The 3rd Zeitgeist movie is out and has been on YouTube since January 25. It’s getting about 100,000 hits a day so it’s going viral. If you haven’t heard about it yet, you will.
‘Zeitgeist: Moving Forward’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z9WVZddH9w Note: it’s long at 2 hr. 42 min.

I highly recommend the first Zeitgeist movie although it’s difficult to find in full length with audio as the audio has been disabled. However, it is available in the following separate parts and it does an excellent job of covering the fraudulent origin of Christianity and exposes 9/11 and the evil of the U.S. Federal Reserve. Google ‘Zeitgeist’.

However, I find the latest Zeitgeist movie very disturbing. Ok, let’s not mince words: it’s a load of propaganda and BULLSHIT!

‘Zeitgeist: Moving Forward’ starts with an explanation of human behavior based on genetics and biology. As I am not a scientist I cannot critique the science.

However, those of you who have followed my economic commentary over the years, know that I am fearless in critiquing economics (my current study), and political science (my previous major). In describing many of our modern economic and social failings, the movie commits every logical fallacy in the book; straw-man arguments, misrepresentation, non sequiturs and argument from authority to name just a few. Furthermore, the gross errors are glaring and highly suspicious of a nefarious motive.

In the first place, there is no room for dissenting opinion. A movie more than two and a half hours long has considerable room for other opinions so it does not pass the propaganda smell test.

A ‘straw man argument’ is one that distorts or misrepresents another person’s position. The movie blames the philosopher John Locke for today’s unequal distribution of wealth because Locke supported private property. History has taught us to always be suspicious of the elimination of private property (more on this later.)

Another example of the movie’s failing is it’s misrepresentation of Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” which is a metaphor; that in a free market everyone pursuing his own self-interest is in the best interests of the community as opposed to someone else making your choices for you. The movie misrepresents the “invisible hand” as God as immanent and extrapolates that as an acceptance of the death of ‘surplus’ children.

The movie is guilty of endless Non Sequiturs – that’s Latin for “it does not follow” – in other words it reaches conclusions not based on its premises. That’s like saying one plus one equals two therefore the sky is green. The mathematical premise is valid but the conclusion does not follow. The entire movie is one big Non Sequitur.

Using a journalist to explain sociological phenomena is an example of the ‘argument from authority’ fallacy. Why not use a real sociologist? I could go on and on listing fallacies but this gives you a few of the many errors throughout the movie.

Blaming Austrian School of Economic theorists like Hayek and Von Mises for today’s global economic problems is more than just an insult since our current problems are the result of governments’ misguided Keynesian economics. The Austrians can’t be blamed as they are a powerless voice in the wilderness. They believe in responsibility – actions have consequences and there is no free lunch. Had governments followed the Austrian school we wouldn’t be seeing the current global economic melt-down.

The movie admits that Adam Smith’s ‘old style’ of capitalism worked when it produced real goods. Then, without any explanation, it wants us to believe that capitalism is responsible for today’s distorted economies without once admitting that it is governments who removed the gold and silver basis of money thus allowing the unrestricted creation of credit and today’s debt bubble. No blame is assigned to government regulatory agencies turning a blind eye to the proliferation of trillions of dollars of toxic financial instruments such as derivatives that are created out of thin air and worth about as much. How can you blame capitalism? There is no more capitalism; it’s dead. Today there is only government intervention and manipulation of markets, crony capitalism and financial oligarchs. There is no mention of governments as serial bubble-blowers with its price control of money (low interest rates) creating ever larger bubbles and the ultimate bubble of all; the largest debt bubble in history. In case you’ve forgotten; all bubbles burst and the bigger the bubble …

As flawed as the movie is in describing the cause of our current sorry state of affairs, it’s real danger is its solution. In other words, it’s prescription is even worse than it’s description. So what is its solution? Why, good old Communism! Of course, it doesn’t call it that. It calls it Resource Based Economics (RBE) which advocates central planning, the elimination of private property and the abolition of money. Karl Marx said the theory of Communism can be stated in one sentence. “abolish private property”.

It has been said that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Either the producers of the latest Zeitgeist movie have failed to learn from history or they are the pawns of the New World Order (NWO) and one-world-government. Let’s briefly examine the three tenets of RBE.

The Soviet Union is not the only example of the failure of central planning. History has shown that centrally planned economies are responsible for more deaths than even Nazism – for instance; China 65 million, U.S.S.R. 20 million, Cambodia 2 million, North Korea 2 million and counting, plus Afghanistan, Vietnam and others.

What about the elimination of money and private property? That too has been tried countless times and has always ended in major tragedy. Russia between 1917 and 1921 resulted in economic collapse and the starvation of millions of people. Anarcho-Communists tried it in Spain in the 1930s, the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia in the 1970s produced mass starvation and genocide and New Harmony in Indiana was one of several American attempts at utopia that produced mass starvation and death. If insanity is doing the same thing over and over and hoping for a different result, then the producers of the latest Zeitgeist movie are clearly insane. A society without money, ruled by a small elite with all goods held in common is as old and flawed as Plato’s ‘Republic’.

However, the producers of Zeitgeist want us to believe we can overcome the shortcomings of the past utopian attempts. How? With computers. Don’t laugh. They mean it. Isn’t it ironic that those who have the greatest faith in computers are those who know the least about them? But, don’t worry, they’re going to use super-fast computers to overcome what is known as the Economic Calculation Problem; how to best allocate scarce resources. Who sets these quotas? Why, the government of course! It is extremely naïve to believe this will prevent the Tragedy of the Commons which is the depletion of a shared resource (an example is the depletion of fish stocks in international waters). Let’s briefly examine this. In the computer world, the acronym GIGO stand for Garbage In, Garbage Out. This applies not only to data but to programming. Just as bad data produces garbage so does flawed programming. What are the parameters of the programming, what values are used and how are they determined? All that super-fast computers will do with garbage programming is churn out garbage faster.

I could go on and on and write a book about this but no one would read anyway. I’ll leave it to the intelligence of the Zeitgeist audience to form their own opinions. I hope they wear their critical thinking caps. The fact that the movie is going viral, however, is frightening and proves once again that there is a sucker born every minute. So far, there seem to be about 2 million of them. And, counting. Don’t be one of them!

Gerold

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