Interview: Peter Joseph on The Young Turks
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- All right, well, we have another terrific interview for you guys today.
Peter Joseph, only the founder of the Zeitgeist Movement, not a big deal.
His first movie was in 2007 'Zeitgeist: The Movie', which makes sense.
'Zeitgeist Addendum' came out in 2008.
'Zeitgeist Moving Forward' came out in 2011.
Peter, thank you for joining us. Appreciate it.
- It's my pleasure, I really appreciate you having me.
- Alright now, a lot of people might not be familiar with the Zeitgeist Movement,
so let's start there, what is it?
- The Zeitgeist Movement is a global sustainability advocacy group,
that essentially orients itself around economic theory
and how we can change the social system
to be more pliable, humane and sustainable across the world.
- Ok. So what's wrong with the system we have now, doesn't it kick ass?
Aren't we number one?
- Of course we're number one, number one in a lot of things,
a lot of negative things, unfortunately.
A lot of life support systems are in decline,
we have growing destabilization across the world.
We've watched Occupy come and go,
it's still lingering, but in different forms now.
We've watched a number of different crises emerge.
Climate destabilization is still on hand, in a very strong way.
The central argument here, and I'll just jump right into it,
is when it comes to economics,
which in Greek means 'management of household',
it also implies efficiency, to economize you know.
This is a 'natural order' type of system that is natural to the Earth,
to the environment that we inhabit, something science stumbled upon.
You know you don't do certain things,
you don't pollute the atmosphere with, by burning oil.
It creates climate destabilization, and you can stick with that example
and extend that on to infinity,
as far as how we are bound by natural order laws.
There's nothing metaphysical about that, nothing esoteric.
However, what's happened traditionally, is we have a system,
a market-based system, a system that's based on
really old traditions of people
engaging in labor, creating trade.
We've developed this thing. We started with handicraft, making it very simple.
We've evolved this industry,
that is massive,
huge.
Money traveling for the sake of money, money made for the sake of money I should say.
Wall Street, the financial system's bigger than anything
which makes perfect sense, since that the core route psychology of this system
is this notion of trade only, not social betterment.
So to finish my thought,
we have this natural law system, this natural law economy
which has been superimposed upon,
by this
capitalist free-market system if you want to call it that in distinction.
I'm gonna say market economy to generalize throughout this conversation.
And what's happened is that they're not
in accord with each other
and the problems we're seeing in the world, both on the human level and the ecological
level is this discord. We're taking a square peg and trying to fit it into a round hole.
And from here on out, its only gonna get worse across the board.
- I counter by saying: USA! USA!
So, seriously, why are they in discord? I mean, I think a lot of americans would
normally think; "Hey look, capitalism, that's the free market,
that's people trading goods." And you know, exactly what you described, what's the discord?
- Well, Ok. The psychological value system that underlies it, as I just alluded to you
we have Wall Street and the banking system, one of the largest
most influential on uh... growth, GDP, in many different ways
the most rewarded system on the planet.
This system produces nothing.
The Wall Street does nothing.
You can argue investment, but creatively
there's no one sitting there behind a desk at a hedge fund,
putting stuff together to better the world.
You could remove, I'm sorry, you could remove
the entire system of finance
and still generate the economy that
allows us to live through factory, industrial
production and creativity.
I bring that up because that the core sickness of this is a value system problem,
where we are seeking money
in advantage only, with the side-effect being social betterment whenever it happens,
and that's a problem.
- So now the bankers would counter and look we've got a ton of problems in our
banking system, no question about that.
But they would say, "Look the core of the system
is essential, cause it allocates money and it allocates resources.
So if it's more important to society that we create widget X, as opposed to widget Y,
we move the money in that direction, so that we have more efficiency."
So that's something that they do, isn't it?
- Oh, I agree, to a certain degree. But what is efficiency really on, again, this natural law ecological level?
Efficiency means that you want to preserve and you want to do the best thing you can,
to create the best outcome you can.
Efficiency is preservation, conservation to meet needs in the most strategic way.
We have an electric car industry, that's slowly inching its way into America. What happened to it, say
100 years ago when the first electric car actually emerged?
Why hasn't this technology been completely proliferated around the world?
Why? Because industry also
is greedy, stubborn, it gets established and doesn't want to change its mechanisms of profit.
Across the board, and this is one of the greatest things we talk about in the movement,
we are paralyzed
by this value ethic. And now I'm not saying that the market system wasn't great
a long time ago.
And the handicraft industry, we had a simple type of post-feudalism, mercantilism kind of world,
where people were,
everyone was a producer, everyone was trading, that's beautiful in and of itself.
But technology
and everything that's happened around us,
has completely stifled this, to the extent that it's no longer applicable in its merit
and we are evolving out of it. There's no better word to use than evolution.
I don't put down capitalism and the market economy cause it was always bad,
I say it's no longer relevant, especially in a world where we can create an abundance.
- But I wanna get to the core of the problem. So, you know,
I understand that we've got great inefficiencies, now and you mentioned the electric car
you know, there's a great movie: "Who killed the electric car?"
And I get why the companies that are in the oil business,
or that do traditional cars that aren't energy cars, wanna kill the electric car,
cause they wanna protect their market share and they want to kill the trolleys
and have everybody to drive cars. I understand that and they pervert the market in that sense.
So, but what is the core of that problem, that we're letting them? So, what is it?
- The core of the problem is that it's not a perversion as you've said, you say it's a perversion?
It's not, that is the market.
Here's the thing that most economists hate that I say,
"The market is as free as ever".
And economists that are from the free market mind are like, "Wow, what are you talking about?
The economy's not free, we have protectionism
we have trade terrorist, we have all this taxation, we've all this coercion by government!"
