Important Update: It is also nice to see the skeptical community is doing its job and calling the Zeitgeist Movement on its bullshit. The site Conspiracy Science has a great breakdown of the gaping holes in the ‘logic’ and ‘reasoning’ used in the the first two films. I suspect the third film, posted here is also as full as crap as the first two.
It is nice to see a director break down such complex topics in our society. Peter Joseph places capitalism and our society under a critical lens and examines the system that is methodically stripping our planet of resources and turning it into items we really do not need.
Fractional reserve banking? Covered in within the context of this film, as well as inflation, the business cycle and how the structural features of our system are grossly inefficient and are actually harming the social fabric of our society.
I’m very glad this film points out that it is the egalitarian societies ( yes, the evil spectre of socialism once again) that fare better in almost all categories that measure a societies health, productivity and innovation. It caught my particular attention because I’m constantly bombarded with the notion that “competition drives innovation and because that’s what capitalism is ergo its all good.” This particular meme is exploded as you are shown graph after graph of data pointing out that the societies that redistribute wealth acutely are the ones that do better in the world, economically, politically and socially.
I’m not entirely happy with the movie as it gets a little tinfoil hatty around the idea of Big Medicine and Big Pharma…but one must take the bad with the good. I link to the trailer and the movie for your viewing pleasure.
I’ve only seen the first two parts, but they have been generally quite good. Its LOTHR length, so make sure you have your popcorn and comfy chair ready if you intend to watch the entire film. The website to see the first Zeitgeist and the Zeitgeist Addendum can be found here.
The content of the documentaries mentioned are pretty much guaranteed to rile my conservative readers…I look forward to the comment section of this particular post. :)
Note: Please where possible reference specific points in the movie, I’m going nuts trying to find the specific parts when referenced by name alone.
Important Update: It is also nice to see the skeptical community is doing its job and calling the Zeitgeist Movement on its bullshit. The site Conspiracy Science has a great breakdown of the gaping holes in the ‘logic’ and ‘reasoning’ used in the the first two films. I suspect the third film, posted here is also as full as crap as the first two.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
42 comments
March 5, 2011 at 2:57 pm
Vern R. Kaine
Great movie! He’s probably going to make a lot of money with it. :)
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March 5, 2011 at 8:56 pm
Alan Scott
The Arbourist,
” I’m very glad this film points out that it is the egalitarian societies ( yes, the evil spectre of socialism once again) that fare better in almost all categories that measure a societies health, productivity and innovation. ”
Since I have a short attention span and did not get to that part of the video, could you please name these egalitarian societies that are doing so well ? I want to learn .
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March 6, 2011 at 8:51 am
The Arbourist
See 1:20 to about 1:30 for the information I was referring to. Japan, Norway, Sweden, Finland rate quite highly in most of the data. The slides themselves are available here.
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March 6, 2011 at 9:01 am
The Arbourist
Indeed. ;)
He had a lot of help and cooperation from many people. It looks like altruism and sharing is the way to go.
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March 6, 2011 at 10:50 am
The Arbourist
I was poking around the intertubes and found a response by the director of the film to criticism level against it. When he was going all free markety and plucky entrepreneurial I thought of you Vern. ;)
It starts around 10:00 ish, but really during the entire clip, Peter Joseph deals with many objections raised by people who expound the ‘free-market’ wisdom.
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March 6, 2011 at 12:01 pm
Vern R. Kaine
“It looks like altruism and sharing is the way to go.”
Touche! (Pardon my French, I don’t know how to make the accented ‘e’).
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March 6, 2011 at 12:11 pm
Vern R. Kaine
“When he was going all free markety and plucky entrepreneurial I thought of you Vern. ;)”
Awww shucks, I’m flattered Arb! :)
You’re possibly aware that I’m actually a big supporter of these types of films in many ways? It was actually Zeitgeist II that turned me on to “Confessions of an Economic Hitman” and the talk about the Fed, I think, is bang on.
Also, I agree with its points about currency and debt. The thinking behind Capitalism is a relatively “free” market whereby two people can voluntarily agree to an exchange of value. However, we must keep in mind that this “value” is defined often by a currency which isn’t really a currency in respect to it being in fact a liability, or debt, therefore not a pure asset.
