1 00:00:00,550 --> 00:00:03,926 … But before that I have one of the most important thinkers 2 00:00:04,140 --> 00:00:06,430 of our time: Peter Joseph. 3 00:00:06,710 --> 00:00:09,218 He created the viral Zeitgeist movies 4 00:00:09,323 --> 00:00:11,840 which then spawned the Zeitgeist Movement, 5 00:00:12,000 --> 00:00:16,393 which has hundreds of chapters and thousands of members around the world. 6 00:00:16,646 --> 00:00:20,209 He also wrote and created a series called ‘Culture in Decline’ 7 00:00:20,400 --> 00:00:24,455 and now he has a new and in my opinion incredibly important book out 8 00:00:24,658 --> 00:00:26,676 called ‘The New Human Rights Movement.’ 9 00:00:27,052 --> 00:00:29,821 Here is my conversation with my friend Peter Joseph. 10 00:00:30,972 --> 00:00:33,563 Peter! thanks for being here. - Oh, my pleasure Lee, always a pleasure. 11 00:00:33,700 --> 00:00:37,095 - So, I'm just going to jump straight in. We're going to get some of the basic, 12 00:00:37,821 --> 00:00:41,156 basic structural stuff out of the way. When we grow up, as we're growing up, 13 00:00:41,261 --> 00:00:42,781 we're sold a religion. 14 00:00:42,940 --> 00:00:46,227 And this religion is bigger than Christianity, it's bigger than Judaism, 15 00:00:46,332 --> 00:00:47,680 it's the market economy. 16 00:00:47,901 --> 00:00:50,769 And we're sold it every day of our lives and we're told it's good 17 00:00:50,910 --> 00:00:54,264 and it makes everything right and it will solve the world's problems 18 00:00:54,400 --> 00:00:56,523 and you just got to believe in it. What's wrong with that? 19 00:00:56,633 --> 00:00:59,101 - Ahh, the faith in the invisible hand of the market 20 00:00:59,230 --> 00:01:02,160 which eventually, like all religions, evolved into the 21 00:01:02,320 --> 00:01:05,187 Orthodox intolerant view of neoliberalism. 22 00:01:05,907 --> 00:01:08,498 So, you know it's very convenient to think 23 00:01:08,600 --> 00:01:11,981 that there's some internal dynamic in our economy that's self-regulating - 24 00:01:12,110 --> 00:01:14,646 that's the term - that there's an equilibrium to be found. 25 00:01:14,923 --> 00:01:17,280 And what isn't talked about which I point out in this book 26 00:01:17,778 --> 00:01:22,473 is for about 70 years, true economic theorists - micro economic theorists - 27 00:01:22,584 --> 00:01:26,153 have sat there trying to formulate their equations, utilitarian equations, 28 00:01:26,418 --> 00:01:29,692 beliefs about human behavior to figure out how equilibrium is generated, 29 00:01:29,800 --> 00:01:31,243 because that's what the “invisible hand” implies, 30 00:01:32,184 --> 00:01:33,852 that's what the stability is supposed to be. 31 00:01:33,960 --> 00:01:36,578 - And then when we get to equilibrium it'll be stable. -Yeah. 32 00:01:36,683 --> 00:01:39,840 There's an assumption and it's been prevailing, it's a mythology and guess what? 33 00:01:39,950 --> 00:01:42,196 It doesn't exist. And they're the first to admit it. 34 00:01:42,400 --> 00:01:44,781 There's whole books that have been written now, there is no equilibrium. 35 00:01:44,886 --> 00:01:48,326 The only equilibrium that could be created involve variables that 36 00:01:48,578 --> 00:01:52,018 literally these pure economists think are irrational and 37 00:01:53,310 --> 00:01:55,415 have no place to begin with. So that's one of the 38 00:01:55,550 --> 00:01:57,280 groundbreaking things no one talks about. 39 00:01:57,581 --> 00:02:01,058 So it's not just “we can speculate” and “we can do this type of analysis” as done 40 00:02:01,200 --> 00:02:04,535 say in the book or by other theorists that are working against market economics. 41 00:02:04,640 --> 00:02:07,144 It's been well established that there's no equilibrium. 42 00:02:07,286 --> 00:02:10,633 We have complete imbalance, we have poverty, we have all the externalities. 43 00:02:10,947 --> 00:02:14,387 We have a general move towards disequilibrium through the entire system, 44 00:02:14,492 --> 00:02:16,000 which is where the state comes in. 45 00:02:16,190 --> 00:02:18,670 Of course you talk to a libertarian: “Ooh the state’s now the enemy!” 46 00:02:18,787 --> 00:02:21,833 They don't realize the dynamic, the synergy between the two historically. 47 00:02:22,110 --> 00:02:24,689 And a whole bunch of things that I could spiral out of control and ramble, 48 00:02:25,070 --> 00:02:26,473 and start yelling eventually. 49 00:02:26,590 --> 00:02:28,067 - That's alright, your rambling's enjoyable. 50 00:02:29,340 --> 00:02:32,049 And you can see the systems collapsing, kind of around our planet, 51 00:02:32,153 --> 00:02:34,560 whether it's the acidifying of the oceans or-… 52 00:02:34,700 --> 00:02:35,612 - Well let’s just start with 53 00:02:35,883 --> 00:02:38,873 close to a billion people in poverty, they don't get their basic nutrition. 54 00:02:39,273 --> 00:02:40,867 To me that's in a collapse right there. 55 00:02:41,212 --> 00:02:44,055 The system never formed itself, it's always been in a state of collapse. 56 00:02:44,258 --> 00:02:45,760 There's the “ins” and the “outs.” 57 00:02:45,932 --> 00:02:46,941 If you're on the outs, 58 00:02:47,218 --> 00:02:50,215 you're just ignored effectively by the theories of this system 59 00:02:50,320 --> 00:02:52,006 which you're in; it's a negative externality. 60 00:02:52,603 --> 00:02:54,313 That's an important term that people need to understand. 61 00:02:54,420 --> 00:02:57,698 "Negative externalities" are things that the market doesn't recognize 62 00:02:57,810 --> 00:02:59,858 or can't navigate or control. 63 00:02:59,960 --> 00:03:02,135 So for example, poverty. What do we have? You have charity. 64 00:03:02,240 --> 00:03:05,292 That's the only form of wealth redistribution that society accepts. 65 00:03:05,606 --> 00:03:08,713 You can leave it up to the billionaire class to decide how they're going to take care of all the, 66 00:03:09,310 --> 00:03:12,560 all this exhaust effectively that has come out of this system, 67 00:03:12,904 --> 00:03:14,707 to try and correct it. Same goes for the fact [of] 68 00:03:15,120 --> 00:03:18,701 massive global pollution, every life support system in decline. 69 00:03:18,836 --> 00:03:22,640 A recent stat I just read, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish, by 2050. 70 00:03:22,935 --> 00:03:25,138 So how do you deal with that? You create all these NGOs 71 00:03:25,243 --> 00:03:28,073 and all these people that are trying to do something outside of the market system 72 00:03:28,190 --> 00:03:29,883 even though they have to be slightly within it. 73 00:03:30,080 --> 00:03:33,556 I mean that's truly really what all of the NGOs and the NPOs and 74 00:03:33,993 --> 00:03:37,335 grassroots organizations, the thousands and thousands of them, they keep multiplying. 75 00:03:37,452 --> 00:03:41,261 They are there to clean up the disaster wake, that's left. 76 00:03:41,370 --> 00:03:44,670 - It's the Band-Aids on the open wounds. 77 00:03:44,780 --> 00:03:47,981 - And it's astounding to me that people don't really put that together to realize that 78 00:03:48,190 --> 00:03:50,596 that's where the activist community needs to focus 79 00:03:50,700 --> 00:03:53,101 and that's why the book is focused in the direction of those things. 