IOW, you want us all to believe in your religion.
At least you’re in the right forum for witnessing.
Can you describe how these problems will just be taken care of naturally? What about my no-good cousin, who would prefer to loaf all day? Exactly how does that problem simply go away?
How are GMOs a problem?
And I just don’t see that climate change, pollution, and wars are results of capitalism. I think capitalism is an economic system that helps technological progress go along at a faster rate, but you can’t blame the problems of technological progress on capitalism by itself.
I sympathize with your ideas for very small groups of people, like small bands of hunter-gatherers. They can make a commune system work reasonably well. But not large groups, and certainly not countries.
The conventional wisdom is that these are ills that demonstrate the need for capitalism to be regulated. In standard economic theory, if my competitor pollutes the stream, and I don’t, I am at a competitive disadvantage, which leads to his success and my failure. If a neutral regulatory agency says, “Nobody gets to pollute,” then we’re back on a level playing field.
(“Hello, national metaphor abuse hotline?”)
By now, I think it’s safe to say the OP has an answer to his original question – “Anybody else jumping on the Zeitgeist bandwagon?” That answer is no. Not only has the thread not turned up anyone else who was already on that bandwagon, it doesn’t look like anyone has been persuaded that this is remotely feasible.
If a pro-capitalism booster told you that the market will find a solution to “climate change, pollution, GMO’s in our food among other things, war on a mass scale” without any further detail, would you find it a compelling argument? If not, what makes you think the response you gave above to the massive holes in Zeitgeist will persuade anyone?
OK, but what’s the first action step?
Let’s assume that everyone in the world agrees we should try our damndest to build a post-scarcity, no-money-required world where everyone takes what they need, and contributes what they feel they can.
What’s the first practical stage of the transition? What do we change first?
(and don’t answer ‘hearts and minds’ - I’m talking about the first tangible phase of transition)
My opinion: we research AI, automated manufacturing, and advanced manufacturing techniques; in other words, the basic technologies we’d need to build a fully or near-fully automated economy. Which we are already doing. There isn’t a whole lot else we can do until such research is farther along, since without such technology we simply don’t have the tool to build such a society; nor can we even do much to prepare for one, since we don’t even know for sure what type of technology will ultimately turn out to be workable for the purpose. In other words, it’s rather like trying to plan the switchover to an “information age” economy in the 19th century.
Agreed. The trouble is though, that automation of production is not being done to make us free of the burden of work, it’s being done to free industry of the burden of having employees - there’s nothing especially wrong with that, but it does highlight a problem with the transition; the difficulty of kickstarting a post-scarcity economy without, as an intermediate step, plunging everybody into poverty.
Well, it’s been 3 pages and the OP hasn’t had a meltdown yet. Nor is he a one post wonder. That counts for something.
Scotty:
- Well if your vision has any plausibility, then there’s no reason why it couldn’t be constructed in a small (utopian) community. It’s been tried. But they run into real problems, even with highly motivated and constructive individuals.
1a. But lower your aspirations a little. There are cooperatives that have been huge successes on any metric: many of them are in financial services of all places.
1b. But if you want a better world, you have to care about reality. Given the history of failed attempts at utopia, I opine that those who dodge reality don’t really care about improving matters. Because if they did… they would do the necessary study.
- Actually capitalism is pretty successful: human welfare has made remarkable advances over the past 100 years. And the 100 years before that. Living standards in China and India have improved over the past 30 years. Whether it all collapses in a hot wet death is another matter. http://www.wri.org/chart/population-living-less-than-1-per-day-1981-2004 (I assume that’s adjusted for inflation.)
ETA:
…which implies there’s an ethical mandate for a high-saving / R&D economy, over the medium and long run, allowing for prudence and moderation. That’s not a jab, btw: I’m just making an observation.
ETA2, after reading Mangetout: D’oh!
See, here’s where the problem lies. True, fair and balanced regulation is nearly impossible with money in the system. It’s due to the nature of money and it’s effects on people. People are easily bought and paid for – just take a look at our government. It goes on because everyone else is doing it and we have to compete to survive. It is profit over people at all costs.
So if you’re a businessman, and you can earn 100 million dollars, control resources and take care of your friends and family but it means 100 million poor people who you don’t know are gonna die. Which do they choose? Instead of sharing the suffering amongst the whole group, the businessman will take whats his and say fuck everybody else.
The problem persists and it gets worse and worse.
The first step would be to research and survey everything we need to live. The population, what the average person needs and the resources we have at hand. Then we figure out what the best way is to utilize all of the resources. It is completely based on science, not rhetoric. Science has advanced far enough to make this happen. Capitalism deserves a lot of credit for bringing us this far. But at this point we are beginning to understand the world well enough for us to make this happen, but unfortunately we’re stuck in this outdated system that keeps us dumb, selfish, powerless and fighting amongst each other.
I’ve said before, life is about cooperation not competition. But when money runs everything it only breeds competition and selfishness.
I appreciate that. 
I think the problem is the whole world needs to come around for this to work. You can’t have one nation be capitalistic while another is communist and expect it to work. THe communist will be busy spreading the wealth around and trying to make it work for everybody, while in capitalism wealth and resources will be concentrated in the hands of a few and they’ll have their eye on what the communist have next.
Glorious.
The problem, as has been pointed out by myself and several other people, is that Humans would have to suddenly change to something different. All of us. Human Nature would have to radically change.
Seems a bit of a stretch.
Communism was founded on similar ideas. It failed for the same reasons. People were still people. Everyone did not work for the common good. Everyone saw that if you’re one of the masses, all you have to do is the same as everyone else, because being 10% better doesn’t get you more. Hell, sometimes it just means that you’re the nail that sticks out and you get pounded down. Social status still means everything in these so-called ‘egalitarian’ societies.
So nothing has changed. People are still people. Expecting people to be different and suddenly do things different isn’t going to work. Thus building a philosophy and an ideology based on unrealistic expectations of Human Nature is a fool’s gambit.
Yes it would be nice.
No it won’t work.
So who is this “we” who gets to decide “everything we need to live”? I think it’s safe to say that you’re never going to get universal consensus on this. Some would think that only the basics of food and shelter are all we need. Others might think you need to include a few creature comforts like books and art and color TV. Still others might say you can’t get by without a housefull of appliances. When you can’t get consensus on this first step, then what do you do?
So, you’re basing the entire first step on the scientists. Wouldn’t these be the same scientists that you think are hiding the cure for cancer?
Well shit I gotta say I’m feeling a little disenchanted. Guess were never going to see peace on earth
Oops
This last part is something I hadn’t considered. But I’m curious as to how far it would go. Because people’s memories are only so good. Also, without money as a medium of exchange, value of different goods are open to interpretation. Which will vary almost definitely.
Feel free to elaborate.
What is funny about the Zeitgeist movement is those pictures of circular cities combined with all of this talk about solar power.
Building designed to make efficient use of solar power would be long in the east-west direction.
But they are more interested in being cool and very modern looking. 
psik