I've entitled this "Social Pathology."
I decided to use the metaphor of disease
to describe the current state of social affairs
and the trends it foreshadows and perpetuates.
I was first introduced to this idea
of relating social state to a cellular state
by a man named John McMurtry
who wrote a book called "The Cancer Stage of Capitalism."
The rationale is pretty simple. Just as human beings
have to deal with pathogens invading and harming their life system
so too does the social system we all share.
Of course, these societal diseases are not generated
by ways of physical germs or the like.
Rather, they come in the form
of presupposed principles of preference
cultural "memes" that transfer from one to another based on values
and hence, belief systems.
These "memes" or patterns of perspective and behavior
are what eventually result from or comprise
the cultural manifestations around us
such as the ideas of democracy
Republicans, Democrats, the American Dream, etc.
In Chapter One we will examine the symptoms
and hence diagnose the current stage of disease we are in.
Then in Chapter Two we will establish a prognosis
meaning what can we expect from the future
as the current pathogenic patterns continue.
And finally, in Chapter Three, we will discuss treatment
for our current state of sickness
and this is where the concept of a Resource-Based Economy
will be initially examined.
However, as an introduction to this
I am first going to describe what I call the "invisible prison".
This is the closed, intellectual feedback system
that consistently slows or even stops
new socially altering concepts from coming to fruition.
[It] stops progress. Let me explain.
The social order, as we know it, is created out of ideas
either directly or as a systemic consequence.
In other words, somebody somewhere did something
which generated a group interest, which then led to the implementation
of a specific social component, either in a physical form
philosophical form, or both.
Once a given set of ideas are entrusted
by a large enough group of people, it becomes an institution.
And once that institution is made dominant in some way
while existing for a certain period of time
that institution can then be considered an establishment.
Institutional establishments are simply social traditions
given the illusion of permanence.
In turn, the more established they become
the more cultural influence they tend to have on us
including our values, and hence, our identities and perspectives.
It is not an exaggeration to say that the established institutions
governing a person's environment is no less than a conditioning platform
to program that person with a specific set of values
required to maintain the establishment.
Hence, we're going to call these "established value programs".
I have found the analogy of computer programming
to be a great way to frame this point.
While there is always a debate about genetics
and environmental influence which
Roxanne Meadows will go into at length later in the program
it's very easy to understand in the context of values
meaning what you think is important and not important
that information influences or conditioning
is coming from the world around you.
Make no mistake, every intellectual concept
which each one of us finds merit with
is the result of a cultural information influence
one way or another.
The environment is a self-perpetuating programming process
and just like designing a software program for your computer
each human being is, advertently and inadvertently
programmed into their world view.
To continue the analogy, the human brain is a piece of hardware
and the environment around you constitutes the programming team
which creates the values and perspective.
Every word you know has been taught to you one way or another.
Every concept and belief you have
is a result of this same influence.
Jacque Fresco once asked me
"How much of you is you?"
The answer is kind of a paradox
for either nothing is me, or everything is me
when it comes to the information I understand and act upon.
Information is a serial process, meaning the only way
that a human being can come up with any idea
is through taking in dependent information
that allows that idea to be realized.
We appear to be culturally programmed from the moment
we come into this world to the moment we die
and I'm not going to drill in it much more than that.
However, consequently, the cultural attributes
we maintain as important values
are most often the ones that are reinforced by the external culture.
I'm going to say that again.
The most dominant cultural attributes maintained
are the ones that are reinforced by your environment.
If you are born into a society which rewards competition over collaboration
then you most likely will adopt those values in order to survive.
The point is, we are essentially bio-chemical machines.
While the integrity of our machine-processing power
and memory is contingent, in part, on genetics
the source of our actions come fundamentally
from the ideas and experiences installed
on our mental hardware by the world around us.
However, our biological computer, the human mind
has an evolutionarily-installed operating system
with some seemingly difficult tendencies built in
which tends to limit our objectivity
and, hence, our rational thought process.
This comes in the form of emotional inclinations.
You know, I'm sure many people here have heard the phrase "Be objective!"
No human being can be fully objective.
That's one of the important things I learned, actually, from Mr. Fresco.
Therefore, there's a very common propensity for us humans
to find something that works for our needs
given the social structure, and then to hold on to it for dear life
regardless of new conflicting information which might rationally expect
a logical change to occur.
Change tends to be feared, for it upsets our associations.
And, by the way, when it comes to maintaining income
in the monetary system, you see this propensity in full force
which I will talk about a lot more later.
Therefore, any time someone dares to present an idea outside of
or contrary to the establishment programming
the reaction is often a condemning of the idea as blasphemy
or undermining, or a conspiracy, or simply erroneous.
For example, in the academic world investigation often becomes confined
to self-referring circles of discourse:
closed feedback loops which assume that the foundational assumptions
of their schools of thought are empirical
and only these experts, as defined by their established credentials
are considered viable authorities
therein often dominating influence over the public opinion.
This is a doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis
and please excuse my lack of Hungarian pronunciation
but he was a physician who lived in the mid 1800's
who performed childbirths.
Through a series of events, he realized a pattern
that there was a relationship with the transfer of disease
and the fact that the doctors of the times
never washed their hands after performing autopsies.
The doctors of the time would handle dead bodies
in the lower elements of the hospitals and then they would go up
and they would perform childbirths without washing their hands.
So, this doctor, realizing this pattern
he started to tell his colleagues about this.
He said "You should wash your hands before doing this
before performing any type of surgery or childbirth
especially after handling a dead body."
He was laughed at. He was laughed at and ignored.
He published papers and they were dismissed and ridiculed.
And after many years of trying this issue, he was finally committed
to a mental institution, where he died.
It was many years after his death when Louis Pasteur
developed the germ theory of disease
that his observations were finally understood
and people realized what a horrible mistake had been made.
In the words of John McMurtry, professor of philosophy in Canada
"In the last dark age, one can search
the inquiries of this era's preserved thinkers
from Augustine to Ockham and fail to discover
a single page of criticism of the established social framework
however rationally insupportable feudal bondage, absolute paternalism
divine right of kings, and the rest may be."
In the current final order, is it so different?
Can we see in any media, or even university press
a paragraph of clear unmasking
of the global regime that condemns
a third of all children to malnutrition
with more food than enough available?
In such an order, thought becomes indistinguishable from propaganda.
Only one doctrine is speakable, and a priest caste of its experts
prescribe the necessities and obligations to all.
Social consciousness is incarcerated
within the role of a kind of ceremonial logic
operating entirely within the received framework
of an exhaustively-prescribed regulatory apparatus
protecting the privileges of the privileged.
Methodical censorship triumphs in the guise of scholarly rigor
and the only room left for searching thought
becomes the game of competing rationalizations."
People tend not to criticize the social order
because they are bound within it.
We are running a thought program
which has been installed on our mental hardware
which inherently controls our frame of reference.
To use a different analogy, it's like they're in a game
and the idea of questioning the integrity of the game itself rarely occurs.
In fact, members of society often become so indoctrinated
by their socially acceptable norms, that each person's very meaning
is framed by the dominant established value system
and the interpretation of new information
is consciously, or even sub-consciously, prefiltered
to be consistent with their prior biases.
Now, this basic idea understood
let's hone our focus
and briefly consider this mind-lock phenomenon as you could call it
in the context of economics
specifically, market economics.
Actually, a more accurate term at this stage would be 'economic theology'.
For, as this presentation will explore
the majority of people on this planet
not only have no idea how they are being affected negatively
by the market economy at large, they actually, on average
hold a steadfast commitment to its principles
based on nothing more than the traditional indoctrination.
I got an email once that said to me
"If you're against the free market, you're against freedom."
(Laughter)
And naturally, I shuddered at this state of mind control
that the dominant established orthodoxy has successfully imposed.
Of course, this is how power is maintained and has been maintained
by the dominant established orthodoxies since the beginning of time.
And the trick, again, is to condition people so thoroughly
into the established value systems, that any thought of an alternative
is inherently ruled out without critical examination.
And to show how deeply pervasive this phenomenon is
you will notice that virtually all the activist organizations
in the environmental, social, and political movements of the day
always exclude the market system itself
as a determinant of harmful effects.
It doesn't even occur to them.
Instead, they focus on individuals and certain groups
or corrupt corporations
and while it is needed
in a per-case basis to target problematic areas
it avoids the mechanism which is essentially creating the problem.
This is the fatal flaw of what's happening in the so-called activist community today.
And, as will be firmly and clearly established
over the course of this presentation
the greatest destroyer of ecology;
the greatest source of waste and pollution;
the greatest purveyor of violence, war, crime
inhumanity, poverty, and social distortion;
the greatest generator of social and personal neurosis
mental disorders, depression, anxiety;
and the greatest source of social paralysis
stopping us from moving into new methodologies
for global sustainability and hence progress on this planet
is not some government. It's not some legislation.
