Движението Цайтгайст е организация, която подкрепя и н
28/08/2021
Ok folks.
I have a large list already, but I'm seeking suggestions for thoughtful authors/researchers to be interviewed for Zeitgeist IV. The core basis of this installment is systems science (see my podcast) and transitioning into a post-scarcity/post-capitalist world.
04/07/2021
Hi, please check out our community forum where we can focus on bridging our international movement, form groups and work on projects as one movement!
If you are already trying to do some initiative or work, you may introduce yourself here:
https://forum.tzm.community/t/global-tzm-chapters-map-introduce-yourself
An introduction video about the forum and the suggested workflows to collaborate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJl03nOmNuY
Zeit-Talks S0E2: Forum tour presentation This video guides people, experienced or new users, through our TZM Community Forum: https://forum.tzm.community/0:00 Introduction0:37 Goal of the forum1:34 ...
20/03/2021
Hi everyone!
Please sign-up on our new global TZM community forum: https://forum.tzm.community/
When you have signed-up, please leave your chapter details in this thread, then we'll add your chapter to the global chapters map: https://forum.tzm.community/t/global-tzm-chapters-map/111
Thanks!
Global TZM chapters map Global TZM chapters map The map below lists all active chapters of The Zeitgeist Movement (TZM) on this forum. Each map marker contains a URL of the chapter’s website or main social-media page, on which each chapter is responsible to provide up to date contact information. The chapter’s forum gr...
17/08/2020
I've been asked this good question by Batu Han from Turkey, and it's definitely one of the main FAQs for the Movement. The answer references many rabbit trails about the functions of a realistic Natural Law Resource Based Economy. Here is my rambling answer for any edification and feedback that people care to respond with:
"Deserve" can be a very toxic word. None of us "deserves" to have been born on finite earth at all, but we got what we got, and here we are regardless. That's part of the unavoidable "Natural Law". Like it or not, agree or disagree, Reality is whatever it is.
Our options are unavoidably constrained by the truth of actual reality, so we use scientific methods/processes to discover the boundaries of our agency while using philosophy to improve *how* we proceed toward less-bad possible futures.
Regardless of "deserve" resource demand can be met in order of priority, such that the most universal basic utilities, commodities, and services are first subsidized and then progressively automated in order to continuously lower marginal cost of provision (to zero if possible, particularly for basic needs.).
For example: There should be RBE food before there are RBE yachts. Trying to provide RBE everything at once is a good way to get nowhere at all. We have to start with basics and proceed by priority.
Food, water, medicare, housing, internet, and an energy allowance among other basics could easily be subsidized with profit tax, and then those systems should be continuously streamlined by improving automation until it's just automatic and self-maintaining without any more money or labor than is avoidable(and this can continuously update with improvements in technology so that everything keeps getting cheaper and more sustainable into the future). Zero marginal cost is the goal, but we will have to work the costs down with systems and free resource supply chains that take time to develop. What matters is that we are leaning in the direction of a viable transition sequence.
Whatever luxuries are most expensive will naturally be the latest to become free on the nl/rbe access systems(if ever), and to be honest, it is not critical to erase capitalism 100% from the first day (or at all necessarily).
In reality capitalism will shrink incrementally as we make preferable, free, sustainable alternatives available. Capitalism cannot compete with free. It will lose as soon as we can provide free alternatives, but not before.
Some luxuries that we can't make free may remain for sale on the money market; as long as their externalities are absorbed sustainably, we do not need to fight capitalism head-on, nor is it a viable option.
Capitalism may never be completely gone, but will remain only for fewer and fewer luxury items that require human skills or outside resources.
People criticise Amazon & Jeff Bezos, but he's doing almost everything perfectly. The only two things he needs to change is to ( #1.) automate the rest of his laborers out of work so that it's a maximally-automated access system, and then ( #2.) he needs to return 100% of any profit back into putting all commodities on "sale" by a percentage of the price, so that people only pay the minimum production cost of their items rather than paying extra overhead for Amazon's extractive profit. Walmart also, and any retailers, should do this in order to begin stepping from monetary-basis toward resource-basis.
