1 00:00:07,667 --> 00:00:10,387 Hello, my name is Franky. I work also with 2 00:00:10,527 --> 00:00:13,371 an organization called The Zeitgeist Movement as you already know. 3 00:00:13,511 --> 00:00:16,021 I would like to welcome everybody 4 00:00:16,161 --> 00:00:20,044 from far and wide; everybody did come. Thank you very much. 5 00:00:20,184 --> 00:00:23,960 I would like to take this opportunity to especially thank 6 00:00:24,100 --> 00:00:26,557 the teams of The Zeitgeist Movement. 7 00:00:26,697 --> 00:00:29,808 Teams meaning the Linguistic Team, the Web Team, the Technology Team, 8 00:00:29,908 --> 00:00:33,664 the Activism Team and also the Project Team that 9 00:00:34,204 --> 00:00:36,649 coordinated this project. 10 00:00:36,789 --> 00:00:40,954 The whole German chapter did a great job 11 00:00:41,094 --> 00:00:44,195 with establishing this event within a month. 12 00:00:44,335 --> 00:00:47,089 I would like to thank everybody personally. 13 00:00:47,229 --> 00:00:49,198 Good to see you here. 14 00:00:49,338 --> 00:00:52,234 I think Peter Joseph doesn't need any introduction. 15 00:00:52,374 --> 00:00:54,686 I think everybody here knows who he is. 16 00:00:54,826 --> 00:00:58,038 So, short and precise: thank you. 17 00:00:58,178 --> 00:01:00,709 I hand the microphone over to Peter. 18 00:01:00,849 --> 00:01:03,398 [Sustained Applause] 19 00:01:13,217 --> 00:01:17,450 You can turn this mic off since I'm not going to use it. 20 00:01:18,147 --> 00:01:20,371 Ah, so it's the other mic. 21 00:01:20,511 --> 00:01:23,256 How's everybody doing? [Audience in unison] - Good! 22 00:01:23,395 --> 00:01:26,332 I really appreciate you all being here. 23 00:01:26,472 --> 00:01:29,180 I want to thank Franky and the Berlin team 24 00:01:29,320 --> 00:01:31,747 for moving so fast; it's really phenomenal. 25 00:01:31,887 --> 00:01:36,052 Having put on many events myself over the years, it's not an easy task. 26 00:01:36,192 --> 00:01:38,499 I'm always reminded when I travel these days, 27 00:01:38,639 --> 00:01:42,400 that The Zeitgeist Movement is truly a global phenomenon at this stage, right? 28 00:01:43,015 --> 00:01:45,594 No matter where any of us end up on the planet, 29 00:01:45,734 --> 00:01:49,597 you don't have to go very far to find friends who share similar values 30 00:01:49,737 --> 00:01:52,275 in this pursuit of a better world. 31 00:01:54,834 --> 00:01:57,073 The title of this talk is "Economic Calculation 32 00:01:57,213 --> 00:02:00,105 in a Natural Law/Resource-Based Economy (NLRBE)." 33 00:02:00,245 --> 00:02:02,157 For the past five years or so 34 00:02:02,297 --> 00:02:04,810 The Zeitgeist Movement has put out quite a bit of educational media 35 00:02:04,950 --> 00:02:06,990 with respect to its advocation, 36 00:02:07,130 --> 00:02:10,425 and the learning curve has been rather intense. 37 00:02:10,566 --> 00:02:12,991 There's been a tendency to generalize 38 00:02:13,131 --> 00:02:15,993 with respect to how things actually work technically. 39 00:02:16,548 --> 00:02:19,186 This is the contents of this presentation. 40 00:02:19,326 --> 00:02:22,280 In Part I and two I'm going to refine 41 00:02:22,420 --> 00:02:24,898 the inherent flaws of the current market model 42 00:02:25,038 --> 00:02:26,875 regarding why we need to change 43 00:02:27,015 --> 00:02:29,292 along with relaying the vast prospects 44 00:02:29,432 --> 00:02:32,354 we now have to solve vast problems, 45 00:02:32,494 --> 00:02:34,746 improve efficiency, and generate a form of abundance 46 00:02:34,886 --> 00:02:36,692 that could meet all human needs. 47 00:02:36,832 --> 00:02:39,938 The active term which has gained popularity in the last couple years 48 00:02:40,078 --> 00:02:42,261 is called "post-scarcity," 49 00:02:42,401 --> 00:02:46,749 even though that word is a little misleading semantically as I'll explain. 50 00:02:47,476 --> 00:02:50,672 In Part III, I'll work to show how this new society 51 00:02:50,772 --> 00:02:53,656 generally works in its structure and basic calculation. 52 00:02:53,836 --> 00:02:56,520 I think most people on the planet know that there is something 53 00:02:56,660 --> 00:02:59,452 very wrong with the current socioeconomic tradition. 54 00:02:59,592 --> 00:03:01,731 They just don't know how to think about the solution, 55 00:03:01,871 --> 00:03:05,367 or more accurately, how to arrive at such solutions. 56 00:03:05,507 --> 00:03:09,023 Until that is addressed, we're not going to get very far. 57 00:03:10,299 --> 00:03:13,431 On that note, in a number of months, a rather substantial text 58 00:03:13,571 --> 00:03:16,659 is going to be put into circulation, available for free 59 00:03:16,799 --> 00:03:19,165 and also in print form or download form 60 00:03:19,305 --> 00:03:21,733 at cost (it's a non-profit expression). 61 00:03:21,873 --> 00:03:24,281 This will be finished hopefully by the first of the year 62 00:03:24,421 --> 00:03:27,455 and will be the definitive expression (in the condensed form) 63 00:03:27,595 --> 00:03:29,840 of the Movement, something that's been long overdue. 64 00:03:29,980 --> 00:03:32,551 It's called "The Zeitgeist Movement Defined" and it will serve as both 65 00:03:32,691 --> 00:03:36,407 an orientation and a reference guide. 66 00:03:36,747 --> 00:03:40,485 It will have probably over a thousand footnotes and sources. 67 00:03:41,362 --> 00:03:44,147 Once finished, an educational video series will be put out 68 00:03:44,287 --> 00:03:47,429 in about 20 parts to produce the material along with a workbook 69 00:03:47,569 --> 00:03:50,986 to help people who want to learn how to talk about these ideas because 70 00:03:51,126 --> 00:03:54,456 we basically need more people on an international level 71 00:03:54,556 --> 00:03:56,556 to be able to communicate, as I try to do. 72 00:03:56,656 --> 00:03:59,906 It's a very important thing, and I think the future of the Movement 73 00:04:00,053 --> 00:04:03,467 rests in part on our capacity to create a well-oiled 74 00:04:03,607 --> 00:04:07,828 international educational machine with consistent language 75 00:04:07,968 --> 00:04:11,822 coupled with real design projects and their interworkings. 76 00:04:13,702 --> 00:04:16,704 Part I: Why are we even here? 77 00:04:17,425 --> 00:04:19,387 Is this type of large-scale change- 78 00:04:19,527 --> 00:04:21,817 what the Movement advocates- really needed? 79 00:04:21,957 --> 00:04:24,720 Can't we just work to fix and improve the current 80 00:04:24,860 --> 00:04:28,023 economic model, keeping the general framework of money, 81 00:04:28,163 --> 00:04:31,846 trade, profit, power, property and the like? 82 00:04:32,857 --> 00:04:35,613 The short answer is a definitive "No," 83 00:04:35,753 --> 00:04:37,539 as I'm going to explain. 84 00:04:37,679 --> 00:04:40,427 If there's any real interest to solve the growing 85 00:04:40,567 --> 00:04:43,038 public health and environmental crises at hand 86 00:04:43,178 --> 00:04:45,179 this system needs to go. 87 00:04:45,319 --> 00:04:48,326 Market capitalism, no matter how you wish to regulate it 88 00:04:48,466 --> 00:04:51,248 or not regulate it, depending on who you speak with, 89 00:04:51,388 --> 00:04:53,929 contains severe structural flaws 90 00:04:54,069 --> 00:04:56,452 which will always, to one degree or another, 91 00:04:56,592 --> 00:05:00,136 perpetuate environmental abuse and destabilization, 92 00:05:00,776 --> 00:05:04,624 and human disregard and caustic inequality. 93 00:05:05,947 --> 00:05:08,914 Put another way, environmental and social imbalance 94 00:05:09,054 --> 00:05:12,887 and a basic lack of sustainability both environmentally and culturally 95 00:05:13,027 --> 00:05:16,476 is inherent to the market economy, and it always has been. 96 00:05:16,616 --> 00:05:21,062 The difference between capitalism today and say, the 16th century 97 00:05:21,202 --> 00:05:24,665 is that our technological ability to rapidly accelerate 98 00:05:24,805 --> 00:05:27,422 and amplify this market process 99 00:05:27,562 --> 00:05:31,191 has brought to the surface consequences which simply couldn't be understood 100 00:05:31,331 --> 00:05:35,130 or even recognized during those early primitive times. 101 00:05:36,281 --> 00:05:38,956 In other words, the basic principles of market economics 102 00:05:39,096 --> 00:05:41,457 have always been intrinsically flawed. 103 00:05:41,597 --> 00:05:45,039 It has taken just this long for the severity of those flaws 104 00:05:45,179 --> 00:05:48,302 to come to fruition. Let me explain a little bit. 105 00:05:48,883 --> 00:05:51,222 From an environmental standpoint, 106 00:05:51,362 --> 00:05:53,397 market perception simply cannot view the Earth 107 00:05:53,537 --> 00:05:57,065 as anything but an inventory for exploitation. 108 00:05:57,205 --> 00:06:00,053 Why? Because the entire existence of the market economy 109 00:06:00,193 --> 00:06:03,466 has to do with keeping money in circulation 110 00:06:03,606 --> 00:06:07,691 at a rate which can keep as many people employed as possible. 111 00:06:08,911 --> 00:06:12,622 In other words, the world economy is powered by constant consumption. 112 00:06:12,762 --> 00:06:15,966 If consumption levels drop, so does labor demand, 113 00:06:16,106 --> 00:06:20,109 and so does the available purchasing power of the general population 114 00:06:20,249 --> 00:06:24,849 and hence, so does demand for goods as money isn't there to buy them. 115 00:06:24,989 --> 00:06:28,405 This cyclical consumption is the lifeblood 116 00:06:28,545 --> 00:06:30,817 of our economic existence. 117 00:06:30,957 --> 00:06:33,976 The very idea of being conservative or truly efficient 118 00:06:34,116 --> 00:06:36,898 with the Earth's finite resources in any way 119 00:06:37,038 --> 00:06:40,011 is structurally counterproductive 120 00:06:40,151 --> 00:06:42,991 to this needed driving force of consuming. 121 00:06:43,570 --> 00:06:46,308 If you don't believe that, ask yourself why 122 00:06:46,408 --> 00:06:50,229 virtually every life support system on this planet is in decline. 123 00:06:50,709 --> 00:06:53,853 We have an ongoing loss of topsoil, ever-depleting fresh water, 124 00:06:53,993 --> 00:06:56,171 atmospheric and climate destabilization, 125 00:06:56,311 --> 00:06:59,154 a loss of oxygen-producing plankton in the ocean 126 00:06:59,294 --> 00:07:02,426 (which is critical to marine and atmosphere ecology), 127 00:07:02,566 --> 00:07:04,566 the ongoing depletion of fish populations, 128 00:07:04,666 --> 00:07:07,110 the reduction of rain forests, and so forth. 129 00:07:07,461 --> 00:07:11,328 In other words, an overall general loss of critical biodiversity 130 00:07:11,468 --> 00:07:14,347 is occurring and increasing. 131 00:07:14,487 --> 00:07:18,192 For those not familiar with the critical relevance of biodiversity, 132 00:07:18,332 --> 00:07:20,810 billions of years of evolution 133 00:07:20,950 --> 00:07:25,668 has created a vastly interdependent biosphere of planetary systems. 134 00:07:25,808 --> 00:07:30,657 Disturbing one system always has an effect on many others. 135 00:07:31,661 --> 00:07:34,079 This, of course, is no new observation. 136 00:07:34,219 --> 00:07:40,155 In 2002, 192 countries in association with the United Nations 137 00:07:40,295 --> 00:07:44,259 got together around something called "The Convention on Biological Diversity." 138 00:07:44,729 --> 00:07:50,184 They made a public commitment to significantly reduce this loss by 2010. 139 00:07:51,023 --> 00:07:54,413 And what changed eight years later? Nothing. 140 00:07:54,915 --> 00:07:58,010 In their official 2010 publication, they state: 141 00:07:58,150 --> 00:08:01,711 "None of the 21 sub-targets accompanying the overall target 142 00:08:01,851 --> 00:08:07,565 of significantly reducing the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010 143 00:08:08,078 --> 00:08:11,167 can be said definitively to have been achieved globally." 144 00:08:11,307 --> 00:08:16,090 "Actions to promote biodiversity receive a tiny fraction of funding 145 00:08:16,230 --> 00:08:19,286 compared to infrastructure and industrial developments." 146 00:08:19,426 --> 00:08:21,351 (Hmm, I wonder why?) 147 00:08:21,491 --> 00:08:24,726 "Moreover, biodiversity considerations are often ignored 148 00:08:24,866 --> 00:08:27,107 when such developments are designed. 149 00:08:27,247 --> 00:08:31,646 Most future scenarios project continuing high levels of extinctions 150 00:08:31,786 --> 00:08:34,898 and loss of habitats throughout this century." 151 00:08:35,984 --> 00:08:39,412 In a 2011 study published which was in part 152 00:08:39,552 --> 00:08:44,668 a response to an general call to isolate and protect certain regions 153 00:08:44,808 --> 00:08:47,776 to insure some security of this biodiversity, 154 00:08:47,916 --> 00:08:51,493 found that, even with millions of square kilometers of land and ocean 155 00:08:51,633 --> 00:08:55,266 currently under legal protection, it has done very little 156 00:08:55,406 --> 00:08:57,773 to slow the trend of decline. 157 00:08:58,427 --> 00:09:02,559 They also made the following highly troubling conclusion 158 00:09:02,938 --> 00:09:07,000 combining this trend with the state of our resource consumption: 159 00:09:08,083 --> 00:09:11,991 "The excess use of the Earth's resources or overshoot is possible 160 00:09:12,131 --> 00:09:16,551 because resources can be harvested faster than they can be replaced. 161 00:09:16,691 --> 00:09:20,711 The cumulative overshoot from the mid-1980's to 2002 162 00:09:20,851 --> 00:09:23,251 resulted in an 'ecological debt' 163 00:09:23,391 --> 00:09:26,859 that would require 2.5 planet Earths to pay. 164 00:09:27,000 --> 00:09:30,789 In a business-as-usual scenario, our demands on planet Earth 165 00:09:30,929 --> 00:09:35,710 could mount to the productivity of 27 planets by 2050." 166 00:09:38,783 --> 00:09:42,852 And there's no shortage of other corroborating studies that confirm, 167 00:09:42,992 --> 00:09:46,192 to one degree or another, we are indeed greatly overshooting 168 00:09:46,332 --> 00:09:48,769 the annual production capacity of the Earth, 169 00:09:48,909 --> 00:09:51,808 coupled with pollution and collateral destruction 170 00:09:51,948 --> 00:09:55,289 caused by industrial and consumer patterns. 171 00:09:56,109 --> 00:09:59,887 Again, this kind of research has been published for many decades now. 172 00:10:00,027 --> 00:10:03,320 Why is it that with all this mounting data 173 00:10:03,460 --> 00:10:06,372 we can't seem to curb life support depletion 174 00:10:06,512 --> 00:10:08,775 and our overshooting consumption trends? 175 00:10:08,915 --> 00:10:11,367 Is it because there are too many people on the planet? 176 00:10:11,507 --> 00:10:14,232 Is it because we're just utterly incompetent 177 00:10:14,372 --> 00:10:17,378 and have no conscious control over our actions? 178 00:10:18,054 --> 00:10:22,431 No. The problem is that we have a global economic tradition still in place 179 00:10:22,571 --> 00:10:26,859 rooted in 16th century pre-industrial handicraft-oriented thought 180 00:10:27,000 --> 00:10:29,150 that places the act of consuming, 181 00:10:29,290 --> 00:10:33,526 buying and selling as the core driver of all social unfolding. 182 00:10:34,000 --> 00:10:37,922 The best analogy I can think of is to consider the gas pedal on a car: 183 00:10:38,062 --> 00:10:40,790 the more consumption of fuel, the faster it goes, 184 00:10:40,930 --> 00:10:43,253 and buying things in our world is the fuel. 185 00:10:43,393 --> 00:10:46,675 If you slow down consumption, economic growth slows, 186 00:10:46,815 --> 00:10:49,905 people lose jobs, purchasing power declines 187 00:10:50,045 --> 00:10:53,154 and things become destabilized and so forth. 188 00:10:54,400 --> 00:10:59,957 So I hope it is clear that the system simply does not reward or even support 189 00:11:00,097 --> 00:11:03,715 environmental sustainability in the form of conservation. 190 00:11:03,855 --> 00:11:07,574 In fact, it doesn't even reward sustainability in the form 191 00:11:07,714 --> 00:11:11,660 of any kind of earthly or physical efficiency 192 00:11:11,800 --> 00:11:14,377 as I will talk more at length of in a moment. 193 00:11:15,640 --> 00:11:19,083 Instead, it rewards servicing, turnover and waste: 194 00:11:19,223 --> 00:11:21,499 the more problems and inefficiencies we have, 195 00:11:21,639 --> 00:11:23,919 not to mention the more insecure, materialistic 196 00:11:24,059 --> 00:11:28,270 and needy the population becomes, the better it is for industry, 197 00:11:28,410 --> 00:11:31,433 the better it is for GDP, the better it is for employment, 198 00:11:31,573 --> 00:11:33,573 regardless of the fact that we may literally 199 00:11:33,673 --> 00:11:36,457 be killing ourselves in the process. 200 00:11:37,895 --> 00:11:42,612 My friend John McMurtry, a philosopher in Canada, refers to this state 201 00:11:42,752 --> 00:11:45,822 as the "Cancer Stage of Capitalism," 202 00:11:45,962 --> 00:11:49,972 a system which is now destroying its host, us and the Earth, 203 00:11:50,112 --> 00:11:53,660 almost unknowingly because very few today really understand 204 00:11:53,800 --> 00:11:59,000 how unsustainable the core driving principles of the market really are. 205 00:12:00,371 --> 00:12:04,042 The second structurally inherent consequence I want to mention 206 00:12:04,182 --> 00:12:06,901 is the fact that market capitalism is indeed 207 00:12:07,041 --> 00:12:10,470 empirically socially destabilizing. 208 00:12:10,989 --> 00:12:13,947 It creates unnecessary and inhumane inequality, 209 00:12:14,087 --> 00:12:17,300 along with resulting unnecessary human conflict. 210 00:12:17,440 --> 00:12:21,080 In fact, I would say capitalism's most natural state 211 00:12:21,220 --> 00:12:24,000 is conflict and imbalance. 212 00:12:25,106 --> 00:12:28,473 I would categorize two forms of conflict in the world: 213 00:12:28,800 --> 00:12:31,201 national and class. 214 00:12:33,500 --> 00:12:36,233 I'm not going to spend much time on the causes of national warfare 215 00:12:36,333 --> 00:12:39,761 as it should be fairly obvious to most of us at his point. 216 00:12:39,861 --> 00:12:42,819 Sovereign nations which are in part protectionist institutions 217 00:12:42,959 --> 00:12:46,150 for the most powerful forces of business have often engaged 218 00:12:46,290 --> 00:12:50,359 in the most primal act of competition- systematic mass murder- 219 00:12:50,676 --> 00:12:54,304 in order to preserve the economic integrity of their national economies 220 00:12:54,444 --> 00:12:58,827 and select business interests which invariably comprise 221 00:12:59,159 --> 00:13:02,743 the political constituency of any given country. 222 00:13:04,133 --> 00:13:08,359 All wars in history, while often conveniently masked by various excuses, 223 00:13:08,682 --> 00:13:11,632 have predominately been about land, natural resources, 224 00:13:11,772 --> 00:13:15,054 or geoeconomic strategy on one level or another. 225 00:13:15,485 --> 00:13:18,111 The state institution has always been driven 226 00:13:18,251 --> 00:13:22,168 by commercial and property interests, existing as both a regulator 227 00:13:22,308 --> 00:13:25,557 of the basic day-to-day internal economic operations 228 00:13:25,697 --> 00:13:29,508 in the form of legislation and as a tool for power consolidation 229 00:13:29,648 --> 00:13:33,458 and competitive advantage by the most dominant industries 230 00:13:33,598 --> 00:13:38,001 of the national or even, in fact more importantly, global economy. 