And I say "No".
Just like Feudalism was based on the land, if you go back to Feudalism;
a completely agrarian society, the entire social order was based around
production of the land, the lords, nobles, ownership, and peasants that controlled it.
We went into Mercantilism, more state concentration,
ultimate, complete state coercion in Mercantilism, as I'm sure you know.
Capitalism comes in the exact same way, which means that the government
and the legislation that is produced by government,
is a product
of the economic theory, not the other way around.
So capitalism is the economy,
economy, excuse me, is the Government, I meant to say, you can't deviate between the two.
So when you see this corruption that people call,
it's not corruption, it's the freedom of the market. I have the freedom in the market
to shut you down if you have a competing product,
or if you have something that's gonna interfere with my market share.
That is the free market, not this illusion that everyone's gonna compete freely
and not have any inhibitions in this sort of utopian laissez faire thing that goes on,
in the rhetoric you hear about.
- So, that's trippy and I'm not sure I agree with you. So let's go a little further down the rabbit hole. - Sure.
- Ok. So if you were to take that system away then, what's an ideal system?
What would replace it?
- It's an enormous question,
let's look at this from an evolutionary standpoint again.
Every element that's happened in human society up until this point in time,
excuse me, every social system,
has been based around scarcity, it's based on the assumption that there really isn't
enough to go around, right? You go back to Adam Smith, go back to David Ricardo,
you go back to Malthus, specifically Malthus, with his population theory
firmly ingrained this stuff. You hear rhetoric across the board,
from mainstream economists, that this is based on the fact that we can't
provide enough for everyone, therefore we have to restrict.
This is no longer true.
When it comes to actual sustainable life supporting goods, when it comes to
meeting the needs of your population, mantaining a high level of public health
and of course assuring sustainability, which you cannot talk about
production in any society without talking about sustainability
'cause that's the long-term inhibitor when it comes to the laws of nature,
we can actually create an abundance now.
See, I would argue for the market and all the things that you and many others talk about,
if I wasn't aware of the fact that it's no longer needed
with just the state of science and technology.
To alleviate the corruption you have to get rid of the psychological place of it.
You have to, everyone's the same basically, we're not,
some people are not just more corrupt than others, they become that way.
There's a reason, just to throw this in there, psychologically, that those of the highest
uh, wages in the world,
donate less to poverty, percentage wise.
There's a study done fairly recently, that found that the most ruthless and the most wealthy
people in the world, excuse me, that the most wealthy were the most ruthless,
they were most likely to cut people off in traffic.
But this is all common sense to us, we know that the cutthroat mentality is there,
but the point is it's no longer necessary. Do you wanna resolve global problems?
Do you wanna resolve poverty? We can, overnight.
Do our resolve corruption? Do you wanna resolve the fact
that, we have ecological destabilization coming out every single angle,
with almost every life support in decline?
We can. But it's going to take overriding the current social system and moving on.
- But I need to know how.
So I agree with you that, you know,
if you breed a certain culture you will get that culture. So, if you
reward and incentivized greed, you will get more greed and the same with corruption, etc.
So I don't believe that the way we do things, is the only way we can do things
and I believe that there is a better way and we can get there.
Now, I need to know more about the specifics though, so for example if you say, okay
we have enough food to feed the world, that's true, we do.
The question is how do you allocate it?
So that's what I throw at you.
- Well, let's think about allocation,
ah, what is the point of any allocation in a market system?
It's to get needs to people, really. It's something that doesn't really happen.
You know?
As every major world health organization stated that it's not the food,
it's not the nutrients, it's not the calories that's in deficit;
it's the fact that there's not enough money in these environments
for these poor people to have resolution.
There's not enough money to create a desalinization plants, to bring clean water.
So, the problem is economic.
So allocation, what does it mean? It means meeting the needs of the human population!
Why should we give birth to anyone on this planet, that we cannot take care of?
And the fact of the matter is we can!
So, that's a huge subject. I could go on a massive spiel about how an entirely new social system
could be generated, that takes in all the needs of the entire human population at once.
And probably the first thing that comes out of anyone listening is that it will be "Communism",
because that's a general reaction, but that is not what it is at all.
It's actually making a society that isn't an anti-society, which is what we have now.
- Ok now, I believe you when you say it's not communism and I think it's very simplistic
thing to think of it that way.
Obviously you're not in favor of capitalism as we have it now, right?
- Well, I will say I'm not in favor of this idea that a competitive system, where everyone's out for itself
is the way that you can have a healthy society.
- Ok. So, again, I'm trying to wrap my mind around how it would work.
Ok, so it's not like, "Hey you know, we've got that all food in the world and hey Bob, if you don't wanna work
take a load off, we'll get it to you", or whatever.
Uh, I'm describing the stereotype of communism. - Sure
- So, but how does it work? I mean, you would have to reallocate resources to some degree,
wouldn't you have to take more from the rich to be able to feed the people in Africa, etc?
- Well, no, that's another unfortunate strawman that's built, I'm not accusing you of that by the way.
But people often say, "You're just gonna take stuff from everybody else? That's not right."
Transition to a new social system is, of course, not an easy thing to think about.
And we can talk at length about that, but let's think of a more direct philosophical, technical level,
let's put it in layers.
Human needs are human needs and public health is public health.
Public health can be defined as; both your nutritional health and also your mental health,
your state of mind.
Lack of conflict in society is also an attribute of public health and preventive medicine.
If you look at this in the standpoint of all the layers that create what your daily life means,
begin, begin with food.
Food creation can exist in much higher states than they can now and they can be localized,
removing economic consequences that we have with the current market economy such as Globalization,
which is very destructive, high-energy, completely wasteful, exploiting labor.
