This time they weren't able to release the japanese subtitles along with the first release. Well, have at it.

By the way, I was an Austrian Economist supporting Libertarian but I am now an advocate of the Venus Project. Enjoy.

Yonosa Wrote:By the way, I was an Austrian Economist supporting Libertarian but I am now an advocate of the Venus Project. Enjoy.

That seems like quite a change...

Probably a really gullible person.

Yonosa Wrote:By the way, I was an Austrian Economist supporting Libertarian but I am now an advocate of the Venus Project. Enjoy.

Because of this film? Either this a damn powerful film, or you're a damn powerful moron.

edit: I'm actually going to watch it to find out.

Blahah Wrote:Because of this film? Either this a damn powerful film, or you're a damn powerful moron.

edit: I'm actually going to watch it to find out.

It is a very well made movie; as for the arguments on human nature, the monetary system etc, some of them are very debatable. Personally I don't agree with The Venus Project anymore, I think it's very naive and simplistic, and could potentially be destructive. Also it's ridiculously vague; if they're advocating the restructure of the entire civilised world, they're going to a need an extremely detailed outline of their plans/ theories, at the moment it's just a few sketchy ideas followed by the mantra: "The movement is still in the recruiting stage..."

[ファブリス]

I'll watch it. I like this type of movies which puts you out of your box and makes you think. Hopefully it's better than the previous episodes. I read that the director matured a little bit since, and it's better.

As for the Venus Project it's not practical right now but it doesn't hurt to think forward. The man was born in 1916 ffs! I like his message, if only the realization that technology is so important.

On the subject of technology and The Venus Project, you may really enjoy the following.

Quote:In this capstone talk from YUIConf 2010, Yahoo! JavaScript architect Douglas Crockford reflects on the life of Walt Disney, who dreamed of creating a ‘City of the Future’ in Florida as part of the project that became Disney World. (This is not a technical session, but rather one about big dreams and the life lessons we can draw from them.)

Douglas Crockford: “Project Future” (43 min.) on YUI Theatre

Walt Disney's plan for EPCOT ... sounds very similar to The Venus Project. If we lived longer, so many such dreams would become reality.

I found it particularly funny that he made fun of the 'New World Order' crap in the movie, yet he perpetuated the same conspiracy theory in the first film.

Here's a good article pointing out some big flaws with The Venus Project:
http://muertos.blog.com/2010/10/23/seein...-disaster/

I'll watch it when I have time and I think some of what they said about about parasitic financial institutions in the first two zeitgeist movies is very true. The venus project has some interesting ideas too. But what I don't get, is this whole opting out of the system idea. First of all, no one is really stopping you from doing it now anyway if you're smart enough not to get into massive debt. And secondly, why would you expect to enjoy the benefits of everyone else's labour and live in some technological paradise if you are unwilling to occasionally work (ie do things that are arduous or boring) for the benefit of other people, which is how capitalism works. If you're getting paid, it means someone somewhere is presumedly benefitting from the service or product you provide. And if they're not, it's the fault of consumers' own idiocy. You specialise in some tasks that other people find arduous or difficult and in return we can pay others to do the same for us. This is precisely why we now have things like super fast internet, airplanes and air conditioners. Zeitgeist movement is all about making people more free by working together but under a capitalist system people already do that when it's in their own interest. I don't see how the Zeitgeist movement can achieve anything without having some kind of centralised decision making core, and that would only lead in the opposite direction of it's stated goals. The road to people living freer and better lives lies in the constant invention/refinement and price reduction of labour saving devices and methods of providing essentials like food/shelter and energy.

nadiatims Wrote:This is precisely why we now have things like super fast internet, airplanes and air conditioners. Zeitgeist movement is all about making people more free by working together but under a capitalist system people already do that when it's in their own interest. I don't see how the Zeitgeist movement can achieve anything without having some kind of centralised decision making core, and that would only lead in the opposite direction of it's stated goals. The road to people living freer and better lives lies in the constant invention/refinement and price reduction of labour saving devices and methods of providing essentials like food/shelter and energy.

