You are currently browsing comments. If you would like to return to the full story, you can read the full entry here: “Problems with Zeitgeist / Venus Project”.
(-Death)rant.net
Personal Thoughts and Development of a Radically Visionary Thinker
You are currently browsing comments. If you would like to return to the full story, you can read the full entry here: “Problems with Zeitgeist / Venus Project”.
The thing you seem to be missing (or perhaps disagreeing with) is that it’s the will of people that would bring this kind of system about. The idea of ownership will still be there but it’ll move to shared ownership more and more.
You mentioned prehistoric tribes but apparently got lost raving about not being able to go back there. Well, of course we can’t, no way to throw away all the communication links we have now. If someone tried… Well, suffice to say it wouldn’t be pretty. The key there is to think of the tribes and how they act internally.
Humans _can do that_. What the communication difference does is to make it possible for humans to be members in several different “tribes” (or networks) all at once. It means that every person is linked to every other. Most likely averaging at somewhere close to 5 hops.
The tribes in prehistoric times stayed distinct because of communication limitations imposed by distance. Those limits are largely gone already. People will still form tribes (networks) but the tribes are impossible to limit to just certain groups.
Money exists as a tool of exchange of ownership. As more and more things move to truly shared ownership (hint, look at open source/free software movement), money becomes increasingly irrelevant to the people.
You do the math.
Thanks for considering the movement’s ideals. Reading this, it seems there are some basic misunderstandings & projections.
From the sound of it, the misunderstandings stem from existing programming that automatically doubts any attempts at change from the status-quo, and so the programmed response to anything that challenges our existing structures is to “read into” things that simply are not there. Let’s go paragraph by paragraph:
1) [quote]“Not considering alternative money or even currency systems is one of the major flaws of the Zeitgeist movement, or perhaps more specifically the Venus Project.”[/quote]
Not sure the wording here is intentional, but your contention of “not considering” doesn’t reflect the facts. Factually, the movement embraces the understanding that ANY system built on differential advantage, such as most alternate currencies (else why have a currency at all?), “generate” the same behavior we’re seeing today.
Starting over with a new currency, no matter how egalitarian the initial intent, will lead to the same imbalances our species currently suffers under. This understanding is a far from the “not considering” contention you assume.
2) You say the data reflecting the divide between income levels as “weak” but then do not give supporting reasons as to why you think this. Surely we can agree a dominant factor to our present social imbalance can be sourced to the extant slavery built into our current economic system?
[quote]It can’t be denied that there must be other factors which influence those social measures to a great degree.[/quote]
No one is saying otherwise, yet your posture suggests different.
3) [quote]…would be grossly irresponsible, because our current and especially our emerging technologies could allow a totally improved standard of living for all of us, humans and other animals alike[/quote]
Believe you’re reading into the intent behind using the “hunter gatherer” data; if I’ve understood it, it was merely to show contrast that our system breeds undesirable results not as prevalent in even primitive stages of our human society, NOT to suggest that such levels of living are preferred going forward.
Rather, one of the major tenets of the Venus Project is a high standard of living via efficient technological solutions to our inherently technical social problems of scarcity & distribution, a fact _in agreement_ with your conclusion in this paragraph (quoted above). Seems you’re arguing against something that we’re both in agreement on.
4) [quote]Those people who actually decide in a technocratic system are the elites who manage the system.[/quote]
Think this is a prime example of where you see something, then automatically associate it with things you’ve considered in the past, without taking the time to realize that what you are considering and referencing are 2 different things. Case in point, in an RBE as proposed by the Venus Project, there are no “people who actually decide”… we let our tools provide the most optimized course of action.
This is a HUGE difference, one that invalidates your assertions that Venus Project is just another form of technocracy.
The rest of your concluding paragraph is based on the above false assertion, and generally ignores the consciousness aspect of the movement; that our challenge isn’t one of “imposing” a structure on society, as you suggest, but of elevating our collective understanding of what our current systems _generate_, then choosing to embrace otherwise.