231 00:13:40,433 --> 00:13:44,260 There are many people in the world that still look at this causality in reverse. 232 00:13:44,400 --> 00:13:48,436 In some economic views, state government is deemed the central problem, 233 00:13:48,576 --> 00:13:52,786 as opposed to the self-interest and competitive, advantage-seeking ethos 234 00:13:52,926 --> 00:13:55,049 inherent to market capitalism. 235 00:13:55,189 --> 00:13:59,860 As the argument goes "If state power was removed or reduced dramatically, 236 00:14:00,000 --> 00:14:04,175 the market and society would be free of most of its negative effects." 237 00:14:04,650 --> 00:14:06,848 The problem with this argument is that it forgets 238 00:14:06,988 --> 00:14:11,208 that capitalism is just a variation of a scarcity-driven 239 00:14:11,348 --> 00:14:14,860 specialization and property-based exchange system, 240 00:14:15,271 --> 00:14:19,467 a system which actually goes back millennia in one form or another. 241 00:14:20,174 --> 00:14:23,488 Early settlements naturally needed to protect themselves as resource 242 00:14:23,628 --> 00:14:26,911 and land acquisition moved forward over time. 243 00:14:27,051 --> 00:14:31,574 Armies were created to protect resources from invading forces and the like. 244 00:14:31,714 --> 00:14:34,651 At the same time people were working to engage 245 00:14:34,791 --> 00:14:36,826 agriculture and handicraft, 246 00:14:37,507 --> 00:14:42,975 and it revealed labor and exchange value in a very primitive form. 247 00:14:43,658 --> 00:14:46,105 Hence property value, in the midst of this scarcity, 248 00:14:46,245 --> 00:14:48,623 demanded regulation and laws, 249 00:14:48,763 --> 00:14:51,259 not only to protect property, but to protect commerce 250 00:14:51,400 --> 00:14:55,000 and also avoid scams and fraud in transactions. 251 00:14:55,800 --> 00:14:58,059 This is the seed of the state! 252 00:14:58,199 --> 00:15:01,350 The market is a game and people can cheat. 253 00:15:01,800 --> 00:15:03,625 You need regulation. 254 00:15:03,765 --> 00:15:05,621 This is the basic problem. 255 00:15:05,761 --> 00:15:08,859 The market also allows- and here's the punchline- 256 00:15:09,000 --> 00:15:11,827 that regulation to be purchased by money. 257 00:15:12,140 --> 00:15:15,203 Therefore, there is no guaranteed integrity. 258 00:15:15,343 --> 00:15:17,716 The state and the market both battle each other 259 00:15:17,856 --> 00:15:19,786 and compliment each other. 260 00:15:19,926 --> 00:15:23,648 You will always have regulatory power centers in a market economy. 261 00:15:23,788 --> 00:15:26,672 The state and the market are inseparable; 262 00:15:26,812 --> 00:15:28,957 they go hand-in-hand. 263 00:15:30,158 --> 00:15:32,798 Now, as an aside, people often challenge this reality 264 00:15:32,898 --> 00:15:35,571 with moral or ethical arguments, 265 00:15:35,751 --> 00:15:40,065 which, I'm sorry to say, are entirely culturally subjective. 266 00:15:40,540 --> 00:15:42,859 In a world where everything is for sale, 267 00:15:43,000 --> 00:15:46,659 where the reward reinforcement, the operant condition, 268 00:15:46,800 --> 00:15:50,948 is directly tied to seeking personal advantage and gain, 269 00:15:51,088 --> 00:15:55,184 who is to say where the lines should be drawn in that process? 270 00:15:56,266 --> 00:16:00,833 This is why moral principles without structural reinforcement 271 00:16:01,390 --> 00:16:03,385 are useless. 272 00:16:03,942 --> 00:16:07,581 In the end, the question isn't what is morally right or morally wrong. 273 00:16:07,721 --> 00:16:09,721 The question is what works and what doesn't. 274 00:16:09,821 --> 00:16:11,821 And sometimes it takes a great deal of time 275 00:16:11,921 --> 00:16:14,794 for the truth of such patterns to materialize. 276 00:16:15,303 --> 00:16:18,053 For example, most people, rightly so, see 277 00:16:18,193 --> 00:16:22,070 abject human slavery historically as a morally wrong condition, 278 00:16:22,210 --> 00:16:26,230 but let's dig deeper into the characteristics and think more deeply. 279 00:16:26,370 --> 00:16:30,859 I think it is much more productive to recognize that slavery didn't work 280 00:16:31,000 --> 00:16:34,860 in the sense that it was culturally unsustainable. 281 00:16:35,000 --> 00:16:37,659 Bigotry in all forms is not just ugly, 282 00:16:37,800 --> 00:16:41,700 it is culturally unsustainable because it generates conflict. 283 00:16:42,970 --> 00:16:45,364 I'm not aware of any slave-owning society 284 00:16:45,504 --> 00:16:48,392 that did not undergo large slave rebellions. 285 00:16:48,532 --> 00:16:51,760 It's unstable and again, therefore, unsustainable. 286 00:16:51,900 --> 00:16:54,559 Market capitalism is on the same path. 287 00:16:54,700 --> 00:16:57,339 There are more slaves in the world today, 288 00:16:57,479 --> 00:17:00,621 operating within the bounds of the market economy, 289 00:17:00,761 --> 00:17:03,501 than anytime in human history. 290 00:17:04,163 --> 00:17:07,059 And I have little doubt that if we get through this rough period of time 291 00:17:07,199 --> 00:17:09,665 without destroying ourselves by war, 292 00:17:09,806 --> 00:17:12,260 uprisings or ecological collapse, 293 00:17:12,400 --> 00:17:17,167 people in the future will look back at our world today with the same disgust 294 00:17:17,308 --> 00:17:21,179 regarding our human-rights-violating economic system 295 00:17:21,554 --> 00:17:26,548 as we today look back upon the period of abject human slavery. 296 00:17:28,000 --> 00:17:29,714 Class Warfare. 297 00:17:30,151 --> 00:17:32,754 This leads as well into the subject of class warfare 298 00:17:32,894 --> 00:17:35,584 and socioeconomic inequality. 299 00:17:36,541 --> 00:17:40,886 The long history of so-called "socialist" outcry has largely been about 300 00:17:41,026 --> 00:17:44,743 this constant and inhumane imbalance on one level or another. 301 00:17:44,883 --> 00:17:47,995 A great deal of time has been spent by many critics of capitalism, 302 00:17:48,135 --> 00:17:51,820 describing how it is indeed a system of exploitation, 303 00:17:52,045 --> 00:17:56,880 which inherently separates a society into stratified economic layers 304 00:17:57,349 --> 00:18:01,447 with a higher class given dominance over the lower, structurally. 305 00:18:01,547 --> 00:18:03,547 It's structurally built right in. 306 00:18:03,691 --> 00:18:06,604 If you're one of those people that doesn't agree with this reality, 307 00:18:06,744 --> 00:18:09,443 ask yourself why there has been one labor strike after another 308 00:18:09,543 --> 00:18:13,519 in the past 300 years, why worker unions even exist, why CEOs 309 00:18:13,619 --> 00:18:16,973 often tend to make hundreds of times more money than the common worker, 310 00:18:17,094 --> 00:18:21,937 or why 46% of the world's wealth is now owned by 1%, 311 00:18:22,237 --> 00:18:24,947 which are almost exclusively of what we could call 312 00:18:25,047 --> 00:18:27,806 the capitalist ownership class. 313 00:18:28,613 --> 00:18:32,534 Inequality and class separation is a direct mathematical result 314 00:18:32,674 --> 00:18:35,678 of the market's inherently competitive orientation, 315 00:18:35,818 --> 00:18:38,247 which divides individuals in small groups 316 00:18:38,387 --> 00:18:42,454 as they work to compete against each other for survival and security. 317 00:18:42,594 --> 00:18:45,617 It is entirely individualistically oriented, 318 00:18:45,757 --> 00:18:51,077 driven by a core incentive system based around isolated self-preservation, 319 00:18:51,217 --> 00:18:55,481 assuming the need to constantly reinforce one's security financially 320 00:18:55,621 --> 00:18:59,246 since the market climate (the environment) gives no certainty whatsoever 321 00:18:59,386 --> 00:19:03,959 of well-being in and of itself: fear and greed. 322 00:19:04,799 --> 00:19:06,991 The rich get richer because the model favors them, 323 00:19:07,131 --> 00:19:08,631 and the poor basically stay the same 324 00:19:08,731 --> 00:19:11,890 because the system works against them by comparison. 325 00:19:12,000 --> 00:19:14,568 It is structurally classed. 326 00:19:14,708 --> 00:19:18,259 Those with more money have more options and influence than those with less. 327 00:19:18,400 --> 00:19:20,735 You are only as free, as they say, 328 00:19:20,875 --> 00:19:24,021 as your purchasing power will allow you to be. 329 00:19:24,578 --> 00:19:27,232 The credit system is a perfect example. 330 00:19:27,372 --> 00:19:30,207 Money is treated as nothing more than a product 331 00:19:30,347 --> 00:19:32,259 in the credit/banking system. 332 00:19:32,400 --> 00:19:35,053 Money is sold by banks via loans for profit 333 00:19:35,193 --> 00:19:37,193 which comes in the form of interest. 334 00:19:37,330 --> 00:19:39,859 If you miss payments or violate your contract, 335 00:19:40,000 --> 00:19:42,559 often the interest rate, does what? It goes up 336 00:19:42,700 --> 00:19:45,999 because you are now considered a higher risk consumer. 337 00:19:46,389 --> 00:19:48,929 If you fail to meet that interest or future payments, 338 00:19:49,069 --> 00:19:51,247 you might default on the loan. 339 00:19:52,518 --> 00:19:56,354 Your punishment is the ruining of your credit rating or reputation 340 00:19:56,494 --> 00:19:57,994 in the financial circles. 341 00:19:58,154 --> 00:20:01,706 Once that happens, your financial flexibility is even more stifled 342 00:20:01,846 --> 00:20:04,512 as your economic access is limited. 343 00:20:06,289 --> 00:20:07,789 People see this as just "the way things are" 344 00:20:07,935 --> 00:20:09,935 but they don't realize how insidious this is. 345 00:20:10,071 --> 00:20:13,150 This pounds the lower classes to stay low 346 00:20:13,290 --> 00:20:16,621 for reasons and forces of coercion that are built into the structure 347 00:20:16,761 --> 00:20:20,060 that are beyond their control! I could give many other examples. 348 00:20:20,200 --> 00:20:23,259 Everything in this system works against you if you're not affluent 349 00:20:23,400 --> 00:20:25,859 in this society. And guess what? 350 00:20:26,000 --> 00:20:28,926 These financial policies were created by ... 351 00:20:30,548 --> 00:20:34,537 self-interest-oriented market logic, 352 00:20:34,677 --> 00:20:37,621 not some politician or some government. 353 00:20:38,487 --> 00:20:41,112 I won't even go into the fact that the interest charged 354 00:20:41,252 --> 00:20:45,460 for the sale of money today doesn't even exist in the money supply itself, 355 00:20:45,600 --> 00:20:49,297 which creates a kind of system-based social coercion 356 00:20:49,437 --> 00:20:53,345 forcing in the inevitability of credit default over time, 357 00:20:53,695 --> 00:20:56,202 along with acts of economic desperation such as 358 00:20:56,342 --> 00:21:00,621 selling property you rather would not, to meet your basic needs 359 00:21:01,000 --> 00:21:04,085 or taking labor positions that you do not appreciate. 360 00:21:04,225 --> 00:21:08,033 The market generates desperation as its method of coercion. 361 00:21:08,652 --> 00:21:13,130 This leads into another very common "free market" confusion 362 00:21:13,270 --> 00:21:16,488 I often see in the very popular laissez-faire community. 363 00:21:16,628 --> 00:21:21,687 They talk about free trade as trade that is entirely voluntary 364 00:21:21,827 --> 00:21:25,613 as though such a thing could ever exist in an empirical sense. 365 00:21:25,753 --> 00:21:29,916 All decisions to trade come from influences and pressures. 366 00:21:30,648 --> 00:21:34,314 Only perhaps the super rich, who literally have no need 367 00:21:34,454 --> 00:21:37,568 to worry about basic survival due to their wealth 368 00:21:37,708 --> 00:21:42,300 could possibly be said to engage in the act of voluntary free trade. 369 00:21:42,826 --> 00:21:46,682 For 99% of the world, we either trade or we don't survive, 370 00:21:46,922 --> 00:21:50,027 and that pressure is empirically coercive. 371 00:21:50,167 --> 00:21:52,559 And no, it doesn't have to be that way, 372 00:21:52,700 --> 00:21:56,008 which is the whole point of this new social model. 373 00:21:57,000 --> 00:21:59,944 So with all that aside, and with this understanding 374 00:22:00,084 --> 00:22:03,682 that wealth inequality is inherent to capitalism itself 375 00:22:03,922 --> 00:22:05,859 - you can't regulate it out - 376 00:22:06,000 --> 00:22:08,462 the main issue I want to address here has to do with what 377 00:22:08,602 --> 00:22:12,574 class separation and social inequality does to us 378 00:22:12,714 --> 00:22:15,219 in the context of public health. 379 00:22:15,651 --> 00:22:18,525 It isn't just a simple issue of some having more than others, 380 00:22:18,665 --> 00:22:22,149 and others suffering the mere material inconvenience, 381 00:22:22,289 --> 00:22:25,859 or pressure to engage in labor or trade they'd rather not have to. 382 00:22:26,000 --> 00:22:27,860 It goes way beyond that. 383 00:22:28,000 --> 00:22:31,159 Socioeconomic inequality is a poison, 384 00:22:31,575 --> 00:22:34,159 a form of destabilizing pollution 385 00:22:34,652 --> 00:22:39,259 that affects people's psychological and physiological health in profound ways, 386 00:22:39,702 --> 00:22:44,059 while also very often accumulating anger towards other groups, 387 00:22:44,423 --> 00:22:48,315 and hence, that generation of social instability. 388 00:22:48,790 --> 00:22:53,426 The best term I know of that embodies this issue is "structural violence." 389 00:22:54,000 --> 00:22:56,096 If I put a gun to someone's head, 390 00:22:56,236 --> 00:23:00,084 say a 30-year-old healthy male, pull the trigger and kill him, 391 00:23:00,224 --> 00:23:03,159 assuming an average life expectancy of say 84, 392 00:23:03,300 --> 00:23:06,375 you can argue that possibly 54 years of life 393 00:23:06,515 --> 00:23:10,014 was stolen from that person in a direct act of violence. 394 00:23:10,433 --> 00:23:12,959 However, if a person is born into poverty 395 00:23:13,099 --> 00:23:15,416 in the midst of an abundant society 396 00:23:15,556 --> 00:23:18,721 where it is statistically proven that it would hurt no one 397 00:23:18,861 --> 00:23:21,784 to facilitate meeting the basic needs of that person, 398 00:23:21,924 --> 00:23:24,878 and yet they die at the age of 30 due to heart disease 399 00:23:25,018 --> 00:23:28,614 which has been found to statistically relate to those who endure 400 00:23:28,754 --> 00:23:32,517 the stress and effects of low socioeconomic status – 401 00:23:33,574 --> 00:23:39,317 is that death, the removal of those 54 years again, an act of violence? 402 00:23:40,075 --> 00:23:42,311 The answer is "yes, it is." 403 00:23:42,451 --> 00:23:44,765 Our legal system has conditioned us to think 404 00:23:44,905 --> 00:23:47,493 that violence is a direct behavioral act. 405 00:23:47,633 --> 00:23:49,907 The truth is that violence is a process, 406 00:23:50,047 --> 00:23:53,159 not an act, and it can take many forms. 407 00:23:53,300 --> 00:23:58,500 You cannot separate any outcome from the system by which it is oriented. 408 00:23:59,110 --> 00:24:02,540 This is virtually absent from the way people think 409 00:24:02,680 --> 00:24:06,164 about cause-and-effect in a socioeconomic system. 410 00:24:07,115 --> 00:24:09,868 The effects of market capitalism cannot be reduced- 411 00:24:10,008 --> 00:24:13,009 or I should say cannot be deduced- logically 412 00:24:13,149 --> 00:24:16,536 from local or reductionist examination. 413 00:24:16,676 --> 00:24:19,060 [It's] like things are working like a clock: 414 00:24:19,200 --> 00:24:22,759 the market is a synergistic system, the economy is a synergistic system, 415 00:24:22,900 --> 00:24:27,059 and the behavior of the whole, meaning large-scale social consequences 416 00:24:27,200 --> 00:24:30,466 such as the perpetuation of inequality or violence, 417 00:24:30,606 --> 00:24:34,565 can only be assessed in relationship to that whole. 418 00:24:34,705 --> 00:24:38,044 This is why there has been one big dichotomy between 419 00:24:38,184 --> 00:24:41,158 what market theorists think is supposed to happen in their world 420 00:24:41,298 --> 00:24:43,698 and what is actually happening. 421 00:24:43,838 --> 00:24:48,079 For example, there is no doubt that poverty and social inequity 422 00:24:48,219 --> 00:24:52,892 is and has been causing a vast spectrum of public health problems, 423 00:24:53,117 --> 00:24:56,051 both in the context of absolute deprivation, which means not having 424 00:24:56,151 --> 00:24:59,772 the money to simply meet up with basic needs such as nutrition, 425 00:25:00,052 --> 00:25:02,923 and in the context of relative deprivation, 426 00:25:03,063 --> 00:25:07,148 which is a psychological phenomenon related to the stress- 427 00:25:07,288 --> 00:25:10,157 the psychosocial stress- of simply living 428 00:25:10,297 --> 00:25:12,822 in a highly-stratified society. 429 00:25:14,258 --> 00:25:17,787 One of the greatest predictors of reduced public health 430 00:25:17,927 --> 00:25:21,258 is now to be found as social inequity, 431 00:25:21,814 --> 00:25:23,376 social inequality. 432 00:25:23,516 --> 00:25:27,564 If you compare developed nations by the level of wealth inequality 433 00:25:27,984 --> 00:25:32,096 you will find that those more equal nations have much better health 434 00:25:32,236 --> 00:25:34,682 than those with less equality. 435 00:25:34,822 --> 00:25:37,244 This includes physical health, mental health, 436 00:25:37,384 --> 00:25:41,033 drug abuse, educational levels, imprisonment, obesity, 437 00:25:41,173 --> 00:25:46,213 social mobility, trust or social capital, community life, violence, 438 00:25:46,575 --> 00:25:49,279 teen pregnancies, and child well-being on average. 439 00:25:49,419 --> 00:25:51,788 These outcomes are significantly worse 440 00:25:51,928 --> 00:25:54,856 in more unequal rich countries. 441 00:25:56,048 --> 00:25:59,934 Yet, if you tried to reduce and analyze a single person 442 00:26:00,074 --> 00:26:02,981 for any of these noted public health factors, 443 00:26:03,121 --> 00:26:06,708 you could never know for sure if that person is actually a victim 444 00:26:06,848 --> 00:26:12,369 of the psycho-stress or the absolute or relative violence condition itself. 445 00:26:12,509 --> 00:26:14,657 The causality can only be understood 446 00:26:14,797 --> 00:26:17,189 on the large scale, probabilistically, 447 00:26:17,329 --> 00:26:21,059 which is the importance of statistical analysis. 448 00:26:21,247 --> 00:26:24,371 So again, the market can only be perceived 449 00:26:24,511 --> 00:26:28,086 as a whole to gauge the truth of its effects. 450 00:26:28,226 --> 00:26:32,100 This is why our legal system is so base and primitive. 451 00:26:34,167 --> 00:26:38,569 That aside, I would like to detail a few more examples of structural violence, 452 00:26:38,709 --> 00:26:41,360 as it obviously takes many more forms. 453 00:26:41,500 --> 00:26:46,304 When we see 1.5 million children die each year from diarrheal diseases- 454 00:26:46,444 --> 00:26:49,306 an utterly preventable problem that isn't resolved 455 00:26:49,446 --> 00:26:52,345 due to a financial limitation across the world, 456 00:26:52,485 --> 00:26:55,759 we are seeing the murder of 1.5 [million] children by a system 457 00:26:55,900 --> 00:26:58,999 that is so inefficient in its process it cannot make 458 00:26:59,139 --> 00:27:02,453 the proper resources available in certain regions, 459 00:27:02,593 --> 00:27:04,768 even though that they are there. 