My name is Joe Alexopoulos, and it's my pleasure to be here today

to speak to you on behalf of The Zeitgeist Movement

and to talk about The Evolution of Economics:

A present 'MAD' economy

versus a Resource-Based Economy.

Before I get into that,

I want to tell you just a little bit about my background, who I am.

I actually went to school here at USC; I got my MBA here.

I am a certified financial planner and a certified fraud examiner,

and I work in Century City

as an investment manager for wealthy individuals,

and as their personal financial planner and advisor.

As a hobby, I like to ride a bicycle around on long-distance solo trips

and on those trips, I like to critically think about

our socio-economic system as it is today, and as I see that it can be

as I've learned through understanding what the tenets and principles

of a Resource-Based Economy are.

However, to be able to fully appreciate and comprehend

what we have today: a present MAD economy,

and to be able to understand and appreciate

what the tenets and principles of a Resource-Based Economy are,

we kind of need to step back and outside

of our comfort zone and our perceptions.

So much so, I can kind of illustrate it best

if we were to travel in a time machine and go back 500 years ago or so

to when people used to think that the earth was flat;

and not only that, back then

Copernicus had the outrageous theory and idea

that wait: Maybe the Earth goes around the Sun

and it's not the other way around.

You see, perhaps maybe your point-of-view is so narrow,

that perhaps maybe it's backwards.

The relationship you have with money is a relationship you will have

before you're born, throughout your entire life and even after you're dead.

But just maybe, the way that you have been perceiving and understanding

the socio-economic monetary system today

is not quite the way it really is.

Just like as if we were all back 500 years ago

and I was Copernicus, and I was telling you

that the world is round, and it's not flat

and maybe the earth goes around the sun,

you'd all go "Joe, look, you're crazy, you're nuts!

Let's get up really early. We'll go down to the beach.

We'll watch that sun come on up on the East.

You'll see that the sun goes around the Earth

and it settles over in the West.

So, you know, end of story. We don't need to talk about this any more.

Clearly we can see that the sun goes around the Earth,

and if you still don't get it, Joe,

then we're going to take you up on top of the mountain,

and you can look as far as you want. Look, the Earth is flat, you moron. It's flat!

You know, come on! You need to go out on a boat?

We'll go for a sail ride. I'll show you. It's flat!"

But maybe, just maybe that small fraction,

that alternative way of looking at things, using your imagination,

perhaps is the correct way to look at

the socio-economic model you live in today.

So, what I am asking you to do is to go on a bit of a journey.

Pretend you were back 500 years ago

and pretend that the information that you're going to hear,

you're going to judge the information based upon the quality

of what it is: Does it make sense,

not based upon where it's coming from

whether it's MSNBC or something like that?

See, information ... your perceptions and values are shaped

by the environment you live in and the experiences you have had.

Take for instance the way that I am dressed.

All of you think a certain way of me

and I notice this, depending upon how I'm dressed,

on your perceptions. See this thing,

it's called a tie, if you will,

is really a metaphor for what I consider a social leash.

The moment that you put a tie on,

you take yourself off, and you put on the behavior,

values, beliefs and understandings of the institution

that is making you put that on today.

So, perhaps the way you're seeing and perceiving things

is as if you've got a tie on;

and so, let's loosen it up a little bit.

Let's even go so far, let's take the tie off, all right?

Let's reconnect our minds to our hearts

and gather a little bit more of a better understanding

of the way this world works.

No, we're not going to get that far but I just want to make a point!

I just want to make a point that the information I am giving you

shouldn't be because I went to school here and have an MBA

and studied macro- and micro-economics.

It shouldn't be because of what I do. It should be because it's true.

Information always goes through three phases.

Truth does. At first it's ridiculed

like "Joe, the Earth, it's not round, OK?

The sun isn't the center. We don't go around that."

It was made fun of! OK?

But after it's made fun of, and it's violently opposed and hated,

eventually it's widely embraced as truth.

So, what I'm asking you to do is to put your beliefs aside for a moment.

Try and not believe everything you've been told

because your beliefs not always are correct.

You have to appreciate in the middle of the word 'belief' is a bit of 'a lie'.

Your being's on one side, your life's on the other;

and in between, well, maybe it's not what you thought.

So, with all of that said, what is a MAD economy?

A MAD economy is what we live in today

and it's known as 'M'oney 'A's 'D'ebt.

All money:I don't care if you use US Dollars, Euros,

Shekels, Francs. You pick it, doesn't matter.

It all comes from a centralized banking institution.

Over here in circle 1 is what we have: the genesis of money today.