What you’ve done is essentially “cherry picked” the idea, then refuted it based on half or less comprehension. This leads one to false or uninformed conclusions, as you’ve shown.
Indeed, the details of how we get from here to there are not written in stone; and yes it’s true the Venus Project is not perfect; no system is. It’s just far better than what we have. If you’re waiting for some “perfect system”, it will never come my friend. What will happen in the meantime is the continued propagation of the status quo, which at the end of the day, is completely unsustainable.
If you’re truly confident in your current position, you should have the ability to re-review the Zeitgeist materials, this time while considering the above reply in a fair and open manner.
You might find there is “more there there”
Else if you still draw the same conclusions, well, best of luck to you anyway
First, Meta, let me complement you on an excellent analysis of the problems with any return to tribal society structures, the problems with imposed systems, the cost and difficulty of implementing a technocratic system and the analysis of how a technocratic system would now recognize the uniqueness of all individuals and potential societies.
Marxism still begats Communism still begats Totalinarianism. ….. Capitalism, as practiced without regulation does also, and perhaps since in the US the regulations and regulations have come to be manipulated by the corporations, it appears that even regulation is not a true failsafe.
So the problems have been stated, at least in part…..that is if we desire a global (galactic?) society that allow the full realization of the different individuals first, and different societies second.
So now we must ask what outcome we desire, what methods are necessary to achieve it, are those methods acheivable, and what, if anything, is necessary to prevent those methods and goals from being swayed to outcomes different than those we desire.
Fael, communication is a part of the solution…..but communication is more complex that simply the ability to transmit sound and data between individuals and societies. …. It also ignores the survival imperative built into all life…..After all, only those who wish to live and are successful at it producing the next generation of life and the next synopses leading to new memes.
Money is a useful tool, that it is misused for ownership and power is as least as old as humankind. Even the posssession of resouces can be used that way in the absence of the concept of money.
At this point in the discussion, I do not see a solution…..but the discussion is important….to question, examine, give and accept feedback freely is important.
Arch
P.S. – we all rant in some ways, and sometimes are perceived as ranting even when we have no intention to do so, and have used words we perceive as neutral in emotional content.
Thank you for replying to my criticism. It seems that this discussion is really important, especially at this point in history when more and more people recognize that our current system is not sustainable (anymore) and really far from perfect.
Before I answer to your replies seperately, let me state my own position towards socioeconomic systems: I think it’s important to base any meaningful socioeconomic system on what people really want, so the true ideal should be a will-based economy, but at our current state of development we can’t implement something like that directly, so we need other tools for that purpose. Ownership of goods, trade and money are relatively simple economic mechanisms (in the sense that it’s easy to invent them, not to understand them completely). Those simple tools have great flaws when applied to goods which aren’t scarce, things like knowledge, music or data. It simply doesn’t fit! A scarce trading tool like money cannot be applied efficiently to a resource which isn’t scarce at all, so the money-system naturally comes with the paradigm of scarcity and creates artificial scarcity, by regulations such as patents, intellectual property rights, monopolies, etc. Those practises are totally awkward and should be abolished! There’s a better tool for managing the distribution of goods which aren’t scarce: Reputation. In a reputation-based economy people would be gratified for producing abundant goods (open-source software for example) “for free”. There are different ways to implement a reputation-based economy, and I think it might be good to have a great diversity of different reputation-systems running in parallel, so people can decide which one to use. I’ve made some thoughts about my own system called Repo-Fluido, which is a coupled hybrid system with money created out of reputation. It could be introduced right now and start replacing the current money systems. Still, there are some flaws to it, for which I don’t have a good solution, so I don’t really push my system towards implementation.
My hope is that with an established reputation-economy money just loses its meaning, so it fades out naturally. Based on the paradigm of direct valuation of what and whom we value, a hybrid or pure reputation-system would be the basis for moving towards a real will-based economy, which thrives on artificial and augmented intelligence, but there’s a very long way towards that “ideal” system.