460 00:27:04,908 --> 00:27:07,334 Drug addiction, which has become a plague 461 00:27:07,474 --> 00:27:11,266 of modern society across the world, not only causing death, 462 00:27:11,406 --> 00:27:16,189 but also a spectrum of suffering, has been found to have roots in stress. 463 00:27:16,329 --> 00:27:18,920 It has to do with a lack of support which creates 464 00:27:19,060 --> 00:27:21,952 a psychological chain reaction that leads to 465 00:27:22,340 --> 00:27:25,786 fill your feelings of pain with self-medication. 466 00:27:25,926 --> 00:27:28,451 You will rarely find a study on addiction patterns 467 00:27:28,591 --> 00:27:30,653 that does not see a direct correlation 468 00:27:30,793 --> 00:27:33,866 to unstable life conditions and stress. 469 00:27:34,949 --> 00:27:39,076 What is perhaps poverty's most dominant psychological feature? 470 00:27:39,500 --> 00:27:42,646 Feelings of insecurity and humility. 471 00:27:43,700 --> 00:27:46,847 Even the vast majority of behavioral violence as we know it 472 00:27:46,987 --> 00:27:49,503 arises due to preconditions which have been tied 473 00:27:49,643 --> 00:27:52,738 to poverty-induced deprivation and abuse. 474 00:27:52,878 --> 00:27:57,124 Former head of the Study of Violence at Harvard, Dr. James Gilligan, 475 00:27:57,264 --> 00:27:59,659 was a prison psychiatrist for many decades 476 00:27:59,800 --> 00:28:03,103 analyzing the reasons for extreme acts of murder and the like. 477 00:28:03,243 --> 00:28:07,165 In virtually all cases, high levels of deprivation, neglect, and abuse 478 00:28:07,265 --> 00:28:11,492 occurred in the life history of the offenders. And guess what? 479 00:28:11,772 --> 00:28:15,080 Poverty is the single best predictor 480 00:28:15,220 --> 00:28:17,568 of child abuse and neglect. 481 00:28:17,708 --> 00:28:19,976 In a US study, children who lived in families 482 00:28:20,116 --> 00:28:22,281 with an annual income less than $15,000 483 00:28:22,421 --> 00:28:25,908 are 22 times more likely to be abused or neglected 484 00:28:26,048 --> 00:28:30,858 than children living in families with an annual income of $30,000 or more. 485 00:28:32,247 --> 00:28:37,584 Aristotle said "Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime." 486 00:28:38,323 --> 00:28:41,508 Gandhi said "Poverty in the worst form of violence." 487 00:28:42,152 --> 00:28:44,359 The interesting thing about all this is 488 00:28:44,500 --> 00:28:47,812 is that we are all possible victims of its effects, 489 00:28:47,952 --> 00:28:50,440 for every time you hear about an act of theft, 490 00:28:50,580 --> 00:28:52,824 violence, murder, or the like, 491 00:28:52,964 --> 00:28:56,046 chances are the origins of that behavior were born 492 00:28:56,186 --> 00:28:58,560 out of a preventable form of deprivation. 493 00:28:58,700 --> 00:29:00,790 I say preventable because today 494 00:29:00,930 --> 00:29:03,953 there is absolutely no technical reason for any human being 495 00:29:04,053 --> 00:29:07,442 to live in poverty and resource deprivation. 496 00:29:07,622 --> 00:29:10,363 Solving social inequality is not just a nice thing to do, 497 00:29:10,463 --> 00:29:12,827 it is a true public health imperative. 498 00:29:13,107 --> 00:29:15,691 Just like making sure our water isn't polluted, 499 00:29:15,831 --> 00:29:17,560 so we don't get diseases. 500 00:29:17,700 --> 00:29:21,536 And each of us have no idea when we might be subjected to say, 501 00:29:21,676 --> 00:29:24,856 the violence bred by this deprivation. 502 00:29:24,996 --> 00:29:27,460 It's a form of blowback. 503 00:29:27,600 --> 00:29:30,663 Just like how some social theorists think about the reasons 504 00:29:30,803 --> 00:29:33,805 for modern terrorism from abused countries. 505 00:29:33,945 --> 00:29:36,359 A country like the United States bombs some town; 506 00:29:36,500 --> 00:29:39,763 the people in that town lose everything. Certain people are deeply affected 507 00:29:39,903 --> 00:29:42,069 and find no other emotional recourse 508 00:29:42,209 --> 00:29:45,146 but to act in the most violent way that can in revenge. 509 00:29:45,286 --> 00:29:49,417 The next thing you know, a bomb explodes at a coffee shop in your city, 510 00:29:49,557 --> 00:29:51,599 killing your sibling. 511 00:29:52,565 --> 00:29:56,682 In short, if you want to produce a violent criminal or gang mentality, 512 00:29:56,822 --> 00:29:59,908 let them be raised in an environment where they are reinforced 513 00:30:00,048 --> 00:30:03,455 with the sense that society doesn't care about them. 514 00:30:03,595 --> 00:30:07,047 And hence they have no need to care about society. 515 00:30:07,187 --> 00:30:08,902 This is the trademark, 516 00:30:09,042 --> 00:30:11,306 this is the core characteristic, 517 00:30:11,446 --> 00:30:14,024 of the capitalist social order. 518 00:30:15,191 --> 00:30:18,575 As a final aside before I move on, I find it incredibly interesting 519 00:30:18,715 --> 00:30:22,188 that the vast majority of the civil rights institutions today, 520 00:30:22,328 --> 00:30:24,741 or human rights institutions today, 521 00:30:24,881 --> 00:30:30,159 which still demand more race, gender, creed and political equality, 522 00:30:30,461 --> 00:30:34,939 tend to do very little to address the roots of economic inequality. 523 00:30:35,608 --> 00:30:38,383 It's a very interesting contradiction. I'm firmly convinced 524 00:30:38,483 --> 00:30:41,776 that as time moves forward, economic equality will morph 525 00:30:41,876 --> 00:30:46,466 into the same role as gender and race equality, 526 00:30:46,686 --> 00:30:50,215 where meeting human needs and facilitating a high standard of living 527 00:30:50,355 --> 00:30:56,417 will be an issue of human rights, not market expedience, 528 00:30:56,874 --> 00:30:59,400 and the social Darwinism to which it is based. 529 00:31:00,509 --> 00:31:03,628 Part II: Post-Scarcity. 530 00:31:03,768 --> 00:31:05,918 I would like to spend a moment clarifying 531 00:31:06,058 --> 00:31:08,859 what an "Abundance Focused Society" actually means 532 00:31:09,000 --> 00:31:12,359 and give some tangible, statistical extrapolations 533 00:31:12,500 --> 00:31:14,800 to confirm this potential. 534 00:31:16,400 --> 00:31:20,491 A Natural Law/Resource-Based Economy is not a utopia. 535 00:31:20,631 --> 00:31:25,527 The Zeitgeist Movement seeks a high, relative, sustainable abundance 536 00:31:25,667 --> 00:31:29,054 relieving the most relevant forms of scarcity. 537 00:31:29,629 --> 00:31:32,403 Many who hear such distinctions immediately dismiss 538 00:31:32,543 --> 00:31:35,181 such qualifications as mere opinion. 539 00:31:35,321 --> 00:31:38,391 The fact is, it's not opinion when it comes to life support 540 00:31:38,531 --> 00:31:40,700 or empirical human needs. 541 00:31:41,678 --> 00:31:43,809 Relative sustainable abundance 542 00:31:43,949 --> 00:31:48,237 means seeking more than enough to meet all human needs and beyond 543 00:31:48,377 --> 00:31:51,300 while keeping ecological balance. 544 00:31:52,003 --> 00:31:55,663 The most relevant forms of scarcity means we differentiate 545 00:31:55,803 --> 00:31:58,360 between scarcity as it relates to human needs 546 00:31:58,500 --> 00:32:01,230 and scarcity as it relates to human wants, 547 00:32:01,370 --> 00:32:03,292 as they are not the same. 548 00:32:03,432 --> 00:32:06,544 Unfortunately, market logic pretends that they are. 549 00:32:06,684 --> 00:32:09,808 The market cannot separate needs from wants. 550 00:32:09,948 --> 00:32:14,397 And this gets to the root of the life-blind, value-system disorder 551 00:32:14,537 --> 00:32:17,320 which continues to distort our culture. 552 00:32:18,145 --> 00:32:20,838 The logic goes like this: If there exists 553 00:32:20,978 --> 00:32:23,859 any form of scarcity of anything on any level, 554 00:32:24,000 --> 00:32:27,715 then we need money and the competitive market to regulate it. 555 00:32:29,308 --> 00:32:31,315 Let me explain this a little bit more. 556 00:32:31,455 --> 00:32:34,018 One of our international lecture team members, Matt Berkowitz, 557 00:32:34,158 --> 00:32:38,478 did a radio interview with a very popular Austrian economist a little while back, 558 00:32:38,618 --> 00:32:42,809 and when the subject of scarcity came up this economist responded with 559 00:32:42,949 --> 00:32:46,576 "Not everyone can have a fancy steak or a Ferrari!" 560 00:32:47,223 --> 00:32:50,630 This was his definitive view of what scarcity means. 561 00:32:51,200 --> 00:32:54,250 Now that may be true. Not every human being 562 00:32:54,390 --> 00:32:58,499 can have a 500-room mansion with three jets parked in the front lawn, 563 00:32:58,639 --> 00:33:02,334 with half the continent of Africa as his or her back yard. 564 00:33:03,131 --> 00:33:05,681 In theory, we could conjure up anything 565 00:33:05,821 --> 00:33:09,146 and use such luxury-based scarcity defenses 566 00:33:09,286 --> 00:33:12,439 to support the existence of the competitive market. 567 00:33:13,059 --> 00:33:16,179 So what are human needs? Are they subjective? 568 00:33:16,785 --> 00:33:19,059 Human needs have been created 569 00:33:19,200 --> 00:33:23,259 by the process of our physical and psychological evolution. 570 00:33:23,400 --> 00:33:27,956 Not meeting these virtually empirical needs results, as noted before, 571 00:33:28,096 --> 00:33:32,239 in a statistically predictable destabilizing spectrum 572 00:33:32,379 --> 00:33:36,166 of physical, mental and social disorders. 573 00:33:37,327 --> 00:33:41,294 Human wants, on the other hand, are cultural manifestations 574 00:33:41,434 --> 00:33:45,615 which have undergone enormous subjective change over the course of time, 575 00:33:45,755 --> 00:33:48,945 revealing in truth something of an arbitrary nature. 576 00:33:49,085 --> 00:33:53,703 This isn't to say neurotic attachments can't be made to wants, 577 00:33:53,843 --> 00:33:57,427 so much so that they start to take the role of needs. 578 00:33:57,567 --> 00:34:01,859 That's a phenomenon that occurs readily in our materialistic society, in fact. 579 00:34:02,000 --> 00:34:05,938 This is exactly why the previously noted wealth-imbalance issues, 580 00:34:06,078 --> 00:34:08,496 namely the psychosocial-stress response 581 00:34:08,637 --> 00:34:12,072 resulting from social comparison, is what it is. 582 00:34:12,511 --> 00:34:15,905 It's a part of our evolutionary psychology in many ways. 583 00:34:16,045 --> 00:34:18,755 But this is partly why more unequal societies also 584 00:34:18,896 --> 00:34:22,800 are the more unhealthy societies, because we perpetuate it. 585 00:34:23,545 --> 00:34:26,804 The Zeitgeist Movement is not promoting an infinite universal abundance 586 00:34:26,944 --> 00:34:30,159 of all things, which is clearly impossible on a finite planet. 587 00:34:30,300 --> 00:34:34,228 Rather, it promotes a "post-scarcity'" or "abundance" worldview, 588 00:34:34,369 --> 00:34:37,956 with an active recognition of the natural limits of consumption 589 00:34:38,097 --> 00:34:41,199 on the planet while seeking equilibrium. 590 00:34:42,652 --> 00:34:45,652 And what separates the world today from the world of the past 591 00:34:45,793 --> 00:34:48,405 is that our scientific and technological capacity 592 00:34:48,545 --> 00:34:51,106 has reached an accelerating point of efficiency 593 00:34:51,246 --> 00:34:54,795 where creating a high standard of living for all the world's people 594 00:34:54,936 --> 00:34:57,514 based on current cultural preferences, in fact, 595 00:34:57,654 --> 00:35:01,212 is now possible within these sustainable boundaries 596 00:35:01,352 --> 00:35:05,422 without the destructive need to compete through the market mechanism. 597 00:35:06,805 --> 00:35:10,490 This is made by what has been called "ephemeralization," 598 00:35:10,630 --> 00:35:14,237 a term coined by engineer R. Buckminster Fuller, 599 00:35:14,377 --> 00:35:16,336 and the recognition is very simple. 600 00:35:16,476 --> 00:35:20,260 The amount of resources and energy needed to achieve any given task 601 00:35:20,400 --> 00:35:22,722 has constantly decreased over time, 602 00:35:22,862 --> 00:35:27,180 while the efficiency of that task has increased, paradoxically. 603 00:35:27,700 --> 00:35:30,159 An example is wireless satellite communication 604 00:35:30,300 --> 00:35:32,659 which uses exponentially less materials 605 00:35:32,799 --> 00:35:35,690 than traditional large-gauge copper wire 606 00:35:35,830 --> 00:35:38,573 and is more versatile and effective. 607 00:35:39,315 --> 00:35:42,630 In other words, we are doing more with less continually, 608 00:35:42,770 --> 00:35:45,859 and this trend can be noticed in all areas of industrial development 609 00:35:45,999 --> 00:35:48,276 from computer processing or Moore's Law 610 00:35:48,416 --> 00:35:53,329 to the rapid acceleration of human knowledge or information technology. 611 00:35:56,022 --> 00:35:57,859 And it isn't just physical goods. 612 00:35:58,000 --> 00:36:00,534 It also applies to processes or systems. 613 00:36:00,674 --> 00:36:03,059 For example, the labor system, via automation today, 614 00:36:03,200 --> 00:36:05,111 shows the exact same pattern. 615 00:36:05,251 --> 00:36:09,534 Industry has become more productive with less people, 616 00:36:09,897 --> 00:36:12,122 ever-increasing machine performance, 617 00:36:12,262 --> 00:36:17,209 with ever-decreasing energy and material needs over time per operation. 618 00:36:18,600 --> 00:36:21,281 As a brief tangent, some might have noticed 619 00:36:21,421 --> 00:36:23,901 I keep saying this phrase 620 00:36:24,041 --> 00:36:26,524 "High Standard of Living. " What does that mean? 621 00:36:26,664 --> 00:36:29,567 Who is to say what a high standard of living should be? 622 00:36:29,707 --> 00:36:33,196 The answer to that question is not "who," it is "what." 623 00:36:33,336 --> 00:36:36,455 And "what" determines our standard of living 624 00:36:36,595 --> 00:36:39,234 is the current state of technology in many ways, 625 00:36:39,374 --> 00:36:41,759 and what is required to keep 626 00:36:41,900 --> 00:36:45,554 social and environmental sustainability on a finite planet. 627 00:36:45,694 --> 00:36:47,849 That's basically the equation. 628 00:36:48,938 --> 00:36:52,347 If we as a society wish to keep the value of constant materialism, 629 00:36:52,487 --> 00:36:57,096 growth, and consumption, promoting the virtue of having infinite wants 630 00:36:57,236 --> 00:37:00,031 then we might as well just kill ourselves right now, 631 00:37:00,171 --> 00:37:02,964 as that is going to be the end result if we continue to push past 632 00:37:03,104 --> 00:37:06,641 the limits of the physical world with respect to our resource exploitation 633 00:37:06,781 --> 00:37:09,119 and the loss of biodiversity. 634 00:37:09,259 --> 00:37:12,063 So I want to make it very clear: this new economic proposal 635 00:37:12,203 --> 00:37:15,193 isn't just about seeing how the market is obsolete per se, 636 00:37:15,333 --> 00:37:19,140 given our new powerful awarenesses of technical efficiency; 637 00:37:19,280 --> 00:37:22,372 it is also about the fact that we need 638 00:37:22,512 --> 00:37:26,342 to get out of the market paradigm as fast as we can 639 00:37:26,482 --> 00:37:29,200 before it causes even more damage. 640 00:37:30,633 --> 00:37:32,564 OK, Post-Scarcity. 641 00:37:32,704 --> 00:37:35,344 The four categories I want to cover in detail regarding this 642 00:37:35,484 --> 00:37:38,461 are food, water, energy, and material goods. 643 00:37:38,601 --> 00:37:41,245 Please note that for food, energy, and water 644 00:37:41,385 --> 00:37:44,630 this is actually a very conservative assessment, 645 00:37:44,770 --> 00:37:47,643 using statistics and measures based only 646 00:37:47,783 --> 00:37:51,240 on existing methods that have been put into industrial use, 647 00:37:51,380 --> 00:37:54,621 not theoretical things that people talk about all the time. 648 00:37:54,761 --> 00:37:57,028 And all I'm going to do is scale this out, 649 00:37:57,168 --> 00:37:59,849 applying a systems theory context. 650 00:38:00,218 --> 00:38:01,454 Food. 651 00:38:01,594 --> 00:38:04,207 According to the United Nations, one out of every eight people on Earth- 652 00:38:04,307 --> 00:38:08,247 nearly one billion people- suffer from chronic undernourishment. 653 00:38:10,639 --> 00:38:13,616 Yet it is admitted that there is enough food produced today 654 00:38:13,756 --> 00:38:15,838 by traditional market methods alone, 655 00:38:15,978 --> 00:38:20,759 to provide everyone in the world with at least 2,720 kilocalories per day 656 00:38:20,900 --> 00:38:24,343 which is more then enough to maintain basic health for most. 657 00:38:24,483 --> 00:38:26,914 Therefore, just in principle right now, 658 00:38:27,054 --> 00:38:30,730 the existence of such a large-scale number of chronically hungry people 659 00:38:30,870 --> 00:38:34,220 reveals at a minimum that there is something fundamentally wrong 660 00:38:34,360 --> 00:38:37,707 with the global industrial and economic process. 661 00:38:39,190 --> 00:38:42,761 According to the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, 662 00:38:42,901 --> 00:38:46,411 "It is estimated that 30-50% of all food produced 663 00:38:46,551 --> 00:38:48,663 never reaches a human stomach 664 00:38:48,803 --> 00:38:51,286 and this figure does not reflect the fact that large amounts 665 00:38:51,386 --> 00:38:54,618 of land, energy, fertilizers, and water have also been lost 666 00:38:55,198 --> 00:38:59,145 in the production of foodstuffs which simply end up as waste." 667 00:39:00,700 --> 00:39:03,302 While there is certainly an imperative to consider the relevance 668 00:39:03,402 --> 00:39:06,292 of these waste patterns, it appears that the most effective 669 00:39:06,472 --> 00:39:10,283 and practical means to overcome this global deficiency entirely 670 00:39:10,423 --> 00:39:13,865 is to update the system of food production itself 671 00:39:14,005 --> 00:39:16,956 with the most strategic localization 672 00:39:17,096 --> 00:39:20,924 in order to reduce the waste caused by inefficiencies 673 00:39:21,064 --> 00:39:23,619 in the current global supply chain. 674 00:39:24,328 --> 00:39:27,097 Perhaps the most promising of these arrangements is something called 675 00:39:27,237 --> 00:39:30,137 vertical farming which I assume many are familiar with. 676 00:39:30,277 --> 00:39:32,606 Vertical farming has been put to test in a number of regions 677 00:39:32,746 --> 00:39:36,439 with extremely promising results regarding efficiency and conservation. 678 00:39:36,579 --> 00:39:39,032 This method of abundant food production will not only 679 00:39:39,172 --> 00:39:43,040 use less resources per unit output, causing less waste, 680 00:39:43,180 --> 00:39:45,259 have a reduced ecological footprint, 681 00:39:45,400 --> 00:39:47,459 increase food quality and the like, 682 00:39:47,600 --> 00:39:50,593 it will also use less surface of the planet, 683 00:39:50,733 --> 00:39:53,663 uses less land area than we're doing today. 684 00:39:53,803 --> 00:39:57,559 It can even be done offshore- it's that versatile- 685 00:39:57,700 --> 00:40:00,402 enabling types of food as well, that certain climates and regions 686 00:40:00,542 --> 00:40:03,029 simply couldn't produce because it's enclosed. 687 00:40:03,861 --> 00:40:06,562 A vertical farm system in Singapore, for example, 688 00:40:06,702 --> 00:40:08,759 custom built, a transparent enclosure, 689 00:40:08,900 --> 00:40:11,359 uses a closed loop automated hydraulic system 690 00:40:11,500 --> 00:40:14,617 to rotate the crops in circles between sunlight 691 00:40:14,757 --> 00:40:16,620 and organic nutrient treatment, 692 00:40:16,760 --> 00:40:22,200 costing only about $3 a month in electricity for each enclosure. 