| | Dimitri,
Today, I watched the first 20 minutes of the 160+ minute video you suggested: ZEITGEIST: MOVING FORWARD | OFFICIAL RELEASE | 2011
My responses to selected quotes are below:
The intro (first few minutes) included a man talking about learning the game Monopoly as a child, and extrapolating dynamics, motives, outcomes, etc. from that childhood game to the nature of capitalism, in general.
The only way to win is to make a total commitment to acquisition.
In extrapolating Monopoly to capitalism, there are 3 things wrong with this 13-word sentence (an error every 4 words, or so).
First, raw acquisition isn't the only way to "win" at capitalism, as you can get rich off of other people acquiring your services (as a doctor or a carpenter or a painter does). This is the nature of free trade, that it isn't a one-sided phenomenon -- that somebody else's acquisition can be your gain, too. You do not have to make a total commitment to acquisition in order to win.
Second, to "win" in Monopoly requires bankrupting everyone around you -- there is no room to win while not, simultaneously, bankrupting everyone around you. This is wrong on two levels. The first level involves the point mentioned above about free trade being mutually beneficial.
The game of Monopoly is artificial in that it follows zero-sum dynamics or what can be called "jungle law" (a "law" for sub-human savages). In Monopoly (or the jungle), each gain made is made at the expense of a loss somewhere else. Someone lands on your hotel on Boardwalk Ave, and you get rich as he goes broke. Or, the lion catches the zebra and the lion eats as the zebra loses its very life. That's the zero-sum dynamic.
The second level on which this second point is wrong is that it uses a pre-conceived notion of "success" (domination via acquisition) that is not agreed to by all parties. There are many ways to live happily, some involving producing more wealth than others. People enjoy differing environments. If you took a "Gallup poll" and asked everyone if they would accept the position of CEO of the greatest company on Earth, many of them would decline the offer. That's because people are different. The notion of "win" used in this official Zeitgeist film is wrong in that it implicitly denies individuality with regard to "winning", "success", or "happiness."
Third, total commitments aren't required. I know many people who excel and are happy excelling (they are successful or winning at it) without a total commitment. Total commitments help, but they are not the only way to win.
I was ready to bend the rules if I had to to win that game.
This is evidence of a "criminal" mindset. It fails to integrate the immense value you get from playing by some "rules" (value from acting in a principled manner). It fails to integrate things like the trust of others, and all the benefits derived therefrom, when it becomes clear to others that they can count on you to act in certain straightforward ways. It fails to integrate that reality is principled, so that you don't have to be unprincipled in order to get ahead -- but just the opposite.
It'll never be enough. So you have to ask yourself the question: "What matters?"@
Great question. The answer will be found in examination of the following, more-basic, questions:
What kind of creature am I?
What kind of universe do I live in?
What do the answers to these two questions tell me about how I should conduct myself?
6:20
I explained that America owed everything it has to other cultures and other nations, and that I'd rather pledge allegiance to the Earth and everyone on it.
This view takes the counter-intuitive position that America has done less for other countries than other countries have done for America -- which is patently false.
7:30
I later calculated that all the destruction and wasted resources spent on that war [WWII] could have easily provided for every human need on the planet.
The insinuation above is naive, magical thinking. It is insinuated that WWII didn't have to take place -- that things would be fine if we never went to war and, instead, utilized all war funds to build hospitals, grocery stores, and playgrounds. But what would have really happened if we tried that? Well, Nazi Germany, or even Communist Russia, might have become world-dominating -- and the hospitals would overflow, the grocery stores would be empty, and the playground would be strewn with dead bodies. It's a different picture when you take into account the reality of reality.
7:55
I have watched as the precious, finite resources are perpetually wasted and destroyed in the name of profit and free markets. I have watched the social values of society be reduced into a base artificiality of materialism and mindless consumption.
Is waste and destruction really central to profit and free markets? What about market-driven increases in efficiency, such as in light bulbs? Light bulbs used to be real inefficient and expensive to run (low lumens per watt; high watts per hour required), and burned out relatively quickly (lasting as little as 40 hours!). Now, there is no comparison to the original light bulbs. There are hundreds of thousands of examples (maybe millions) of things getting more efficient because of profit and free markets. The opposite of a free market -- a command-and-control "economy" -- is the very anti-thesis of efficiency.
Just ask the people old enough to have lived through the fall of the Soviet Union about that (or just go to your local post office or DMV).
Because it's so obvious that the public sector is so much more wasteful than the private sector ever is, it seems that what is railed against is not so much that there's waste with capitalism (as is outwardly stated), but that there's any waste at all -- any kind of a "footprint" of man having lived on earth. As if we "owe" the Earth something, so we should start sacrificing to pay back that never-ending debt.
18:40
There's the addiction to oil, at least to the wealth, and to the products made accessible to us, by oil. Look at the negative consequences on the environment. We're destroying the very earth that we inhabit, for the sake of that addiction.
This is a dishonest idea. All the life needs met by products made accessible to us by oil are considered addictions? Well, what isn't considered an addiction, then? If you drink water out of plastic bottles, you are addicted to oil, but what if you drink it out of the tap? Well, you are addicted to city water supplies. Well, what if you drink it out of a well? Well, you are addicted to underground water sources. Well, what if you drink it out of a stream? Well, you are addicted to naturally running water (and probably harming the fish in that stream). In fact, the very fact that you need water is proof that you are addicted to water.
Water that could have been used for a "higher" purpose somewhere on the planet.
19:50
It's respectable to be addicted to profit no matter what the cost.
This is flippant and I have already responded to it in answer to the first quote in post 85.
Ed
(Edited by Ed Thompson on 3/10, 2:56pm)
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