Anyone seen this? Seems a bit conspiratoid, but I haven't watched it yet.
-Jon
To darkness I condemn you...
Seen it. When I watched part one I thought it was excellent. It sadly descends into a farce. I disagree with the film and personally think the reptilian humanoids are behind it all:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Icke#Reptilian_humanoids"
Irish Liberty Forum
I've downloaded the movie and I liked the 1st part. Then, it starts talking about 9/11 "Loose Change" BS. I may have not given it a fair shot to the last, monetary part, but it seemed anti-semitic propaganda from a little I watched. I would not recommend it to anyone.
Equality before the law and material equality are not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time. -- F. A. Hayek in The Constitution of Liberty
By the way, they have some website where you can download it. You probably want to do that because it is 2 hours long... Anyway, a link that might interest you -- an interface to download videos from youtube or google-video: http://keepvid.com/ . You just have to rename the filename to "video-name.mp4"... But I'm sure the quality will be better if you google for the video website and download the original there.
This and Freedom to Faschism just help the media in claiming Libertarians are conspiracy theorists. " It's not a law that I have to pay taxes lol lol lol lol" Why would the government not make it law? It is the stupidest arguement I have ever heard. Just stick with the taxation is theft line. kthxbye
"The plans differ; the planners are all alike"
-Bastiat
Anyone notice there is an entire "anarchist" movement devoited to bringing as much of society under the umbrella of state's guilt as possible?
I wonder where the former marxists will turn to next after market anarchism out lives its usefulness for society buidling.
Part I was really well done. It blew my mind. Much I knew, but much was new. Great information in a concise form.
Part II and III were ok.
Quote from BlackSheep:I've downloaded the movie and I liked the 1st part. Then, it starts talking about 9/11 "Loose Change" BS. I may have not given it a fair shot to the last, monetary part, but it seemed anti-semitic propaganda from a little I watched. I would not recommend it to anyone.
You should have watched the whole movie before making a criticism. Actually, the first part of the movie is more a matter of opinions, however the second part document actual facts about 9/11. The third part is also well documented. I recommend this movie to everyone - I am also considering adding a link to the YouTube link to all my business emails. You see, I am self employed, so my boss and I always agree.
JonBostwick: Anyone notice there is an entire "anarchist" movement devoited to bringing as much of society under the umbrella of state's guilt as possible? I wonder where the former marxists will turn to next after market anarchism out lives its usefulness for society buidling.
I wasn't aware of this, could you elaborate?
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I did some research and found that Part 1 was actually full of a lot of speculation, and speculation that while interesting, is misleading. Mises warned against a conspiratorial view of history for a reason. Check their sources.
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http://www.myspace.com/telpeurion
Yes I've seen Zeitgeist and I thought it was pretty good. As I understand it, it was meant to encourage people to think critically about the institutions we take for granted. It certainly has the potential to do that but it errs a bit on the side of paranoia and includes a lot which people may find offensive.
Part I was interesting. It had the potential to cause offense but it seems like it was worth putting out there. Part II, I could have done without. I don't think the government is competent enough to have pulled of 9/11 and even if it were, it's largely inconsequential regarding my beliefes about what public policy should be. Part III was the most important part but it was a bit to much on the side of paranoia I felt.
The sequal came out last Friday - Zeitgeist: Addendum. It goes deeper into the monetary and banking system as well as the role of "economic hit-men" in the American Empire; all of which should have been included in the first movie. The second half then starts to propose "solutions" which caused me to lose a great deal of respect for the producers of this film. They propose The Venus Project, which appears to me to be the product of watching too much Star Trek. They describe a world without "scarcity" and claim that because of our new technological abilities scarcity only appears to exist because of money. They say things like this "resource based economy" will free the common man from the drudgery of trying to survive in a capitalist monetary system and then procede to insult the viewers intellegence by claiming that nothing like this has ever been proposed before. It's rediculous and as much reminiscent of the description of socialist proponents in The Road to Serfdom as anything happening in the mainstream today. Of course, I don't have to tell most of you that do I.
At any rate, while I doubt this is new to anyone here I still suggest people watch it. They suggest that people go to www.thezeitgeistmovement.com to organize. The site isn't up yet but I hope it has a forum like this one. At least that would provide an opportunity for me to point out the absurdities of what is proposed in The Venus Project.
Telpeurion: I did some research and found that Part 1 was actually full of a lot of speculation, and speculation that while interesting, is misleading. Mises warned against a conspiratorial view of history for a reason. Check their sources.
If it was my choice, I would remove the first part entirely. I would create the movie with part 2 & 3 only.
Jon Irenicus: Anyone seen this? Seems a bit conspiratoid, but I haven't watched it yet. -Jon
I have not watched it yet though I have a DVD right in front of me. But I should since I am cat-sitting for the filmakers brother and his wife now.
http://www.comebackalive.com/phpBB2 Travel, Adventure Travel, Arguments, Recipes.
LancierDombre:They propose The Venus Project, which appears to me to be the product of watching too much Star Trek. They describe a world without "scarcity" and claim that because of our new technological abilities scarcity only appears to exist because of money.
ahah. This idea seems to be spreading faster and faster. I've heard my share of this non-sense and absurdity in a talk in labor's day. But I think, while pretty much all of these people seem to live in their own reality, their view of the world is not destitute of merit. Less and less labor is needed to produce goods, and that is true of capital goods as well. More and more people are taking full years just to travel, out of a few months of work. There are a lot of government policies, like the typical protective agriculture ones very regressive in nature, that have a big impact in the price of necessities, without which we would probably see a move to a society whose greatest part of the time would be spent on leisure, not laboring.