It's not some rogue corporation or monopoly or cartel.
It's not some flaw of human nature.
It is, in fact, the economic system itself
at its very foundation.
The market system, monetary system, free market
capitalist structure, whatever you want to call it
is not only the source of some of the greatest
social problems we face today
it is also setting us up
for what could be called the terminal stage of this disease
where the pathogenic social value cancer
has mutated and multiplied to a point
where we are now faced with nothing less
than the death or collapse of modern civilization as we know it.
Now please understand
I'm not a doom's day theorist.
I'm not here looking for general knee-jerk emotional reactions
to say it's the end of the world.
It doesn't take a genius to see where the trends are going
the trends that the media won't talk about
and given the pattern of political, economic
and environmental negligence and abuse
we are on a collision course, which I will explain as we continue.
Are there solutions to these problems? Yes, there are.
But they are so far outside of the status quo
and a threat to those in power, both politically and economically
that they are just outright dismissed as irrational and absurd.
The self-appointed guardians of the status quo won't even hear it
because it's far outside of their reference and identity.
Here's a few examples of some of the things that are currently happening.
And there's many more. These are just a few that have popped up
in the mainstream media.
This is where The Zeitgeist Movement comes in. I'm really sorry to say
we can no longer rely on government institutions
to steer us in the right direction.
Every government on this planet is locked
into an economically-oriented social program
which is self-serving, unsustainable
and destructive to one degree or another.
The possibility of a smooth transition
into a new enlightened social design
which does not have the negative by-products
which I'm going to talk about is extremely limited
given the options made available in the current order:
meaning the legal system, the political system, etc.
Likewise, we can no longer endure
the profit-driven ethos of the corporate and financial powers
which control all of our precious resources on the planet
resources we all need for survival.
Society today is sick and the illness permeates all life systems within it
and I see The Zeitgeist Movement as the immune system
of the social world, if you will.
[applause]
Thank you. Chapter one: Diagnosis.
Before I begin this analysis of the social condition
we need to first consider the problem of value
and cultural relativism.
People today tend to think that their ideas are equal to others' ideas
regardless of supportive information. This obsession with opinion
has created a frame of reference for so many people today
which has no physical referent
where evidence becomes inconvenient
and ultimately, people think that everything is equal.
And you get this argument a lot. I'm sure you've all experienced this.
It's a very, very specific point.
Everyone is not equal in their opinion.
It's impossible, as quaint
and convenient as such a concept might seem.
The ultimate question becomes "What actually deserves belief?"
What is important to everyone on this planet
and how do we maintain our well-being, both personally
and socially, in a sustainable way?
What is the indisputable common ground
which can all be agreed on in a world of Christians
Muslims, Capitalists, Socialists, Atheists, Anarchists
Scientologists, Republicans?
What can we all agree on?
Well, here's one thing that's universal:
being healthy versus being sick.
Being healthy is a preferred value preference, you could say.
Normal versus pathological states
hence healthy versus diseased states
provide an incontrovertible value basis
for all individuals and societies.
Virtually all people in all societies prefer to be alive
and healthy, last I checked.
There is no cultural relativism about whether having good food to eat
staying away from cancer, or having unpolluted water to drink
is a good value to have.
Therefore, our analysis of the health of society
is not going to be based on GDP
consumer price index, the state of the stock market, economic growth
unemployment levels or employment levels, free trade agreements
or any other commonly referenced economic attribute
used to claim that society is "improving" or "growing".
Instead, we will examine things that actually matter
such as rates of disease, poverty
social capital, trust
conflicts, corruption, planetary depletion, pollution
murder rates, life expectancy, educational performance
imprisonment rates, drug and alcohol abuse, mental illness, etc.
These are things that actually matter.
So let's begin.
Contrary to popular belief
evidence now shows that our early human ancestors
which predate the Neolithic Revolution
really didn't live in a state of perpetual conflict and extreme scarcity
as many anthropologists, early on, had assumed.
In fact, Hunter-Gatherer societies were a very unique arrangement
immersed in both a restrictive
yet self-regulating environmental paradigm.
Before the advent of agriculture, there was very little control
over what was available: You didn't have agriculture.
You couldn't control the environment.
So, what happened is a natural balance was in order.
And the societies themselves seemed to reflect this balance
by having, in fact, non-hierarchical, non-competitive
leaderless social structures.
In fact, it has been found that their value systems
their social values were essentially based
on equality, altruism and sharing.
And they literally forbid upstart-ism, dominance
aggression and egoism.
We know this today because of anthropological research done
on remaining hunter-gatherer societies around the world
such as the Piraha, out of Brazil.
Amazingly it appears (and this is an important point
for anyone that tells you that the current system is natural)
that for well over 90% of the human species' existence
on this planet as we know it
we were within social organizations that did not use money
that did not have hierarchy, and they even had
"counter-dominance strategies" where the majority
would work together to shut down any individual
that was trying to gain power and control.
Pretty much the reverse of what we have today.
The Neolithic Revolution changed all of that.
It provided human beings with an ability to control their environment more intently.
The sustenance of life could now be cultivated essentially at will.
Now, while this advent would appear as a profound benefit to all
it also introduced some pesky social problems
as a result of conditioning attributes which we still deal with today.
In the view of anthropologist and Professor of Neurology
at Stanford University, Dr. Robert Sapolsky
"Hunter-Gatherers have thousands of wild sources of food to subsist on.
Agriculture changed all of that, generating an overwhelming reliance
on a few dozen food sources.
Agriculture allowed for the stockpiling of surplus resources
and thus, inevitably, the unequal stockpiling of them
stratification of society and the invention of classes.
Thus, it has allowed for the invention of poverty."
Since this dramatic change in the structure of human society
the creation of imbalances has continued
and social stratification and income inequality
are now staples of the modern world, as we all know.
In fact, many who are unfamiliar with human history
would probably consider these attributes again to be part of some
natural human order. It's so pervasive today.
We have gone from food cultivation, to commodity bartering
to gold exchange, to metal-backed certificate exchange
to fiat currency.
We went from a system with values reflective
of true natural processes
to a system of values based on certificates of ownership
traded for income on their own, virtually...
I would say not even virtually, completely
decoupled from physical resources.
And we have come from a world based on necessity
and social drive for preservation and sustainability
to a world based on strategic manipulation
pointless materialism
and an obsession with property and ownership.
In the words of historian, philosopher David Hume
"The first man who, after enclosing a piece of ground
took it into his head to say "This is mine"
and found people simple enough to believe him
was the real founder of civil society.
How crimes, wars, murders
how many misfortunes and horrors would that man have saved the species
who pulling up stakes or filling up the ditches
should have cried to his fellows "Beware of listening to this impostor.
You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the Earth belong to us all
and the Earth itself, to nobody."
Moreover, scarcity
is now a driving force for commerce.
In our system, scarcity equals profit.
The less there is of something, the more it can be valued in terms of money.
In other words, abundance is a negative thing in a profit system.
In the words of anthropologist Marshall Sahlins
"The market industrial system institutes scarcity
in a manner completely unparalleled
and to a degree nowhere else approximated
where production and distribution are arranged through the behavior of prices
and all livelihoods depend on getting and spending.
Insufficiency of material means
becomes the explicit, calculable
starting point of all economic activity."
Likewise, I would like to point out, as a simple aside
that the money supply in America, at all times
has less in value than the outstanding transactions required.
In other words, there isn't and never will be
in the American money supply or most other money supplies on the planet
enough money in existence at any one time
to cover the outstanding transactions within the economy.
Money is created out of debt, through loans.
And interest is charged for those loans
whether it is government bonds or a personal home equity loan.
If every single debt was called in right now in our economy
there would be an enormous amount of money
that is literally impossible to pay back in domestic currency.
This is a central reason why stratification and inequality
is literally built into our system:
the inherent scarcity of the money supply itself.
Imagine that.
In this system, bankruptcy isn't some irregular by-product
that negligent people just happen to stumble into
it is an inevitable built-in attribute.
It's a game of musical chairs. I hope that's clear.
In the words of economist Bernard Lietaer
a great quote
"Greed and competition are not the result
of immutable human temperament.
Greed and fear of scarcity are in fact being continuously created
and amplified as a direct result of the kind of money we are using.
We can produce more than enough food to feed everybody
but there is clearly not enough money to pay for it all.
The scarcity is in our national currencies.
In fact, the job of the central banks
is to create and maintain that scarcity.
The direct consequence is that we have to fight with each other in order to survive."
That last sentence really defines so much.
"The direct consequence is that we have to fight with each other in order to survive."
The consequence of these mechanisms is, again, extreme social imbalance
and hence, social stratification.
With this understood, let's now consider
the state of income inequality within the world.
In 2005 the jolly folks at Citigroup
put out a memo to its wealthiest clients
in regard to the state of what they called the "Plutonomy"
and the opening summary on this is very, very clear.
