Zeitgeist: Moving Forward Movie Review

 

Zeitgeist: Moving Forward is a great movie, and great movie makes great mistakes. I�m going to summarize them into a top ten list for your pondering.

 

For those who are not familiar with Zeitgeist: it is a free movie. You can download the free DVD on torrent or you can watch it free on their website http://zeitgeistmovie.com/ or even on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z9WVZddH9w

 

The movie was made by Peter Joseph. The 2007 movie was mainly about 9-1-1 Conspiracy which won�t be covered in this review. The 2011 Zeitgeist: Moving Forward is a documentary about building sustainable modern economic, new way of living, criticism of consumerism and monetary policy, preservation and all the good stuff that�s similar to ideology of the recent Occupy Wall Street movement, It makes many interesting points, some I agreed, some I don�t, So let�s see the top 10 list, shall we?

 

1. Economic is to economize, but our society does not economize enough
   1. Yes, our society does not economize most efficiently, but that's different to say we don't economize at all.
      1. Just because Tiger Wood is not the best golf player of all time, can you accuse him of not knowing how to play golf?
   2. For Examples:
      1. Cars have improved mileage
      2. Refrigerator is more efficient
      3. Light bulb save more energy
      4. Even your big screen LED TV consume less energy than the CRT models
      5. Agriculture feed more people
      6. That fits the very meaning of economize, to do more with less.
   5. I agreed with the movie the fact is we do consume more energy than our ancestors. It�s not because we are more greedy, it�s because there are more people on earth, and with much higher living standard
      1. I know we still feel like we are poor. That�s because we don�t compare our living standard with our forefathers We only compare it with our contemporary peers.
   6. Money does not bring happiness, that again, I agreed with the movie.

2. Rich powerful people conspire against us
   1. Don't blame the corruption of the powerful people for the stupidity of the common men.
      1. 62 million people elected George Bush for a second time on 2004, Is that conspiracy or stupidity?
      2. Fox news was the most popular news channel in the media. Is that conspiracy or stupidity?
      3. 70% Americans believed in WMD. Is that conspiracy or stupidity?
      4. Y2K which predicted the meltdown of civilization. Is that conspiracy or stupidity?
      5. Airport security, many nail clippers and bottle water were missed, yet people could still bring explosives to the plane. Is that conspiracy or stupidity?
   2. It is not the conspiracy of the powerful people, but it�s the inadequacy of the common mind.
   3. Is the rich our enemies and the poor our friends?
      1. Warren Buffett. The 2nd richest man in the world. Is he not rich enough, is he not powerful enough. Yet he complained the tax for rich people is too low.
      2. So this poor guy, Joe the Plumber who later said he made less than 250 thousands a year is worrying about a tax increase that is specifically targeted for the 250 thousands. So this guy want Warren Buffett and Bill gate to pay less tax�. Is that stupidity or conspiracy.
      3. Now look at those poor folks... say Joe the Plumber, who claimed he didn�t make much money, yet he complained the tax for rich people was too high. The rich people complained their tax too high, yet the poor people wanted the rich to have lower tax? What kind of world we live in?
      4. And look at the poor grass root followers of Sarah Palin, they walked out the meeting chanting �Drill baby drill�, They didn�t look like the CEO of the big oil companies yet they care more about the welfare of the rich than their own. Is that conspiracy or stupidity?
      5. The rich folk like Bill Gate spent half of his wealth on charity, probably thinking he has more money than he knows how to spend. Yet the poor people from the tea party complained that these �job-creators� were punished by high tax... Is that conspiracy or stupidity?
   4. Occam�s razor, why blame conspiracy when all these can be easily explained by the stupidity of common men? It�s not the rich and powerful people who conspire against us, it�s the stupidity of the common mind that conspire against us.

3. Zeitgeist the movie is not about Marxism
   1. It is like arguing intelligent design is not about religion
   2. Technically it may not be Marxism,  but it�s very close to communism
   3. Comparing Marxism to Communism is like comparing creationist to intelligent design
   4. Different but similar. I will give more solid evidence below.

4. Abolishment of monetary system
   1. That I cannot agreed.
   2. Money is only a tool, It�s a little piece of paper that help us to keep the score
   3. Blaming money for all the evil, is like blaming the messenger for the war.
   4. The problem is not money itself but the distribution of money.
   5. Just like in the old soviet, which tried to get rid of money but instead replace it with different sort of coupons.
   6. The only way to change is to change the government who controls money but not money itself.