It is really a shame. This film started out so well talking about the bs that is the Fed. It even had a clip of Ron Paul! I was actually on board. Untill the same old same old set in. Capitalism is bad, corporations suck blah blah blah. Blaming capitalism for the evils done to people by government action. People seem to confuse corporatism, and state capitalism, with free market capitalism. It is the same old song and dance that I have heard over and over again. And the proposed "Venus Project" is complete fucking nonsense. I actually laughed out loud when the movements founder lumped fascism, communism, socialism and free enterprise as one in the same. People really need to read and understand the Austrian theory of monetary and business cycles. All in all i gave it a reluctant 2 out of 5 stars. The opening 15-20 minutes was good and the "economic hit-men" was interesting as well. I would like to see the sources used though. I never take crap like this on face value. Mises did warn of a conspiratorial view of history; putting together pieces that aren't there. And hindsight is always 20/20. But for its explaination of Fed monetary policy I reccommend the first 20 minutes of this film. Same with the first Zeitgeist film a lot of speculation not much else.
Seen it, liked it, agreed with most. The smoking gun for me is the angular cut steel columns with molten metal around the cut. That part is just eerie.
Me too. Regarding the assertions about a a resource based system, I do agree that our current economic systems including capitalism have a propensity to cause duplication of effort, corruption, activities that benefit one-self but have adverse and unknown (but real) negative impact on the rest of the economy. I find some of the motivations behind what they call a resource based economy to have merit, such as the idea that we actually do have enough resources and advancement in technology to be able to take care of basic needs for everybody with minimum human labor if collective interests where prioritized and not everything has to be justified with personal short-term gain. The interesting thing is that with more benevolent actions, in the long term, personal gains will also be maximized anyway. But with the current systems its hard to have any faith in that idea because most people are worried (and not unjustifiably so) that if they are the only ones to act benevolent, they will just be abused by other more selfish persons and any grand goals that drove their benevolent actions will anyway be sabotaged by the more selfish.
Lets take the environment as an example. I think most people have the notion that if everybody completely selfishly abuses the environment to save costs, in the long term each person individually will loose because holiday resorts will not be what they used to be, they will suffer from toxins, the world will look less nice, the air will feel worse, and costs required to make the environment habitable (such as air-cons, heating, dams etc..) will increase. If an environmentally conscious company's bottom line will be negatively affected by being more green, they may feel that they are giving up a competitive advantage by acting environmentally responsible if they feel that many (or most) other companies will not follow. Same applies for consumers. One can buy environmentally friendly products which might cost more. Many who have an interest may be put off by the idea that their action alone will not solve the problem. We have here a case of lack of trust and lack of social and collective consciousness.
So whilst I can easily imagine that in terms of resources and technology, the resource based economy mentioned in Zeitgeist/Venus project is feasible, the challenge lies in our social development and social character. Already in the world as it stands right now, one can see differences in social coherence and character between different countries, cities and communities; sometimes vast differences. Hence I believe it is possible for us to improve things and I agree with the film that we should be managing human behavior rather than feeling limited by some notion of human nature. The task at hand I believe is to raise awareness and take actions that will increase social maturity and trust. People may or may not believe in the resource based economy. Likewise people may or may not object to claims that Zeitgeist makes about religion or other topics. I think if we increase social maturity (the exact opposite of what leads to economic empires and "hitmen"), even our current capitalist (or other monetary) systems will work a lot better and suffer a lot less of corruption and so on. What was said very well in the film I thought was that we need to understand that we are an organism as a whole, all people together on the earth. If the heart fails, so will the brain. Capitalism though, may tend to promote behaviors where the heart competes (even with using dirty tricks if needed against the brain) - so I understand where Zeitgeist is coming from, that maybe the current economic systems make it very hard for us to mature socially.
Capitalism assumes the sum of the parts is equal to the whole, but this is simply not the case. If each part is doing the best for itself in selfishness, the whole does not get whats best for it and in turn, the parts don't either. We may be at a point in time where we are technologically able and sociologically needing to change to a real new system. How exactly that looks I'm not sure, but I'm open to the resource based economy as a potential starting point for a blue-print of the future. Most importantly though, I think as a strategic objective we need to mature social coherence to help us reach whatever future economic system we choose to build.
I would love to know how to come up with the best for the whole.
One of the first steps may be to work to increase the amount of people who realize and clearly understand that we would actually be better of this way (in a best for the whole situation as you say) and inspire people to start thinking of the possibilities - really want it.
Other challenge might be: people think to themselves "ok, I want it, but am I the only one? How can I and the few others change the world?" So in parallel when raising awareness (or having discussions) that "best for the whole" is a good thing, we should raise awareness that there are other (hopefully with time increasingly many) out there who believe this. This will give people confidence to trust it is possible and worth it to take action (act more environmentally friendly, don't sacrifice the greater development in a cut-throat manner for ones own profitability etc..) and take risks. As long as the number of people who believe in this increases and as long as the behaviors of people move towards the greater good, we will be moving towards a "best for the whole" situation and we will enjoy increasing rewards during this change (i.e. we don't need to wait for us to exactly reach some vision of utopia to benefit from this).
By churning out cute buzzwords and silly analogies, of course.
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