Skeptic Project

CyborgJesus wrote:

Create a new business, pull all resources from old business to the new one w/o customers noticing. Problem solved.

This could only happen if this particular social system did not have non-anonymity as a fundamental rule/social need. But with non-anonymity, members of society would still know the individuals associated to the older business that they had bad experiences with and to continue to preference against them. Don't get me wrong, I am for certain fundamental rules known as "Social Meta-Needs" so social and economical interactions can be fair and optimal. It is just not with the idea to condemn companies who may turn out to be big or have a very huge market share due to success.

Only if they don't desperately need the product, like oil, food or electricity.

Even for such things there are still alternatives and still the possible action for more providers even if the people choose to still go with the current *efficient* monopoly until they find another one or create their own.

When your company can afford the best advertising and run negative over months before seeing profit? No small competitor can do that.

No guarantees of unending profits and unending success for both an efficient monopoly or a small competitor. Even running in negative for months can last longer where investors or co-owners may choose to pull their money out and jump ship.

Even if you could (and you can't), why not just team up with the big guy and sell for his price? Much more profit in that, and you just share the market and kick all other guys out.

Because you will have to split up your profits, which can turn out to be an opportunity cost. In addition, you may have less say if you join the "big guy". Furthermore, it is possible you can become the "bigger guy" if your product is viewed better and affordable with the population.

The only way to stop any of this is by government intervention.

And this same government intervention can enable it far worse than what you describe. So, why not let a population's Social Preferencing do the deciding of who is worthy to be big, small, and where there will naturally have variety for many things anyway?

CyborgJesus wrote:

Only if you don't use people to cloak it for you. It's not like this is a new concepts - you'll find numerous people that were either paid for their signature or simply made up before we had the opportunity to use LLCs and Holdings as we please.

People using others to cloak a service for them implicates a contract/agreement. And part of the SMN theory I mentioned about non-anonymity includes having Valid Contracts registered publicly. Therefore, if such person decides to have others cloak their services for them, doing it secretly is high risk in those same people just ditching them and taking all their money, in which the original owners can't charge them for theft or fraud since their cloaking agreement was done invalidly (not registered). Furthermore, a society that utilizes this non-anonymity will have businesses individualized rather than institutionalized as corporate fictions like LLCs and so forth.

What's the alternative to food&water? Or to gas if you gotta head 30 miles to work w/o public transportation?

With food and water, that's where the statement "possible action for more providers" comes in. With food, alternatives would deal with types of food and sources of food people possess and can make. In the same manner of transportation, different types of transportation and energy sources for them. With water, alternatives will deal with sources. No matter how big a company is, they won't own all the sources of these things since other "property owners" exist and there are also unclaimed resources out there to be tapped.

That's like saying "Sure, you're competing with your raft against my steamship, but we both could sink".

Sure, and I see no problem here if both parties can happily get from point A to B. Furthermore, when it comes to business, the race is not for the swift nor for who is bigger in size, but for who can endure.

You can do exactly the same when you join a cartel. Just keep both your prices at maximum and keep increasing your own quality. When you excel and gain more popularity, offer to buy up your competitor. Where's the evil genius in you?

You still can't ignore opportunity costs here. Keeping your prices at maximum could lead to lost of sales and consumers. Moreover, keeping your prices real high creates incentives for someone else to step in and charge lower. Thus, being an evil genius in that manner could actually have one being stuck on stupid.

How? Patents? How are people supposed to invest anything in R&D if I can just go and copy it?

You still possess the intangible idea to research in it anyway. Moreover, it will still take funding and resources to make the idea a reality. Others duplicating it gives higher potential for competition as far as innovating the same idea and seeing it being sold at competitive prices. And guess what, this will help minimize the potential of the same efficient monopolies you don't like!

CyborgJesus wrote:

Try reading some books about business criminality, maybe that cures your faith in contracts. You don't give your cloak access to anything, you just use their name. Risk is as low as it can get.