693 00:40:22,724 --> 00:40:26,041 This system also has reported to have 10 times 694 00:40:26,181 --> 00:40:29,960 more productivity per square foot than conventional farming, 695 00:40:30,100 --> 00:40:33,686 again, using much less water, labor, and fertilizer. 696 00:40:34,300 --> 00:40:37,171 Students at Columbia University in the US 697 00:40:37,311 --> 00:40:41,625 determined that in order to feed 50,000 people, a 30-story farm 698 00:40:41,765 --> 00:40:44,944 built on the size of a basic city block would be needed, 699 00:40:45,084 --> 00:40:47,214 which is about 6.4 acres. 700 00:40:47,354 --> 00:40:50,901 If we extrapolate this in the context of the city of Los Angeles, California 701 00:40:51,041 --> 00:40:54,620 (where I'm coming from) with a population of about 4 million, 702 00:40:54,760 --> 00:40:58,430 with a total acreage of about 318,000 703 00:40:58,570 --> 00:41:02,843 it would take roughly 78 structures to feed all residents. 704 00:41:03,469 --> 00:41:08,540 This amounts to about 0.1% of the total land area of Los Angeles, 705 00:41:08,953 --> 00:41:11,180 to feed the entire population. 706 00:41:12,106 --> 00:41:14,112 If we apply this extrapolation to the Earth 707 00:41:14,252 --> 00:41:17,994 and the human population of 7.2 billion, we end up needing about 708 00:41:18,134 --> 00:41:21,911 144,000 vertical farms to feed the whole world. 709 00:41:22,051 --> 00:41:26,874 This amounts to about 921,000 acres of land to place these farms 710 00:41:27,014 --> 00:41:30,034 which, given about 38% of the Earth's land 711 00:41:30,174 --> 00:41:33,012 is currently being used for traditional agriculture, 712 00:41:33,152 --> 00:41:36,499 we find that we only need about 0.006% 713 00:41:36,639 --> 00:41:39,167 of the Earth's existing agricultural land 714 00:41:39,307 --> 00:41:41,560 to meet production requirements. 715 00:41:41,700 --> 00:41:43,700 Let's be a little bit more consistent. 716 00:41:43,870 --> 00:41:46,938 Within that 38% land-use statistic for agriculture, 717 00:41:47,078 --> 00:41:49,972 much of that land is also used for livestock cultivation, 718 00:41:50,112 --> 00:41:52,444 not just crop cultivation. 719 00:41:52,584 --> 00:41:54,914 So, if we were to theoretically take 720 00:41:55,054 --> 00:41:58,660 only the crop production land currently being used, 721 00:41:58,800 --> 00:42:03,021 which is about 4 billion acres, replacing land-based cultivation 722 00:42:03,161 --> 00:42:08,300 by dropping these 30-story vertical farms side-by-side in theory, 723 00:42:08,865 --> 00:42:12,798 the food output would be enough to meet the nutritional needs to feed 724 00:42:12,938 --> 00:42:15,810 34.4 trillion people. 725 00:42:18,417 --> 00:42:22,619 Given that we only need to feed about 9 billion by 2050, 726 00:42:22,759 --> 00:42:28,681 we only need to harness about 0.02% of this theoretical capacity, which 727 00:42:28,832 --> 00:42:32,971 it could be argued, makes rather moot any seemingly practical objections 728 00:42:33,111 --> 00:42:36,160 common to the aforementioned extrapolation. 729 00:42:36,300 --> 00:42:40,487 In short, we have absolute global food abundance potential. 730 00:42:42,007 --> 00:42:43,365 Water. 731 00:42:43,505 --> 00:42:46,514 According to the World Health Organization about 2.6 billion people- 732 00:42:46,654 --> 00:42:49,468 half of the developing world- lack proper sanitation 733 00:42:49,608 --> 00:42:52,396 and about 1.1 billion people have no access 734 00:42:52,536 --> 00:42:54,723 to any type of clean drinking sources. 735 00:42:54,863 --> 00:42:57,974 Due to ongoing depletion, by 2025, 736 00:42:58,114 --> 00:43:01,046 it is estimated that almost 2 billion people 737 00:43:01,186 --> 00:43:04,137 will live in areas plagued by water scarcity 738 00:43:04,277 --> 00:43:07,461 with 2/3 of the entire world population living 739 00:43:07,601 --> 00:43:10,041 in water-stressed areas. 740 00:43:11,180 --> 00:43:14,160 The cause? Obviously waste and pollution. 741 00:43:14,300 --> 00:43:16,684 But I'm not going to talk about that- 742 00:43:16,824 --> 00:43:19,359 the details, causes and prevention; that's not the point of this. 743 00:43:19,500 --> 00:43:23,219 Rather, let's take again, a technological capacity approach only, 744 00:43:23,359 --> 00:43:27,924 considering modern purification and modern desalination systems 745 00:43:28,064 --> 00:43:30,373 on the macro-industrial scale. 746 00:43:31,400 --> 00:43:33,188 Purification. 747 00:43:33,328 --> 00:43:38,600 The average person today globally uses about 1,385m³ of water per year. 748 00:43:38,740 --> 00:43:43,200 This factors in all industrial activity as well, such as agriculture. 749 00:43:43,907 --> 00:43:46,920 For the sake of argument, let's consider what it would take to purify 750 00:43:47,060 --> 00:43:52,917 all the fresh water currently being used in the world on average annually. 751 00:43:53,411 --> 00:43:57,590 Given the global average of 1,385m³ 752 00:43:57,730 --> 00:44:00,080 and a population of 7.2 billion, 753 00:44:00,220 --> 00:44:03,902 we arrive at a total annual use of about 10 trillion m³. 754 00:44:05,004 --> 00:44:10,560 Using a New York State USA UV-disinfection plant as a base measure, 755 00:44:11,120 --> 00:44:15,123 which has an output capacity of roughly 3 billion cubic meters a year, 756 00:44:15,500 --> 00:44:18,945 taking up about 3.7 acres of land, 757 00:44:19,085 --> 00:44:22,030 we would need 3,327 plants 758 00:44:22,170 --> 00:44:27,109 to purify all the water used by the entire global population, 759 00:44:27,249 --> 00:44:30,182 taking up about 12,000 acres of land. 760 00:44:30,884 --> 00:44:33,959 Needless to say, there are many other factors that come into play, 761 00:44:34,099 --> 00:44:36,731 such as power needs, location, and the like. That's fair enough. 762 00:44:36,871 --> 00:44:39,465 However, this is a minor inconvenience. 763 00:44:39,605 --> 00:44:41,874 12,000 acres is nothing compared to 764 00:44:42,014 --> 00:44:46,112 the 36 billion acres of land on the planet Earth. 765 00:44:47,183 --> 00:44:50,471 To give this a more practical example, the US military 766 00:44:50,611 --> 00:44:54,788 alone has about 845,000 military bases 767 00:44:55,800 --> 00:44:58,109 and buildings, I should say, as well. 768 00:44:58,249 --> 00:45:02,939 This has been reported to take up about 30 million acres of land globally. 769 00:45:03,954 --> 00:45:08,327 Only 0.04% of that land would be needed 770 00:45:08,467 --> 00:45:12,360 to disinfect the total fresh water use of the entire world 771 00:45:12,500 --> 00:45:15,839 if that were even needed, which of course it is not. 772 00:45:16,975 --> 00:45:18,545 Desalination. 773 00:45:18,946 --> 00:45:22,378 Let's run the same theoretical extrapolation on desalination. 774 00:45:22,518 --> 00:45:26,044 The most common method of desalination used today is called reverse osmosis, 775 00:45:26,184 --> 00:45:29,459 and according the International Desalination Association, 776 00:45:29,600 --> 00:45:33,500 it accounts for 60% of the installed capacity globally. 777 00:45:33,640 --> 00:45:36,719 There are a lot of other methods that are emerging quite rapidly 778 00:45:36,859 --> 00:45:40,285 with high levels of efficiency [which] can move water much more quickly. 779 00:45:40,385 --> 00:45:42,385 But I'm not going to talk about that. I want to stay only 780 00:45:42,485 --> 00:45:44,485 within the common methods applied today. 781 00:45:44,585 --> 00:45:46,585 But keep in mind that everything I'm speaking of 782 00:45:46,685 --> 00:45:49,235 has dramatic improvements coming very soon. 783 00:45:49,358 --> 00:45:51,358 There's an advanced reversed osmosis 784 00:45:51,469 --> 00:45:53,935 seawater desalinization plant in Australia 785 00:45:54,075 --> 00:45:57,710 that can produce about 150 million m³ of fresh water a year 786 00:45:57,850 --> 00:46:00,318 while occupying about 50 acres. 787 00:46:00,458 --> 00:46:03,809 Given the total annual water use of the world today, 788 00:46:03,949 --> 00:46:06,629 - it's about 10 trillion cubic meters again - 789 00:46:06,769 --> 00:46:09,147 it would take about 60,000 plants to produce 790 00:46:09,287 --> 00:46:11,691 current global water usage in total. 791 00:46:11,831 --> 00:46:14,660 Using the dimensions of that plant, which is quite large, 792 00:46:14,800 --> 00:46:18,322 such a feat would take about 18,000 miles of coast land, 793 00:46:18,462 --> 00:46:21,839 or about 8.5% of the world's coast land. 794 00:46:22,408 --> 00:46:25,501 Obviously, that's not really ideal, that's a lot of coast land, 795 00:46:25,641 --> 00:46:27,788 but this exercise is about proportion. 796 00:46:27,928 --> 00:46:31,140 Clearly, we do not need to desalinate all water used, 797 00:46:31,280 --> 00:46:34,440 nor would we bypass the use of purification processes 798 00:46:34,580 --> 00:46:39,476 or ignore the vast reforms needed to preserve efficiency and fresh water 799 00:46:39,616 --> 00:46:43,559 or, equally as important, the reuse schemes that are coming to fruition 800 00:46:43,700 --> 00:46:46,567 where buildings are able to use water in multiple ways 801 00:46:46,707 --> 00:46:49,914 by recycling water that comes from a sink into toilets, 802 00:46:50,054 --> 00:46:54,107 and other mechanisms that unfortunately go unused for the vast majority. 803 00:46:55,159 --> 00:46:58,208 Let's do a slightly more practical real life extrapolation, 804 00:46:58,348 --> 00:47:00,916 combining only purification and desalination 805 00:47:01,056 --> 00:47:03,980 with actual regional scarcity statistics. 806 00:47:04,299 --> 00:47:07,591 On the continent of Africa, roughly 345 million people 807 00:47:07,731 --> 00:47:09,743 lack access to freshwater. 808 00:47:09,883 --> 00:47:12,613 If we apply the noted global average consumption rate 809 00:47:12,753 --> 00:47:15,860 again of 1,385m³ a year, 810 00:47:16,135 --> 00:47:20,400 seeking to provide each of those 345 million people that amount, 811 00:47:20,800 --> 00:47:24,800 we would need about 480 billion cubic meters produced annually. 812 00:47:25,400 --> 00:47:29,261 If we divided this number in half and use purification systems 813 00:47:29,401 --> 00:47:32,281 for one section and desalination for the other, 814 00:47:32,421 --> 00:47:35,582 the desalination process would need about 1.9% 815 00:47:35,722 --> 00:47:40,083 or 494 miles of coastline for desalination facilities, 816 00:47:40,808 --> 00:47:45,758 and only about 296 acres of land for purification facilities, 817 00:47:45,898 --> 00:47:49,185 which is a minuscule fraction of Africa's total land mass 818 00:47:49,325 --> 00:47:51,343 of about 7 billion acres. 819 00:47:51,483 --> 00:47:54,489 So, this is highly doable even in this crude example. 820 00:47:54,629 --> 00:47:59,823 In all cases, we would strategically maximize purification processes 821 00:47:59,963 --> 00:48:02,134 since it is clearly more efficient 822 00:48:02,274 --> 00:48:06,069 while using desalination for the remaining demand. 823 00:48:06,663 --> 00:48:08,938 In short, it's absurd for anyone on this planet 824 00:48:09,078 --> 00:48:12,376 to be going without freshwater, not to mention, as an aside, 825 00:48:12,516 --> 00:48:16,458 70% of all freshwater used today 826 00:48:16,598 --> 00:48:22,127 is used in agriculture in our grossly wasteful agricultural methods. 70%! 827 00:48:22,921 --> 00:48:25,810 If we, for example, apply again vertical farm systems 828 00:48:25,950 --> 00:48:30,438 which have been noted to reduce water by upwards of 80% in comparison, 829 00:48:30,678 --> 00:48:32,295 we would see an enormous freeing up 830 00:48:32,435 --> 00:48:36,147 of this unnecessarily scarce resource as well. 831 00:48:36,487 --> 00:48:38,280 Moving on to Energy. 832 00:48:38,420 --> 00:48:42,800 We live in one massive perpetual motion machine known as the Universe. 833 00:48:43,229 --> 00:48:46,660 The fact that we still use polluting fossil fuel stores in the Earth 834 00:48:46,800 --> 00:48:49,590 or the incredibly unstable nuclear phenomenon 835 00:48:49,730 --> 00:48:52,760 which gives very little room for human fallibility 836 00:48:52,900 --> 00:48:54,976 is truly frightening. 837 00:48:55,640 --> 00:48:58,861 There are four main large capacity 838 00:48:59,001 --> 00:49:02,345 "base-load," as they would say, renewable energy means 839 00:49:02,485 --> 00:49:04,708 which are currently most ideal 840 00:49:04,848 --> 00:49:08,057 as per our current state of technological application. 841 00:49:08,197 --> 00:49:11,111 These are geothermal plants, wind farms, 842 00:49:11,251 --> 00:49:14,060 solar fields, and water-based power. 843 00:49:14,200 --> 00:49:16,766 Due to time I'm not going to explain what these mediums are 844 00:49:16,906 --> 00:49:19,242 as I assume most know. I'm just going to run through 845 00:49:19,382 --> 00:49:21,367 the abundance comparison. 846 00:49:21,507 --> 00:49:22,685 Geothermal. 847 00:49:22,825 --> 00:49:25,610 A 2006 MIT report on geothermal found that 848 00:49:25,750 --> 00:49:29,326 13,000 zettajoules of power are currently available in the Earth 849 00:49:29,466 --> 00:49:32,690 with the possibility of 2000 zettajoules being harvestable 850 00:49:32,830 --> 00:49:35,180 with improved technology. 851 00:49:35,452 --> 00:49:38,255 The total energy consumption of all the countries on the planet 852 00:49:38,395 --> 00:49:41,337 is only about half a zettajoule a year. 853 00:49:41,477 --> 00:49:44,230 This means literally thousands of years of planetary power 854 00:49:44,370 --> 00:49:47,033 could be harnessed in this medium alone. 855 00:49:47,173 --> 00:49:51,870 Geothermal energy also uses much less land than other energy sources. 856 00:49:52,592 --> 00:49:55,523 Over 30 years, a period of time commonly used to compare 857 00:49:55,663 --> 00:49:59,562 the life cycle impacts from different power sources, 858 00:49:59,984 --> 00:50:03,385 it was found that a geothermal facility 859 00:50:03,525 --> 00:50:08,860 uses 404 m² of land per gigawatt hour 860 00:50:09,000 --> 00:50:10,838 while a coal facility 861 00:50:10,978 --> 00:50:15,968 uses 3,632 m² per gigawatt hour. 862 00:50:16,688 --> 00:50:19,859 If we were to do a basic comparison of geothermal to coal 863 00:50:20,000 --> 00:50:22,897 given this ratio of m² to GWh 864 00:50:23,037 --> 00:50:25,343 we find that we could fit about 9 geothermal plants 865 00:50:25,483 --> 00:50:27,674 in the space of one coal plant. 866 00:50:27,814 --> 00:50:30,892 And that isn't accounting for the vast amount of land 867 00:50:31,032 --> 00:50:33,032 that is currently used for coal extraction- 868 00:50:33,165 --> 00:50:36,360 you know, those huge holes that we see in the earth. 869 00:50:36,500 --> 00:50:39,048 By the way, the beauty of geothermal, and in fact, 870 00:50:39,188 --> 00:50:43,240 all of the renewables I'm going to speak of, is that extraction 871 00:50:43,380 --> 00:50:47,303 or the harnessing location is almost always the exact same place 872 00:50:47,443 --> 00:50:50,933 as processing for the power distribution as well. 873 00:50:51,073 --> 00:50:54,960 All hydrocarbon sources on the other hand require both extraction 874 00:50:55,100 --> 00:50:58,675 and power production facilities almost always in separate locations, 875 00:50:58,815 --> 00:51:02,122 sometimes refineries as well, in separate locations. 876 00:51:02,769 --> 00:51:06,627 In 2013, it was announced that a 1,000 megawatt power station 877 00:51:06,767 --> 00:51:08,948 was to begin construction in Ethiopia. 878 00:51:09,088 --> 00:51:13,000 We're going to use this as a base, theoretical for extrapolation. 879 00:51:13,769 --> 00:51:18,300 If a 1000-megawatt geothermal power station operated at full capacity 880 00:51:18,730 --> 00:51:21,265 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, 881 00:51:21,405 --> 00:51:25,700 it would produce 8.7 million MWh a year. 882 00:51:26,261 --> 00:51:29,458 The world's current annual energy usage is about 883 00:51:29,598 --> 00:51:34,642 153 billion MWh a year, which would mean it would take in abstraction 884 00:51:34,782 --> 00:51:38,831 about 17,000 geothermal plants to match global use. 885 00:51:40,160 --> 00:51:44,997 There are over 2,300 coal power plants in operation worldwide today. 886 00:51:45,137 --> 00:51:48,701 Using the aforementioned plant-sized capacity comparison 887 00:51:48,841 --> 00:51:52,667 of about nine geothermal plants fitting into one coal plant, 888 00:51:52,807 --> 00:51:57,084 the space of 1,940 coal plants would be needed in theory 889 00:51:57,224 --> 00:52:00,625 to contain the 17,000 geothermal plants 890 00:52:00,765 --> 00:52:04,403 or 84% of the total in existence. 891 00:52:04,870 --> 00:52:07,669 Also, given that coal accounts for only 41% 892 00:52:07,809 --> 00:52:09,860 of today's current energy production, 893 00:52:10,000 --> 00:52:12,684 this theoretical extrapolation also shows 894 00:52:12,824 --> 00:52:17,420 how in 84% of the current space used by coal plants, 895 00:52:17,560 --> 00:52:24,011 geothermal could supply 100% of total global power supply. 896 00:52:25,646 --> 00:52:27,508 Wind Farms. 897 00:52:27,648 --> 00:52:30,762 It's been calculated that today with existing turbine technology, 898 00:52:30,902 --> 00:52:33,108 which is improving rapidly, that Earth could produce 899 00:52:33,248 --> 00:52:36,040 hundreds of trillions of watts of power, many more times 900 00:52:36,180 --> 00:52:38,871 than what the world consumes, overall. 901 00:52:39,011 --> 00:52:41,649 However, breaking this down, using the 9,000 acre 902 00:52:41,789 --> 00:52:45,034 Alta Wind Center in California as a theoretical basis, 903 00:52:45,174 --> 00:52:50,509 which has an active capacity of 1,320 MW of power, 904 00:52:50,649 --> 00:52:54,986 a theoretical annual output of 11 million MWh is possible. 905 00:52:55,536 --> 00:52:58,780 This means 13,000 906 00:52:59,209 --> 00:53:02,422 9,000-acre wind farms would be needed to meet 907 00:53:02,562 --> 00:53:06,800 total global demand of 153 billion MWh. 908 00:53:07,487 --> 00:53:11,029 This requires about 119 million acres of land 909 00:53:11,169 --> 00:53:15,500 or 0.3% of the Earth's surface 910 00:53:15,790 --> 00:53:18,618 to power the world in abstraction. 911 00:53:18,758 --> 00:53:21,796 However as some may know, offshore wind 912 00:53:21,936 --> 00:53:24,636 is typically much more powerful than land-based. 913 00:53:24,776 --> 00:53:27,190 According to the Assessment 914 00:53:27,916 --> 00:53:31,980 of Offshore Wind Energy Resources for the United States, a report: 915 00:53:32,120 --> 00:53:36,715 4,150 gigawatts of potential wind turbine technology- 916 00:53:36,855 --> 00:53:39,615 turbine capacity- from offshore wind resources 917 00:53:39,755 --> 00:53:43,060 are available in the United States alone. 918 00:53:43,200 --> 00:53:46,778 Assuming this power capacity was consistent for a whole year, 919 00:53:46,918 --> 00:53:51,658 we end up with an energy conversion of 36 billion MWh a year. 920 00:53:52,171 --> 00:53:54,697 Given the United States in 2010 921 00:53:54,837 --> 00:53:57,860 used 25.7 billion MWh, 922 00:53:58,216 --> 00:54:01,073 we find that offshore wind harvesting alone 923 00:54:01,213 --> 00:54:03,535 could exceed the national use 924 00:54:03,675 --> 00:54:08,000 by about 10.6 billion MWh or 41%. 