Motivation in an RBE - again

Once we have stopped doing work for its own sake, even if we have automated much of the remaining and truly necessary work, there will be the need for human input. Even Jacque Fresco and Peter Joseph accept that there will always be a residual need for human input even in the ultra-automated - 'cybernated' world they imagine when arguing for an RBE.

We seem to have the assumption that people are only motivated by money, but this flies in the face of many facts or apparent facts:

• There are many people working philanthropically who are plainly motivated by doing good rather than by money. Some do good in their professional capacity, some in their own time. If the latter could be freed up from doing whatever they have to do to get paid, to doing what they want to do, there would be step change in doing good.
• People drop out of the rat race - including from highly paid jobs - and not all go off to 'find themseleves' - many take up careers that they believe are more worthwhile.
• Money in itself cannot be an incentive, because it is useless until you buy something with it. Being motivated by making money (over and above what is necessary) is in effect being motivated by having more, or a prior, call on goods and services than other people. Is this really the motivation we want for our society?
• The studies explained by Daniel Pink in his TED talk (which can be seen on internet video sites), and other work.

If we were to have a money-free world, and some problem with motivation were perceived, would we bring back money as an incentive, or would we try to find other motivational means?

Save now to waste later

The budget cuts that face government at all levels mean very strict controls on money leaving the council's coffers. It barely seems to matter (with honourable exceptions) whether or not the money spent would have accrued genuine benefits - or even saved money - in the future. With some expenditure it may be straightforward to estimate the future benefits and confidently make the investment, but not all expenditure is so lucky.

An example springs to mind which may seem trivial, but it is illustrative. Staff in many organisations complain of lack of communication both up and down and across organisations, and so one way this is tackled is away-days, and in the public sector they are being banned - even just the cup of tea and power point ones. It makes it appear that it is accepted that these were a waste of money if we scrap them to save money - and the problem is the benefits are not too easy to quantity, even if the increased morale that comes from being included and from "bonding" is noticeable and intuitively oils the wheels and yields greater efficiency / effectiveness. It is more trenchant to point out that money/profit is no respecter of human values, but in the public sector, even a financial return on investment doesn't seem to be enough.

How money distracts our focus

In today's Metro (London), Oxfam expressed concerns at the decline in Christmas card sending because of the money that is raised through selling them.

I'm not having a go at Oxfam, or Christmas, but if Oxfam need money to feed the hungry, etc, we can actually just give them money without buying anything.

As I argue here often, what people want / need is a full belly, a roof over their head, and a source of information and communication (that's not an exhaustive list, but indicates life's necessities simply). As things stand they need money to get these, but it doesn't have to be like that, and by extension, we shouldn't need to buy Christmas Cards to make it happen.

Economic growth

The new series of In Business on BBC Radio 4 started this week with an analysis of Economic growth, entitled "Growing Pains. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00w228b I found it balanced, and was pleased that even those who defended it said that it wasn't an end in itself - something our politicians need to learn.

I think it is plausible that human ingenuity will grow infinitely, but some commentators doubt that it can grow quickly enough to tackle our planet's imminent problems by itself. it is plainly true that we have a finite limit on our physical resources - we are in a resource based economy in the general sense even if past economists have wrongly predicted when we would reach them. I think we need to start preparing for the inevitability now.

Economic growth sounds OK, or even good. That's part of the problem. It is technically an increase in Gross Domestic Product (or maybe Gross National Product - the difference isn't important in this context), yet it can include the productive value of clearing up after environmental disasters, or dealing with disease break outs. (Obviously dealing with them is a good thing to do in individual cases, but we don't want any more, just to get economic growth. What we in fact want is growth in healthiness, amongst other things).
And it's all very well scoffing at at attempts to measure happiness, but we do actually want to be happier, so why not try?

Some proponents of economic growth on the radio programme claimed that life expectancy has improved because of economic growth. Whether or not that is true, or whether its a cum ergo ergo propter hoc argument is not really the point. The increase in life expectancy is the thing being aimed for and what we should keep our sights on.

Student finance

I was near the student protests (or riots if you prefer Sky's epithet to the BBC's) in Whitehall today, briefly. There were loads of police and reporters around, so the controversy is certainly making work for them.

The issue of whether education should be funded by the general public or by the individual direct recipient of the education is a false dichotomy. A lot of the cost of education is the cost of tuition, because we have to keep tutors in work in the current system, and we have to withhold education to keep the price of it up so people can make money out of it - because they have to because of the system.