With the Valid Contract of the SMN theory I mentioned, I even forgot to mention that the person cloaking for you is putting their self at risk too where if they were to get sued for violating the service agreements they have with customers and if they have access to nothing like how you put it, you can just ditch them too since you have no Valid Contract with them also and the cloakers will still be liable since they would be the ones registering their own names for the business you want to use their cloaking for. You can say, I will just pay the restitution for them, but they will be just going by words and not by a registered public agreement, which would of include your identity. So a person will not be so quick to do this if he/she is liable to restitution with customers and the agreement they have with you as far as cloaking is invalid. Moreover, if word gets out that they were cloaking for you, it only adds more stains to your own identity, and reputation when you could of just advertised to the public of you being a better business owner and proving it with your service. In addition, the money you spent for cloaking could of been money you could of just saved and use to build a better reputation with your service and public identity. So I see no reason why a thoughtful business person would go that route in a transparent social system, especially when they still have the opportunity to build back up their reputation and where this better reputation can attract more customers, and more potential profits.

Check up on the SMN theory and the NSC model contract to get the gist of what I'm saying with the non-anonymity of Valid Contracts.
http://selfsip.org/fundamentals/socialmetaneeds.html<br /> http://selfsip.org/solutions/NSC.html</p>

That's as unspecific as the typical TZM nonsense.

Nope, I mentioned specific type of consumables and I am not stating anything inconsistent with the reality of no one company or person owning everything. Different property owners of many things exist. That is a fact.

1) Dominate every affordable source of your resource (i.e, buy the best farmland)

"Best" is subjective. Moreover, you are only applying wishful thinking that the person *WILL* dominate or own every affordable source. No guarantees they will dominate or dominate forever.

2) Once somebody enters your market (buys mediocre farmland), offer to buy him up and pay him a bit more than he's earning today, adjusting his prices to your own will make it worth it

Still one-sided wishful thinking and assumptions here. Because one, subjectively, the farmland may be not be mediocre to the person who enters the market. Two, you have to question if you will truly be able to afford to pay him more, and if he will accept your offer. Plus, even if they were to cooperate with you and you can afford to do so, that still does not mean there will be no other competitors or no potential of other competitors cooperating to challenge you.

3) If he declines, lower your price so he can't survive in the same market (if he needs $500/mth and sells 10 goods for a profit of $50, lower your price to <$50. You'll either make enough profit through your volume (selling 1000goods in the same period) or you'll have made enough money in the past to live of that.

If there are more big fish in your market, open a cartel like OPEC and discuss the best prices for all of you.

But who says lowering your price will make you survive yourself? You just shooting one sided assumptions when there are other factors that could make things turn out differently pertaining to the minds and circumstances involved like expenses (acquiring a new company and taking on their expenses is one too), quality, and other competitors that can still challenge you. Moreover, lowering your price does not mean people still would not have preferences for your competitor if quality and reputation is in question, which can make them see if something is worth the higher price. So this appeal to fear of an efficient monopoly are just one-sided assumed scenarios and as if people just look at prices exclusively to determine to buy something. Different "big" businesses cooperating to sell things also means the possible action of different big and small businesses cooperating to compete against them still.

See above for reasons why nobody will be able to do that, if you do your job correctly.

See above why even if you do so, the opportunity is still there for others to compete against you and where there is no guarantee of your plan of buying up competitors reaping you continued success or for you to have success alone.

It's not about the intangible idea, it's about regaining my investment.If I invest $200M to figure out nuclear fusion, and license the idea out for 15% of profits, I make a lot of money. If I do the same thing and everyone can go and put up small plants for 2-10M and compete with mine, I don't make any money (if I even get my 200M back!), so I'll rather use the $200M to build myself a few monopolies.

The intangible idea is also a part of the process. It takes blueprints and abstractions to formulate what you want to manifest as a product or invention. Once you sell this product, it becomes public where others can just examine your product and emulate the concept of it to sell their own or buy the parts to build their own even if you have $200M to set up a lot of shops.