"The world is divided into two blocks: the Plutonomy and the rest.
The US, the UK, and Canada are the key Plutonomies
economies powered by the wealthy."
A Plutonomy is defined as a society where the majority of the wealth
is, of course, controlled by an ever-shrinking minority.
And as such, the economic growth of that society
becomes dependent on the fortunes
of the wealthy minority and not the rest of the people.
Keep that in mind.
They then go and ask the question "What are the drivers of Plutonomy?"
They state "Disruptive technology
driven productivity gains, creative financial innovation
capitalist-friendly cooperative governments
an international dimension of immigrants
and overseas conquests invigorating wealth creation
*cough* SLAVE LABOR *cough* [Laughter]
the rule of law and patenting inventions.
Often these wealth waves involve great complexity
exploited best by the rich and educated of the time."
The basic point of this document is the understanding
that the average consumer is essentially meaningless to the equity markets.
For the super-wealthy, trading amongst themselves
account for the state of the economy overall.
They state "In a Plutonomy there's no such animal as 'the US consumer'
or 'the UK consumer' or, indeed, 'the Russian consumer'.
There are rich consumers, few in number, but disportionate
in the gigantic slice of income and consumption they take.
There are the rest, the 'non-rich', the multitudinous many
but only accounting for surprisingly small bites of the national pie."
They continue "This is why, for example
we worry less about the impact of high oil prices on aggregate consumption.
Clearly high oil prices are a burden for most parts of our communities.
However, without making any moral judgment
income inequality, being what it is
just makes this group less relevant to the aggregate data.
The conclusion? We should worry less about the average consumer
say the 50th percentile, what they're doing
when that consumer is (we think) less relevant to the aggregate data
than how the wealthy feel and what they are doing.
This is simply a case of mathematics, not morality."
You've got to hand it to them for being honest.
Now, before I go any further, let me clarify a bit.
Plutonomy, as the Citigroup documents describe
and these are very long-winded documents
is of course the state of extreme imbalance, so extreme in certain countries
that the investment community has little regard
for the average person's consumption habits.
In other words, the preference mutation
has occurred as a result of the financial incentive system
where the consumption patterns of the general population
become nearly obsolete in the interest of the wealthy
where they, the wealthy elite, the Plutonomy, can now just trade
amongst themselves and forget about the lower classes.
In other words, so much money is being moved around between the rich
that the public consumption patterns are nearly irrelevant.
This, of course, makes sense when you think about
the methods used to gauge health of the economy
which are supposed to be relating to everyone.
GDP is basically calculated
by how much money people spend or make
on a given good or service.
So, using the example of net worth
if you have the top 1% controlling
35% of the financial wealth in America
with the next 19% controlling 50%
leaving the bottom 80% with 15%
you have 20% of the American population controlling 85% of the money.
And this is what Citigroup figured out.
This very small section of the population is what actually powers everything.
What this means is that the financial system has little incentive, inherently
to care about the actions or well-being of 80% of the public.
And since we all know that the financial system
is the most powerful influence on most governments in the world
especially the US government, you begin to see that the only concern
the ruling class has with regard to the majority of the population
is merely to keep us complacent enough so a backlash does not occur.
And I'm not projecting this. Citigroup
makes us very aware of this, explicitly, when they state
"We see the biggest threat to Plutonomy as coming from a rise
in political demands to reduce income inequality
spread the wealth more evenly and challenge forces such as globalization
which have benefited profit and wealth growth."
But, don't worry, they are not too concerned.
"Our conclusion? The 3 levers governments and societies
could pull on to end Plutonomy are benign.
Property rights are generally still intact
taxation policies neutral to favorable
and globalization is keeping the supply of labor in surplus
acting as a brake on wage inflation."
They summarize:
"The heart of our Plutonomy thesis: that the rich
are the dominant source of income, wealth and demand in plutonomy countries
such as the UK, US, Canada and Australia
countries that have an economically liberal approach to wealth creation.
We believe the actions of the rich and the proportion of rich people
in an economy helps explain many of the nasty conundrums
and fears that have vexed our equity clients recently
such as global imbalances or why high oil prices
haven't destroyed demand.
Plutonomy, we think, explains these problems away
and tells us not to worry about them.
Secondly, we believe the rich are going to keep getting richer in coming years.
As capitalists (the rich) get an even bigger share of GDP
as a result, principally, of globalization.
We expect the global pool of labor in developing economies
to keep wage inflation in check and profit margins rising
good for the wealth of capitalists
relatively bad for developed market unskilled/outsource-able labor.
This bodes well for companies selling to or servicing the rich."
Sorry to pull you through all of that long-winded text
but I hope it settles in what people at the top
are really thinking about behind the financial system.
And they are likely right. The rich are going to get richer.
The current economic decline that we are in now
really doesn't mean anything to the top 20%.
It's the 80% that continue to suffer.
But hey, who cares? Evidently the top 20% power the economy anyway
and I'm not even going to go into what this means in regard to
our naive assumptions of democracy in the modern world.
In fact, in the words of former Supreme Court Justice
Louis D. Brandeis (I believe is how you pronunciate it)
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth
concentrated in the hands of the few, but we cannot have both."
Now, I bring all of this up as an introduction
to what we are going to talk about in regards to social health.
Coupled with this, however, I think a few stats should be digested.
In 2007, chief executives of the largest 365 US companies
received well over 500 times the pay of the average employee.
In many of these top companies the chief executive is paid more in one day
than the average worker makes in a year.
The Wal-Mart family, which is about 6 people, the Waltons
has a combined fortune estimated at about 90 billion dollars
in 2009, according to Forbes.
The combined wealth of the lower 40% of the US population
is only $95 billion.
Also, the highest paid jobs on the planet
are in fields of trading and investment, occupations which
have no meaning whatsoever.
[They] create nothing.
They are pointless to the state of society in the natural world.
In 2005, the average annual "take home" pay
for managers of the top 26 hedge funds, aka gambling casinos
was $363 million each!
Compare that to the average medical doctor which makes about a $150,000 a year
and the biological research scientists, which are looking for cures
and treatments for diseases which makes only about $68,000 a year.
You get the point. Income inequality is here.
It is growing, and it appears to be unstoppable
when you look at the mechanisms of the financial markets
and the culturally accepted reality of tremendous wage differentials
among different fields.
So now, we present the question.
What does this mean to our health, to our well-being?
Ground-breaking research by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Picket of the UK
in the area of social inequalities in health
and the social detriments of health has given us some profound realizations
about what it means to have a society based and driven by inequality.
To summarize this ground-breaking research, the common view
that social problems are caused directly by singular material conditions
such as bad housing, poor diets or lack of educational opportunities
is being overturned.
The idea that more wealthy societies do better than poorer societies
in regard to health in general, is not the case.
The social problems abundant in rich, highly-stratified countries
are largely caused by the scale of material differences
between people within society itself.
The problem is not absolute income, but rather the problem of relative income.
If you compare groups of people with the same income in different countries
you'll find that those in more unequal countries
do much worse than those in more equal countries
with the same income.
It appears to be a psycho-social phenomenon.
Inequality seems to make countries socially dysfunctional.
And as based on measures of societal health, crime rates, and well-being
it is safe to say, as you will see me point out
that really our current structure is nothing more than a social failure.
Life expectancy.
On this chart we see a specific set of wealthy countries.
I apologize for those that can't read this in the back.
I'll do my best to point out what is going on here.
Basically, the Y-axis you see is life expectancy
and the X-axis is income inequality going from left to right, low to high.
Life expectancy bottom to top of course, low to high.
As you can see in this, Japan has the lowest amount of income inequality
but with a staggeringly high life expectancy.
While Singapore, trumping only the United States in this particular set
of countries analyzed, which are mostly wealthy countries
has the greatest income inequality
and the regression line in the middle shows clearly
how the patterns moving from lower inequality to greater inequality
reduces the life expectancy of all of these countries.
Drug use. We see the United States
as having the highest level of inequality based on the sample set
while also being within the top 4 of countries
with the most illegal drug use: US, New Zealand, Australia, and the UK.
While in the lower echelon you have Japan, Sweden and Finland
which have the least amount of inequality and the least drug use.
Greece is in there too. It's the trends that are important here.
You can see the clear regression line.
I want to expand on this particular one. The reasoning for this:
There was a study done in 2002 with macaque monkeys.
In the study, 20 monkeys were observed and analyzed
in regard to social hierarchies that developed in different circumstances
noting which animals were dominant and which were subordinate.
The result was that the monkeys that had become dominant
had more dopamine activity in their brain than they had exhibited
before they became dominant, while the monkeys that became subordinate
showed very little changes in their brain chemistry.
In turn, after teaching the monkeys how to administer cocaine to themselves
through levers, it was found that the subordinate monkeys
took in much more cocaine than the dominant monkeys.
In other words, it's a form of self-medication.
Let's continue onto mental illness.