Zeitgeist does a great job of explaining how this very fact places us all in perpetual servitude, and I think it more/less makes the argument of whether we’re using this debt in a free market or not a useless one.
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March 6, 2011 at 12:48 pm
Vern R. Kaine
6:00 minutes or so in: “If you want to produce the most long-lasting durable good, then you cannot have a market system. Period. There’s no way in a system based on cost-efficiency that you’re ever going to have the best goods of anything”
I’m not sure I agree with that statement in that I don’t agree that it is simply a supply-push issue as Joseph seems to make it out to be. There’s also the matter of “demand-pull”.
If the market demands a table (using the clip’s example), that lasts 50 years and is 100% enviro-friendly, and the market can produce a table at a price consumers are willing to pay, the table will get produced. Those who produce a less environmentally-friendly or durable table will then be forced to adapt to compete either by making a more durable table, a more affordable table, or a more environmentally-friendly table (i.e. perhaps where the construction process, not destruction process, is more friendly.) There has to be a particular or potential type of demand first, and that’s what initiates corporate decisions.
He criticizes his critics for reducing the argument, but I believe Joseph in this instance is guilty of the same by ignoring consumer demand (and price elasticity) as the initiator of market forces #1, and failing to acknowledge the fact that in any other type of economy (look at Communist Russia, for example), quality of goods is actually worse, #2.
He does bring up the point of coercion before and after which influences both sides of the Supply-Demand equation, but in making his claims regarding quality he’s jumping in half-way into the equation, which I believe is incorrect. The market doesn’t make tables for the sake of making tables, and it doesn’t make tables purely for the sake of need – it makes tables based on consumer wants as well and unless coercion occurs successfully to influence those wants, the market process otherwise starts with the consumer, not with the company.
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March 6, 2011 at 1:06 pm
Vern R. Kaine
What I don’t get in Joseph’s arguments, and perhaps this is stated in the actual video, is what his proposed end-game or solution is. To me, it can only be population reduction or eugenics in the way he seems to puts things in this clip.
On the one hand he seems to be saying that we need to be giving people opportunities through employment, and opportunities that don’t exploit them and force them to buy cheap watches that just go into landfills.
He says that the way those jobs are maintained are through the consumption cycle, which is wrong economically and also environmentally, as technologies that could be employed to build “peak efficiency” products aren’t being employed.
OK, so on the other hand, let’s say he waves his wand and all products are now “peak efficiency” products that last the longest and do the least harm for the environment. Costs go up, many jobs are lost, and yet demand for goods and services along with population sizes themselves will continually increase.
Other than culling the population or coercing them (i.e. brainwashing populaces the other way into thinking all we need now are huts and ricebowls), what’s Joseph’s proposed solution?
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March 6, 2011 at 1:31 pm
Alan Scott
The Arbourist,
I have not had time to research all of the countries you mentioned. I will only say that you might want to scratch Japan off of your list of redistributive economic power houses.
Since their economy peaked in the late 1980s, they have had sub par economic growth. The 1990s were known as the lost decade. Their huge cache of cash has sustained them and the fact that the US militarily defends them so they do not have that burden, but they are hardly an example of proof that socialist economics works .
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March 6, 2011 at 1:31 pm
Vern R. Kaine
“If it wasn’t for the State, the free market would have collapsed on itself a thousand times over.”
With comments like these, Joseph shows how many who are not in business understand the academic version of “free market” when the term is used but not the realistic version.
Instead of looking at a “free” market as being something either with or without government, consider instead that it is a market that simply has a level playing field both for consumers and suppliers alike which can exist with government involvement. When businesspeople talk about the “free market” on a practical level, it’s usually on this basis – fair competition with protection for all stakeholders in a transaction, not just the vendor and the customer.
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March 6, 2011 at 1:36 pm
The Arbourist
Before I go into providing a differing view on what you have said, I have to say that I have not finished watching the movie yet, (I’ve only seen part I, II so far so roughly half) and as yet do not think I have a full understanding of the concepts being argued. In light of that, I may construct straw men of what Zeitgeist is actually putting forward as I attempt to answer your concerns. In that light, referencing exact times in the movie would be good, so I can help establish the context for myself. That being said, let the half-cocked rebuttal begin.
If the market demands a table (using the clip’s example), that lasts 50 years and is 100% enviro-friendly, and the market can produce a table at a price consumers are willing to pay, the table will get produced [ed:56:00].
It sounds like here we are already trying to establish the context within the market system which precisely what the example is trying to avoid, because by definition the market system must be efficient in its inefficiencies from the get go. (54:00). Why is there not a place where you can get 50 year tables, the answer would seem to be that once everyone has them, there would not be a reason to buy another for some 50 years, hence the profitability is not very good.
Those who produce a less environmentally-friendly or durable table will then be forced to adapt to compete either by making a more durable table, a more affordable table, or a more environmentally-friendly table (i.e. perhaps where the construction process, not destruction process, is more friendly.)
Could be making the assumption that the market always preselects for efficiency? The point being argued is that cost-efficiency is what selects the products that make it to market rather than pure consumer demand.
There has to be a particular or potential type of demand first, and that’s what initiates corporate decisions.
So why would not people demand a table that is lasts, is environmentally friendly and incorporates all of the externalities into its final price? We’re going to disagree here because you’re going to say its all about choice while I say it is going to be about artificially created wants that influences our decisions away from the real and the rational to the profitable artificial construct.
There has to be a particular or potential type of demand first, and that’s what initiates corporate decisions.
And why should that demand not be met by the best use of our limited resources, backed by scientific principles?
and failing to acknowledge the fact that in any other type of economy (look at Communist Russia, for example), quality of goods is actually worse, #2.
Communist Russia is a complete red herring with regards to this argument. The issue being dealt with is the inherent inefficiency build into the market system. Granted we can easily say just look at Communist Russia and all the shortages of goods they had, compare that to the consumer nirvana in place now. What we do not see (overtly – although one person, by now, hears quite often of the environmental degradation and its effects fairly regularly now) is the finite resources being expended to keep the cyclical consumption going. We really need to take the shiny gloss of the market system before we can fairly say, oh look at how wasteful and inefficient system “X” is.
it makes tables based on consumer wants as well and unless coercion occurs successfully to influence those wants
The presence of a multi-billion dollar advertising industry speaks much to whether this coercion happens successfully…
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March 6, 2011 at 1:41 pm
The Arbourist
The idea we are working toward is the that inequality is not good for all the members of society whether they are rich or not. Japan’s distribution of wealth is relatively egalitarian compared with others, and the other factors of general societal health do correlate with the notion that egalitarian societies tend to be the more healthy,safer,innovative societies.
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March 6, 2011 at 1:45 pm
The Arbourist
Exactly my point, and most of the time when I use the term “free market” it is in scare-quotes because in reality it is a hybrid of private and state power.
it’s usually on this basis – fair competition with protection for all stakeholders in a transaction, not just the vendor and the customer.
Except of course when they use their political power ($) to game the “free-market” in their favour etc.. etc.. (Halliburton and we can continue from there for examples)
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March 6, 2011 at 1:58 pm
The Arbourist
Boy do I ever need to finish watching this…but I’ve been looking at the criticisms and debates going on around what is being proposed and I’ll answer the best I can given current knowledge.
What I don’t get in Joseph’s arguments, and perhaps this is stated in the actual video, is what his proposed end-game or solution is. To me, it can only be population reduction or eugenics in the way he seems to puts things in this clip.
The idea I believe is to do away with the markets and money and go to a resource based economic model. It seems fairly radical, but one of the conclusions he draws is that we will inevitably be moving to a RBE model in the future considering the inefficient and inflationary nature of the current money-market system. I can see his point somewhat as money is just a convenient construct which hyper-inflation can render irrelevant in a matter of weeks (I’m thinking of late Wiemar Germans buying bread with wheelbarrows full of money).
OK, so on the other hand, let’s say he waves his wand and all products are now “peak efficiency” products that last the longest and do the least harm for the environment. Costs go up, many jobs are lost, and yet demand for goods and services along with population sizes themselves will continually increase.
Costs may go up but so does real efficiency as basic needs of human societies are met so all of sudden we do not have to go through all phases of the demographic transitions we find ourselves in phase 4 which usually is zero or negative growth in population
Other than culling the population or coercing them (i.e. brainwashing populaces the other way into thinking all we need now are huts and ricebowls), what’s Joseph’s proposed solution?