Looking forward to see how those topics develop, thanks for posting!

This one post by one, 'franklee' is what I would expect most of the replies to end up sounding like, but who knows, we'll see.

"We, should commend him for having the balls to ask the questions we were too afraid to ask, out of fear we sat in silence, while brave men like him and Charlie Sheen stood up and asked to tough questions that still have not been answered."

The questions have only 'not been answered' because the answers don't fit their narrative.

I love how "the movies arent the movement" quickly gets thrown out the window when you ask them to reject pro 9/11 conspiracies, suddenly its what wakes everyone up and important.

http://www.thezeitgeistmovement.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_kunena&Itemid=99999&func=view&catid=231&id=285058&limit=10&limitstart=10#287200

WTC7 !!! SEE IT WAS DEMOLITION BY EXPLOSIVES, YOUTUBE IS THE SMOKING GUN

Yup, Alton. In fact, the thread already has a truther in there... links and all! Apparently this truther is also an anti-vaccination fellow too.

Hi All, as promised I have returned. Also in my efforts to promote change within the movement and promote further discussion on our assocaition with the 9/11 topic I posted a question on my chapter forum about a week ago. To date I've received no response. I then reposted it on the global forum. You can follow both here:

http://www.thezeitgeistmovement.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_kunena&Itemid=99999&func=view&catid=231&id=285058&limit=10&limitstart=10

https://zeitgeistvancouver.com/index.php?option=com_kunena&Itemid=2&func=view&catid=74&id=991&limit=15&limitstart=15

My id is Vasper85 on the forums.

TeeZedem, again I wish you luck, but I'm not a bit surprised by the lack of interest ZM members have shown in these topics, nor by the fact that the one on the main ZM forum turned into a conspiracy topic about how WTC7 was "pulled."

I think this is what you're going to find with the vast majority of Zeitgeisters: they just can't let go of conspiracy theories, and there's no way you can convince them it's in their best interests to do so.

The Zeitgeist Movement is a conspiracy movement. It is primarily about spreading conspiracy theories and about increasing the personal fame and influence of Peter Merola. The RBE stuff is an after-the-fact justification. I don't think you're going to have much success in founding a subgroup for non-CTs. There just aren't enough of them to make any difference in the movement.

Wouldn't joining a communist / socialist organization make more sense?

Communism doesn't sell as good. Most communists read Marx (not easy), Adorno (even more not easy) or Hegel (holy god not easy) - then you have people like Adorno saying that it's futile to make pictures of the future, as they'll be just as incorrect as any picture of capitalism made in the middle ages. Lots of books, no pictures? Not the most attractive club for teens with distrust in the status quo.

Some attractive girls who don't talk rubbish all day though, although I might be slightly biased.

"I agree. And, the best way I can think of to prevent such attacks against financial institutions in the future would be to eliminate financial institutions altogether."

Lulz.

The thread got noticed by Peter and locked faster than I thought...LoL
9-11 is not a movement issue yet many people in the movement still talk about it being an inside job, they still promote the first Zeitgeist film, and their grandmaster (Peter) still believes the government did it, but he wants to disassociate himself and the movement from the topic due to the alex jones, and truth movement crowds looking more and more like nutjobs and idiots. Interesting lol

/Peter/ ....And btw no one but me can promote 911 Conspiracies with Zeitgeist, you all need to shut up about it. PS: Check out my new Zeitgeist film it shows 911 was an inside job again tbh /Peter/

"That specific quote by Woodrow Wilson is indeed taken out of context and misrepresented. But in fairness, I couldn't find that quote in PJ's updated version of Z1 or in the companion guide so I think he took it out. "

The Woodrow Wilson quote is just the most obvious, but there are plenty of other quotes like that that he's used... I haven't looked at the new companion guide or whatever, but I'm willing to bet he left a lot of still questionable ones in there.