Zeitgeist: Moving Forward Page #7

In fact, if we step back far enough

you will realize that the GDP

not only doesn't reflect real public or social health

on any tangible level

it is, in fact, mostly a measure

of industrial inefficiency

and social degradation.

And the more you see it rise, the worse things are becoming

with respect to personal, social

and environmental integrity.

You have to create problems to create profit.

There is no profit under the current paradigm

in saving lives, putting balance on this planet

having justice and peace or anything else.

There is just no profit there.

There's an old saying -

Pass a law and create a business'.

Whether you are creating a business for a lawyer or whatever.

So, crime does create

business just like destruction creates

business in Haiti.

We have now roughly 2,000,000 people incarcerated

in this country (USA)

and of those many are in prisons run

by private corporations:

Corrections Corporation of America, Wackenhut

who trade their stock on Wall Street

based upon how many people are in jail.

Now that's sickness.

But that is a reflection of what

this economic paradigm calls for.

So what exactly does this economic paradigm call for?

What is it that keeps our economic system going?

Consumption.

Or more accurately- Cyclical Consumption.

When we break down the

foundation of classic market economics

we are left with a pattern of monetary exchange

that simply cannot be allowed to stop

or even substantially slowed

if the society as we know it

is to remain operational.

There are three main actors on the economic stage:

the employee, the employer

and the consumer.

The employee sells labor to the employer for income.

The employer sells its production services, and hence goods,

to the consumer for income

and the consumer, of course, is simply another role

of the employer and employee

spending back into the system

to enable the cyclical consumption to continue.

In other words, the global market system is based on

the assumption that there will always be enough

product demand in a society

to move enough money around at a rate

which can keep the consumption process going.

And the faster the rate of consumption

the more so-called economic growth is assumed

and so the machine goes...

But, hold on -

I thought an economy was meant to, I don't know...

"Economize"?

Doesn't the very term have to do with preservation

and efficiency and a reduction of waste?

So how does our system, which demands consumption

and the more the better, efficiently preserve

or "Economize" at all?

Well... it doesn't.

The intent of the market system is, in fact, the exact opposite

of what a real economy is supposed to do,

which is efficiently and conservatively orient

the materials for production and distribution

of life supporting goods.

We live on a finite planet, with finite resources

where, for example, the oil we utilize took

millions of years to develop...

where the minerals we use took billions of years to develop.

So... having a system that deliberately promotes

the acceleration of consumption

for the sake of so-called "economic growth"

is pure ecocidal insanity.

Absence of waste, that's what efficiency is.

Absence of waste?

This system is more wasteful than all the other

existing systems in the history of the planet.

Every level of life organization and life system

is in a state of crisis and challenge

and decay or collapse.

No peer-reviewed journal in the last 30 years

will tell you anything different:

that is that every life system is in decline

as well as social programs...

as well as our water access.

Try to name any means of life that

isn't threatened and endangered...

You can't.

There really isn't one and that's very, very despairing.

But we haven't even figured out the causal mechanism.

We don't want to face the causal mechanism.

We just want to go on. You know that's where insanity is

where you keep doing the same thing over and over again

even though it clearly doesn't work.

So you're really

dealing with not an economic system

but I would go so far as to say an anti-economic system.

[The Anti-Economy]

There is an old saying that the competitive

market model seeks to

"create the best possible goods at the lowest possible prices"...

This statement is essentially the incentive concept

which justifies market competition

based on the assumption that the result

is the production of higher quality goods.

If I was going to build myself a table from scratch

I would naturally build it out of the best

most durable materials possible, right?

With the intent for it to last as long as possible.

Why would I want to make something poor

knowing I would have to eventually do it again

and expend more materials and more energy?

Well, as rational as that may seem in the physical world

when it comes to the market world

it is not only explicitly irrational

it is not even an option.

It is technically impossible to produce

the best of anything

if a company is to maintain a competitive edge

and hence remain affordable to the consumer.

Literally everything created and set for sale

in the global economy is immediately inferior

the moment it is produced

for it is a mathematical impossibility

to make the most scientifically advanced, efficient

and strategically sustainable products.

This is due to the fact that the market system

requires that "cost efficiency"

or the need to reduce expenses

exists at every stage of production.

From the cost of labor, to the cost

of materials and packaging and so on.

This competitive strategy, of course

is to make sure the public buys their goods

rather than from a competing producer

...which is doing the exact same thing

to also make their goods both competitive and affordable.

This immutably wasteful consequence of the system

could be termed:
Intrinsic Obsolescence.

However, this is only one part of a larger problem:

A fundamental governing principle of market economics

one you will not find in any textbook, by the way

- Is the following:

Nothing produced can be allowed to maintain a lifespan

longer than what can be endured

in order to continue cyclical consumption.

In other words, it is critical that stuff breakdown,

fail and expire within a certain amount of time.

This is termed - "Planned obsolescence"...

Planned obsolesce is the backbone of the underlying market

strategy of every goods producing corporation in existence.

While very few, of course

would admit to such a strategy outright

what they do is mask it within the

Intrinsic Obsolescence phenomenon just discussed,

while often ignoring, or even suppressing

new advents in technology

which might create a more sustainable, durable good.

So, if it wasn't wasteful enough

that the system inherently cannot allow the most

durable and efficient goods to be produced,

Planned Obsolescence deliberately

recognizes that the longer any good is in operation

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