Last night I finished watching the New Zeitgeist film titled Moving Forward. I also watched an hour interview with the creator Peter Joeseph (below referred to as PJ). I began some debates on YouTube in the chat section but when it became too late I went to bed. Today I went to see if anyone had replied to me and several had. So I decided to pick one and just unload all of my thoughts on him in a private message on Youtube. Here is that message.

First my Parting words last night:

"night night all... it's been fun here. I think that Peter is right on about a lot of the problems we have. In the end though, as I reflected, I think the causes he elicits are not the whole story. Also, while I'm not saying they are impossible, his solutions are very unlikely to yield the perfect, work free, society proposed. From what is depicted in the film I'd say this is not a peaceful movement either. The "peaceful mob" was not there to deliver a birthday cake at the end. The Plutocrats capitulated because they knew that if they did not. Eventually that mob could kick their butts or at least make their lives hell. @ParadigmShifting. Complying with the masses denotes a pure democracy AKA mob rule. This mean that the rights of the individual are not protected, which means that individuals exist at the whim of the masses. This is referred to as a collectivist philosophy. PJ can say all day that all the -isms are crap.But he is in fact promoting one whether he knows it or not.

Response from ParadigmShifting

"The "right" of an individual to keep the majority of the life giving resources of this planet to himself isn't a right. If thats how you feel then as a member of the masses I say fuck your right. I was born on this planet just the same as you were, what gives you anymore "right" to anything on it than I have?"

My Private message to ParadigmShifting

So then what about my resources. By your argument then if I chop down a tree and use its wood to keep warm you then have a 'right' to that wood? So then you have a right to my labor. Because you were born here do you have a right to my services? To my time? to my person? I don't think so. That is because I 'own' me. My body is sovereign. Meaning I alone control its action and I have a right to protect it from harm. In this resource based economy they never talk too much about human resources. The greatest of all resources. They just say that no one will have to work for anything material. Someone will have to work though. Even PJ admits that... of course they will volunteer their time to maintain the equipment of this world. PJ also implies that people will be left to be creative and invent new things as opposed to the grind of work. So then there will be labor happening. If ownership of one's self is abolished as old fashioned then the collective owns your labor and if a cause is deemed the greater good of the greater number of human resources your human resource can be exploited or even extinguished if necessary. While this sounds like a technological advance this is in fact the most primitive of philosophical systems. With the resources centrally controlled we must ask... who are the central controllers? Will they not abuse their power? "No they will not... because the lust for power will be bread from the human mind!" To that I say. Dream on. The reason this nation remained free as long as it did was because the founders placed limits on the central authority. For the last 100 years or so those limits have been compromised. When asked how we'd make sure to have good men in the central authority Thomas Jefferson said "Speak to me not of good men, we shall bind them in the chains of the constitution".

Power is a tool. Just like any tool it can be used for good or for evil. PJ uses his power of persuasion and media to promote ideas which he thinks are right. If you asked him he'd say that is a good use of power. When designing any system it usually has power centers. If your system depends on moral men to control these power centers then it is doomed to failure. Especially if rights of personal ownership are not maintained meaning that the needs of the majority will rule the individual. In this society the individual has no recourse when the majority speaks, other than begging on hands and knees. If everything is provided to you as a privilege by the resource center or computer mainframe then everything can be taken away as well. Either by force or by accident. When you have a populous dependent on one central system of resource management that system and those who are a part of it are vulnerable to manipulation or control. If individuals are not self sufficient, and have no natural rights, the most fundamental being the right to life (the ownership of one's own body) then individual have no rights. They have only privileges granted them by a higher authority. The nature of privileges dictates that they can be removed from you at any point, this includes your license to live. Also these privileges means that at some level some entity owns the resources of the world. Even if that entity is titled "The People of Earth" if those people at once own nothing, not even themselves, but in turn owns everything, including others you have a paradox. The power to control all of the resources will have to be delegated. PJ states this. That it will be managed by a central earth nervous system. This system will own the resources and decide what to do with them. Ok, perhaps you'll say it will not 'own' anything because no one will 'own' anything... Well then I'll just leave it at what PJ says. The system will monitor, allocate, optimize and delegate the resources of the earth. With the collective right to the resources of the earth delegated to the system the individual is left with no rights at all then. Since ownership of one's self or anything is passe. So even though the majority lives "as if EVERYONE on Earth has a six figure income", as one commenter posted last night, they have no rights. Thus they are nothing more than slaves to this system. House slaves, granted... but slaves non-the-less. The typical response to this would be. You just have not learned enough about the Venus Project. You need to go to their website and see what it's all about. You need to watch this video or that interview. You need to get more educated. To that I'd say, I've seen the 3 movies. I've reviewed several interviews with PJ, hours worth. I have read their posts on The Venus Project's site. It all sounds very nice but it is plain to see that there are oversights. Such as those listed above.

One of the main links on The Venus Project's page is "A New Social Design". Social design is not a new practice. Time and time again brilliant great men have proposed new social designs to bring prosperity as solve the problems of our culture. It is these very designers who have ruined our society today. The central economic planner such as the central banks of the world and those who attempt to manage economic industries and resources are constantly mis-allocating resources. The Venus Project says that they will be different because they will use science. Well... our power centers today base everything on science. The scientists are bought and paid for though and if in a moneyless, Venus Project, society you say that cannot happen then you cannot be talking about the same human species which I am. Persuasion does not die with money, especially is a society where individuals have not rights. I would recommend that Venus Project members read "The Law" by Frederic Bastiat. It was written in 1850 but is still one of the best works of social literature ever published. It is short and can be read in an afternoon. I cannot tell you what to believe, because you own your own mind, and you can continue to believe in the noble ends of the Venus Project. I just beg of you please look closely at the means to that end. Please consider that their computer system will have to be programmed by flawed humans and that we don't know everything about our Earth. Technology has been a foundation stone of human material progress over the eons. However, progress and technological discovery was never greater than after a group of philosophers decided that the rights of the individual are supreme and innate in society. Anyone who violates those rights, no matter the ills or perceive nobility of their cause, will be held accountable. They realized that no group should have rights beyond the rights of the individuals who make up that group. At that time we saw the greatest advances the world has ever known. Do not misconstrue these statements to say that I believe that this is the society in which we live now. For it is not. These ideas have been gradually eroded ever since their inception by our common enemies. That is another story though. Please consider what I've said here.