925 00:54:08,706 --> 00:54:11,653 And axiomatically, extrapolating this national 926 00:54:11,793 --> 00:54:15,181 level of capacity to the rest of the world's coast lines, 927 00:54:16,035 --> 00:54:20,302 also taking into account the aforementioned land-based statistics, 928 00:54:20,890 --> 00:54:24,818 it is clear that we can power the world many, many times over 929 00:54:24,958 --> 00:54:27,438 with wind, and quite practically. 930 00:54:28,924 --> 00:54:30,739 Solar Fields. 931 00:54:31,633 --> 00:54:35,498 If humanity could capture 0.1% of the solar energy striking the Earth, 932 00:54:35,638 --> 00:54:37,991 we would have access to six times as much energy 933 00:54:38,131 --> 00:54:40,589 we consume in all forms today. 934 00:54:40,729 --> 00:54:43,214 The ability to harness this power depends on technology 935 00:54:43,354 --> 00:54:46,999 and how high the percentage of radiation conversion is. 936 00:54:47,662 --> 00:54:51,142 The Ivanpah Solar Electric System in California: 937 00:54:51,282 --> 00:54:53,601 it's a 3,500-acre field 938 00:54:53,741 --> 00:54:57,314 with an annual stated generation of about one million MWh. 939 00:54:57,454 --> 00:55:01,250 If we were to extrapolate using this as a theoretical basis, 940 00:55:02,476 --> 00:55:07,520 it would take about 142,000 fields or about 500 million acres of land 941 00:55:07,660 --> 00:55:10,654 to theoretically meet current global energy use. 942 00:55:10,794 --> 00:55:14,368 That's about 1.5% of total land on Earth. 943 00:55:15,228 --> 00:55:20,040 Deserts cover about 1/3 of the world or about 12 billion acres, 944 00:55:20,180 --> 00:55:23,146 and they tend to be fairly conducive to solar fields, 945 00:55:23,286 --> 00:55:26,746 while often less conducive to life support for people. 946 00:55:26,886 --> 00:55:30,640 Given the roughly 500 million acres 947 00:55:30,780 --> 00:55:33,372 theoretically needed to power the world as noted, 948 00:55:33,512 --> 00:55:37,038 only 4.1% of the world's deserts would be needed 949 00:55:37,178 --> 00:55:39,360 to contain these fields, 950 00:55:39,500 --> 00:55:42,446 land that pretty much just otherwise sits there. 951 00:55:44,122 --> 00:55:45,794 Water-Based Power. 952 00:55:45,934 --> 00:55:49,774 There are five dominant types of water-based power: wave, tidal, 953 00:55:49,914 --> 00:55:51,950 ocean current, osmotic, 954 00:55:52,090 --> 00:55:54,726 ocean thermal, and water course. 955 00:55:54,866 --> 00:55:58,195 Overall, the technology for harnessing ocean in general 956 00:55:58,335 --> 00:56:01,284 is in its infancy, but the potential is vast. 957 00:56:01,424 --> 00:56:04,008 And based on traditional estimates 958 00:56:04,148 --> 00:56:07,303 here is what the accepted global potentials 959 00:56:07,443 --> 00:56:10,823 have been estimated at using existing methods; 960 00:56:10,963 --> 00:56:15,243 we're not applying advanced technology that's not in application yet. 961 00:56:16,084 --> 00:56:20,596 This all figures up to be about 150,000 TWh/year 962 00:56:20,736 --> 00:56:23,587 or 96% of current global use 963 00:56:24,094 --> 00:56:26,360 of the half of a zettajoule, 964 00:56:26,500 --> 00:56:30,911 pretty much enough to power the world in one medium alone if applied. 965 00:56:31,451 --> 00:56:34,025 However to give a sense of growing technological potential 966 00:56:34,165 --> 00:56:37,108 (because I think this is important considering how technology 967 00:56:37,248 --> 00:56:40,969 and water-oriented power is deeply in its infancy) 968 00:56:41,109 --> 00:56:44,453 recent developments in 'ocean current' harnessing technology 969 00:56:44,593 --> 00:56:46,668 (the currents that go underneath the ocean) 970 00:56:46,808 --> 00:56:49,760 which can embrace much lower speeds now than they used to, 971 00:56:49,900 --> 00:56:53,035 it has estimated that ocean current alone could now 972 00:56:53,175 --> 00:56:57,000 theoretically power the entire world if applied correctly. 973 00:56:58,779 --> 00:57:00,346 So, let's recap. 974 00:57:00,810 --> 00:57:03,713 Wind, solar, water and geothermal have shown, 975 00:57:03,853 --> 00:57:06,800 as large scale, base-load renewable energy mediums, 976 00:57:06,940 --> 00:57:11,216 that they are capable, individually, of meeting or vastly exceeding 977 00:57:11,356 --> 00:57:14,678 current annual global energy consumption at this time. 978 00:57:14,818 --> 00:57:19,341 And obviously a systems approach, harmonizing an optimized fraction 979 00:57:19,481 --> 00:57:22,340 of each of those renewables strategically is the key 980 00:57:22,480 --> 00:57:26,173 to achieving a global, total energy abundance. 981 00:57:26,929 --> 00:57:29,277 For example, it's not inconceivable to imagine 982 00:57:29,417 --> 00:57:32,010 a series of man-made floating islands 983 00:57:32,150 --> 00:57:35,872 off select coastlines which are designed to harness, at once, 984 00:57:36,012 --> 00:57:40,860 wind, solar, thermal difference, wave, tidal and currents, 985 00:57:41,000 --> 00:57:43,630 all at the same time and in the same general area. 986 00:57:43,770 --> 00:57:47,586 Such energy islands would then pipe their harvest back to land 987 00:57:47,726 --> 00:57:49,836 for storage and distribution. 988 00:57:49,976 --> 00:57:54,279 It is only up to our design ingenuity to figure things like this out. 989 00:57:55,712 --> 00:57:58,027 Localization and Reuse. 990 00:57:58,167 --> 00:58:00,395 The final energy factor I want to mention, 991 00:58:00,535 --> 00:58:03,591 which builds upon this systems-thinking explicitly, 992 00:58:03,731 --> 00:58:07,500 has to do with localization and re-use schemes. 993 00:58:08,416 --> 00:58:11,323 Localized energy harnessing isn't given a fraction 994 00:58:11,463 --> 00:58:13,588 of the attention it needs today. 995 00:58:13,728 --> 00:58:16,449 Smaller scale renewable methods which are conducive to 996 00:58:16,590 --> 00:58:18,894 single structures or small areas 997 00:58:19,034 --> 00:58:22,430 find the same systems logic, regarding combination. 998 00:58:22,943 --> 00:58:26,411 These local systems could also, if need be, connect back into the larger 999 00:58:26,551 --> 00:58:30,812 base-load systems, creating a total, mixed medium, integrated network 1000 00:58:30,952 --> 00:58:33,981 which happens sometimes today with solar. 1001 00:58:34,121 --> 00:58:37,009 There are many localized systems out there which can draw energy 1002 00:58:37,150 --> 00:58:40,379 from the immediate environment: there's solar power arrays, 1003 00:58:40,519 --> 00:58:42,909 there's small wind harvesting systems, 1004 00:58:43,050 --> 00:58:45,234 localized geothermal heating and cooling 1005 00:58:45,374 --> 00:58:48,404 and even architectural design that just simply makes 1006 00:58:48,544 --> 00:58:51,388 natural light and heat/cool preservation more efficient. 1007 00:58:51,528 --> 00:58:53,579 Buckminster Fuller was great with his dome structures 1008 00:58:53,720 --> 00:58:57,361 and how they actually contained energy quite well. Same idea. 1009 00:58:57,501 --> 00:58:59,952 Extending outwards to city infrastructure 1010 00:59:00,092 --> 00:59:04,033 we see the same wasted possible efficiency almost everywhere. 1011 00:59:04,173 --> 00:59:06,883 A simple technology called piezoelectric 1012 00:59:07,023 --> 00:59:11,315 is able to convert pressure and mechanical energy directly into electricity. 1013 00:59:11,455 --> 00:59:15,357 It's an excellent example of an energy reuse method with great potential. 1014 00:59:15,497 --> 00:59:17,892 Existing applications have included power generation 1015 00:59:18,032 --> 00:59:21,757 by people simply walking on these engineered floors and sidewalks, 1016 00:59:21,897 --> 00:59:25,079 streets which can generate power as automobiles cross over them, 1017 00:59:25,220 --> 00:59:28,009 and train rail systems which can also capture energy 1018 00:59:28,150 --> 00:59:31,006 from passing train cars through pressure. 1019 00:59:31,146 --> 00:59:34,650 It has been suggested by people who have studied this 1020 00:59:34,790 --> 00:59:38,240 that a stretch of road less than one mile long, 1021 00:59:38,380 --> 00:59:40,543 four lanes wide, a highway, 1022 00:59:40,683 --> 00:59:43,422 and trafficked by about 1,000 vehicles per hour 1023 00:59:43,562 --> 00:59:46,249 can create about 0.4 Megawatt of power, 1024 00:59:46,390 --> 00:59:49,182 which is enough to power 600 homes. 1025 00:59:49,322 --> 00:59:52,491 Now extrapolate that out to the bulk of all the highways in the world; 1026 00:59:52,631 --> 00:59:56,071 you have a very, very powerful regenerative energy source. 1027 00:59:57,751 --> 01:00:01,098 Overall, if we think about the enormous mechanical energy wasted 1028 01:00:01,238 --> 01:00:04,758 by vehicle transport modes and high-traffic walking centers alone, 1029 01:00:04,898 --> 01:00:07,980 the potential of that possible regenerated energy is quite substantial. 1030 01:00:08,120 --> 01:00:10,686 It's this systems-thinking once again that is needed 1031 01:00:10,826 --> 01:00:13,169 in order to maintain sustainability, 1032 01:00:13,310 --> 01:00:17,819 while also pursuing this global energy abundance. 1033 01:00:18,651 --> 01:00:21,637 The final more complex subject, energy aside, 1034 01:00:21,777 --> 01:00:24,703 will be the subject of material abundance 1035 01:00:24,843 --> 01:00:26,890 and creating life-supporting goods. 1036 01:00:28,363 --> 01:00:32,621 Unlike the prior, more simple post-scarcity categories of food, 1037 01:00:32,761 --> 01:00:37,270 water and energy, the creation of a broad material abundance 1038 01:00:37,410 --> 01:00:41,460 of all basic goods, which comprise the current average, you could say, 1039 01:00:41,600 --> 01:00:45,029 of what is culturally considered a 'high standard of living' today 1040 01:00:45,169 --> 01:00:47,481 is substantially more radical in its need 1041 01:00:47,621 --> 01:00:50,481 for industrial revision and change. 1042 01:00:51,075 --> 01:00:54,889 As expressed before, the current highly inefficient methods 1043 01:00:55,029 --> 01:00:59,342 we use in industrial design, production, distribution and regeneration 1044 01:00:59,482 --> 01:01:01,949 is one of the main reasons we are in a constant state 1045 01:01:02,090 --> 01:01:04,336 of global resource overshoot 1046 01:01:04,476 --> 01:01:07,680 and destabilizing biodiversity loss. 1047 01:01:08,515 --> 01:01:11,749 Also as noted prior, there is no market incentive 1048 01:01:11,889 --> 01:01:13,889 for advanced states of efficiency, 1049 01:01:14,026 --> 01:01:16,889 as efficiency always reduces the amount of labor, 1050 01:01:17,029 --> 01:01:20,374 resources and service needed for a given purpose; 1051 01:01:20,514 --> 01:01:23,231 and hence, reduces monetary circulation. 1052 01:01:23,371 --> 01:01:25,503 I can't reinforce that enough. 1053 01:01:25,643 --> 01:01:29,420 Therefore, a new synergistic systems-view of industry 1054 01:01:29,560 --> 01:01:33,415 focused explicitly on material and labor efficiency, 1055 01:01:33,555 --> 01:01:37,647 along with an optimized strategy for sustainability, is in order. 1056 01:01:38,179 --> 01:01:43,012 For the sake of time and as a lead-in to the final section on calculation, 1057 01:01:43,152 --> 01:01:45,644 I'm going to focus on a few principles or protocols 1058 01:01:45,784 --> 01:01:48,883 and how each protocol assists efficiency 1059 01:01:49,023 --> 01:01:51,761 towards this post-scarcity abundance. 1060 01:01:51,901 --> 01:01:54,503 Otherwise it would take an enormous amount of time; 1061 01:01:54,633 --> 01:01:56,633 it's not as simple as the prior extrapolations. 1062 01:01:56,737 --> 01:01:59,026 However, in this book that I mentioned there will be a whole chapter 1063 01:01:59,166 --> 01:02:02,451 dedicated to this issue in great detail. 1064 01:02:06,790 --> 01:02:08,826 (1) Access, not property. 1065 01:02:09,633 --> 01:02:13,218 A property-based society incentivizes the preference to own 1066 01:02:13,900 --> 01:02:16,420 a given product, rather than rent, 1067 01:02:17,266 --> 01:02:19,489 or gain access to as needed. 1068 01:02:19,629 --> 01:02:22,939 I'm a filmmaker and while I do rent some things occasionally, 1069 01:02:23,080 --> 01:02:26,382 it's much more cost-effective and smart to buy things 1070 01:02:26,522 --> 01:02:28,907 because they have resale value. 1071 01:02:29,047 --> 01:02:32,045 This incentive of universal ownership is incredibly wasteful 1072 01:02:32,185 --> 01:02:35,883 when we examine actual use time of a given good. 1073 01:02:36,740 --> 01:02:40,698 Facilitating a means of access where things can be literally shared 1074 01:02:40,838 --> 01:02:44,573 will allow many more to gain use of goods they otherwise could not, 1075 01:02:44,713 --> 01:02:48,496 along with there being less production of those goods in proportion. 1076 01:02:48,609 --> 01:02:50,609 In a Natural Law/Resource Based Economy 1077 01:02:50,720 --> 01:02:55,264 we seek to create an access abundance, not a property abundance 1078 01:02:55,404 --> 01:02:57,729 which is inherently wasteful. 1079 01:02:57,869 --> 01:03:01,616 As an aside, it's also important to note that property 1080 01:03:01,756 --> 01:03:03,979 is not an empirical concept. 1081 01:03:04,119 --> 01:03:06,899 Only access is empirically valid. 1082 01:03:07,102 --> 01:03:09,843 Property is a protectionist contrivance. 1083 01:03:10,021 --> 01:03:13,153 Access is the reality of the social and human condition. 1084 01:03:13,293 --> 01:03:16,005 In order for you to truly say "own" a computer, 1085 01:03:16,145 --> 01:03:18,193 you have to have had alone 1086 01:03:18,333 --> 01:03:22,096 come up with the entire technological process that made that thing 1087 01:03:22,236 --> 01:03:24,449 along with the ideas that comprise the tools 1088 01:03:24,589 --> 01:03:26,618 you might have used to make that computer. 1089 01:03:26,758 --> 01:03:29,116 This is literally impossible 1090 01:03:29,256 --> 01:03:32,928 and is what destroys the early labor theory of value 1091 01:03:33,068 --> 01:03:36,421 (property is stuff that's put forward by classical economists). 1092 01:03:36,561 --> 01:03:39,790 There's no such thing as property. There is only access and sharing, 1093 01:03:39,930 --> 01:03:42,926 no matter what social system you employ. 1094 01:03:44,274 --> 01:03:46,518 (2) Designed-in Recycling 1095 01:03:46,658 --> 01:03:49,532 Contrary to our intuition, there is no such thing as waste 1096 01:03:49,672 --> 01:03:51,277 in the natural world. 1097 01:03:51,417 --> 01:03:54,050 Not only from the standpoint of the biosphere which reuses 1098 01:03:54,190 --> 01:03:55,893 everything in its process, 1099 01:03:56,033 --> 01:04:00,968 the 92 main naturally occurring elements in the periodic table 1100 01:04:01,108 --> 01:04:04,724 that comprise all matter cannot be exhausted. 1101 01:04:05,251 --> 01:04:08,174 Humanity has given very little consideration to the role 1102 01:04:08,314 --> 01:04:11,842 of material regeneration, and how all of our design practices 1103 01:04:11,982 --> 01:04:14,836 must account for this recycling. 1104 01:04:15,479 --> 01:04:18,342 In fact, as some may know, the highest state of this recycling 1105 01:04:18,482 --> 01:04:21,016 will eventually come in the form of nanotechnology. 1106 01:04:21,156 --> 01:04:23,894 Nanotechnology will eventually be able to create goods 1107 01:04:24,034 --> 01:04:28,195 from the atomic level up and disassemble them right back down 1108 01:04:28,335 --> 01:04:30,855 to the almost virtual starting point. 1109 01:04:30,995 --> 01:04:34,777 It is the ultimate form of recycling. By the way, I'm not suggesting this. 1110 01:04:34,917 --> 01:04:38,409 I'm not suggesting that nanotechnology is even needed at this time, 1111 01:04:38,550 --> 01:04:40,608 as though that that's what we're doing right now. 1112 01:04:40,748 --> 01:04:43,620 It's just [that] this is a great principle to reference 1113 01:04:43,760 --> 01:04:46,795 as far as regenerative importance. 1114 01:04:48,465 --> 01:04:51,714 Today, industry has little sense of synergy in this context. 1115 01:04:51,854 --> 01:04:54,680 Recycling is an afterthought. Companies continue to do things 1116 01:04:54,820 --> 01:04:58,169 such as blindly coat materials with chemical paints, and the like, 1117 01:04:58,310 --> 01:05:00,660 that distort the properties of those materials, 1118 01:05:00,800 --> 01:05:02,929 making the materials less salvageable, 1119 01:05:03,070 --> 01:05:06,349 or maybe completely unsalvageable, to current recycling methods. 1120 01:05:06,490 --> 01:05:09,129 It happens all the time. So long story short, 1121 01:05:09,269 --> 01:05:11,809 strategic recycling just might be 1122 01:05:11,949 --> 01:05:15,144 the most core seed of a continued abundance. 1123 01:05:15,601 --> 01:05:19,151 Every landfill on earth is just a waste of potential. 1124 01:05:20,262 --> 01:05:23,788 Number 3: Strategic conformation of good design 1125 01:05:23,928 --> 01:05:26,000 to the most conducive 1126 01:05:26,140 --> 01:05:29,016 and abundant materials known. 1127 01:05:30,005 --> 01:05:33,494 You will notice this efficiency qualification in what I just said: 1128 01:05:33,634 --> 01:05:36,224 conducive and abundant. 1129 01:05:36,364 --> 01:05:40,997 Conducive means most appropriate based on the material properties. 1130 01:05:41,300 --> 01:05:44,539 Abundant means you weigh the value of conduciveness 1131 01:05:44,680 --> 01:05:48,958 against the value of how accessible and low-impact the material is, 1132 01:05:49,098 --> 01:05:53,681 compared to other materials which may be more or less conducive. 1133 01:05:54,345 --> 01:05:57,381 This is a synergistic efficiency comparison. 1134 01:05:57,521 --> 01:06:00,244 (I'm sorry if the language sounds a little bit complicated.) 1135 01:06:00,384 --> 01:06:04,735 Probably the best example of this is home or domicile construction. 1136 01:06:04,875 --> 01:06:08,061 The common use of wood, bricks, screws and the vast array of parts 1137 01:06:08,201 --> 01:06:12,954 that is typical of a common house is comparatively, vastly inefficient 1138 01:06:13,094 --> 01:06:18,105 to more modern, simplified pre-fabrication or moldable materials. 1139 01:06:18,648 --> 01:06:21,450 A traditional 2000 square-foot home requires about 1140 01:06:21,590 --> 01:06:24,109 40 to 50 trees, about an acre. 1141 01:06:24,249 --> 01:06:27,779 Compare that with houses that can be created in prefabrication processes 1142 01:06:27,919 --> 01:06:30,664 with simple, earth-friendly polymers, 1143 01:06:30,804 --> 01:06:34,705 concrete, or other easily formable methods. 1144 01:06:34,845 --> 01:06:37,888 3D printing, for example, is on pace. 1145 01:06:38,761 --> 01:06:43,640 These new approaches have a very small footprint as compared to 1146 01:06:43,780 --> 01:06:47,058 our destruction of global forests which continue, for wood. 1147 01:06:47,198 --> 01:06:50,138 Home construction today is one of the most resource intensive 1148 01:06:50,278 --> 01:06:53,484 and wasteful industrial mediums in the world, 1149 01:06:53,624 --> 01:06:57,044 with about 40% of all materials collected for construction 1150 01:06:57,184 --> 01:06:59,438 ended up as waste in the end. 1151 01:07:01,202 --> 01:07:04,779 Number 4: Design conduciveness for labor automation. 1152 01:07:04,920 --> 01:07:07,587 Now this is very foreign to many. 1153 01:07:07,727 --> 01:07:10,418 The more we conform to the current state 1154 01:07:10,558 --> 01:07:13,703 of rapid, efficient production processes, 1155 01:07:13,843 --> 01:07:16,464 obviously, the more abundance we can create. 1156 01:07:16,604 --> 01:07:19,832 If you read texts on manufacturing processes, 1157 01:07:19,972 --> 01:07:22,732 they typically divide labor into three categories. 