Transcript for Government: Earth

The infinit yes presents

What is a true government?

Government represents nothing more than the processes

that control how decisions are made within a society.

Today, monarchies and dictatorships are widely recognized as

socially destructive forms of government,

because one person being entrusted with total power

inevitably leads to corruption.

So people fought for, and won, the right to choose their leaders,

and not just one leader,

but bodies of leaders, assemblies of decision makers

that would, in theory, represent the interests

of the people who elected them.

It was a beautiful idea,

and it was certainly better than any system that it replaced,

but times continue to change and we are beginning to see more clearly now

some of the problems with representative democracy.

But let me backtrack here quickly and talk again about government.

Think about this for a second:

While the rules and laws which are set down by our elected officials

do have major effects on how we live our lives

the biggest governor on what we do,

how and when we do it,

and how we make all of our decisions is - money

and our access to money.

When we get right down to the basics,

our planet's environment, its resources, and how they are distributed

and maintained is controlled completely by the flow of money.

If you want to buy something, it depends on how much money you have,

if you want to go somewhere it depends on how much money you have,

if you want to do almost anything,

it depends on how much money you have.

Truly, today, we are governed not by our elected officials,

but by our economic class system.

This type of extreme inequality which is prevalent in the United States

yet presents itself accross the world

is completely unsustainable, and not to mention unnatural,

and by that I mean not in sync with the forces of nature.

However, like I said before, decisions of elected officials

can and do have major effects on our lives.

Unfortunately, like us, our elected officials

have become governed by money.

The influence of international banks over the UN

and all of the world’s most influential governments and decision makers

is undeniable.

When we utilize the game of monetary exchange and accumulation

to manage our resources, by default,

we put more power into the hands of people with more money.

In our current system, this has allowed wealthy international bankers

to gain major influence over our elected representatives

through campaign contributions and lobbyists,

and even over the popular opinion of the public,

through major media control and advertising.

Many people believe that these things don’t affect them,

and they are immune,

but the fact is that everyone is affected, myself included,

for no one can separate themselves from their environment.

And we see a lot of advertising.

Even if we go back to the ideal form of representative democracy,

behind a bureaucratic facade,

we really just have the election of hierarchical rotating monarchies.

The problem with monarchy is that the concentration of decision making power

into one individual inherently corrupts that person,

and history has shown that this also seems to apply

when power is concentrated into groups of people,

as it is in a representative democracy.

As well, a voter is always forced to compromise

when they elect a ‘representative’,

because of the inherent limitation in choices.

Be it a two party system or a ten party system,

the chances of there being a candidate who represents all of your ideas

are slim to none,

yet when you vote for them you have to vote for all of their ideas.

The apathy towards voting, we witness in many people around us,

shows us that people are feeling the futility of this now almost purely symbolic action.

When people vote, and see that nothing changes,

they naturally conclude that there is no purpose in voting.

To sum up, representative democracy is a system

in which instead of having one corrupt ruler make our decisions,

we elect corrupt groups of people to make our decisions.

And let me quickly make the point,

that it's not that the public is making the wrong decisions

in electing corrupt people.

The problem is that power corrupts.

And absolute power corrupts absolutely.

I gave him the only thing a poor person has - and that's a vote.

And I expect the answer,

If he doesn't do that, then we'll know and we can all grieve

because America is dead.

The America that John Adams had dreamed up

when he said that noble men were just as important as the small men,

when he said we deserve clean air, we deserve clothes on our back -

it's gone. And what do we get?

We get lies, we get commissions, we get meetings, we get hearings

but for God's sake, Jesus did not hold a commission about the lepers, he went out and helped them.

We need to implement a system that allows for maximum freedom of action

in all areas of life.

Many people today advocate a direct democracy.

This is one method of electing ideas, rather than leaders.

The thinking behind direct democracy of course,

is that the "one man-one vote" paradigm

provides the maximum amount of freedom and participation for the individual.

The problem is that while this allows for equal participation,

it does not allow for maximum participation or freedom for that matter.

For it also doesn’t always lead to the best conclusions.

Direct democracy is vulnerable to mob rule,

and could quickly turn into a tyranny of a majority over the minority.

There are.... [ringing]

There are countless other systems of referendum based democracy

advocated by many different groups,

but the problem with most of these systems

but the problem with most of these systems

is that they still utilize money as their method of resource distribution.

Even under strict guidelines,

money presents every person with the goal of wealth accumulation,

which as I said, incentivizes greedy behaviour,

and though people may be born with a genetic disposition for greedy behaviours,

studies have shown that gene expression is largely based on environmental triggers.

For example, a person who may be born with the genetic markers

that can produce sociopathy,

but it would take some kind of precipitate action

to elicit actual sociopathy in that person.

That is why throughout history,

in any form of monetary system, no matter what the controls are,

some people always find ways to circumvent them, to gain power and dominance

because that is what the environment encourages.

That is why money, when utilized, ultimately becomes our true governor.

In order to maximize freedom, our social construct must take into account.

Every person, every resource, every park and tree.

Through a completely holistic resource management system,

we can align our actions with nature,

understand and work with it rather than battle against it.

In this type of system there is no need for money,

because people are provided for equally and maximally,

with the only true government on this, being the earth,

and our current technological capabilities.

This is called a “Resource Based Economy”,

because it focuses on the intelligent management of resources.

Now, you may be asking

"So, who makes the decisions in this ‘holistic resource management system’?",

and it’s an important question, because as I’ve been saying,

making our decisions based on people’s opinions of what’s ‘best’ doesn’t work.

What’s actually ‘best’ is determined by the only true governors of our actions:

the sustainability of our planet, its environment, including humans

and their needs for freedom, dignity, respect, equality, and most importantly,

the ability to participate in society and in the decision making process, which, again,

is governed not by opinion, but by holistic, sustainable, egalitarian values,

coupled with what we, as a species, actually have on our planet

and are capable of doing, together.

By removing money as our governor, and replacing it with these attributes,

we can build a truly sustainable society,

since people’s actions would no longer be despotic, self-serving,

profit-oriented and short-sighted, but rather would be aimed at the common good,

because without having to direct our energies towards working,

often at completely useless jobs, in order to ‘earn our living’,

every person would become free to explore new ideas, investigate,

suggest things, try new things, be creative, see what works best,

free to study and test their own ideas and the ideas of others

and of course, vice versa, creating a totally non-centralized system of data gathering.

Once the data is gathered, volunteers freely associated

(meaning anyone who wants to participate, can,

as much or as little as they want, and with whomever they want)

can collate that data on a global level, finding the best solutions to technical problems

and disseminating that information freely to everyone.

How these freely associated people take that data and use it is entirely up to them.

So this creates a whole new set of worldwide experiments

upon which more information is gathered, which produces a continuous progress loop.

In short, this system can be summed up as:

the election of ideas using the scientific method

to achieve maximum freedom and sustainability on this planet.

This is the system proposed and advocated by the Zeitgeist Movement and the Venus Project.

There are two kinds of people in this world,

people who got no dreams, people who got dreams and don't do nothing about it

and people who go out and fulfill their dreams.

I don't know about you but I'm the third kind.

So you gonna help me out or not?

And I want more than anything, my children to know I fought with everything I had,

every single thing I had, not to lose not one more time.

Written and Edited by: Aaron Moritz