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Occupy Wall Street Protests Go Global
Hugh Pickens writes "Tens of thousands of people around the world took to the streets Saturday to reiterate their anger at the global financial system, corporate greed and government cutbacks, with rallies held in more than 900 cities in Europe, Africa and Asia. 'United in one voice, we will let politicians, and the financial elites they serve, know it is up to us, the people, to decide our future,' said organizers of the global demonstration. The demonstrations by the disaffected coincided with the Group of 20 meeting in Paris, where finance ministers and central bankers from major economies were holding talks on the debt and deficit crises afflicting many Western countries. Crowds around the world were largely peaceful, but the demonstration in Rome turned violent as clashes in the Italian capital left dozens injured, including several police officers. In London, WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange made a dramatic appearance, bursting through the police lines just after 2:30pm, accompanied by scores of supporters. He climbed the cathedral steps near St. Paul's to condemn 'greed' and 'corruption,' and attacked the City of London, accusing its financiers of money laundering and tax avoidance."
In other news, the greedy condemn Assange.
Global indeed
And it'll all get nowhere.......
I mean..the Europeans will probably stir things up a bit and might get a few changes in...mainly in the field of regulation of the markets..
The Americans are, unfortunately, too cowed to do anything as they were sold out decades ago and are pretty well blind to it still. Although they are demonstrating in Wall St it'll all be a memory in a month.
As the average middle class American is progressively dumbed dowm, impoverished and stripped of their protections I can only see a small monied ruling class presiding (ah ha...pun) over a large mass of minimum wage slave serfs....
Such a shame, they showed such promise.
The rioters there weren't part of the movement, they were using the movement as a way to gain attention and disrupt the real meaning of the day
Track IP - Remotely track the IP address of a machine via email or MySQL.
Only around 20% of the population were sided against the king during the time America was being formed.
Why is that relevant? Well it just means that it takes a lot less people than you think to get things rolling.
I've seen this type comment around a lot. "They are protesting against corporate greed but they are using iphones and computers that were made by large multinational corporations!!!"
It is not a ironic that the people protesting are using tech that was made by near-slaves in china.
if we were to live some sort of exploitation free life we would have to return to the jungle and live primitively.
People are just doing what they can with what they have.
The rich have stolen democracy. Return democracy to the 99%
End the collusion between corporation and state!
After reading this article http://www.businessinsider.com/what-wall-street-protesters-are-so-angry-about-2011-10 and seeing Inside Job http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzrBurlJUNk I am tempted to join them!
200,000 + people in page, 120 k+ are currently talking about it. its bigger than most politicians' pages. Support is really global, and there are people from all walks of life. Albeit, of course, people who have their dinners in monaco.
https://www.facebook.com/OccupyWallSt
Read radical news here
Mojo Nixon Inside
If you have an idea to solve the current financial woes and ensure it never happens again, email every politician in your country. If your plan is credible, they will most likely suck you off on the spot or get their secretary to :P
A protest for the sake of protesting is kind of pointless IMO and that is all this is
First hand reports of whats going on in London and some tactics used to snuff out demo
I'd love to see something better, but the rhetoric sounds a WHOLE lot like the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. How'd that work out?
In fact, as often as it's been tried, none of them have worked out.
Listen, I understand that you're mad, but you have to provide a solid alternative. Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it, and no matter how badly you want something to not be so, still it remains. These revolutions have a history of plunging their respective people into the dark ages.
Protesting outside a companys office achieves nothing
you need to track down the board members and executives of these companys, you know follow the money, and setup camps outside those fuckers houses
protesting the company is useless, you have to protest at the people who created this mess, when shit gets real at home, and they feel personally threatened for their safety and their life is disrupted by constant harassment, then perhaps they will take a good look at what they did to piss everyone off.
While you are shouting at concrete at their office, they are at home enjoying themselves in peace with their ill gotten gains, their life is mildly invovienced (cant go into the office, but can sit by the pool and telework), you have to piss these people off personally to get change.
"The demonstrations by the disaffected coincided with the Group of 20 meeting in Paris, where finance ministers and central bankers from major economies were holding talks on the debt and deficit crises afflicting many Western countries"
Spanish protests go global. Spanished followed the Arab Srping, then there were protests in many cities in Europe, then Israel, then it was the US, and now the whole world. Don't be that stupid centered.
This isn't a political blog this is a technology blog - can we focus on that?
According to this map, they are scattered everywhere. I wonder how much more effective it'd be if the 99% really dropped in on Wall Street and got their money back?
Are Revolting
I think 20 years of skewing the system to favor the wealthy while neglecting the majority is finally starting to sink in. It's not that people can't be rich, that there is anything wrong with being rich, or that there is something wrong with capitalism generally. In principle these things are all fine. It is the way that it has been twisted so that every time an economic issue comes up, the majority of people end up paying (bailouts, wage cuts, etc.) while the people at the top manage to skim off an ever-widening fraction. Regular wages barely keep up with inflation or even decline. We're told companies have to remain competitive, which is true, but if that's the case then why have CEO salaries climbed *far* in excess of inflation over the last 2 decades whether there's an upturn in the economy or a downturn? Meanwhile there is a race to the bottom in terms of corporate taxes world-wide, with countries like Ireland luring companies there with exceptionally low rates, then practically going bankrupt the moment there is an economic downturn. Personal taxes go down, but it's a game where the very wealthy get theirs reduced far more than the average Joe. Between corporate tax decreases and disproportionate tax cuts or tax systems that favor the wealthy (capital gains), the middle and lower class ends up shouldering an ever-larger fraction of the total tax burden to run government services, which get cut anyway. Everyone is expected to tolerate "austerity" measures due to a screwed-up financial system that wasn't their fault. Governments cut taxes before paying down debts when times are good (you're supposed to run a surplus in the good times to get rid of the debts so you are ready for the next economic cycle instead of hitting borrowing limits, and so you aren't stealing money from the next generation). The list of grievances is long.
Look, I like capitalism. Like democracy, it's the least-bad economic system that I think we have. But the simple fact is, this was a grand experiment in "trickle-down" economics. Early on, the results were kind of fuzzy, but the result is now becoming clear to everyone: you can't shaft the majority of workers for a generation and expect that things are going to be fine economically. You also can't say you are running a democracy while favoring the wealthy at every possible opportunity. You can't let money buy such strong influence in politics that ordinary people start believing their vote is worthless. You can't do these things for so long and expect that the system is going to remain sustainable.
Unless the rich and powerful eventually want to live in medieval-style castles to keep the common peasants out, they're going to have to realize that they need to pay more into the society that they live in, and focus a little less on their own individual wealth. They need to care more about the future of society as a whole, and bring things back to a more sustainable, balanced system like we used to have in western democracies and economies. This is the wake-up call. Heed it, like a democracy is supposed to do when its people speak up, and things will be okay. Ignore it at your peril.
What do the penguins know that the rest of us don't?
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
Are you kidding me? Just in Portugal were counted one hundred thousand people protesting. More like hundreds of thousands, if not more.
Excellent blog post by CM describing the situation on the ground:
http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/occupy-wall-street-whats-really-going/63603
The Powers That WERE, will never let go without spilling the last drop of "your" blood, spending the last penny of "your" tax money, or eliminating the last of "your" rights. These corrupt, festering sores on society must be excised before any healing can begin. They are a cancer and the prognosis is not good. But there is always hope.
The riots in Italy turned to be very violent. It was basically urban warfare.
At least 4 cars were set alight, 70 people injured (30 policemen), shops broken, they even managed to set alight an armored police vehicle.
however, there were basically 2 groups in there:
-the main protestor group, who had nothing to do with violence, and in fact insulted and in some cases stopped and even handed some of the violents to the police.
-the violents, all in dressed in black, with helmets, clubs and other things. We call them "black blocks", they are dumb violent anarchists who gather whenever there's a big rally for anything, and basically destroy the peaceful athmosphere, private property and whatever they can find.
there was tear gas everywhere, people trowing anything they could find at the police...
this is the armored vehicle on fire, these are other images.
Anyone else reminded of Shay's Rebellion? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays'_Rebellion
There's plenty to gripe about, but I don't see anyone stepping forward to distill the message and create an agenda. Change won't happen without leadership and I don't see any at the protests.
Now they're outsourcing the protesters! Preemptive apologies to rest of the world.
If only more protesters understood the source of their problems. Most are complaining about the symptoms vs. the cause. However, there are a few there with End the Fed signs.
Ron Paul 2012 - the only person who would challenge the corruption at its source.
