Zeitgeist: Moving Forward Page #6

of private property here...

Well, he drops them!

He drops them like that. Right in one sentence.

He says, 'Well, once the introduction

of money came in by men's tacit consent

then it became... '

and he doesn't say all the provisos are canceled or erased -

but that's what happens.

So, now we have not

product and your property earned by your own labor -

oh no- money buys labor now.

There is no longer consideration

whether there is enough left over for others;

there is no longer consideration of whether it spoils

because he says money is like

silver and gold and gold can't spoil

and therefore money can't be responsible for waste...

which is ridiculous. We are not talking about money

and silver, we are talking about what its effects are.

It's one non sequitur after another.

Just the most startling

logical legerdemain that he gets away with here

but it fits the interests of capital owners.

Then Adam Smith comes along and what he adds

is the religion to this...

Locke started with God made it all this way

this is God's right

and now we get also with Smith

saying 'it's not only God's... '

well, he's not actually saying this but

this is what's happening philosophically, in principle

he's saying that 'it is not only a question of private property... '

That's all now 'presupposed'- It's Given!

And that there's 'money investors that buy labor' Given!

There's no limit to how much they can buy of other men's labor

how much they can accumulate, how much 'inequality' -

that's all given now.

And so he comes along and what his big idea is

and again it's just introduced in parentheses, in passing...

You know, when people put out goods for sale - the supply

and other people buy them - the demand and so forth

how do we have supply equaling demand

or demand equaling supply?

how can they come into equilibrium?

and that is one of the central notions of economics

is how do they come into equilibrium...

and he says:
it's the "Invisible Hand of the Market"

that brings them into equilibrium.

So, now we have "God is actually imminent.

He just didn't give the rights to property

and all its wherewithal and its "natural rights"

regarding what Locke said...

now we have the system itself as "God".

In fact, Smith says, when he talks

and you have to read the whole of the

Wealth of Nations' to find this quote.

He says:
'the scantiness of subsistence

sets limits to the reproduction of the poor

and that nature can deal with this in no other way

than elimination of their children. '

So he anticipated evolutionary theory in the worst sense...

this is well before Darwin.

And so he called them the 'Race of Laborers'.

So you can see:
there was inherent racism built-in here

there was an inherent life blindness to kill

innumerable children

and he thought:
'that's the Invisible Hand making supply

meet demand and demand meet supply. '

So, see how wise "God" is?

So you can see a lot of the really virulent

life destructive, eco-genocidal things

that are going on now have, in a way,

a 'thought gene' back in Smith too.

When we reflect on the original concept of

the so-called free market - capitalist system

as initiated by early economic philosophers

such as Adam Smith

we see that the original intent of a "market"

was based around real, tangible, life supporting goods for trade.

Adam Smith never fathomed that the most

profitable economic sector on the planet

would eventually be in the arena of financial trading

or so-called investment

where money itself is simply

gained by the movement of other money

in an arbitrary game which holds

zero productive merit to society.

Yet, regardless of Smith's intent

the door for such seemingly anomalous advents

was left wide open by one fundamental tenet of this theory:

Money is treated as a Commodity, in and of itself.

Today, in every economy of the world

regardless of the social system they claim

money is pursued for the sake of money and nothing else.

The underlying idea, which was mysteriously qualified

by Adam Smith with his religious declaration of the

'Invisible Hand'

is that the narrow, self-interested pursuit

of this fictional commodity

will somehow magically manifest

human and social well-being and progress.

The reality is that the monetary incentive interest

or what some have termed the: "Money Sequence of Value"

has now completely decoupled from the foundational

'life interest', which could be termed the

'Life Sequence of Value. '

What has happened is that there is a complete confusion

in economic doctrine

between those two sequences.

They think that the Money Sequence of Value

delivers the Life Sequence of Value

and that's why they say if more goods are sold

If GDP's rise and so forth...

there would be more enhanced well-being

and we could take the GDP as being our basic layer indicator

of social health...

Well, there you see the confusion.

It's talking about Money Sequences of Value

that is, all the receipts and all the revenues that are

derived from selling goods

and they're confusing that with life reproduction.

So, you have built right into this thing from the beginning

a complete conflation of the money

and life sequences of value.

So, we are dealing with a kind of structured delusion

which becomes more and more deadly

as the money sequence decouples from producing

anything at all.

So, it's a system disorder

and the system disorder seems to be fatal.

[Welcome to the Machine]

In society today, you seldom hear anyone speak

of the progress of their country or society

in terms of their physical well-being, state of happiness,

trust or social stability.

Rather, the measures are presented to us

through economic abstractions.

We have the gross domestic product, the consumer price index,

the value of the stock market, rates of inflation...

and so on.

But does this tell us anything of real value

as to the quality of people's lives?

No. All of these measures have to do with

the money sequence itself and nothing more.

For example, the Gross Domestic Product of a country

is a measure of the value of goods and services sold.

This measure is claimed to correlate to the

"standard of living" of a country's people.

In the United States health care accounted for over

17% of GDP in 2009

amounting to over 2.5 trillion spent.

Hence, creating a positive effect on this economic measure.

And, based on this logic

it would be even better for the US economy

if health care services increased more so...

perhaps to 3 trillion dollars... or 5 trillion

since that would create more growth

more jobs and hence boasted by economists

as a rise in their country's standard of living.

But wait a minute.

What do health care services actually represent?

Well, SICK AND DYING PEOPLE.

That's right- the more unhealthy people there are in America

the better the economy.

Now, that is not an exaggeration or a cynical perspective.

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