1 00:00:00,530 --> 00:00:04,340 Also a huge financial burden which brings us now to the economy. 2 00:00:04,480 --> 00:00:06,750 You know for a great many people it's become a system that is 3 00:00:06,890 --> 00:00:11,490 in part, broken, in part a result of the 2008 financial collapse. 4 00:00:11,534 --> 00:00:11,535 . 5 00:00:11,630 --> 00:00:15,070 So how do we climb out and get to a place of progress? 6 00:00:15,210 --> 00:00:17,370 Well, you know, big problems need big ideas 7 00:00:17,510 --> 00:00:19,970 and here's one. Start with this: money 8 00:00:20,100 --> 00:00:23,660 and throw it away. It sounds crazy, right? 9 00:00:23,800 --> 00:00:25,650 Well, now we're going to talk to someone who thinks this might be 10 00:00:25,740 --> 00:00:25,741 . 11 00:00:25,750 --> 00:00:28,590 exactly what we need. Peter Joseph is a film maker 12 00:00:28,710 --> 00:00:32,010 and also the founder of The Zeitgeist Movement. 13 00:00:33,020 --> 00:00:35,040 Hey there Peter, I'm of course simplifying here. 14 00:00:35,180 --> 00:00:38,390 It's not just get rid of money or currency. It's instead making 15 00:00:38,530 --> 00:00:41,030 this monetary-based economy... you make it 16 00:00:41,170 --> 00:00:45,280 a resource-based economy. Talk about what this actually means. 17 00:00:46,340 --> 00:00:49,860 - Well actually, you're half right. A Resource-Based Economy explicitly 18 00:00:50,000 --> 00:00:52,820 does want to remove the actual mechanics of exchange 19 00:00:52,940 --> 00:00:56,630 and the market system itself, as radical as that may seem to most. 20 00:00:56,950 --> 00:00:59,060 You have to understand, first of all, that the problem we're seeing 21 00:00:59,200 --> 00:01:02,260 in the world is not the result of some bad policy 22 00:01:02,360 --> 00:01:06,500 some legislation or some inflationary cycle boom and bust 23 00:01:06,640 --> 00:01:09,500 phenomenon that we're typically taught in traditional economics. 24 00:01:09,640 --> 00:01:12,630 The very foundation of the economic structure is intrinsically flawed. 25 00:01:12,750 --> 00:01:15,560 We create money out of debt. We charge interest on it 26 00:01:15,700 --> 00:01:18,400 which doesn't exist. We create the principal, but yet 27 00:01:18,590 --> 00:01:21,030 the principal plus the interest is always outstanding. 28 00:01:21,170 --> 00:01:24,220 People, it's a game of musical chairs to put into a singular phrase. 29 00:01:24,360 --> 00:01:28,170 Everyone systematically suffers through this system and its offset. 30 00:01:28,320 --> 00:01:31,020 So when you hear about debt collapse, sovereign debt defaults 31 00:01:31,140 --> 00:01:33,410 these are inevitabilities of the system. They're not based on 32 00:01:33,550 --> 00:01:35,550 just someone's rogue policy 33 00:01:35,660 --> 00:01:38,900 or some flagrant activity of the stock market and derivatives 34 00:01:39,040 --> 00:01:41,890 granted those are very important attributes of it. 35 00:01:41,990 --> 00:01:44,500 But my point and my work with the movement is that the system 36 00:01:44,640 --> 00:01:46,850 is intrinsically, inherently flawed. 37 00:01:46,990 --> 00:01:51,000 And for us to get on a scale, on a pace, on a... 38 00:01:52,230 --> 00:01:54,640 in a way to make our society sustainable and not suffer 39 00:01:54,830 --> 00:01:57,810 all these economic consequences, we have to get down to the life-ground 40 00:01:57,916 --> 00:01:57,917 . 41 00:01:57,950 --> 00:02:01,520 and what actually supports human life, what we've learned 42 00:02:01,650 --> 00:02:06,410 from the natural world, the systems that actually generate food. 43 00:02:06,540 --> 00:02:09,010 When you realize this, we live in a technical reality 44 00:02:09,150 --> 00:02:11,190 not a monetary one. 45 00:02:11,290 --> 00:02:13,370 For example, one child dies every five seconds 46 00:02:13,510 --> 00:02:15,780 from poverty and preventable diseases on this planet. 47 00:02:15,920 --> 00:02:18,050 This is, of course, unnecessary technically. 48 00:02:18,190 --> 00:02:20,000 We could easily feed everyone on this planet. 49 00:02:20,130 --> 00:02:21,890 And when you extrapolate that train of thought, when you take 50 00:02:22,030 --> 00:02:25,170 a technical perspective as opposed to a monetary perspective 51 00:02:25,310 --> 00:02:28,550 we see we could resolve just about all the major human woes 52 00:02:28,619 --> 00:02:28,620 . 