Economic Calculation in a Natural Law / RBE, Peter Joseph, The Zeitgeist Movement, Berlin

Economic Calculation in a Natural Law / Resource-based Economy, Peter Joseph, The Zeitgeist Movement, Berlin Germany
November 12 2013

Intro: 0:00
Part 1: Why Change?: 4:12
Part 2: Post Scarcity: 30:59
Part 3: Economic Organization and Calculation: 1:11:01
Q&A: 1:45:10

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Hello. My name is Frank Muller. I also work with the organization called the Zeitgeist movement, as you already know.

And yeah I would like to welcome everybody right here. And from foreign land everybody who did come, thank you very much.

And I would like to take an opportunity to especially thank teams of the zeitgeist movement.

Teams meaning the linguistic team, the web team, the technology team, the activism team

and also, of course, the project team that coordinated this project right here.

Again, we seek to simplify the way materials and production means are used so that the maximum number of goods can be produced

with the least variation of materials or production equipment.

This is a very important point.

And this five factors what we can call in total "The Optimize Design Efficiency" function if you wanna be technical.

Keep this in mind as I'm gonna return to all this in a moment.

Moving on to the industrial complex, the layout.

This means that the network of facilities, which are directly connected

to the design and the database system that I just described.

Servers, productions, distribution, recycling - basically it.

Also we need to relate the current state of resources. Critically important. As per the global resource management network, another tier, which I'm also gonna describe in a moment.

Production. This means, of course, that natural manufacturing will evolve, as expressed before, as automated factories will be able to produce more with less material inputs, less machines and (?)formalization(?).

And if we were to consciously design out unnecessary levels of complexity we can further this efficiency trend greatly

with an ever lower environmental impact and resource use, while maximizing, again, our abundance producing potential.

The number of production facilities, whether homogenous or heterogeneous, as they can be called,

would be strategically distributed topographically based on population statistics.

Very simple stuff. It's no different from how grocery stores work today.

They try to average out distances the best they can between pockets of people and neighborhoods.

You can call this the proximity strategy, which I'll mention again in a moment.

Distribution. This can either can be directly from the production facility as in the case of on demand custom one off production

or it can be sent to a distribution library for public access in mass, based on demand and interest in that region.

The library system is where goods can be obtained.

Some goods can be conducive to low demand and custom production and some will not be.

Food is an easy example of a mass production necessity, while a custom piece of furniture will come directly from the manufacturing facility once created.

And I suspect, again, this on demand process, which will likely become equally as utilized as mass production will be an enormous advantage.

As noted, on demand production is more efficient since resources are going to be utilized for the exact use on demand as opposed to block things as we do today.

Distribution Library.

Inventory is accessed in a direct dynamic feedback link, of course, between production, distribution and demand.

If that doesn't make sense to you, again, all you have to think about is how inventory counting and tracking works in any major commercial distribution center today.

With, of course, a few adjustments made to this model.

We already doing this kind of stuff already. And, regardless of where the good is classified to go,

whether it's custom or not, libraries or to a direct user, this is still access system. In other words, at any time the user of a custom good can return the item for reprocessing

just as the person who obtained something from the library can as well.

Since, as noted, the good has been pre-optimized (all goods are pre-optimized for conducive recycling) odds are recycling facilities actually are build in directly in to the production facility

or the genre of production facility (depending on how many facilities you need to create a variety of demand).

So again, there's no trash here.

Whether it's a phone, a couch, a computer, a jacket or a book, everything goes back where it came back from for direct reprocessing.

Ideally this is a zero waste economy.

Resource Management Feedback and Value.

The computer aided an engineering design process, obviously does not exist in a vacuum.

Processing demands, input from the natural resources that we have.

So connected to this design process, literally, build into the optimized design efficiency function noted prior, is dynamic feedback from an earth accounting system

which gives data about all relevant resources, which pertain(?) to all productions.

Today most major industries keep periodic data of their genre materials, as far as how much they have.

But, clearly, it's difficult to ascertain due to the nature of corporate secrets and alike.