We can concentrate food production regionally all across the world,
in very simple technical manners, such as vertical farms.
Vertical farms we can put in the coast of Los Angeles, along with desalinization
processes and nutrient extraction processes coming from the ocean.
And we can grow
hundreds of tons of organic nutrient vegetable food,
enough to meet the
the actual, and protein generating food too, there're all sorts of things can be grown as well to
actually meet the high nutritional quality of everyone in Los Angeles.
Locally, no importing. And I'm not advocating that's all we do, but I'm giving you the example.
So what that means is that you could have, for example, in transition
and I'm jumping ahead,
is, all food free in Los Angeles,
of this nature, to everyone, to meet everyone's need, period.
Because its in abundance,
no one's gonna hoard it and steal it, even in a market system, cause it's gonna go to waste.
It's available to everyone
and you would see an enormous increase in public health
and less strife in the community.
I could go on a big tangent on that, but we'll stop there, that's one layer.
- Ok, the people who are gonna make that food, they have to be incentivized to make it?
- They do.
- Ok, so how do you pay them? How do you incentivize them to produce more food?
- In a transitional system, see I'm speaking transitionally right now,
you would pay them just like anyone else is being paid. You'd subsidize this one,
this one would be subsidized. Or you get corporate influence to agree to do it,
which would be hard-pressed, hard-pressed to do. But...
- You would have to change a lot of things for that to happen.
- Well, we're talking about changing everything here, there's no qualms here.
I understand the difficulty of it, I'm not here to say that any of this is easy,
but I'm presenting a train of thought. If people want to see these resolutions and they wanna have change, we could do it,
we are all one big human family!
- Ok so put the corporations aside, you could subsidize it, ok?
- It could be subsidized, but I really don't wanna go down this road to talk about this,
because it's actually deviating from the point as far as, it just getting done.
You know, automated food system is what we're talking about,
we're talking about one supervisor on every floor of these automated, tiered, vertical farm systems.
Everything can be automated at this stage, as far as stuff like that, very easily.
This is a powerful because you have supervisors
get paid nominally what, in concert as far as the whole industry...
see, they'd get paid perfectly fine, if again, we're talking about a market economy (and I usually don't think this way).
They could be paid perfectly sufficiently, especially given the fact that
there's not a fraction of the employees that would typically be involved
in industrial production, as we know it today, as far as food resources.
Again here's one problem though, I don't want to go this angle because it's
really complicated, to include the market economy, that's why I advocate the removal of it.
- Ok so if you remove the market economy... - What is the incentive? - Yeah
- What is the incentive? - Yes. - The incentive is that your well-being is directly related to
everything that happens, so that means you are incentivized to actually
contribute because it comes back to you.
In 1992, 50% of americans donated 4.2 hours, totalling 80 billion hours a year
no money, they donated themselves to help poverty
to help different systems. In 1978, there was a study done in Canada,
one of the only studies done ever in the world by the way, this is fascinating,
they gave a fixed guaranteed income to a small town,
ah, brilliant for four years.
Everyone, more people graduated from high school,
more people worked, the happiness rate was off the chart, people could take care of their families,
even people that came from more destitute origins,
there was an incredible improvement.
- So wait, everybody got the same salary?
- Everyone was given the same monthly rate of salary, yes.
- And then they could do whatever they wanted?
- They kept working, they went to jobs that employed them.
- This was a particularly unique circumstance, I can send you the article if you'd like to read it? - Aha.
- But what it goes to show is this incentive fallacy we have,
that no one's gonna do anything unless there's a "monetary reward" is shortsighted.
People will do tons of things, if they think it comes back and helps them.
And even more so, the great secret of humanity,
people love to do things that help others,
they really do.
- So you think that they would've started Nike just the same... - No.
- And would have expanded Nike just the same if they didn't have the profit motive?
- Because that is a completely different abstract notion that seeks profit.
Nike, the entire concept to say a shoe, has to be put in question.
You don't design a shoe to be advertised through celebrities to sell it,
to develop market share with a style and a brand.
In the future, if we were to move into this type of sanity,
people would think of shoes in the most ergonomic sense,
it would be designed to last, it'd be designed to be the most beneficial and healthy for you,
we'd lose a lot of the stylistic things. All corporate facades are built upon the interest to sell you things,
with a certain degree of durability,
with a certain degree of health involved, but that's secondary.
- But isn't that part of human nature? People want style!
-Oh, well I think style can come in many different ways though.
People can appreciate each other without the ornament
and all that nonsense. Go back 60 years, in America we had more of a, I'm sorry go back about a hundred years.
In America we had more of a puritanical ethic for the earliest part of this country,
it wasn't until the 19... actually yeah, the 1930s that the big push
towards two phenomena in fact; planned obsolescence, because our technology was
getting too big,
so we had to decrease product life in order to keep the consumption economy going,
keep people employed.
And 2, this massive thing, put forward by people like Eddie Bernays and a lot of others,
that they wanted to turn people into consumers because
not of what they needed, but because of these wants that would be generated by society.
This is fact, anyone can go look this up.
So the value system that,
is talked about where people, you have this assumption that people just want more, more
and more bling and they want to be stylized.
There might be some truth to that, we see african countries with their ornaments and everything
but that is very, very, different from what's been put forward, and the fashion
neuroses that has come to define our culture today in America and the West.
- So I guess I have a fundamental problem with that because I think that...
and you know balance is kind of a loaded word, but I think that
I look at it a little bit more balanced. I think that human beings are both things;
they're both incredibly cooperative
and much more so than in our current system allows for or encourages,
but at the same time I also believe they're incredibly competitive.
And so,
so, I think that they want the bling, I think it's a natural human instinct and they want more land
and they want more stuff and I think trying to bottle that up ain't gonna work.
- Ok well, instead of us thinking anecdotally or at the surface sense, let's run the statistics.
There are many many studies that have been done by the Khan Academy
and many other places that have done
numerous research projects, to see what
really motivates people and what
happens when they get put into certain environments, where they're forced to be competitive.
When it comes to collaborative things, excuse me, when it comes to creative ventures and I find this to be particularly interesting,
competition is not a good concept.
Cutthroat competition is not a good concept at all, when it comes to developmental creativity.
In fact if you look, this is easy to prove if you look at a general corporation.
Well all corporations might be fighting ruthlessly against each other,
there's a deep seated need
to incentivize some element of deep collaboration amongst those are working
together, to produce what they need to produce.
I think that there's a great deal of truth to what you say, but I think it's over exaggerated
to a large degree. I think that the core of everything is a collaborative drive,
a deep empathy. You know when you walk down the street and
you see someone get hit by a car, you wanna help them,
you don't wanna laugh at them. And you know, deeply we have an empathetic evolutionary psychology
that's been suppressed. I use that word suppressed, very, very adamantly.
I think if we were given time to fruit out
a non-competitive environment,
to really see that collaboration,
is the most rewarding.
And it's not to say we're all equal, it's to say
that yes you contribute cause your skill set is really good in one way,
I contribute cause my skill set is really good in another way
and we work together to make the best of it,
not have a cutthroat personality battle, because we think that one needs to be better than the other
in this value system we have.
- You know, again, we have some disagreement on that cause I just think that
you're right, it has been de-emphasized and we're on the extreme end of the spectrum
and we can come much closer to the middle, but I also think that, that,
maybe I'm over generalizing, based on myself but I'm an incredibly competitive guy. I wanna win, right?
I wanna win in a basketball game, I wanna get the hotter girl, you know I wanna ...
I was born into a deeply competitive musical environment, everyone was as cutthroat as it can be,
I have deep neurological culminations of competition myself, but I understand where they come from.
Competition is again a cultural phenomenon.
We have a fight or flight propensity, we run out of food, we get, I step on your foot, you're really mad at me
your adrenaline kicks in,
a competitive mode might happen and there might be conflict.
But in the society that we can create an abundance, we have to really think about
what it means for us to meet the needs and change our evolutionary psychology if you will,
I mean that not in a literal sense.
We look at the fact that over the past 4000 years, the dramatic changes that have occurred through society,
that's all cultural,
our brains have not changed that dramatically in 4000 years.
And I'll say this as one final point as these little tangents I have,
is war,
we live in a state of very very detrimental war. Technology,
nanotechnology, of course nuclear weapons I mean
in about 50 years we're gonna have nanotechnology, if not a lot sooner.
That will make the, the nuclear bomb look like a roman catapult.
It's that severe, when we think of national war, to see what kind of risk we're all at,
when anyone at this point will be able to get a suitcase bomb to blow something up.
Anyone will be able to do anything to have enormous capacities of destruction.
So, point being, I agree that competition can be good, sports, friendly competition,
but on the social level, it's truly destructive and could very well lead the demise of the whole society.
- Well there actually, we generally agree. I mean, so I think for example, we've incentivized
defense contractors in this country
to make more money if there's more war. And we told them all by the way,
it's incredibly easy to buy our politicians.
So you put either a plant in their district, or just simply give them 10 or 50 thousand dollars.
My God, if you give them 50 thousand dollars they'll do anything for you, right? - Sure.
- And so we've created this giant incentive system for more war, and by the way
we're number one, and USA, USA, we're gonna dominate and when we do,
we're shocked to find out that other people are displeased with that. - Yeah.
- And then there's something called blowback. - Yeah.
- You know libertarians talk about this, liberals talk about it, and, and so
all of that I totally agree with, right? - Ok.
- And I wanna change that system, I'm just tryin to find a way that I can wrap my mind around it,
where I think that is, to be honest, realistic.
- Ok, well I'll do you one further then, just for the
philosophical basis of it.
With respect to war,
there's a deep inter-meshing between
politics,
business
and war and there always has been.
Again, the government we have is a product of the competitive market economy,
not the other way around.
So to think that
we would not go to war for oil, we would not go to war to secure our currency,
to think that we would not go to war to do all of these things that we've been doing,
in fact, all empires have been doing
Eastern India Company, Britain.
War has a always been about resources and economic commercial domination,
always, with a few religious exceptions in the middle ages.
And even those, actually, if you look underneath the surface are largely about trade and
commerce and land.
That is deeply ingrained
in the competitive market mentality. If you have twocorporations that are seeking
market share, looking to collaborate, get cartels going, looking to establish a monopoly,
yeah they might not be able to get away with it too long because of the overarching
government issue that's there to stop it,
there's no real difference between that and two countries, which are corporations one and all.
The United States gets trillions of dollars in taxes revenue from all corporations.
It's a business, period!
General Smedly D. Butler, 1940s, one of the most decorated army officers
in history of America.
He wrote a book called 'War is a racket' and I've never seen a more plain description,
of how war is, and has always been used for commercial domination of the monetary power.
Which is why we always put down the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds
and all these people we demonize,
they are just manifestations
of the same ruling ethic.
So, to disagree a little bit, I don't differentiate,
I see it as exactly built-in.
And we can expect nothing less,
than the buying of politicians, the defense contract, windfalls,
these are all build into the same mechanism, as far as I'm concerned.
- Ok, so how do you change it?
- Ok. How do you change a system that is inherently corrupt? How do you change a system, move
from something where everyone that has been so deeply
conditioned into these values and ethics, to the fact that is glamorized now,
into something that is actually sustainable and meeting the needs of the
human population in an abundance.