There’s still the possibility of mixing a resputation-economy with a resource-based economy, but it’s far from obvious how that mix is supposed to work in practise. It looks difficult to combine both paradigms symbiotically. Meanwhile I’m voting for some kind of reputation-based system, because I think it would work better and could be implemented relatively easily.
@ Fael: Yeah, I like the idea of shard ownership, but I doubt that the world population would collectively vote for implementing something like the current Venus Project ideas anytime soon (meaning: Not before it’s too late to do anything). Unless maybe, such a system is demonstrated to work really well.
I also like the idea of being in multiple different “tribes”/networks simultaneously. But I think it needs really immersive virtual reality for that paradigm to unfold its full potential. Add personal nanotech-enabled fabbing and you could run the world as network of anarchistic sydicates, with every person being member of as many sydicates as he or she likes. Maybe I should pursue that idea further.
And yes, I do hope that money becomes increasingly irrelevant if we implement other, more adapted organisation systems.
@ Joseph: Thanks for discussing my objections. I am really glad that there are people out there who think about alternative systems. It’s even better if they are open to discussion. Initially I thought the Venus Project, presented in Zeitgeist: Addendum is a really great idea. It’s just that I think it has some major flaws and is not the best alternative system.
1)
That’s a really interesting hypothesis, but what is it based upon? Can you prove it? To make bold statements convincing, you need really strong evidence. From my point of view, mankind has never seen a system in which the difference in wealth and power was solely based on differences in actual performance and public utility. There have always been mechanisms which lead to a decoupling of the distribution of wealth and the distribution of work / performance / beneficence. This results in perceived injustice. And I think that this perceived injustice is closer to the core of the problem than inequality alone. I think inequality is acceptable, if it is kept at a moderate level, which doesn’t produce strong disruptive effects. (Very light disruptive effects may be justified, if the overall increase in motivation, liberty and performance outweigh them.) Do you think a system which measures performance in categories of social, ethical and ecological utility, distributes wealth only according to that measure, and also prevents disruptive inequality would still generate the same problematic behaviour as today’s systems?
2)
Good point. The reason as why I think the correlation of income inequality with different social problems is weak is that it looks like the standard deviation of at least some of the graphs is relatively high. This could indicate that the statistical relevance of the suggested conclusion isn’t very high. In such a situation one could assume that the data was cherry picked and that graphs which don’t support the hypothesis aren’t presented, or even denied. I don’t assume that that’s actually the case, but it’s a possible assumption you might want to refute as effectively as possible. What I really think is that there should be another factor (see point 1) , which would produce graphs with less standard deviation, so that all data points lie pretty close to the regression line.
I think exploitation and alienation would be more fitting terms, because slavery is a more special phenomenon.
3)
Good that you point this out explicitly. I didn’t assume that you had different intentions. Instead, I just wanted to point out that using the “hunter gatherer” data could be abused, so it’s better to argument against such abuse preemptively. I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear enough about that point.
4)
Well, that’s exactly what I think is your blind spot. I think it’s an illusion to believe that you can just use some kind of tool or mechanism for arriving at a most optimized course of action, without involving any real decision. The reason for that, is that you first need an actual goal or target parameter at first. Of course you can postulate that sustainability is the primary target parameter (which makes sense, but isn’t a purely logical necessity, because some people might still prefer short-term gains over long-term survival), but that’s hardly sufficient for all kinds of practical problems. If there’s no clear mechanism for setting up target parameters, those people who design the actual solution, necessarily make them up themselves, according to their own ideas and values. This could create a social divide or at least some alienation between “system designers” and other people. There are a lot of “free variables” to solution finding, like how fast should the solution be implemented? (In one month or in 10 years?) Where should it be implemented? (Not in my backyard!) What materials and technologies are used? (Rare high-quality stuff or cheaply available components?) What precautions are made against possible risks? How long is the solution targeted to last? (Perhaps in 10 years we will have much more efficient solutions) Who does the actual work? How will people be compensated, who are negatively affected? And so on. You just can’t deduce all the answers just from a small bunch of target parameters. What you need is an actual debate about the problem and possible solutions in society. What you really need is a working participatory democracy (at least regarding the target parameters and goals).