1158 01:07:22,872 --> 01:07:26,749 There's human assembly, there's mechanization and there's automation. 1159 01:07:26,889 --> 01:07:28,955 Human assembly means handmade, 1160 01:07:29,095 --> 01:07:32,189 mechanization means machines assist the laborer, 1161 01:07:32,329 --> 01:07:34,948 and automation means no human action. 1162 01:07:36,681 --> 01:07:40,064 Imagine if you needed a chair and there were three designs. 1163 01:07:40,204 --> 01:07:44,100 The first is elaborate and complex, and could only be done by hand. 1164 01:07:44,240 --> 01:07:46,983 The second is more streamlined where its parts could be made 1165 01:07:47,123 --> 01:07:50,068 mostly by machines, but would need to be assembled by hand. 1166 01:07:50,208 --> 01:07:56,691 The third chair is produced by one process, fully automated. 1167 01:07:58,088 --> 01:08:01,367 The latter chair design would be the design goal 1168 01:08:01,507 --> 01:08:04,290 in theory of this new approach. 1169 01:08:05,110 --> 01:08:08,356 What this would do is reduce the complexity of the automation process 1170 01:08:08,496 --> 01:08:10,300 with little to no human labor. 1171 01:08:10,440 --> 01:08:13,986 Imagine a production plant that not only produces cars, 1172 01:08:14,126 --> 01:08:16,974 it can produce virtually any kind of industrial product 1173 01:08:17,113 --> 01:08:20,078 comprised of the same basic shared materials. 1174 01:08:20,219 --> 01:08:22,004 This is very feasible. 1175 01:08:22,144 --> 01:08:24,725 This would increase output substantially. 1176 01:08:24,866 --> 01:08:28,569 In other words, we are optimizing the means of production. 1177 01:08:29,198 --> 01:08:32,129 And as an aside, many who see stuff like this 1178 01:08:32,270 --> 01:08:35,232 think that this means there's not going to be any variety in the future, 1179 01:08:35,372 --> 01:08:39,279 that it's just going to be cold and uniform and everyone gets the same thing. 1180 01:08:39,420 --> 01:08:42,654 No. I'm just using this as an example to make an efficiency point. 1181 01:08:42,795 --> 01:08:45,997 Being conducive to automation does not mean universal uniformity 1182 01:08:46,136 --> 01:08:49,417 of design because the incredible amount of variance possible 1183 01:08:49,559 --> 01:08:53,223 in our current automation technology is amazing and accelerating. 1184 01:08:53,363 --> 01:08:57,514 Modular robotics, there's many different self-changing machines 1185 01:08:57,654 --> 01:08:59,911 that can create a great amount of variance. 1186 01:09:00,051 --> 01:09:03,038 All this means is the existing processes in their current state 1187 01:09:03,180 --> 01:09:05,551 should be respected to ease production. 1188 01:09:05,692 --> 01:09:08,959 Don't confuse this with the idea that everyone just gets the same everything. 1189 01:09:09,100 --> 01:09:11,707 What they get is the same basic sustainability principles, 1190 01:09:11,848 --> 01:09:15,055 which come in many different forms, if you can understand that. 1191 01:09:15,196 --> 01:09:19,145 These four parameters set in motion, along with the basic intent 1192 01:09:19,285 --> 01:09:23,037 to assist the trend of ephemeralization on all levels, 1193 01:09:23,176 --> 01:09:25,845 there is little doubt that every human being 1194 01:09:25,986 --> 01:09:28,272 could have a very high standard of living. 1195 01:09:28,412 --> 01:09:32,327 It is simply about converting all of the inefficiency we have 1196 01:09:32,466 --> 01:09:36,099 straight into productivity, strategically. 1197 01:09:37,965 --> 01:09:41,504 I will conclude this section by noting that R. Buckminster Fuller 1198 01:09:41,644 --> 01:09:44,649 is probably the only human being that has ever attempted 1199 01:09:44,790 --> 01:09:48,341 to account and quantify the state of resources and their potential 1200 01:09:48,482 --> 01:09:51,410 within the past hundred years and, while primitive, 1201 01:09:51,550 --> 01:09:55,569 he was able to arrive at the following conclusion in 1969: 1202 01:09:56,906 --> 01:10:00,762 "Man developed such intense mechanization in World War I 1203 01:10:00,902 --> 01:10:05,561 that the percentage of total world population that were industrial 'haves' 1204 01:10:05,701 --> 01:10:08,593 rose by 1919 to the figure of 6%. 1205 01:10:08,713 --> 01:10:10,713 This was an abrupt change in history. 1206 01:10:10,833 --> 01:10:13,986 By the time of World War II, 20% of all humanity 1207 01:10:14,126 --> 01:10:16,429 had become industrial 'haves.' 1208 01:10:16,570 --> 01:10:20,665 At the present moment the proportion of 'haves' is at 40% of humanity. 1209 01:10:20,805 --> 01:10:24,300 If we up the performances of resources from the present level 1210 01:10:24,440 --> 01:10:28,781 to a highly feasible overall efficiency of 12% more 1211 01:10:28,921 --> 01:10:31,963 (increasing by 12%, our use, holistically, on average) 1212 01:10:32,103 --> 01:10:34,941 all humanity can be provided for." 1213 01:10:35,380 --> 01:10:39,907 The exponential increase in information technology since 1969, 1214 01:10:40,047 --> 01:10:42,122 along with the applied technology and advanced 1215 01:10:42,362 --> 01:10:45,838 synergetic understandings we have today, 1216 01:10:45,978 --> 01:10:48,162 I suspect, now far exceeds-... 1217 01:10:48,302 --> 01:10:52,769 we are way beyond the 12% efficiency increase that he saw as needed. 1218 01:10:52,910 --> 01:10:58,152 The problem now is conforming to industrial conduciveness appropriately 1219 01:10:58,590 --> 01:11:00,964 which is currently not done. 1220 01:11:01,871 --> 01:11:06,277 This leads us to Part III: Economic Organization and Calculation. 1221 01:11:07,876 --> 01:11:09,981 If you're wondering why I spent so much time 1222 01:11:10,121 --> 01:11:12,263 on the prior points of post-scarcity 1223 01:11:12,403 --> 01:11:15,010 and those two core problems inherent to market capitalism- 1224 01:11:15,150 --> 01:11:18,098 social imbalance and environmental imbalance- 1225 01:11:18,238 --> 01:11:21,327 it's because you cannot understand the logic of the economic factors 1226 01:11:21,467 --> 01:11:25,108 involved in this model without those prior awarenesses. 1227 01:11:26,703 --> 01:11:30,174 A Natural Law/Resource Based Economy is not just a progressive outgrowth 1228 01:11:30,314 --> 01:11:33,635 of our increased capacity to be productive as a species, 1229 01:11:33,775 --> 01:11:36,531 as though we would just gradually evolve out of the market system 1230 01:11:36,671 --> 01:11:39,159 step-by-step into this approach. 1231 01:11:39,299 --> 01:11:42,534 No. The dire need for this system's removal 1232 01:11:42,674 --> 01:11:44,936 needs to be realized once again. 1233 01:11:45,076 --> 01:11:47,172 It has to become a part, in fact, 1234 01:11:47,312 --> 01:11:49,981 of the incentive structure of the new model: 1235 01:11:50,121 --> 01:11:53,506 the historical understanding that if we do not adjust in this way 1236 01:11:53,646 --> 01:11:56,621 we will revert right back into this highly unstable period 1237 01:11:56,761 --> 01:11:58,795 we are in right now. 1238 01:12:00,061 --> 01:12:03,265 An economic model is a theoretical construct 1239 01:12:03,405 --> 01:12:07,787 representing component processes by a set of variables or functions, 1240 01:12:07,927 --> 01:12:10,916 describing the logical relationships between them. 1241 01:12:11,056 --> 01:12:12,556 Basic definition. 1242 01:12:12,658 --> 01:12:15,989 If anyone has studied traditional or market-based economic modeling, 1243 01:12:16,130 --> 01:12:19,459 a great deal of time is often spent on things such as price trends, 1244 01:12:19,600 --> 01:12:22,559 behavioral patterns, utilitarianistic functions, 1245 01:12:22,699 --> 01:12:25,952 inflation, currency fluctuations and so forth. 1246 01:12:26,453 --> 01:12:30,916 Rarely, if ever, is anything said about public or ecological health. 1247 01:12:31,385 --> 01:12:34,979 Why? Because the market is, again, life-blind 1248 01:12:35,120 --> 01:12:38,937 and decoupled from the science of life support and sustainability. 1249 01:12:39,077 --> 01:12:41,727 It is simply a proxy system. 1250 01:12:43,643 --> 01:12:47,902 The best way to think about this economy is not in the traditional terms, 1251 01:12:48,042 --> 01:12:50,491 but rather as an advanced production, 1252 01:12:50,631 --> 01:12:55,338 distribution and management system which is democratically engaged 1253 01:12:55,478 --> 01:12:59,174 by the public through a kind of participatory economics 1254 01:13:00,169 --> 01:13:03,953 that facilitates input processes, such as design proposals 1255 01:13:04,093 --> 01:13:07,845 and demand assessment, while filtering all actions 1256 01:13:07,985 --> 01:13:13,014 through what we will call sustainability and efficiency protocols. 1257 01:13:13,449 --> 01:13:17,167 These are the basic rules of industrial action 1258 01:13:17,307 --> 01:13:20,808 set by natural law, not human opinion. 1259 01:13:20,948 --> 01:13:25,000 As noted prior, neither of these interests are structurally inherent 1260 01:13:25,140 --> 01:13:28,771 in the capitalist model, and it is clear that humanity needs a model 1261 01:13:28,911 --> 01:13:33,164 that has this type of stuff built right into it for consideration. 1262 01:13:34,053 --> 01:13:36,521 Structural System Goals. 1263 01:13:37,490 --> 01:13:39,985 All economic systems have structural goals 1264 01:13:40,125 --> 01:13:42,542 which may not be readily apparent. 1265 01:13:42,682 --> 01:13:46,013 Market capitalism's structural goal, as described, is growth 1266 01:13:46,153 --> 01:13:50,058 and maintaining rates of consumption high enough to keep people employed 1267 01:13:50,198 --> 01:13:55,079 at any given time, and employment requires also a culture of real 1268 01:13:55,219 --> 01:14:00,180 or perceived inefficiency, and that essentially means the preservation 1269 01:14:00,320 --> 01:14:05,411 of scarcity in one form or another. That is its structural goal. 1270 01:14:05,543 --> 01:14:09,884 And good luck getting a market economist to admit to that. 1271 01:14:11,237 --> 01:14:15,408 This model [NLRBE] goal is to optimize technical efficiency 1272 01:14:15,548 --> 01:14:18,940 and create the highest level of abundance we possibly can 1273 01:14:19,080 --> 01:14:22,272 within the bounds of earthly sustainability, 1274 01:14:22,412 --> 01:14:25,415 seeking to meet human needs directly. 1275 01:14:27,879 --> 01:14:29,917 System Overview. 1276 01:14:30,057 --> 01:14:33,890 One of the great myths of this model is that it's centrally planned; 1277 01:14:34,030 --> 01:14:36,273 I'm sure many of us have heard this. 1278 01:14:36,413 --> 01:14:39,818 What this means based on historical precedent is that it is assumed 1279 01:14:39,958 --> 01:14:43,736 that an elite group of people basically will make the economic decisions 1280 01:14:43,876 --> 01:14:46,118 for a society. 1281 01:14:46,258 --> 01:14:52,258 No. This model is a collaborative design system: CDS. 1282 01:14:52,474 --> 01:14:54,053 Not centrally planned. 1283 01:14:54,193 --> 01:14:57,000 It is based entirely upon public interaction 1284 01:14:57,440 --> 01:15:00,641 facilitated by programmed, open-source systems 1285 01:15:00,781 --> 01:15:03,769 that enable a constant dynamic feedback flow 1286 01:15:03,909 --> 01:15:06,958 that can literally allow the input of the public on any 1287 01:15:07,098 --> 01:15:10,814 given industrial matter whether personal or social. 1288 01:15:11,733 --> 01:15:14,169 Now a common question, when you bring that up they say 1289 01:15:14,309 --> 01:15:16,425 "Well, who programs this system?" 1290 01:15:16,565 --> 01:15:18,837 The answer is: Everyone and no one. 1291 01:15:18,977 --> 01:15:21,640 The tangible rules of the laws of nature as they apply 1292 01:15:21,780 --> 01:15:25,708 to environmental sustainability and engineering efficiency 1293 01:15:25,848 --> 01:15:29,164 is a completely objective frame of reference. 1294 01:15:29,304 --> 01:15:32,110 The nuances may change to some degree over time, 1295 01:15:32,250 --> 01:15:34,621 but the general principles remain. 1296 01:15:35,804 --> 01:15:39,139 Over time, the logic of such an approach will also become more rigid 1297 01:15:39,279 --> 01:15:42,035 because we learn more as we perfect our understandings, 1298 01:15:42,175 --> 01:15:44,266 and hence, less room for subjectivity 1299 01:15:44,406 --> 01:15:46,852 in certain areas that might have had it prior. 1300 01:15:46,992 --> 01:15:49,970 Again I'll be describing this more so in a moment. 1301 01:15:50,110 --> 01:15:53,899 Also the programs themselves will be available in an open source platform 1302 01:15:54,039 --> 01:15:57,016 for public input and review, absolutely transparent. 1303 01:15:57,156 --> 01:15:59,323 And if someone noticed a problem 1304 01:15:59,463 --> 01:16:02,783 or unapplied optimization strategy, which will probably be the case, 1305 01:16:02,923 --> 01:16:05,550 it is evaluated and tested by the community 1306 01:16:05,690 --> 01:16:08,588 kind of like a Wikipedia for calculation, 1307 01:16:08,728 --> 01:16:12,122 except much less subjective than Wikipedia, 1308 01:16:12,262 --> 01:16:14,761 without the moody administrators. 1309 01:16:16,216 --> 01:16:19,012 Another traditional confusion surrounds the concept 1310 01:16:19,152 --> 01:16:22,179 which has become to many the defining difference 1311 01:16:22,319 --> 01:16:25,124 between capitalism and everything else. 1312 01:16:25,264 --> 01:16:28,435 And it has to do with whether the means of production 1313 01:16:28,575 --> 01:16:30,549 is privately owned or not. 1314 01:16:30,689 --> 01:16:33,891 This is replete throughout tons of traditional 1315 01:16:34,830 --> 01:16:37,939 literary treatments on capitalism when they describe 1316 01:16:38,079 --> 01:16:41,887 how it's the ultimate manifestation of human behavior, of society. 1317 01:16:42,027 --> 01:16:44,527 If you don't know what this means, the means of production 1318 01:16:44,627 --> 01:16:48,677 refers to the non-human assets that create goods such as machines, 1319 01:16:48,890 --> 01:16:51,981 tools, factories, offices and the like. 1320 01:16:52,121 --> 01:16:54,465 In capitalism, the means of production is owned 1321 01:16:54,605 --> 01:16:59,017 by the capitalist by historical definition, hence the origin of the term. 1322 01:16:59,157 --> 01:17:02,759 I bring this up because there's been an ongoing argument for a century 1323 01:17:02,899 --> 01:17:05,748 that any system which does not have its means of production owned 1324 01:17:05,888 --> 01:17:10,576 as a form of private property is just not going to be as economically efficient 1325 01:17:10,716 --> 01:17:13,677 as one that has or maybe not even efficient at all. 1326 01:17:13,817 --> 01:17:18,027 This, as the argument goes, is because of the need for price: 1327 01:17:18,167 --> 01:17:20,310 the price mechanism. 1328 01:17:20,450 --> 01:17:23,931 Price, which has a fluid ability 1329 01:17:24,071 --> 01:17:26,967 to exchange value amongst virtually any type of good 1330 01:17:27,107 --> 01:17:31,598 due to its indivisibility of value, creates indeed a feedback mechanism 1331 01:17:31,738 --> 01:17:35,423 that connects the entire market system in a certain narrow way. 1332 01:17:35,563 --> 01:17:40,071 Price is a way to allocate scarce resources amongst competing interests. 1333 01:17:40,211 --> 01:17:44,166 Price, property and money translate, in short, 1334 01:17:44,266 --> 01:17:48,370 subjective demand preferences into semi-objective exchange values. 1335 01:17:48,795 --> 01:17:53,754 I say "semi" because it is a culturally relative measure only, 1336 01:17:54,398 --> 01:17:58,229 absent most every factor that gives true technical consideration 1337 01:17:58,370 --> 01:18:00,299 to a given material or good. 1338 01:18:00,439 --> 01:18:03,098 It has nothing to do with what the materials or goods are; 1339 01:18:03,238 --> 01:18:05,692 it's just a mechanism. 1340 01:18:05,832 --> 01:18:08,777 Perhaps the only real technical data, in fact, 1341 01:18:08,917 --> 01:18:11,049 that price embraces very crudely 1342 01:18:11,189 --> 01:18:14,620 relates to resource scarcity and labor energy. 1343 01:18:14,760 --> 01:18:16,684 Resource scarcity and labor energy. 1344 01:18:16,824 --> 01:18:19,838 You can basically find that in price. 1345 01:18:19,978 --> 01:18:22,599 So in this context the question becomes: 1346 01:18:22,740 --> 01:18:25,133 Is it possible to create a system that can 1347 01:18:25,273 --> 01:18:27,736 equally, if not more efficiently, 1348 01:18:27,876 --> 01:18:32,014 facilitate feedback with respect to consumer preference, demand, 1349 01:18:32,154 --> 01:18:35,505 labor value and resource or component scarcity 1350 01:18:35,645 --> 01:18:40,538 without the price system, subjective property values or exchange? 1351 01:18:41,684 --> 01:18:43,490 And, of course, there is. 1352 01:18:43,630 --> 01:18:46,920 The trick is to completely eliminate exchange 1353 01:18:47,060 --> 01:18:50,475 and create a direct control and feedback link 1354 01:18:50,615 --> 01:18:54,244 between the consumer and the means of production itself. 1355 01:18:54,384 --> 01:18:57,241 The consumer becomes part of the means of production 1356 01:18:57,381 --> 01:19:01,498 and the "industrial complex" becomes nothing more than a tool 1357 01:19:01,638 --> 01:19:05,454 that is accessed by the public to generate goods. 1358 01:19:06,430 --> 01:19:09,842 In fact as alluded to prior, the same system 1359 01:19:09,982 --> 01:19:13,158 can be used for just about any societal calculation, 1360 01:19:13,298 --> 01:19:16,084 virtually eliminating the state government, in fact, 1361 01:19:16,224 --> 01:19:18,077 and politics as we know it. 1362 01:19:18,217 --> 01:19:21,659 It is a participatory decision-making process. 1363 01:19:22,597 --> 01:19:26,624 As an aside, as far as the fact that there will indeed always 1364 01:19:26,764 --> 01:19:29,087 be scarcity of something in the world, 1365 01:19:29,227 --> 01:19:32,974 which is the very basis of existence of price, market and money, 1366 01:19:33,114 --> 01:19:36,500 human beings can again either understand the dire need 1367 01:19:36,640 --> 01:19:39,679 to exist in a steady-state relationship with nature 1368 01:19:39,819 --> 01:19:42,588 and the global human species for cultural 1369 01:19:42,728 --> 01:19:45,914 and environmental sustainability, or not. 1370 01:19:46,054 --> 01:19:48,689 We can either continue down the same path we are now 1371 01:19:48,829 --> 01:19:54,112 or become more aware, responsible to the world and to each other, 1372 01:19:54,252 --> 01:19:57,739 seeking post-scarcity and using natural law rules of sustainability 1373 01:19:57,879 --> 01:20:03,444 and efficiency to decide how to best allocate our raw materials, or not. 1374 01:20:03,584 --> 01:20:06,979 But I think the former is the most intelligent path. 1375 01:20:07,892 --> 01:20:10,438 I state that because again, this resource argument 1376 01:20:10,578 --> 01:20:15,561 always comes down to the abstractions ... of scarcity. 1377 01:20:15,717 --> 01:20:19,796 It never qualifies what scarcity is in certain contexts. 1378 01:20:19,928 --> 01:20:22,950 It doesn't separate scarcity and that's its fatal flaw, 1379 01:20:23,090 --> 01:20:25,458 between human needs and human wants. 1380 01:20:25,598 --> 01:20:29,578 Also, I want to point out another fallacy, 1381 01:20:29,718 --> 01:20:32,470 which of this private ownership of the means of production, 1382 01:20:32,610 --> 01:20:35,249 a fallacy of this broad concept is its culture lag! 1383 01:20:35,755 --> 01:20:39,340 Today we are seeing a merger of capital goods, 1384 01:20:39,480 --> 01:20:41,846 consumer goods and labor power. 