Transition again, is the most complicated thing you can talk about.
But you have to change, which is what the Zeitgeist Movement does, the value systems first.
You have to get people to realize the underlying problem
and get them to actually understand the solution.
So when you talk about change literally, it's a change of the human being,
it's a change of you and I.
To realize that we might be a part of this system, we might have to engage it.
I have to sell movies, I have to engage in the "evil capitalist" stuff
and everyone says I'm a hypocrite for that,
but that's me living in the system I was born into, trying to work through it.
We have to deviate and create plans to enable an abundance, to enable these,
these elements that would comprise the characteristics of the new social system
in the future, which would again reward
these, these attributes.
The Zeitgeist Movement works on about four different levels here, we have for
example, March 17th we have our big awareness day that's global,
with about 150 events usually on average for this day, across the world
in always about 70 countries. And it's all about showing the flaws in the current
economic system
and showing the solution,
through the train of thought of logic,
natural law economy that we put forward.
- And you guys get drunk for Saint Patrick's day?
- Yes, of course. - Ok, alright good.
Just want to be clear on that.
- It's at the same time, but we can't talk about that.
- Ok, all right, this is a coincidence..
- So beyond that.... And the second event is on Cinco de Mayo!
- Ha, ha. The other issue, is to show the world, again, the possibility more than anything else ...
We can talk about and complain and most people know the complaints,
they don't know the root order, excuse me, the root psychology, the root problem of
this system, they don't fully understand that,
which again, I can talk about it 'til I turn blue.
but to show people what's possible and make them realize that they don't have to exist the way they do
And if they realized that..
just as slavery, when you know, african-american population
many of them probably thought
that's the way it was supposed to be, they were ingrained into that... to be slaves
that was their value system, they thought
God created them this way or something like that
Slowy they realized it didn't have to be that way
and revolution occurred and they were "set free", if you use that terminology
This can happen in the exact same way, we can free ourselves from this economic system
if we change our minds, and start to create institutions that interfere
with this system a little bit
in meaning that there are transitional systems that could be put forward
that don't use money
there could be transitional systems that are put forward that use a mutual credit system
that remove the pressure of GDP
Again, these are all transitional notions i could talk at length
but i really want to emphasize 'cause I could go a long distance on this
for the audience's sake, which probably doesn't even know what i'm referring to
i'd like to talk about what actually comprises the new system because you've alluded to it
but we haven't really described it
So let's think about this in layers
public health is really the goal...It's the success of society....It's public health, right?
It doesn't matter how much stuff we have, even if everyone in the world had a 50 room mansion
and 2 jets parked in their front lawn, that doesn't mean they're happy
but it would be kind of awesome
It'd be tripy if that was the case
Granted, the Earth couldn't sustain that clearly
(We're working on it)
And that's another important point, is that all elements about our sense of luxury and aspirations
and success, have to fit
within the pre-existing framework of the natural order
People often say to me: "what if i want
in your system ah...
uh... you know, a huge..
2000 square foot house with
(it's not 2000 square foot house). A 200 square mile backyard, i should say, something obnoxious
i say, well, what if I want Africa as my backyard?
do you think that's humane?
Cause at some point, when it comes to natural balance in society, something has become
crazy
irrational, and essentially violent
There's a great deal of material violence out there when it comes to selfishness
So with that framework in mind..
you have to balance human needs
and our aspirations and sense of success and material abundance
with the inherent levels
of restriction in the natural world, the carrying capacity of the Earth
Do you want to coexist or you want to fight? If we want to coexist, then we have to change our patterns
7 billion people on this planet...9 billion people in a couple of decades easy
that's due to lack of education by the way
uh... we're gonna have to
really assess what we're doing
and build a model around that goal
now that's the first thing, how do you establish that goal? Do we want that goal?
If humanity doesn't want that goal, then there's no hope in even trying to reach it
But i think deep down people want to see balance and peace and sustainability
So you start with the food level as I mentioned earlier, easy to create global
abundance through localization
Energy. Big energy issue across the world
Are there other technical solutions to create energy abundance? Absolutely.
There's more energy hitting the surface of the Earth
uh... every day than we could use daily for 4000 years
It's 4000 times more energy. It's a technological capacity to harness
which is right around the corner with nanotechnology
also geothermal and wind and solar and tide, these've imense capacities, there's no energy crisis
we localize all of that, all homes become local
in their energy production, very easy to do at this point in time, it's not done
because of, again, the utility industry and the cartels that are inherent to our system
and the GDP that it drives by the way, that's very important to point out.
You localize this, boom, everyone has food and everyone has energy
Now we get to production, i'm making it over simplified, but it really is that simple
if these industries were set up, when i say "industries" i mean technical mechanisms were set up
then you move on to actual production
Production is really important, and of course, this relates to what i just described
production... you have to get a sense of what the Earth has
Right now, all the corporations in the world that hoard resources for their own profit gain
They keep it secret what's available, we don't really know how much oil there is
We don't really know how many diamonds
how much copper, how much aluminum there really is... there have been surveys that have been made, but
it's private secret, it's a corporate right to have those secrets. We have to assess this.
And we have to figure out exactly what we have
and then we have to generate a system, a logical system of distributing these
resources in a way that actually make sense with respect to natural law
What i mean by that:
we have decision making processes through industry that's based entirely on the motivation of money
so you have to make something
you're looking at numbers and cost efficiency, you're relating to industries, you're
going to use things based only on your cost efficiency and the patterns you need
that's not the way a real economy would work, a real economy would take resources that we have
and assess them for their scientific relevance, assess them for what
they're actually supposed to do
But who does the assessment?