In our modern society, there is no real way to hold debtors responsible for the obscene amounts of debt they run up. Why should we as a society let asshats run up 100k in debt and then have to hear them cry about how they can't afford to pay their debts, yet if they don't pay them..there is no real punishment to them. I say bring back Debtors prisons
...know it is up to us, the people, to decide our future,' said organizers of the global demonstration.
If it were that easy to accomplish, it would have been corrected many, MANY years ago.
When you say "our parents" and "our grandparents", it's likely that you're talking about the so-called Baby Boomers. We shouldn't feel sorry for them at all. These people have fucked up everything they've gotten involved with, for decades now. Hell, they're largely responsible for the current situation.
They were born into one of the most, if not the most, prosperous times in the history of humanity. The foundation of this prosperity was planted by their hard-working ancestors, and they grew up in it and eventually inherited it, so they can't actually take any credit for it. In hindsight, this was the peak of middle-class America. Rather than trying to improve further on this already-amazing economic situation, many of them ended up becoming hippies fighting against the very system that provided them the best standard of living of all-time.
I'm not a conservative by any means, but neither can I respect those who grow up in a near-perfect environment, yet go ahead and do everything they can to trash this environment. But that's exactly what many Boomers did during the 1960s. They caused some damage, but thankfully were limited in their ability to cause real harm, and their movements fizzled out.
When the 1970s rolled around, some of them finally outgrew these youthful shenanigans. They got involved with corporate America and the American government, which up until that time actually did treat middle-class American workers extremely well. Even lower-middle-class workers could afford vehicles and homes without having to go into debt. But the Boomers would put an end to this as they started moving up the management ladder.
By the mid-1970s, the Boomers were starting to get into positions of corporate and government power. Given the huge amount of people around the same age, many of these Boomers tried to be as outrageous as possible to differentiate themselves from their peers, in order to further their careers. They would suggest courses of action that their parents or grandparents, the previous leaders of corporate America, would think of as being totally asinine and wrong-headed. One such concept that they embraced was outsourcing/offshoring.
They had unfortunately embedded themselves well within American corporations and government by the mid-1980s. They had become the leaders of business and society, and to put it bluntly, they fucked everything up. Every policy they made served to fuck over the American middle class. This is the very same American middle class that begat these Boomers!
The Boomer's precious offshoring, outsourcing and "free trade" destroyed the American manufacturing sector in the 1980s and 1990s. Although younger generations tried to negate some of this damage via the Internet boom, far too much damage had already been done. By the 2000s, the Boomers had started to offshore even the best-paying technical jobs.
As everyone today knows, the Boomers' policies have absolutely destroyed the American economy. They caused the very problems that have rendered many of them "poor" today. The only people they should hold accountable are themselves.
Do we need a new word, Corporatism for it, or do we already have one, Capitalism?
Can't we get the protesters outside celebrity homes. $12+ for a movie ticket is ridicules. Think of all the social good we could do with Hollywood's money, Brad Pit won't be any less pitter if limited him to say $25,000 a year like an average American. We can't stop at wall street.
Quick Hitsory Lesson
A little too quick, slow down next time cowboy!
Slightly on topic: Does anyone here have any opinion over the Terra - a common world currency that is based on the top 10 or so produce of the world (gold, corn, oil etc.), and so is much more stable and less prone to inflation. I saw it a couple of days ago, and I can't help but feel it would save trillions in efficiency and help benefit the world.
Whitepaper here:
http://www.terratrc.org/PDF/Terra_WhitePaper_2.27.04.pdf
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
I sure am glad you capitalized the important points.
Sorry I have to run though, time to work my 84th hour this week. Though I control no budget and have no employees that report directly to me, I know I should be glad I only get paid for 40 hours of work a week even though I put in 80-100 all the time. I know that my contribution is really helping my employer a lot and they respect and appreciate my hard work as an employee, even though I've never gotten training, a raise, insurance, or a bonus in the 5 years I've been there, I know in my heart that my lack of greed will come back and help me in the long term. I just have to pull harder on my bootstraps.
I can finally get to sleep tonight, after working 36 hours in a row this weekend. Who could have ever forseen a problem when they let go of half the dev staff and replaced them with $500 a month interns. I mean, there was no downside right? Can't lose! Sure hope my wife doesn't get bored with me at work all weekend, I doubt that'll have any long term negative repercussions.
Nope everything is just peachy.
P.S.- The owner of the company makes millions but his official salary is $1. I wonder if he's part of your 53%.
I've been watching these protests, interested in seeing what might come out of them. Unfortunately, no one has stepped out and tried to distill all the chaos down to simple talking points that the masses can understand. Left-wing protestors have a much higher barrier to overcome to be taken seriously. The right wing pundits, Tea Party guys, etc. seem to understand this and keep their rantings simple. They appeal to a wide swath of the country by doing that -- it's easy to convince a plumber that the Evil Government is preventing them from becoming a hugely successful entrepreneur because they're "stealing" his tax dollars. That's where I think a lot of the non-rich right wingers have their thinking misplaced -- they're inadvertently supporting business owners who turn around and make average peoples' lives miserable.
My take on this whole thing is as follows. I don't want communism, anarchy or the guillotining of investment bankers. What I do want is the social contract that companies used to have with their workers put back in place. The world is going to get even more divisive as automation and cheap labor start taking away all those nice safe service jobs. I like the model of Germany and the Scandinavian countries. There are plenty of business owners in those countries who are successful and get rich, but they seem to have a perspective and deal with the burden of paying taxes to support the rest of society. This is similar to the 50s-style social contracts many employers had -- hard work and loyalty were rewarded with a commensurate income ladder, paid health insurance, and paid retirement.
Think about it this way -- you're probably well-educated, worked hard to get where you are, and most people have health insurance, a nice stable job, good income and a few possessions. What makes you think that businesses are always going to need network administrators, Java programmers and other IT people? We're already seeing evidence that businesses would rather deal with sub-par service and skeleton staffs...and most people are a couple of paychecks away from being totally broke short of their retirement funds.
I see why everyone's mad at Wall Street though -- a lot of the reason that social contract went away in the first place is a constant demand for corporate earnings regardless of economic conditions.
If I were leading this thing, I think my simple, Tea Party-style talking points would be as follows:
1. Make everyone pay their fair share of taxes. Don't fall for executives' scare tactics about moving to China -- they're going to do that anyway.
2. To ensure this tax money gets spent wisely, limit corporate influence on the political system. It's amazing how quickly universal health insurance could be funded once some of these tax loopholes are removed.
3. Reduce the hyper-focus on the financial markets. Get individual retirement investors out of the market and into something safer like a pension or annuity. Let average people have a stable retirement, but encourage investment on their own if they want. Let companies breathe for a couple of quarters so they can actually plow money back into things that will produce results further down the road.
These things would resonate with average Americans, and it would be very hard for the right wing pundits to call me a dirty hippie if I came to the table with a good set of arguments.
Occupy Wall Street in the beginning was the globalization of European Protests... I mean, Greece and Spain were on fire, with people fighting the police on the streets, many months before anything in America.
In soviet russia the government regulates the companies.
Why is there no political system anywhere where the campaigns are funded by a flat levy, and ALL levels of government have equal elections where union and private donations, as well as politician's OWN FINANCES are banned from participating? Each politician gets a set amount equal to all the other candidates with which they can campaign with, and MANDATED/paid media time, and BAN private political advertising. Get rid of these douchebag interest groups from politics they have no place. Politicians shouldn't be allowed to pool their money together into party platforms either. If 50 people across electorates want to campaign for the same thing they should have to each spend out of their allowances individually to get their message out, so 50 conservative candidate ads, not 1 expensive ad running all the time for the conservative party. Anyone running against them should have the chance to do the same. This system that currently exists serves only the rich and powerful and the union bosses that are slaves to them. Kill the financial incentive to suck up to the big end of town and to businesses and make the bastards actually serve the public interest. Everyone knows this is the only way to go, it's high time people stood up for it and made it happen.
There are technologies that can assist with decentralization of finance. Bitcoin is one such technology. If you are interested in truly revolutionary technologies (not just toys made by chinese slaves), maybe you should check it out. http://bitcoin.org
The US economy in recent years has followed Adam Smith about as much as the USSR followed Karl Marx. I agree with the GP that government is part of the problem, but that is largely due to the ever-increasing influence of "big money" in politics, culminating in the horrific Citizens United ruling a year and a half ago. Unfortunately, the only way to cut the octopus tentacles away is a constitutional amendment to strip corporations of their "personal" rights. Only then will our government be able to function properly to protect the people from "inhuman" corporate avarice.
As for how to protect us from the conglomerates, I suggest: 1. a STET tax; 2. get out of NAFTA, and reinstate reasonable tariffs as Adam Smith intended; 3. reinstate Glass-Steagall; 4. break up too-big-to-fail banks into smaller units; and 5. put some banksters in JAIL!
