The Zeitgeist Movement

Brent,

Above I said that with free-market capitalism, the "real wages" (the purchasing power) of workers increases. If you look at the world in 1960 and again in 1998 (in terms of purchasing power), you can see this.

In 1960, the richest 20% of the world could purchase 13 times the amount of goods and services as the poorest 20% of the world. In 1998, the richest 20% of the world could purchase 12 times the amount of goods and services as the poorest 20% of the world. A key point is that that the total purchasing power of the world increased, so you cannot say that we got more "purchasing power equality" by redistributing wealth from rich to poor (bringing down the rich; more toward the poor level).

Now, if what you were saying about (un-)sustainable employment were true, then this wouldn't have happened. In order for what you said to be true, there would have to be an increase in the ratio (of top 20%-to-lowest) of purchasing power discovered, in those 38 years**.

Ed

**Note: 38 years represented at least a "working lifetime" for most people in that time period

Post 61

Monday, March 7, 2011 - 11:30am

Brent,

Do you think it would be okay if three-quarters of the world population died -- as long as the remaining quarter of the population practiced RBE?
Wow. Why would you ask a question like that?

Read the 1935 quote under the heading of Communism on this page.

Ed

Post 62

Monday, March 7, 2011 - 2:05pm

Don't know if anyone else has made this point - I've only skimmed some of the posts, but here goes.

The reason we have abundance is BECAUSE we have prices. Prices play a part in determining what we need. I personally don't need a Lamborghini. If we abolish prices and suddenly Lamborghinis are free, guess what? I suddenly need one! And that happens with almost every good. I only need one television right now. But if they're free, suddenly I need one for every room.

How do you keep that from happening? The only way is to have some ruler or bureaucracy deciding what everyone truly needs. I prefer our system, where we each decide for ourselves, based on the relative prices of things.

Post 63

Monday, March 7, 2011 - 3:04pm

My sense of this argument is that it isn't entirely honest on one side. I'm not saying the Brent is telling lies, but that he appears to be clinging to what the rest of us see as a fantasy. And that is his choice, rather than honestly considering anything that might contradict that fantasy; and he refuses to open his eyes in spite many excellent posts sent his way.

My sense is that has woven a warm emotional place for himself, complete with a special view of himself - a sense of identity - out of this fantasy where he is a kind of prophet/discover/provider of his new age dawning. If it were real, who wouldn't be excited at bringing plenty to the world, and the end of so much pain and strife? But none of that is real, and we don't know what disappointing realities would set in as Brent's alternatives without that fantasy.

In the meantime, I just try not to argue with people who seem to have a vested interest in living in world so complete yet so unrealistic.

I don't intend this as a rebutting anything he has said, since in that context it would be sheer ad hominem. And I don't offer this in a mean-spirited way because Brent appear to be sincere and his fantasy is benevolent and well intended. This might come across as psychologizing, but the degree of obvious fantasy means no one needs to go down that path - I'm just stating the obvious. It might be condescending... but sometimes I'm like that. Brent has imagination, drive, feels comfortable with striving to achieve a vision, and his vision is of a better world, but sadly, unless he is more directly connected to reality, his efforts are wasted and no one wants their entire life to go past leaving no real accomplishments. There are pains in life and while I steer as clear of them as I can, I also know they are part of what make the great moments great and that can't happen in fantasy.

Post 64

Monday, March 7, 2011 - 4:41pm

I understand some people have a short attention span, and 20 minutes of critical thinking is too long. Let me give you the summary�

lol.

Yeah, that's it. My attention span is short. Especially for mindless games.

Video one: Zero ideas presented for the viewer to consider.
Video two: Nothing profound for the viewer to consider.
Video three: Ignored due to the inconsiderate waste of time produced in videos one and two.

Man, don't get into sales. Seriously. You'll end up starving in a damp cardboard box.

Post 65

Monday, March 7, 2011 - 6:53pm

I'm not talking about "wealth redistribution". RBE is not about "wealth redistribution". RBE is about providing abundance for everyone.