Well, our super fast internet and airline services are also greatly due to government subsidising/ research programs (e.g. the pentagon program) which actually goes directly against the idea of free market capitalism. Funnily enough, Obama even mentioned this in his state of the union address.
Even if you accept that some sort of capitalist system is the most effective way to achieve technological innovation, we simply cannot carry on the way we're going. With private tyrannies (corporations etc) controlling the world's resources and environment, we'll simply destroy ourselves in the very near future. This isn't a radical view, this is a basic principle of capitalism. Any society based on material wealth and personal gain will destroy itself in time. If we want a sustainable, more free society, we need resources to be in the hands of the people: we need a far more democratic society.

thecite Wrote:Even if you accept that some sort of capitalist system is the most effective way to achieve technological innovation, we simply cannot carry on the way we're going. With private tyrannies (corporations etc) controlling the world's resources and environment, we'll simply destroy ourselves in the very near future. This isn't a radical view, this is a basic principle of capitalism. Any society based on material wealth and personal gain will destroy itself in time. If we want a sustainable, more free society, we need resources to be in the hands of the people: we need a far more democratic society.

Actually, every society will destroy itself in the future. That's not a principle of capitalism, it's just how civilization works. Every economic system and every political system eventually collapses. Just like eventually every species goes extinct, we will too. There is no magical type of society that will work forever--there's just some that will last longer than others.

And actually, I think there's no reason to think that some dreamed-up freer society would last longer. How do you know? That's what Marxism was supposed to be, but it went all awry for reasons that people didn't predict. We can avoid the problems that Marxism had, but that doesn't mean there isn't a whole host of other problems that are impossible to predict and may cause the whole thing to not work.

the cite Wrote:Well, our super fast internet and airline services are also greatly due to government subsidising/ research programs (e.g. the pentagon program) which actually goes directly against the idea of free market capitalism. Funnily enough, Obama even mentioned this in his state of the union address.

But how can we prove that the results are better than if everyone was just taxed less and thus less in need of research programs and subsidising etc? I guess you could probably argue the aviation industry advanced rapidly thanks to high military spending during ww1 and ww2 but these wars also destroyed value on a massive scale. And again we don't know what developments that capital could have been going towards. I will say this though, governments are big and have access to vast spending capability and land, so they can develop massive infrastructure, train networks, energy grids and whatnot. However, these kinds of services almost always run at a loss. Compare this with services brought to you by the private sector. This is why high end technology such as mobile phones and computers continue to get better and cheaper but bus and train fares almost always go up.

thecite Wrote:Even if you accept that some sort of capitalist system is the most effective way to achieve technological innovation, we simply cannot carry on the way we're going. With private tyrannies (corporations etc) controlling the world's resources and environment, we'll simply destroy ourselves in the very near future. This isn't a radical view, this is a basic principle of capitalism. Any society based on material wealth and personal gain will destroy itself in time. If we want a sustainable, more free society, we need resources to be in the hands of the people: we need a far more democratic society.

When corporations are able to gain a level of power that can be viewed as tyrannical it's because they are backed by governments. And again citizen/consumer stupidity is generally to blame in allowing these situations to arise. Really what is needed is a balance of power between a large number of similarly powerful entities (be they governments, corporations or individuals) to keep each other in check. Which is why I'm all for small government. Not necessarily no government though. Like all things of any importance in life a balance somewhere between two extremes tends to be optimal.

Tzadeck Wrote:And actually, I think there's no reason to think that some dreamed-up freer society would last longer. How do you know? That's what Marxism was supposed to be, but it went all awry for reasons that people didn't predict. We can avoid the problems that Marxism had, but that doesn't mean there isn't a whole host of other problems that are impossible to predict and may cause the whole thing to not work.

