“It may be thought that we have left out a basic field of analysis – the critique of technology as a prime mover of the globe’s palpable degenerations of live diversity and the life-ground…. [however], the money-sequence program behind the pervasive advances of machine technology is never uncovered. The value logic of ‘development’, ‘investment’, and ‘profit’ in whic technology is always the means, is not itself examined… The regulating principles governing the private and state corporate bodies who plan, produce, implement, and distribute machine technology of every kind are left unexamined. What we are seeing here is a classic case of blaming a tool for what it is being used for.”
new video: “Capitalism: Epic Fail!”
aaron moritz, August 26th 2010Well, that’s pretty much the title. I had to put it in all caps for youtube though. Somehow it seems more appropriate, even though I like the lowercase as well…
Lawrence Lessig: Re-examining the remix
aaron moritz, June 7th 2010This isn’t just about remixes, this isn’t just about copyrights, it’s about freedom to create and share ideas. This talk hits right to the heart of the issue… money, again, but more importantly it explores why this openness is important and inevitable.
Top 25 Censored News Stories for 2009
aaron moritz, March 9th 2010from: http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/category/y-2009/
U.S. Economy Grinds To Halt As Nation Realizes Money Just A Symbolic, Mutually Shared Illusion
aaron moritz, February 16th 2010link – (from the onion, no, sadly it’s not real)
and a few choice quotes.
“The U.S. economy ceased to function this week after unexpected existential remarks by Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke shocked Americans into realizing that money is, in fact, just a meaningless and intangible social construct.”
“U.S. markets closed as traders left their jobs and resolved for once to do or make something, anything of real value.”
“As news of the nation’s collectively held delusion spread, the economy ground a halt, with dumbfounded citizens everywhere walking out on their jobs as they contemplated the little green drawings of buildings and dead white men they once used to measure their adequacy and importance as human beings.”
“Sources at the White House said President Obama was “still trying to get his head around all this” and was in seclusion with his coin collection, muttering “it’s just metal, it’s just metal” over and over again.”
‘“I don’t even know what we were thinking in the first place,” said former banker Nathan Collins of Brandon, MS, as he jimmyed open a door to allow a single mother and her five children to move back into their house. “A bunch of people sign a bunch of papers, and now this family has no place to live? That’s just plain ludicrous.”’
The only thing I didn’t like was the talk about bartering at the end of the article.
China and Google
aaron moritz, January 17th 2010I’m not usually one to praise billion dollar corporations for anything because I think their existence highlights the failings of our crock of shit global money system, but since they’ve turned this into a game, it’s hard not to root for someone. I love Apple because they’re innovators and iPhones and iPod’s kick ass and Mac OS fucking kills Windows. And I’ve always liked Google. Yeah they’re pioneers in a new kind of subversive advertisements, and advertisements are the oil in the unholy engine of doom we call Capitalism, but they give a ton of shit away for free (because of all the $$$ made off that advertising) like Google Docs, Google Earth, Google Maps, Google Wave (which I love just wish more people used it / knew what the fuck it was) and their constantly improving their products, and they’re working to create cheap abundant solar energy. And their new phone almost makes me want to drop my iPhone.
But what they’ve done with this China situation is really a class move, in my opinion. Here’s a link to their blog about it, and I’ll give a quick overview. Google’s servers were hacked, and the personal information of many Chinese human rights activists were targeted. Luckily, not very much information got out. Apparently this got Google’s execs thinking about free speech, and freedom of information on the internet, and they’ve decided that they no longer want to offer a censored search engine for the Chinese people. China has strict regulations on what kinds of information should be available on the internet, and Google has catered to these restrictions with their Google.cn website. Now they’re saying they will offer completely uncensored search in China, or close their operations in that country. It’s a small thing, but I like the sentiment behind it.
Freedom of information on the internet is under attack from all sides because this type of revolution could literally upend the entire social system of the planet, and many people don’t want that. Google is a vocal supporter of net neutrality, and this step in China shows that to some extent their willing to put their money where their mouth is.
universal basic income
aaron moritz, December 23rd 2009i think maybe a decent step between our current stratified monetary paradigm and a truly free and equal society is the idea of a basic income. while it doesn’t solve the psychological problems that come from competition and artificial scarcity, it at least seeks to provide every single person on the planet with a basic amount of money, so that they can live without being forced into unnecessary labour. i think we should take it one step better and start providing people with guaranteed basic resources, such as free water, food, electricity, etc, but any kind of effort is better than no effort, or effort in the wrong direction.