1385 01:20:41,986 --> 01:20:44,537 Machines are taking over human labor power, 1386 01:20:44,677 --> 01:20:48,930 becoming capital goods, while also reducing in size 1387 01:20:49,070 --> 01:20:51,091 to become consumer goods. 1388 01:20:52,042 --> 01:20:55,697 I'm sure almost everyone in this room has a home paper printer. 1389 01:20:55,837 --> 01:20:58,129 When you send a file to print from your computer, 1390 01:20:58,269 --> 01:21:02,476 you are in control of a mini-version of a means of production. 1391 01:21:03,271 --> 01:21:04,959 What about 3D printers? 1392 01:21:05,099 --> 01:21:07,475 In some cities today there are now 3D printing labs 1393 01:21:07,615 --> 01:21:12,513 which people can send their design to print, in physical form. 1394 01:21:12,653 --> 01:21:15,703 The model I'm going to describe is a similar idea. 1395 01:21:15,843 --> 01:21:18,092 The next step is the creation 1396 01:21:18,232 --> 01:21:20,871 of a strategically automated industrial complex 1397 01:21:21,011 --> 01:21:23,266 localized as much as possible 1398 01:21:23,406 --> 01:21:26,199 which is designed to produce, through automated means, 1399 01:21:26,339 --> 01:21:30,541 the average of everything any given region has found demand for. 1400 01:21:31,271 --> 01:21:34,493 Think about it: on-demand production on a mass scale. 1401 01:21:34,988 --> 01:21:37,218 Consider for a moment how much storage space, 1402 01:21:37,358 --> 01:21:39,449 transport energy and overrun waste 1403 01:21:39,589 --> 01:21:42,271 is immediately eliminated by this approach. 1404 01:21:42,411 --> 01:21:45,543 I think the days of large, wasteful mass producing economies 1405 01:21:45,683 --> 01:21:50,820 of scale are coming to an end, well, if we want them to. 1406 01:21:51,866 --> 01:21:55,383 This type of thinking: true economic calculation, 1407 01:21:55,927 --> 01:21:59,880 by the most technical sense of the term, I can't reiterate that enough. 1408 01:22:00,020 --> 01:22:02,657 We are calculating to be as technically efficient and conservative 1409 01:22:02,757 --> 01:22:07,455 as possible which again, almost paradoxically, is what will facilitate 1410 01:22:07,635 --> 01:22:12,703 a global access abundance to meet all human needs and beyond. 1411 01:22:13,473 --> 01:22:15,704 Structure and Processes. 1412 01:22:15,844 --> 01:22:18,635 I'm going to walk through the following 3 processes: 1413 01:22:18,775 --> 01:22:21,789 (1) the collaborative design interface and industrial schematic, 1414 01:22:21,929 --> 01:22:24,263 (2) resource management, feedback and value 1415 01:22:24,403 --> 01:22:28,567 and (3) general principles of sustainability and the macro-calculation. 1416 01:22:30,209 --> 01:22:33,940 The collaborative design interface is essentially the new market; 1417 01:22:34,080 --> 01:22:36,060 it's a market of ideas. 1418 01:22:36,200 --> 01:22:39,152 This system is the first step in any production interest. 1419 01:22:39,292 --> 01:22:43,358 It can be engaged by a single person; it can be engaged by a team 1420 01:22:43,498 --> 01:22:45,897 if you have friends and you want to put it together, sort of like 1421 01:22:46,037 --> 01:22:48,506 how businesses think; it can be engaged by everyone. 1422 01:22:48,646 --> 01:22:50,799 It is open source and open access, 1423 01:22:50,940 --> 01:22:54,641 and your concept is open to input from anyone interested 1424 01:22:54,781 --> 01:22:58,977 in that good genre or anyone that's online that cares to contribute. 1425 01:22:59,797 --> 01:23:02,291 Obviously it comes in the form of a website, as I stated; 1426 01:23:02,431 --> 01:23:05,354 and likewise, whatever exists as a final decision, 1427 01:23:05,494 --> 01:23:07,694 whatever is put into production, even though in theory 1428 01:23:07,799 --> 01:23:09,812 everything will be under modification at all times, 1429 01:23:09,952 --> 01:23:13,554 but what has been approved, if you will, is digitally stored 1430 01:23:13,694 --> 01:23:17,053 in a database which makes that good available to everyone. 1431 01:23:17,193 --> 01:23:19,184 Sort of like a goods catalog, 1432 01:23:19,324 --> 01:23:22,799 except it contains all of the information digitally 1433 01:23:22,939 --> 01:23:25,261 that is required to produce them. 1434 01:23:25,401 --> 01:23:27,828 This is how demand is assessed. 1435 01:23:27,968 --> 01:23:30,234 It's feedback and it's immediate. 1436 01:23:30,374 --> 01:23:33,188 Instead, of course, of advertising 1437 01:23:33,328 --> 01:23:37,778 and the unidirectional consumer good proposal system, which it is, 1438 01:23:37,918 --> 01:23:41,538 that we have today where corporations basically tell you what you should buy 1439 01:23:41,678 --> 01:23:44,234 with the public generally going with the flow, 1440 01:23:44,374 --> 01:23:47,761 favoring one good component or feature, using price, 1441 01:23:47,901 --> 01:23:51,021 if they don't like something then clearly they won't produce it anymore 1442 01:23:51,161 --> 01:23:53,186 to weed out supply and demand. 1443 01:23:53,326 --> 01:23:55,211 This system works the opposite way. 1444 01:23:55,351 --> 01:23:57,571 The entire community has the option of presenting ideas 1445 01:23:57,711 --> 01:24:00,728 for everyone to see and weigh in on and build upon. 1446 01:24:00,868 --> 01:24:04,349 Whatever isn't of interest simply won't be executed to begin with. 1447 01:24:04,490 --> 01:24:07,097 There's no testing here such as you would see with marketing, 1448 01:24:07,237 --> 01:24:10,222 which is incredibly wasteful. It's as simple as that. 1449 01:24:11,160 --> 01:24:13,181 The actual mechanism of proposal 1450 01:24:13,321 --> 01:24:16,545 will come in the form of an interactive design interface 1451 01:24:16,685 --> 01:24:20,927 such as we see with computer-aided design, or CAD as it's called, 1452 01:24:21,067 --> 01:24:24,149 or more specifically computer-aided engineering 1453 01:24:24,289 --> 01:24:27,494 which is a more complicated synergistic process. 1454 01:24:28,280 --> 01:24:32,359 As an aside, some see computer-aided design programs as they exist 1455 01:24:32,499 --> 01:24:35,215 as having an enormous learning curve, and they do. 1456 01:24:35,355 --> 01:24:37,260 But just as the first computers 1457 01:24:37,400 --> 01:24:40,269 were very difficult code-based interfaces 1458 01:24:40,876 --> 01:24:43,404 which were later replaced by small little programs 1459 01:24:43,544 --> 01:24:46,286 in the form of graphic icons that we're all so familiar with 1460 01:24:46,426 --> 01:24:50,903 the future CAD-type programs could be oriented in the exact same way 1461 01:24:51,043 --> 01:24:53,423 to make them more user-friendly. 1462 01:24:53,563 --> 01:24:57,127 Obviously, not everyone has to engage in design. 1463 01:24:57,267 --> 01:25:01,208 Some people, like most people today, appreciate what's been created prior. 1464 01:25:01,348 --> 01:25:04,201 They absorb and they use what other people have come up with. 1465 01:25:04,341 --> 01:25:07,363 So there's a diminishing law of returns in a lot of ways, if you will. 1466 01:25:07,503 --> 01:25:10,892 Not everyone has to get in there and has some role to do this. 1467 01:25:11,032 --> 01:25:13,698 But many will and many will enjoy the process. 1468 01:25:14,966 --> 01:25:18,289 And you can customize things as you go which is a great point. 1469 01:25:18,430 --> 01:25:21,185 There's minor things that can happen with a product that someone doesn't know 1470 01:25:21,285 --> 01:25:23,785 anything about, but maybe they just want to change the color and that's it. 1471 01:25:23,899 --> 01:25:26,399 Obviously, that doesn't take a lot of education. 1472 01:25:27,075 --> 01:25:29,929 More importantly, technically speaking, 1473 01:25:30,070 --> 01:25:33,582 the beauty of these design and engineering programs today 1474 01:25:33,722 --> 01:25:36,556 is that they incorporate advanced physics 1475 01:25:36,696 --> 01:25:39,773 and other real-world, natural-law properties. 1476 01:25:39,913 --> 01:25:43,519 So a good isn't just viewable in a static 3D model. 1477 01:25:43,660 --> 01:25:46,410 It can be tested, right there, digitally. 1478 01:25:46,550 --> 01:25:49,050 And while some testing capacity might be limited today, 1479 01:25:49,156 --> 01:25:52,929 it's simply a matter of focus to perfect such digital means. 1480 01:25:53,069 --> 01:25:56,601 For example, in the automotive industry, long before new ideas are built, 1481 01:25:56,741 --> 01:25:59,593 they run them through similar digital testing processes, 1482 01:25:59,733 --> 01:26:01,595 and there's no reason to believe 1483 01:26:01,735 --> 01:26:04,818 that we will not eventually be able to digitally represent 1484 01:26:04,958 --> 01:26:10,944 and imitate and set in motion virtually all known laws of nature in time, 1485 01:26:11,084 --> 01:26:14,131 and being able to apply them to different contexts. 1486 01:26:15,138 --> 01:26:17,565 Similarly, and this is critical, 1487 01:26:18,235 --> 01:26:22,249 this design that's proposed in this system is filtered 1488 01:26:22,706 --> 01:26:26,811 through a series of sustainability and efficiency protocols 1489 01:26:26,951 --> 01:26:30,597 which relate to not only the state of the natural world 1490 01:26:30,737 --> 01:26:33,485 but also the total industrial system, 1491 01:26:33,625 --> 01:26:35,598 in as far as what is compatible. 1492 01:26:35,738 --> 01:26:39,875 Processes of evaluation and suggestion would include the following: 1493 01:26:40,431 --> 01:26:43,461 strategically maximized durability, 1494 01:26:43,601 --> 01:26:45,231 adaptability, 1495 01:26:45,371 --> 01:26:48,246 standardization of genre components, 1496 01:26:48,386 --> 01:26:52,656 strategically integrated recycling conduciveness, as I mentioned before, 1497 01:26:52,796 --> 01:26:55,642 and strategically conducive designs themselves, 1498 01:26:55,782 --> 01:26:58,808 making them conducive for labor automation. 1499 01:26:59,607 --> 01:27:01,669 I'm going to go through these, each quickly. 1500 01:27:01,809 --> 01:27:05,631 Durability just means to make the good as strong and as long-lasting as relevant, 1501 01:27:05,771 --> 01:27:09,924 the materials utilized comparatively assuming possible substitutions 1502 01:27:10,064 --> 01:27:12,210 due to levels of scarcity or other factors 1503 01:27:12,350 --> 01:27:14,377 would be dynamically calculated 1504 01:27:14,517 --> 01:27:17,702 likely automatically, in fact, by the design system 1505 01:27:17,842 --> 01:27:21,920 to be most conducive to an optimized durability standard. 1506 01:27:22,672 --> 01:27:24,177 Adaptability. 1507 01:27:24,317 --> 01:27:26,752 This means that the highest state of flexibility 1508 01:27:26,892 --> 01:27:29,517 for replacing component parts is made. 1509 01:27:29,657 --> 01:27:32,747 Has anyone seen this thing called "phonebloks?" 1510 01:27:33,999 --> 01:27:35,261 Brilliant. 1511 01:27:35,401 --> 01:27:38,570 In the event a component part of this good becomes defective 1512 01:27:38,670 --> 01:27:41,967 or out-of-date, whenever possible the design facilitates 1513 01:27:42,097 --> 01:27:44,395 that such components are easily replaced 1514 01:27:44,535 --> 01:27:47,486 to maximize full product life span. 1515 01:27:48,226 --> 01:27:51,585 Standardization of genre components. 1516 01:27:52,098 --> 01:27:56,245 All new designs either conform to or replace, if they're updated, 1517 01:27:56,385 --> 01:27:59,889 existing components which are either already in existence 1518 01:28:00,029 --> 01:28:03,662 or outdated due to a comparative lack of efficiency. 1519 01:28:04,463 --> 01:28:08,472 Many don't know this, but a man named Eli Whitney in 1801 1520 01:28:08,612 --> 01:28:11,664 was the first to really apply standardization in production. 1521 01:28:11,804 --> 01:28:14,379 He made muskets and back then they were handmade, 1522 01:28:14,520 --> 01:28:16,819 and they were not interchangeable, so the musket parts, 1523 01:28:16,959 --> 01:28:20,008 if anything broke, you couldn't take a part from something else. 1524 01:28:20,148 --> 01:28:22,491 He was the first to actually make the tools to do this, 1525 01:28:22,631 --> 01:28:26,013 and he basically started the entire process of standardization, 1526 01:28:26,153 --> 01:28:29,497 and the US military was now able to buy huge things of muskets 1527 01:28:29,637 --> 01:28:32,449 and interchanged them and, much more sustainable, 1528 01:28:32,589 --> 01:28:34,982 even though they were killing people. 1529 01:28:35,850 --> 01:28:38,350 Which is interesting for the military because if you think about it, 1530 01:28:38,450 --> 01:28:41,551 the military is one of the most efficient systems on the planet 1531 01:28:41,690 --> 01:28:43,816 because it's absent the market economy. 1532 01:28:43,956 --> 01:28:46,889 If you really want to look to where industrial efficiency was born, 1533 01:28:47,029 --> 01:28:50,629 as much as I dislike it, the military is where it becomes, 1534 01:28:51,186 --> 01:28:53,560 where it's been harnessed the most, excuse me. 1535 01:28:53,700 --> 01:28:57,431 Anyway, this logic not only applies to a given product, 1536 01:28:57,571 --> 01:29:01,021 it's applied to the entire good genre: standardization. 1537 01:29:01,836 --> 01:29:05,377 By the way, this efficiency will never happen in a market economy 1538 01:29:05,517 --> 01:29:08,969 with its basis in competition, as proprietary technology 1539 01:29:09,109 --> 01:29:12,528 removes all such collaborative efficiency. No one wants that. 1540 01:29:12,668 --> 01:29:14,668 No one wants to share everything like that. 1541 01:29:14,800 --> 01:29:17,966 Otherwise, people wouldn't have a need to go back to the root company 1542 01:29:18,069 --> 01:29:20,206 and buy the part; they would go somewhere else 1543 01:29:20,346 --> 01:29:23,189 where they'd have access to it through other means. 1544 01:29:23,650 --> 01:29:25,555 Recycling conduciveness. 1545 01:29:25,695 --> 01:29:28,206 As noted before, this means every design must conform 1546 01:29:28,346 --> 01:29:31,253 to the current state of regenerative possibility. 1547 01:29:31,393 --> 01:29:34,372 The breakdown of any good must be anticipated 1548 01:29:34,512 --> 01:29:37,563 and allowed for in the most optimized way, 1549 01:29:39,126 --> 01:29:42,660 and made conducive for labor automation. 1550 01:29:43,111 --> 01:29:45,889 This means that the current state of optimized 1551 01:29:46,029 --> 01:29:49,487 automated production is directly taken into account 1552 01:29:49,627 --> 01:29:52,165 seeking to refine the process- 1553 01:29:52,305 --> 01:29:55,081 excuse me- seeking to refine the design that's submitted 1554 01:29:55,221 --> 01:29:57,946 to be most conducive to the current state of production 1555 01:29:58,086 --> 01:30:01,762 with the least amount of human labor or monitoring. 1556 01:30:01,902 --> 01:30:07,261 We seek to simplify the way materials and production means are used 1557 01:30:07,361 --> 01:30:09,861 so that the maximum number of goods can be produced 1558 01:30:10,000 --> 01:30:13,728 with the least variation of materials and production equipment. 1559 01:30:13,868 --> 01:30:15,960 It's a very important point. 1560 01:30:16,100 --> 01:30:18,559 These five factors will be what we can call in total 1561 01:30:18,700 --> 01:30:23,254 the optimized design-efficiency function, if you want to be technical. 1562 01:30:23,394 --> 01:30:26,293 Keep this in mind as I'm going to return to all of this in a moment. 1563 01:30:27,643 --> 01:30:30,658 Moving on to the industrial complex, the layout. 1564 01:30:30,798 --> 01:30:34,152 This means that the network of facilities, which are directly connected 1565 01:30:34,292 --> 01:30:37,432 to the design and the database system I have just described. 1566 01:30:37,573 --> 01:30:41,445 Servers, production, distribution, recycling is basically it. 1567 01:30:41,870 --> 01:30:45,828 Also, we'd need to relate the current state of resources, 1568 01:30:45,968 --> 01:30:50,702 critically important, as per the global resource management network, 1569 01:30:50,842 --> 01:30:54,936 another tier, which I'm going to also describe in a moment. 1570 01:30:55,843 --> 01:30:59,607 Production- this means of course actual manufacturing- 1571 01:30:59,747 --> 01:31:03,993 would evolve, as expressed before, as automated factories 1572 01:31:04,500 --> 01:31:07,021 which are increasingly able to produce more 1573 01:31:07,161 --> 01:31:11,050 with less material inputs and less machines: ephemeralization. 1574 01:31:11,190 --> 01:31:15,424 If we were to consciously design out unnecessary levels of complexity, 1575 01:31:15,564 --> 01:31:17,822 we can further this efficiency trend greatly 1576 01:31:17,962 --> 01:31:21,398 with an ever-lower environmental impact and resource use 1577 01:31:21,538 --> 01:31:25,206 while maximizing, again, our abundance-producing potential. 1578 01:31:25,750 --> 01:31:27,833 The number of production facilities, 1579 01:31:27,973 --> 01:31:30,755 whether homogeneous or heterogeneous, as they would be called, 1580 01:31:30,895 --> 01:31:33,537 would be strategically distributed topographically 1581 01:31:33,677 --> 01:31:36,420 based around population statistics, very simple stuff. 1582 01:31:36,560 --> 01:31:38,731 It's no different than how grocery stores work today 1583 01:31:38,871 --> 01:31:41,102 where they try to average distances as best they can 1584 01:31:41,242 --> 01:31:43,496 between pockets of people and neighborhoods. 1585 01:31:43,636 --> 01:31:45,966 You could call this the 'Proximity Strategy' 1586 01:31:46,106 --> 01:31:48,630 which I'll mention again in a moment. 1587 01:31:48,770 --> 01:31:50,050 Distribution. 1588 01:31:50,190 --> 01:31:53,076 This can either be directly from the production facility 1589 01:31:53,216 --> 01:31:56,793 as in the case of on-demand custom one-off production, 1590 01:31:56,933 --> 01:31:59,665 or it can be sent to a distribution library 1591 01:31:59,805 --> 01:32:02,372 for public access en masse, 1592 01:32:02,512 --> 01:32:05,249 based on demand interest in that region. 1593 01:32:05,389 --> 01:32:08,678 The library system is where goods can be obtained. 1594 01:32:09,416 --> 01:32:12,023 Some goods can be conducive to low demand 1595 01:32:12,163 --> 01:32:14,588 and custom production and some will not be. 1596 01:32:14,728 --> 01:32:17,717 Food is an easy example of a mass production necessity, 1597 01:32:17,857 --> 01:32:19,952 while a personal tailored piece of furniture 1598 01:32:20,092 --> 01:32:23,550 would come directly from the manufacturing facility once created. 1599 01:32:24,604 --> 01:32:26,817 I suspect that this on-demand process, 1600 01:32:26,957 --> 01:32:31,629 which will likely become equally as utilized as mass production, 1601 01:32:31,769 --> 01:32:33,904 will be an enormous advantage. 1602 01:32:34,044 --> 01:32:36,556 As noted, on-demand production is more efficient 1603 01:32:36,696 --> 01:32:40,359 since the resources are going to be utilized for the exact-use demand, 1604 01:32:40,500 --> 01:32:43,783 as opposed to the block things that we do today. 1605 01:32:46,800 --> 01:32:50,000 Distribution Library. 1606 01:32:50,436 --> 01:32:53,505 Inventory is accessed in a dynamic direct feedback link 1607 01:32:53,645 --> 01:32:56,706 between production, distribution and demand. 