I’m thinking that the standard of living will not fall, because…. because that is the part I have not seen or grappled enough with yet to provide a cogent answer. Grr…:>
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March 6, 2011 at 2:19 pm
Vern R. Kaine
Could be making the assumption that the market always preselects for efficiency? The point being argued is that cost-efficiency is what selects the products that make it to market rather than pure consumer demand.
Then I’d repeat my argument that it’s ultimately a balance between the two: cost-efficiency and consumer demand, and that in the beginning, it’s almost entirely around consumer demand which Joseph neglects. He says that someone selects a cheaper watch because that’s all they can afford. Not necessarily. They reward the company that meets their wants and needs with a purchase, which have usually been determined before a watch is ever produced.
Three things are asked at the beginning of any business or product line before ground is ever broken: what do customers want, what price they want it at, and can the company produce at that price and still be profitable. The comment seems to suggest that the third part of that is always answered “yes” in advance – it isn’t. We may be able to build what the market wants, but to do it at a price they want may mean we have to take a loss on that product for sometimes years. The profit motive, then, drives cost-efficiency in order to maximize profit, but it’s the consumer that sets the first price and indicates the demand or amount of products that the company must fulfill, often when best practices have not yet been fully established.
Especially in the beginning, the inefficiency that Joseph refers to is really more tied to uneducated consumer demand (consumer whims) than anything on the corporate side. He seems to forget that business plans and business analysis/due diligence are conducted before anything ever gets produced, and 99.9% of that is based around the customer and market demand.
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March 6, 2011 at 2:21 pm
Vern R. Kaine
I can see his point somewhat as money is just a convenient construct which hyper-inflation can render irrelevant in a matter of weeks (I’m thinking of late Wiemar Germans buying bread with wheelbarrows full of money).”
I agree. You could replace “the stock market” with “money”, and “uneducated investor sentiment” with “hyper-inflation” and I think the same would hold true. We definitely need (and will have?) a correction back towards real value.
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March 6, 2011 at 2:32 pm
Vern R. Kaine
“Why is there not a place where you can get 50 year tables, the answer would seem to be that once everyone has them, there would not be a reason to buy another for some 50 years, hence the profitability is not very good.”
Yes, so the companies move on to replacing many of the other 5 year (or less) products that they can now make last 50 years. Most product and, for that matter, company lifecycles are only 3-5 years long in their business plans. Sometimes you get what they call enhancement launches, which are more typical, but other times you get game or arena-changers. Those are less common, and I agree with Joseph’s argument that in some cases this is disincentivized (example: the auto industry), but this is again where other advocates for “the little guy” come in who can produce these new ideas cheaper. Those advocates would include the media, the government, the Internet (more a vehicle, but whatever) and in the more “free” a market (by my definition) the better this works.
you’re going to say its all about choice while I say it is going to be about artificially created wants that influences our decisions away from the real and the rational to the profitable artificial construct.
Actually no, I’d agree with you there, unless you’re saying we don’t have a choice. I think we may say we want a table that lasts 50 years, but either a) we can’t afford one, or b) we don’t really want one for the reason you say – artificially-created wants, created by either our own whims and/or those exacerbated by advertising.
It’s not the profit-motive itself (in my opinion) that makes corporations irresponsible, it’s their ability to convince people to let them be.
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March 6, 2011 at 2:41 pm
Vern R. Kaine
And why should that demand not be met by the best use of our limited resources, backed by scientific principles?”
I don’t disagree, but we both acknowledge that there is another science at play here, psychology, which through the form of advertising does a very good job at reaching a populace who, en masse, prefers to treat symptoms rather than actual problems and avoids pain at all costs. How many people read books to get educated on understanding the effects of advertising? If they don’t, what does that say?
“We really need to take the shiny gloss of the market system before we can fairly say, oh look at how wasteful and inefficient system “X” is. “ [ ed:close your tags Vern :)]
I wasn’t throwing Communist Russia in there as a red herring. I believe the example was relevant to counter the argument that you can’t produce the best goods in a market economy. I believe you need a capitalist system to do that, but we’re so well into a collectivist and corporatist system now that we’ve confused with capitalism we’re stuck in a fog of half-right’s not knowing where to really turn.