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
for $200 a piece of paper vs 100K+ in Debt as well prison time like you want.
Ton of graduates with fewer and fewer decent paying, career jobs. It's almost entirely service industry. Shops, restaurants, banks. The problem with this is the country is not properly utilizing its talent. They end up with massive debt, a feeling of being worthless with nothing to strive for except management in the same crappy jobs.
If you don't have a degree, you may not be able to advance much even in the service industry. If you do have one, you may be overqualified for the entry level, part-time, near minimum wage positions. You have to secure these positions while still in college, then advance up after graduating.
In short, the problem isn't there aren't enough talented college graduates. The problem is the government who is supposed to be helping keep companies in check for the best interests of their workers, is in bed with these companies and doing everything they can to make them happy. They've lost interest in having the most talented, best operating country (in terms of quality of life for its citizens), and instead are fixated on the short term of pleasing the wealthiest at the expense of everything else.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." --Mahatma Gandhi. I have never been more proud of my fellow Americans than I am now with the Occupy Wall Street movement. You people on Wall Street, you corporate shills, hedgefund kiddies--your days are numbered. You have been able to buy politicians and get legislation that benefits you and no one else. The US voting population understands that Congress itself is full of millionaires. Yes, last I checked, we do live in a democracy. Much as I despise the Tea Party, they are one type of attack on your right side. The Occupy Wall Street movement--which is spreading like wildfire across the entire world--is an attack from the left. You may think you can mock, ridicule and marginalize the OWS movement but I am not so sure. Go ahead and mock, insinuate that it's all Soros and all of your other techniques. Unfortunately for you, the rest of us also went to college and grad school. We too read constantly, get up early in the morning to study our battle plans and plot our strategy. At first I too saw the lack of common purpose as a weakness. I wrote pieces that explained what I saw as the grievances. Then I heard that fine American genius Matt Taibbi--who wrote that Goldman Sachs is a "great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money"--point out that the lack of a common articulated set of goals and a designated single leader is a point of genius. Just because the OWS movement does not articulate their goals does not mean they don't have goals and designs. And with no stated goals, they are a moving target with a thousand goals. With no central leader, there is no one for Wall Street to corrupt and co-opt. This is classic closed cell behavior as practiced by subversive groups for centuries. Wall Street always attacks like this with money. But without a leader to corrupt, without a single defined list of goals to refute, the OWS movement is a moving target, chimeric and powerful. Go on ridiculing them. We are not going away. If we find that our leaders, even our beloved President Obama, don't react to our wishes, they will be replaced. And I promise you, if we need to replace even President Obama, you will like his successor even less. You Republicans plan to nominate Mitt Romney, he of Bain Capital who slashed jobs, drained equity and walked off with millions? Bring it on! I relish the chance to attack that fat cat. Bring it on. Don't start anything you can't finish. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill-Lynch, Bank of America and Citigroup--to say nothing of all the hedge funds with your poster boy Raj Rajaratnam--you started something you can't finish. You and your millions are no match for our power. We know where you live, we know where you work and where you play. We're coming for you. You had better be afraid, very afraid.
Oh, I thought this was a place to argue with nerds on the internet. Is there any news for nerds that doesn't revolve around phones and tablets anymore?
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
I never was able to find work as an EE, and I was willing to relocate just about anywhere in the USA. After 18 months, I went back to school for law...which was a mistake, in retrospect. Graduated in 2008 and still haven't landed so much as an unpaid internship. Three degrees, $180k of student loan debt, and I'm working two jobs just to have enough to eat; painting and construction.
I am upset with Wall Street - for the low returns of the last few years. But I blame it on the Bolsheviks who now run the country. That will soon end. As for the protesters, spray 'em down with firehoses. Nobody will want to hang around over night when they are wet.
an ill wind that blows no good
The title makes it sound as if the Occupy Wall Street was replicated around the world. The truth is, the US started after everyone had done something like that. We had our movement of "Indignados" in El Salvador about two months ago, so it's not as if the United States started with it, so it looks as if the editor didn't know about what was happening in the world by the time the movement started in the US.
The OWS crowd have deliberately avoided touting any specific economic models. The fact that you don't know that only shows how ignorant you are of the movement and renders the rest of your comment irrelevant. Yes, I have heard a few protesters condemn capitalism, but I've heard even more say that they simply want capitalism with fairness. They want justice for the crimes of the banksters and less "corporate capture" of government.
As for taxes, the ratios you cite are very similar to those in the USA. However, that's only for income tax revenue. If you include sales tax, property tax, and all the rest, the lower and middle classes pay a much higher percentage of their gross income to the government than the rich do.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Many of the people protesting were using iPhones. You can buy the latest iPhone 4S (life-changing iOS 5 included) directly from the Apple Store right now.
Outsourcing/offshoring was not a boomer idea, it was an integral part of Reaganomics. Up until the 70's, a third of government revenue came from import/export tariffs. So-called "free trade" had already been a longstanding desire of conservative business interests for many years, and Reagan started the process that culminated with NAFTA under Clinton.
I agree with the rest of your analysis, but the idea of "free trade" did not originate with the Boomer generation, it had been around for quite a while already.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Increase the size of the House. Make the House way more representative then it is now. Of course we'd need a bigger building to house all the Congresspeople, but that shouldn't be a legitimate objection. We can build a bigger building. We have the technology.
Those banks that are "too big to fail" need to be split into smaller pieces that do not represent a systematic threat.
The government has split up AT&T in the 1970s, Standard Oil before that and had anti monopoly laws in place that should be used to prevent another bailout.
This is the first thing we need to fix. We have to stop treating Corporations as individuals with the same "rights" as real people. Only when we've done this can we undo the mess caused by Corporate greed and collusion with politicians. Then we can start treating the people who steer their corporations into criminal acts like the criminals they are.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
Crisis is causing protests around the globe, but they have different causes and goals.
Have you read the OWS home page? Its an oppressive governments dream list. It can be summed up as, we want the government to do this to SOMEONE ELSE.
Its an over the top greed fest demanding others give to people who are in the protester class and take from others while silencing them as well.
That the unions joined in is hilarious because they are part of the unholy trinity that runs our society. Politicians, Corporations, and Labor Unions, control the mess and have laws to support their needs. They don't care about the marchers except how to best exploit them.
Did you notice for how long Washington ignored the marchers until they found a means to exploit them? They then moved in their operatives to try to take it over.
Funny how every bad deed ascribed to the Tea Party has been witnessed and caught on camera with the OWS marchers. From uttering racist words to damaging public property (not to mention pissing/shitting on cars?). Oh get real.
The marches in other parts of the world mean something important, the ones here seem to be a bunch of spoiled brats and trouble makers who are attention starved and selfish. I am, you owe me, is their motto.
Comparing them to the Arab Spring is insulting to all those over there who risked their life for what they marched for, those marching here risk a hang nail
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
So back around 1998 I was getting, and passing on, BBS delivered messages on feminist lists pointing out that the Taliban sucked and we should really push our government to stop supporting them. My journal entry from 2011/11/11 says I'm really sad about what's been going on, but I'm also worried that the way our country reacts might cause more problems than it solves. In 2006 I started trying to convince my mother that she had too much debt to support her house / lifestyle and she ought to cut back and simplify. And yeah, the whole "Free Software" thing starting in 2000, got off Facebook and am holding out for diaspora, vegetarian, dirty crazy West Philly blah blah blah...
You know something? It's nice that these protesters finally decided to get off their ass and take note of the fact that "it is up to us, the people, to decide our future." You know what else? You asked for this crap. Every time you skipped the PTA meetings, and treated your teachers like poorly behaved babysitters, and decided it was easier to watch another movie than volunteer for anything at all, to buy that SUV and those chinese-made sneakers, to work for that shitty boss instead of risking a pay cut to do something worthwhile, to vote for someone in the two party system, and to throw every dollar you ever made at people who were producing what they thought you wanted at (human) costs that you were only too happy to ignore, you said "please sir, can I have some more" to the stupidest vision of what our species can be. Oh. So now that you can't actually afford an X-box to piss your life away on, you want to do something that matters?
Fine. Good. But don't sit there and pretend that it's Wall Street's fault. You got exactly what you've been asking for. When you're done with the pity party, please have enough sense to create something better.