80 00:03:53,210 --> 00:03:54,627 - And the externalities aren’t even, 81 00:03:54,812 --> 00:03:57,298 they're not even really calculated in most of these equations. 82 00:03:58,701 --> 00:04:03,070 So you see that a hamburger at McDonalds still cost a dollar to this day, 83 00:04:03,187 --> 00:04:04,726 it's like 96 cents or something. 84 00:04:05,003 --> 00:04:09,113 Meanwhile, if it calculated for all those externalities, 85 00:04:09,220 --> 00:04:12,190 the pollution, everything else, the oil, the water used to raise the cow, 86 00:04:12,301 --> 00:04:13,833 it'd be $200 for a hamburger. 87 00:04:14,049 --> 00:04:17,040 Sure, or the fact that they analyzed all the major corporations, 88 00:04:17,901 --> 00:04:19,427 there was a study done about two years ago, 89 00:04:19,981 --> 00:04:24,006 finding that if you took the negative externalities into account, 90 00:04:24,170 --> 00:04:26,073 there's no profitability in any of these major corp[orations] 91 00:04:26,180 --> 00:04:29,052 which effectively means there's no profitability across the whole of capitalism, 92 00:04:29,410 --> 00:04:31,040 if you factor in real-life concerns. 93 00:04:31,495 --> 00:04:33,600 - All right, so I know we're moving fast here but 94 00:04:33,821 --> 00:04:36,246 one of the keys to the market economy is debt, 95 00:04:36,535 --> 00:04:39,846 and you say in your book that it's estimated that by 2060, 96 00:04:39,950 --> 00:04:42,578 60% of all countries in the world will be bankrupt, 97 00:04:42,867 --> 00:04:48,793 while the US alone will have a debt of 415% of GDP by 2050. 98 00:04:49,080 --> 00:04:51,938 Now on a certain level debt is a customary fiction 99 00:04:52,049 --> 00:04:53,883 and can be erased with the flick of a pen. 100 00:04:54,209 --> 00:04:57,440 So I guess, people might be left feeling like, which is it? 101 00:04:57,550 --> 00:05:00,627 Is debt this incredibly powerful thing and people are 102 00:05:01,101 --> 00:05:04,676 dying and suffering and societies are crumbling under the load of this debt? 103 00:05:04,953 --> 00:05:05,975 Or is it just a fiction? 104 00:05:06,330 --> 00:05:09,409 It's both at the same time amongst many paradoxes in this system 105 00:05:09,510 --> 00:05:11,095 and it's basically based on class hierarchy. 106 00:05:11,200 --> 00:05:13,378 The higher up you are, the more immune you are. 107 00:05:13,710 --> 00:05:16,006 Just like the wealthy get bailed out, the rich countries get bailed out. 108 00:05:16,120 --> 00:05:20,473 It doesn't matter if the United States has $19 trillion worth of debt or $190 trillion worth of debt 109 00:05:20,726 --> 00:05:24,486 if it remains at the peak of the global empire of stratified countries. 110 00:05:24,910 --> 00:05:28,670 That's because there's so many underlying geopolitical stratums and 111 00:05:28,960 --> 00:05:31,809 backdoor deals that understand that this debt is fiction, 112 00:05:31,920 --> 00:05:34,160 understand that there's more interest in debt in existence than money. 113 00:05:34,283 --> 00:05:37,667 There's $200 trillion of debt, only $80 trillion in global currency. 114 00:05:38,633 --> 00:05:39,612 What does that result into? 115 00:05:39,723 --> 00:05:42,000 It means that the lower class just gets screwed over and over again. 116 00:05:42,116 --> 00:05:43,316 You have the boom and bust cycle. 117 00:05:43,686 --> 00:05:46,824 There's always the boom, everyone's all happy, capitalism works and the bust happens. 118 00:05:46,972 --> 00:05:48,652 Oh, everyone suffers, right? No. 119 00:05:48,781 --> 00:05:51,046 The lower classes get destroyed by this. 120 00:05:51,310 --> 00:05:52,941 - Like Greece for example. - Oh yeah. 121 00:05:53,058 --> 00:05:56,380 It can work on international level or domestic level, it's the same type of dynamics. 122 00:05:56,812 --> 00:06:00,246 And so when the bust happens, you have all of these... 123 00:06:00,650 --> 00:06:03,310 Large corporations can absorb smaller corporations. 124 00:06:03,495 --> 00:06:05,458 They have the capacity to withhold. 125 00:06:05,796 --> 00:06:07,630 And then when they - make a long story short - 126 00:06:07,747 --> 00:06:09,981 when the boom starts happening, when they start 127 00:06:10,123 --> 00:06:11,827 lowering interest rates, when they do QE [Quantitative Easing] 128 00:06:12,086 --> 00:06:15,230 all that money effectively goes straight into the financial and corporate sectors, 129 00:06:15,372 --> 00:06:17,384 high-level corporate sectors anyway. 130 00:06:17,593 --> 00:06:19,833 And that's just a statistic proven, that's also in the book. 131 00:06:20,012 --> 00:06:21,630 So in other words it's a vehicle of class war. 132 00:06:21,815 --> 00:06:24,504 So debt has multiple levels, the point being. Is it is a fiction? Yeah. 133 00:06:24,646 --> 00:06:26,215 And we should recognize it as such. 134 00:06:26,344 --> 00:06:29,040 People should be clamoring to remove debt, student debt loan, 135 00:06:29,230 --> 00:06:32,578 government debt, countries should NOT be held in austerity, there SHOULD be mass riots. 136 00:06:32,984 --> 00:06:37,606 But, within the structure of capitalism they have to make the math look like it works. 137 00:06:37,864 --> 00:06:40,947 If the math doesn't work in capitalism well, maybe people might question it. 138 00:06:41,938 --> 00:06:43,350 And what is interest as well? 139 00:06:43,464 --> 00:06:46,098 I want to point this out because I talk to a lot of people that look into currency reform. 140 00:06:46,210 --> 00:06:49,476 They want to use complementary currencies, they want to move to blockchain and Bitcoin. 141 00:06:49,926 --> 00:06:51,040 But they miss the fact that 142 00:06:51,236 --> 00:06:53,680 when you're in a banking system and it's based on capitalism, 143 00:06:53,790 --> 00:06:56,713 based in capitalist structure, you have to do something then create fees. 144 00:06:56,960 --> 00:06:59,052 Interest is the fee. Interest is the profit margin. 145 00:06:59,163 --> 00:07:01,027 Interest is the surplus value so to speak. 146 00:07:01,410 --> 00:07:04,523 So that's why the system is what it is, it's inherent to the structure. 147 00:07:04,633 --> 00:07:05,513 Does that make sense? 148 00:07:06,012 --> 00:07:08,930 So you can't just have capitalism and somehow have a different kind of currency without-… 149 00:07:09,144 --> 00:07:12,196 If you want to do that you have to nationalize the entire US banking system 150 00:07:12,387 --> 00:07:13,680 so there's no profit involved. 151 00:07:13,858 --> 00:07:15,636 And since this is the hub of the one percent, 152 00:07:15,796 --> 00:07:19,538 the wealthy 5% of this planet that own so much now. 153 00:07:20,301 --> 00:07:22,886 40% of, excuse me. 154 00:07:23,452 --> 00:07:26,086 Since the 1970s we went from about 155 00:07:26,276 --> 00:07:29,612 3% working in the financial services sector to about 5%, 156 00:07:30,049 --> 00:07:35,076 and the financial services sector was about 5% of GDP and now it's about 30%. 157 00:07:35,378 --> 00:07:40,209 So that 30% of GDP is going to 5% of the population. 158 00:07:40,615 --> 00:07:44,375 That’s how powerful the small financial services, 159 00:07:44,498 --> 00:07:46,812 Wall Street conglomerate is, so back to my point: 160 00:07:47,000 --> 00:07:47,926 You want to nationalize the banks? 