TZM Spain Response to "October 15th - United for Global Change"

The Zeitgeist Movement in Spain wishes to express its fraternity with those whom on October 15th have united for global change.

Something is wrong with a world where 20% of the population owns 80% of the wealth, and 34,000 children die every day due to poverty and preventable, or easily treatable, diseases. In a world where abundance, respect, and justice are possible, allowing scarcity, violence and injustice is a crime against humanity.

This cannot just be part of "human nature." These thoughts are always in the minds of people who demand real change.

A change in what direction? It's time to reconsider whether the foundation of our socioeconomic system - based on competition, marketing, and money - provides solutions for human needs, and is socially and environmentally sustainable. In short, it's time to analyze the root of those problems... and to act accordingly. If the market is based on profit maximization, wealth concentration and inequality, obtaining benefit from real or artificial scarcity, if the financial system is a speculative bubble generator, if today's politics are for sale and politicians are mere agents of the system that reinforces the status quo, the original question will have to be asked again: Where is this change headed?

It is also time to analyze the key to change. Is it in the traditional ways of activism, centered around protests? Is it in the political game? In searching for new leaders? Or perhaps the real change is about changing our ways of interacting in the current system, overcoming fear, conformity, and ignorance, while taking strategic measures to build something new.

Real change.

The system we propose is called a Resource-Based Economy, and it's a very different way of understanding society, the relationships between its members, the way to satisfy people's needs, and develop solutions to problems. The current monetary system is based on the scarcity of various goods and services, but this scarcity is artificially perpetuated by money; it's fictitious. There are abundant resources on this planet, and thanks to the current technological developments we could create an abundance of sustainable goods and services, so that all people in the world could enjoy a high standard of living. Also, thanks to automation, all of these could be made without the need for repetitive human labor, including degrading or even dangerous jobs. All people could devote their time to fulfilling their passions, maximizing every individual's potential. Also, all of this could take place while respecting the environment, maintaining dynamic equilibrium with nature, and avoiding the possibility of making this valuable planet we all live on uninhabitable.

If we have the technical capacity and we have the natural resources to do it, the question that immediately arises is: Why don't we do it? For too long this monetary system has shown its inefficiency and un-sustainability at every level. It is time to evolve as a species towards a system which renders the use of money obsolete, getting rid of all the distortions it causes. We don't deserve anything less than the best we can imagine.

- TZM Spain

The Zeitgeist Movement is a global activist group that works toward well-being and social progress through the application of science and technology. It has approximately a half-million members, in 1,100 groups worldwide. We recognize the world as a unique system and mankind as a singular unit, sharing a common habitat.

www.thezeitgeistmovement.com
www.movimientozeitgeist.org