Certainly no "single" solution will suffice, but ending the Fed would be a damn good place to start. Debt is a huge piece of the puzzle, and our "money as debt" currency is basically a Ponzi scheme writ large. The Fed is a privately owned institution; it's only connection to government is that its board members are appointed by the president and approved by the Senate. (And of course, all such candidates are picked from the population of elite bankers to begin with, so there's really no way for the elected government to influence the Fed's behavior.) Rather than printing our own money (a power which is specifically assigned to Congress in the constitution), we instead borrow our money supply from this private bank... at interest. How stupid is that?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
I keep seeing the "Mortgage crisis was cause because Banks were forced to lend to poor people" meme too, but they never provide any numbers to support this. The Government didn't force banks to give people mortgages for amounts that were far greater than the value of the homes they were buying while simultaneously selling investors these mortgages as bundled securities while they were secretly betting everything they had on the failure of these same investments.
i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
It's a bad idea. A currency should represent and serve a single culture/nation/society. When you implement a single currency across a range of disparate economies you end up with the "Euro crisis" presently unfolding before us.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Occupy is supposed to be about the will of the people, not a rally for any one political party Whichever Occupy groups you may be a member of, beware of those who are trying to co-opt the movement for their own agendas. Democracy not dictatorship!
My views are no more important than anyone elses. That's the beauty of Occupy. It looks like it may be the first truly democratic movement to ever wield the power of the internet. I've always believed that with the internet, we could achieve true democracy where people vote on Parliamentary/Senate/Congress issues DIRECTLY rather than through representatives. We're not there yet, but hopefully we will be soon.
While it's easy to set up some sort of system for voting, it'd be much harder to democratize the process of submitting legislation to be voted on.
The only thing I could suggest is something like the website the US government set up, where anyone can start a petitiion and any petition that collects a certain number of votes during a given time frame would be automatically tabled for voting by the general public.
I figure the same people who would be too apathetic to submit petitions, vote on them, or vote on the tabled legislation is also probably too apathetic to vote in our existing elections.
The Occupy groups are probably going to have to do something like that to narrow down the diversity of demands to a set that can actually be presented and acted upon. While reigning banks in may be a relatively clear goal in the US, the goals of the Occupy protests in the rest of the world are not so clear cut.
I think it's telling that anyone who advocates change that threatens the profits of the status quo is automatically labelled socialist, communist, hippie, or worse by them. It just goes to show how indefensible the position of the status quo is when they can't come up with a better argument than name-calling and labelling to support their abusive behaviour.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Protesters, you're all bark and no bite.
I totally agree with stripping corporations of their 'personal rights'. And from a quick read, I also agree with the STET tax.
Very, VERY well put on your part, & per my subject-line above? Agreed, 110%. The buck's coming to its famed halt, & soon I predict. I was astounded that it was in MY CITY this weekend actually, but not really (it's very "economically depressed" is why) - it's just a small portrait of "middle america" is why.
Yes, the stock market IS @ the heart of it (the wealthy in other words & their unbridaled greed), no questions asked.
I mean, what?
For a bunch of fairly intelligent people (I would assume @ least) and certainly crooked ones (we're in control of the biggest crooks of ALL TIME & worst kind of all - the "brainy criminals" that use, abuse & change the system to THEIR gain)?
They're bending tax laws (ala "transfer pricing" &/or reporting profits overseas & losses in the states ("accounting cooking the books" etc.), & like Bermuda where there is no corporate tax by incorporating HQ's there etc.), sending good paying jobs overseas to eliminate possible threats from a "middle class" they're attempting to erode into serfdom (this is all about CONTROL, folks, the very thing sociopaths crave because they lack some characteristics normal humans have in their psyche (love, empathy, concern, etc. for others). Sending jobs overseas too, attempting to max profits FOR THEMSELVES (see CEO pay & bonuses vs. avg. worker median income stats for example) & impoverishing/weakening possible threatening parties is what it is ALL about.
Keep 'em weak, divided, & scattered (plus mock them in the presses etc.)? This is "std. modus operandi" for that kind... scum, greedy scum that lack other finer human characteristics (they're just like drug addicts, albeit their drug? Money, POWER, & Control!)
Man - They're SO EASY TO "SEE THRU", their fav. color MUST BE TRANSPARENT!
Now, nothing "purifies like light" & the real bastards behind it are like the saying "It's not the man in the throne that runs things, but the shadowy person standing beside he"? They "hide in the shadows" like evil often does (& they are evil, greed driven evil).
Once more - Psychopaths/Sociopaths ARE at the helm here in the US & over much of the world via stock markets, the IMF, the Trilateral Commision & more and they are now out in the open, the place they cannot STAND to be or can afford to be.
Folks have had enough.
* We can stand quite a bit & tolerate a lot of b.s., but not when it comes to the future or folks' childrens' futures. That's when the game, stops, or will be MADE TO STOP.
APK
P.S.=> The politicians? Yes, they're the wealthy too, taking GIANT slices of the pie, living off stock market dividends (when you're rich, you don't work for your money, it works for you, via stock markets)...
I mean, trying to make them pay an "even tax" (which they should but avoid via the means I noted above here)? Waste of time... they pay a FLAT 15% TAX ON THEIR REAL INCOME (stock market dividends)! That little "illusion" is trying to BLOW SMOKE UP OUR ASSES is what it is! You FIRST have to understand an enemy, to destroy he... & folks DO understand now!
Those utter fools think folks don't look into things when the going gets rough... well, that's when the tough get going, right after the bastards behind it all, & yes - folks KNOW who "those types" are, & you hit it right on the head, thank you... honestly, thank you!
... apk
folks, just remember how republicans treat those on the downside. Never forget.
US Congress Whipsaws Stocks & Members Still Make Insider Trades
http://www.investoruprising.com/author.asp?section_id=1287&doc_id=231809
Slashdot = Sarcasm
It's of general interest to nerds as it dictates our future condition. Some nerds are in the 1%, but most are at best middle class and this directly affects us either way.
...is just a fashion choice.
Advice: on VPS providers
Occupy is supposed to be about the will of the people, not a rally for any one political party Whichever Occupy groups you may be a member of, beware of those who are trying to co-opt the movement for their own agendas. Democracy not dictatorship!
My views are no more important than anyone elses. That's the beauty of Occupy. It looks like it may be the first truly democratic movement to ever wield the power of the internet. I've always believed that with the internet, we could achieve true democracy where people vote on Parliamentary/Senate/Congress issues DIRECTLY rather than through representatives. We're not there yet, but hopefully we will be soon.
While it's easy to set up some sort of system for voting, it'd be much harder to democratize the process of submitting legislation to be voted on.
The only thing I could suggest is something like the website the US government set up, where anyone can start a petitiion and any petition that collects a certain number of votes during a given time frame would be automatically tabled for voting by the general public.
I figure the same people who would be too apathetic to submit petitions, vote on them, or vote on the tabled legislation is also probably too apathetic to vote in our existing elections.
The Occupy groups are probably going to have to do something like that to narrow down the diversity of demands to a set that can actually be presented and acted upon. While reigning banks in may be a relatively clear goal in the US, the goals of the Occupy protests in the rest of the world are not so clear cut.
I think it's telling that anyone who advocates change that threatens the profits of the status quo is automatically labelled socialist, communist, hippie, or worse by them. It just goes to show how indefensible the position of the status quo is when they can't come up with a better argument than name-calling and labelling to support their abusive behaviour.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
The OWS movement is the outrage. And it's just getting warmed up.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
no one is out to destroy capitalism. i'm certain some crackpot in the occupy wall street crowd is, but most of them just want a job, and a secure middle class life. you get that by destroying CORPORATE socialism, which is the system we live under. no one wants people waiting in line to be handed toilet paper on alternate wednesdays, got it? we want capitalism, which is NOT the system we live under in the USA, if you have been paying any attention
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If the complaint is about unequal distribution of wealth in America, why the fuck are these countries with 10x better ratios protesting? Oh thats right, because the protests are so unfocused that they can be about WHATEVER THE FUCK YOU WANT because the protestors are just angry morons who don't really even understand what they're angry about (other than "I don't have as much money as some other guy").
So now it's about "corporate greed," eh? I wonder what the protest will be about next week.
Which homepage are you talking about?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
In fact, some of that stupidity has shown up on OWS, like cries to 'audit the Fed'. Look, idiots, auditing the Fed isn't going to do anything. The Fed is doing nothing illegal.
Without an audit of the public-private beast that is the Federal Reserve System, how would you know whether they've done anything illegal or not? I don't know if the Ron Paul's version of the audit was ever passed, but Senator Sanders got an amendment inserted into some-bill-or-another. His office has this page:
"Audit the Fed" was Ron Paul's effort to hold the Federal Reserve accountable. It was a preliminary step to ending the system whereby "Wall Street" loans the economy its money supply. If you have a dollar bill in your pocket, it's only there because someone borrowed it from a banker - the bills are printed by the treasury and purchased by the Federal Reserve at cost [2 cents?]. If you have a quarter or a dime or a Susan B. Anthony dollar in your pocket, the Fed bought these from the Mint for face value.
