Occupying Wall Street?

[evansblue]

This is the "Anything Else" section backbreaker. I don't see what the big deal is. You act like politics are being discussed in every other thread.

 

[Bible_Belt]

Backbreaker 'occupies Wall Street' with a big fat bank account. I wish I could say that I wasn't jealous. But then Auburn is going to beat Arkansas on Saturday, so I'll feel sorry for him as a Razorback fan. It all balances out.

 

[Bible_Belt]

you don't know my political affiliation, my religious affiliation (though if you have been around long enough you should) or my view points.

Those are some of the many things that make us human. Even Arkansas fans

 

[Mr.Positive]

Seems like everytime I type a post, I get booted off the forum and have to re-log in....and have lost everything I've typed.

I'll keep it short. This is a good video to watch...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQow0Fhua1A&

 

[5string]

When I watched the protesters on TV, I could not help but wonder, do they have fvckin jobs? How do the find the time for this sh!t?

 

[Bible_Belt]

When I watched the protesters on TV, I could not help but wonder, do they have fvckin jobs? How do the find the time for this sh!t?

Since less than half of working age people are employed right now I'd guess that no, they don't have jobs.

 

[5string]

Since less than half of working age people are employed right now I'd guess that no, they don't have jobs.

Then my next question would be....do they choose not to work, or are they unemployed because of a bad economy?

By the looks of them, I'd doubt they could get a job operating a leaf blower.

 

[sstype]

I agree that revolution is not a magic answer. Prior to Castro, Cuba had a similar gap between the rich and the poor. Castro promised to end inequality with his revolution, and he succeeded. Now everyone is equally poor.

I agree.

My parents are from Iran. The Shah's economic policies made Iran into a regional powerhouse, however, the productivity gains were not being shared with the middle and working classes. This discontent became fodder for the religious mullahs. They promised to the people economic opportunity, oil royalties to every citizen, democracy, and a return to traditional Islamic values....and what they got was a regime more totalitarian, more extremist, and more elitist than what they had replaced.

This plays out every single time in every society with large wealth gaps (Czarist Russia, French Revolution, Cuba, Iran, Germany, Arab Spring)

When people have no hope, no future....they turn to opportunists on both extremes whether its the Huey Long brand of populism on the left or right wing nationalism.

Its easy to sit here and smugly accuse protesters of being lazy bums and dismiss them.....But what the wealthy and their supporters don't realize is the masses is what sustains the system. If the common people lose faith in the system (because they feel the game is rigged for only the top 1%) then the elites and the merchant upper class lose their power as well. What is a stock worth if no one is buying your product? What is a bond worth if your business can't repay the loan because there's no business? What is real estate worth if you can't meet your fixed costs? What is any investment worth when an angry mob is destroying your market?

This isn't about left or right anymore.....this is about the very social fabric of our civilization being torn apart due to the rampant corruption, extortion, unaccountability and unfettered greed among those at the very top and their stubborness in refusing to address those issues, preferring personal gain at the expense of long-term social stability (which leads to losing both).

Telling the discontented and disadvantaged to "get a job" or "stop waging class warfare" or "quit being jealous" is meaningless shaming language. This "Let Them Eat Cake" elitist attitude contributes to our downfall. The human condition is to blame others for percieved injustices (whether real or not). The viability of a socio-political system hinges on whether leadership and the elites are willing to maintain the social contract between them and the plebes, or face revolt. This has played out numerous times in history, and it will play out again, whether you like it or not.

Based on my parents experiences of living under both brutal regimes in Iran, I prefer the elite make concessions to the masses and keep the devil we know, rather than potentially living under some fiery populist's left or right-wing nightmare dystopia.

 

[evansblue]

Since less than half of working age people are employed right now I'd guess that no, they don't have jobs.

:crackup:

 

[sstype]

To sum up, we should succumb to mob rule, despite that for the most part these people could get jobs if they truly wanted them.

Nice strawman you built there.....

If you actually took the time to read my post I am wholeheartedly against "mob rule" as demonstrated by my parents personal experience with tyranny, mob-style populism, revolt, and then reversion to tyranny.