Mental illness is much more common in more unequal countries.
Once again we have the US at the peak of mental illness.
We have Japan at the lowest echelon.
As you can see from this chart, mental illness and inequality
are very much correlated.
A quick glance at SSRI antidepressant drug visits
to doctors' offices among adults 18 years of age or older
in the United States from 1995 to 2002
shows a clear trend of growing dependencies on antidepressants.
The most common type of disorders of course are anxiety and depression.
A psychologist by the name of Jean Twenge did an interesting study
which proved that Americans are much more anxious than they used to be.
A survey of college students from 1952 to 1993
across 52,000 students
found that students today were more anxious
than 85% of the population at the beginning of the study, meaning 1952.
By the late 1980s, the average American child was more anxious
than the child psychiatric patients of the 1950's.
As far as depression, a study called
"Time trends in adolescent mental health" found that in Britain
depression among people in their mid 20's was found to be twice as common
in a study of 10,000 or so people born in 1970:
10,000 people study, twice as common in 1970 as it was in 1958.
It also found that in general, psycho-social disorders
affecting young people have risen substantially over the past 50 years.
In Germany, Italy, Japan, and Spain
1 in 10 are deemed "mentally ill" in a year.
In the UK it's 1 in 5, and in the US it's 1 in 4.
Across entire populations, rates of mental illness are 5 times greater
in the most unequal countries compared to the least equal.
Now, of course, I know what you're saying "What about genetics?"
I think Richard Wilkinson summed it up very well.
"Although mental illness can be affected by changes
in the levels of certain chemicals in the brain
nobody has shown that these are actually causes of depression
rather than changes caused by depression.
Although some genetic vulnerability may underlie some mental illness
this cannot by itself explain the huge rise
in illness in recent decades.
Our genes cannot change that fast."
And let's move on to the idea of trust.
Another word for this is social capital.
Social capital is defined as an attitude, spirit
or willingness of people to engage in collective civic activities
hence, there's a strong trust-relationship.
As you can see in the chart, those that feel they can trust one another
are much more common, naturally
in societies that have less inequality.
This of course is beyond obvious, as I'm sure many would agree.
Naturally, with greater inequality, people are less caring of one another.
In fact, mistrust and inequality, I think, reinforce each other.
Now, this point is probably enough for a one-hour lecture in and of itself:
What is a society if people cannot trust each other?
It's important to realize that the idea of friendship
and the notions that couple in with friendship
which is ultimately a quality of trust
is a characteristic completely opposed
to the competition mentality
and the economic theories of self-interest we see today.
Empathy, reciprocation, and cooperation equates to good health
while suspicion, fight, competition
always equates to high levels of stress and hence destruction.
As we'll talk about in a second, stress
is one of the deadliest killers that we know of. It's a secret killer.
And living in a society where you have to look over your shoulder
and where you have to fight for everything that you have;
where you have to question virtually every transaction
given the initial assumption that the person
might be trying to pull one over on you for their own betterment;
the fact of the matter is, we thrive socially on trust and cooperation
provably by health standards.
And social structures which create relationships based on inequality
inferiority, and social exclusion
are inflicted with the greatest deal of social pain and neuroses.
Let's move on to educational scores.
This one's very interesting. Not only do more unequal countries
have worse educational attainment
kids are more likely to drop out of school, as well.
Interestingly, class distinctions and their effect
have become very obvious in this regard.
For example, a study was done in 2004
where they took 321 high-caste Indian boys
and put them with 321 low-caste Indian boys
and they were given a task of solving a certain problem.
The first time they did this, the caste relationship
the social status, was not announced to these children.
They had no idea who was around them. And you can see
the caste unannounced (low caste) actually beat the high caste.
The second time they did it, the results were dramatically skewed
as the lower caste did much worse than before
while the higher caste did better. This is psychological.
It's a psycho-social inferiority-superiority relationship
that has been repeated many times in many cases through other studies
which has the exact same consequence.
People are greatly affected by their perceived status in society.
When we expect to be viewed as inferior, very often we perform as such.
Homicide Rates
As you can see, the United States blows everything out of the water
when it comes to homicide rates.
And obviously, if you look at the regression trend
homicide rates are naturally more common in unequal societies.
In fact, violence itself
is probably the most established attribute of social inequality
over any of the things that we're talking about in these examples.
James Gilligan, who was a prison psychiatrist for 25 years
and he is currently director for the Center for Study of Violence
at Harvard University, had this to say about his experience
dealing with violent criminals to the extensive length that he has:
"The prison inmates I work with have told me repeatedly
when I asked them why they have assaulted someone
that it was because 'he disrespected me'.
The word disrespect is central in the vocabulary, moral value system
and psycho-dynamics of these chronically violent men.
I have yet to see a serious act of violence that was not provoked
by the experience of feeling shamed and humiliated
disrespected and ridiculed and did not represent
an attempt to prevent or undo this 'loss of face'
no matter how severe the punishment.
For we misunderstand these men at our peril
if we do not realize they mean it literally
when they say they would rather kill or mutilate others, be killed
than live without pride, dignity, and self-respect.
They literally prefer death to dishonor."
It's really easy to see how class relationships
and hence income inequality, can translate into feelings of humiliation
loss of control, disrespect, and ridicule.
When someone loses their job, it's often demoralizing.
They say "Oh, my husband's unemployed."
And that's a demoralizing thing "Oh, he's... unemployed..."
After all, the very nature of class is hierarchical.
In other words, the upper class really looks down
upon the lower class, historically speaking.
And to be looked down upon is essentially humiliating.
Therefore, it should be no surprise why the US has the largest number
of homicides in the world, given its extreme income inequality.
And this leads us to rates of imprisonment.
The trend is very acute as well.
Obviously as we can see imprisonment rates are much higher in unequal countries.
The more unequal the country, the more people in prison.
However, what is interesting about this reality
is that it doesn't just relate to rates of crime, which of course
is more prevalent in unequal societies
but it also has to do with the punitive attitudes
toward the so called "criminal elements of society".
In other words, the more unequal the society
the harsher the punishments are for a given offense.
And hence, more people are put into prison for longer periods of time
than they are in more equal countries.
Since 1984 the state of California has built
one new school and 20 new prisons.
As an aside, for those out there who think
the prison system might serve some therapeutic rehabilitation role
in the modification of human beings and human behavior
I would like to refer back once again to our prison psychiatrist
James Gilligan for his perspective.
He states "The most effective way to turn a nonviolent person
into a violent one is to send him to prison.
The criminal justice and penal systems have been operating
under a huge mistake; namely, the belief that punishment
will deter, prevent or inhibit violence
when in fact it is the most powerful stimulant of violence
we have yet discovered."
Now, here's a very interesting one: Social Mobility.
Social Mobility has to do with
the class relationship that you have upon your birth
and how easy it is for you to move up out of that class
or lower than that class during your life.
In other words, if you're born into poverty, how much of a possibility
do you have to become wealthy?
As you can see by this chart, the United States
home of the "American Dream"
has the lowest mobility rate of all the countries in the sample set.
There are very high odds that if you are born into poverty, you will stay in poverty.
Likewise, if you are born into great wealth
you will stay wealthy most likely for the rest of your life.
And if you think about it, it's really a form of class segregation.
This reality can be blamed, in part
on the very mechanisms of our financial system
which keeps the lower classes poor
and the upper classes rich, deliberately.
As a quick example of this, which I've stated before
but I think it's a very important example
if you have one million dollars and you put it into a C.D. at a bank
at 5% interest, you are going to generate $50,000 a year
simply for that deposit.
You are making money off of money itself, paper made on paper
nothing more, no invention, no contribution to society, nothing.
That being denoted, if you are a lower to middle class person
who is limited in funds, which must get an interest-based loan
like most people, to buy their home or use credit cards
then you are paying interest to the bank
which the bank is then using, in theory
to pay the person's return with the 5% C.D.
Not only is this equation outrageously offensive, due to the use
of interest to steal from the poor and give to the rich
but it also perpetuates class stratification by its very design
keeping the lower classes poor, under the constant burden of debt
while keeping the upper classes rich with the means to turn excess money
magically into more money with zero labor or social contribution.
This is only one mechanism, by the way, which is used
to make sure these class attributes
or class segregation, is maintained.
Infant Mortality
Very simply, more high in unequal countries
than less unequal countries.
Obesity [is] naturally higher in more unequal countries.
Teenage birth rates [are] higher in more unequal countries.
Innovation: I love this one because it's a total slap in the face
to all those party-line-toting market-enthusiasts who seem to think
that the competitive-based incentive system of seeking profit
translates into new innovations for the common good.
I'm sorry to say, that isn't the case whatsoever.
Using the measure of patents per million, Finland, Sweden
and Ireland trump the United States when it comes to invention.
And finally, let's take a look at an aggregate summation
that was compiled of the many points we have just examined.