The initial "Tea Party" rallies were held by Ron Paul's supporters in the 2008 presidential campaign, in response to the bailouts. Paul eventually dropped out of that race, but the "powers that be" thought the "tea party jingle" would be useful to perpetuate the concentration of power.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2478408&cid=37730984
MOD THE POSTER curmudgeon99 UP TO THE MAX! He's hit the thing, dead on, & I felt the same (as does anyone who has been adversely affected by the "powers that be", sociopathic greedy swine in other words)... folks ARE "looking into it" & seeing EXACTLY what curmudgeon stated, & do NOT like it... myself being one of those folks, along with millions of others who are being disenfranchised & robbed blind by the biggest most dangerous criminals of all time: The current wealthy class, period.
Sociopaths - it's what they are: It's not even about money, it's about POWER & CONTROL, what psychpaths crave., point blank.
What's being seen is the effete attempts @ stupidity by dull minded transparent morons who are obviously part of "the problem" & IF you think stuff like that does NOT go on? Guess again (take a read):
HBGary POST in Fake Names On Social Networks, a Fake Problem:2011 -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2375110&cid=37056304
Trolls & shills ABOUND online, because ideas are HARD TO KILL and as you put it?
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you OFTEN TROLLISHLY & OFF TOPIC (via grammar nazi b.s. & the like or trying to shit on their opponents in the presses & communication they largely own (one of the FIRST MOVES a "conqueror" makes, is seizing those things in occupations typically) calling folks "crazy" etc. (when I see that? Warning bells go off like mad here, because it's "std. modus operandi" by those threatened by truths usually)...
APK
P.S.=> About time this occurred I say, & I only hope that justice, TRUE JUSTICE, is served... apk
Spanish 'Indignados' Protests started a month before Occupy Wall Street ones.
But a Ron Paul audit is silly, if just because his stated objectives are silly: He believes in hard money, and hard money is not, in any way, shape or form, what we need.
Ask a market monetarist, and they'll say that the issue is not that the fed is doing too much, but that it's doing too little, and in the wrong direction. That what we need is higher inflation, not less. But if we give Paul more of a voice, We'll see ourselves with high unemployment for another couple of decades.
If Ron Paul's economic agenda wasn't batshit crazy, he'd at least get some sympathy from the left. But as it is, he'll never go anywhere. I keep wishing for someone to take his views on immigration and foreign affairs, but tied to some modern economic ideas instead.
Just because you can make a lot of money doing something doesn't mean a degree in it isn't a Mickey Mouse qualification.
I mean, if there was such a thing as a degree in kicking an inflated cow's stomach around for 90 minutes, would the existence of Wayne Rooney and David Beckham mean that said qualification was equivalent to a Master's in engineering from MIT?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You know what the difference is between the French Revolution and this? They spent a lot less time talking about the rights and wrongs of what they were doing and a lot more time affecting actual change, via a guillotine.
The psychopathic mind that the protesters are protesting against don't care that 99% of the world hates them, as long as they can go on screwing us. Such a mind can't be fixed or repaired, it can only be removed.
Apologies for shooting from the hip, above. After skimming the PDF, I'm less skeptical. (I'll read it in detail later, when I'm not at work.) For example, I'm still skeptical of implementing a demurrage scheme that actually works on a global scale. But anything that gets us off the "money as debt" treadmill is definitely worth a look.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
While we need well-educated scientists, engineers, and so on...we only need so many of them. There aren't enough economic "slots" available for everyone to have a degree and get such a job. Making education widely available seems like a nice way of giving everyone a fair chance, but the actual effect is a largely debt-ridden populace that is too well-educated to be happy with the menial jobs that are in high demand.
We don't need as much educated labor as is available, and we DO need an army of uneducated laborers (or at least people willing to do that kind of work). Those are what the needs are, and no amount of policy-setting will change that. So long as everyone-and-his-brother can get loans to cover a fancy degree, supply will always outstrip demand, even if this financial crisis is somehow resolved.
Which it won't be. At least not by a bunch of poor people sitting around all day. The wealthy groups who control most of the world's assets have no interest in giving any of it back, no matter how many starry-eyed optimists insist that the world can be made into a fairer place. Control of economic resources will have to be taken back by force (preferably political force, but historically by violent force). We will see if these park-sitters really have the backbone for that.
politics.slashdot.org/story/11/10/16/0326232/occupy-wall-street-protests-go-global
Notice the section this story is in?
I think all are wrong, this is the offshoot of the demonstrations from overseas, against the loss of jobs, incomes, and faith in wall street, at least ours have mostly violence free, and hope they remain that way.
I've been watching these protests, interested in seeing what might come out of them. Unfortunately, no one has stepped out and tried to distill all the chaos down to simple talking points that the masses can understand.
The Occupy Wall Street demands are starting to focus. They're all quite reasonable. This is a revolutionary movement that wants to pass HR 1489, the "Return to Prudent Banking Act". That's something that real conservatives ought to be supporting. It's about returning to the system that worked from 1933 to 1999, where banks had to stay out of the stock market and brokerages couldn't accept deposits. This separation prevented trouble on Wall Street from taking down banks.
The Occupy Wall Street movement wants the Department of Justice to get tough on crime on Wall Street. That, too, is completely in line with conservative tradition. They want a tougher Securities and Exchange Commission and restrictions on campaign spending. None of this is even slightly radical.
Everything on that list would have been supported by President Eisenhower, arguably the best Republican president in the last century. (Eisenhower delivered peace and prosperity while facing down the Soviet threat, which was quite real back then. He made it look easy; he'd often knock off around 3PM and go play golf. Of course, he'd already been in charge of winning WWII in Europe; compared to that, the presidency was a vacation. His greatest skill was that he could pick the right subordinate for the job and keep them on mission. He managed both Patton and Montgomery effectively during WWII.)
The Republicans have lost their way. (Look at the collection of losers and weirdos running for the Republican presidential nomination.) Republican moderates should be supporting Occupy Wall Street.
Thank you, I'll pass that around, that's a great link.
Actually, the demurrage scheme is what put me off a bit. It just seems to add a layer of complexity/admin that we don't need. Because the currency is intrinsically stable, do we need to start messing about with depreciation of the Terra whenever it is transmitted? Or maybe I haven't understood it properly...
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
Standing at a cathedral to preach against corruption...
I'm glad that not one ounce of irony escapes Assange.
'End Corporate Greed' == 'Set up a government agency that determines when enough is enough, take what's left over, and give it to me so I don't have to work for it'
'Stop Social Inequities' == 'I don't want to start out life with nothing like everyone else did, give me stuff at 25 so I'm equal with other people at 40'
'Stop Exploiting the poor' == 'I know I don't have any skills and went to a liberal arts college, but that's no reason to pay me minimum wage'
'End All Debt' == 'I wasn't that good at math and didn't realize how much this college thing would cost. Probably shouldn't have gone, it's obvious I wasn't that smart'
'Pay A Livable Wage' == 'I want to live in an apartment by myself and have my own car and not live in my mom's basement and ride a bike'
They are not protesting, they just want to legally steal stuff from people that have worked all their lives.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
They've sucked up $169 billion in bailout pork.
ideological solution. The reason the OWS has been able to unite people with a wide variety of viewpoints is because of their General Assembly format. No parties. Everyone has a voice. The focus of the GA is actual problems and solutions, not ideological BS or helping their team (political party) score points at the expense of the other party and the American public.
So, that right there is one alternative: true democracy, not a spectator team sport disguised as one.
In the era of post WWII prosperity progressives and socialists in Europe and the US thought that they could suck enough blood out of the economy to support unfunded retirements and myriad other social 'benefits' and that, thus harnessed, the semi-capitalism that was allowed to exist would fund their paradise forever. Now that the European and US economies have reached the limits such blood-letting, the looters and moocher are 'protesting' that their victims are 'greedy.' The demonstrators claim that capitalism has failed because it cannot continue to finance their social welfare schemes. Like vampires, the 'protesters' will not be satisfied until they have sucked every last drop out of their victims--the 'greedy' productive men and women of Europe and the US.
THIS IS A STORY ALL ABOUT
how my life got flipped turned up side down, and I'd like you to take a minute and just sit right there, and listen to how I became the Prince of a town called Bel-Air!
'Here in my country the "Occupy .+ street" event was lead by the local communist party`, GreatBunzinni
..
Would you please stop typing that kind of bullshit here on slashdot
This. Not to mention Lybia, Baharain, Iceland, Tunisia, Chile, etc... (in no particular order).