The internet is already bursting with tons of educational materials. There's a lot of rubbish there too, which is a problem, but it should not outweigh the powerful advantage of the good material.

In a resource based economy, all education would be distributed freely and widely. Lectures would be streamed live round the world and recorded for future use. And because people would not be doing pointless, empty work (or socially destructive work) they'd have more time to absorb education, and share their own knowledge and skills. Technology would be fully exploited to help achieve this.

Take money out of the equation conceptually, just for a moment, and it is easy to see how the goal of education is personal growth, the promulgation of knowledge and understanding - that kind of thing. But acquiring money becomes an end in itself, just as it does in every field. In the current system if the true aims of education can be delivered while money is being made that's fine - an exact parallel of the role of money in many other  elements of life - but making money comes first, because of its position as the economic life blood on which everything else depends.

Self replicating machines

The BBC World Service Technology programme, Digital Planet, ran an item on 3D printing, featuring http://www.freedomofcreation.com/

This is not simulating 3D like an image, but using lasers to actually 'sculpt' an object. One of the particularly intriguing applications was using the 3D printer to print the parts to make another 3D printer. Currently they can only make it print 50% of the parts as electric motors and circuit boards are beyond their reach.

I also liked the idea of shoes that can be put back into the machine, with bit of waste plastic, and then "reprinted" in the same design but a larger size. Brilliant for children.

It appears that freedom of creation want to spread these machines around quickly, which is good. In a resource based economy, technological breakthroughs would always be shared, so that their advantages can quickly accrue to as many people as possible, and so that improvements and refinements can start. There would be no secrecy to safeguard monetary profits - the only profit would be to humanity, thorough improving our lot sustainably and reducing the need to work.

Food waste; the value of work

There's an article in today's Metro (London) about Foodcycle, a charity that uses food destined for the bin to cook meals that it then sells at budget prices in its cafes, one of which is near Crouch Hill Station, not all that far from where I work.

At the moment, the cafe at The Station House only opens on Friday lunch times and at the moment they're only using food from two supermarkets and a Marks & Spencers. Don't get me wrong, this is a brilliant enterprise, but let's just take a step back and look at it critically.

• Food shops throw edible food in the bin. Read it again. Food shops throw edible food in the bin. (Individuals also waste food, I know).
• This charity - heavily reliant on volunteers - is stopping this on a small scale, and this is referred to as shops 'donating' food.
• There are people/families in this country who cannot afford the time and/or the money (and or do not have the skills) to source, cook, and eat sufficient healthy food .

One of the ideas of an RBE mentioned by Peter Joseph in a recent talk, is that eating out uses, or can use, food more efficiently. There is, or should be, less waste. Of course, without money, people would go to a restaurant / cafe and eat what they wanted (no more than they needed) and wouldn't feel constrained to gorge to get value for money. It seems likely that eating would be primarily through communal eating places. But it's surely fundamental to any sane economy that edible food should not be thrown away. This admirable charity is saving some, but where is the national effort to conserve this vital resource.

The Metro article also speaks well of the enterprise because it provides work for people to do. Again and again this casual assumption arises. There is no value in work in and of itself. It is only what the work achieves that can be valuable. Think about it, suppose there were some organised system for collecting unwanted but still edible food. Suppose it was a robot of some sort and no human labour were needed to operate it. Wouldn't that be profoundly sensible, even though it didn't create jobs?

This casual, wrong assumption is revealed in the call out section of the article, where one key point is "young people lack the skills that are needed to find gainful employment and affect their community positively". This is ambiguous - it could mean that they lack the skills to find gainful employment and they also lack the skills to affect their community positively, but I think the point being made might be that finding gainful employment is how you they will affect the community positively. I can expose the wrongness of the casual assumption by deleting part of the sentence, and rendering it:

"young people lack the skills that are needed to affect their community positively". This speaks of the need for training and education, and not of the spurious merits of work in and of itself. If people devise a way to make it so less human labour is needed to achieve the same outputs, that is a good thing, even though it is the opposite of creating jobs.

There is a sentence in the article that would suggest, if it weren't for the rest of the article, that they do get it. "Volunteers collect the unwanted[!] produce and turn it into nutritious meals in unused professional kitchen spaces. Meals are then served to those in need in the community, thereby helping to address issues of food poverty and poor nutrition while furnishing young volunteers with valuable skills."