1608 01:32:56,846 --> 01:32:59,259 If that doesn't make sense to you, all you have to think about is 1609 01:32:59,400 --> 01:33:01,701 how inventory accounting and tracking works 1610 01:33:01,841 --> 01:33:04,808 in any major commercial distribution center today 1611 01:33:04,948 --> 01:33:07,059 with, of course, a few adjustments made in this model. 1612 01:33:07,200 --> 01:33:09,660 We're already doing this type of stuff already. 1613 01:33:09,800 --> 01:33:12,559 Regardless of where the good is classified to go, 1614 01:33:12,699 --> 01:33:16,090 whether it's custom or not, libraries or to the direct user, 1615 01:33:16,230 --> 01:33:18,355 this is still an access system. 1616 01:33:18,495 --> 01:33:21,684 In other words, at any time the user of the custom good 1617 01:33:21,824 --> 01:33:24,190 can return the item for reprocessing, 1618 01:33:24,330 --> 01:33:28,400 just as the person who obtained something from the library can, as well. 1619 01:33:28,838 --> 01:33:31,133 Since, as noted, the good has been pre-optimized 1620 01:33:31,273 --> 01:33:33,473 (all goods are pre-optimized for conducive recycling) 1621 01:33:33,627 --> 01:33:36,956 odds are the recycling facility is actually built directly in 1622 01:33:37,096 --> 01:33:40,382 to the production facility or the genre of production facility, 1623 01:33:40,522 --> 01:33:43,741 depending on how many facilities you need to create the variety of demand. 1624 01:33:44,954 --> 01:33:47,257 So again, there's no trash here: whether it's a phone, 1625 01:33:47,397 --> 01:33:49,481 a couch, a computer, a jacket, a book, 1626 01:33:49,621 --> 01:33:53,046 everything goes back to where it came back from, for direct reprocessing. 1627 01:33:53,186 --> 01:33:56,319 Ideally this is a zero-waste economy. 1628 01:33:57,906 --> 01:34:00,913 Resource Management, Feedback and Value. 1629 01:34:01,053 --> 01:34:04,540 The computer-aided and engineering design process 1630 01:34:04,680 --> 01:34:06,771 obviously does not exist in a vacuum. 1631 01:34:06,911 --> 01:34:12,439 Processing demands input from the natural resources that we have. 1632 01:34:13,496 --> 01:34:17,442 So connected to this design process, literally built into the 1633 01:34:17,582 --> 01:34:20,695 optimized design-efficiency function noted prior, 1634 01:34:20,835 --> 01:34:24,070 is dynamic feedback from an Earth-wide accounting system 1635 01:34:24,210 --> 01:34:26,855 which gives data about all relevant resources 1636 01:34:26,995 --> 01:34:29,274 which pertain to all productions. 1637 01:34:29,414 --> 01:34:32,465 Today, most major industries keep periodic data 1638 01:34:32,605 --> 01:34:35,124 of their genre materials as far as how much they have, 1639 01:34:35,264 --> 01:34:37,264 but clearly it's difficult to ascertain 1640 01:34:37,380 --> 01:34:40,470 due to the nature of corporate secrets and the like. 1641 01:34:41,238 --> 01:34:43,075 But it's still done. 1642 01:34:43,215 --> 01:34:47,589 To whatever degree ... technically possible this is, 1643 01:34:47,948 --> 01:34:50,272 all resources are tracked and monitored, 1644 01:34:50,412 --> 01:34:52,756 and in as close to real time ideally as possible. 1645 01:34:52,896 --> 01:34:56,331 Why? Mainly because we need to maintain equilibrium 1646 01:34:56,471 --> 01:34:59,308 with the Earth's regenerative processes at all times 1647 01:34:59,448 --> 01:35:02,781 while also, as noted before, work to strategically maximize 1648 01:35:02,921 --> 01:35:05,559 our use of the most abundant materials 1649 01:35:05,700 --> 01:35:08,715 while minimizing anything with emerging scarcity. 1650 01:35:10,160 --> 01:35:11,565 Value. 1651 01:35:11,705 --> 01:35:14,780 As far as value, the two dominant measures, 1652 01:35:14,920 --> 01:35:17,539 which will undergo constant dynamic recalculation 1653 01:35:17,679 --> 01:35:20,039 through feedback as industry unfolds, 1654 01:35:20,179 --> 01:35:23,166 [are] scarcity and labor complexity. 1655 01:35:24,104 --> 01:35:26,507 Scarcity value without a market system 1656 01:35:26,647 --> 01:35:30,473 could be assigned a numerical value, say one to 100. 1657 01:35:30,613 --> 01:35:32,731 One would denote the most severe scarcity 1658 01:35:32,871 --> 01:35:36,298 with respect to the current rate of use, and 100 the least severe. 1659 01:35:36,438 --> 01:35:39,346 50 would mark the steady-state dividing line. 1660 01:35:39,486 --> 01:35:42,085 For example, if the use of wood lumber passes 1661 01:35:42,225 --> 01:35:44,654 below the steady state level of 50, 1662 01:35:44,794 --> 01:35:47,209 which would mean consumption is currently surpassing the Earth's 1663 01:35:47,349 --> 01:35:49,811 natural regeneration rate, this would trigger 1664 01:35:49,951 --> 01:35:52,026 a counter-move of some kind, 1665 01:35:52,166 --> 01:35:55,970 such as the process of material substitution, 1666 01:35:56,110 --> 01:35:59,805 hence the replacement for wood in any given future productions, 1667 01:35:59,945 --> 01:36:02,069 finding alternatives. 1668 01:36:02,482 --> 01:36:05,146 And of course, if you are a free market mindset listening to this, 1669 01:36:05,286 --> 01:36:08,493 you are likely going to object at this point by saying "Without price, 1670 01:36:08,633 --> 01:36:12,247 how can you compare value of one material to another or many materials?" 1671 01:36:12,387 --> 01:36:19,302 Simple: you organize genres or groups of similar-use materials 1672 01:36:19,442 --> 01:36:23,255 and quantify, as best you can, their related properties 1673 01:36:23,395 --> 01:36:27,020 and degree of efficiency for a given purpose, 1674 01:36:27,160 --> 01:36:29,660 and then you apply a general numerical value spectrum 1675 01:36:29,774 --> 01:36:31,968 to those relationships, as well. 1676 01:36:32,869 --> 01:36:35,512 For example, there are a spectrum of metals 1677 01:36:35,652 --> 01:36:39,150 which have different efficiencies for electrical conductivity. 1678 01:36:39,591 --> 01:36:41,591 These efficiencies can be quantified, 1679 01:36:41,710 --> 01:36:44,292 and if they can be quantified, they can be compared. 1680 01:36:44,432 --> 01:36:49,923 So if copper goes below the 50 median value regarding its scarcity, 1681 01:36:50,063 --> 01:36:52,869 calculations are triggered by the management program 1682 01:36:53,010 --> 01:36:57,033 to compare the state of other conducive materials in its database, 1683 01:36:57,173 --> 01:36:59,878 compare their scarcity level and their efficiency, 1684 01:37:00,018 --> 01:37:02,401 preparing for substitution, and that kind of information 1685 01:37:02,541 --> 01:37:04,865 goes right back to the designer. 1686 01:37:05,848 --> 01:37:09,279 Naturally, this type of reasoning might indeed get extremely complicated 1687 01:37:09,379 --> 01:37:13,395 as again: numerous resources and numerous efficiencies and purposes 1688 01:37:13,575 --> 01:37:16,819 which is exactly why it is calculated by a machine, not people. 1689 01:37:16,959 --> 01:37:19,839 And it's also why it completely blows the price system out of the water 1690 01:37:19,979 --> 01:37:24,508 when it comes to true resource awareness and intelligent management. 1691 01:37:25,829 --> 01:37:27,917 Labor Complexity. 1692 01:37:28,057 --> 01:37:32,200 This simply means estimating the complexity of a given production. 1693 01:37:32,825 --> 01:37:36,502 Complexity, in the context of an automated-oriented industry, 1694 01:37:36,642 --> 01:37:39,810 can be quantified by defining and comparing 1695 01:37:39,950 --> 01:37:42,901 the number of process stages, if you will. 1696 01:37:43,680 --> 01:37:46,355 Any given good production can be foreshadowed 1697 01:37:46,495 --> 01:37:50,136 as to how many of these stages of production it will take. 1698 01:37:50,276 --> 01:37:52,827 It can then be compared to other good productions, 1699 01:37:52,967 --> 01:37:56,728 ideally in the same genre, for a quantifiable assessment. 1700 01:37:56,868 --> 01:37:59,820 The units of measurement are the stages, in other words. 1701 01:37:59,960 --> 01:38:02,420 For example, a chair that can be molded in three minutes 1702 01:38:02,560 --> 01:38:05,101 from simple polymers in one process will have a lower 1703 01:38:05,241 --> 01:38:09,032 labor complexity value than a chair which requires automated assembly 1704 01:38:09,172 --> 01:38:13,098 down a more tedious production chain with mixed materials. 1705 01:38:13,961 --> 01:38:16,893 In the event a given process value is too complex 1706 01:38:17,033 --> 01:38:20,497 or inefficient in terms of what is currently possible in production, 1707 01:38:20,637 --> 01:38:24,351 or too inefficient by comparison to an already existing design 1708 01:38:24,491 --> 01:38:28,205 of a similar nature as well, the design, along with other parameters, 1709 01:38:28,345 --> 01:38:31,565 would be flagged and would be re-evaluated. 1710 01:38:31,705 --> 01:38:35,088 And again, all of this comes from feedback from the design interface; 1711 01:38:35,228 --> 01:38:38,188 and there's no reason to assume that with ongoing advancement 1712 01:38:38,328 --> 01:38:40,631 in AI (artificial intelligence), 1713 01:38:40,771 --> 01:38:44,112 we wouldn't be able to feedback not only the highlight of the problem 1714 01:38:44,252 --> 01:38:46,962 but would also create suggestions or substitutions 1715 01:38:47,102 --> 01:38:49,955 for you to understand in the interface. 1716 01:38:51,661 --> 01:38:53,888 [Macro]-Calculation. 1717 01:38:54,282 --> 01:38:56,743 Let's put some of this reasoning together. 1718 01:38:56,883 --> 01:38:59,477 I hope everyone can bear with me. 1719 01:38:59,617 --> 01:39:01,800 If we were to look at good design 1720 01:39:01,940 --> 01:39:05,272 in the broadest possible way with respect to industrial unfolding, 1721 01:39:05,412 --> 01:39:08,500 we would end up with about four functions or processes 1722 01:39:08,640 --> 01:39:12,371 each relating to the four dominant, linear stages of design, 1723 01:39:12,511 --> 01:39:14,896 production, distribution and recycling. 1724 01:39:15,036 --> 01:39:19,212 The following propositions should be obvious enough as a rule structure. 1725 01:39:19,352 --> 01:39:22,806 All product designs must adapt to optimized design efficiency. 1726 01:39:22,946 --> 01:39:26,308 They must all adapt to optimized production efficiency. 1727 01:39:26,448 --> 01:39:29,089 They must adapt to optimized distribution efficiency, 1728 01:39:29,230 --> 01:39:31,969 and they must adapt to optimized recycling efficiency. 1729 01:39:32,109 --> 01:39:35,366 Seems redundant, but this is how we have to think about it. 1730 01:39:35,506 --> 01:39:39,350 Here is a linear block schematic and the symbolic logic representation 1731 01:39:39,490 --> 01:39:42,217 which embodies the subprocesses or functions 1732 01:39:42,357 --> 01:39:44,490 I'm now going to very generally break down. 1733 01:39:46,453 --> 01:39:48,985 Process 1: The Design. 1734 01:39:49,125 --> 01:39:51,172 Optimized Design Efficiency. 1735 01:39:51,312 --> 01:39:55,631 A product design must meet or adapt to criteria set 1736 01:39:55,771 --> 01:39:59,516 by what we have called the current efficiency standards. 1737 01:39:59,656 --> 01:40:04,176 This efficiency process has five evaluative subprocesses, 1738 01:40:04,750 --> 01:40:07,114 as noted before earlier in the presentation: 1739 01:40:07,254 --> 01:40:10,555 durability, adaptability, standardization, 1740 01:40:10,695 --> 01:40:14,134 recycling conduciveness, maximized automation conduciveness. 1741 01:40:16,580 --> 01:40:19,448 Further breakdown of these variables and logical associations 1742 01:40:19,588 --> 01:40:21,848 can be figuratively made as well, of course, 1743 01:40:21,988 --> 01:40:24,999 which I don't think is conducive for this type of presentation 1744 01:40:25,139 --> 01:40:28,723 because we're going to get lost in ever- reductionist minutia. 1745 01:40:29,192 --> 01:40:33,055 But for more detail this stuff will be developed much more and be put 1746 01:40:33,195 --> 01:40:36,290 into this text as I've just described which will be available for free. 1747 01:40:36,430 --> 01:40:40,439 I'm going to try to do my best to give the general efficiency process here. 1748 01:40:40,983 --> 01:40:43,650 In the end, when it comes to this Design Efficiency process set, 1749 01:40:43,790 --> 01:40:47,641 we end up with this design function at the top. 1750 01:40:48,881 --> 01:40:52,550 Just to see it, I'll list all of the function meanings at the end. 1751 01:40:54,339 --> 01:40:58,501 We move on to process 2: Production Efficiency. 1752 01:40:58,641 --> 01:41:01,348 In short, this is the digital filter 1753 01:41:01,488 --> 01:41:05,747 that moves design to one of two production facility types. 1754 01:41:06,383 --> 01:41:08,577 One for high demand or mass goods 1755 01:41:08,717 --> 01:41:11,361 and one for low demand or custom goods. 1756 01:41:11,501 --> 01:41:14,049 The first uses fixed automation, 1757 01:41:14,189 --> 01:41:18,017 meaning unvaried production ideal for high demand, 1758 01:41:18,157 --> 01:41:20,556 and the second: flexible automation 1759 01:41:20,696 --> 01:41:23,864 which can do a variety of things, but usually in shorter runs. 1760 01:41:24,004 --> 01:41:26,004 This is a distinction that's commonly made 1761 01:41:26,107 --> 01:41:28,223 in traditional manufacturing terms. 1762 01:41:28,663 --> 01:41:32,111 This structure assumes only two types of facilities. 1763 01:41:32,251 --> 01:41:35,698 Obviously there could be more, based on the production factors. 1764 01:41:35,838 --> 01:41:39,101 But if the design rules in the process are respected, 1765 01:41:39,241 --> 01:41:41,746 as expressed before, there shouldn't be much variety. 1766 01:41:41,886 --> 01:41:44,967 Over time things get simpler and simpler. 1767 01:41:46,093 --> 01:41:48,423 So to state this, I'm just going to run through it for those that 1768 01:41:48,563 --> 01:41:50,619 like to hear things spelled out like this. 1769 01:41:50,759 --> 01:41:52,802 All product designs are filtered by a 1770 01:41:52,942 --> 01:41:56,360 demand class determination: process D; 1771 01:41:56,500 --> 01:41:59,160 the demand class determination process filters 1772 01:41:59,400 --> 01:42:04,385 based on the standards set for low demand or high demand. 1773 01:42:04,907 --> 01:42:07,174 All low consumer demand product designs 1774 01:42:07,284 --> 01:42:09,405 are to be manufactured by the flexible automation process, 1775 01:42:09,535 --> 01:42:11,535 all high consumer demand product designs 1776 01:42:11,645 --> 01:42:13,645 are manufactured by the fixed automation process. 1777 01:42:13,778 --> 01:42:15,843 Also both the manufacturing of low consumer demand 1778 01:42:15,943 --> 01:42:17,943 and high consumer demand product designs 1779 01:42:18,043 --> 01:42:22,420 will be regionally allocated as per the proximity strategy 1780 01:42:22,548 --> 01:42:25,794 of the manufacturing facility. This simply means 1781 01:42:25,934 --> 01:42:28,999 you keep things as close to you as possible, as close to the average 1782 01:42:29,139 --> 01:42:32,217 of any given demand as far as what type of facility you're using. 1783 01:42:32,357 --> 01:42:34,957 And this will change over time as populations change, 1784 01:42:35,097 --> 01:42:37,188 so you keep updating. 1785 01:42:37,328 --> 01:42:38,820 Process 3. 1786 01:42:38,960 --> 01:42:43,430 Once process 2 is finished, the product design is now a product 1787 01:42:43,570 --> 01:42:47,106 and it moves towards optimized distribution efficiency. 1788 01:42:47,820 --> 01:42:51,674 In short, all products are allocated based on the prior 1789 01:42:51,814 --> 01:42:54,577 demand class determination as noted before, 1790 01:42:54,717 --> 01:42:58,700 so low consumer demand products follow a direct distribution process, 1791 01:42:58,840 --> 01:43:02,275 high consumer demands follow the mass distribution process 1792 01:43:02,415 --> 01:43:04,415 which would likely be the libraries in that case. 1793 01:43:04,546 --> 01:43:08,508 Both low consumer demand and high consumer demand products will be 1794 01:43:08,648 --> 01:43:12,857 regionally allocated per the proximity strategy, as noted before. 1795 01:43:13,488 --> 01:43:17,497 And process 4, very simple, the product undergoes its life span. 1796 01:43:17,637 --> 01:43:20,921 Ideally it's been updated and adapted; ideally it's been used 1797 01:43:21,061 --> 01:43:24,537 to the highest degree and made as advanced as it could within its life cycle. 1798 01:43:24,677 --> 01:43:27,936 Once it's done it becomes void and moves on to process 4 1799 01:43:28,076 --> 01:43:30,725 which is simply optimized recycling efficiency. 1800 01:43:30,865 --> 01:43:33,956 All voided products will follow a regenerative protocol 1801 01:43:34,096 --> 01:43:36,782 which is a subprocess that clearly I'm not going to go into 1802 01:43:36,922 --> 01:43:38,905 because it's deeply complicated 1803 01:43:39,045 --> 01:43:41,436 and is the role of engineers to develop over time. 1804 01:43:41,576 --> 01:43:44,419 This is just a simple macro representation; 1805 01:43:44,559 --> 01:43:49,249 again these subvariables or subprocesses go on to quite a large degree. 1806 01:43:50,550 --> 01:43:53,919 Keeping all of this in mind, again, a lot of this will be in the text 1807 01:43:54,060 --> 01:43:56,257 and hopefully others, I think, can see this stuff, 1808 01:43:56,397 --> 01:43:58,592 that are fluent with this type of thinking, and hone in 1809 01:43:58,732 --> 01:44:00,760 and perfect these equations and relationships. 1810 01:44:00,900 --> 01:44:03,733 What I tried to do here is to give a broad sense 1811 01:44:03,873 --> 01:44:06,392 of how this type of thing unfolds. 1812 01:44:06,532 --> 01:44:08,764 As a concluding statement, more or less, the way 1813 01:44:08,904 --> 01:44:11,504 this extrapolation of sustainability and efficiency- 1814 01:44:11,644 --> 01:44:13,958 it's really quite a simple logical thing. 1815 01:44:14,098 --> 01:44:16,980 You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see how things work on this level. 1816 01:44:17,120 --> 01:44:20,297 Creating a real program that can factor in 1817 01:44:20,437 --> 01:44:24,150 what are hundreds if not thousands of subprocesses in algorithmic form, 1818 01:44:24,290 --> 01:44:27,548 as they pertain to such an economic complex is indeed 1819 01:44:27,688 --> 01:44:31,231 a massive project in and of itself, but it's more of a tedious project. 1820 01:44:31,371 --> 01:44:33,714 You don't need to be a genius to figure this stuff out. 1821 01:44:33,854 --> 01:44:36,545 I think this is an excellent think-tank program 1822 01:44:36,645 --> 01:44:38,645 for anyone out there that's interested in projects. 1823 01:44:38,745 --> 01:44:41,102 I have a number of little projects that I'm trying to get going 1824 01:44:41,275 --> 01:44:43,724 when I have time; one is simply called The Global Redesign Institute, 1825 01:44:43,864 --> 01:44:46,085 which is a macroeconomic approach to redesign 1826 01:44:46,225 --> 01:44:48,579 the entire surface of the planet, basically. 1827 01:44:48,719 --> 01:44:51,624 And in this other programming concept, we create an open-source platform 1828 01:44:51,764 --> 01:44:53,899 where people can begin to engineer this very program 1829 01:44:54,039 --> 01:44:55,627 that I'm describing. 1830 01:44:56,467 --> 01:44:58,578 That's it. I was going to make a conclusion to this talk 1831 01:44:58,718 --> 01:45:00,484 but it was already way too long. 1832 01:45:00,624 --> 01:45:02,959 So I just hope this gives a deeper understanding of the model, 1833 01:45:03,100 --> 01:45:05,100 how it could work and thank you for listening. 1834 01:45:05,277 --> 01:45:08,677 [Applause]