79.9% interest on credit cards
aaron moritz, December 19th 2009Well, the economy has collapsed because everyone is in debt and can’t afford to pay their mortgages and credit cards because in our fractional reserve banking system all money used to pay off interest is created with more interest so we make more money to pay off that interest but then there’s even more interest on that money… it seems like we could never get out of debt… unless… we could charge 80% interest. That would make everything better! Of course!
http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/credit/2009-12-17-subprime-credit-card-apr_N.htm
09.02.2009
aaron moritz, September 9th 2009Money is necessary to motivate people. In an equal society (where everything is available to everyone) people would be lazy and no one would do anything, and nothing would get done. Therefore, no equal society.
Well, there’s that way of thinking, and then there are these facts:
06.06.2009
aaron moritz, June 6th 2009EDIT: (FRIDAY MAY 7 2010) I HAVE FURTHER UPDATED MY UNDERSTANDINGS OF THE MOVEMENT< AND FEEL LIKE THIS ARTICLE DOES NO JUSTICE TO IT. I KEEP IT UP ONLY BECAUSE I WROTE IT AND NOTHING GETS DELETED.
I worked a full time job at my mothers masonry shop every summer from grade 6 until I graduated. Obviously this was not my decision, and I felt it was unfair that I be forced to submit to labour at such an early age. I understand my mother was probably trying to teach me some value or work ethic or something, but it hasn’t quite turned out that way. Now I still hate working, and I still think it’s wrong that I am forced to submit to labour, or that anyone is, at any age.
*this is my zeitgeist movement wrap… my lame interpretation of some inspired ideas that are greatly expanded on if you actually go to the movement website. I’ll try to shut up about it after this.
Now most people say suck it up, that’s just how things are. If nobody worked, then nothing would get done. And that was a completely true and logical statement for a long time. But it’s not anymore. We have the technology to make it so that people don’t have to work. At least not the monotonous, dirty, mind-numbing definition of work we have today. If everything were automated (including machines that service the machines), people would be free to serve mostly a supervisory role. The only reason this hasn’t already happened (the technology exists) is because people need jobs. We have to keep unemployment down because people need money.
Money. We all need money. Because there’s not enough of everything to go around. But an interesting statistic (that I can’t be bothered to look up right now, go research the movement if you want actual
facts…) says basically that the less human labour involved in an industry, the more productive that industry is. Machines can do our jobs much, much better then we can (and this includes government, but I’ll get into that later). So if machines were to do most of the work, they could create enough of everything that we wouldn’t need money. You can have whatever you want. Or more accurately, anything you want would be available to you, because if there is an abundance of everything, there really is no need to own, or hoard our possessions as we do now. This is called a resource based economy. A lot of people say this sounds a lot like communism, and it does, communism was a beautiful idea based on the equal sharing of what was available, just like this is. The essential difference is that communism was based in scarcity, which inevitably lead to power struggles, which lead to dictatorships. With our new technological abundance, scarcity would be a thing of the past. As would government. Where as communism promised a dictatorship of the people, or a true democracy (and that worked out really, really, well), a resource based economy promises the end of government.
We don’t need to have a government at all. Period. The role of the government is to make decisions, and since I’ve already established that machines do our jobs better then we do, it’s time we let machines make the decisions.
Ok, shut the fuck up for a second. I know what you’re thinking, but the matrix, terminator, and battlestar galactica aren’t real. Computers, even complex ones, like the one being suggested as the central decision making force in this society, only do what they are programmed to do. They aren’t going to rise up and fight us. This is a silly science fiction notion that has never proven to have any validity beyond making great entertainment.
No one person can know everything. But a big enough, fast enough computer can. And a computer that has access to all available knowledge, could logically infer decisions that would benefit everyone equally, while maintaining the environment, and all that other good stuff. It would be the end of democracy as we know it (or the election of preselected leaders every few years, with no real say in our own government), but real democracy has never existed. In this new system, people would participate by entering ideas and new information into the central computer, which would allow it to continually improve our society through our ideas. Now don’t mistake to mean that the computer will “govern”, it will make technical descisions about resource allocation, prioritized by user inputted statistics. People will make the social decisions that are relevant to them. It will be continually improved by people entering ideas and new information into it, which would allow it to continually improve our society through our own new ideas. You participate as much as you want, because your needs are taken care of no matter what.
Now to any logical person, this all sounds utopic, or stupid, or generally raises more questions then it answers. It took me a while to come around too, but just watch zeitgeist addendum and ponder what just might be possible for a while, and consider opening your mind to the thought that maybe everything isn’t as terrible as it seems. Maybe things really can change. There is a lot more information on the site. Watch the orientation video, listen to some of the radio broadcasts, read the guide, and check out The Venus Project. Please. I’m fucking begging you.