That’s very good to hear! I hope that my participation in the collective thought process can elevate our collective understand a little bit further.
So, are they written down anywhere? Are there even realistic ideas or plans how to implement something radically different as your system?
I’m content with the relatively best alternative system we can devise at the current level of our abilities. In my opinion, the Venus Project doesn’t qualify for that, yet. I’m not even convinced that it would work well. What’s exactly the advantage of the Venus Project over the planned economy of the former Soviet Republic, apart from massive automation? I don’t think that automation is the only difference it takes to make a planned economy work well. Maybe I’m wrong, but a pure planned economy doesn’t sound like a really efficient solution.
If you think about my objections seriously, you might find ways to improve your concept and make it more convincing. Good luck!
@ Archmage: Thanks for your compliment!
The problem with current regulations of economy is that it that these regulation systems aren’t the workings of a real participatory democracy. Representative democracies can get corrupted by lobby interests (and they actually do).
Those are really difficult questions. I would go for a system, which places the will of people at the center. I do think about a completely integral system called Thelemanomics, which is based on will and unifies economy, politics, ethics, etc. harmonically. But at the current stage it’s just a fancy sci-fi fantasy. A similar system (or at least some effects of it) will be presented in my current story project, when it’s finished.
It seems that there is some real demand for my ideas about alternative economic systems. I will try to post more about that topic, and explain my ideas is more detail, soon.
Arch,
I was not bringing up a solution to anything. Merely trying to point out to Meta where I believe he’s missing the forest for the trees and while doing that, laying out how I see things developing from here.
I decided to go ahead and paste some stream-of-consciousness-style writing from my personal journal. My apologies if this is based on misconceptions about what Zeitgeist or Venus Project actually are.
ooh, Metafire posted a blog post reviewing Zeitgeist and the Venus project. I had been meaning to do that, but so far the only comments I had were that their websites let you donate money to the project, but didn’t let you get involved in any other way. Oh, and they didn’t actually have a plan for how to get from our current world to the scenario they’re describing.
oh, and in one of their videos, I liked the clip of the naked guy running on the treadmill
and yeah, the idea of a resource-based economy seemed kinda… silly…
ooh, that’s the comment I wanted to make: they’re talking about a new resource-based economy in the same video where they’re talking about resources becoming so abundant that noone would ever need to trade them anyway. They’re advocating switching to a resource-based economy that would only last for a decade or two before needing to be replaced with something else anyway.
and yeah, the “resource-based economy” totally ignores the possibility of people valuing services. The idea is totally borken.
I’m still undecided about whether these projects even qualify as a “nice try”. I don’t think there are any useful ideas that could be salvaged from these projects, because, well, the video consisted entirely of saying what they think is wrong with our current society, and talking about how nice things could be in the future, but not providing ANY advice about how to get there. They mention the idea of a resource-based economy, but that idea is totally broken, and they don’t even make any suggestions about how the system could be bootstrapped, even if it was a good idea! So, um, yeah. Venus Project: FAIL! Zeitgeist Movement: FAIL!
oh, and I also agree with Metafire that technocracy isn’t a magical solution to everything. Though it does sound like a good idea if the people in charge of making laws about technology actually understood the technology… unlike our current system. (“It’s a series of tubes!”)
> find a meaningful purpose to his or her life?
Oh, certainly not in having to work for others, damn.
That statement about “meaningful purpose” seems not to make much sense.
> elites who manage the system
> cannot decide about the paradigms
In the best-case, if there’s a way to prove that something is better than current paradigms, then that something will be implemented.
(since tehnocracy is slightly more of general idea than proposed implementation, different possible systems can be called technocratical too).
Oh, and I also think that almost all political problems are made-up and/or are results of mass [social] immaturity.
* There’s also a point about augmenting values, but I lost details somewhere people really want
Oh, I’d still claim that people really want not what they claim they want… But that’s a separate subject
(that also goes for “some people might still prefer short-term gains over long-term survival” there)
> applied to goods which aren’t scarce
Actually, basical economical theory says something different about abundant goods.
