ZDAY 2014, Tucson Speech

       Here is a speech that I gave on Sunday, March 16th, 2014 at the first 
annual "ZDAY Tucson" event, or "Zeitgeist Day. I am far from perfect as a 
public speaker and was incredibly nervous, but the information is solid. 
Enjoy 

Click this link to watch the video. It is 29 minutes long.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4vBBV9Wrlc

The topic of the speech was a summary of the 2014 book titled
 "The Zeitgeist Movement Defined". This book is available for sale or

FREE PDF DOWNLOAD at:

 http://www.thezeitgeistmovement.com/orientation

Here is a basic transcript of my speech:

     Hello. I will be talking about the new book that came out this February called
"The Zeitgeist Movement Defined". This 320 page book is available for free
online or can be ordered in paperback on Amazon and other book sellers, at cost.

    The purpose of the book is to give the reader a detailed and informed
understanding of the "train of thought" that the Zeitgeist Movement advocates.
The format of the text is a series of essays, supported by over 800 footnotes and
citations, which source 3rd party research. This allows the reader to do further
learning concerning any of the information if they like.

    The contributions of brilliant thinkers such as Buckminster Fuller, Jaques Fresco,
Jeremy Rifkin, Ray Kurzweil, Nikola Tesla, Carl Sagan and many more are quoted
and sourced for their work towards improving our world.

    So, what is the train of thought of the Zeitgeist Movement, or TZM?
Obviously, I will only be giving a very brief summary due to time, but hopefully
I can cover a few of the most important points and encourage you to learn more.

    Put in a sentence, TZM seeks to spread information and the awareness that our
society is dangerously out of date when it comes to what is possible due to the 
scientific method and technical advances today, in terms of societal and 
ecological sustainability.

     Simplifying things, the Movement's focus can be looked at in 2 main parts.
First, it is important to understand what the most basic, root causes of the 
problems that face our world are today. The second is to realize actual solutions, 
mainly, the need to transition out of a scarcity-driven, competitive market and
into a Resource Based Economic model, or 'RBE'.

    If we really want to understand what the root-causes to the problems today are,
then we have to look at our economic system a what it was designed to do. This
is where the origin becomes clear, as to these root causes.

    The most basic, fundamental rules operating at the core of the capitalist economic
model are; 
-The need for constant growth
- scarcity
-profit
-competition

    These things are important to understand because they are in direct conflict with
sustainability and human well-being. Without constant growth, the economic model 
collapses, as it requires money to be constantly moving around in the economy.
It also requires people to have jobs, so that they can continually buy things, in order
to keep up consumption rates.

    One way to think about this is to picture a company which sells, let's say a toaster...
or really product, but lets just say a toaster. If the toaster is built to last 100 years,
 that company will not have repeat sales and will probably go out of business.So, it is in the companies survival interest,  that they design products which will 
need to be replaced in a predictable amount of time. This business strategy is
no secret and is called "planned obsolescence".

    The consequences of this need for infinite growth were not considered during the 
17th century, when the capitalist ideology was being developed by people like 
Adam Smith and others. However, now these consequences are becoming clear 
when it is pointed out that we live on a finite planet. Nothing can grow forever.

    In many ways, the capitalist model operates with the same principals as a cancer cell.
Cancer cells themselves lack the ability to stop growing and are blind to the well being 
of the organism which they are a part of. It is an interesting analogy.

    According to a study:
          "The excess use of the Earth's resources or 'overshoot' is possible 
          because resources can be harvested faster than they can be replaced.
          The cumulative overshoot from the mid 1980's to 2002 resulted in an 
          ecological debt that would take 2.5 Earths to pay. In a 'business as 
          usual' scenario, our demands on this planet could amount to the 
          productivity of 27 planets by 2050."
Marine Ecology Progress Series, VOL. 434: p 261, 2011

    To understand how things like this can be allowed to happen, it's important to realize
that our economic system is "life blind". Nowhere in the capitalist model is there any 
mechanism to support human well-being or the well-being of the planet. These things
are called "externalities", meaning that they lie outside of the concerns of economic theory,
which simply wasn't designed to deal with any of our life support systems.
    
    This brings me to an even deeper issue of the fact that our monetary system and capitalism 
in particular, is a 'scarcity-based' system. In this system, there is no profit to be made 
from actually solving problems.