I'm sorry my views don't fit into a neat little ideological box as I take a sociological perspective based on human behavior (which is by and large irrational) and past historical events.

I guess I'm the guy everyone hates because I don't take "their side"

P.S....Here is what the unemployed face in their job hunt

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/26/business/help-wanted-ads-exclude-the-long-term-jobless.html

 

[Deadly_Ripped]

It seems like there have been a large number of posts in this thread regarding the age or appearance of the crowds. If you watch the live feeds, most of the protestors don't actually look like freaks at all. They look very normal, albeit the ratio of bearded-to-non-bearded men seems to be particularly high, and there do seem to be more piercings.

I'm employed at a job I love, and I look like a very normal person, but I will be protesting this weekend at a branch of the OWS in my city. I'm attending because I feel like there's a disproportionate influence of a small number of people over the legislative process and political campaign funding. I want to voice my opinion.

I am DARN sure that nothing will change if I do nothing, so I might as well put on my boots and try marching for what I believe in!

 

[sstype]

I read your post twice. There is no strawman.



I reference the quote above where you mention "revolt". This is essentially succumbing to mob rule if demands are not met.

You may not like what it is, but when you peel away that nice pretty veneer you've built, revolt is mob rule. Just as "paying off the mob" to avoid a revolt is still mob rule.

I don't see how demanding accountability, ending corruption in gov't and finance, and bringing back sensible financial regulations is "succumbing to mob rule." I think for the most part the protesters demands are fairly reasonable....all I said is if we ignore or dismiss them we do so at our own peril. I have history to back me up.

The other part of the problem is the extreme class warfare being harnessed by those currently in power, combined with the entitlement attitude of the typical American.

What entitlement? We didn't become the world's largest economy by sitting around demanding handouts all day. Americans are considered the hardest working, most productive people in the world. We also have the least worker benefits and social programs of any industrialized nation. A few lazy bums mooching off welfare does not represent the "typical American"

BTW, as for jobs, during lunch I saw three help wanted signs. And that was only during one hour with most of my time eating at a restaurant. None for glorious office jobs, but they were for full time employment.

I don't buy the lack of jobs bull$hit. They just aren't the jobs that people believe they are entitled to have.

Well if we're going to use anecdotal evidence, my ex-gf who used to work at a dept store, told me how management would routinely pass over unemployed white collar workers due to fear they would leave as soon as they found a job in their field. Many job candidates who lack this "entitlement" you speak of routinely get passed over for being "overqualified"

 

[Deadly_Ripped]

So I just came from my city's Occupy event and it was AMAZING. Absolutely amazing. There was so much energy, and everyone seemed to focus on the issue of corporate greed run wild being at the heart of many of our political process-related problems.

It was awesome and I wish I didn't work so much or I could be there every day. Apparently there are 1200 cites reporting an occupation, so you might want to look into it near your area if you're frustrated and want an outlet to vent your frustration.

 

[Burroughs]

Jim Rogers thoughts are insightful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH1SJhEbBKU

 

[backbreaker]

But then Auburn is going to beat Arkansas on Saturday, so I'll feel sorry for him as a Razorback fan. It all balances out.

lol don't think so buddy

 

[BigJimbo]

I will care when America quits bombing children in Serbia, Iraq, Ossetia, Afghanistan, Libya, Lebanon, Yemen, Palestine, etc. Yes, Ron Paul actually gets it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klcyPNIA698
God Bless Putin! A great man who might just save America. How? A strong Russia is needed to help balance Western domination! That is the reason America/Western Europe hates Putin! He offers resistance (as compared to that lush called Yeltsin). Remember, Russia IS NOT THE WEST! Thank God for that. They have cultural, geographic, and historical ties to the Middle East and Far East. Just look at the map. Hell, just visit Moscow. That is a great thing about the Russian language. You discover so many interesting and unusual cultures.

BTW, Jim Rogers is a smart and VERY honest man!

Once again, I encourage boozing and banging over bombing. Right that one down!