161 00:07:48,030 --> 00:07:50,350 Well you're going up against the strongest political force in history. 162 00:07:50,492 --> 00:07:53,720 - And a lot of these people, hedge fund managers and the such, 163 00:07:53,833 --> 00:07:56,535 don't actually do anything, they don't create anything of substance. 164 00:07:56,646 --> 00:07:59,009 It's just moving of numbers around a screen 165 00:07:59,218 --> 00:08:01,187 and it makes them incredibly wealthy. 166 00:08:02,840 --> 00:08:04,061 - It is the evolution-… 167 00:08:04,701 --> 00:08:06,843 In economically mature nations like the United States, 168 00:08:06,947 --> 00:08:10,252 that evolution is consistent. You see this happening with all countries. 169 00:08:10,510 --> 00:08:12,984 You go from merchant capitalism to financial capitalism. 170 00:08:13,341 --> 00:08:15,538 We outsource all our production, 171 00:08:15,661 --> 00:08:18,418 we are increasing dramatic efficiency meaning that there’s 172 00:08:18,535 --> 00:08:20,547 so much that we need to sell that we can’t. 173 00:08:20,713 --> 00:08:24,098 So we subsidize that so to speak with all the financialization. 174 00:08:24,209 --> 00:08:27,680 Subsidize is the wrong word, we compensate for it, through financialization. 175 00:08:28,160 --> 00:08:31,938 And that's why financialization has become so large and accepted 176 00:08:32,090 --> 00:08:35,593 because it's really a driving force of the entire global economy now, 177 00:08:35,700 --> 00:08:37,723 even though it does nothing, even though it creates nothing 178 00:08:37,830 --> 00:08:39,304 and it causes more imbalance. In fact 179 00:08:39,410 --> 00:08:41,950 many theorists have argued that it's actually worse for Main Street 180 00:08:42,141 --> 00:08:44,770 that financial, that Wall Street even exists. 181 00:08:44,904 --> 00:08:47,649 It doesn't help Main Street at all; that's well accepted. 182 00:08:48,135 --> 00:08:49,901 - Well hold on, Wall Street and capitalism, 183 00:08:50,018 --> 00:08:52,461 and I saw in another interview you brought this up as something 184 00:08:52,570 --> 00:08:55,926 you find frustrating where people keep saying it to you so that's why I'm doing it. 185 00:08:56,849 --> 00:09:00,750 "But Wall Street and capitalism is how you got your cell phone and your computer 186 00:09:00,867 --> 00:09:02,713 and it gave you all these wonderful things Peter." 187 00:09:02,929 --> 00:09:04,301 - Yeah I love that, love that. 188 00:09:04,763 --> 00:09:08,430 All that capitalism is, is an incentive system and a distribution architecture. 189 00:09:08,633 --> 00:09:13,280 So what happens inside of that is left to the will of the individuals gaming. 190 00:09:13,483 --> 00:09:14,584 So yeah, you can get efficiency. 191 00:09:14,695 --> 00:09:17,476 With the rise of technology since the Industrial Revolution, 192 00:09:17,581 --> 00:09:20,012 exceptional levels of efficiency has been created through design, 193 00:09:20,295 --> 00:09:21,483 through intelligent ingenuity, 194 00:09:21,741 --> 00:09:24,732 not through just the incentive structure of wanting profit. 195 00:09:24,840 --> 00:09:28,553 - So basically technology came along with capitalism and everybody is always saying 196 00:09:28,664 --> 00:09:30,473 that capitalism is the thing that got them all those 197 00:09:31,569 --> 00:09:33,464 good health devices and all that stuff but-… 198 00:09:33,692 --> 00:09:37,120 - I'll put it this way. During the Second World War there was this 199 00:09:37,384 --> 00:09:39,120 emerging hatred of communism. 200 00:09:39,236 --> 00:09:42,627 Obviously the US capitalist hegemony did not want to have anything interfere with it, 201 00:09:42,769 --> 00:09:44,904 which of course led into the Cold War for a long time 202 00:09:45,009 --> 00:09:47,846 and still basically exists in its weird echoes as you know. 203 00:09:48,609 --> 00:09:50,073 And what they did, 204 00:09:50,190 --> 00:09:52,658 the social planners so to speak, government and big business, 205 00:09:52,770 --> 00:09:55,593 got together and they tried to convince everyone after World War 2 - 206 00:09:55,766 --> 00:09:58,880 and keep in mind the United States just terrorized the entire world with the atomic bomb - 207 00:09:59,132 --> 00:10:03,963 and that set a whole new precedent in terms of its new found place as Empire. 208 00:10:04,153 --> 00:10:05,670 It also had the infrastructure 209 00:10:05,815 --> 00:10:08,892 and this new industrialization that happened while Europe was in ruins. 210 00:10:09,107 --> 00:10:11,070 So it started to produce like mad, 211 00:10:11,206 --> 00:10:14,560 and it convinced the public that buying and consuming and working 212 00:10:14,695 --> 00:10:19,372 was going to create an egalitarian system that paralleled the claims of communism. 213 00:10:19,480 --> 00:10:21,021 This is something that not many people know about. 214 00:10:21,220 --> 00:10:23,704 So it bullshitted the people to think that 215 00:10:23,852 --> 00:10:27,107 the more they consume they're helping the society, they're fighting communism, 216 00:10:27,261 --> 00:10:30,560 and they're creating more of an egalitarian structure because the more they consume 217 00:10:30,689 --> 00:10:33,083 the more they create jobs and the cyclical consumption. 218 00:10:33,190 --> 00:10:35,126 Of course, it doesn't quite work out that way, does it? 219 00:10:35,624 --> 00:10:36,855 That's funny how this historic-... 220 00:10:37,027 --> 00:10:40,627 - And now what percentage of America is under some form of debt-… 221 00:10:41,372 --> 00:10:44,160 - Oh, 60% have less than a thousand dollars in savings. 222 00:10:44,363 --> 00:10:48,867 - Oh yeah and it was something like 50% can't get past a $500 emergency. 223 00:10:48,972 --> 00:10:49,556 - Yeah, oh yeah. 224 00:10:49,667 --> 00:10:52,553 - And so that's the you know bounty that we've been promised? 225 00:10:52,660 --> 00:10:54,738 - 43% spend beyond their means every year 226 00:10:54,855 --> 00:10:56,615 because of saturation of debt. 227 00:10:56,880 --> 00:10:59,107 It was the 1970s the credit expansion came forward 228 00:10:59,249 --> 00:11:02,289 because with the surplus goods that were being created - 229 00:11:02,436 --> 00:11:05,403 again this very positive thing that happened since the Industrial Revolution - 230 00:11:05,858 --> 00:11:08,295 this increase in efficiency and the ability to move from- 231 00:11:08,430 --> 00:11:11,476 factories produce, thousands of percent increase in factory production. 232 00:11:11,581 --> 00:11:13,470 So what do you do? You have to get people money to buy this stuff 233 00:11:13,587 --> 00:11:16,916 to get more money fueled to the upper percent, upper 1%. 234 00:11:17,187 --> 00:11:19,569 So that was when credit expansion really really hit. 235 00:11:19,864 --> 00:11:22,984 And that's actually something that we can talk about this, and I don't want to deviate too far but 236 00:11:23,341 --> 00:11:25,507 people talk about universal basic income. I'm in favor of this 237 00:11:25,612 --> 00:11:27,500 because it can help poverty but there's a certain caveat. 