Anyways. No demerit to the people of US. It's only a label, after all.
In fact, the "indignados" protests started on may 15 (several months ago). Several massive protests have been succeeded in spain since there (for instance, on June 19):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15-M_Movement
900 cities? That's a lot of cities. Can anybody name 900 cities? Some of those cities must only have a single protester given that thousands are in each major city! Can anybody name to handful of protesters in the 900 th smallest city? Me thinks that somebody made up this number, 900!
It would be cool if the Internet based government comes out of that. I read that the future political decisions will be made by people who vote online.
I hope it will start soon.
Same story:
Many people, who are miserable because of poor life decisions, decide that it's not their fault and they will blame those in charge.
After all, it's not like no one forced them to buy those cheeseburgers, sign those ARMs, demand more expensive government programs and cheer on the expensive wars.
It's all bread and circuses, until the drones/proles get upset, and then it's revolution... and a long fall from being a superpower to being a nobody.
This message brought to you by France, Rome, Angkor Wat, Easter Island, Athens and Tenochtitlan.
Futurist Traditionalism
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=D2h_Uk9f0dQ
Read radical news here
for im also proud of americans this time. as a foreigner. for, THIS is 'the people' that we all actually are.
Read radical news here
http://artsandscience.concordia.ca/polanyi/conf/pdf/Palacios.pdf
“For a century the dynamics of modern society was governed by a double movement: the market expanded continuously but this movement was met by a countermovement
checking the expansion in definite directions. Vital though such a countermovement was for the protection of society, in the last analysis it was incompatible with the selfregulation of the market, and thus with the market system itself.
“That system developed in leaps and bounds; it engulfed space and time, and by creating bank money it produced a dynamic hitherto unknown. By the time it reached its maximum extent, around 1914, every part of the globe, all its inhabitants and yet unborn generations, physical persons as well as huge fictitious bodies called corporations, were comprised in it. A new way of life spread over the planet with a claim to universality unparalleled since the age when Christianity started out on its career, only this time the movement was on a purely material level.
“Yet simultaneously a countermovement was on foot. This was more than the usual defensive behaviour of society faced with change; it was a reaction against a dislocation which attacked the fabric of society, and which would have destroyed the very organization of production that the market had called into being” (Polanyi, 1957: 130).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Transformation_(book)
The market, once it considers land, labor and money as "fictitious commodities" (fictitious because each possesses qualities that are not expressed in the formal rationality of the market) “subordinate[s] the substance of society itself to the laws of the market.”[1] This, he argues, results in massive social dislocation, and spontaneous moves by society to protect itself. In effect, Polanyi argues that once the free market attempts to separate itself from the fabric of society, social protectionism is society’s natural response; this he calls the ‘counter movement’. Polanyi did not see economics as a subject closed off from other fields of enquiry, indeed he saw economic and social problems as inherently linked. He ended his work with a prediction of a socialist society, noting, "after a century of blind 'improvement', man is restoring his 'habitation.'"
the only way to cut the octopus tentacles away is a constitutional amendment to strip corporations of their "personal" rights. Only then will our government be able to function properly
Well said.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
The idea of Outsourcing/offshoring, or "free trade", was originally sold as a way for other countries to develop their economies so their workers could afford to buy American products and services. What happened though was that with each free trade agreement, or trade policy change in the absence of such an agreement (i.e. China), workers in these countries haven't been allowed to effectively organize in a way to significantly increase and protect workers' wages, rights, safety, the environment, etc. which would have created a larger and wealthier middle class in those countries. In the absence of such worker rights and benefits, the result has been that wages are kept low and the majority of workers so poor as to be unable to afford American goods and services with the majority of profits from the difference in these lower wages and standards going to multinational corporations and their shareholders which many people are now calling the other 99%.
Ironic statement considering the likely direction of the weather in the coming weeks.
Tens of thousands of immigrants come to the US every year. Many come at their extreme peril, often "illegally".
Why do they do it?
Because they know that if they work hard, they have a much better chance of success here than anywhere -- anywhere! -- else in the world.
I completely agree that there are serious, serious problems with American society and the american economy. However, I have not yet heard a concise, understandable complaint from the "occupy" crew.
I am a self-made 9-percenter. I started from nothing. I ate government cheese as a kid (really!) I worked my ass off to get to have a 6-figure salary, a nice home in the suburbs, two fine Japanese automobiles, and a upper-middle-class lifestyle.
I wish the "occupiers" would learn and understand how we got here. I've got my own ideas, and I'm not going to use this forum to discuss them. However, I suggest a housecleaning in Washington is long overdue. Career politicians and their corporate PACs are (IMHO) a very large part of this problem.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
THANK GOD I'M AT THE AGE WHERE I'LL BE GONE BEFORE THE SHIT STORM HAPPENS.
The sooner your gone the better, you silly twised fuck, go ahead and die now please.
Yet another randomly capitalised make your eyes bleed post full of drivel from APK
I believe what they are proposing is to make up a currency backed by physical assets. Not sure how this would help considering that our problem was a very similar one to the real estate crisis
In the real estate crisis, people started using their houses as a sort of currency. No money? No problem, tap the equity on the house and buy a car. And once the house prices started to fall, we realized that we had too many houses for the people we have in the country, most of the extra being built as "investment properties". And all through the boom, at least from what I saw in Spain, the people who need to buy them could not afford them. After the crash, no one has a job to buy them.
I am afraid we will end up with something similar might happen with Terra. The currency involves stockpiling commodities at high (3%-4%) costs. All that will do is to cause people to pile up commodities, pay for losses/theft etc. and then tap it out as need be. I am not sure how this would be any different from using CDOs on houses as currency, which the banks were doing during the boom times.
http://slashdot.org/submission/1062723/Cheap-mobile-data-plan?art_pos=2
None of that is even remotely politically feasible. You have to address the corporate media propaganda and campaign funding issue first.
His lack of paragraphs can give the indication that he is not careful in his thinking, as well as his writing. It also makes it harder to read. The medium, to some extent, is the message.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
The OWS crowd have deliberately avoided touting any specific economic models.
Oh, I wouldn't be so sure of that. Of all the media footage I've seen from around the world, there's a lot Marxists among the rank and file of the OWS crowd. At least more so that at any other protest I've seen. After seeing what happened to Russia, Cuba, N. Korea, and China, clearly the economic collapse is the beginning of the end for Western civilization. The downfall already happened in the East and Middle East, no reason to think it can't happen to us as well.
Who knows. Maybe in a 100 years from now, your MacBook Pro will still be the most high-tech consumer device around. Generating power for it may be more difficult I suppose.
If you cannot elect people through your protesting, then it was for nothing. The target is the "rich". You'll ask them to pay more in taxes and they'll take their money to where they can pay less in taxes. The 1%, those making 380k+ by IRS data, pay close to half the income tax. Cry more.
Nope. It wasn't a reganomics idea, it was a nixon and carter idea. Great way to try and twist shit, besides free trade is fine. Fair trade is what's broken. NAFTA? That's fair trade.
And I'm going to let you finish, but could you move your little rally thing out of the street? Some of us have to get to work.
It may be interesting to note that we have economic protests that probably include the entire spectrum of governments. Socialist, supposedly capitalist, dictatorship, kingdom, republic - none of it matters. People feel screwed in almost all systems.
What is with all the corporate sheeple posting all the negative personal attacks against a worldwide movement of people? Front what I've seen these groups are far too diverse to be summed up so simplistically.
Capitalism should not be a religion but it sure has become one over the years. You can attack god more easily than the mighty mammon. Some of these TV bastards seem to have combined the two into 1 god.
Class warfare is something that never stopped and probably never will - anybody who acts like it isn't going on is either waging it or not competent enough to listen to. Many of these issues are the same age old ones just with newer details.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Food riots are coming. bad weather all over is causing food problems along with rising oil prices (since most the food production and distribution is HEAVILY oil based) are going to cause bad situations to get worse and likely worse than the places last time where riots broke out due to oil prices.
In the USA we merely are losing our middle class; which relative to each group is enough to spark some kind of actions - the starving may end up in riots and the middle class may not start riots until they lose their Cable TV. Its all relative thresholds.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
The governments JOB is to facilitate the exploitation of people and resources by corporations as efficiently as possible.
With few exceptions, thats what they have always done.
This has worked well in the past, when corporate interest was tied to US interest we had good education and a mostly fair economic system.
In a global economy companies aren't vested in the country they're based in. For example, if they want talented workers they simply hire them from another nation that has a good education system. This is why the US education system... sucks.
Don't believe we're in a plutocracy? slashdot just did a story about how Amazon worked out a deal with TN for no state sales tax.. tell me a small business (or self employed person) would have the same opportunities.