Yes, you could make some hypothetical argument that all societies will destroy themselves in time (this isn't necessarily true, if humans get to the point where we can explore space meaningfully, our species could last hundreds of thousands of years by moving around and spreading out through the universe); but any society based on personal gain/ greed and material wealth will destroy itself swiftly. Not a controversial view.
By Marxism, I'll assume you mean socialism (which are actually two very different things). Well perhaps we could make some very insightful judgments on the sustainability of socialism if it had been meaningfully practiced in any nation on Earth, which it hasn't. Soviet Union - Totalitarian/ capitalist. PRC - Totalitarian/ capitalist. Cuba - Totalitarian, slowly becoming more capitalist.
The whole Leninist notion that you need a 'vanguard party' to usher in socialism goes directly against the idea of socialism; that is, that people should be in control of the decision making in society, and control the resources and means of production.

Like I said in another thread, I think a great example of socialist/ democratic success is the Spanish Revolution.

nadiatims Wrote:But how can we prove that the results are better than if everyone was just taxed less and thus less in need of research programs and subsidising etc? I guess you could probably argue the aviation industry advanced rapidly thanks to high military spending during ww1 and ww2 but these wars also destroyed value on a massive scale.

My point was simply to show you that those innovations were in large part not due to capitalism.
Corporations are inherently tyrannical power structures; they control the resources of the planet with almost no democratic input available to the public.

thecite Wrote:Yes, you could make some hypothetical argument that all societies will destroy themselves in time (this isn't necessarily true, if humans get to the point where we can explore space meaningfully, our species could last hundreds of thousands of years by moving around and spreading out through the universe); but any society based on personal gain/ greed and material wealth will destroy itself swiftly. Not a controversial view.
By Marxism, I'll assume you mean socialism (which are actually two very different things). Well perhaps we could make some very insightful judgments on the sustainability of socialism if it had been meaningfully practiced in any nation on Earth, which it hasn't. Soviet Union - Totalitarian/ capitalist. PRC - Totalitarian/ capitalist. Cuba - Totalitarian, slowly becoming more capitalist.
The whole Leninist notion that you need a 'vanguard party' to usher in socialism goes directly against the idea of socialism; that is, that people should be in control of the decision making in society, and control the resources and means of production.

Like I said in another thread, I think a great example of socialist/ democratic success is the Spanish Revolution.

I'm not sure you have realistic expectations about how hard space travel is. It's feasible that we could establish a colony on mars, but that's pretty much the limit. Even the nearest star to us is four light years away. The nearest extrasolar planet that could sustain humans is likely to be thousands of light years away. If you can figure out how to get a group of humans to live on a space ship for, say, ten thousand years (way longer than recorded history), be my guest. Ten thousand years being an underestimation of how long it would take, of course (after all, we'll never make a spaceship that can go anywhere near the speed of light).

I'm not saying that it's NECESSARILY true that all societies will destroy themselves in time (very few things are necessarily true--one might be "There are no square circles"). Almost all human knowledge is in degrees, and we know very few things for certain. I'm making an argument from induction: Every civilization before us has fallen in a relatively short amount of time. Therefore, it's reasonable to assume that that will continue to happen. Just like it's reasonable to assume that when I drop a pencil it will fall to the floor and not the ceiling--that's how it's always happened. We're more sure of the pencil falling, but both are based on the same type of inductive reasoning.

I agree that what you're saying isn't a controversial view. People say it all the time. That's what makes something not controversial. I think it's not well thought out. It's just a popular meme--it's not based on any real theory.

No, I don't mean socialism, I mean Marxism. A big part of　Marxism is the belief that a proletarian revolution will take over the government and change the economic framework to socialism, with proletariat control of the means of production and private property in general under state control. That's what I'm talking about, that's what went awry. It seemed like an awful good idea, but once people tried to put it into action, the countries basically became capitalist dictatorships, as you said (although for a short amount of time the People's Republic of China actually was socialist). The whole point of what I was saying is that you can't plan some big societal change in advance because it won't turn out how you expect it to. Society is a very complex system. Simple theories, like those in Marxism or The Venus Project, just don't apply to it.