238 00:11:27,800 --> 00:11:31,181 - Basic income seems like it's getting a lot of people talking about it. 239 00:11:31,292 --> 00:11:35,249 - It is. And even like Zuckerberg and these billionaires, and now why? 240 00:11:35,753 --> 00:11:39,489 Because it satisfies that need to give the population something 241 00:11:39,643 --> 00:11:42,676 so they can spend back into the system to keep supporting it 242 00:11:42,800 --> 00:11:46,258 and effectively, invariably, whether it's intentional or not, doesn't matter, 243 00:11:46,455 --> 00:11:48,972 it will just funnel right back up to the upper class anyway. 244 00:11:50,227 --> 00:11:53,433 - So that's the problem, but you support it because it's a half step. 245 00:11:53,624 --> 00:11:55,341 - I support it because it would increase public health. 246 00:11:55,460 --> 00:11:57,913 I don't want to see poverty, I don't want to see this kind of suffering 247 00:11:58,024 --> 00:11:59,532 that we see across the world. 248 00:11:59,720 --> 00:12:03,360 So if the United States did do that you could see the massive increase in public health, 249 00:12:03,606 --> 00:12:05,840 but it would still preserve the system in a negative way. 250 00:12:06,280 --> 00:12:10,061 - Okay I want to jump to the violence we see in our society 251 00:12:11,740 --> 00:12:14,467 with our military, but with our police militarization 252 00:12:15,347 --> 00:12:17,464 and really just one-on-one citizens, 253 00:12:17,581 --> 00:12:20,147 the rise of violent groups and things like that. 254 00:12:20,387 --> 00:12:23,433 Can that be connected back to the market economy? (he says knowingly) 255 00:12:23,600 --> 00:12:24,689 [Both laugh] 256 00:12:25,446 --> 00:12:28,695 - Any student of history will see that social inequality 257 00:12:28,836 --> 00:12:31,421 by whatever perceived level, whether it's economic, 258 00:12:31,532 --> 00:12:34,080 whether it's racial, whether it's nationalistic, 259 00:12:34,713 --> 00:12:38,061 whether it's Aborigines versus settled, colonization, 260 00:12:38,381 --> 00:12:39,729 all of that is produced conflict. 261 00:12:39,901 --> 00:12:42,036 And what is the root of that? It's exploitation. 262 00:12:43,076 --> 00:12:46,393 Slavery, when I was in school I was taught that slavery in America was 263 00:12:46,670 --> 00:12:48,750 "oh the whites just felt so superior," 264 00:12:48,929 --> 00:12:51,833 and they would just enslave people because they looked different and had different beliefs. 265 00:12:51,956 --> 00:12:52,800 That's not what is was. 266 00:12:52,941 --> 00:12:56,498 We were using white indentured servants in the American colonies 267 00:12:56,670 --> 00:13:00,055 until it was discovered through the African slave trade which existed prior 268 00:13:00,633 --> 00:13:04,160 that - and which by the way these kings in Africa were selling 269 00:13:04,283 --> 00:13:07,415 these slaves outright, had nothing to do with anything but money on both sides - 270 00:13:07,770 --> 00:13:10,800 So we realized it was a better investment to invest in slaves. 271 00:13:11,150 --> 00:13:13,993 It didn't make any difference what they looked like, it was just easier 272 00:13:14,184 --> 00:13:16,640 that they looked different because you could catch them if they ran away. 273 00:13:16,996 --> 00:13:18,523 So there was more value to it as an investment. 274 00:13:18,633 --> 00:13:20,320 That's the way it was, that's cost efficiency. 275 00:13:20,436 --> 00:13:22,461 That is the driving mechanism of capitalism. 276 00:13:22,707 --> 00:13:24,916 So not to deviate from your question regarding the violence but, 277 00:13:25,230 --> 00:13:28,732 why is it that we have all this interracial tension after 200 years? 278 00:13:28,849 --> 00:13:31,907 It’s because we started with this foundation of exploiting an entire subclass. 279 00:13:32,172 --> 00:13:34,566 And via the Black Panthers movement and Martin Luther King, 280 00:13:34,793 --> 00:13:38,387 all of the tumultuous civil rights, the violence, the deaths: 281 00:13:38,810 --> 00:13:42,024 this is an echo of a basic kernel of the capitalist structure. 282 00:13:42,473 --> 00:13:44,646 And it's sad to me that most people don't see it that way. 283 00:13:44,793 --> 00:13:48,516 They think that somehow slavery was separate from the new "free labor" of today. 284 00:13:48,873 --> 00:13:50,467 Yeah it's free labor 285 00:13:50,732 --> 00:13:53,292 in the abstraction of free labor when you're backed into a corner. 286 00:13:53,415 --> 00:13:55,476 So yeah, I'm sure the people that are making 15 cents an hour-… 287 00:13:56,000 --> 00:13:59,304 - So you're saying there's not just something ingrained in us that makes us 288 00:13:59,784 --> 00:14:01,329 force another class down. 289 00:14:01,483 --> 00:14:02,283 - Well I'll say this. 290 00:14:04,572 --> 00:14:08,184 Lower reptilian brain reactions, basic biological behaviorism. 291 00:14:08,400 --> 00:14:12,080 There are clearly reactions that we can see in our primate brethren 292 00:14:12,430 --> 00:14:15,661 that when in fear, when in threat, 293 00:14:15,901 --> 00:14:17,716 we stratify, we get dominant. 294 00:14:17,833 --> 00:14:21,741 We create these things based on whatever the circumstance requires. 295 00:14:22,043 --> 00:14:24,344 Usually it's just like physical brawn and so on. 296 00:14:24,640 --> 00:14:26,560 But we also have the prefrontal cortex. 297 00:14:26,670 --> 00:14:29,052 We have this new emerging thing, an amygdala, the hippocampus. 298 00:14:29,353 --> 00:14:31,058 We have consciousness basically. 299 00:14:31,261 --> 00:14:33,181 And the question is: what are we pinging now? 300 00:14:33,470 --> 00:14:35,686 And I argue that the system we have now is just 301 00:14:36,080 --> 00:14:38,209 constantly pinging the lower reptilian brain, 302 00:14:38,344 --> 00:14:41,544 not allowing the fruits of our consciousness and empathy to actually come forward. 303 00:14:41,864 --> 00:14:42,726 So it IS a part of us. 304 00:14:43,064 --> 00:14:45,981 - And in fact there's great examples of where the goal of 305 00:14:46,104 --> 00:14:49,292 let's say a store or shopping center is to get past to that 306 00:14:49,876 --> 00:14:51,458 that deeper thought, you know. 307 00:14:51,667 --> 00:14:54,970 And I think it’s called the Gruen transfer when you get into one of these shopping centers and 308 00:14:55,080 --> 00:14:58,363 slowly the lights and the sounds and the smells overwhelm you and you get to a point 309 00:14:58,806 --> 00:15:02,344 where you finally are just like putting things in a bag without even thinking 310 00:15:02,535 --> 00:15:03,569 about what you're doing! 311 00:15:03,673 --> 00:15:06,689 - Oh sure. Well think about the ethic of shopping for fun! 312 00:15:07,052 --> 00:15:08,350 thinking “where did this come from?” 313 00:15:09,249 --> 00:15:13,298 People, women, I've heard this on a show “Saturdays are for shopping.” 314 00:15:13,575 --> 00:15:16,307 It's such an abusive thing that's happened through advertising 315 00:15:16,418 --> 00:15:19,612 that has made people feel comfortable with the act of consuming, 316 00:15:20,295 --> 00:15:22,330 when it really should be the opposite. 