53 00:02:28,630 --> 00:02:32,800 on this planet by restructuring the entire economic phenomenon 54 00:02:32,920 --> 00:02:37,160 to be truly economic, meaning preservation, sustainability. 55 00:02:37,370 --> 00:02:39,510 - You were talking earlier and you said: 56 00:02:39,800 --> 00:02:42,350 "Everyone suffers by the system." I think that maybe... 57 00:02:42,490 --> 00:02:45,070 let's clarify a little bit. A lot of people suffer 58 00:02:45,210 --> 00:02:47,560 but there are some people who want to keep this system 59 00:02:47,700 --> 00:02:50,340 exactly how it is. Isn't that right? 60 00:02:50,730 --> 00:02:55,040 - Yeah, I'd say the upper 1% [...] certainly has a prime interest 61 00:02:55,130 --> 00:02:55,131 . 62 00:02:55,160 --> 00:02:59,547 has a very easy way to justify the fruits that they've claimed. 63 00:02:59,660 --> 00:03:03,660 We have 1% of the world's population owning 40% of the planet's wealth. 64 00:03:03,800 --> 00:03:07,120 If that isn't a signpost to the intrinsic flaw of this system 65 00:03:07,260 --> 00:03:09,580 that it's there to perpetuate one class 66 00:03:09,720 --> 00:03:12,040 over another, I'm not sure what is. 67 00:03:12,180 --> 00:03:15,280 So yes, the upper 1% has a very vested interest and naturally 68 00:03:15,380 --> 00:03:17,510 that carries on to the governments which are essentially 69 00:03:17,650 --> 00:03:19,740 funded and supported by the corporate institutions. 70 00:03:19,880 --> 00:03:21,390 - And I know... - ...that continue this. 71 00:03:21,500 --> 00:03:24,930 - You've written about this large gap between the rich and poor 72 00:03:25,070 --> 00:03:27,380 and I know one point that you've made in your writings is that 73 00:03:27,520 --> 00:03:30,980 America is one of the most socially immobile countries in the world. 74 00:03:31,120 --> 00:03:33,810 I kind of had to stop and read that again when I saw that 75 00:03:33,950 --> 00:03:36,020 but basically what you're saying, I think, is: 76 00:03:36,160 --> 00:03:38,880 If you're born poor, chances are you will stay poor 77 00:03:39,020 --> 00:03:41,219 other than of course a few exceptions. 78 00:03:41,360 --> 00:03:44,400 How does this change under the "Zeitgeist system"? 79 00:03:45,850 --> 00:03:48,640 - Well, it's not the "Zeitgeist system." This work builds upon 80 00:03:48,780 --> 00:03:50,830 research by a man named Jacque Fresco 81 00:03:50,940 --> 00:03:54,880 which builds upon researchers from the past 150 years 82 00:03:55,020 --> 00:03:57,520 people that have continually thought about a different economic model 83 00:03:57,660 --> 00:03:59,700 not based on monetary exchange 84 00:03:59,800 --> 00:04:02,800 and all of the intrinsic problems that come out of that. 85 00:04:03,020 --> 00:04:06,030 The Venus Project is something important to mention which I suggest 86 00:04:06,150 --> 00:04:09,560 people look into that has a partnership with The Zeitgeist Movement 87 00:04:09,689 --> 00:04:09,690 . 88 00:04:09,700 --> 00:04:13,190 and it's a blueprint system based on referencing natural law. 89 00:04:13,330 --> 00:04:15,370 What that means is you actually get to the life-ground 90 00:04:15,480 --> 00:04:18,290 as I mentioned earlier. You look at what it means to make 91 00:04:18,400 --> 00:04:21,960 a human being, what it means to meet the needs of human necessity 92 00:04:22,100 --> 00:04:25,680 from obviously the bare necessities to all of the emotional 93 00:04:25,820 --> 00:04:28,220 and biopsychosocial phenomenon 94 00:04:28,340 --> 00:04:28,341 . 95 00:04:28,350 --> 00:04:32,030 that actually generate our behaviour, well-being, and mental health. 96 00:04:32,170 --> 00:04:35,030 When you put all this together which is a completely technical orientation 97 00:04:35,149 --> 00:04:35,150 . 98 00:04:35,170 --> 00:04:37,030 very limited when it comes to human opinion 99 00:04:37,130 --> 00:04:39,150 this is what science has given us, by the way. 100 00:04:39,290 --> 00:04:42,140 You see that the current economic model is stuck in time. 101 00:04:42,280 --> 00:04:46,460 It's not actually representing what meets human needs 102 00:04:46,600 --> 00:04:49,340 and the more you step back and look at how we could technically provide 103 00:04:49,460 --> 00:04:52,690 for the human population, eliminate war, eliminate famine 104 00:04:52,830 --> 00:04:55,900 eliminate poverty, eliminate 95% of most crime 105 00:04:56,040 --> 00:04:58,170 which by the way is monetary related 106 00:04:58,310 --> 00:05:01,120 you begin to see that an entirely new approach can be taken. 