That alone would be a substantial leap closer to RBE in just two steps from what major industries already do. The remainder of the transition requires streamlining the production costs so that the prices of everything fall closer and closer to zero in sequence of basic priority as determined by delegative consensus.
That is how a transition to nl/rbe could actually work, so when advocates criticise Amazon and Jeff Bezos(or Walmart, etc.) it shows they don't understand the systems approach. Dumb people argue with me about this all the time, but favoring "small" business is the wrong direction; favoring zero-profit systems is the key point.
People who attack the functioning systems of successful corporations, rather than the systemic profit motives are useless, if not costly, to the NL/RBE cause. They do far more harm than good by trying to participate in the transition. Even with good intentions, they sabotage the train of thought and perpetuate disinformation. To be kind, I'll avoid naming names, but some of us aren't helping. Our enemies are not the "elite" "them", our enemies are ourselves and our own delusions. We need to be internalizing effective education before we can be the change with progressive advocacy. This is why *education* is the first project of the transition in order to get the population up to a functional level.
Who we really need to find and collaborate with is people who understand systems design beneath the surface of shallow conceptual assumptions. Realistic creative thinkers, not paranoid reactionaries, are the movement, so we can't ignore the difference.
Despite fantasies of "Green profit" any endeavor that is taking a monetary profit is ultimately extracting unsustainably. No amount of profit is sustainable. For nl/rbe transition any profit must be used to reduce the consumer cost until commodities are meeting demand at the steady-state price of production. Then when we develop alternatives around the addiction to profit, we can begin to refine the sustainability of our resource supply chains. But the order of operations is important.
This is why a commitment to zero-profit is fundamental to nl/rbe design. No amount of money can buy resource-basis into existence, it's not resource-based if you pay for it. This is why raising money for round cities is antithetical to RBE progress. We can't afford to waste energy on a mere facade that does not advance the systems design. Whatever we design will not be resource-based unless we figure out how to base it in resources. Otherwise it's just more capitalism as usual. The direction of the first step determines the desired outcome. That's what systems design means.
This is the systemic incentive to make goods sustainably. We don't have to "make" anyone do anything(unless they are a public threat, in which case we have to make them stop), we only have to support beneficial instincts. Those instincts are part of the "natural law" that scientists work *with*. Accepting reality for benevolent reasoning is the first step, and most of everything else cascades naturally into place if that first step is well placed.
Capitalism is bad because it's always(by definition) trying to be more profitable monetarily at any resource cost. So long as the profit motive remains people cannot focus on valid priorities, but (if given the chance) most people try hard to do their best in life, and a "Delegative Democracy" system(perhaps among others) can filter the best people into decision-making rather than ranking sharks by profitability.
This is where the word "deserve" comes somewhat back into play. In a Delegative Democracy voters rank their trust in various qualified researchers so that the most trusted professionals get the highest rankings and are given first option to administrate.
The RBE community has often been against voting, but without voting the public will not accept results, and without delegated researchers the results will not be accurate, this is why delegative democracy is a necessary hybrid model, but less-bad systems may be developed.
So by this system everyone gets personal autonomy and maximal liberty, and anyone wanting power to exert influence gets a crowdsourced ranking for various qualities and competence in given fields according to qualified collective consensus.
Such multi-dimentional systems are not easy to explain, and many simpletons are quick to argue against what they can't understand, but in a science-based systems approach everyone is continuously rewarded intrinsically for their own self-directed development. People get what they deserve in that sense, (but without the toxic concept of imposed "punishment").
Undue suffering, deprivation, and coercion are natural primate tools of punishment, but we need to learn how to consciously deprogram that fixation on "punishment". There is zero value to punishment for its own sake in a developed civilization. Mental health facilities can address any real problems, and if I go crazy and become a threat, I hereby consent to being incarcerated in a science-based, compassionate insane asylum for help and for the protection of the general population. Any participant in a benevolent civilization will have to accept the minimum "natural law" of necessary public protection, but any such "prison" should be the best possible rehab facility that it can be. According to science, it should not be punitive. Nobody "deserves" punishment for its own sake. That's a disgusting religious assumption that doesn't even work.