317 00:15:23,273 --> 00:15:26,018 It should be an issue of social reflection when you 318 00:15:26,141 --> 00:15:29,760 engage in this system of economics where you know that 319 00:15:29,938 --> 00:15:32,793 what you're doing does have repercussions across society. 320 00:15:32,960 --> 00:15:38,369 It's a basic sense of ... integration in society as opposed 321 00:15:38,713 --> 00:15:41,304 to the douchebags driving around in their car, their $250 thousand cars, 322 00:15:41,612 --> 00:15:44,344 or the women with their $2,000 handbags 323 00:15:44,455 --> 00:15:46,486 which are basically signatures of violence. 324 00:15:46,732 --> 00:15:50,492 - Melania Trump: $56,000 jacket the other day. - I saw that, yeah. 325 00:15:52,738 --> 00:15:54,695 How detached from reality can you be? 326 00:15:54,880 --> 00:15:57,150 At least in the Great Depression, all the Rockefellers, 327 00:15:57,520 --> 00:16:01,076 they wised up and they would drive around in little cars. They wore old jackets. 328 00:16:01,292 --> 00:16:05,446 Now, no one cares. Now it's just flagrant materialism, flagrant vanity. 329 00:16:06,160 --> 00:16:10,578 - I have part two of my interview with Peter Joseph, creator of the Zeitgeist Movement. 330 00:16:10,713 --> 00:16:11,907 He's out with a new book, 331 00:16:12,196 --> 00:16:15,883 and the last time we talked about the problems with our system. 332 00:16:16,012 --> 00:16:19,224 This time, he and I discuss the solutions. 333 00:16:19,446 --> 00:16:22,695 How do we fix this mess and start moving forward? 334 00:16:23,064 --> 00:16:23,864 Take a look. 335 00:16:24,436 --> 00:16:27,280 Well the advertising gets to actually something else I wanted to ask you which is 336 00:16:27,526 --> 00:16:30,000 a while back for your other series ‘Culture in Decline’ 337 00:16:30,116 --> 00:16:34,110 I did a thing on advertising and about how abusive they are to, you know, 338 00:16:34,492 --> 00:16:37,052 ads in general, to what they're trying to get, 339 00:16:37,563 --> 00:16:39,249 make us think and act. 340 00:16:40,473 --> 00:16:43,809 But what I don't think I explicitly said is that 341 00:16:44,141 --> 00:16:47,760 it's basically, the estimate is a thousand to 3,000 ads in brand names a day, 342 00:16:48,012 --> 00:16:51,341 and they're all really selling one thing: it's need, 343 00:16:51,464 --> 00:16:55,076 and solving that need with consuming, with consumerism. 344 00:16:55,790 --> 00:16:58,590 Is it possible to get past that system 345 00:16:58,750 --> 00:17:02,726 when we have that much advertising for this way of life? 346 00:17:03,076 --> 00:17:07,064 Like there's just endless thousands and thousands of ads telling you 347 00:17:07,250 --> 00:17:08,233 this is the way it has to be. 348 00:17:08,344 --> 00:17:11,501 - Well here's the way I look at advertising and the rise of consumerism, 349 00:17:11,630 --> 00:17:13,846 which by the way I don't know if people know that consumerism, 350 00:17:13,960 --> 00:17:15,206 I consider it a pejorative. 351 00:17:15,452 --> 00:17:19,384 But actually this an economic policy in the mid-20th century. 352 00:17:19,575 --> 00:17:23,286 Consumerism is a theory that people should behave this way to help each other. 353 00:17:23,390 --> 00:17:25,076 It's nuts, completely again-... 354 00:17:25,193 --> 00:17:27,969 - And after 9/11 Bush said keep shopping, and they went. 355 00:17:28,380 --> 00:17:30,227 - So, what I see it as, 356 00:17:30,910 --> 00:17:35,310 it's a structural transfer of the need to consume and to keep money moving, 357 00:17:35,560 --> 00:17:37,538 buying things over and over again to keep jobs 358 00:17:37,766 --> 00:17:41,058 into the social psychology of people. That's what's happened. 359 00:17:41,200 --> 00:17:43,421 And again there was a massive campaign as I said earlier 360 00:17:44,080 --> 00:17:47,396 in part that led people to this ethic of constant consumption 361 00:17:47,501 --> 00:17:51,421 as though it was a moral duty and ethic: You're helping society by doing this. 362 00:17:51,840 --> 00:17:54,689 So you have to change the social system, that's what goes back to the book once again. 363 00:17:55,464 --> 00:17:57,384 It's the new human rights movement because 364 00:17:57,495 --> 00:17:59,895 if you want to change the way people think, if you want to change 365 00:18:00,172 --> 00:18:03,446 their general incentives, you have to change the structure that's organizing them. 366 00:18:03,630 --> 00:18:05,987 It's very fundamental. It's very simple really. 367 00:18:07,224 --> 00:18:10,123 - And you're saying that achieves a new level of Human Rights. 368 00:18:10,492 --> 00:18:12,480 - Well it achieves a new level of consciousness, awareness. 369 00:18:12,590 --> 00:18:13,550 It's forces that, 370 00:18:13,760 --> 00:18:18,178 that constant pinging of the lower fear reactions and that threat of survival, 371 00:18:18,480 --> 00:18:20,910 and it enables people to finally break out and realize the humanity 372 00:18:21,021 --> 00:18:22,680 in our advancement, and what we CAN do. 373 00:18:22,793 --> 00:18:24,867 We know human variability can exist in many different ways. 374 00:18:24,972 --> 00:18:28,258 There's nothing that says we have to live in this competitive cutthroat world at all. 375 00:18:28,596 --> 00:18:31,495 Plenty of examples throughout history of pockets of people that have lived differently. 376 00:18:31,778 --> 00:18:33,606 And you see it in fact in the pockets 377 00:18:33,852 --> 00:18:36,430 within the structure, say in a corporation of course. 378 00:18:36,590 --> 00:18:38,738 Generally a corporation is fairly collaborative 379 00:18:38,880 --> 00:18:41,507 while it may be highly competitive against other corporations. 380 00:18:41,716 --> 00:18:44,516 Same for the military: very compatible 381 00:18:44,775 --> 00:18:48,190 and then of course they're supporting an extremely violent war against some other group. 382 00:18:48,553 --> 00:18:51,563 So the group-istic thing is a problem and that's been completely 383 00:18:52,467 --> 00:18:53,993 amplified by the current system. 384 00:18:54,920 --> 00:18:56,929 Which brings us back to the new human rights movement 385 00:18:57,033 --> 00:19:00,040 because at the root of all of this we have this constant group antagonism. 386 00:19:00,350 --> 00:19:02,756 That's the flaw of the way we exist right now 387 00:19:02,972 --> 00:19:04,855 and it's perpetuated by our economy. 388 00:19:05,770 --> 00:19:07,901 - Absolutely. I want to jump to some solutions 389 00:19:08,020 --> 00:19:10,055 because I think we've got people depressed enough. 390 00:19:13,753 --> 00:19:17,316 In the book you say there are five shifts that need to happen 391 00:19:17,427 --> 00:19:21,581 in order to increase economic efficiency and to get to this new place, 392 00:19:21,692 --> 00:19:23,107 to these new human rights really, 393 00:19:24,436 --> 00:19:26,123 and I just want to basically go through these. 394 00:19:26,760 --> 00:19:29,815 The first one you list is "automation" and I actually, 395 00:19:29,930 --> 00:19:31,710 last week on Redacted Tonight I did a piece on, 396 00:19:31,833 --> 00:19:36,178 I guess a study just came out of, or survey of AI experts 397 00:19:36,381 --> 00:19:40,596 and they believe, like most of them believe that 398 00:19:40,713 --> 00:19:43,249 AI will at least be capable of doing every job 399 00:19:43,353 --> 00:19:46,203 and we're talking including creative jobs like bestselling 400 00:19:46,843 --> 00:19:48,880 novels and pop songs and stuff, 401 00:19:49,064 --> 00:19:51,433 be capable of it in 50 years and 402 00:19:51,587 --> 00:19:53,753 perhaps replace those jobs in a hundred years. 