kidmercury

Zeitgeist: Addendum, is the latest movie from Peter Joseph, the man behind Zeitgeist, a movie I highly recommend and consider to be the best film of 2007. See my previous review.

Zeitgeist: Addendum, which for simplicity purposes I'll refer to as Zeitgeist II, is an excellent movie which I highly recommend (though quite flawed in some respects, which I'll get to shortly). The movie does an excellent job of explaining the current monetary system; it is one of the clearest and most entertaining presentations on that subject that I've seen. That is the primary reason I highly recommend the movie, and encourage all to watch it for free on Google Video.

What Zeitgeist II says about monetary policy, government, and religion is all true; the parts about monetary policy and government can be proven to be true, and the part about religion can almost be proven to be true -- although things get murky when you go back thousands of years, so it cannot definitively be said to be true. Though I've yet to see a credible debunking of the information presented about religion; most of the "debunking" amounts to insults and statements like "only a fringe minority believes that." Humorously, those statements are largely made by people who think a tiny and incestuous group of elitists who engage in human sacrifice rituals and call themselves the New World Order secretly rule the world (I actually agree with those who say this, but I find it humorous that they can attack someone else's beliefs because they are only believed by a "fringe minority." Clearly, we're all a bunch of kooks!)

Anyway, where Zeitgeist II starts to get it wrong is when it hates on free market capitalism, saying competition is wrong and that capitalism requires scarcity -- and thus capitalism cannot exist in a world of abundance, which is the true nature of our world.

WRONG.

What Zeitgeist II fails to note is that capitalism, like virtually all other aspects of our world, is in the midst of a revolution; a re-birth of sorts. Capitalism can exist in a world of abundance. It simply means that the new scarcity is a person's desires. And thus we are witnessing the rise of the open systems/open source economy -- an economy built on the notion that an abundance of anything creates an opportunity to sell a personalized solution.

This is best illustrated through examples:

• Google realizes that the web is infinite, and thus is progressing towards creating personalized search.
• Ning realizes that the technology exists to create an infinite number of social networks -- and thus enables you to create your own, personalized social network.
• Amazon realizes there is an almost infinite number of products, and thus works to create a personalized shopping experience via recommendations based on your browsing and shopping history.

Zeitgeist II instead advocates The Venus Project, a project run by a group of well-educated, creative, and seemingly well-intentioned folks striving to create a resource-based economy -- an economy without money.

In addition to being rooted in a false understanding of capitalist economics, Zeitgeist II is quite vague in describing how exactly we are going to survive in this resource-based economy. Free technology and an abundance of natural resources are great, and certainly should be celebrated. But it is quite a leap in logic to assume that just because we have the ability to harness free energy and there is an abundance of natural resources that we no longer need money.

Now, while I believe Zeitgeist II's analysis to be flawed for the reasons given above, a resource-based economy is something I do expect humanity to get to -- just not any time soon. For a more thorough and valid look at the economics that will allow such a world to exist, I recommend considering Michael Goldhaber's concept of the attention economy. Goldhaber argues that attention is a new form of currency; for instance, people will create outstanding, labor-intensive videos (like Zeitgeist II) and put them on YouTube for free, because they will get attention. Thus, the attention of others is a form of currency. I prefer to call Goldhaber's attention economy the love economy, largely because I am one tripped out dude who likes to make things sound more magical (because things really are magical, so why not?). The other reason I like to call it the love economy is because the term attention economy has been hijacked by more money-oriented minds, who have come to use the term to refer to the notion that an abundance of content on the Internet results in a scarcity of attention -- and thus content should be commoditized and used to get attention, and that this concept is at the heart of the future of digital business.

Now, ultimately I expect the love economy to disrupt and conquer the monetary economy. But we're not there yet -- not even close, as evidenced by the enormous lack of detail in exactly how such a world can function properly (i.e. how will goods get transported, if machines do the transportation who will set the algorithm, who is to decide the transportation path, what if I want to use the same transportation path for a purpose I find to be equally valid, what if the machine breaks, what if I want to create a hurricane to generate energy but you want to go sailing, etc). And so I think Zeitgeist II and the truth movement in general should focus on the attention/personalization/open systems economy instead of trying to use the love economy to break past money.

Zeitgeist II's depiction of an eminent destruction that precedes a utopian renaissance of sorts did remind me of Culture 2.0: The Collapse of Everything, a report I wrote back in 2006. While I don't agree entirely with the thesis presented in Zeitgeist II, I agree with the basic idea of "after the collapse comes freedom" -- and would urge all to remember this over the next few years, when global calamity will reach levels that even those of us in the Truth movement can scarcely imagine.

Fehlerquelle

For me its not sooo much about true or false regarding the movie ZEITGEIST - it is the essence of ZEITGEIST - open your eyes > THE REVOLUTION IS NOW . AND FOR SURE WE NEED ONE > EVERYWHERE !!!!

kidmercury

fair enough, though i think the first zeitgeist is better for the revolution. perhaps the best revolution film out there.

Unregistered

Hi Kid Mercury,

interesting post. I had never heard of an Attention Economy until I read this blog, and find the idea interesting. However, I do not see how The Venus Project necessarily precludes an attention economy. Similarly, I disagree that abundance would not mean an end of money. An abundant supply of something results in a price of zero, assuming the supplier is happy to comply.
As you might have guessed, I am fond of The Venus Project's proposal, indeed, I found it the stronger part of Zeitgeist II. I have been looking into it since I saw the film (Oct 08), and the more I study it, the stronger an idea it seems. The key is that the non-monetary aspect is worked towards, not switched on at the beginning of the journey, before it makes sense to do so. Second, in order for goods and services to be abundant, society has to be redesigned -- infrastructure, education, law, politics etc. -- to make this possible. You mention transportation paths being in conflict in some way. As if the transportation paths for goods would necessarily be the same ones as for human travel. That would be scarcity of transport, meaning no abundance. The cyclone thing is a weird problem that I don't get. Doesn't seem realistic to me.
The point is, for the Venus Project to work, scarcity has to be designed out. Similarly, scarcity as a presumed foundation for transactions has to be educated away. An abundance paradigm has to be "at the helm," so that our understanding of things like property and law are fundamentally altered. Needless to say, this is not something that can happen overnight.
However, your point that an abundance of material leads to a scarcity of attention is an interesting one. Whether it requires money (of some kind) is another question. As I said in opening my response, I am not sure that a world shaped along The Venus Project lines would preclude an attention economy. As now, there would be a bewildering array of music, film, humour, literature etc. to choose from. But does attention scarcity mean a medium of exchange? Does it need a resolution?
If you want to get back to me on this, you can find me at THD RUSSELL - poems, shorts, novels, thoughts.

Peace
Toby