The assessment is done by reason
and this is something that people hate it when i say it, cause they think that somebody
in some round table
in some soviet circle, is gonna make all the decisions for all the world
one of the great psychological revolutions, great sociological revolutions
that has to occur if we intend to survive on this planet
is we have to stop delegating decision making to people
and delegate decision making to a process of rational thought and LOGIC
this is completely devoid in the world
Let me express this, cause i know that it's a difficult thing to just throw out there
We can calculate society now
Science has only been with us really in application about six hundred years
we can calculate
what the greatest conductor, conducting metal is and why should be used in
certain forms and not in others
we can apply this type of reasoning
to everything
and i don't mean some utopianistic thing where suddenly
there's a matrix and everything's calculated...that's an ideal
that probably isn't reality, at least not now
but that's the way we should approach our thought process... we have to arrive at
conclusions, not base them on traditional notions or pre-existing systems
So when you take the frame of reference it completely shatters the political system
it shatters the business system as we know it, it shatters this notion of "free choice"
and i say that in a very subtle way, because when it comes down to it
we are not free
if we intend to survive on this planet we have to align ourselves
with the laws of nature
and guide ourselves
and that's that. And that's a deep problem we have with the neuroses of
"freedom" we have in the world today.
But Peter, it comes back to who's gonna make that decision, so...
uh...I sometimes kiddingly, somewhat kiddingly, call myself the most reasonable man in America
So do I get to make the decisions?
Ok, here's the thing, democracy.
What is a real democracy? Democracy means at the root, I don't mean the greek root
but democracy in and of itself implies
finding a way to get people to work together and share the world
and share decision making processes, right?
okay well a democracy could be that everyone in the world decides to kill themselves
Well, then that's their choice to do so. It could be that everyone in the world
decides to enslave a whole group of people, that's fine
It could be decide that everyone in the world, in their ignorance, decides to destroy the whole
planet because of bad methods
because they're not willing to align themselves with natural laws such as say...
climate destabilization, depletion, all the other things that are happening in the world today
so that means democracy
needs something else, it needs a guiding educational principle
It needs a frame of reference
to make the democratic process reasonable
because otherwise, it's just monkeys in the wild
Ok, but who gives that? Your reason can be different than my reason
you know, look, i'm an enormous believer in logic and i'm agnostic
and I don't believe in religion, that's a whole separate problem because we've got to
overcome the fact that the world is massively religious
That's a great point
But who decides what's reasonable?
Well, let me finish my point...it's we have to create a system of interaction of humanity
where everyone decides
now what i mean by that is... we have this thing
called a Direct Democracy, it's very common now, it's used in technical circles.
we apply the concept of Direct Democracy, except it isn't people
seeing a referendum..it isn't people voting on something... it's actually about the true
established element of society, that keeps us going which is industry itself
Not politics. Politics is a byproduct it's really at its deepest core
really uh... negative retroaction
of an economic system that's so inefficient it needs these people up here
to control everything in their dictatorial way
So in the future you're gonna have an interactive system of some kind
where people are going to contribute to the development of goods
of life support
They're gonna contribute to the management of the Earth
contribute to their own betterment
in just the way we do today except against
a technical benchmark
of the scientific method and reason
we really can't operate in another way
There's gotta be a system and that can be done technically, it can be done though computers
That's how a direct democracy is proposed to work today
I use that, it's a great analogy
it can be done where people are interacting and sharing ideas
in an utterly open-source way
Oh, you want to build a car?
Here's a bunch of data that we've comprised about how this car could work more efficiently
and more in the interests of our demands in the population
But what if i don't want your perfectly efficient car?
Well it's gonna get to a point also, when human choice
would be so much more variable
because of the modular revolution in robotics where you'll be able to print cars
in a way where you can have a custom car at a whim, without the need for mass production
there's so many things that are happening technologically right now that aid
the individualism that you speak of
that aid the ability of you to be creative in and of yourself, 3D printing...
uh... there's a whole lot of amazing stuff happening around the corner
If you study people like Ray Kurzweil...
The Singularity Institute
and look at people like Jacque Fresco, Buckminster Fuller
I throw this out there because
we're not thinking wide enough enough, and i'm calling you out a little bit, cause you gotta be wider
You gotta look at what's possible..
I'm pretty wide
It's looking at what's possible and thinking about how a lot of the fears that we have about a loss of individuality
a loss of decision making are not
actually applicable to the type of
system of interaction I'm speaking of, and i'll say one more final...
I'm not sure I'm buying that
Ok. Then what's the objection?
Again, i'm not quite sure who's
making the decision, it seems a little too utopian about how we
all wind up agreeing on the right technical thing and then
and then what's my parameters of choice? So like you've
come up with this great car except
then i say okay, but i want a different car, and you say don't worry about it cause all the printers
are gonna print all the kinda cars you want
Oh let me ask you this one: how much choice do you think you really have ?
How much choice do any of you people think you really have?
In a world that's driven entirely by a corporate incentive, entirely upon mass production
in a very inefficient way, producing things that yeah, there's the illusion of difference
everything is as 1984 as you could possibly imagine in the world today
Everything is carbon copy
Look at the average homes out there, there's very little variation
the entire infrastructure is certainly without variation
people have very little options to do tons and tons of things
I can't put solar panels on my home without enormous amount of money
There's inhibitions across the board
So this idea, this sort of indulgence that we have that we can exist in a way
we can't exist in a way, excuse me, without the market system
because the market system enables this freedom of choice
is really a delusion. We have limited choices more than any time than we'll ever see when it comes to the future
There'll be so many more choices in the future
and there's only one final thing i'll add to that
that is really important again, I can't drill home enough....is that
when we want to be sustainable
our choices are limited
it doesn't mean that things are going to be
uh... anything less than they are now, in fact there will be more choices the future
But if the choices are limited, who's the one who gets to limit them?