But it's still done, regardless to whatever degree technically possible this is , all resources are tracked and monitored and as close to real-time, ideally, as possible.

Why? Mainly because we need to maintain equilibrium with earth's regenerative processes at all times

while also, as noted before, work to strategically maximize our use of abundant materials, while minimizing anything with emerging scarcity.

Value.

As far as value, the two dominant measures, which undergo constant dynamic recalculation through feedback, as industry unfolds its scarcity and labor complexity.

The whole German chapter did a great job with establishing this event in a month.

So, I would like to thank everybody personally. And, yeah, good to see you here.

I don't Peter Joseph needs an introduction here. I think everybody knows who he is here.

So, short and precise. Thank you, and I hand the microphone to Peter.

And yo ucan turn this mic off since I'm not going to use it.

How's everybody doing? I really appeciate you all being here.

And I want to thank Franky and the Berlin team for moving so fast. It's really phenomenal

having put on many events over the years, it's not an easy task.

And I'm always reminded when I travel these days, that the Zeitgeist Movement is a global phenomenon at this stage, right?

And no matter where any of us end up on the planet, we don't have to go very far to find friends who share similar values.

in this pursuit of a better world.

The title of this talk is Economic Calculation in a Natural law Resource-Based Economy.

For the past five years or so the Zeitgeist Movement has put out quite a bit of educational media with respect to it's advocation.

And the learning curve has been rather intense.

And there's been a tendency to generalize with respect to how things actually work technically.

This is the content of this presentation and in parts one and two I'm going to refine

the inherent flaws of the current market model regarding why we need to change.

Along with relaying the vast prospects we now have to solve

the vast problems; to improve efficiency and generate a form of abundance that can meet all human needs.

The active term which has gained a good deal of popularity in the past couple of years

is called post-scarcity. Even though that word is a little bit miss-leading semantically, as I'll explain later,

And in part three, I will work to show how this new society generally works in its structure and basic calculation.

I think most people on the planet know that there's something very wrong with the current socio economic tradition.

They just don't know how to think about the solution.

Or more accurately how to arrive at such solutions.

Until that is addressed, we're not going to get very far.

And on that note, in a number of months a rather substantial text is going to be put into circulation that will be available for free.

Available for free and also in print form or download form.

At cost, it's a non-profit expression. This will be finished, hopefully, by the first of the year.

And this will be the definitive expression, at least in the condensed form, of the movement--something that's been long overdue.

It's called the Zeitgeist Movement Defined.

And it will serve as both an orientation and a reference guide

And we'll have probably over a thousand foot notes and sources.

Once finished, an educational video series will be put out

in about twenty parts to produce the material along with the work book.

To help the people who want to learn how to talk about these ideas, because we basically need more people on international levels

to be able to communicate as I try to do.

It's a very important thing. I think the movement--the future of the movement, I should say, rests, in part, on our capacity to create a well

oiled international educational machine, with consistent language, coupled with real design projects and there inter-workings.

Part one. So why are we even here?

Is this type of large scale change, what the movement advocates, really needed?

Can't we just work to fix and improve the current economic model, keeping the general frame-work of money

trade, profit, power, property and the like?

The short is a definitive now.

As I'm going to explain.

If, there is any real interest to solve the growing public health and environmental crises at hand, this system needs to go.

Market Capitalism, however you wish to regulate it, or not regulate it (depending on who you speak with) contains severe structural flaws.

Which will always, to one degree or another, perpetuate environmental abuse and destabilization and human disregard and caustic inequality.

Put another way, environmental and social imbalance and a basic lack of sustainability,

both environmentally and culturally, is inherent to the market economy and it always has been.

The difference between Capitalism today, and say, the 16th century, is that our technological ability

to rapidly accelerate and amplify this market process, has brought to the surface consequences which

simply couldn't be understood or even recognized in those early primitive times.

In other words, the basic principals of market economics have been intrinsically flawed.

It has taken just this long for the severity of those flaws to come to fruition.

So let me explain a little bit.

From an environmental stand point: