I was asked the other day to respond to the so called Zeitgeist Addendum.
The Zeitgeist drama of course is no more than an eleventh-hour, pretended entry into the monetary reform arena. It will never be rightly exalted for advancing the idea of a singular solution for inflation and deflation, systemic manipulation and dispossession of industry, or inherent multiplication of debt into terminal debt. What does Zeitgeist even intend to accomplish? Zeitgeist does not even recognize the idea a privatized currency can and should be issued by the people, who are the real creditors wherever tokens intended to represent the value of their production are to convey their commerce.
Like anything else, the actual value of the Zeitgeist plea can be no greater than the degree to which it stresses effect and style over conclusive argument and solution. We cannot even rightly pretend to understand how it points the way to solution, because Zeitgeist only affirms a few observations which were raised long ago, and because it concludes no further, conclusive understanding whatever from those observations. The initial version of Zeitgeist doesn't even address the nature of money more so than to dig up the very superficial definitions which for so long have failed to serve us. But thus, building upon those flawed definitions--as if flawed definitions are a fitting foundation for anything further--what can and does Zeitgeist introduce to the development of solution?
Both the so-called Addendum and its previous version merely repeat research from decades earlier, which I myself presented on the contrary as a basis for developing the critical arguments of solution, and which of course require defining/ascertaining not only what "money" can and must represent, but exactly how any obfuscations of that necessary definition result in the present crisis.
In 1979, that work developed the thesis that any pretended monetary system based on interest-bearing debt ultimately terminates itself under insoluble debt; and this thirty-year-old thesis itself and alone explains anything which Zeitgeist can complain about. Yet does Zeitgeist tie its complaints to this critical fault of the pretended monetary system? Absolutely not; and even if it did, it would only pretend further to be the author of the justification of that complaint.
But it is impossible then for Zeitgeist to certify any purported solution, because it doesn't even identify the cause of the problem it must solve.
Neither then does Zeitgeist build a decisive analysis of the same history. Likewise, it neither disproves mathematically perfected economy--or recognizes whether there is one and one only solution to inflation and deflation, systemic manipulation of the cost or value of money or property, and inherent, irreversible, and terminal multiplication of debt by interest. It neither identifies the role of real creditor, or the usurpation of that role to impose usury. Thus for all its mere drama, it only affirms that the consequences of that usurpation are offenses against us, but only to turn us somewhere other than solution, and only as the thesis of mathematically perfected economy--far more clearly demonstrated thirty years ago. Why then does Zeitgeist jump into the way of solution?
Thus Zeitgeist merely splinters a critical movement from what it has to understand and where it has to go. It neither proves alternate solutions for inflation and deflation, systemic manipulation of the cost or value of money or property, or inherent multiplication of debt by interest; nor does it raise any fact of complaint which cannot be attributed to these injustices, and the need for actual solution.
I was asked nonetheless in particular to reply to the proposed, "resource-based" industrial system. I'm still wondering why. There isn't even a proposed method of transitioning to such a thing. There can't be, because there isn't even a substantial definition of it. The Zeitgeist drama comprises so many obvious faults and deficiencies that it no more warrants reply than viewing. The real question in my opinion is why watch this in lieu of studying solutions?
Only because I was asked, did I watch the drama to its end, and so, do I give sufficient examples of its critical faults:
Since when for instance, is the monetary system "labor based"? It is based instead not only on debts subject to interest which can only multiply the sum of debt, but on intervention to pretend the role of creditor, that artificial multiplication of artificial debt is made the very instrument which multiplies exploitation into terminal exploitation.
But even if the monetary system were "labor based," what is the fault of reward for labor? Worse, what is the alternative? Reward without labor/effort? That proposed alternative is the very subversion which is responsible for what you have now.
Anyone who dreams we will ever--or even should ever--seek to simply eliminate repetitive tasks--a thing which is impractical--is merely glossing over the real issues with pretended intellectualism. If you have ever developed a product which is the pinnacle of its class, you have repeated *every* step in fact often enough to perfect them above all others. If you have built machines to do the work better than ever before, you know you will do far more untoward work on machineS than can ever be justified, if you don't first toil over every aspect of the process so that the first machine you will build will be as close to the ultimate as possible.
Repetition is not a fault of the monetary system, nor is repetition or other pathetic complaints of Zeitgeist responsible for the present crisis. Nor are these things what obstructs us from building the proposed trains of the future--a thing many of us have envisioned and discussed for many years. The problem is the imposed monetary system, because only if you solve its intended faults do you free yourself to build whatever you determine. Why can't we do that now? Because the usurer, who merely usurps the role of creditor, determines where the money goes, and what "industry" (or obstruction of *other* industry) is to prevail.
Once they own that dominant process, all they have to do and all they want to do is sit on it, because it is accomplishing what men who do nothing want to accomplish.
The answer therefore is not to follow them, supposing we all can do nothing, or dedicating ever more effort to doing the least; supposing that repetitive tasks can simply be eliminated or must be eliminated --or even that this is a new idea. It is no new idea, and it is not even germane to monetary solution, that we can build the most sophisticated wood-working machines which have ever been built--producing perfect surfaces and steering down crooked bamboo strips, producing compound tapered bevels to tolerances of three ten-thousandths of an inch. We do this when and how we have to, if we can, and only if the monetary system does not obstruct us from doing so. If and whenever we do so however, mechanization follows in the wake of sufficient repetition and deliberation, so that in the building of one eventual machine to do the job right, we minimize work there as well.
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