So you don't think the current capitalist system we have is unsustainable? I think you only need to look around at the world to see how wrong that is. Global warming, massive environmental destruction, ecological collapse, resource wastage, pollution etc, it should be pretty evident.

Well I think Marxism is a silly concept, the idea that there are any sort of historical 'rules' which will ensure this and that happens, and I'm not a fan of The Venus Project, in large part precisely due to what you just said there: human societies are such complex things that I don't think you can plan them out generically. I said pretty much the same thing in another thread a few days back. I think we can only make changes to guide society in the right direction.

Yeah, I know we agree on the Venus Project.

I do think the capitalist system will fall, but I think that it doesn't really have anything to do with capitalism itself. With the human population as high as it is, I don't believe that there will ever be a feasible system that will prevent humans from causing massive environmental damage. You want a feasible system for not causing vast environmental damage? How about 95% of the world's population dying out? Seems like the only solution that will realistically ever happen.

Tzadeck Wrote:I do think the capitalist system will fall, but I think that it doesn't really have anything to do with capitalism itself. With the human population as high as it is, I don't believe that there will ever be a feasible system that will prevent humans from causing massive environmental damage. You want a feasible system for not causing vast environmental damage? How about 95% of the worlds population dying out? Seems like the only solution that will realistically ever happen.

This ignores how inherently wasteful capitalism is, and the fact that it's actually only a small amount of the world's population that is consuming the large amount of resources.
The system we have is about using as much resources as possible, as quickly as possible, to gain the maximum profit, this is diametrically opposed to sustainability.

Doesn't seem like they're giving the computers enough control here. I vote for full-fledged robotocracy.

The problem with Robotocracy is that our robot masters may not turn out to be the tyrannical workaholic overlords we envision. A sufficiently advanced AI would surely be as vulnerable as any human to the temptations of TV tropes.

thecite Wrote:

Tzadeck Wrote:I do think the capitalist system will fall, but I think that it doesn't really have anything to do with capitalism itself. With the human population as high as it is, I don't believe that there will ever be a feasible system that will prevent humans from causing massive environmental damage. You want a feasible system for not causing vast environmental damage? How about 95% of the worlds population dying out? Seems like the only solution that will realistically ever happen.

This ignores how inherently wasteful capitalism is, and the fact that it's actually only a small amount of the world's population that is consuming the large amount of resources.
The system we have is about using as much resources as possible, as quickly as possible, to gain the maximum profit, this is diametrically opposed to sustainability.

That's a problem with how we source our resources, not with capitalism. Energy is a prime resource, can generate capital and you can use it until the cows come home as long as you have a sustainable source of it. We've been using fossil fuels - thats unsustainable. If we find a sustainable means of energy provision (we have several) and start using them universally, capitalism becomes sustainable (at least for energy). Other resources can similarly be made sustainable, for example making various materials which currently use mineral resources from various forms of carbon (e.g. nanotube materials). Space is a finite resource on the planet, so is water (at least for now) but that doesn't make capitalism unsustainable. As long as there are some essentially limitless resources, you can continue to use them to generate value.

[ファブリス]

Blahah Wrote:That's a problem with how we source our resources, not with capitalism

You could say the same about guns, nuclear bombs, heavily processed foods, and such. Guns don't shoot by themselves do they? Capitalism per se is not directly the problem, what it represents is.

I think what's at stake here is a necessary shift in people's motivations and consciousness about others.

This discussion is pretty pointless imho unless we acknowledge the current paradigm, its problems, and the need for a new one.

That's what these movies are good for. Getting stuck in the minutiae of captialism, or other systems, is missing the point imho.