I think the crux of the argument is that Joseph and others are saying “here’s what these corporations have to stop doing”, and I’m saying I agree, but as far as product quality (environmental quality) is concerned that the way to get them to raise the bar is to raise the bar on consumer intelligence and consumer demand, that THAT’S the greatest leverage point we have rather than so-called government “regulation”.
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March 6, 2011 at 2:54 pm
Vern R. Kaine
“Costs may go up but so does real efficiency as basic needs of human societies are met.”
Met for how long? Unless they get rid of money and scarcity altogether, how is this sustainable? This goes beyond “spread/decentralize the wealth” because with costs rising, eventually all that spread wealth ultimately centralizes again. The few always control the many in nature (exceptions?), so who does Joseph say is the few, and what are they put in charge of?
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March 6, 2011 at 2:58 pm
The Arbourist
I’m on the learning curve here as well Vern. I’ll listened to this vid once, and maybe some of the objections raised will mirror your own and help foster our understanding of what this is all about.
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March 6, 2011 at 2:58 pm
Vern R. Kaine
“Halliburton” is so ’00’s, Arb!!! haha! Try G.E..
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March 6, 2011 at 3:01 pm
The Arbourist
“here’s what these corporations have to stop doing”
I think the scale of what Joseph is proposing goes further than corporations. From what I have been able to glean, it is a reorganization of production of goods on a global scale based on the best use of the resources we have left.
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March 6, 2011 at 4:54 pm
Alan Scott
The Arbourist,
You seem to believe that the government bureaucrat, government legislator is superior to private businessmen and investors in making economic choices.
When taxes are high, the entrepreneur does not take the risks he or she otherwise would take because you have altered the risk-reward equation. He does not care about protecting and growing his business . Therefore more of the economic activity is defaulted to the government.
You seem to think there is no price society at large pays for the risk averse environment your ideas create ??
If you were wealthy in a high tax society, you would act to protect your wealth from confiscation. You might send it to Switzerland, but that is not so attractive recently. You might buy expensive art. You might convert it to gold or bury it in the yard . You might spend it extravagantly because the government would keep you from leaving it to your dear children, if you were to have any .
What you would not do is use it constructively by investing in economic activity, because would be penalized for it. I use the word ” you ” because in spite of your Socialist bent I believe ” you ” would act as selfishly as the rest of us .
I started to make a case against your collectivist ideology by reciting Stalin’s economic policies of the 1930s that so many Americans were enchanted with until they went over and saw for it themselves. But, I knew you would say that was not the egalitarian example you meant.
So I opted for the Great Britain of the 1950s and 60s. As one of the winners of WW2, you might think it would have been booming. True it had war damage and debts the US did not have . But West Germany and Japan had much worse physical and economic damage, yet they were recovered and doing well at least by the 60s while Britain was in an economic stagnation that would not turn around until Maggie Thatcher in the early 1980s.
Yes I double dog dare you to research the British economy of the 1960s. Their industries were being put out of business by more nimble and competitive ones from their former foes. I particularly refer to the decimation of the British motorcycle industry by the Japanese.
Now what is to account for this. Well Progressives gained power and threw Winston Churchill out on his ear as soon as Hitler vas Kaput. Even though Churchill would come back in the 1950s, your Progressive philosophies dominated British society in the post war era.
Universal health care, unions, anti capitalism, tax the rich policies were all the fashion. Owners of British industries were demonized and taxed and taxed and taxed . Suddenly British factories that had produced the mighty Spitfire to win the Battle of Britain, could not produce a car or motorcycle that did not break down driving out of the factory. Thus they lost the second Battle of Britain to their German and Japanese crony capitalist competitors.
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March 6, 2011 at 6:53 pm
Bleatmop
Assuming these are the same people, these people lost all credibility with me with their troother video.
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March 6, 2011 at 9:33 pm
Vern R. Kaine
You mean the Loose Change people, or just the 9/11 segment in (I think?) Zeitgeist I?
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March 6, 2011 at 10:38 pm
The Arbourist
You seem to believe that the government bureaucrat, government legislator is superior to private businessmen and investors in making economic choices.
In light of the discussion of the thread, this line of inquiry is not particularly relevant to what is being discussed. A resource based economy is not socialism, not communism or any other disingenuous label you care to affix to it. The market system is eating itself, wasting resources and peoples lives; the very structure of the market system is its undoing – that is what this documentary is all about.
If you had bothered with the information provided on the link I gave earlier, the conclusions that can be drawn from the data are quite evident. The more like system you describe a country it is, the worse off it and its people are. The less like the situation you describe, the better off the nation is in question in multiple areas of measurement, from crime rate, poverty, education, mental illness, innovation etc. The systems that are more egalitarian are doing better, the ones that are less are doing worse. The correlations are strong enough to draw this conclusion from the data.
So really, you have the facts in front of you. From the statement above it seems like they really have not penetrated the ideological layers that would allow you to investigate and draw a more informed conclusion. So either you believe the facts that egalitarian societies are better off, or you do not. If you do not then the weight of evidence is against you and it can be concluded that you are demonstrably wrong, and all the Mao, Stalin and Pol Potishness you mention will not change that fact.
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March 6, 2011 at 10:56 pm
The Arbourist
I have not seen the first one Zeitgeist in awhile, I seem to remember it being a little on the credulous side on certain issues, the whole 9/11 thing being one of them. In this particular film, Z3, they get all tinfoil hatty over big medicine and pharma. A healthy dose of skepticism is in order in any case.
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March 6, 2011 at 11:05 pm
Vern R. Kaine
Off-topic, but the best 9.11 doc I’ve seen so far is “Press For Truth”. Not tin-foil-hatty at all, but still eye-opening regarding how justice was obstructed, how the media was asleep, and what the government did know vs. what it publicly said it didn’t.
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March 7, 2011 at 10:54 am
The Arbourist
You seem to believe that the government bureaucrat, government legislator is superior to private businessmen and investors in making economic choices.
16,000 children die per day in the current economic paradigm we have.
The death toll supercedes anything we had in the past and the toll is still growing. So perhaps, just maybe, instead of reflexively defending your cherished beliefs, try and look at something differently.
This derail is over. Please stay on topic, and the topic is of course the Zeitgeist movie and the solutions it proposes.
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March 7, 2011 at 10:04 pm
Bleatmop
Vern – I mean Zeitgeist I. Loose change are different people from what I understand.
Arbourist – It’s the tinfoil hatty about that and in how they portray the nature vs nurture debate in this iteration that makes me discount them. That they somehow tie that into a rant against big pharma and extending medicare reminds me of how Glen Beck thinks. Just throw a bunch of terms into a bag, draw them out at random and create a conspiracy theory to fit.
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March 9, 2011 at 1:22 pm
The Arbourist
Yeppers, you do a little looking and quickly the gloss fades from the nice shiny movies.
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March 10, 2011 at 6:54 pm
Alan Scott
The Arbourist,
I tied myself to a chair, put a gun to my head and watched the first 40 minutes of the video. Besides finding it almost as boring as the movie Unknown, I found several purported facts that I do not believe are true. Egalitarian hunter gatherer groups such as native American tribes are supposedly non violent. That is simply not true .
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March 10, 2011 at 8:04 pm
The Arbourist
I’d probably have to agree with you Alan, please see the update I added to the main article. The director/writer/producer has a tendency to exaggerate the legitimacy of his sources, specifically the idea that remarkable claims require remarkable evidence. The first Zeitgeist movie has been thoroughly Fisked and the Addendum and now this moving forward (Z3) is following the same route.
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March 11, 2011 at 5:57 pm
Vern R. Kaine
I’d probably have to agree with you Alan”
Thought I’d never hear those words come out of your mouth, Arb! Must have hurt to say?! haha
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March 11, 2011 at 7:43 pm
Bleatmop
Wow, the zeitgeist ‘leader’ has an enemies list. We all better beware or he’ll add us and have his legion spam our blogs. Or worse, TWITTER SPAM!
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March 11, 2011 at 8:21 pm
Alan Scott
Vern R. Kaine,
”
“I’d probably have to agree with you Alan”
“Thought I’d never hear those words come out of your mouth, Arb! Must have hurt to say?! haha ”
I agree . When I read those words I was sure I had entered the twilight zone . Then I thought, I must be slipping. Where did I go wrong ?
Or as Max Bialystock said in the Producers when his Nazi play became a hit, ” WHERE DID WE GO RIGHT? “
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March 12, 2011 at 8:00 am
The Arbourist
I’m sure it is a temporal feature Alan, the planets will move back out of alignment and things will be back to normal and we will be disagreeing again very soon. Things will be right as rain. :)
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July 16, 2011 at 11:42 am
Moe
Hi Arb – I’m only four months late to this thread; I carefully flag emails that I want to respond to ‘later’. Yours re this movie was one – you’ve no dobut entirely forgotten by now.
I didn’t watch it all. I skipped arounds amongst the three. Stylistically it just drags and Joseph will have lost many viewers for that reason alone.
What I liked: they ‘went there’ on stuff we refuse to even discuss. Stuff we dismiss in ‘polite company’ like Big PHARMA’s impact on health and the environment.
What I disliked: too often, they saw conspiracy in what was social dynamics, allowing that much of what they described also has conspiratorial aspects,
Like you (or Vern?) above, I found the nature vs nurture discussion in the third film to be excessive and entirely too philosophical for an area full of actual data, which they pretty much dismiss.
Sorry I missed this chat in real time.
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July 16, 2011 at 12:00 pm
The Arbourist
Glad you stopped by Moe, it has been awhile and it nice to see you again.
I would have to agree. The film is long on polemics and short on fact. There are many skeptics who have valid questions about what is said and stated in the film, enough to raise serious concerns about the validity of most points.
What I do like about the films is precisely what you mentioned, they tackled subjects that do not get discussed or analyzed most of the time, even if the analysis is wrong having the avenue open to actively discuss taboo subjects is a valuable service rendered.
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July 16, 2011 at 12:13 pm
Moe
I see you’ve been very prolific! Just surfing around here reminds me I must stop by more often.
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December 10, 2012 at 4:44 am
Deks Roning
There is a fundamental problem with a market based system because it never creates the ‘best’ of what is technologically possible, with highest efficiency in mind, using superior synthetic materials that can be made in abundance (all of which is in line with our latest scientific knowledge).
The market system creates what is most ‘cost efficient’ or ‘cheap’ from a $$$ point of view, then release subsequent revisions that are marginally better.
They still don’t make products that last.
We could easily design products to last, to have a ‘universal interface’ (in case of technology so that they could be upgraded with better ones as time goes on).
There is no reason for people to NOT have ‘the latest and the greatest’ – because we can simply recycle the old (harvest it for raw resources) and convert it into the new.
Instead of extracting resources from the Earth, we should be using landfills to mass produce superior synthetic materials using least amount of materials and energy in the process – which can be done.
But our scientific knowledge and practical applications of it are over 100 years ahead of anything in circulation (technology-wise).
We can upgrade all our technology to reflect our latest scientific knowledge in less than a decade on a global scale, if there is a global push for it.
We’d also experience quantum leaps in technology that would follow if we eliminated money from equation and focus on what can be done from a pure resource/technology point of view, in a sustainable capacity and highest efficiency we are capable of.
We’d DESIGN the cities/technology to change as our scientific knowledge grows in a sustainable way.
There is no reason to incur forceful population reductions or eugenics in the first place.
Humanity has been producing enough food to feed 10 billion on an annual basis for just over 30 years now, and even at the start of the 20th century, there was more than enough food, housing, energy, clothing, material goods and services for everyone on the planet, just no one had the money to access them.
By giving each person on the planet (yes, each person) 1000 square feet home, you could fit the entire population of Earth (all 7 billion) in the state of Texas… with rest of the planet being vacant of Human activity (this doesn’t include vertical solutions/housing, which would further reduce the footprint).
We can also eliminate outdated agriculture and grow entirely organic food in fully automated vertical farms that use hydroponics, aquaponics and aeroponics, without soil, pesticides, chemicals or GMO – and the food in question could be grown up to 5x faster.
The globe could have transitioned to Geothermal for baseload energy and heat production by 1929 along with using wind as supplement.
There is a great deal of information available to everyone… the problem is, its chopped up into pieces and not really easy to find.
Relevant general education of the global population is paramount.
By exposing everyone to such notions, people would likely be less prone to being manipulated/used by others. They would also be able to govern themselves.
Technology and resources are the least of our problems.
We can already automate 75% of the global workforce, even though 99% to 100% is possible in less than a decade if there’s a concentrated effort (along with repairing the damage done to the environment).
There is NO need for killing, population reduction or similar extremist notions based on fear.
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