It's funny how, again, we think we live in a democracy, and you keep asking this question
"who is the person?"
You don't fathom that we can create a system where everyone interacts through a medium
that reasons these things out, where production can be automated...
Ok, so that goes back to my religion point then
So...no...It is hard to fathom, right? So, I fancy myself logical, right and..
uh...
at the same time i know that i live in a notion of insanity, let's keep it real
generated insanity
ok now, there's the insanity that you talk about in the capitalist system, etc
which there's a lot that a agree with on, as we've discussed already
and then there's the insanity of religion
so if we went to, you know
We go to decide what's reasonable
and people will decide your that what's reasonable is that we're gonna get sucked up into the sky
by Jesus's vacuum.
Believe me I know...I'm not sitting here trying to tell you I have all the answers
I'm trying to present a train of thought to the audience and yourself
to the extent that, this is what we could do
this would resolve the problems at hand. We have plenty of cognitive dissonance
I have spent a great deal of time criticizing religious belief
I'm very well aware of the neuroses that's established. I'm also very well aware
of the dogma that exists in the market mindset too
with people i speak to, this materialism that's come forward
where anything, where you try to say anything about how things how they "should be"
or how someone should behave, everyone hates that you know, I get that
but the fact of the matter is there is a governing natural law
I am susceptible to certain rules, I can eat tons of garbage and toxic stuff
but i'm gonna get cancer probably, therefore i'm bound if i want to maintain health
same thing goes to society if we wanna live in a society that's peaceful
sustainable, humane, in a very literal sense that we know of today
we have to take the social order into account
so people's values have to be adapted to what works on the whole
and if you follow this train of thought
you will realize that... and we are malleable, we are very malleable
Our plasticity in our minds can enable us to do things.. when you look across the world
there are people living in all sorts of different types of societies
Not as much as they used to of course, with the hegemonic agendas of the West
But, it's not that it can't be done...people will overcome their fears
once they realize
that they are going to be so much happier
than the world they have today because this is all relative as well
i'm not trying to say this is utopia, this is relative to where we are now
So look, there's limited resources and that's a sad day for all of us
and we allocate them in a way that's not necessarily efficient now
so we have the illusion of choice as you're pointing out, I get all that
in your view of things
somebody
there's going to be another system of making those
choices among limited resources
And you're hoping that it's one that it's based on reason
so that appeals to me, I like reason. But but when we go to decide together
we're not very reasonable creatures, so
I mean we're not right now, i hope we are in a thousand years or in ten thousand years
But right now, like you go and try to make a reasonable decision in Pakistan and see how that turns out for you
I completely agree with you, I understand. Once again, I'm not trying to deny that
and I know that there would be an enormous amount of resistance towards anything
of this nature regardless of how reasoned and even if you explained how
beneficial it would be for everyone, especially in these impoverished
highly religious nations, how much better their lives would be if they simply
conceded to these fundamental economic purposes uh... but
that doesn't change the goal, and that doesn't mean if doesn't happen
tomorrow, doesn't happen in a decade, doesn't happen in 100 years, doesn't happen in 1000 years from now
it doesn't change the interest to pursue it
because if you follow the logic, this is where we're going, and I think it will
happen if we don't destroy each other
and the planet uh... beforehand
And that's Nip and Tuck, I see which way it's gonna go
So one more thing uh...
how do people take concrete steps now?
let's assume
that, you know, you live in a western democracy, specifically, i would say the US
we're in the US
uh... do you want them to take certain action
in terms of the government and say okay, let's do this instead of that?
Ok, as far as transition i'll jump right into that
The first as i mentioned earlier is you've to really start to inform people
about what the true root problem is, again i've huge
lectures and tons of documents on the root problems of economics as we know it
then you have to inform them of the solution, get that under their belts
then you show them what's possible, you show them they can live in a world where they only work 2 hours a week
Oh get outta here...
Listen, I'm serious.
I'm dead serious
I don't think you understand the capacity, what we're capable of technologically
this isn't to say we're gonna live in the same world we live in now
We'll take this back right now
Imagine if you took all the technology that you know of today, all the automation and stuff
then posed it on America, or you posed it on Europe 300 years ago
Forget the biases of the culture, forget everything
they would not have to work at all
You know why? Because it'd be fully and utterly automated
it's the change of culture
the change of the notion of materialism that has forced us into wanting more and more
and creates these illusions, i'm not saying that we should go back to
300 years, Europe, that's not what I'm saying
What i'm saying is that..
Hey, they didn't have air conditioning back then, so let's just keep that real
It's all relative, the values are all relative, if we leave this materialistic culture
if we stop this obsession with consumption that has been imposed upon us
we could find....balance.
To the extent that where we drive our values and importance from how we relate to each other
how we help, we contribute to the world, how we better ourselves in a deep personal way
not only cars we have in the garage or anything else
Look, 2 hours a week seems extreme to me, but i understand you've a valid point
I can mathematically quantify that in documents that have been posted
I understand it, so..
but so now that's step three of those at....so ok, then what do we do tomorrow?
So what i propose.. we have a great deal of poverty, we've a great deal of unemployment
and unemployment by the way, just to make sure that this is stated at least once
unemployment's a consequence
of technology
entirely
the entire reason we have unemployment in America and across the world is in explicitly based on the
application of technology for cost efficiency in this is not going to stop
and this will lead to
what has been called theorists the contradiction of capitalism
to the ultimate instability of our social system
the ability to produce more with less people at cheaper rates
It's a complete clash of the system
that being said, there's plenty of people unemployed on this planet
that could, that have plenty of skills that could be utilized
There's something called a mutual credit system, that has been used in Switzerland
it also takes more primitive forms as a time bank
uh... in the world like in New York they have one i think there's one probably in Los Angeles
and what you do is you don't use money
you start to barter through these complex systems, computerized systems
you barter services and even goods in certain circumstances
you're not using money, which is beautifully you're accomplishing 2 things:
you're removing growth which means removing circulation
which is a negative thing against this type of model, you want more and
more consumption to make this model work which means that...
This isn't the intention of it, but as long as people are bartering
and getting their needs met cause they have no money and..
those that do come around and want to do that instead, cause they despise this system like myself
they will start to pull away from the market economy
and they'll start to pull more gas out of this, we're gonna starve the beast
starve the beast is a more, a firmly activist notion
Second are sharing systems
there's a Zeitgeist Movement in Toronto
that does a tool sharing systems in their local community they have all
their tools put in one place and they share them, why?
Cause no one uses a screwdriver all the time
so they share them
There's no duplication of stuff, like the Zipcar
Zipcar is a tremendous good sustainability practice because there is not people
buying cars one on one, they're using them, having access to them
and that's a big thing about the future, there won't be as much
property obsession in the future, it will be about access more than anything else
extremely important for sustainability of the species given population growth
so those are two attributes that will help
pull some wind out of the system and
help those that are really suffering
and then we move on to larger order
mandates that we'll move against the government to demand certain facilities
be put in place regarding energy
regarding food production
and this word that people hate more than anything else
the "socialization" of certain aspects of our lives
doctor Martin Luther King Jr. advocated a guaranteed income
and he was killed soon after, I'm not saying that was why
but he went against the economic system just like he went againt racism
you know why? Cause we live in a state of pure economic racism, it takes the form of classism now
It doesn't matter what your gender or race is
It matters what your place is on the social hierarchy
and they're keep you in those positions because it's subservient oriented
It's exploitation across the board
this is important, so these mandates will be pushed forward in the same type of rhetoric
and through culminations of these things....and the ultimate issue really is education
i believe that there's gonna be a breakdown in culmination
as well because this system is not going to survive, i mean we're gonna keep...
Mark my words, you're gonna see more employment, since it's inevitable
you're gonna see more poverty of the ultimate tier..
More employment or unemployment?
Unemployment, excuse me
You're going to see more climate destabilization because the faster this system
pulls itself and tightens the noose
the corporations are gonna get more and more lax
and more and more ruthless, same with the politicians
and the worst thing that i fear more than anything else is another World War
which has been inching in certain ways for a long time
there's a lot i agree with...in what you just described
Ok before we leave though i wanna ask you about how you got here
so where did you grow up and how did all of this come about?
Sure, I grew up in North Carolina, a small
a small
more or less an urban town but for North Carolina isn't particularly urban
uh... my father is a mailman and my mother well a retired now, a social worker
and actually I pull a lot of my views from my mother's work in social work, she worked
many different elements, I've never seen such deprivation than the more rural areas of the world
really a case example of what poverty does to people and the generation
neuroses, sexual abuse, gangs
uh... it's really a microcosm
uh... I should say a macrocosm really of what's happening across the world
and i drew a lot of values from that, but i grew up in a very competitive environment
I was pursuing career in classical music..that was my...i went to college for
i dropped out
for various uh... obvious reasons, debt. I couldn't see myself going into
100 thousand dollars in debt to be musician, that made no sense to me
It's unique how the financial system
when people turn 18, they go to college and they're just riped to be
exploited by the corporations 'cause they're a walk out of that school with
enormous amounts of debt, at least in America
and then you're gonna have to pay that all the rest of life, how you're gonna pay it off?
You're gonna work for a corporation
And you can't leave otherwise you can't pay the debt
and that so..education is the one thing you cannot get rid of, even under bankrupcy
I know, I remember years ago i was gonna default on my loans, they were so big
but it was in my mother's name and they told her they would garnish her social security
which I thought was unbelievable
and this is America you know... so i moved uh...I was in New York for many years
Three years ago i moved here but i mainly worked in media in New York
i did my music stuff but i was just like anyone else
I was very ruthless, I actually was an independent equity trader for about 6 years
I have a lot of experience in the financial system
and in the advertising system too, as in my own view two of the worst industries in the face of the Earth
Did you make good money doing that?
Not particularly cause i didn't have a large capital base
You have to have high five figures to do the type of day trading I was doing, I did nominal
but i didn't ...I did purely private
I didn't work for any institution
so but it was a great experience driver
I mean, my goal was to actually do that and be a musician in all my narcissism was to be
an equity trader, finally get the capital base which i was working up to, and be a musician
This is the standard kind of narcissism you see in this culture, and then something snapped
Something snapped when I was about 25
and i just started looking at the world, 9/11 happened, i started looking at the world
and said, what's going on? What is...I woke up, to use that cliche term
and then i made the first film as a performance piece believe it or not, in 2007
as a catharsis, I was still working in advertising, still doing day trading
and i released this free piece
i never intended to put it online, excuse me, I never intended to make a movie out of it
it was riddled with copyright infringement but I did a performance
of it in lower manhattan for free
and after it was done i threw the media on it cause it was a performance piece
I literally performed the piece
with a percussion arrangement
and then i threw up online and out of nowhere the whole thing went viral
like there was no tomorrow and this started me on a path
I've been pushed into the position i'm in now, i had no intention
of uh... really attempting any of this and everything's just been led to another and now i feel
a deep uh... I can't live with myself
knowing what's possible
in the world and seeing what we're doing and without trying to change it
that's where i stand
All right, Peter Joseph, thanks so much for being with us on The Young Turks
I appreciate it
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