Like what you're saying Fabrice(it seems you too have shook off your indoctrinations), and what a few others are saying too. But most of the replies are what I expected of course. It takes time to understand these new ideas, and also, TZM is about pushing us in a new direction and to explain that there are alternatives, they're not trying to say they have all the answers, 1 film will not explain the direction. Also, the main principle is run society by the scientific method, and however "gullible" I might be the scientific method is proven to work ( I have read nearly the entire reading list on The Venus Project's recommended list, this is not a conversion type of shift, it is a shift in perspective and a greater commitment to skepticism, and not a faith based system, I was always a scientist before a libertarian and this direction just makes a lot more sense because it focuses on sustainability whereas still operating under a monetary system even if it was a hard debt-free currency it would not touch this, not to mention automation is going to displace the working class). Watch and enjoy the film, then reply. I will withdraw from the conversation though, I invite you to look into the direction more guys!

Blahah Wrote:

thecite Wrote:

Tzadeck Wrote:I do think the capitalist system will fall, but I think that it doesn't really have anything to do with capitalism itself. With the human population as high as it is, I don't believe that there will ever be a feasible system that will prevent humans from causing massive environmental damage. You want a feasible system for not causing vast environmental damage? How about 95% of the worlds population dying out? Seems like the only solution that will realistically ever happen.

This ignores how inherently wasteful capitalism is, and the fact that it's actually only a small amount of the world's population that is consuming the large amount of resources.
The system we have is about using as much resources as possible, as quickly as possible, to gain the maximum profit, this is diametrically opposed to sustainability.

That's a problem with how we source our resources, not with capitalism. Energy is a prime resource, can generate capital and you can use it until the cows come home as long as you have a sustainable source of it. We've been using fossil fuels - thats unsustainable. If we find a sustainable means of energy provision (we have several) and start using them universally, capitalism becomes sustainable (at least for energy). Other resources can similarly be made sustainable, for example making various materials which currently use mineral resources from various forms of carbon (e.g. nanotube materials). Space is a finite resource on the planet, so is water (at least for now) but that doesn't make capitalism unsustainable. As long as there are some essentially limitless resources, you can continue to use them to generate value.

This does not even touch the issues of automation replacing the working class and stripping them of their purchasing power. The issues of financially motivated crime(which is over 95% of all crime), "profiting" from problems without fixing them, the waste of ownership, the cyclical consumption... I could go on and on... A monetary system was good once, it really was, now it's outdated, don't connect yourself to ideas in that way, the flaws of the system are easily verifiable if you make a commitment to scientific analysis and try to not become emotional about the issues involved. I invite you to make a more thorough analysis with scientific standards of evidence to back the benefits. I hope you think about these issues, I will not reply, nor read this post from this point, watch the film and join the movement!


EDit: "thorough analysis with scientific standards of evidence to back the benefits." this might be unclear, what I mean is don't just repeat supposed benefits of a monetary system, reanalyze each issue yourself and at all the evidence to look and see if the claim is true. There are many common assertions in our current culture because the general person's understanding is behind that of the latest science, that's why you still hear people saying things like "Human's use only 10% of their brain", or that "evolution is a stepping tool and we are "most evolved" animal". I mean it's no wonder people who are just used to repeating things don't know how to make a basic scientific analysis. Only analysis with scientific standards of evidence provide answers, "economics" has no evidence, it's an abstraction wake the #%)* and stop supporting a system that makes you a debt slave, alows a billion to starve, destroys our planets, I could go on and on.

Tzadeck Wrote:

thecite Wrote:Yes, you could make some hypothetical argument that all societies will destroy themselves in time (this isn't necessarily true, if humans get to the point where we can explore space meaningfully, our species could last hundreds of thousands of years by moving around and spreading out through the universe); but any society based on personal gain/ greed and material wealth will destroy itself swiftly. Not a controversial view.
By Marxism, I'll assume you mean socialism (which are actually two very different things). Well perhaps we could make some very insightful judgments on the sustainability of socialism if it had been meaningfully practiced in any nation on Earth, which it hasn't. Soviet Union - Totalitarian/ capitalist. PRC - Totalitarian/ capitalist. Cuba - Totalitarian, slowly becoming more capitalist.
The whole Leninist notion that you need a 'vanguard party' to usher in socialism goes directly against the idea of socialism; that is, that people should be in control of the decision making in society, and control the resources and means of production.