403 00:19:53,926 --> 00:19:56,664 Most of them believe that, that that's happening. 404 00:19:57,501 --> 00:20:01,378 - I think people go a little extreme, and I'm for all of this by the way, 405 00:20:01,483 --> 00:20:04,276 but I think the interest in sort of creative dominance 406 00:20:04,387 --> 00:20:08,067 and then the fear of the sentient rise and 407 00:20:08,344 --> 00:20:10,424 even Stephen Hawking has talked about the 408 00:20:10,529 --> 00:20:12,775 tremendous dangers of giving birth to AI 409 00:20:12,880 --> 00:20:15,095 and all the Matrix and Terminators movies all over again. 410 00:20:17,458 --> 00:20:20,320 But I think there's a speculative side to it that is a little gratuitous 411 00:20:20,440 --> 00:20:22,676 as far as what we expect to happen but I don't think we should go that far. 412 00:20:22,780 --> 00:20:24,406 I think we just look at it from the standpoint of 413 00:20:24,523 --> 00:20:26,012 “what can we do to free ourselves from labor? ” 414 00:20:26,307 --> 00:20:29,920 Remember labor is at the root of the civil rights battle 415 00:20:30,443 --> 00:20:33,907 going all the way back to ancient slavery in Egypt. 416 00:20:34,203 --> 00:20:36,578 It's all about the abuse of labor, the lower labor class, 417 00:20:36,756 --> 00:20:38,886 the fighting of unions in early America, you know, 418 00:20:39,181 --> 00:20:41,618 instantly berated as communist-socialist, 419 00:20:41,735 --> 00:20:45,409 union busters, mafia, people getting killed. Yeah, absolutely. 420 00:20:45,716 --> 00:20:48,966 So that is at the root of it. Now we can talk about the other elements too but 421 00:20:49,181 --> 00:20:52,529 if we really want to get to the heart of stopping effectively the ongoing class war, 422 00:20:52,652 --> 00:20:55,901 the removal of labor for income would be the most profound thing that we could do. 423 00:20:56,116 --> 00:20:57,858 Or at least subsided substantially. 424 00:20:57,963 --> 00:20:58,855 - What do you mean by removal? 425 00:20:58,978 --> 00:21:02,750 - Removal meaning ... replaced with automation and then you start to 426 00:21:03,550 --> 00:21:05,833 subsidize so to speak, you start to support people 427 00:21:06,055 --> 00:21:08,923 by lowering the work, lowering the hours, reducing the workday, excuse me, 428 00:21:09,120 --> 00:21:10,861 reducing the workweek, reducing the work hours, 429 00:21:10,978 --> 00:21:13,230 and then these things like universal basic income. 430 00:21:13,489 --> 00:21:16,436 And there’s other things I could rattle on that would compensate for the automation shift. 431 00:21:17,095 --> 00:21:20,180 But that's what needs to happen as one core step 432 00:21:20,307 --> 00:21:22,049 which invariably has to happen to some degree. 433 00:21:23,021 --> 00:21:25,280 - And with the jobs disappearing, you know people 434 00:21:25,403 --> 00:21:28,578 are suffering when in fact that should be a good thing where people have 435 00:21:29,021 --> 00:21:30,966 more time, they make the same amount of money, 436 00:21:31,470 --> 00:21:32,824 if we're still in a money system but 437 00:21:33,070 --> 00:21:33,772 it should be a good thing. 438 00:21:33,883 --> 00:21:36,720 The analogy that I try and use to explain to people is like: 439 00:21:36,873 --> 00:21:38,960 It's basically like we're all hamsters on treadmills. 440 00:21:39,130 --> 00:21:40,947 And they're slowly taking away the treadmills. 441 00:21:41,060 --> 00:21:43,329 And so the hamsters start beating the crap out of each other 442 00:21:43,433 --> 00:21:45,740 to try and get what's left. And then, 443 00:21:46,116 --> 00:21:47,926 politicians come along and they say one of two things. 444 00:21:48,036 --> 00:21:51,126 They say either "I'll bring back the treadmills" and we go "Yay!" 445 00:21:51,255 --> 00:21:54,190 or they say "We'll make the treadmills go faster" and we say "Yay!" 446 00:21:54,867 --> 00:21:57,470 No one says "Why are we running on the treadmills?" 447 00:21:57,960 --> 00:22:00,812 - Exactly. And then the identity is so locked into labor, you know. 448 00:22:00,916 --> 00:22:04,769 People retire, it's statistically proven that they die sometimes after quite frequently. 449 00:22:04,966 --> 00:22:07,458 48,000 suicides are noted to have occurred between America 450 00:22:07,563 --> 00:22:10,036 and 63 European countries during the Great Recession 451 00:22:10,301 --> 00:22:12,652 because not only deprivation but they have no job. 452 00:22:12,780 --> 00:22:14,806 And there's that identity of having to work, especially men. 453 00:22:15,050 --> 00:22:17,267 They have this identity that's been ingrained in them that they're supposed to be 454 00:22:17,378 --> 00:22:19,212 the caretakers you know and all that stuff. 455 00:22:19,464 --> 00:22:21,618 So the cultural ramifications are very strong, 456 00:22:21,723 --> 00:22:22,953 we have to undo a lot of that. 457 00:22:23,120 --> 00:22:25,680 - But my argument against that is sometimes it's good 458 00:22:25,790 --> 00:22:28,350 when people die when they lose their job like Roger Ailes. 459 00:22:28,461 --> 00:22:29,760 So-... [both laughing] 460 00:22:29,870 --> 00:22:30,886 - There's always an exception. 461 00:22:31,230 --> 00:22:33,000 - But I want to ... 462 00:22:33,378 --> 00:22:35,000 Let's move to the next one: access. 463 00:22:36,449 --> 00:22:38,720 Do we not have free access now? We're in a free country! 464 00:22:39,581 --> 00:22:40,110 - I love that. 465 00:22:40,916 --> 00:22:43,076 The freedom and democracy of it all, right? 466 00:22:43,556 --> 00:22:46,387 Access is at the root of everything whether we know it or not. 467 00:22:46,504 --> 00:22:50,627 Property is really just access because you don't really own anything, 468 00:22:50,830 --> 00:22:52,110 you don't take it with you. 469 00:22:52,289 --> 00:22:55,987 It's the labor, the ideas, what went into the construction of anything, 470 00:22:56,092 --> 00:22:57,360 it’s a social phenomenon. 471 00:22:57,710 --> 00:23:01,760 So it's an illusion that's been propagated in a very primitive view 472 00:23:01,930 --> 00:23:04,572 and born in the Malthusian period which 473 00:23:04,780 --> 00:23:06,793 you had to hoard and you had to be protective. 474 00:23:07,010 --> 00:23:08,400 So property rights today 475 00:23:08,510 --> 00:23:10,806 dominate the majority of legislation out there if you look at it. 476 00:23:10,916 --> 00:23:13,329 Almost all the crime legislation on the books relates to property, 477 00:23:13,513 --> 00:23:16,664 and most of the violence you see comes down to a property relationship as well. 478 00:23:16,775 --> 00:23:19,396 - And the police are largely defending property. - Exactly. 479 00:23:19,501 --> 00:23:22,880 - The perfect analogy or metaphor is Standing Rock 480 00:23:23,009 --> 00:23:24,313 where you have cops 481 00:23:24,535 --> 00:23:27,907 protecting a pipeline against the people they've sworn to protect. - Exactly. 