TZM Q&A on Social Problems
https://www.thezeitgeistmovement.com/about/
How does TZM view our major social problems today?
TZM is different from most activist communities and political/social movements in the world today, due to the way we view the majority of the societal problems and their causes. We see it as structural.
In short, the socioeconomic system itself is regarded as the root cause of persistent negative societal outcomes, with human behavior and its resulting effects — corruption, pollution, wars, waste, exploitation, and hence, distortion of values and psychology — seen as symptoms of this fundamental root source.
Which current issues does the movement focus on?
General Observations:
In the view of The Movement, the society today has become increasingly detached from the physical world, with techniques of production, distribution and social ordering that have little to no relationship to the environment or the current state of scientific knowledge with respect to public health and sustainability.
Cyclical Consumption
For instance, our use of a profit-based, “growth”-driven monetary system has become one of the greatest destroyers of the natural world and sustainable human values. The entire global economy requires “cyclical consumption” to operate, which means that money must constantly be circulating. Thus, new goods and services must be constantly introduced regardless of the state of the environment and actual human necessity. This “perpetual” approach has a fatal flaw, for resources as we know it are simply not infinite. Resources are finite and the Earth is essentially a closed system. To assume the need for constant consumption to keep people employed and hence the market system going is eco-cidal on a finite planet. The true goal of an economy, by definition, is to strategically preserve and create efficiency. The system today demands the opposite.
Infinite Growth
The Monetary-Market Model is based upon money being treated as a Commodity and its origination from Debt; sold for Interest Income. This is a “Ponzi Scheme”. Each time this Commodity (Money) is sold (Bank Loans), it needs to be paid back (Debt) with more money charged as a fee for profit (Interest). The problem is that the Interest Value required to settle the debt does not exist in the Money Supply outright. In other words, Bankruptcy and Default are not byproducts — they are inevitable — as there is always more debt outstanding than money in existence. This creates severe, offset monetary scarcity that oppresses many people on many levels.
The Value of Scarcity
Likewise, the intents inherent within the monetary system derive a strategic edge from scarcity. This means that depleted resources are actually a positive thing for industry in the short term, for more money can be made off each respective unit. This is contextual to the monetary law of Supply & Demand and hence “Value” in economics. It creates a perverse reinforcement to ignore environmental problems and the negative consequences that create scarcity; not to mention reinforcing technically unnecessary human deprivation. This system does not/can not meet the needs of the many because it isn’t financially efficient to do so.
Problems/Inefficiency = Profit.
Similarly, the system also requires problems/constant consumer interest in order to work. The more people who have cancer or cars that breakdown, the better the economy due to the servicing of those problems. Needless to say, this also generates an inherent disregard for human well-being and the environment. Sustainability, efficiency, and preservation are the enemies of this model.
Cost Efficiency & Irresponsible Obsolescence
There is also the Cost Efficiency mechanism that demands cutting expenses to remain “competitive” in the marketplace. Every single product created by a corporation today is immediately inferior by design, for the market requirement to cut creation costs in favor of lowering the output “purchase price” to maintain a competitive edge automatically reduces the quality of any given item by default. It is impossible to create the “strategically best”/long-lasting anything in our society, which translates into outrageous amounts of wasted resources and time. Likewise, this same mechanism is reinforcing the environmental disregard, depletion, and pollution that we see as a constant in the world today… among other issues.
Waste & Oppression of the Human Resource
As far as Occupations today, we need to ask ourselves what the point is of a given focus and why it is necessary. The fact is, most jobs today are not directly related to the actual necessities of life. Rather, most are artificial concoctions created in order to keep people employed so they can maintain purchasing power in an environment where our technology continues to expand exponentially, displacing humans from the production force.
It is a common statement in politics today to hear about “creating jobs”. Well, in theory, an occupation could be created where people are paid to sit in a room and test chewing gum all day, everyday… but is that a viable use of the human mind? Should we relegate our mental capacity to simple any so called job due to mere “economic” reasons, regardless of what it actually contributes to personal and/or social development? This becomes even more bizarre as a train of reason when we realize that Mechanization not only frees us from labor, but is actually more efficient and productive due to the exponential advancement of science and technology.
On a different level, the very reality that each human being is required to be put in a position of servitude to a corporation or client in order to gain income to purchase the necessities of life not only perpetuates the waste of the human mind and human life, it is also a form of oppression — slavery. If we combine the aforementioned “Infinite Growth” point above regarding the Debt pressure that is built into this system, we see that the combination of the guaranteed Debt imbalance and the requirement to submit to Labor, regardless of its purpose/effect, in order to gain monetary income to survival — is a structural form of oppression against the lower classes (who hold the most debt and need for more periodic income).
As noted, advancements in science and technology have shown that we can automate a great deal. The more we have applied mechanization to labor, the more productive things have become. Therefore, it is not only negligent for us to waste our lives waiting tables, working at a bus station, fixing cars, or other repetitive, monotonous jobs, it is also entirely irresponsible for us not to apply modern mechanization techniques to all industries where it is possible, for apart from strategic resource management, this is a powerful way to achieve balance and abundance for all the world’s people, thus reducing crime generating imbalances.
The fact is, the Market System cannot maintain itself with any viable integrity anymore, for corporations will continue to save money through automation, displacing human labor — which also displaces purchasing power, continuing the inevitable loss of “growth” that defines this system.
In the end, today’s society now has access to highly advanced technologies and can easily provide more than enough for all of the earth’s people. This is possible through the implementation of an economy based on scientific resource management and applying modern methods. This is the purpose of The Zeitgeist Movement- to create a global awareness to thus transition into a new, sustainable direction for humanity as a whole.
How does TZM view the solutions to our major social problems today?
It appears that most solutions offered in the world today are framed within the current social order of monetary practice.
For example, there are over 1 billion people starving in the world and the most common solutions sought tend to utilize money in some fashion to enable the resources needed.
TZM takes a very different view. Rather than take each problem on a per case basis and work to solve that problem within the confines of the customarily accepted system — a system that might, in fact, be creating the problem itself — TZM steps back to consider the inherent logic of the issues themselves and how they relate to the emerging Scientific Benchmark (with respect to The Scientific Method), which tends to go outside of social tradition and custom.
In the case of 1 Billion people starving, the solution does not rest with the need for more donations, more governmental subsides, or even legislation to limit possible causal abuse and exploitation of such regions (as those are not direct solutions since they do not relate to the mechanics of survival). Rather they relate and intermediate with current social customs.
The real issue and hence logic is Technical — not political or financial. Starvation is a technical problem when clean, life supporting resources are not made available to a certain region for some reason. The question is then asked: Is there an empirical environmental restriction which is making those resources unavailable? The answer today is clearly ‘no’. It is well noted by the W.H.O. and others that there is plenty of food being produced in the world to feed everyone and we also have clear technical means to also desalinate and clean polluted water to make it safe for drinking. This can be done on an industrial scale.
The Financial Approach clearly has an inherent flaw which is not enabling these basic life supporting attributes and resources to be made available to 1 billion people. It is economically inefficient, when considering the true sense of the definition of “economics”.
The Technical Approach, which proves that these things are, indeed, possible, where no one would ever have to starve, says- if it is possible to do it, then we need to simply figure out a new way to do it and bypass the current social custom if need be.
As is common within much of The Zeitgeist Movement materials, we see the financial structure, as a whole, as being a foundational cause of most of the world’s issues — with the Technical Reality of what is possible as an approach to the solution. It is based upon Scientific Causality, not Financial Causality. In a world of extreme advancement in information and mechanical technology, the great realization is that we can do much more than ever to meet the needs of the human population, along with generating a logic where most of the environmental and social issues we face today would be gone tomorrow if we simply applied our updated understandings now.