People are waking up to the fact that they live in a plutocracy (though it's called many different names) and the realization their country was never really meant for them.
You rightists are the best minions the Corporatists could ever have asked for. Even after all that has happened so far, your only concern is "how can we transfer even more political power to the largest corporations?" Can we deregulate them further? Can we cut their taxes more? Golly, transferring all that wealth and power to them over the last 30 years has been such a resounding success, we'd better do even more of it, eh?
Stuff yourself in the oven okay?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
The OWS represent according to themselves 99% of the population, yet they are endorsed by Obama, Bernanke and Soros.
Is anybody fooled by that?
Others disagree w/ your opinion of my posts & proof by 150++ below:
+5 'modded up' posts by "yours truly" (6):
CA DISREPUTABLE #2 of 2:2010 -> http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1884922&cid=34350102
EXCEL SECURITY FIX:2009 -> http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1139485&cid=26975021
TESLA:2010 -> http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1872982&cid=34264190
TESLA:2010 -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1806946&cid=33777976
NVIDIA 2d:2006 -> http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=175774&cid=14610147
HOSTS & BGP:2010 -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1901826&cid=34490450
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+4 'modded up' posts by "yours truly" (3):
INFO. SYSTEMS WORK:2005 -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=161862&cid=13531817
WINDOWS @ NASDAQ 7++ YRS. NOW:2009 -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1290967&cid=28571315
CARMACK'S ARMADILLO AEROSPACE:2005 -> http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=158310&cid=13263898
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+3 'modded up' posts by "yours truly" (7):
APK MICROSOFT INTERVIEW:2005 -> http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=155172&cid=13007974
APK MS SYMBOLIC DIRECTORY LINKS:2005 -> http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=166850&cid=13914137
APK RC STOP ROOKIT TECHNIQUES:2008 -> http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1021873&cid=25681261
APK FOOLS IE7 INSTALL IN BETA HOW TO:2006 -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=175857&cid=14615222
PROOFS ON OPERA SPEED & SECURITY:2007 -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=273931&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=20291847
HBGary POST in Fake Names On Social Networks, a Fake Problem:2011 -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2375110&cid=37056304
INJUSTICES:2010 -> http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1754650&cid=33255474
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+2 'modded up' posts by "yours truly" (6):
HOW DLL API CALL LOADS WORK:2008 -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1001489&cid=25441395
APK ROOTKITS:2005 -> http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=165958&cid=13843462
APK TRICK TO STOP A MALWARE:2008 -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1010923&cid=25549351
SECURE CODING 4 DEFCON:2005 -> http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=158231&cid=13257227
Your dyslexia addled brain can give the indication that you are not capable of reading, as well as his anything on topic. It also makes it worthless to read your reply. The medium, to some extent, is the message, and yours? Is off topic trolling, plain and simple.
Yes, punish the thrifty and reward the feckless!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
"tens of thousands"? What about "millions"? If you count each country.. These games played by paid liars (a.k.a. journalists), who pretend to be objective, and then plant inside their articles some small inaccuracies..
We will let our democratically elected leaders, and their masters, the people who trick us in to voting for them that WE are in charge!
My preference would be a fiat currency controlled by statute (to prevent political meddling), pegged to population growth. Print new dollars each year, based on the calculated population increase, then spend them into the economy to pay for infrastructure projects, etc.. (I don't favor returning to the gold standard, as Ron Paul proposes, because scarce commodities are too susceptible to speculation and monopolization.)
I would also prefer that each country have its own currency, since most countries have unique economic conditions. This is what I was getting at in my earlier comment... the E.U. tried to use its new currency as a way to bring these disparate economies into unity. Wrong tool for the job!! (And probably not a very useful project in the first place.)
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
When an airplane has an emergency landing, or even worse, crashes, the incident doesn't make us stop flying. Instead of that, we carefully analyze what happened, find the root cause of the incident and fix it for all other planes. That's how flying has become more safe than driving a car, despite all technical challenges.
The capitalistic system itself has proven to work pretty well. But we broke it, by going into wars, corruption, removing too many regulations, resulting in anarchy in the financial world. And on top of that, globalization is a challenge we haven't fully adapted to. Throwing everything overboard would be stupid, but it does certainly need fixing and revitalizing. Basically we need to revive the American dream, by enabling everyone to get a fair chance for good education. Make our own goods here in the US, instead of importing everything from overseas. Bring back the regulations that ensure that the financial institutions return to their core business of enabling business and individuals to move forward, instead of gambling on our bankruptcy.
Of course I oversimplify the problem, but the problems that caused this collapse, would almost certainly derail any possible system. If we learn from this, we'll come back a lot stronger.
Actually they're not annoyed at the system; they're just annoyed that it isn't them that's rich... Egotism at its finest.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
Sorry if I was unclear, I meant that the constitutional amendment should be done first, because that would at least get corporate money out of politics (ie: reverse Citizens United). And that in turn would make the other steps more feasible.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Would you care to provide some links or citations? I've watched a lot of OWS footage from a variety of sources, and the only stuff that even came close to espousing Marxism was shown on FOX News, which has a clear bias against the OWS movement. Here's an example of how selective editing can be used to skew the protests however you want. Just speaking out against corporate greed is not the same thing as Marxism.
To be fair, I haven't seen much footage from around the world, mostly just the USA. (Seems to me the non-US protests just got started in the last week anyway, so maybe more will get shown soon.)
Also, there is no intrinsic link between dictatorship and any particular economic theory. Authoritarians will happily adopt any ideology that suits their needs, because they don't care about ideology, they only care about power. At the moment, our American authoritarians are twisting "free market" ideology to increase their control of the government. That is what the OWS folks are protesting.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
It's easy to say this, but inflation actually plays a vital role in the economy because of how prices change. For the economy to work well, prices need to reflect the real costs of producing stuff, and how that stuff is valued by consumers. Now if the real value that some item should have decreases, then without inflation, its nominal price would have to decrease as well. But prices are sticky: it is quite easy for vendors to keep them at the same level.
Inflation helps this process, because when the general price level rises, the real price of individual items decrease as long as their nominal price stays constant. So for sellers and employees to maintain the same level of real income, they somehow need to justify nominal price rises. You could think of it as the Red Queen hypothesis applied to economics.
And, just to put things into perspective, the boom years of the 1950s and 1960s saw inflation around 4% and higher in most Western economies, with nobody (at least not the 99%) complaining about inflation, whereas recently, inflation has crept around the 2% level. That should provide some food for thought as well.
http://i.imgur.com/t10qf.jpg
Russia - 1917, USA - 2017 ???
All the newspapers and TV news is showing this protest as if people do not know what they are protesting! Watch out the government owns the news and is trying to squash with miss-information. I say grow the protest! If you can not be there sponsor someone who can, They took America away from us, They spy on us constantly, Revolt and put them back in their place as servants to the people not dictators.
It gets worse the more you study it. The sub prime housing issue was fraud plain and simple. We then had to pay for this when the assets (read bad debts) went bad. We also have to help the banks with their debts to Greece, Ireland and co, another bailout. So banks can't loose their money we have to give it to Greece, Ireland etc. This is then administered by IMF, ECB etc who help banks pillage countries, This money does not help the people of those lands, it harms them, so that when their economy worsens assets can be picked up cheap by banks, banks debts are paid and there future profits are guaranteed at our expense. It just goes on and on, the big question is will our governments keep bailing them out until our own currencies are ruined?
Don't think that The US, Great Britain etc are safe, we have big issues our selves.
"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." --Thomas Jefferson, 1743 - 1826
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._presidential_election,_2000#Florida_recount
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premier_Election_Solutions#Diebold_and_Kenneth_Blackwell.27s_conflict_of_interest
The thrifty aren't punished, only the "stash the cash under the bed" group are "punished" - as they should be.
Money invested, even in a bank, isn't affected by inflation (unless you're particularly bad in your choice of savings account... but the same is true in a hard money environment) If you buy shares of a company at $1, and inflation is 5%, your shares will be worth $1.05 one year later if the company is neither more nor less valuable than when it started.
Bear in mind that the thing that's hurting the economy right now is massive deflation, something that's caused real assets like housing to lose 70% of its worth over the past five years. That's the underlying cause of our economic problems, because the debt associated with those assets hasn't changed in response to the same deflation. The vast majority of people with that debt didn't do so irresponsibly, they backed a loan with a physical asset - in order to buy that asset - that wasn't supposed to lose value, at least, not to the extent it did.
NYTimes has a piece about the lack of specific policy goals:
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
But go ahead and bury any reports of election fraud, it's been working pretty well so far apparently.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Same as the Old Boss... We won't get fooled again... yeah... right...
yes you persuaded me. now i think there is nothing wrong with a system in which top 5% holds 72% of everything and bottom 85% has only 15%. its ok.
