1. Zeitgeist – A Critique

2. What it gets right
• There is much corruption in the world today
• There is much waste
• There is evil in the world today
• The monetary system has become corrupt
• The wedding of force and market is evil

3. What it gets wrong
• Money itself is not in the least inherently evil
• Neither are markets if free
• Competition is not a dirty word
• Humans are not infinitely malleable products
of their environment
• Recommends centralized planning and control
– Deadly failure

4. Overall tone
• Endless harping on what is wrong in most lurid terms
– Endless assertions about cause with no proof
– Endless tirades no matter what the subject of the same points
• Claims of “Scientific Method”
– No actual use of such
– Claims it is useable for all problems, goals, issues, desires
• You do not know what is good for you
– The tech elite and the computers will
• Life will be wonderful but
– You have no economic freedom
– No property. Use of money and even barter forbidden
– No vote as the machines know best

5. Zeitgeist and Venus Project
• Zeitgeist is activist arm for Venus Project
– Series of movies
• Effective in some ways and raise awareness about some
real evils such as way money system works now,
corrupt governments, corrupt corporations
• Very preachy and one-sided throughout
– ZeitGeist Movement Activist Orientation Guide is
cleaner exposition

6. On markets
• Stresses that markets exist to make capitalists rich
– Classical marxist view
• Totally misses
– Voluntary nature of markets
– Freedom to produce values and trade them
– Essential place of money as means of trade
• Money does not have to be debt
• That most evils of market cited are actually evils of mixing
government in economic realm
– That government is profoundly anti-free market
• Claims
– Money and markets are inherently evil and to be
abolished. Ditto all prices

7. On Money
• Presents money only as debt
• Ignores
– Money as fungible means of exchange
• No exchange only distribution by the central computer
– Money as vote
• What do I value more and how much more from set of choices on
smallest and largest scales
– Money as feedback
– Money as quantification of relative value
– Money as objective limit bounding desires to means
• Money is the means of free trade
– Uncoerced voluntary exchange of value for value

8. What is profit?
• According the Zeitgeist it is unmitigated evil
– There is evil profit of mere accumulation of tokens rather than
increase of value
– But claims ALL profit is evil
• Claims history show it is all evil (contrary to facts)
• Claims even duality itself is due to the profit motive (?!)
• But real profit is creating more value than was consumed in the
creation
– A net gain for everyone
– The creation of new wealth – increase of value
• Profit is whether an endeavor produces value greater than it
consumes
• Profit is utterly essential if you want any increase in well-being,
happiness, opportunity

9. On Price
• Zeitgeist claims prices should only be based on
– Relative scarcity
– Amount of human labor involved
• Claims that through automation and advancement
– Scarcity and human labor go away so everything must be free
• Price is actually determined by how much something is valued relative to how
much other things are valued.
– There is no such thing as an ability to create anything and everything that can be dreamed of
in any arbitrary amount
– Price is essential to comparison of values / demands against costs and resource limits
• Maybe Zeitgeist will work on the other side of MNT
– But even there matter/energy and various knowledge/skills are not infinite
– And this is certainly not where we are
– “partial basis of this manual is to show how, through the advent of Technology and the
elimination of Scarcity, 99% of all economic theory is now an outdated and irrelevant practice”

10. On Economy and Market
• Only acknowledges
– Employer (owner/producer)
• Claims these profit by producing shoddy goods, harming consumers,
destroying environment, enslavement and exploitation of employees,
duping consumers
– Consumer
• Taught to want things they don’t need
• Taught to mindlessly consume
– Employee
• Claims these are slaves chained by debt
• Ignores any free market agreement with employers
• Just a tad biased..
– No mention of inventor, financer / investor, marketing, sales,
infrastructure and those that provide it

11. On Scarcity
• Claims that scarcity is bunk
– "recognizes the earth is abundant with resources”
• Claims appearance not is a gimmick to justify profits or due to the excesses of capitalism
– Despite fact that economic freedom raised the standard of living of humanity to unprecedented levels in very
short time
– Calls for centralized database of all resources
• Centralized decisions by “scientific method” done by computer as to how to best use all resources
– Claims that if you don’t think so then your environment has tragically conditioned you to reach
that conclusion
• This is Dialectical Materialism – that there is bourgeoisie truth and proletarian truth, that truth is
dependent on conditioning and not objective.
• It leads straight to a call for reeducation and suppressing “reactionary” elements
• In the real world
– Many resources are in fact scarce relative to demand
– Many skills are scarce relative to demand
– It takes actual work with real cost to produce most things
– It takes actual work to get those things to the people that desire them

12. On Human Nature
• Zeitgeist Moving Forward and other materials
– Attempt to disvalue claims to human nature due to evolutionary psychology and our genotype
– Says explicitly that the nature of humans is due to social factors only
– Says that humans are conditioned to think and act as they do
– Says that humans have no particular distinguishing skills or attributes from one another
justifying economic differences
• Claims all human skills can conceivably be done by machine as its argument
– Says that humans should not decide matters of any importance
• Instead they should be decided by scientific method by computers we don’t have or no how to build
– Says we will all be happy
• Without economic freedom
• Without power to decide much of anything
• At the sweet mercy of the centralized system to answer our requests as it alone knows is best for us
• Ignoring human nature is very convenient
– You can disown those who disagree as poorly conditioned
– You don’t have to answer any arguments that your proposals are incompatible with human
nature