This chart shows Life Expectancy, Math Literacy, Infant Mortality
Homicides, Imprisonment, Teenage Births, Trust, Obesity
Mental illness (drugs/alcohol use), and Social Mobility.
As you can see, in the United States
with the highest level of stratification, we are the absolute worst.
And just to make sure you understand this analysis clearly
here is a chart showing absolute income of the same thing you just saw.
As you can tell, there is no pattern. There's no trend regression line.
Here they are, side by side, so you can see how viable this information really is.
The trend is very clear about the ramifications of inequality
in a given country or social environment.
As a final point on this topic of inequality and its consequences
I want to bring up a study called "The Whitehall Study"
which was in 2 rounds stretching over I believe about 60 or 70 years.
Professor Michael Marmot of the Department of Epidemiology
and Public Health at University College of London
was the director of these studies.
He used the British Civil Service System as the subject group
and they found that there is a gradient of health quality
in industrialized societies which is not simply
a matter of poor health for the disadvantaged
and good health for everyone else. Something else was happening.
Remember, this is the UK, which has socialized health care.
So everyone, essentially, has equal access
to the same amount of health care.
They found, regardless of this, that there was a social distribution of disease
as you went from the top of the socio-economic ladder to the bottom.
And the types of diseases that people would get would change on average.
For example, the lowest rungs of the hierarchy
had a 4-fold increase of heart disease-based mortality
compared to the highest rungs.
And this pattern was to a certain degree irrespective of access to health care.
This is just one example, by the way.
There is a gradient of health problems that emerge
that cannot be explained by absolute income.
And it, in fact, goes back to the stress response
if you go into it and research these points.
Even in a country with universal health care
the worse a person's financial status and position in the hierarchy
the worse their health is going to be on average.
In other words, people in higher socio-economic positions
those higher in the pyramid, live longer, enjoy better health
and suffer less from disability
while those of lower socio-economic status
die younger and suffer the greater burden of disability and disease.
This comes in the form again of a gradient meaning that
from the higher upper class, straight down to the bottom class
each successive step down, or up, the socio-economic ladder
constitutes a respective quality change
in a person's health.
The bottom line is that there is a great deal of statistical data that screams
that living in a more equal society is more healthy and productive
for about 99.9% of the population.
It is only those at the very tip of the pyramid
that could be considered unaffected by the disease
known as social inequality.
Equality benefits everyone, in other words.
Now, given this reality
it begs the question: What is the actual
psycho-social cause of these issues?
What are the most dominant mechanisms in place
that continually support class division
and the neuroses and sickness it generates?
We really don't have to look very far for a viable possibility.
The cultural programming wing of the market system is the advertising industry
which serves to perpetuate the consumption values that you see around you.
However, it goes much deeper than that.
It goes much deeper than just getting people to buy things
for a specific company's profit.
The fact is, the values of materialism and consumption
are of dire importance to the operation of the world economy.
Without those values
the system would falter and let me explain why.
At the core of the economy as we know it
lies the unalterable requirement for constant
perpetual, cyclical consumption.
In other words, the entire basis of what we refer to as "economic growth"
which in turn is translated into things such as Gross Domestic Product
which are supposed to be measures of social progress and the like
is nothing more than human beings constantly and perpetually buying and selling
over and over and over again.
If human beings do not buy things
companies and stores cannot afford to pay their employees.
If an employee cannot be paid, then that employee which is also the consumer
cannot go out and spend the money they receive from employment
back into the system to perpetuate the cycle.
If people do not constantly spend their money
the entire economic structure, including the entire labor system
would completely collapse.
Given this reality, the highest priority of any corporation
or, in fact, any government that cares about its economy
is to make sure the public has an immediate interest
to constantly consume.
It is interesting to point out that America was originally founded
on a certain degree of a Protestant work ethic
a Protestant world view, where thrift and savings
were actually dominant values back then.
Since that time, advertising agencies had to switch their arguments
from utility-oriented angles
to those engaged in for emotional appeal
and status enhancement.
Americans now consume twice as much
as they did before the end of World War II.
As an historical note
one of the leading figures in this American value "hijacking"
is a man named Edward Bernays.
Bernays is most famous for his book called "Propaganda"
which was bought by many people, including Joseph Goebbels.
He was hired by all the major corporations many decades ago
to help influence the public into buying things
very simply, that they did not need.
A new world of neurotic associations such as materialism
and "conspicious consumption" to quote Thorstein Veblen
was unleashed during this time and has grown and mutated dramatically.
Today, human needs have become utterly perverted
by the imposed, suggested wants generated
by the consumption-provoking mechanism of marketing and advertising.
The more dissatisfied and unhappy a population is
the better it is for advertising agencies and corporations.
Consumerism feeds on a form of inferiority and self-consciousness.
And that translates, very literally, into identity and social status.
Amazingly, the indoctrination is so powerful that consumerism is regarded
by most of society as reflecting some kind of basic human interest
as though it's a reflection of human nature.
This of course is baseless. In fact, our neurotic need to shop and consume
is actually a reflection of how deeply social we are
and how influenced we are by the social programming
and status orientation of possessions and appearances
and everything else that's been pushed upon us.
On this note, I'm now going to begin a transition
to the next section of this presentation
and to bridge that I want to make a point that
not only does the status-generated consumption patterns
of most of the public, especially in America
cause a great deal of social stress
leading in part to many of the problems we have just analyzed;
[but] the propensity for constant cyclical consumption
which, again, is required for the entire world economy to function
is also outlining trends which show a clear path
to severe environmental problems
and the continual breakdown of civilization as we know it
as we destroy all of our natural resources through this
idiotic act of conspicious consumption to fuel GDP.
Part Two: Prognosis
The prior points made about the well-being and quality of life issues
associated with social imbalance is a big issue.
However, to be fair, just because there's a propensity
for an overweight, violent, diseased, mentally-disturbed
selfish, untrusting, illiterate population
does not necessarily translate
into the consequence of social collapse, as we are beginning to see.
We are going to move on, putting the basic well-being of humanity
aside for a moment, and focus on the mechanisms
of the social system itself
and the larger order problems that are being generated.
Okay, here's the deal.
One of the most critical things to understand
which without a shadow of doubt proves
the unsustainable nature of our current social system
and how it is on a collision course with nature, is this:
Due to the way money, and hence the market system functions
we are locked into an incompatible paradigm
where two mutually exclusive operating principles
one, the need for constant consumption or infinite growth
collides with an unyielding, finite planet
and hence, the physical laws of nature.
You simply cannot have an infinite growth of commerce
and hence consumption, in a closed system
such as the planet Earth.
For all those that don't fully understand this, let me explain more.
The planet Earth is basically a closed system when it comes to its resources.
All the minerals and energy deposits that we currently use
have rates of cultivation that dramatically exceed
the lifespan of the human being.
For example, oil and fossil fuels in general
took over a 100 million years, easy, for them to come about.
The same goes for our mineral resources.
The 4,400 mineral species out there today
took outrageous amounts of time to be created.
The diamonds that we find today
took over 3 billion years to be created.
Given this environmental reality, it would seem painfully obvious
that the most important aspect of any Earthly society
would be the preservation of the Earth's resources, right?
It would seem, in fact, that the entire basis of any economic structure
would have, as the number one priority
the preservation of the resources of the planet.
Why? Because once it's gone, it's gone.
For example, even at this stage of scientific inquiry
we cannot take a tire, which contains probably 6 or 7 gallons of oil
and convert it back into combustible fuel.
So instead of having a logical system of resource-management
where we actually monitor the Earth's resources and try, as the human species
to strategically orient our use of these precious finite elements
we came up with something much more interesting.
And it's called the Infinite Growth Economic Paradigm.
In our current system we grab as many resources as we can.
We throw them into anything that we think someone will buy
and we try to manipulate each other into buying these things from us for profit.
In fact, the entire basis of the free market ideology
is using and exchanging as many resources as possible
as fast as possible, to generate as much money as possible
which in turn is used to exploit more resources over and over again.
We've created a global money and profit-driven structure
which consists of a circular exchange protocol
where money must move from the consumer to the employer
to the employee, which is the consumer again; and the only way
that could sustain this pattern to keep people employed
the only way to keep people eating, to keep GDP up or the stock market up
is through the mandate that goods and services
comprised again of our finite resources and energy
are constantly and perpetually used and sold ad infinitum
regardless of purpose, utility or respect for what we actually have.
I couldn't possibly come up with a more destructive manner
for organizing society.
And the sad thing is, people don't see this whatsoever.
They have been conditioned into ideologies.
Capitalism, Communism, Socialism, well, guess what?
Any social ideology, specifically economic, which does not directly relate
to the resources of the planet in its doctrines explicitly
meaning the attributes of our environment which actually sustain our lives
is an inapplicable and thus irrelevant social ideology.
Case in point [is] oil and fossil fuels.
We live in a hydrocarbon economy, as I'm sure you all know.
Our entire economic structure, meaning production, distribution
food cultivation, transportation, etc.
is entirely based on energy from fossil fuels.
There are 10 calories of hydrocarbon energy
in every calorie of food currently consumed in the industrialized world.
This is M. King Hubbert, a geologist
and interestingly enough, a technocrat.
M. King Hubbert predicted in the late 1940's
that the United States would peak in its oil production in 1970.
Of course, he was ridiculed, laughed at, and scorned
by the scientific establishment.
And unfortunately, he was right
the US did peak in the 1970's.
In fact, some studies now show that global oil discoveries
have likely peaked around the same time.
The exact date is debatable, but it doesn't change anything.
Before I go any further, I know some of you out there are saying
"How do we know that these statistics are accurate?
How do we know that the research institutions are unaware
of existing oil supplies that go undiscovered?
And how do we know if the oil corporations themselves
which contain the data, are not lying to simply boost their profits?"
These are good questions, but there is no question
about the decline in the United States. We do import
over 70% of our oil now.
And as far as the global peak, all you really have to do
is look at the drilling patterns of the major corporations
to see that almost every major oil company
is desperate to find new oil reserves
and they have gone almost everywhere legally possible to do so.
The oil on this planet, which took 100 million years to generate
regardless of what you believe about depletion rates
is going to run out, one way or another.
It is an unsustainable practice.
And I won't even go into the obvious dangers associated with burning fossil fuels
in regards to its environmental effects
which we're all hearing about today.
As an aside, it is not at all irrational
or hasty to consider that the peak oil issue
just might have something to do with the fact that the United States
which consumes 25% of the world's energy
while having only 5% of the population
has the largest permanent military bases in history
situated in the Middle East with no evidence
whatsoever of ever leaving this region.
Obama has already stated that he is going to leave 50,000 troops
in the Middle East, indefinitely.
This is the guy that got the Nobel Peace prize
as we continue in the Middle East to probe and agitate countries
which contain, guess what, the majority of the remaining recoverable oil
on this planet, such as Iran. Give it some thought.
And if you take a moment to consider that peak oil and its relationship
with the economic system and geopolitics
might be relevant to the US involvement in the Middle East
you'll tend to find the world starts to make a lot more sense.
In the words of M. King Hubbert
"We are in a crisis in the evolution of human society.
It's unique to both human and geological history.
It has never happened before and it can't possibly happen again.
You can only use oil once.
Soon all the oil is going to be burned and all the metals mined and scattered.
This is obviously a scenario of catastrophe
but we have the technology.
All we have to do is completely overhaul our culture
and find an alternative to money.
We are not starting from zero. We have an enormous amount
of existing technical knowledge.
[It's] just a matter of putting it all together.
A non-catastrophic solution is impossible
unless the society is made stable.
This means abandoning two axioms of our culture:
the current work ethic and the idea that growth is a normal state of life."
[Applause]
He continues in a paper he wrote in 1981, called
"Two Intellectual Systems: Matter-energy and the Monetary Culture".
Hubbert writes "The world's present industrial civilization
is handicapped by the coexistence of two universal
overlapping and incompatible intellectual systems:
the accumulated knowledge of the last four centuries
of the properties and interrelationships of matter and energy
and the associated monetary culture
which has evolved from folkways of prehistoric origin."
You simply cannot have a society operate based on this necessity
for constant growth to maintain, ironically, stability.
We have at our disposal a tremendous number of alternative energies
and infrastructure possibilities and sophisticated manners of implementation
which could reduce our reliance on fossil fuels dramatically
paving the way to a world that would have zero reliance
on hydrocarbon energies at all.
Unfortunately, you are not going to see this anytime soon
for the economic paradigm we live in
sets up another serious problem that we need to address
and I simply call this "Establishment Paralysis".
Given our tremendous reliance
on hydrocarbon energy at this stage of human evolution
people, when hearing about the obvious problem of depletion
naively brush it off under the assumption that the establishment
is actually preparing for a transition out of
our dependency on hydrocarbons.
Or better yet, that the establishment can actually afford
to create a transition.
In order to understand the difficulty of moving out
of our current established energy paradigm
we must first realize that from a financial standpoint
there is very little motivation to move into a new system.
This is the very nature of an established institution
in the monetary system.
The fact of the matter is an exorbitant amount of money
(I know this will sound strange to many of you) an exorbitant amount of money
is going to be made on the scarcity of energy
and in fact, the collapse of society itself.
Our economic system is predicated on making money on the way up
and making money on the way down. Those in power
referencing back to that Citigroup document I talked about
have a propensity to care more about the short term
short-sighted financial benefits of running out of energy
than they care about the pivotal life-supporting attributes
that it provides.
If you look back at history, you see that the concern
over depleting fossil fuels has been talked about for a long time.
And many scientists in the 1960's and 70's felt that by the year 2000
we would have an entirely different energy infrastructure.
Why didn't that happen? Why is it that the Reagan administration ripped off
the solar panels from the White House that Jimmy Carter had installed?
Why is it that the US government sided with big oil
so the electric car would be squashed in the United States?
The answer of course is that our profit-based system
sets up a natural defensive propensity to stop anything
if those changes find the prior establishment to be obsolete.
This is likely the most caustic attribute of our current situation.
The knee-jerk propensity to stop productive change
for the sake of preserving market share and profit for select groups.
Think about it.
If you start a company, you hire employees
you generate income. What have you done?
You've created an institution which yourself and your co-workers rely on
for their income and hence survival. Therefore,
you will do what you need to to protect yourself
and your life-sustaining company.
It is providing for your standard of living. In other words
there is a built-in short sightedness.
And this survival element, which is only operational
in our current profit-oriented system
is what is stopping needed change from coming to pass.
I could probably ramble off many examples of new advents
that have been pushed to the side because they are either too efficient
or too sustainable for the market system to absorb
or simply money can't be made continually off of them.
It can't perpetuate the system or it puts an industry out of work.
It puts people out of work. There is a human element to this.
So there's a natural attribute
where people say "This is probably better for society
but I need to make money now. I can't think about the transition
let's just push this aside for now." That's what's happening over and over again.
It's not that they are "bad" people.
This is what this system has created.
Simultaneously, let's remember that
the market system requires constant problems.
In order for the public interest and consumption to be maintained
problems in cultural influence is required.
The more problems there are, the better the economy, generally speaking.
In this system it is inherently "good"
for cars to break down. It is "good"
for people to get cancer.
It is "good" for computers to become quickly obsolete.
Why? More money. To put it into a sentence:
Change, abundance, sustainability and efficiency
are the enemies of the profit structure.
Progressive advancements in science and technology
which can resolve problems of inefficiency and scarcity once and for all
are in effect making the prior establishment's servicing
of those problems obsolete.
Therefore, in a monetary system, corporations
are not just in competition with other corporations
they are actually in competition with progress itself.
[Applause]
Thank you.
And again, this is why it's so difficult
to have any form of change in a monetary system.
You simply cannot have a social convention
where money is made off of inefficiency, scarcity and misery
and expect a quick incorporation of new advents
that can relieve these problems.
With that understood, let's get back to the energy problem.
The final issue I'd like to point out is this:
Apart from the fact that there's a great deal of money
to be made by the select few, as the majority suffers;
apart from the fact that the established energy institutions have little motivation
to forgo their profitability to alter society's energy mediums
is the very harsh reality
that due to the outstanding debts, globally right now
the Earth is essentially bankrupt
as hilarious as that is.
There is likely not going to be enough money to change anything.
I want everyone to think about this very critically.
As exciting as the potentials are for renewable energy
in the fields of solar, geothermal, tidal, and wave
(potentials that have been documented thoroughly that will far exceed
the global energy consumption by thousands of percent)
we still have the serious problem in our current structure
of financing the infrastructure to make this transition.
How do we transition into a new infrastructure where every single government
on this planet, every country, owes money to someone else
where they're seeing a systemic breakdown of bankruptcy
starting to occur in Europe? In the US, it's just a matter of time.
Given the current state of affairs and the urgency of renovation
especially with peak oil, how could we possibly afford
to make a transition to these renewable energies
before the scarcity of oil begins to shut down
due to excessive oil prices because of supply and demand?
One study by a leading expert in Sweden predicts by 2030
the world will be using 10 barrels of oil
for every new barrel discovered or extracted.
That's really not that far away.
How can we expect the United States
with over $12 trillion worth of debt, barely able to cover
its interest payments to other governments with state bankruptcies occurring
near depression level unemployment, cutting social programs
(we're already selling off infrastructure to foreign countries)
how can we expect to afford to move into a new infrastructure?
I'm using energy as just a singular example.
There's many other problems we have to deal with.
In 2008 the executive director of the International Energy Agency stated
that it would take $22 trillion in investment
to update the global energy supply and infrastructure by 2030.
22 trillion dollars! Where's that money going to come from?
Do you really think that we're going to get away with just randomly printing
more and more money in the central banks
and expect no inflationary repercussions or debt collapse repercussions?
Remember, all money comes into existence from loans.
There has to be an initiator. Every single dollar
in all of your wallets is owed to somebody by somebody.
And this again leads us into the heart of the disease:
The economic monetary-based system or "The Game"
as I like to call it (because that's all it is
that's all it ever was) a game
and we can change the game anytime we want.
We just need to convince those who are winning the game
to put down their pieces for a moment and ask themselves
if the game they are playing is really going to reward them in the long run.
In a report coming out of the AFP, there's growing evidence
that the current rate of our resource exploitation
indeed has a time frame. The report states:
"As it is, humanity each year uses resources equivalent
to nearly one-and-a-half Earths to meet its needs."
Says the Global Footprint Network, an international think tank:
"We are demanding nature's services
using resources and creating CO2 emissions at a rate 44% faster
than what nature can regenerate and reabsorb.
This means that it takes the Earth just under 18 months to produce
the ecological services humanity needs in 1 year.
And if humankind continues to use natural resources
and produce waste at its current rates
we will require the resources of 2 planets
to meet our needs by the early 2030's
a gluttonous level of ecological spending
that may cause major ecosystem collapse," the report said.
I want to point out that
people hear that and they have a Malthusian notion.
They think that our consumption patterns are somehow inherent
and they are not going to change.
I read a statistic recently, and for my new film I'm going to
do a huge section on waste attributes of certain industries.
And what I've come to find is that of all the production that is done
on average 75% is waste.
75% is waste.
Of all the materials that are created, put into circulation and taken out
90% of those end up in landfills
I believe within 6 months.
This isn't about some natural human thing that we are doing.
This is about the social system's obsession with constantly consuming
for the sake of economic growth.
In an analysis done by the IRRC, by 2025
it's predicted that 2/3 of the world will experience water scarcity.
Two thirds of the world, by 2025.
Many seemingly wealthy countries are already turning to desalinization processes.
In turn, over 1 billion people are starving on this planet.
Do you, with everything that we have discussed
think that any of these things are going to get better
given our current financial crisis?
And again, in case you haven't figured it out, the problems of water scarcity
and food scarcity is indeed 100% economic.
There are many types of desalinization processes
which could take salt water and convert it into clean water
in all of these poor countries. But guess what?
No one has any money to implement these types of solutions
in poor countries. The same goes for food.
We've gotten to a point with scientific invention that
we don't even need arable land anymore
which, by the way, is eroding at a rate of about one inch a year
due to the abusive agricultural methods that are being utilized.
And please note, it takes about 500 years for fresh topsoil to emerge.
Hydroponics and aeroponics, alone, if applied correctly, could provide
for all the world's people, without the wasted water resources
and the excessive need for nitrogen-based fertilizers.
In fact, you could build these facilites
on the land that is depleted in stories.
You could have sky-scrapers of organic
food production on an industrial level.
But once again, who has the money to do that?
And on an extremely enraging and sad note
the more we experience social breakdown
the more human exploitation, crime and abuse will occur.
While here in America we think that slavery was abolished many decades ago
the fact is there are now more slaves
in the world than any time in human history
given the definition of slavery.
However, this time it doesn't come from owning people
it is simply the globalization attribute
of exploitation for cheap labor.
I'm going to stop here
as far as talking about the negative attributes inherent in our system
along with the ongoing social collapse
which I personally can't see an end to for a very long time
if at all, frankly, until we move into something more sustainable.
The personal and private debts, for example, are so high right now
that it's going to take another number of bubbles to burst
before any type of so called stability is going to occur.
Anyway, before I go on to the final section of this talk
which is essentially an introduction to the Venus Project
and a resource-based economy, let me summarize by saying
that the monetary paradigm economic structure is
the basic, systemic source of the majority
of the world's problems we have around us.
In this system, if this cancer is allowed to grow unabated
spreading its malignant propensities across the globe, utterly decoupling
from the natural world and the carrying capacity of the Earth
destroying the finite resources we all share
we are on pace with nothing less than
something that no one can even consider, of a collapse.
And I'm not talking about waking up one day and there's nothing anywhere.
It's not like that. It's where slowly it erodes to a point where
the values and the culture and the awareness becomes so distraught
and so confused that the levels of quality of life become justified.
When you start to accept less and less.
It's going to slow everything down to a crawl.
And invariably there will be some dramatic accents
of severe problems, especially when it comes
to the energy crisis that is looming.
Something radical has to be done. We are approaching a terminal stage.
Part 3: Treatment
There are two angles to consider when attempting to resolve these problems.
The first is the mentality of the culture, as we discussed before
the cultural programs.
And the second is the actual structure of social operation.
As noted earlier in our discussion, these two attributes are deeply interlinked.
However, regarding the first issue of cultural conditioning
as a movement we need to employ what I call
"Social Therapy".
Social Therapy refers to adjusting a society's values
changing the value programs.
We must have sustainable values in order to have sustainable practices.
I would suggest that the first program that needs to be uninstalled
from our mental hardware is the social distortion
that generates conspicious consumption pushed forward
by the corporately-aligned advertising agencies.
The value orientation of having more and more stuff
regardless of their utility or function, is an unsustainable ideology
inherently, on a finite planet.
Consumerism and materialism again are sicknesses
culturally created to perpetuate the cyclical consumption
needed to fuel the market and labor system.
This is precisely what The Zeitgeist Movement is trying to do.
We can't do anything until people understand the need for this direction
which is why we are here, right now;
which is why this is being webcast;
which is why those involved in the movement are diligently working
not to create infrastructure yet, but to try to get these values out there.
We'll address the movement's directives in the second half of the program.
Beyond that, as far as the actual structure of society
I'm afraid we require nothing less than a complete and total revision.
And this is where The Venus Project again comes in.
I'm going to run down 5 of what I consider to be the central attributes
required to move into a resource-based economy.
1. We must move from a growth economy to a steady-state economy.
The cancerous consequences of the infinite growth paradigm
must be stopped before it's too late.
In the final analysis, given our technological ingenuity at this stage
we propose the absolute elimination of the monetary system itself.
There's no reform possible to stop what this system is doing.
The scarcity and waste we see around us is created by us
not some intrinsic process of nature
or some Malthusian, inherent tendency.
The need of money is no longer relevant
and is extremely detrimental, in fact.
Second, we must move from a primitive, competitive
invention-oriented system, work system, to a collaborative system.
Not only are all goods produced in our current society inherently inferior
due to the need to maintain a competitive cost-basis in the market place
but the competitive system also generates massive amounts of corruption.
Yes, I agree, the incentive to compete
does produce some improved goods and services
to a certain degree, but that positive is utterly overshadowed
by the planned obsolescence, the inherent planned obsolescence
and the general environmental indifference generated
by the necessity to stay ahead of someone else.
As an aside, imagine for a moment if the top engineers
of the major car companies, rather than competing
got together and decided to collaborate
on making the best car possible at a given point in time.
Imagine if we established an incentive system
that pulls people together to create the best
rather than compete and produce inherent inferiority.
Think about that. An open-source world
where all lines come together and produce goods
so everyone can benefit.
Think about that. The progress would just be unbelievable
not to mention it would save tremendous amounts of resources.
For there would be no longer a need to duplicate perpetually.
You don't have 2 companies making the same thing anymore.
It's a form of preservation if they work together.
Third, we have to move from our piecemealed, dispersed, industrial methods
to a central, planned system of streamlined functionality.
Is it me or is it absolutely insane that we import strawberries from Brazil
or bananas from Ecuador or water from Fiji
when all of these things could be produced locally?
As Jacque Fresco would describe in regard to his city systems
everything is as self-contained as possible.
As another example, consider the general routes of production.
From mining the materials, to creating the preliminary components
to assembling the components, to distribution.
And there's a constant move of transportation
to go from one place to another
wasting tremendous amounts of energy.
Give that some thought for a moment. Think about if you streamline
all of the actions of society. Think about how fluid things could be
and what that actually means.
Now, to extend this point, in a talk I did called "Where are we going?"
I described a ground-up global approach
to a network organization
which is, in fact, a resource-based economy.
And I described why the parameters are what they are.
I don't have time to go through all of it, but let me give just a quick run down
of the reasoning for those that have never even considered
any other social system outside of what we know today.
Very simply, the Earth is a system and must be treated as such.
There are resources all over the Earth, and therefore
you must have a system that can monitor these global resources
within a global technological infrastructure.
Therefore, we have to have a feedback system which has to be global in nature
coming from the carrying capacity of the Earth
which is the starting point of all industrial decisions.
The first step in this: We do a full survey of the Earth's natural resources.
You can't make intelligent decisions if you don't know
what comprises the attributes of those decisions.
We must first understand the full range and capacity
of the Earthly components in order to derive inference
as to our capabilities.