 

[Julius_Seizeher]

The OWS bowel movement has no valid philosophical foundation underneath it--they whine about student loans and their cell phone bills while impotently railing against a vaguely defined concept they call "corporate greed". I don't know where to start, or if I care to wade into this muck, but here I go.

First and foremost, the Flea Party is a horde of irrational, whim-worshipping, mindless collectivists who, unfit to deal with existence, blame others for their ignorance and poverty. Rational, intelligent, self-confident people stand to gain nothing from blocking traffic with their bodies. This is a movement of incompetents, for incompetents, and the piles of garbage and human waste are the only legacy they will leave behind.

It is only a person with no self-esteem who could hold others accountable for his life circumstances; the man of self-esteem could not conceive of giving others the power to "hold him down" in the undescribable, undefinable manner by which these people claim to have been victimized. And victimization, you will realize, is their ideal; unable and unwilling to earn the values that manifest happiness in this life, they cowardly hide behind shopworn platitudes of "greed" and blah blah blah.

Has anyone bothered to discern between greed and ambition?

Ambition is the desire to be, to do, to create, to produce, in a word: to earn. Ambition is the law of cause and effect applied to the pursuit of happiness. But greed, greed is the desire for the unearned, the unwarranted, the undeserved. Greed is the desire to divorce the law of cause and effect from values and to achieve ends without means, effects without causes.

So who is greedy and who is ambitious? Are the entrepreneurs, businessmen and giant corporations exponents of greed? Businesses do not pretend that they can make money by not producing, not creating, not earning. They need only the freedom to do so, and the real injustice of our "mixed economy" is that they should have to beg permission from any worthless bureaucrat in order to produce.

And who are the exponents of greed? Those shoddy little worms in the streets, snarling and whining about "the distribution of wealth" that they are not willing to earn, but believe themselves perfectly entitled to acquire without earning. They are the product of every welfare state: professional looters who would have been human beings, but choose to exist instead as whining, pathetic, tribalistic subhuman savages.

There is no philosophical argument that can possibly justify what they are really after. They want to steal and loot from the corporations and competent individuals, and the best way to accomplish the groundwork for this is to demonize, marginalize, and slander the producers of wealth until no one minds when they are robbed, beaten and killed. It happened in the USSR, it happened in China, it happened in Southeast Asia, it happened all over Europe, it happened in South America.

Any man with any sense of self-worth, self-esteem, and the desire to be free (and to bear the responsibility freedom entails), would spit on these looters and never be associated with their impotence and evil.

 

[Deadly_Ripped]

You have concocted a really eloquent description of a people about whom you clearly know very little.

I'll try to keep this simple so that we don't get drawn down a very long path of detail-squabbling.

Money equals influence in politics and it should not be that way, because then a tiny group of people have a very large amount of influence, and use it to their advantage at the peril of the majority. Then those people tell us to be happy that we're not in the WORST position that we could be in. In other words, our representative democracy is no longer representing the majority, and is instead worshipping corporate needs, because that's where their campaign funds come from to keep them in power.

They keep screwing us in the pooper, then tell us to be happy that they use lube. You seem like the kind of guy who assumes that everyone has equal opportunities and equal potential to succeed in life. Hate to break it to you, but life isn't that fair.

 

[Leporello]

I've been to the main protest in New York a bunch of times. it's actually very impressive; they've constructed almost a complete mini society there, and all actions are taken by consensus.

From my point of view, it's fairly simple: the country is in a bad way, Wall Street has the ability to fix it, but has decided not to. This tells me that they are no longer reliable guardians of the American national interest and should be removed from power.

 

[Alle_Gory]

Any man with any sense of self-worth, self-esteem, and the desire to be free (and to bear the responsibility freedom entails), would spit on these looters and never be associated with their impotence and evil.

Exactly. Corporations and entrepreneurs are a good thing. I mean they give everyone jobs... wait no they don't most have been outsourced. And they compete to give everyone a better product... wait many don't and collude to fix prices and buy out competitors (AT&T). And they pay their fair share of taxes... wait no they don't many have specialized lawyers and accountants to skirt tax rules and lobby for lower taxes and more grants while giving little in return.

You can try to paint this all in a positive light but enough **** has gone wrong to cause a recession.