5. We can build an Utopian City
   1. On paper, it�s very easy to build a circular city, like the one mentioned in the Venus project, because paper is flat. But the real world has mountains, rivers, oceans, desert and jungles�
   2. Who is going to do the governing job? Who is going to do the mundane job? Avoiding the question by saying a robot or a super computer will take care of that is like saying God will take care of everything. Different name, same excuse.
   3. I don�t think it�s impossible; it�s just not in the near future. Eventually we will reach that state, if we don�t destroy ourselves before then.
6. Distribute wealth according to one�s need and centralized resource management
   2. We are already doing that
   3. Health care is like that, sick people receive more resources, healthy people get rewarded less
   4. But according to the movie, after abolishing money, each person should be allocated resources according to his needs.
      1. Tried and failed. Small community like Sontula in Vancouver Island. Big empire like the soviet union. Ancient country like China. All tried these before and failed.
      2. The problem is who is going to decides who need more?
      3. According to the movie, it will be a super computer, but who is going to decide the algorithm of that computer? How to resolve the disputes? What will decide this man deserve an iPhone more than the other guy?
   5. Better stay with what we have and improve and optimize our current system. We don�t need revolution, we just need evolution.

7. From 1970 to 2010, Poverty doubled?
   1. In reality poverty dropped by 80% from 1970 to 2010, mainly because of the modernization of China and India.
   2. Important factors include globalization, market-based reforms, liberalization, Information Age technology, productivity gains in agriculture, and the collapse of central planning in China and India
   3. It is true the LDC (Least Developed Countries) becomes poorer, but the poverty of those countries were mainly due to political, religion, and civil wars, not monetary policy or conspiracy.

8. Money is equal to Debt, therefore it is a Ponzi scheme
   1. Charging interest on money is like making money out of nothing....
      1. That�s why the Christian and Islamic law in the middle age were against charging money for borrowed money
   2. For someone to be in debt, someone else has to own the debt.
   3. Interest is not really generated out of thin air:
      1. In theory, interest payment indicate an increase in productivity
      2. When a farmer borrow money to buy fertilizer, the crops he produced pay for the interest,
      3. A Ponzi scheme does not involve increase in productivity.
   4. Stock market
      1. Stock market is trading debts
      2. Stock market is more than that, it�s keeping the money in circulation.
      3. Just like the water in the fish tank, it has to circulate through the water tank to refresh the oxygen in the water. If you keep the water still, all you get will be a tank of dead fish.
      4. Besides, it also act like kind of social service. People gamble with their money but the money is not really lost, it was built into infrastructure (like optical fibre) or providing free services on the internet. The company may go bankrupt but the infrastructure it built persist.
   5. But yes, I agreed with the movie that our modern monetary system is a bit similar to Ponzi scheme than before, but that�s only because of the deregulations of the banks
   6. So all we need is to fix the system, not to abolish the system. Evolution, not revolution

9. If we spent all our money now, we won�t have enough money to pay everyone
   1. Unless everyone is going to die tomorrow, it won�t happen, and if everyone do die tomorrow, we don�t care.
   2. Human don�t live for today, we always save for tomorrow, in the forms of goods, assets or money.
   3. But yes, a disaster can happen if...
      1. If there is a limited resource
      2. The resource is critical to our survival
   4. For example, if human must drink coffee to survive, and we only have 5 billion cups of coffee for the 7 billion population then the price of coffee will increase astronomically and our monetary system will collapse
   5. Food we have plenty, water is a bit of problem, oil would be our biggest problem
   6. Yes we consume as we do now, we will run into trouble like the movie said, but again, it needs improvement upon current system. Evolution, not revolution.

10. We need to change the world
    1. No, the world is fine, it�s us that is the problem
    2. Our irrational mind is the problem
    3. We need to battle our own irrationality, modify the way we consume and vote.
    4. The battle is within ourselves, and not some hidden sneaky powerful people.
    5. Change ourselves before we change others.
    6. That�s my message, thank you for listening.

Closing:

1. Do we have problem?
   1. We have lots of problem
   2. We maybe living at the end of the golden-age, which was brought about by the advancement of science and technology and the information age.

2. The cause of such downfall is the exhaustion of critical resources i.e. oil, food and water, the monetary policy need a lot of improvements (i.e. not to reward failures with bonuses) but not the total abolishment, and also of human irrationality.
3. What we need is Evolution not revolution.
4. We need to battle our own irrationality, modify the way we consume and vote.
5. The battle is within ourselves, and not some hidden sneaky powerful people.