There are many natural resources to consider on the planet
but for now I want to focus on energy again.
Since energy is essentially the fuel of society
this is a good focal point.
So what do we do? We scan the Earth, holistically.
Yes, we scan the entire planet
listing all relevant energy locations and potentials.
The potentials of course, to clarify, are based in part
on the state of technology. I don't want to go into all the techno-attributes
of harnessing and things like that.
For example, solar technology has dramatic potential at this stage
due to the advent of nanotechnology.
We are seeing a possible exponential increase in this potential
where really small solar panels could have up to 97-98% efficiency
in the radiation that they pull in.
Moving on. So, we have this raw data. What do we do?
We just rate each resource, based on its renewability, pollution
and all the factors that have to do with
the act of extraction and everything that goes along with it.
It becomes self-defining, based explicitly
on the goal of sustainability and maximum efficiency.
Those resources that have the most negative retro-actions
are given the least priority in utilization.
For example, fossil fuels are no longer needed.
They are not renewable. They pollute the environment.
Given the tremendous power of geothermal, wind, wave, and solar combined
there is, again, no reason to burn fossils fuels at all.
Once we realize this, we move to our third point: distribution and monitoring.
Energy distribution and infrastructure projects would logically be formulated
based on technological possibility
and, naturally, proximity to sources.
In other words, if you have wind energy being utilized in Asia
it's not likely going to be delivered to Latin America.
The distribution parameters would be self-evident
based upon the technology and proximity practicality.
Likewise, again, active resource monitoring done through Earth sensors
would allow a constant awareness of our rates of use
the rates of depletion, the rates of renewal
or any other parameter relevant to know.
This is pivotal for us to maintain what we consider
a balanced-load economy.
If the scarcity of any resource is going to occur
we will see it far in advance, and we can forecast it
and we can make proper actions to adjust accordingly
before it becomes a very large problem.
This idea, of course, is nothing new. You see this in your ink-jet printer.
Your printer has an ink level, comes up to tell you what you have.
And just to show you that this isn't some
bizarre idea that's impossible
Hewlett-Packard just recently came out with what
amazingly, they called "A Central Nervous System for Earth".
The first time I heard that sentence was actually out of the mouth
of Jacque Fresco, and that's exactly what
they are attempting to do, in a limited sense.
They are trying to develop a wireless sensoring system
to acquire extremely high resolution seismic data on land.
And this is exactly the direction.
It's funny with these things that have been talked about for a long time
and people say "Oh, that can never happen," and we see it beginning to happen
in small pockets.
All we have to do is scale this out
and expand it for the needs that we require.
OK, so what do we have so far? We have the locations
of our energy resources. We have the outputs, potentials
and distribution qualifiers based on strategic usage.
You would survey the public to see what they wanted.
Just as someone goes to a store, they say to the salesman "I want this."
They get what they need, and it becomes a statistical point.
Therefore, it's a dynamic monitoring of the consumption rates.
And finally, we have a system of active resource monitoring that reports
the state of energy supplies, rates of usage, and other relevant trends.
I know I'm moving very quickly with this. If you want to hear
a more expanded expression of this point
you can go online and watch the lecture "Where Are We Going?"
In other words, with this entire concept, we've created a system
a systems approach to energy management on the planet.
The system is comprised of real-time data and statistics.
The process of unfolding is based not on a person or a group's opinion
not on the whims of a corporation or government
but on natural law and reasoning.
In other words, once we establish the interest
that survival, and hence sustainability is our goal
as a species, which I hope everyone here shares
each parameter to consider in regard to resource management
becomes completely self-evident from the ground up.
It's called "arriving at decisions"
as opposed to "making" them which is a subjective act
based on incomplete information
and very often cultural or personal biases.
Using this energy model as a procedural example (and I'll move very quickly.
I didn't realize how long this presentation was. It's already almost 17:30.)
we would compile this information into a computer database management program
and this will be a logical means to monitor and have automation systems
to correct elements that are problematic.
We want to eliminate the subjectivity currently dominant in our society.
This is like a nervous system. There's no reason to vote on anything.
There's no reason to debate anything in Congress.
Moving on to Point 4.
For the sake of humanity and efficiency
we need to stop wasting time on labor processes that are generated
by the market system to maintain employment.
We need to move into deliberate automation of everything we can.
Given the current state of technology today, there's absolutely no reason
for a waiter to exist in any restaurant.
There is absolutely no reason for anyone to work at the post office.
There's absolutely no reason why anyone should be
in virtually any factory whatsoever.
I've been working on a statistical data set
for a project that I'm doing in regard to employment in America
considering what percentage of the current workforce
could be automated at this stage of technological know-how.
Coupled with eliminating occupations that have no social return
such as Wall Street, including all jobs that have to do with money.
[Applause]
As Jacque would describe, our system has no money.
There's no banks. There's no cashiers.
I have recently come to the generalized conclusion
which I'm continually working on, but I'm going to throw it out there.
I believe 65% of the American jobs could be eliminated tomorrow
with the knowledge we have now.
Not trend-projections, which make things cataclysmic
but the knowledge we have now.
[Applause]
But this isn't just a fanciful notion of, "Oh, we can have more free time".
There's also a social imperative here.
It's a very critical thing to point out that historically speaking
the more that we have moved to automation or what's called "mechanization"
in any industry, the greater the productivity.
In fact, productivity is now inverse
to employment in many sectors studied
which means it is socially irresponsible
not to automate as much as possible
for it allows for greater abundance and efficiency.
Here's a chart of the G7 advanced industrialized countries
showing how employment in manufacturing has been dropping
while manufacturing output has risen substantially.
And this particular trend is happening across the board, and why wouldn't it?
These machines don't need to take lunch breaks.
They don't need vacations. They don't need insurance.
It makes perfect sense. And as a very quick point
what you're going to find is the inexpense of machines.
Machines are becoming so inexpensive now.
Technology is exponentially growing at such a rate.
In your cell phone you have a little microchip that's more powerful
than the greatest super-computer that existed 50 years ago.
And it's really cheap now. The first great super-computer costed
millions and millions of dollars.
People aren't going to be affordable anymore to most corporations.
They are going to automate because they can't figure out a way
to reconcile keeping human labor anymore
except for ideological things, of course.
And fifth
we have to move from a system of materialism and property
to a system of universal access.
Before this point is dismissed as communist propaganda
let's consider the train of thought.
In a resource-based economy, where production is streamlined
to maximize quality and minimize waste and duplication
the idea of property becomes obsolete and, in fact, detrimental.
People do not need to hoard and protect anything.
They simply need access to what they need at the time they need it.
The best example is the automobile. We've been finding in science now
there have been tests done of cars that can drive themselves.
It's been tested: satellite-driven automobiles that can navigate very well.
And Jacque talked about this years ago as well, using Doppler radar
so cars simply cannot hit another car.
These things are coming to fruition. So in the future if you need to go somewhere
you call up the car that you need, it comes to you, you utilize it
and then, when you are at your location, it goes back and helps somebody else
as opposed to sitting in some parking lot
wasting time and space for likely 80% of the automobile's life.
This is what we do. We waste so much space and resources...
[Applause]
We waste so much space and resources with this primitive
concept of personal ownership.
It is environmentally detrimental and socially inefficient.
And by the way, property isn't an American or capitalist idea.
It's really a primitive mental perspective generated from generations of scarcity.
People claimed legal ownership because it was simply a form of protection.
It's also controlled restriction, in fact.
You know, no longer would someone need to live in one place.
One could travel the world constantly, getting what they need, as they move along.
Anything needed is obtained without restriction. There's no reason
to even steal something and this is an extremely important point.
How could you steal something that no one owns?
You certainly couldn't resell it because there's no money.
Right there, you have 95% of all crime gone.
[Applause]
In conclusion, as paradoxical as it may seem
the more efficient and conservative we become
the more streamlined we become
the higher the level of abundance we can generate for all of us.
Today around the world many people often say
"I wish we could live like Americans." I know you've heard this before.
Well... no.
The contrived, ostentatious orientation
and conspicious consumption patterns of the American culture
should be despised by all other countries on this planet.
We have 5% of the population...
[Applause]
We have 5% of the population and we consume
30% of the world's resources. It's insane.
In a resource-based economy where we base our production
distribution on physical referents
starting with the carrying capacity of the Earth;
where we streamline our labor expression towards things
that have a long-term social return;
where we get rid of the cancer known as the financial system
and start to share our resources in a diligent way
working together, avoiding the false values of materialism
and consumption pushed upon our culture
we find that we can provide a high quality of life for everyone on this planet
while eliminating all of the central reasons for war
poverty, destitution, violence, criminal behavior, neuroses.
It would be the dawn of a world we could actually label a civilization.
And if that isn't a goal worth working towards
I don't know what is. Thank you.
www.thevenusproject.com
www.thezeitgeistmovement.com