Anyone can become decision-making Representatives in topics of their particular expertise by advancing through delegative degrees of education, experience, and competence. Idiot mobs and specialized researchers cannot be given equal weight in a better society, but delegation must be democratic if it is to be accepted by the population. Hence "Delegative Democracy."
Humans are vulnerable to power, but a transparent, open-source system of delegation can give everyone what they "deserve"(I would find a healthier phrase, such as "qualify for") with accountability to the limits of reality. Scarce and/or costly commodities require secure(blockchain) accounting methods to curtail freeloading; capitalism will continue to fill that gap until we figure out how to meet the demand with free resources, but that is easily done and emerges naturally along the way. When the systems are right, the destination becomes inevitable.
Free, sustainable, automated commodities can be freeloaded by anyone without consequence, because it doesn't matter if such commodities are "wasted". In rbe, commodities are designed to be maximally wasteable anyway; where possible, this obviates the need for rationing renewable goods(and RBE commodities are already renewable by definition, so freeloading is not a problem).
For example, If automated indoor gardens can grow as much food renewably as anyone tries to hoard, then "greed" isn't a problem unless it exceeds the renewable threshold. Only when consumption becomes unrenewable would collective action be warranted on the level of mental health or a systemic fix, but simple systemic solutions to that are not hard to design as such problems emerge. Bad actors are not a fatal flaw, only a factor to design for. People who think that "greed" is the problem are people who don't understand systems design. Greed is a natural expression of insecurity. Social science demonstrates that whenever we secure a healthy standard of living there is no greed.
So we don't need to waste energy trying to stop undeserving freeloaders (It's sure to be a shrinking problem through education and social enrichment.
People are not motivated to greed or waste for no reason, it's the profit motive that causes that currently. Without the profit motive, it becomes an easily-manageable problem)
With the realistic guardrails of science the value of a systems approach is such that we can design to accommodate any problem with whatever least-bad option that our current expert consensus can think-up case-by-case. If experts rank the options, there will always be a #1 consensus to try until another idea become more highly rated by the qualified consensus. Meanwhile, anyone who disagrees is free to attempt #2(and subsequent options) on an experimental basis, and this is how the best ideas gain momentum in science. Jacque wasn't great at explaining this, but it's what he taught when he referred to "competent democracy".( https://vimeo.com/109846462 )
That's when unimaginable improvements to humanity, and all life, will spike to catch up with what's already been possible, and the adjacent possible will grow when science becomes freely self-motivated rather than constrained by monetary dependence.
Most mammals are naturally curious when we aren't afraid. Addressing fears is the key to collective betterment. Greed is easy to address, and everyone benefits enough while those who qualify earn trust. Nobody is coerced to give, so there can be no expectation of special treatment. All volunteer only however much they care too, and the benefits are understood to be collective.
For example, this is how Wikipedia works. They aren't trying to get rich, they're just collaborating for public good for as cheaply as possible. That same method is how we realistically transition to NL/RBE by subsidizing, then automating, and then freely sourcing existing markets into increasingly free resource supply chains. Dismantling the market system is a grave mistake, we need that system; what we don't need is the corruption of the profit motive. Minus the profit motive many of the corporate methods used by Amazon and Walmart etc. are actually not wrong.
Okay, all that rambling addressed many topics. More conceptual information is being continuously updated on this education group where sincere learners are welcome:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/naturallaw.rbe.education
Additional updates and development about NL/RBE are also being shared here:
https://www.facebook.com/naturallawresourcebasedeconomy/
Discussion around the rank-choice/delegative governance model is welcome here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/rankedchoicedelegative
More about the realistic ("Natural Law") approach can be learned here:
https://www.facebook.com/SacredRealism/
If you think I am wrong about anything please explain your reasonable evidence and I would be delighted to change my mind about any details if you can help me be less wrong.
🌍❤️☮️🔬♻️💭📢🏳️🌈🙏
21/06/2020
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Not Paper Proclamations, But A Way Of Life
All the unrest of the times have root causes. We must do more than to create one or two policies to alleviate one or two issues no matter how important, we must do more!
Learn about the systemic causes of our societal issues. Please read through our website, link found in our profile. Learn about a .
02/06/2020
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