107 00:05:01,260 --> 00:05:03,480 It's very difficult for me to describe that to you 108 00:05:03,620 --> 00:05:06,200 in a very short little segment, but a Resource-Based Economy 109 00:05:06,340 --> 00:05:09,320 is based upon resource management intrinsically. 110 00:05:09,460 --> 00:05:11,520 Monetary relationships don't manage anything. 111 00:05:11,660 --> 00:05:14,120 We have cost efficiency. We have all of these things 112 00:05:14,260 --> 00:05:17,130 that inhibit our ability to create sustainable goods. 113 00:05:17,270 --> 00:05:19,640 We have established institutions that are constantly trying 114 00:05:19,780 --> 00:05:23,000 to preserve their market share. It's essentially a mafia orientation. 115 00:05:23,140 --> 00:05:25,190 It's one group against another, everyone's battling, 116 00:05:25,330 --> 00:05:28,930 and we have this illusion that somehow it's for the betterment of us 117 00:05:29,049 --> 00:05:29,050 . 118 00:05:29,070 --> 00:05:31,420 that we have this self-interest and it isn't. 119 00:05:31,560 --> 00:05:33,560 It's provably not if you look through history 120 00:05:33,660 --> 00:05:36,370 and what we're actually doing to ourselves, and we're on a train-wreck 121 00:05:36,510 --> 00:05:39,690 to a complete environmental disaster and a social disaster. 122 00:05:39,830 --> 00:05:41,890 - Peter, I want to interrupt you real quick. 123 00:05:42,030 --> 00:05:45,230 I can just hear the bad election commercials in my head. 124 00:05:45,370 --> 00:05:48,250 You know if this movement gains momentum 125 00:05:48,390 --> 00:05:51,450 the people who this system does benefit are going to come back 126 00:05:51,590 --> 00:05:53,680 and this is what they're going to say: 127 00:05:53,820 --> 00:05:56,110 "He wants to bring us back to 128 00:05:56,250 --> 00:05:59,030 ...he wants to make us a communist society." 129 00:05:59,250 --> 00:06:01,200 What do you say to that? 130 00:06:01,340 --> 00:06:03,700 - That's all they know, that's their entire frame of reference. 131 00:06:03,830 --> 00:06:07,320 You see, the propaganda of the West and the Free Market 132 00:06:07,460 --> 00:06:09,360 or the Free-for-All-Market, as I call it 133 00:06:09,460 --> 00:06:13,320 is to constantly assume back, orient back to these old structures 134 00:06:13,460 --> 00:06:15,630 that were based on autocratic dictatorship 135 00:06:15,770 --> 00:06:19,620 with no real communist attribute to it all. A true communist idea 136 00:06:19,760 --> 00:06:23,160 is a family, something I think we can all relate to. 137 00:06:23,300 --> 00:06:26,650 We are about intelligent resource management 138 00:06:26,790 --> 00:06:29,670 learning about how to take care of ourselves technically 139 00:06:29,810 --> 00:06:32,200 and creating a ground-up system that does that. 140 00:06:32,340 --> 00:06:35,620 And the only way you can do that is by the elimination of this... 141 00:06:35,760 --> 00:06:39,440 this supposed self-interest intrinsic attribute 142 00:06:39,580 --> 00:06:41,560 of our system that we think is natural. 143 00:06:41,700 --> 00:06:44,060 Obviously we all have self-interest, but 144 00:06:44,200 --> 00:06:46,390 self-interest must become social-interest 145 00:06:46,530 --> 00:06:48,920 if we expect to survive as a species, very simply. 146 00:06:49,070 --> 00:06:53,080 - I think one of the questions people would have is 147 00:06:53,220 --> 00:06:55,830 under this system, what's the incentive? 148 00:06:55,970 --> 00:06:58,920 What's the incentive to contribute more, to try harder 149 00:06:59,060 --> 00:07:02,100 if in the end, we're all gonna be equals? 150 00:07:03,550 --> 00:07:06,780 - Well, first of all, no one is just equal in an arbitrary sense. 151 00:07:06,920 --> 00:07:09,480 That's a loaded kind of concept. 152 00:07:09,630 --> 00:07:13,060 [We're] equal in the ability to get the necessities of life 153 00:07:13,200 --> 00:07:16,390 to get out of the materialism that we have, that fuels 154 00:07:16,530 --> 00:07:20,500 this conspicuous consumption that's destroying the planet. 