• Edible food cannot be described as 'unwanted' while there is malnutrition and starvation anywhere. They mean 'unsold'. The shops can't get money for it. Good old money, eh?
• The food (a physical thing) is nutritious, not the meal (an abstraction), but I'm probably just being picky, here.
• Unused kitchens - yes a wasted resource is being used validly in this project. More please!
• There shouldn't be any food poverty and poor nutrition. A rich country like the UK is well placed to eradicate this easily, but it is true of the planet.
• Yes - upskilling (forgive me) people by having them do something constructive is exactly right. But I'm not talking about future employment, because there is no value in work in and of itself. It is only what the work achieves that can be valuable.

Keep Britain [un] tidy

I think I'll take up dropping litter. It will make work for road sweepers, and Civil Enforcement Officers to catch me and issue me with a fixed penalty notice and people to process the FPNs. We'll need more anti litter campaigners and the professional organisation that supports and encourages them will be able to take on more staff.

Well - people must have jobs, right? Fair enough, this is reductio ad absurdam (as they say in Germany) bad it's not far off subsidising car factories to keep people in work making cars that no-one wants (which is why the factory needs closing.)

People don't need jobs - they need a full belly, a roof over their head, and access to information and communication. (That's a rough and ready list, but it will do to make the point),

People must have jobs - ?

This is a councillor being quoted on a council's website:

"Breaking the cycle of unemployment where generations have not known work or wages can be very difficult. Apart from job availability, the barriers may be the lack of skills, fear of starting a job in a new environment, a need for childcare, clothing and perhaps social skills.

"If a suitable job is available, we want to help identify factors that would prevent a jobseeker from getting and keeping that work.

"It's important the cycle of worklessness is broken, particularly where children are concerned, so they can learn to embrace the world of work and aspire to a more varied future."


 Apart from the "aspire to a more varied future", this gets a big thumbs down from me. Let's not indoctrinate children to 'embrace the world of work' - at least not with our current understanding.


TVP/TZM approach (as I express it).

• What needs doing? (Only things that are socially constructive, and preserve and improve us and our planet for our continued existence as a species should be done.)
• Can it be done efficiently and sustainably by machine(s) / technology now, or in the future? If so deploy/develop the technology as soon as possible.
• What is left has to be done by humans, at least until the technology can take over. 

TVP/TZM thinks there will be very little need for human work in a technologically advanced resource based economy

Public/Private false dichotomy

A colleague was telling me of someone he knew who works in the software industry, and has been to sporting events with drinks receptions by taxi with invited guests all on expenses. One of the events was sponsored by Microsoft. Is this supposed to be OK because it's private sector? Alond with private individuals and organisations, public sector organisations buy Microsoft software and therefore some taxpayers' money is going into champagne for well-paid and well entertained software geeks. I'm not asking why the public sector shold have beanos as well, just that the idea of the public sector doing anything like this would be anathema, but it's the same people paying and the same money - the attributes 'private' and 'public' sector are minor differences.

I'm not dmgling out Microsoft for criticism - it just so happens they were the company in this case. I don't know how much they spend on such things compared to other organisations.

Planetary list of things to do

Jeremy Hardy, with whom I often agree, scoffed (on the News Quiz, I think) at the idea of comparing economies to households (despite the Greek oikonomos, meaning rules/laws of the house) presumably because of Mrs Thatcher's predilection for it. I still think it's illustrative.

The excellent Brandy Hume of the Zeitgeist Movement, in her series of videos called "Take the venus project challenge" compares a planet that lets 1 billion of its 7 billion population starve, with a household that lets one of its seven members starve. Not OK.

In a household, do you (say) deliberately use more crockery than necessary to create work washing it up? Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? In fact, you might even get a dishwasher as it will save labour and free up your time for something more rewarding than the drudge of washing up. Sounds sensible?

Severn Suzuki in her ?1992 speech to the UN (as a child) pointed out that adults teach children to share and co-operate and not to fight, yet she saw adults competing and fighting.

So is there a fault with the household model as a model for the planet, or are we living wrongly as a planet? TVP/TZM would say the latter.

If we were a giant household / family on this planet (as I argue we are), what might our household list of things to do include?

Make sure everyone has enough to eat, make sure everyone is well, settle the dispute between X and Y, Make sure the 'house' is well maintained, make sure the 'house' is efficiently run (ie best outcomes for least effort). I don't need an exhaustive list to make the point

Britain's Trillion Pound Horror Story

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2010/nov/12/britains-trillion-pound-horror-story-tv-review

The Guardian (link above) has a discussion about this TV programmed and an article about it in the guise of a TV review.