482 00:23:28,443 --> 00:23:29,846 Yeah that brings another subject of 483 00:23:29,963 --> 00:23:32,363 the role of the police in their structural position but 484 00:23:32,516 --> 00:23:33,766 I don't want to go on that tangent. 485 00:23:33,950 --> 00:23:37,027 So access is at the core of it. We've slowly started to see 486 00:23:37,138 --> 00:23:40,387 the interest in access, from sharing cars, 487 00:23:40,950 --> 00:23:43,243 from AirBnB’s, from sharing homes, 488 00:23:44,060 --> 00:23:46,935 to people that have gone a little bit farther, they have tool-sharing libraries 489 00:23:47,046 --> 00:23:50,258 or even just the functional idea of the ancient library itself 490 00:23:50,420 --> 00:23:52,160 and the implications of that. 491 00:23:52,720 --> 00:23:55,144 So if you have an access society where you're not, 492 00:23:55,470 --> 00:23:59,126 where you're not using property or you've deviated away from it as much as you can, 493 00:23:59,280 --> 00:24:01,883 where you allow for people to gain access to things 494 00:24:01,990 --> 00:24:03,907 through a system that's not based on exchange-… 495 00:24:05,304 --> 00:24:07,969 - This actually gets into the next one, open source. 496 00:24:08,227 --> 00:24:09,003 - Yeah, we can … 497 00:24:13,569 --> 00:24:17,273 We can overlay that a little bit as well. So open source 498 00:24:18,215 --> 00:24:21,000 brings in the subject that effectively you have more 499 00:24:21,329 --> 00:24:24,258 efficiency generated through more minds focusing on something 500 00:24:24,436 --> 00:24:25,513 than just a boardroom. 501 00:24:25,692 --> 00:24:27,581 And that goes back to what I just said about the evolution, 502 00:24:27,698 --> 00:24:31,649 the social relationship to everything that we’ve created. 503 00:24:32,020 --> 00:24:35,464 What goes into a computer is hundreds of years of investigation 504 00:24:35,570 --> 00:24:38,529 by countless people. I mean honestly, thousands of years 505 00:24:38,630 --> 00:24:40,061 when you think about the evolution of science. 506 00:24:40,530 --> 00:24:43,366 So on that historical level that that exists in the sense of collaboration, 507 00:24:43,520 --> 00:24:45,027 and then on the parallel level, if you, 508 00:24:45,156 --> 00:24:47,101 as has been proven by people that developed Linux, 509 00:24:47,224 --> 00:24:50,363 by all these other math projects, all these things I list in the book as well, 510 00:24:51,329 --> 00:24:53,538 creative collaborative Commons where people have access 511 00:24:53,643 --> 00:24:56,953 in an organized capacity to design and innovate can now be extended to anything. 512 00:24:57,224 --> 00:25:00,110 Cars: you can use CAD, computer-aided design, computer-aided engineering. 513 00:25:00,270 --> 00:25:02,000 In the future people will sit at a laptop 514 00:25:02,215 --> 00:25:04,861 with thousands of others working on a single project 515 00:25:04,978 --> 00:25:07,630 to try and make the best of the best "something" 516 00:25:07,821 --> 00:25:09,649 that could be made at that point in time, best of the best. 517 00:25:09,780 --> 00:25:11,747 And that would open the floodgates of innovation. 518 00:25:11,852 --> 00:25:14,449 So in other words, you're far more innovatively efficient. 519 00:25:14,603 --> 00:25:17,852 - Yeah without all this proprietary code you could have people, 520 00:25:18,006 --> 00:25:19,920 things move along much quicker. 521 00:25:20,344 --> 00:25:22,873 - Less waste, you'd have universal standardization and people actually have 522 00:25:22,990 --> 00:25:24,935 an interest in sharing the ideas since you don't have all 523 00:25:25,046 --> 00:25:27,630 the crap, the noise and the waste, 524 00:25:28,646 --> 00:25:30,160 like planned obsolescence. 525 00:25:30,326 --> 00:25:32,443 - Right, what about localization? 526 00:25:32,760 --> 00:25:34,110 - Localization, the fourth one. 527 00:25:35,507 --> 00:25:38,080 Fourth one or third one? - We're at 4. - We're at 4 already, wow! 528 00:25:38,410 --> 00:25:41,403 So localization I think will happen naturally due to ephemeralization, 529 00:25:41,520 --> 00:25:43,612 a term coined by Buckminster Fuller which basically means 530 00:25:43,720 --> 00:25:45,686 things are always - the process, technology and design - 531 00:25:45,796 --> 00:25:48,160 are always going to get smaller and smaller and smaller and more efficient. 532 00:25:48,610 --> 00:25:50,147 And the computer is just another example of that. 533 00:25:50,250 --> 00:25:51,796 - And this decreases a lot of waste ... 534 00:25:52,283 --> 00:25:55,520 - Absolutely. It also incentivizes moving out of globalization 535 00:25:55,630 --> 00:25:58,412 which is simply another form of colonialism or exploiting labor 536 00:25:58,523 --> 00:26:01,400 and resources in foreign lands that can't defend themselves or they're so, 537 00:26:01,643 --> 00:26:04,547 there's such destitution they have no other option but to, 538 00:26:04,707 --> 00:26:06,547 to adhere to 15 cents an hour and so on. 539 00:26:06,670 --> 00:26:07,452 - Right, right. 540 00:26:08,104 --> 00:26:11,341 Just because a country's willing to sell you its resources because it's so desperate 541 00:26:11,452 --> 00:26:13,698 doesn't mean that that's good for them. 542 00:26:14,049 --> 00:26:16,073 - “Free labor!” Free labor. 543 00:26:16,258 --> 00:26:19,901 So localization is critically important for the stability of this planet. 544 00:26:20,036 --> 00:26:23,009 I mean again, the average American plate, food, 545 00:26:23,144 --> 00:26:25,581 travels about 14, 15 hundred miles 546 00:26:26,043 --> 00:26:28,504 for the average American. That's nuts, that's crazy. 547 00:26:28,676 --> 00:26:30,073 - Yeah and we have things like 548 00:26:30,375 --> 00:26:34,313 you could buy a $28 table let's say, a wooden table at Walmart. 549 00:26:34,713 --> 00:26:37,618 Those trees were cut down in Vancouver, then they were shipped to China 550 00:26:37,729 --> 00:26:40,763 to be turned into the pieces to be put together then shipped back to Walmart. 551 00:26:40,947 --> 00:26:42,830 Then Walmart sells it to you, it lasts 4 months, 552 00:26:42,947 --> 00:26:44,227 but that's good because you go buy another one! 553 00:26:44,338 --> 00:26:44,941 - Yeah. 554 00:26:45,624 --> 00:26:48,590 So you see the point. It's obvious that we need to do that, 555 00:26:49,329 --> 00:26:53,747 and again I think it will be an in-the-market system luckily or unluckily, 556 00:26:53,852 --> 00:26:54,744 it depends how you look at it. 557 00:26:54,970 --> 00:26:57,181 People will gravitate towards localization eventually 558 00:26:57,290 --> 00:27:00,800 because it just will be less efficient financially for them to do globalization, 559 00:27:00,916 --> 00:27:02,443 especially with the rise of automation. 560 00:27:02,920 --> 00:27:05,581 - And then the last one is networked digital feedback. 561 00:27:05,692 --> 00:27:07,101 - OK that's a big one. - Explain that one. 562 00:27:07,218 --> 00:27:11,366 - Well, we have this thing, echoes of old anti-socialist rhetoric. 563 00:27:11,624 --> 00:27:14,166 Author Ludwig von Mises years ago wrote that 564 00:27:14,560 --> 00:27:17,575 basically you can't have any kind of non-market system 565 00:27:17,690 --> 00:27:20,627 because you'd never be able to understand the preferences of the individual, 566 00:27:20,738 --> 00:27:22,320 you’d never be able to track supply and demand 567 00:27:22,480 --> 00:27:24,941 and all those basic economic parameters and metrics. 568 00:27:25,760 --> 00:27:28,147 That is thoroughly ridiculous in the modern day, 569 00:27:28,252 --> 00:27:31,076 especially with the Internet, with sensor systems. 570 00:27:31,240 --> 00:27:33,292 You could have a city that is - well and this will happen, 571 00:27:33,403 --> 00:27:36,061 it's already happening around the world, I'm surprised DC doesn't have it yet - 572 00:27:36,184 --> 00:27:37,673 but you'll have a citywide Wi-Fi. 573 00:27:37,938 --> 00:27:41,175 And then you connect sensors to all the transactions that are occurring, 574 00:27:41,520 --> 00:27:45,476 boom! you have instant feedback of all the transactions that are happening in the economy. 575 00:27:45,587 --> 00:27:48,283 And I'm not necessarily referring to economic financial transactions. 576 00:27:48,455 --> 00:27:51,390 I'm referring to transactions of people just simply getting what they need. 577 00:27:51,600 --> 00:27:54,726 As this book progresses the logic becomes more and more clear 578 00:27:54,836 --> 00:27:56,393 that the highest state of efficiency, 579 00:27:56,756 --> 00:28:00,344 which would also create the highest level of social amiability, 580 00:28:00,806 --> 00:28:04,344 hence the alleviation of all the group-versus-group woes, 581 00:28:04,566 --> 00:28:06,264 is a system that doesn't have money! 582 00:28:06,541 --> 00:28:08,024 Now I don't push that in the sense, 583 00:28:08,141 --> 00:28:09,735 I know how irrational that sounds to most people, 584 00:28:09,840 --> 00:28:12,326 how foreign that is to most people, they just can't even field that. 585 00:28:12,756 --> 00:28:16,233 But that's something that I talk about and I eventually lead to but I'm, 586 00:28:16,840 --> 00:28:19,729 I'm very transition oriented. So those five things you just mentioned, 587 00:28:19,876 --> 00:28:22,609 if we could get anywhere with any of those in a substantial way 588 00:28:22,806 --> 00:28:25,132 you're going to see a dramatic alleviation of social tensions, 589 00:28:25,329 --> 00:28:27,452 reduction of poverty, the increase in efficiency, 590 00:28:28,067 --> 00:28:30,760 the decrease of waste, more sustainability and so on. 591 00:28:30,873 --> 00:28:33,415 They all have those factors built in, as an outcome. 592 00:28:34,596 --> 00:28:38,067 - So, why don’t we hear these ideas 593 00:28:38,627 --> 00:28:42,806 and even really just a deeper questioning of capitalism and the free market? 594 00:28:43,649 --> 00:28:46,073 I mean it's basically a third rail of politics, 595 00:28:46,180 --> 00:28:48,147 but even on most of our media, 596 00:28:48,289 --> 00:28:49,230 even people that, 597 00:28:49,660 --> 00:28:52,836 that a lot of the country respects as kind of thinking, 598 00:28:53,126 --> 00:28:55,458 forward-thinking people like Elon Musk and 599 00:28:55,618 --> 00:28:57,403 let's say Neil deGrasse Tyson and these people 600 00:28:57,513 --> 00:28:59,421 that can look at the numbers the same way you can. 601 00:29:00,166 --> 00:29:01,920 Why don't you hear it? - It’s bias. 602 00:29:02,660 --> 00:29:05,433 It’s bias! There's an overriding bias 603 00:29:05,550 --> 00:29:07,335 with people born [into wealth], especially if they've been rewarded. 604 00:29:07,660 --> 00:29:10,553 It doesn't take a degree in social science to 605 00:29:10,800 --> 00:29:13,630 see the operant conditioning of the wealthy that reach a point 606 00:29:14,578 --> 00:29:16,658 where they have been so rewarded that their brain's like 607 00:29:16,760 --> 00:29:18,941 “What? You're not going to counter this system! What are you doing? 608 00:29:19,249 --> 00:29:22,356 This is your survival. This is what has been rewarding you.” 609 00:29:23,052 --> 00:29:25,230 And that's why the only thing that any of these guys have talked about 610 00:29:25,347 --> 00:29:26,473 is universal basic income. 611 00:29:26,689 --> 00:29:30,830 It's the only socially acceptable plausible thing to do besides charity. 612 00:29:31,692 --> 00:29:32,800 Really it's a form of charity. 613 00:29:33,206 --> 00:29:35,310 And they can't justify the lack of it now 614 00:29:35,421 --> 00:29:38,436 in the sense of trying to demean it into some kind of social welfare thing 615 00:29:38,541 --> 00:29:40,972 which you know has a terrible connotation to it, 616 00:29:42,350 --> 00:29:44,553 because of they see the efficiency, 617 00:29:44,760 --> 00:29:47,538 "they" meaning the whole of the high business community and government 618 00:29:47,649 --> 00:29:50,780 understands what we're doing with technology, understands the efficiency, 619 00:29:51,000 --> 00:29:54,443 understands that all of this efficiency that’s been generated over the past 50 years 620 00:29:54,560 --> 00:29:57,790 has gone to the one percent, with 8 people with more money now than the bottom 50%. 621 00:29:58,050 --> 00:30:00,350 They know they have to do something if they want to preserve their hierarchy, 622 00:30:00,460 --> 00:30:01,796 it's an intuition they feel. 623 00:30:02,024 --> 00:30:04,923 So universal basic income is the most logical step for them. 624 00:30:05,200 --> 00:30:06,689 But there's plenty more that needs to be done. 625 00:30:06,806 --> 00:30:09,070 And I stand with you in the sense of the disgust: 626 00:30:09,181 --> 00:30:11,938 Anyone that claims to be for science that hasn't taken the time 627 00:30:12,240 --> 00:30:13,778 to just look at their own world! 628 00:30:13,956 --> 00:30:15,507 Forget about the cosmos for a second. 629 00:30:15,790 --> 00:30:18,400 Let's not terraform planets yet, let's not send rockets. 630 00:30:18,689 --> 00:30:21,089 Let's worry about what's happening here for a moment! 631 00:30:21,753 --> 00:30:23,710 And I think it's just disappointing. 632 00:30:23,870 --> 00:30:26,867 I don't think these concepts are that foreign or that difficult to get people's heads around, 633 00:30:26,978 --> 00:30:29,489 it's just it's the social indoctrination and fear, 634 00:30:29,698 --> 00:30:31,944 and the fear of being ostracized and labeled as something 635 00:30:32,055 --> 00:30:33,940 that will be inconvenient for their reputations. 636 00:30:34,713 --> 00:30:37,520 - Yeah! I think when your bread is buttered 637 00:30:38,190 --> 00:30:40,480 from doing one thing it's tough to change course. 638 00:30:40,707 --> 00:30:43,181 But Peter, thank you so much for taking the time. - My pleasure. 639 00:30:43,290 --> 00:30:45,200 - The new book is ‘The New Human Rights Movement.’ 640 00:30:45,850 --> 00:30:47,796 It's amazing and excellent as all your work is 641 00:30:48,090 --> 00:30:51,563 and I’m looking forward to the movie I guess will come out, in a little while? 642 00:30:51,740 --> 00:30:54,990 Interreflections hopefully will find its release by the end of the year 643 00:30:55,100 --> 00:30:57,089 but no promises, it just keeps getting pushed back. 644 00:30:58,190 --> 00:30:59,760 - That's alright. Thank you Peter! 645 00:30:59,876 --> 00:31:01,200 - Alright man, thank you, appreciate it.