155 00:07:20,640 --> 00:07:24,140 These values will change, so the incentive will be people 156 00:07:24,280 --> 00:07:27,730 actually understanding that when they contribute to society 157 00:07:27,870 --> 00:07:31,660 or do something real, not work in advertising or the stock market 158 00:07:31,786 --> 00:07:31,787 . 159 00:07:31,800 --> 00:07:33,940 when they do something, and they're educated to actually contribute 160 00:07:34,080 --> 00:07:36,800 to society, it's for their own self-betterment themselves. 161 00:07:36,900 --> 00:07:39,270 So if I was an inventor, I would invent something 162 00:07:39,410 --> 00:07:42,640 not to make money off of it. That's a very sick, distorted idea. 163 00:07:42,780 --> 00:07:44,870 I would invent something to better the world, knowing that 164 00:07:45,010 --> 00:07:47,070 that would come back to me in my own betterment. 165 00:07:47,210 --> 00:07:49,320 So it's a completely different value structure, and the best thing 166 00:07:49,460 --> 00:07:52,390 I can relate to you is the idea of a family. 167 00:07:52,520 --> 00:07:54,520 The idea of what it means to live in a family 168 00:07:54,620 --> 00:07:56,860 and the respect that's mutual in a family, where you are not tipping 169 00:07:57,000 --> 00:07:59,240 your mother every time she brings you something at the table. 170 00:07:59,390 --> 00:08:02,390 It's an entirely new value system orientation, and unfortunately 171 00:08:02,530 --> 00:08:05,310 we have to undo the tremendous psychological 172 00:08:05,440 --> 00:08:08,250 distortion that has been created after, more or less 173 00:08:08,390 --> 00:08:11,910 centuries of this despotic system that is failing right in front of us 174 00:08:12,050 --> 00:08:14,900 and will lead to simply more war, more poverty. 175 00:08:15,020 --> 00:08:17,490 So I don't really have to defend it, but the fact that 176 00:08:17,630 --> 00:08:19,490 all you have to do is watch what's happening right now 177 00:08:19,590 --> 00:08:21,700 and what's going to continue to happen, if you follow the trends. 178 00:08:21,840 --> 00:08:23,840 -And just real quick if you do look around at what's happening 179 00:08:23,940 --> 00:08:27,060 especially right now, this is not a... I know your idea 180 00:08:27,200 --> 00:08:29,780 and your Movement has followers all around the world 181 00:08:29,910 --> 00:08:32,370 more than 200 countries have chapters. 182 00:08:32,510 --> 00:08:35,940 Talk about why this is not just a national idea 183 00:08:36,080 --> 00:08:38,030 but kind of an international one. 184 00:08:38,630 --> 00:08:42,360 - Absolutely, well, sovereignty is essentially a mirror 185 00:08:42,500 --> 00:08:45,340 of a corporate concept. It's a self-preserving idea. 186 00:08:45,470 --> 00:08:45,471 . 187 00:08:45,480 --> 00:08:47,550 The world is gonna have to learn to work together. 188 00:08:47,700 --> 00:08:49,760 I'm sorry to say to all the politicians out there: 189 00:08:49,900 --> 00:08:52,480 jingoistic, patriotic. In the words of Albert Einstein: 190 00:08:52,620 --> 00:08:55,030 "Patriotism is a disease". It's one world. 191 00:08:55,170 --> 00:08:58,030 It's a single round planet, and it's time we recognize it as such. 192 00:08:58,170 --> 00:09:00,170 We have to manage the world in this way too, so there's a 193 00:09:00,270 --> 00:09:02,730 firm technical reality, it's not just philosophical. 194 00:09:02,850 --> 00:09:05,900 So the Zeitgeist Movement is about bridging the difference between 195 00:09:06,040 --> 00:09:09,580 all races, all nationalities, all religions 196 00:09:09,720 --> 00:09:12,400 everything that divides us 197 00:09:12,540 --> 00:09:15,750 because we all have to come back to the basic necessities of life 198 00:09:15,890 --> 00:09:18,440 and we can't even get that right within a monetary system. 199 00:09:18,560 --> 00:09:22,130 The suffering is unacceptable and not necessary. 200 00:09:22,270 --> 00:09:25,750 So it's not... It's a global movement, firmly global. 201 00:09:26,070 --> 00:09:29,100 - Unfortunately, we're out of time Peter but certainly a big idea 202 00:09:29,240 --> 00:09:32,100 in this time that is filled with some really big problems. 203 00:09:32,230 --> 00:09:35,760 Peter Joseph filmmaker and also founder of The Zeitgeist Movement.