Presenter Martin Durkin set up the private sector good, public sector bad dichotomy early on, and said more than once that the public sector is now BIGGER [his emphasis] than the private sector, as if that was inherently bad/wrong/stupid. He made repeated reference to 'the productive economy', giving me the impression that it was identical with the private sector, but later in the programme he visited the NE for a nostalgic look at how it was an industrial powerhouse in the 19C. He was appealing for a manufacturing led recovery.

He didn't address the point that the technological advancements of the 19C and since have increased productivity wildly, reducing the need for work. We can't possibly as a planet keep consuming more and more to generate enough work for people to do so they can get money to spend on consumption. This isn't a moral imperative - there is a physical upper limit to the planet's resources.

The documentary's cartoon, parodied civil servant was seen taking money out of a restaurant's till to pay his wages, and then using the same money to buy himself food in the restaurant. Thus taxation was demonstrated as being 'theft' - one of the refrains of the programme is that government is spending OUR money. But this is just money circulating. It has to do that to work. In the private sector you may go into a coffee shop (these seem to be held up as the pinnacle of private sector achievement) and pay for your coffee. Some of the money will go to workers in the shop and some to the owners. The people who receive that money will go to other shops to spend it by the same process and so on. Why no shouts of "they're spending MY money" here?

I think we're supposed to be quite happy handing over money in the private sector as we do it willingly and have a choice, but this is disingenuous. You might have a choice of where to buy your food, but you have no choice but to buy food. You'd rather not have to pay it - free would be better - but you accept (grudgingly perhaps) that you have to. Rather like taxation, in fact.

I'm not saying tax couldn't be simpler, fairer, or lower, but paying for goods and services is part of the system we live in.

Durkin's point that pretty much everyone should have a job in the "productive economy" is standard fare, but let's examine it. You need to have a job to earn money so that you can buy things to keep companies in business so they can employ people. This is the cycle of consumption and it's one of the big problems of the monetary system.

Another key problem Durkin didn't really touch on is where "our" money comes from. The answer is that it is created by banks, and as you know they don't give it away, they want it back with interest - ie more money - but as they are the sole purveyors of money (ultimately) you can only ultimately get the money to pay the interest from them - at more interest. It is of course impossible to pay this back.

The programme's contributors mention "creating wealth", without really explaining what wealth is. We might understand it as making money, but  as the programme commented, creating money ("printing money") is pointless and wrong if there are no goods and services behind it. Exactly. This applies to all money in both sectors, not just the public sector.

Wealth is not money. Wealth is the beneficial resources we have available to us.

Military Industrial Complex

Maybe there is such a thing as a just war and maybe some of the war aims of conflicts in recent years were valid. The fact that just war might be possible should not cloud our views of the military industrial complex. This posting was provoked by the film "Why we fight" one of 57 videos recommended by v-radio, an internet radio station dedicated to spreading the word about TVP/TZM. The film is a bit plodding (IMHO) at the start, but persevere, because the intensity builds towards the end.

It features the nauseating collaboration between arms manufacturers and government, but in a profit driven world people must have jobs, making weapons is a job and weapons must be sold to get money to pay the workers. The  companies must make a profit and war - frankly - brings profit as it consumes weapons.

Another pericope in the film was about an articulate, intelligent 23 year old man who was joining the army as he couldn't get a job elsewhere. He also admired the tech. Middle aged women arms factory workers were also featured, torn between their need to have a job and their distaste at making weapons to kill people.

Part of the lie we are told is that the technology is super accurate and gets its targets without killing innocents nearby. The tech plainly is technically impressive and we should lament that the skill and resources that go into building this stuff is not be diverted to constructive end. It isn't surprising that manufacturers over egg the capability of what they are selling, and this is no different. The fact that we see the exaggerated claims as news is a feature of how the military-industrial complex pervades. But these weapons aren't as accurate as is made out, as we know from the pain wracked faces or corpses of "non combatants" on our screens.

As public sector cuts bite deep, many people look to military spending and argue that resources should be diverted. The arguments against are either along the "protecting freedom" lines - no-one can disagree with protecting freedom, or along the lines of just war, and removing nasty rulers from power. So we might feel a bit guilty as if we didn't really want freedom or a world free of nasty dictators. I'm also a bit conflicted around poppy day. Were those who fought / died freedom fighters fending off fascism, or were they suckers in the military industrial complex, or both. I'm moved by the ceremonies at the Menin Gate and by the last post and reveille on Remembrance Sunday, but I wonder if this is all part of the enormous commercial (advert) for the military industrial complex. Death or injury working for a company should merit compensation from that company, rather than a few quid in a poppy sellers tin. I accept that people think they are fighting for their country or a just cause, and (perhaps) that to some extent they actually are, but the profit motive is what has turned the whole thing into an industry. If the industry can get the country on board, why wouldn't it?

Planet cf household

It can be trite to compare the planet to a household. Margaret Thatcher used to compare the UK to a household and critics found it simplistic, amongst other things, but:

In your household, I suspect you are all trying to work together towards a common aim (or someone's trying to make that happen). Everyone's share of the work is (theoretically) part of achieving the household's aim. No-one's creating work just so someone can do it. In fact you're trying to minimise household work and share it out evenly.

Apart from scale, why is the planet any different?

G20 gets it all wrong

'At a G20 press conference, Brazil's finance minister Guido Mantega criticised the US central bank's latest QE programme. "The trouble with putting an extra $600bn into the US economy is that this money will not go into production, will not create jobs and neither will it boost domestic consumption.'

says http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11728504

1) Why should it go into production? Production of what? It matters what we produce.
2) So what if it will not create jobs? As a planet we need to prioritise our list of things to do, not just put more things on it.
3) "Nor will it boost domestic consumption.". Good. Apart from people that are malnourished, starving, or in abject poverty, we don't want more consumption. We don't want consumption for it's own sake. We've goyt a finite planet. We need to conserve and be efficient.

Manual Scavengers

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9174000/9174738.stm

The work of manual scavengers in India was featured of BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning. The next time someone mentions the importance of work to you, here's an example to counter them. This job entails taking away human waste from customers' toilets. The only equipment provided is baskets for the waste, and these often leak. The work is so disgusting and demeaning that the woman interviewed said that if she had daughters she would rather they died of hunger than do this work. The woman is supposed to be paid by individual customers, but some days she gets no pay at all and her and her seven sons go to bed hungry. Sons are not expected to work in this "job" - in this case their job is cleaning out sewage tanks. That counts as a better job.

The demeaning nature of the job is reinforced by the caste system. The woman is only allowed to point at the vegetables she wants in the market, and the trader will put them on the floor for her. If she touches any vegetables no-one will use the stall at all.

The interviewer asked the woman about politicians and elections. Her answer is something we can all relate to - there is no way of making them keep their promises.

Of course human waste needs to be dealt with, but it is hard to think of a problem that merits a better solution more than this one - and one that involves humans as little as possible. To make people do this to get money is utterly disgraceful, but the argument that any human should do a job that could be done by a machine just to get money does not stack up. This job is just an extreme example.

Motivation, profit, big pharma

The big pharmaceutical companies are trying to make profits for their shareholders. That's part of the profit system. Have a look at "Big Pharma Big Bucks" on YouTube - US based, with more direct advertising than UK, but you'll get the idea. They can effectively relaunch drugs under a new name, and we all know how generic drugs can often be much cheaper than branded ones. They also 'invent' lifestyle diseases - "disorders" that don't really have any pathology, but play on people's desire to be/feel better, in an effort to sell more drugs. The companies can't really get out of this. If company A starts marketing a new product, company B has to compete.

These companies are selling powerful chemicals, whose unwanted side effects they will want to play down, and the more they sell (ie we take) the higher their profits. Which is supposed to be better. This provoked a thought about motivation. Critics of TVP/TZM claim that without money there would be no motivation. But do you really want pharmaceutical manufacturers / sellers / pharmacists / GPs that are motivated by money if money comes from selling more pills and potions? Plainly we ideally want people motivated by making people better, and it we can't have that we must harness the motivation that money provides to that goal, and not the goal of selling more drugs.

Of course people aren't actually motivated by money - only by the goods and services that they can use it to obtain. Even the power money brings can only be used to obtain goods and services in the end. Because of the monetary system, we have an advertising industry that tries to make people want goods and services, so that they buy them and keep the profits coming in. That's the system - we have to keep that money on the move.

If we step back and look at what we actually want for ourselves, our fellow humans and our planet, a different picture will emerge. What we want from our pharmaceutical industry is good health, for example.

Monetary reform, interest

Some critics of the current system see monetary reform as a key way forward. TVP/TZM advocates (or at least some) think it may be a help in the transition to an RBE.

Interest is a problem in the current system. If you've got money, you can lend it at interest. If you haven't, you have to borrow it at interest. Thus it is a mechanism for making the rich richer. Also, the money to pay the interest has to come into the system. In effect it is simply created and lent - at interest. Thus more money is owed than actually exists, and there must be default on debts by definition.

But if someone has a bit of money to spare, it does make sense for them to lend it to someone who needs it. This leads to us asking why they should lend it without interest. Of course the money is no good to them  stuffed under the proverbial mattress- the only real use of money is to pay for goods and services. It has no intrinsic value. For this reason, an increase in the amount of money that exists should correspond to an increase in the amount of goods and services available, but that is hard if not impossible to quantity - hence prices (the trade off between supply and demand) are set by markets.

I am still looking around / trying to understand how the true advantages of money (or apparent advantages) can be gained without the disadvantages.

Barter and profit

One criticism levelled at TVP/TZM ideas (by people not familiar enough with the ideas) is that without money we would have to return to barter. They have apparently missed the point that if there is abundance, there won't be any need for trade, nor will it be possible. If there's more than enough tomatoes (say) for everyone's need, why would anyone need to trade anything for them? It is only in scarcity that the profit system can operate, so it creates it where it does not exist.

Can we have abundance in all necessities? TZM/TVP says we can. Obviously, we could stop creating artificial scarcity so that we can monetize things, but to do that we'd have to stop putting profit at the top of our list of priorities.

Psychwar

http://www.vimeo.com/14368259

My previous post was prompted/inspired by the film Psychwar, which documents amongst other things how Psychops operations developed in war are deployed to manipulate public opinion. It's well worth a watch.

Profit; Democracy

A key point made by Jacque Fresco and others is that companies/corporations have a legal duty to maximise profit. In the 1920s productivity had become so high that it would have been possible to increase wages and reduce working hours and thus have a higher standard of living, but this would have been at the expense of profit. To 'solve' this problem, consumerism was developed, using advertising to persuade us to buy the stuff that was being produced, so that profit could be maintained.

Early advertising was product centred - it was informative about the product, but as it developed, it started more and more to tap into actual human desires, by depicting healthy, happy, leisured people using the product being sold, or depicted alongside the product at advertisement level. Thus the psychology is that the product the viewer sees depicted will bring, or help bring, the health and contentment that is portrayed by the people in the advert.

If companies and corporations were legally bound to maximise the fulfillment of human need, things would look very different - not to say better, so why did profit win out - it seems illogical?

Well, those in positions of power did not want ordinary people to have more leisure time as a benefit of increased productivity, as this would give them time to think, become better educated, and potentially threaten the positions of the rich/powerful. This would lead towards true democracy, instead of the limited, circumscribed democracy that we have now, which works on the basis that ordinary people should not directly participate in decision making as they are insufficiently intelligent/educated to do so meaningfully. Many critics of the current system would of course point out that the best education is reserved for those with wealth to pay for it and therefore the people in power are creating the problem that the limitation on democracy is apparently aimed at solving.

TVP/TZM does not take such a high view of democracy as some critics of our current system do. They do see education as extremely important, and done properly, education would help people to make informed decisions, thus removing one of the objections to untrammelled democracy. But as Peter Joseph points out, nature is not a democracy: there is no point voting against an earthquake. TVP/TZM argues that opinion is pretty much meaningless in the face of scientifically acquired knowledge. Expansion of that idea is for another posting.

Zeitgeist: Moving Forward

Message from Peter Joseph of the Zeitgeist Movement

"Zeitgeist: Moving Forward", which is explicitly about a Resource-Based Economy, to going to be opening theatrically through independent (Chapter) groups starting Jan. 15th 2011. As most know this arrangement is non-commercial and I am not requiring any monetary return. Any proceeds that are obtained from these screenings will be applied to each respective ZM Chapter's work, specifically for ZDAY 2011 - which we hope to be larger than ever.

If you are not in a Chapter but would like to host a screening, special arrangements can be made depending on your circumstance. Ideally, you would need to start a Chapter or join one in your area to qualify but there is some flexibility. Please email zmf@thezeitgeistmovement.com if you have any questions.

*The Official Press Kit is now available for download:

http://www.zeitgeistmovingforward.com/

*Also, please view/re-view and spread (embed/email) the ZMF YouTube Trailer far and wide. A viral recognition is important. [It is also now in 30+ languages.] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYLLFpNn4lMfeature=player_embedded

Thanks for your help. Again, this work is a tool to create public awareness/response which will reverberate across the world, as the current system continues to deteriorate. People are looking for change and I suspect by Jan. 2011, the western decline will be at a new low due to the ongoing/inevitable global debt collapses; the mass unemployment paradigm emerging."