Response to "Zeitgeist: Addendum"

My brother sent me a link on facebook to watch a documentary called "Zeitgeist: Addendum" and wondered what my thoughts where, I spent a lot of time on this response so I thought I might as well post it as a blog.

Here are my thoughts.  The movie had some good things about it and a lot of things that made me want to rip my hair out. I enjoyed the very beginning where it talks about the federal reserve, and I was willing to look over some of the economic illiteracies that I saw such as the term "wage slave" that we libertarians have debated endlessly against when talking to socialists. And calling money "debt" I suppose could be a technical truth but its a fairly manipulative way of putting it.

However as soon as it started to claim that wal-mart destroys small business and machines take the jobs of assembly workers it is clear that they don't even have a basic economic understanding or they are purposely avoiding obvious facts. Wal-mart greatly improves the quality of life in the towns that it goes to. To suggest that "mom and pop" shops have a right to exist is to claim that they have a right to exist at the expense of everyone's interest. This is usually why we condemn monopolies. Also claiming that new technology takes away from other peoples jobs is absurd. New technology has only created more jobs, and improved the quality of life. Also this attack on "monetary-ism" is silly. A medium of exchange is extremely useful and the only way to have an effective economy, perhaps it can even be said that a medium of exchange is a kind of technology.

But even if we ignore that, economic principles are still in effect without a median of exchange. For example, if you lived on an island by your self and you lived by picking berries everyday, you would still be subject to the laws of supply and demand. You would have to pick more berries then you consume or else you would die. Lets say there were two of you on the island. You pick berries and Tim hunts. At first you could simply exchange berries for meat, how ever the more complex your economy gets the less effective this will become, eventually you will need a medium of exchange. This way you can simply BUY the meat from Tim and he can BUY the berries from you.

The best medium of exchange we have ever used in history is gold. Gold is durable, and limited creating a very stable medium of exchange. To call "monetary" the root of all evil is fairly radicals. It is simply a matter of economic law that makes exchange more fluent. They can call it "wage slavery" if they want, in which case I would welcome them to live in middle of no where, with child mortality rates of 75% and see if how much more free they are. Even then they are subject the the laws of supply and demand as I pointed out before. They would simply have a less efficient economy. Period. Just like there are certain ways to be healthy there is certain way to live prosperously. To call living healthy "lack-of-fast-food-slavery" is silliness.

Now to the issue of scarcity. The argument from scarcity is out dated and full of half truths. Some industries are subject to scarcity and prophet from it.  Some do not.  Volvo makes its profits from a lack of scarcity, Ford arguably does not. Also something that cannot be avoided is that scarcity is a fact of nature, not of economics (I mean economics in the sense of an advanced market, not picking berries this time). If Scarcity was not a state of nature then there would be no need for hunting or farming. There are certain ways to optimize our resources around us, and nothing to date has done this better then capitalism, competition, and rational self interest.

True, technology is very useful when making resources more abundant ("monetary-ism" being one of these technologies) but what did technology come from?  It is not some kind of independent entity. It came from competition, capitalism, and self interest which the movie repeatedly condemns.  It did not come from "brotherly love" and I don't really care if it did.  Is the motivation so important?

The movies greatest flaw is that it says technology is great and liberating and free trade is not.  Money and free trade ARE a technology that helps minimize the issue of scarcity. If you don't believe me then simply look at the issue of scarcity under feudalism as compared to capitalism. However I am perfectly open to the possibility that capitalism may become an out dated technology some day.

Many of the issues posed as problems of capitalism and money are not problems of free trade and economics but of a mixed economy. but considering how long this has gone perhaps we can get into that another time.  But in short it is not "money" and "greed" that is the root of all evil, but the legitimization of violence.  Once violence (in the form of government usually) is introduced into the free market it is no longer an extension of human beings and their interests, but the representation of some humans interests taking priority over others.