To have something provided presupposes a provider, does it not? What does the provider get out of all of this?

All of the "stuff" in your possession that you value is designed to fail. They are made with the cheapest materials and have just as short a useful life as today's society will tolerate before they break.

Isn't this kind of a cynical and corrupt view of productive effort and human nature, Brent? If you don't trust builders we have now, why would you trust the builders in your vision? What's so different about them?

Post 66

Monday, March 7, 2011 - 8:59pm

They'll be angels (and then men won't need government).

Post 67

Tuesday, March 8, 2011 - 2:32am

Teresa,

To have something provided presupposes a provider, does it not? What does the provider get out of all of this?

The provider is technology. Technology does not need motivation. It just performs as it was designed to perform.

All of the "stuff" in your possession that you value is designed to fail. They are made with the cheapest materials and have just as short a useful life as today's society will tolerate before they break.

Isn't this kind of a cynical and corrupt view of productive effort and human nature, Brent? If you don't trust builders we have now, why would you trust the builders in your vision? What's so different about them?

When we have the profit motive, it trumps human nature. Let me give you an example. Let's say the CEO of a publicly traded corporation decided to drop the price of the company's products down to the true cost of producing them. This new reduced cost included continuing to pay the wages of employees. What do the shareholders and board of directors of the company do? The CEO is fired and someone who understands profit is given the job.

Let's do another example, the CEO of a publicly traded corporation is tired of the waste and pollution the company's manufacturing produce. He decides to spend corporate money on improvements to the facilities. However, these improvements not only cost money, but result in slower and/or more costly production. This gives competitors an edge in price and the CEO's corporation loses market share. What do the shareholders and board of directors of the company do? The CEO is fired and someone who understands profit is given the job. (You can try to argue with me until you're blue in the face that customers will choose the more environmentally-friendly product over the cheaper one, but recent events prove you wrong. When the rubber hits the road, the decision by the consuming masses always comes down to price.)

Why not one more example? The CEO's of two competing companies decide to stop under-cutting each other on sales price, material prices, and pay their workers similar wages, all in the hope of just splitting the market share. What happens? A third company with a CEO that understands profit comes in with lower-cost production and lower sales prices and steals the market from the other two companies. What do the shareholders and board of directors of these two market-share-losing companies do? There CEOs are fired and people who understand profit are given the job.

This is the nature of our current mutated version of capitalism has become.

If you don't trust builders we have now, why would you trust the builders in your vision? What's so different about them?

Simple: No profit motivation. Now builders are building for the good of everyone: themselves, their communities, and the planet. They use the highest quality materials to explicitly design products that are meant to last as long as possible, including building in the ability to upgrade.

Products cannot be made in such a manner in today's world. First, they will be too costly compared to the competition, so no one would buy them. Second, our monetary-based economy is dependent on cyclical consumption. Your shoes cannot be made to last a lifetime or all shoe companies will go out of business. This concept extends to every product made. They are designed for limited use before being thrown in the trash so you can buy new ones. If our production and consumption pattern stops acting like this, then our monetary-based economy falls apart.

The economy that we all depend on cannot be so fragile. It's setting ourselves up for catastrophe.

Post 68

Tuesday, March 8, 2011 - 2:27am

Dean Michael Gores,

So what we have discovered is.

Welcome back to the conversation. Is it going somewhere you like now?

It treats ruthless murderers, rapists, and looters like reasonable people

Careful on the words you choose. I never said, "reasonable". I don't even know what that means.

RBE treats people behaving in aberrant manners in the most intelligent way for long term good. Punishing them does nothing but satisfy vengeful desires. We need to understand what when wrong in their lives. Something surely did. We need to identify what went wrong, learn from the tragic experience, and do our best to ensure what went wrong for that person doesn't happen to other people.

RBE would let such criminals destroy an incredible amount of value

Did you not already read when I wrote that without money, value and possessions, and after providing abundance for everyone's needs, most crime disappears. In today's world, criminals destroy an incredible amount of value. That is today's status quo and we've grown used to it. In an RBE, there is no need to steal. Crime doesn't pay.

Brent Kyle has come clean that he is a socialist.

You say that like it's a bad thing. Do you use public roads? You're a socialist. Do you believe in public libraries? You're a socialist. If a fire starts in your house, do you expect the fire department to come put it out? You're a socialist.

Where do you draw the line between "good" socialism and "bad" socialism?

He does believe that we should take from the productive by force to give to the needy.

When did I say that? I don't believe in "taking" anything. RBE is not at all about force. We don't want your crap. I challenge you to find where I said something resembling that.

Brent Kyle is frightened by my plain clear statement that yea, people die when no one helps them

That's not what you said. Who would be frightened by such an obvious statement?

since I let people starve that I'm a terrible murderer or something.

Oh, it was worse than that, Dean Michael Gores. Do I need to remind you what you wrote just two days ago?

Post 32, March 5 @ 6:47 am:

People should starve because they create less value than the value of food, and they do not have the resources to trade for it.

"People should starve". That is saying the poor deserve to die because they are not productive. That is you sentencing them. That is truly different than what you're now saying you said. Now you're just saying you don't give to the poor. That is just a personal decision I have no problem with. What you said two days ago is a frightening glimpse into your thoughts.

He enjoys such high luxury food items while there are starving children in Africa.

That does not make me a hypocrite. I believe humanity has the capability of providing abundance for everyone. I cannot feed starving children in Africa no matter what personal actions I take. Making personal sacrifices is not what a RBE is about. Try learning more about what you're talking about before laying judgements.

RBE/TZM is communism with the fantasy that: "With technology, we can provide for everyone's needs!"

Have you not been following along? I already proved RBE is not communism, in detail and in spirit. You only wish that it was so you can easily categorize and defeat it with simple arguments.

Post 69

Tuesday, March 8, 2011 - 2:29am

Ed,

You want to simultaneously do away with the primary driver of, if not the invention, at least the spread, of all of these advancements (the profit motive)

Profit is not the primary driver/invention/spread-of advancements. People come up with inventions to simplify life. They want to make life a little easier/funner/safer.

Why do people donate their time to work on open source software projects, for example? I enjoy building things for people I know based on my own relatively novel ideas. I don't do it for money. I share my ideas with others, and I get better and better each time I build something. I do it for the personal satisfaction of helping others. Do you not enjoy helping others come up with new solutions?

We would still have all of those inventions because humanity is capable of imagining they are possible. Perhaps the timeline of development might be different, but I cannot accept that humanity would do nothing but lay around if it wasn't for the profit motive.

Nevertheless, my point was about what people at one time declare as "utopian" will be taken for granted by later generations. Calling something "utopia" is just an easy way out of not really thinking about what's really possible.

this ignorance or evasion allows you to go ahead and conclude that unemployment will skyrocket

Unemployment will skyrocket due to three things:

(1) Technology is becoming so cheap and effective, it is replacing human work. Can you deny what is happening all around our neighbourhoods? Bank machines and the Web replacing bankers. Travel agents replaced by the Web. Book store employees replaced by the Web. Video store employees replaced by the Web. Stock brokers/investors replaced by the Web. It's picking up speed. Real Estate Agents are about to be replaced by FSBO websites in a big way. Notice I gave only examples of service jobs. The farming and manufacturing jobs have already been taken by technology.

(2) The unemployed cannot support businesses in their local communities. This is the "skyrocketing" part. Unemployment causes more unemployment as local businesses start to fail and the pool of unemployed grows.

(3) Our economy is being propped up by "cheap" money via low interest rates. I'm not even talking about "qualitative easing" by governments. (Did someone say, "socialism"?) I'm talking about people borrowing money too easily to start-up and propagate businesses at interest rates that allow them to carry debt that they normally wouldn't be able to support. When the interest rates go up (can anyone argue that they interest rates will not substantially go up?), businesses will fail, and banks will be less-inclined to lend, resulting in more businesses going belly-up.

Do you think it would be okay if three-quarters of the world population died -- as long as the remaining quarter of the population practiced RBE?

RBE is not Communism. That quote does not apply.

You asked me to prove why RBE was not Communism. I gave you the material and you said I proved why the details were not the same. You asked for me to prove why Communism and RBE were different in spirit, so I did. You picked apart the "ism" naming I used in the intro and you didn't like my conclusion about unemployment, but you didn't touch the "spirit" part in the middle about the difference of motivation between Marxism and RBE.

Are you still hanging on to "RBE = Communism" despite me proving it otherwise?

Post 70

Tuesday, March 8, 2011 - 3:17am

The provider is technology. Technology does not need motivation. It just performs as it was designed to perform.

Technology doesn't exist or survive on its own, though. Where does the input come from?

When we have the profit motive, it trumps human nature....Simple: No profit motivation.

What is the motivation, then? If I can't expect a gain from my work, what should I expect? Are you saying you believe the profit motive is somehow foreign or superfluous to human nature? Is there proof of that conclusion? I can tell you that there is scientific evidence refuting it.

Post 71

Tuesday, March 8, 2011 - 7:33am

Laura:

The reason we have abundance is BECAUSE we have prices. Prices play a part in determining what we need. I personally don't need a Lamborghini. If we abolish prices and suddenly Lamborghinis are free, guess what? I suddenly need one! And that happens with almost every good. I only need one television right now. But if they're free, suddenly I need one for every room.

How do you keep that from happening? The only way is to have some ruler or bureaucracy deciding what everyone truly needs. I prefer our system, where we each decide for ourselves, based on the relative prices of things.

These folks don't object to prices, so much as they want to be the unilateral emperors who set prices. In some extremes, like this one, 'free.'

Their argument is that 'prices' are regressive. They fear that when a rich man goes to the Lamborghini dealership, the salesmen all look at him and say "Relax, boys, he's one of us." And, they set the price of the Lamborghini at a tiny % of his income. But when the poor and middle class come to that same dealership to buy the same thing, they immediately(you have to watch real close)jack the price up to an ungodly % of their yearly income. For the same thing!

So to 'fix' this injustice(huh?)they have a great idea. Just fix the price of everything at the same % of income. (That this will require chaining folks at the factory to the assembly line in order to keep up with demand is not considered a problem in these totalitarian puddingheaded theories.)

Imagine the reaction of the owner of a diner, when Bill Gates shows up for his spaghetti dinner under this model. He will be charged the same % of his income as everybody else. For the same thing. Fair is fair.

The diner owner's first reaction is, "Great! I'm going to be rich!" His second reaction is "Shit! I'm going to be rich!"

But, if we just get rid of the concept of value-for-value totally, and just show up at the diner when we want something, this will somehow be a better model.

Value-for-nothing is an economic model based on years of watching Barney the Dinosaur sing about candy canes and gumdrops dropping from the sky.

Post 72

Tuesday, March 8, 2011 - 7:37am

The provider is technology. Technology does not need motivation. It just performs as it was designed to perform.

Spoken like a soft scientist.

Not all soft scientists are soft in the head. But, you guys really need to clean out your swamps.
(Edited by Fred Bartlett on 3/08, 7:39am)

Post 73

Tuesday, March 8, 2011 - 7:46am

Profit is to commerce as efficiency is to process.

Post 74

Tuesday, March 8, 2011 - 7:55am

Technology doesn't exist or survive on its own, though. Where does the input come from?

Exactly. In thirty years making my living in technology, I've never seen a single successful application of same that wasn't totally dependent on the quality of the efforts of the individuals involved. And as a consultant, I've also seen the opposite: companies with cultures that regarded technology as something like a commodity that could be placed on and taken from a shelf when needed, and turned on and off like tapwater. The places I've seen that clung to that attitude have all long failed, blown away.