But I’d still agree that there’s artificial scarcity on at least some levels (like, minimized research on automation, maybe?), and that intellectual property rights are massively insane.
> slavery is a more special phenomenon
I’m a slave of the needs of my body! And everything else is just resulting from that.
(plus some are slaves of their desires, but — point on immaturity that way ↑)
For me, the biggest objections to the Zeitgeist are that the Z does not go far enough to create social revolution. Most of the objections you raise are easily answered. The original technocratic movement proposed a monetary unit based on energy, issued in equal numbers to every adult on an annual basis. People consume what they want, and that consumption is tracked. Buckminster Fuller supported this idea. With regard to keeping the system responsible, this is easy done by affording a right of veto to a majority of the adults on earth, in each continent, in each nation state, in each state or province, and in each municipality. This of course also requires that the technocracy be consitutionally bound to complete transparency in all of its projects and policies. Thus there is no technocratic fallacy. While such a system would be highly bureaucratic, computerization would alleviate much of the bureaucracy and technocracy really does require supercomputers of the type that are just now coming online. I think it is quite creditable to argue that global technocracy is the logical end state of industrialization itself. As for services, I really do think the technocracy must be restricted in the libertarian sense to a minarchy, redefining the latter as the minimum level of government required to build and maintain the physical infrastructure required to maximize human life. Just to give one example, the technocracy would build the communications grid but it would not determine the content, and indeed would not be allowed to determine the content. Thus, paradoxically, a technocracy is libertarian in the Ayn Randian sense yet Rand would repudiate the technocracy as intrusive government. Yet there is no reason to assume that a collective infrastructure cannot be rationally designed to maximize human liberty, so Rand is wrong. Of course, the devil is in the details and as a legal structure the technocracy would have to be properly set forth with adequate monitoring just as our society has.
What you say here sounds more reasonable than most of what I heard about technocracy. Using an energy based currency might be a good idea in general, even outside a technocratic concept. If the point of technocracy is just creating an optimal infrastructure and basic economic security, then it might work out fine, if it ever gets implemented sensibly. The libertarian version you mention sounds pretty fine. It would not contradict democracy, alternative currencies and free enterprise (although in the areas where the technocracy is active it would be hard to compete).
“The original technocratic movement proposed a monetary unit based on energy, issued in equal numbers to every adult on an annual basis.” So, this would be some kind of basic income. I am very much in favor of that.
“[...]affording a right of veto to a majority of the adults on earth, in each continent, in each nation state, in each state or province, and in each municipality.” Sounds good. Would make a lot of protests unneccesary.
“This of course also requires that the technocracy be consitutionally bound to complete transparency in all of its projects and policies.” It is really frightening that people accept a government that is not 100% transparent. This shows that our current society is still established by top-down force. I am absolutely for transparency! Bring it on!
“For me, the biggest objections to the Zeitgeist are that the Z does not go far enough to create social revolution.” Creating social revolution is very difficult. Using social media more aggressively might help. As far as I see there are several ways in which a technocratic system could be established:
1. By establishing a global network of technocratic parties.
2. By creating a cartel of companies and big corporations which implement technocratic principles. (It might work fine, if there were tax cuts for companies who really cooperate with the technocracy.)
3. By building new independent technocratic nations, for example as seasteading project.
4. By convincing leaders of not actually democratic states that real technocracy is totally great.
5. By turning technocracy into a MMOG and letting the technocracy game govern the infrastructure economy.
“I think it is quite creditable to argue that global technocracy is the logical end state of industrialization itself.”
In which sense would such a development be logical? Which force would make it possible to overcome encrusted systems which mainly work for their own particular advantage?
Here are some recent critical reviews of the Zeitgeist ideas:
http://www.thefulfillment.org/chatlogs/020511Zeitgeist.htm
http://ivysunkiller.wordpress.com/2011/02/06/the-venus-project-vs-reality/