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For my next guest we bring you a completely
different perspective on the economy.

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Peter Joseph is a filmmaker
and founder of the Zeitgeist Movement

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which is a sustainable advocacy organization.
The movement believes that

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social issues such as poverty, corruption, pollution and war

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are all a result of an outdated
and inefficient social structure.

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They advocate for a new socio-economic model:

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a natural law resource based economy.

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I sat down with Peter earlier
this week to talk about his ideas,

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and I started off by asking him to explain

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what he thinks is wrong with our
current banking system.Take a look!

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— Starting with the banking system and the
financial sector, which

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I would say is a carcinogenic adaptation
of the underlying premise of capitalism,

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the system itself isn't designed
to cater to what we would term

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technical sustainability or social stability.

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In other words, you have something called
market efficiency, which as we all know

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has to do with the movement of money,
the acquisition of efficiency for profit attainment,

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the need to have economic growth
to keep people employed,

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all of these attributes require servicing and
in truth require technical inefficiency.

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So, the more we improve society,
the more we have technology

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that can be used for extended periods,

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the more we adapt our technology, the more
we're able to create sustainable products,

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the more we able to solve problems in other words,

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the less fuel there is to drive market efficiency
and keep the economy going.

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The market economy was basically

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created in the sort a sixteenth-century handicraft premise.

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Adam Smith, for example, never would
have fathomed that we would have

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the largest industry in the world today being the financial sector,

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and people trading and gambling, and having
a gambling casino economy that we have today

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with equities and futures and currencies.

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This is a carcinogenic adaptation
of the underlying premise

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of seeking the widget gain,
as it were from economics 101.

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So it's completely outdated in other words,

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and it's not gonna handle the
problems we have today with

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a billion people starving, three billion in poverty,

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the huge water stress that is rising,
the energy crisis in demand,

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we'll have another billion people
on this planet in another 15 years.

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These stressors will not be resolved by a system

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that actually wants inefficiency to keep it going.

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— Right! Now can you explain to our viewers
what The Zeitgeist Movement is.

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— The Zeitgeist Movement is a
global sustainability advocacy organization

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and, in short, we get to the root
of what is underlined,

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most of the social problems
that we see in the world today,

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from the conflict and social instability
that we see on a daily basis

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to again the core ecological crises that
we also see amalgamating and continuing,

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and what we find is that the route premise
of the social model is at fault.

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Now I wanna make one distinction because

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when you talk about or criticize capitalism,
people are very quick to point fingers.

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Capitalism did not start in the 16th century
even though it was formalized as such.

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The premise of capitalism,
the premise of the market itself

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is this fear of scarcity

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and the necessity to compete and gain advantage
over others because of that fear,

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and this has amalgamated into this
complex system that we have today

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that is literally decoupled from itself,
where people are out trading and gaining

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without any regard for what actually
is relevant to social progress.

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So the movement sees this,
and we also see that we have immense

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problem solving capacities and
technological solutions out there

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that are going unused because
they are simply too efficient

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to be applicable to keep
market circulation going.

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So we recommend what I term a
"Natural Law Resource-Based Economy"

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and this idea simply says that
we need to use the scientific method,

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we need to get down to the root
of what actually creates life-support,

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creates public health, ensures security for the environment,

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ensures social and ecological sustainability,

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and to do so we need to install
a completely different social system

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that actually has that interest in mind,

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and that is an elaborate conversation that

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we can go into at length
but I must stop right there.

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— And I do wanna go into it at length at some point,
but thank you for sound biting it for us.

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But my question is...
— Sure!

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— What happens when economic growth slows
today as compared to what would happen

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when economic growth slows in this
more sustainable society that you envision

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... Zeitgeist Movement?

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— Well that's a very interesting idea because

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you're premising economic
growth in the market context.

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There would be no economic growth
in the same theoretical understanding

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in a Resource-Based Economy.

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Economic growth is basically defined as
the acceleration of money moving

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through consumers and producers and laborers,

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and it's money that circulates, and this is what
keeps growth going and keeps people employed,

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and of course, employment is the
ultimate foundation of an economy.

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If people aren't employed then
they don't get purchasing power

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they can't buy into the system they can't keep this highly contrived cycle going.

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In a new model, in a socially sustainable model
based on the scientific method

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we don't have economic growth, you have actual
tangible production to meet human needs,

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and you use the highly optimized

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sustainability and efficiency protocols, you could call them,
that we have derived from nature

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that says: okay you shouldn't overuse this resource
because it's scarce, we should use

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a high propensity resources that have a
good abundance rather than deplete

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say, rare earth metals for arbitrary purposes such as
cheap cell phones that you can buy for 99 cents,

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that end up in a landfill and are never recycled 
because they're not designed to.

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So, economic growth is a contrivance of thought
coming from the monetary economy

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and I can't even think of a way
it would exist in a new system,

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other than the concept of simply
producing to meet human needs

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in an access type of society
rather than a propertied society;

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which is another point that we can touch upon as well.
So I hope that makes sense.

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It's a market contrivance, economic growth.

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It does but my follow up to that is:

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How would a non-monetary society be more sustainable?

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— Because it would be based on actual
technical premises of sustainability:

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things that we don't do in the monetary system
because market needs turnover,

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market needs inefficiency.

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Again, if you want to have a
very robust market economy

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you need immense amounts of things to service.
I give you an example: Cancer.

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If we resolved cancer, if we're able to
actually go after the lifestyle factors

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the genetic propensities and
stop this massive growth of cancer

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which is continuing on the planet, there
would be billions if not trillions of dollars

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and millions of jobs lost tomorrow
if this actual resolution was put forward.

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So if you if you can extrapolate
axiomatically that example

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to what it would mean to make a car that
lasts a hundred years, imagine for example

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if we had advanced housing structures

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that had advanced production
of produce in our own homes,

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and we also had 3D printing machines
that were based on nanotechnology

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that can produce the basic housewares,

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basically capital goods becoming
consumer goods, in other words.

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What would that mean if we
each of us could go, say, a month

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without buying anything?
The entire economy would collapse.

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So the system is not predicated
on saving, conservation

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or anything that you can, in a
classical sense, would deem sustainable,

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and I'll add one more thing to that
because I think it is adjacent to it,

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and that's the idea social sustainability.

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This system produces conflict.
Its core driving mechanism is imbalance.

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I mean, it's hard to use the word exploitation
because everyone thinks you're Marxist.

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But it's very, very true,
if you're going to do cost efficiency,

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which is the core driver of
saving money in this type of economy,

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meaning that if I start a business, I need
necessarily to maintain competition,

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to pay my laborers the least amount I possibly can

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so I can stay afloat and be competitive,

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outsourcing to Third World
labor or what have you,

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this is inherently destabilizing, because
you're creating immense wealth gaps,

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and again it's this carcinogenic incentive
system that's where we are today

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with one the largest wealth gaps in human history

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and it's only going to get worse,
I'm sorry to say,

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especially when the stressors of the
environmental crises really hit.

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The wealthy are going to
continue to compound their greed -

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greed is based on fear - continue to secure their positions

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and you're gonna continue to see
larger and larger wealth divides

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until, of course, as history has proven,
you end up with probably a revolution of sorts

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which we are seeing periodically around the world
right now for similar economic reasons.