would have to be (RM+LB)/100*G=(D-0.01)*100

. In essence a demand formula in his world would be (RM+L)*(DP+>0.01).

Where RM is raw material, L is labor, DP is the demand percentage + demand growth. So, in essence, the calculation requires the existence of what is in practice infinite resources in order to work, since the only way to reliably have supply > demand is infinite supply or complete collapse in demand.

And this post totally doesn't make me appear insane.

I know this was addressed to AG, however I have already told you that its about bringing supply and demand into equilubrium. I have added to my previous comment on that issue.

You are not the only one I have seen who expressed this viewpoint, and I never did believe it was representative of the whole idea. The advanced technological society with perfect allocation of resources you speak of will probably not begin on this planet. Earth is too big, too fixed. It would take a cataclysm or an extremely repressive state to make Earth change. The change will have to come from outside, from Earth's colonies.

Supply and demand are at equilibrium when it comes to price - or the amount that the supplier (manufacturer, chapman) is willing to release and deliver to the demander (customer, chap), the amount which is sufficient for the supplier to resupply his stock and get the things he needs. Their are fat times and there are lean times depending on natural phenomena which we must contend with.

Again, evidence of such a claim.



No. You've taken what I've said as representative of the whole idea.



Nope, not perfect, just much better due to supply and demand being in harmony coz the value system recognises natural law and the methodology mirrors this. This is why its not perfect. Science isn't perfect coz it changes all the time. There are no final frontiers of perfection.



No. Earth is a constantly changing biosphere. It is the current human value system that seems "fixed".



I'm glad I don't share your cynicism that such a bad thing has to happen first in order for humanity to change.

The main issue is that your arguments are based on either disproved theories, such as human beings being able to differentiate between needs and wants. That the desire to have more than others is purely socially conditioned.

The most dangerous assumption you make is the one I've been pointing out since my first post, namely that human demand is a result of social conditioning as opposed to biological tendencies.

I have already explained to you the difference. A need is what is required, a want is what is desired.



That status motivation IS socially conditioned.



How the hell is it dangerous? And what biological evidence do you have that greed is natural?



I take a look at the income disparity and I disagree.



As i have said, money is now obsolete as a resource allocator mechanism. Tell you what, here's the quote from "The First Civilisation" I read out on my latest podcast:

“The first problem goes something like this: An economic system without 'price' would not work, because there would be no way to set a 'value' for goods and services. How then, could we possibly figure out a rational way to allocate them? This conundrum is called the Economic Calculation Problem, and at first glance, this logic actually seems quite sound.

However, this assertion makes the daring assumption that the Market actually allocates resources in a rational way; an assumption that is difficult to defend when one looks at the world that this method of distribution has created, where two identical articles of clothing can have wildly different prices just because one has a 'brand name' label on it, and a small portion of the population controls a huge percentage of the planet's resources. Whether such a method of distributing resources is 'rational' is seriously questionable, but I won't linger on this question any longer for a very important reason: The ability to assign prices to goods and services loses any and all meaning in a post-scarcity economy.

We can think of it in terms of the law of supply and demand. This economic rule dictates that as the supply of a good or service increases, the price for it must drop. Likewise, as demand for something decreases, the price for it drops as well. Therefore, if we could reach a point where the supply of something was vastly higher than the demand, the price would become so low that it would become indistinguishable from zero. This could be done in 2 ways: We could either reach a point where we are able to provide a much greater supply of goods and services than what is needed, or we could reduce the demand for them dramatically.

In an RBE, both of these moves would be taken. By creating an environment that no longer precludes individuals to a materialistic addiction, there would be a massive drop in demand for essentially every kind of commodity. By taking advantage of automation, and largely removing the need for human labour, the supply of goods and services would be able to vastly surpass the demand. What is the point in charging money for shelter or food when there is more than enough of either to satisfy the demand of every individual in that society? Why charge money for access to goods when they are so abundantly available for access? If the 'price' of everything in a society was essentially zero, there would no longer be any logical way to distribute goods and services based on the price mechanism. Without the ability to assign a 'value' to anything, there would no longer be any reason to maintain a currency of any kind. This is why 'price' would not be used in an RBE. It would simply serve no rational purpose.

But if we cannot make use of the price mechanism, then how do we figure out a way to allocate resources? The traditional alternative to a Market based system is a Centrally Planned system; one in which a group of people decide how the economy will be run for their entire population. However, this kind of system has been criticized because of issues relating to information: How do the planners receive the necessary information to make informed decisions? How can something as complicated as an economy be comprehensively 'planned' by one group? Won't there always be an informational disconnect that exists between the population and the planners? It becomes quickly apparent that a Centrally Planned economy is not a very plausible alternative to the Market system.

However, we overcome the limitations of Central Planning in an RBE by making use of the survey system, in which planning is not centralized; it is actually dispersed throughout the entire population. By having economic decisions made at the level of each individual, we greatly reduce the complexity that the 'planners' (the members of the population) have to deal with. Each person has access to the information necessary to make their own economic decisions (the person's own consumption habits). This information is then sent to and processed by the Global Databases, which are themselves distributed networks. Since the population has already done much of the work of 'planning', the Databases are responsible simply for execution of the plan; a purely algorithmic task based on rules of priority (as we discussed in the previous section), which is precisely what computers excel at. A system in which the population is in direct control of their economic lives has been called a Participatory Economy (or Parecon, for short). This kind of system offers an alternative to the Market system, while overcoming the informational disconnect that plagues a Centrally Planned system. Logically speaking, it is only because of the invention of the Internet that this kind of system is even possible; an invention which would have been difficult for the economists of the early 20th century to predict.

What we ultimately need to keep in mind is that the basis of every school of traditional economic thinking is scarcity - the idea that there is 'not enough for everyone' - and the dramatic effects this reality has on human behaviour. This concept is the foundation on which all of the economic systems of past and present are built. Scarcity is as fundamental to traditional economic thinking as the value of pi is to geometry. Traditional economic thinking, therefore, has little or no validity in analyzing a post-scarcity economy. It would be like trying to do geometry in a world where the value of pi is 'banana-suitcase'; even the most basic of assumptions no longer holds true.”

+

It still falls to what I said in my last post, RM+L can never be < D. Because RM + L is finite whereas D is infinite. The person who wrote the stuff you pasted, did not at any point address how to move from a scarcity based economy to an abundant supply economy. In fact it assumed that people's demands will fall something which is largely contradicted by large amounts of economic research.

In fact, large parts of the economy is based on where the is a supply there will be demand.

That section of the book was not meant to address the transition. This is a fallacy that a lot of TZM critics fall at. they proport something/ask a question, it could be about aaaaany thing at all, annd when we provide information, because that piece of information doesn't detail how to get from here to there, they claim its automatically null and void and rest comfortable thinking they've debunked a piece of information that covers something different.

If you are talking about supply and demand, talk about supply and demand. If you want to know about supply and demand, ask about supply and demand. Don't ask about supply and demand and expect an answer about the transition. I haven't read the book in its entirity, however I think there is a section in there about the transition. Find it, read it, then get back to me.

You can download a pdf of it here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?pmx55rb6v2b1esj