I've never seen technology evolve or perform "on its own." Not even in the most trivial of senses. Maybe he means, we no longer hire elevator operators?

If so, he is talking about 19th century 'technology.'

I have no idea what this guy is talking about.

He's sounding more than a little PolitSci to me.

Post 75

Tuesday, March 8, 2011 - 12:00pm

Maybe Brent believes in the Ghost in the Machine?

Post 76

Tuesday, March 8, 2011 - 12:01pm

Brent,

Do you use public roads? You're a socialist. Do you believe in public libraries? You're a socialist. If a fire starts in your house, do you expect the fire department to come put it out? You're a socialist.

That's the sloppy thinking of a standup comedian, or something.

:-)

If someone was being born in North Korea right now, you'd say that they were a communist -- but that's wrong. Communism is a worldview, and you don't get an entire worldview (magically?) injected into your body simple by being born in -- or in any way benefitting from -- a "communist" hospital. Instead, worldviews are things that slowly grow out of myriad interactions you've had with the world and with other people. They develop over time.

And because we are the only animal that can tell the difference between the way things are, and the way they ought to be (the only animal with a formal morality), our day to day experiences -- on the roads, in the hospitals, in the libraries, etc. -- are not reliable indicators of our worldview. Your half-thought-out standup comedian punch-line glosses over this fact of reality.

I think you may have already knew all this, but that you weren't bothering to properly integrate it -- when responding to Dean like you did.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 3/08, 12:08pm)

Post 77

Tuesday, March 8, 2011 - 12:21pm

Brent,

Profit is not the primary driver/invention/spread-of advancements. People come up with inventions to simplify life. They want to make life a little easier/funner/safer.

Why do people donate their time to work on open source software projects, for example?

Did you know that over a dozen strangers (folks you never met) were involved in getting a can of soup into your cupboard? Now, I know what you are saying: "But Ed, you could be wrong, it could have been just 11 strangers involved."

No, it could not have been.

You do not fully understand how it is that innovation -- and the products of innovation -- makes its way around to people. My advice is to rent the movie: Greed; (with John Stossel) in order to fully understand how it is that innovation -- and the products of innovation -- makes its way around to people.

Ed

Post 78

Tuesday, March 8, 2011 - 1:42pm

Brent,

Unemployment will skyrocket due to three things:

(1) Technology is becoming so cheap and effective, it is replacing human work. Can you deny what is happening all around our neighbourhoods? Bank machines and the Web replacing bankers. Travel agents replaced by ...

This argument is old and stale, Brent.

Yeah, sure, you decorated it with all the new bells-n-whistles of the age -- but that is always so. It is merely an extention of the argument that the cotton gin increases unemployment by reducing demand for manual labor. But did the cotton gin do this? No.

Instead of reducing a demand for manual labor, the cotton gin increased the production of cotton by 50-fold in 20 years. A 50-fold increase in the production of something leads to an increase in employment (packaging, shipping, sales, etc). Now, you can sit there and say: "Well, but if we purposefully remained on a level where we were 50 times less productive (pre-cotton-gin); then we would have 50 times more employment -- because of our self-promulgated inefficiency!"

But this reasoning misses the point. Yes, it's true that, if we purposefully remained inefficient, then it would take more man-hours to get anything done -- but the salient point is that lifestyles improve, in lock-step, with efficiencies; so that more is demanded out of life after every innovation. Technology creates jobs, it doesn't crowd them out. In the case of the cotton gin, 50 times more cotton was demanded -- leading to a net increase in (packaging, shipping, sales, etc). employment from this technology, not to any net decrease.

Ed

p.s. If you remain stuck with Marx's (manual) Labor Theory of Value rather than using the more true -- and therefore, more appropriate -- Marginal Utility theory of value, promoted by Carl Menger; then you may continue to believe (even in the bold face of contradictory evidence) that technology reduces jobs.

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 3/08, 1:54pm)

Post 79

Tuesday, March 8, 2011 - 2:03pm