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
take your shilling elsewhere.
Read radical news here
The Oven Stuffing Comment was in reference to Nazi Germany, where "blame the Jews" turned into the Holocaust. The fact that you didn't get the reference says a great deal about how educated you are.
As for the Talmud, it says a lot of things, much of it contradictory to itself. And if you're not familiar with how Jews use the Talmud, then you have no idea that taking one line out of context is completely inappropriate. Again, showing your complete ignorance of the fact that context is king.
And I wonder how the Talmud has anything to do with OWS, the protesters chanting "blame the Jews", because I rather doubt those chanting know anything of the Talmud, let alone being able to take it out of context, like what was done here.
The question is nothing but a Red Herring, sorry if I didn't let it distract me. Now I know why you posted AC, because you don't want people to realize how stupid and racist you really are.
And no, I'm not a Jew. I just find group politics completely and totally distasteful because it always leads to totalitarianism.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Well, voting does work -- Minnesota had a pro wrestler as a governor. Well, work ..? :)
Use the system, form a party... oh, isnt that what OWS is doing?
You seem to want some kind of controlling "party" that sets mandated media time and many rules -- enforced by who?
The only way I can envision this happening is if there is only 1 party -- and the planning board or ?? are behind the scenes pulling the strings.
yea, you get 30 minutes to discuss these 8 talking points.
Not invited to the debate? Sorry, there is only so much time to spread around.
Money invested, even in a bank, isn't affected by inflation (unless you're particularly bad in your choice of savings account... but the same is true in a hard money environment) If you buy shares of a company at $1, and inflation is 5%, your shares will be worth $1.05 one year later if the company is neither more nor less valuable than when it started.
What savings accounts are paying interest anywhere near inflation levels? I haven't seen any...
Sorry, you're right, I "skimmed" over that bit. The "free trade" movement started under Nixon and was continued by Carter. (After all, it was Nixon who closed the gold window.) But it only started to accelerate under Reagan.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Documented facts from the jews' talmud no less. They're racist (if not criminal by US Law) http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2478408&cid=37735696 You haven't answered a question if they are proud of them or not (you asked if the "blame the jews" things OWS people are saying are questionable and if they are proud of them or not, so there you go).
Inflation helps this process, because when the general price level rises, the real price of individual items decrease as long as their nominal price stays constant. So for sellers and employees to maintain the same level of real income, they somehow need to justify nominal price rises. You could think of it as the Red Queen hypothesis applied to economics.
Heh, the problem there is that wages are sticky also, at least in a job market like we have.
But generally you're right.
And, just to put things into perspective, the boom years of the 1950s and 1960s saw inflation around 4% and higher in most Western economies, with nobody (at least not the 99%) complaining about inflation, whereas recently, inflation has crept around the 2% level. That should provide some food for thought as well.
It's too hard to explain any of this to people, because people are idiots, and end up repeating nonsense that's true for the rich, but not for anyone else. Although inflation doesn't hurt 'the rich' per se, who do not have their money in 'money'. It hurts retail stores, who have to constantly deal with being a step behind.
Probably half the people out there complaining about 'inflation' have more debt than cash on hand. Like, oh, anyone who has a mortgage, at all. Which means inflation is helping them, by definition. But they wander around yammering about 'inflation', because they've been told it's bad and told it's happening.
Basically, if people actually wish to understand this and stop repeating weird 'inflation=bad' nonsense, the issue with inflation is not so much as what it does to 'money' that people already have. Almost no actual human beings have enough actual money to worry about that.
The issue with inflation, and deflation, is the lag as the value of money changes in different places at different times. Usually wages vs. prices. Inflation makes the lag go in a direction that is useful to people who buy things in stores.
Also people should understand that having exactly no inflation or deflation is impossible, unless the government can magically predict exactly how much new wealth is being generated and how much old wealth is being destroyed next month, and produce economic policies that create exactly the monetary supply to mimic that. Barring the success of those two independently impossible feats, you're going to get inflation or deflation.
So you're going to get one or the other, and for quite some time, the policy has been 'minimum amount of inflation, but not let it fall into deflation'. (Although deflation did happen in 2009.) I live in constant fear of the day a politician campaigns on 'I will reverse inflation! I will give us 10% negative inflation!', and anti-inflation idiots vote for him.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Would The Buddha blog for Hitler? The obvious answer is: Of course he would. The Buddha would debunk the Nazi propaganda and wake the Germans (before it's too late).
But would the Nazis allow it? Would the Nazis allow The Buddha to cut the Nazi's web of lies? Of course they wouldn't. So, if the American elites are all fired up about Occupy Wall Street isn't that a hint that OWS is no thread to the elites? (Notice how the master signer Paul Krugman is all fired up about OWS).
Did anybody in the american press admit that, the Meltdown must be seen in the context of the "global economy"? It has nothing to do with greed or the "evil" banks[1]. The de-regulation, liberation etc of the banks IS a neccessity for the "global economy". No global banking no global economy.
However, even if Glass-Steagal is put back in place (or something similar), if a simple finical "innovation"[4] can bring down the "global economy" so easily -- how is this ever going work? >_ In other words: Globalization doesn't work and never will.
So, what the U.S needs to do is a gentle and gradual localization of it's economy (this will take decades) -- the leftists call it de-globalization. Projects such as the de-centralization of the U.S. American food industry or re-urbanization are classic example of how to start this. However, the [sic] liberal elites wont allow this to happen -- they love globalization.
(...) I was there, ten years ago in Genoa when the Europeans said NO to neo-liberarlism (the American equivalent where the protests of Seattle). Afterwards, it was truly amazing to see how easily the elites brainwashed the college kids -- and swiftly turned things around against us (the working class). My generation hates the 68ers (the Boomer-hippies) because they stepped down on the "anti-globalisation" crowd (Notice how similar this is in the U.S, the Boomer-hippies turned into war-mongers too: The Economist, The NYT, Friedman, Kristoff, Hitchens etc where all fired up about the Iraq war) -- these fuckers threw away history. (...)
So the un-defeatable elites love globalization? But it gets worse: The economists love the "global economy" even more.
The liberal icon Paul Krugman is OFFICIALLY[2] considered a Scientist (he's everywhere on everything [3]) and Krugman (I wish he was dead) loves the "global economy"
Is Occupy Wall Street up for it? To go up against the elites, and to go up against [sic] Science?
To only hope is that a real Scientist speaks out against Economics (but this would require the Scientific community to admit they let it happend: A pseudo science was presented as real Science to the public). Everbody -- everybody -- knows that globalization spun out control with the exception of virtually every economist.
So to wrap it up: Refuting Economics, Refuting the "opinion-leaders" NYT, Economst, Time Magazine etc (and scrapping the fucking Nobel Prize) is probably all that needs to be done to get things started. I have *umm* cancer so this Your chance to fame and glory. What are you waiting for? ^_^
So you want more examples? The extreme interdependences of the "global economy" are a cause of instabilities all by itself etc etc Krugman was for CO2 derivate trade, against breaking up the banks, in favor of food speculation (starving the poor). In favor of Haitian style slavery (google "in praise of cheap labor krugman") and above all, believes the U.S can export itself out of the depression *bwhahaha*. And worse of all worse Krugman doesn't miss a chance to throw mud at China. Also, you might read Stigliz' book "In free fall" it's the work of a true academic fraudster etc etc
[1] One could argue that all (transnational) corporations do these things, so if they want to throw Loyd Blankenfein into jail -- so goes George Soros, Steve Jobs etc.
[2] Todays "top" Economists are presented as Scientist (Stigliz had multipliable appearances on AuthorsAtGoogle and was featured in LMD twice. Krugman was called a Scientist in Le Monde Diplomatique -- the authoritative
It's a bad idea. A currency should represent and serve a single culture/nation/society. When you implement a single currency across a range of disparate economies you end up with the "Euro crisis" presently unfolding before us.
This is a really stupid statement, equal to saying that the United States should get rid of the dollar because it's a bad idea because of all of the disparate economies of the states.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
My pessimistside: They already try to manifest against the war in Iraq... It changes nothing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_the_Iraq_War It would be more useful to stop buying stuff or watching television and get out with your friends.
My optimist side: Maybe they learn something from Bug's Life movie. (The ants colony fight back the grasshoppers). The problem is that every revolution has it own risk. But when there is 30 millions without jobs it become serious.
Index linked shares? Ask your daddy's trust fund manager where I can get some of those!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Thank you, thank you, thank you. You are a voice of reason in a sea of inflation insanity.