Like I said in another thread, I think a great example of socialist/ democratic success is the Spanish Revolution.

I'm not sure you have realistic expectations about how hard space travel is. It's feasible that we could establish a colony on mars, but that's pretty much the limit. Even the nearest star to us is four light years away. The nearest extrasolar planet that could sustain humans is likely to be thousands of light years away. If you can figure out how to get a group of humans to live on a space ship for, say, ten thousand years (way longer than recorded history), be my guest. Ten thousand years being an underestimation of how long it would take, of course (after all, we'll never make a spaceship that can go anywhere near the speed of light).

I'm not saying that it's NECESSARILY true that all societies will destroy themselves in time (very few things are necessarily true--one might be "There are no square circles"). Almost all human knowledge is in degrees, and we know very few things for certain. I'm making an argument from induction: Every civilization before us has fallen in a relatively short amount of time. Therefore, it's reasonable to assume that that will continue to happen. Just like it's reasonable to assume that when I drop a pencil it will fall to the floor and not the ceiling--that's how it's always happened. We're more sure of the pencil falling, but both are based on the same type of inductive reasoning.

I agree that what you're saying isn't a controversial view. People say it all the time. That's what makes something not controversial. I think it's not well thought out. It's just a popular meme--it's not based on any real theory.

No, I don't mean socialism, I mean Marxism. A big part of　Marxism is the belief that a proletarian revolution will take over the government and change the economic framework to socialism, with proletariat control of the means of production and private property in general under state control. That's what I'm talking about, that's what went awry. It seemed like an awful good idea, but once people tried to put it into action, the countries basically became capitalist dictatorships, as you said (although for a short amount of time the People's Republic of China actually was socialist). The whole point of what I was saying is that you can't plan some big societal change in advance because it won't turn out how you expect it to. Society is a very complex system. Simple theories, like those in Marxism or The Venus Project, just don't apply to it.

haha, Wow, please watch the film guys it deals with the supposed "Marxism" of TVP. Come on guys, this is one of the most common logical fallacies, because you don't approve of the "capitalism" system that makes you a socialist/communist/Marxist(fill in the term of your liking), as if there were only 2 options, dualities are for people who can't think dynamically, you two sound like cold war propagandists. Grow up and submit the ideas to scientific analysis with strict scientific standards of evidence, that is the test of nature, the only real test that exists, and stop operating in abstracted ideas of the early 20th century, the world's a very different place now.

ファブリス Wrote:

Blahah Wrote:That's a problem with how we source our resources, not with capitalism

You could say the same about guns, nuclear bombs, heavily processed foods, and such. Guns don't shoot by themselves do they? Capitalism per se is not directly the problem, what it represents is.

I think what's at stake here is a necessary shift in people's motivations and consciousness about others.

This discussion is pretty pointless imho unless we acknowledge the current paradigm, its problems, and the need for a new one.

That's what these movies are good for. Getting stuck in the minutiae of captialism, or other systems, is missing the point imho.

That's backwards - this is the opposite of getting stuck in the minutiae of capitalism, I am excluding things which aren't capitalism and making no comment about the detail of capitalism itself. If you want to identify a problem, you need to identify the right one. Capitalism represents humanity. Maybe not individuals, but as a whole it represents how humans (and all other organisms) have always lived - they take what is within their capabilities to get, and they continue to do so until some limiting factor controls resource extraction.

Zeigeist - the films, the movement - is a fart in the wind. Capitalism, whilst it has its problems, arose organically and without sudden design, and is here to stay. I'm not saying I'm strictly in favour of capitalism, but it's what we have, it does work for many purposes, and we should fix it rather than dream up harebrained alternatives. The probability of any complete social uphieval movement taking control worldwide is miniscule. Trying to get the entire world to act in an unnatural way (by all aspiring to a new moral standard) will never, ever work.