13. Current and near term situation
• Says automation will displace all human labor
– Perhaps some day but this has been claimed since the cotton gin
– Thus all humans must get everything good for them free
• With something / someone else making the decision as to what they can have
• Points rightly to the economic crisis
– Sometimes identifies accurate causative elements
– But then jumps to old marxist like conclusions without justification
• Claims we are destroying the environment utterly
– This was claimed many many times in the past too, especially in the 70s
• Claims only junking most everything in economic and political realms
especially provides any hope
– Is much too busy castigating and propagandizing to be bothered with pesky
details of how things can work

14. On Energy
• Claim that only renewable energy is worth pursuing
– Many out of context upper bound energy system capacities used to
claim energy is abundant and easy in renewable realm
– Standard claim that greedy market system keeps us from having
endlessly abundant energy now
• Totally unsupported by any real analysis of what it takes to exploit this energy
effectively
• total disregard for nuclear, clean coal technologies
• Claim of no real versus manufactured need for oil, coal and so on
– All those evil money grubbing business people tricking us again..
• Unending claims that we would have abundance if it weren’t for those greedy
business and banking people
• "The fact is, energy is nothing but abundant on this planet.”
– I would like to see the proof on that if you don’t mind.

15. Movement Methods
– Scientific Method
• Thrown around a lot without question as to what it is
and isn’t and where it is and is not applicable
– Automation
– Computers making all decisions
– Values
• Conditioned by environment
• “only relevant values are those that work to improve
society vs those that hinder it”
– Determined by whom/what?
– What of other values?

16. On Values
• Values are conditioned
• Legitimate values are what they (or the computer) decide benefits
the kind of society they believe should exist
• There is no certainty of knowledge
– But they will start from the certainty they should abolish much of your
freedom and autonomy and disown your values
• "Our approach to social evolution begins with our values. Our
values are combinations of personal reflections on our acquired
knowledge, coupled with the traditionalized, cultural
indoctrinations we are born into.As time moves forward, our values
change. Sadly, most of the values people have today come from a
social system that is largely out of date in terms of its relationship
to modern science and technology."
– Perhaps you need to be re-educated, comrade!

17. Resource based economy
• Requires global survey and computer database of resources
• "A Resource-Based Economy utilizes existing resources rather than
commerce. All goods and services are available without the use of
currency, credit, barter or any form of debt or servitude.”
– No property, money, credit, barter -> no trade whatsoever. No economic
freedom.
• “Recognizes the earth is abundant with resources”
• “Resource based economy will need to be global by its nature”
– Remember when failure of communism was attributed to not being universal?
• Talk of maximizing production
– Of what when there is no market determining what is needed?
• Will have everyone log in to computer with their needs and desires.
– Maximized with what feedback, quantification mechanism without markets or
money? Or even votes?

18. Steps to Goal
• Survey (and presumably control) resources of planet
– How is this monitored / used?
• “real-time feedback to central computer of all relevant changes and problems”
– Right…
• Decide what needs to be produced
– You don’t know what you “really need”
– All products must be as advanced as possible and built to last forever
• Why?
• How is the decision as to what is needed made exactly?
• Optimize production
– How with no visible feedback mechanisms?
– Call for lots and lots of automation and appeals to future magic technology
• Produced by whom and why?
– Claim that everything “can last your lifetime without repair”
• So much for unlimited lifespans and for keeping up with accelerating change..
• Distribution
– Proposes you sign on to the computer and describe what you want and the computer figures
out whether it has anything like that or wishes to build anything like that and whether you
should get one. If all that is ok then it tells you where to pick it up or when it will be delivered.

19. On Decision making
• "In a Resource-Based Economy, people do not make decisions; they arrive
at them through the use of advanced technological tools that incorporate
The Scientific Method.”
• "Because of this, there is little reason for traditional opinions in the solving
of any problem, for our technical insight can now arrive at most answers
using The Scientific Method along with all known variables relative to the
problem.”
– Claims all problems are technical
– Your opinions and values are irrelevant
– need I say more on the obvious breach with reality and the obvious relegating
of humans to creatures that own nothing, have no freedom of association, can
trade for nothing, cannot make any decisions relevant to their lives?
• "Government and the concept of the “State” will eventually be outgrown
entirely and replaced by an objective system of global resource
management and technological organization.”
– The state shall wither away. Where have I heard that before?

20. Dream Machine Imaginary Friend
• A central database containing catalogs of every known material and
technical understanding for problem solving and invention.
• An earth wide autonomic nervous system, with environmental sensors in
all relevant areas of the planet, generating “Industrial Electronic
Feedback” regarding resources, operations and other environmental
issues.
• Interdisciplinary Teams of technicians oversee the system and orient
research projects to continue growth, efficiency and social evolution.
– Evolution under what pressures/feedback? Team of elites when earlier
claimed no humans had any special skills.
• "In a Resource-Based, Global Economy, where “industry” and
“government” are combined into a CybernatedSystem that incorporates
advanced problem solving database computers, coupled with vast
planetary wide observation sensors, the traditional concepts of politics ,
elections and the like have no relevance or basis."