Rap News channels Zeitgeist director Peter Joseph and futurist Jacque Fresco for a battle royale against Rep. Ron Paul.
As the Great Recession brings out protesters from Lower Manhattan to Greece and India, alternatives to today’s greed-based economy are again in the air.
Two of the most popular ideas, each with an über-popular cult following online, play at far poles of the spectrum of Plan B schemes to free the peoples of the world from the oppression of corporate control.
In the first corner, extreme libertarianism and the nostalgia for a simpler time before the Fed, fiat currency and government red tape when markets were free and money was gold. And in the second corner, a sparkling vision of a utopian future of shiny-glass, circular cities planned out and managed by science.
It’s gold. No, it’s computers.
Ron Paul, Texas Congressman and once-again GOP presidential contender, has become the current face of a decades-long movement to abolish the Federal Reserve Bank, bring back sound money and cut government regulations that favor the big boys. All this to unleash the power of truly free markets that would help the middle class and small businesses.
Meanwhile, director Peter Joseph’s three Zeitgeist documentaries have gained a following for techno-prophet Jacque Fresco, who thinks that the globe can free itself from the dictatorship of moneyed interests and the market economy they control by putting human affairs into the hands of a super-computer that would rationally and fairly manage all nations’ use of natural resources.
In Rap News Episode #9, Robert Foster at The JuiceMedia has pitted a Zeitgeist super-computer robot against a Ron Paul gold-standard robot. It’s a battle royale for the future of the economy and the winner is…love?
Foster wraps up his witty and insightful rap by suggesting that the only way to save the economy may be to kill it. Not so different than what ecological economists like Herman Daly or Richard Heinberg have told us already, that we may be reaching the permanent end of economic growth. But this time, you can dance to it.
Watch the video and smile. Then think about it.
— Erik Curren, Transition Voice
Yeah, I’ve been watching the Zeitgeist stuff, too. Once again, the two ‘sides’ of this are omitting the one problem which is at the root of human logic as the destroyer: “What are people FOR?”
If a grand scheme doesn’t come up with a way for humans to be generous rather than consumptive, it is still a self-destroying plan.
Fresco’s pretty drawings and magic computer look perfect on the surface, but underneath, we all know that the computer would decide that humans are wasting resources and eliminate us. (Welcome to SkyNet, where the future factory staff consists of a man and a dog).
Libertarians continue to fall for the Invisible Hand Job that wants everyone to believe that we will somehow make the world “Magically Delicious” at a bargain price, if only we didn’t have to conform to social contracts.
John Galt’s gulch would be an economic disaster of epic proportions: with mountaintop removal, slag heaps left and right, and women working as kitchen slaves and keeping their mouths shut when their Manly Husband comes home to “have his way” with her.
Personally, I blame religions for convincing people that God will decide what their purpose is in life, rather than teaching people that it is NOT alright to “go forth and multiply” or to conquer other people to prove one’s Divine Right of Kings (philosophies born of plagues and crusades killing off the working classes).
Every species can be evaluated based on how it affects the soil and the microbes which bring forth the nutrients of all life on this planet. We should be looking downward for our justifications, not upward to ‘leaders’, ‘destiny’, governments or empty space.
Evil: any action taken based on unquestioned belief.
In other words, “If you can imagine it, you can screw things up with it.”
You again made me smile, Auntigrav. “Libertarians continue to fall for the Invisible Hand Job that wants everyone to believe that we will somehow make the world “Magically Delicious” at a bargain price, if only we didn’t have to conform to social contracts.”
When are you going to do a column for us?
Belated thanks for a *great* article, and especially for introducing me to the work of Robert Foster. For lack of a better term I’ve come to think of myself as a “conservative libertarian” so parts of both Ron Paul and Zeitgeist appeal to me (and I’m pretty much disgusted with generic Republican-Democrat offerings). Robert’s rap take-off on their ideological flaws, fallacies and paradoxes was icing on the cake. Next…more reading on Transition News! (-;
Glad you enjoyed Robert Foster. We love Rap News. They always seem to hit the right tone of satire balanced with admiration and they seem to spare no one.