DIG: Debt, Interest, and with debt and interest,

add in a little bit of time, what do you get? It Grows,

this circle here, if you will.

In order to pay the interest on the DIG, you've got to create profits;

but a profit, if you think about it, or creating a profit on something,

is very much akin to a debt. When you create a debt

and you ask for interest, the interest doesn't exist.

The person has to artificially go out and inflate prices

or whatever to pay the interest.

When you go and you build something or invest, there's a cost.

Say you build a building or something, you sell it for a profit.

The profit is just as fictional as the interest.

While the DIG implies growth and this one keeps growing,

then this one has to keep charging more money

or inflating its prices to pay for the more interest.

It just goes round and round and round,

and in order to keep it going over on this side

where all of us have to run around,

we're actually in the business of creating problems for profit.

We're not in the business of solving problems;

we actually can't afford to solve problems today.

Take for instance, if you're a pharmaceutical company,

and you actually cure something, after your patent runs out in 17 years

and then your competitors can get in and the price drops. The price drops and you...

or even better yet, it's like smallpox and you cure everybody.

Guess what? You're out of business! We can't do that.

We can't actually employ people in real, full-time, all-meaningful jobs.

We have to do a lot of what I call 'needless complexity' in the finance,

legal, banking, insurance,

because 'fake make-work' jobs work like

an economic leech on the actual productivity of goods and services

of the actual productive part of the economy.

What that does by burdening those systems: with that it inflates the price

or it pushes the price up so that the profit can be bigger

so it can go back, and it goes 'round and 'round; but the net effect,

as this goes 'round and 'round and 'round,

it holds the standard of living down.

It holds back new technologies

because if a new technology destroys an existing profit model,

we sweep that under the rug;

or if a new technology is too expensive

or doesn't make a profit right out of the gate,

we don't do it! So, think about it.

You've got billions of people entertaining this stuff over here:

needless complexity, problems for profit, fake make-work and make it to break

and in the middle (it was there earlier, OK,

I think some of you saw it; we can play the tape back);

but in the middle the real crime here, the real waste,

it's not just the pollution and everything else like that,

it's the wasted lives. It's the time,

and the most profound thing that we lose,

and it's this one here in the middle (same as on the other one)

the biggest thing we lose are ideas.

Ideas are the predecessor of new technology

that lifts the standard of living.

We're wasting billions of lives, trillions of hours and ideas

that would elevate our standard of living

to a level that is truly unimaginable today.

Just in the same way someone from 500 years ago

couldn't even grasp the concept of the Earth being round,

imagine trying to explain a cell phone call.

All of us are just that primitive today

because these billions of ideas are not coming to fruition

in the MAD economy that we live in.

So, if we can switch gears,

if you can go on that mental journey and change your perception,

take the tie off

and appreciate the tenets and principles of a Resource-Based Economy,

you will see that we can turn it around and we can start moving forwards

instead of the other way, backwards.

As a result, our socio-economic system doesn't hold ideas back

and keep the standard of living and technology down.

It supports it and lifts it

to a higher, unimaginable standard of living;

and what's really interesting, if we start this thing up,

fire it up like a lawnmower,

we begin by surveying, tracking and determining the needs that we have.

Then we move on. We set up production, distribution, look at feedback of that;

and what's really interesting, is with the technological advancements

during the transition... The transition from a monetary

or a MAD economy could happen naturally

if we actually fully embrace the technological advances we have today.

If you come up with an idea which then leads to a new technology

which is labor-saving, and it reduces the cost,

if we actually had a completely free market

that wasn't retarded by having to make profit

(which is fictional just like to pay the fictional interest on a fictional debt)

it would drive the prices way down to the point where it would be like

[deeply inhales] taking a breath of fresh air.

Whereas if you could get the cost of something like a breath of fresh air,

where it costs absolutely nothing for me to consume it,

or procure it to the point of consumption,

there's no reason to bother accounting for it with money or prices.

You see as technology rises, you can push prices down.

If the billions of ideas that are out there

were to manifest themselves and become a reality,

we would just sweep money right out because it would become irrelevant.

We would embrace hyper-deflation. That's what we want.

We have, because of the old system,

a chronic, gross and a horrific case of what I call VD:

a Value Disorder, where our values are backwards.

We put profit above everything else.

We actually have a disorder in our mind in thinking that:

Oh my God, the unemployment rate has reached nearly 10%!

That's a crazy way to think about things.

Shouldn't you actually think that:

Wait a minute, the reason to go to work is not to have to do it again!

It's to go there and get the job done so I can move on to something else.

We should be thinking:

We need to get our technology, our processes and our efficiency so high

that, oh my God, it's the employment rate that reached 10%!