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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."
This isnt about Assange and his glory seeking attempts.
This is about our parents, our grandparents, and our future. Our grandparents and parents because their retirement disappeared when bankers toying with other peoples money failed.
Us because, as it stands now...we have no guaranteed retirement plan. At any time any idiot can do the exact same thing and take away our retirement.
Companies are gouging the consumer, stealing from their employees, and then asking them to pay for their own expensive healthcare.
Not only that, but these same companies are claiming no one wants to work for them and asking for overseas employees.
This world that has been created by the Corporations has put enough pressure on the lower and middle class. It is time, once again, to tell them "we are tired and we aint gunna take it no more".
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.
Tempted? If you are lower or middle class and ever have any hope of enjoying life when you are of retiring age, you better join them.
Otherwise, just throw your money down a rabbit hole.
I've seen it in cartoon form too: http://www.onenewsnow.com/uploadedImages/Cartoons/101011.jpg
It's still wrong though. I wouldn't even call it a bad argument, as that would mean admitting it's an argument. It's a good textbook of the ad hominium fallacy: "These people are hypocrites, therefore what they say is wrong."
Just wait 'til the boomers notice that their retirement funds went poof. There's a whole generation that felt entitled to get everything handed to them from cradle to grave. What do you think will happen when you not only take away what they greedily consider entitlement but also what they worked for. You have a lot of people there who are used to complaining if they don't get their way and who are anything but a minority.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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 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.
I agree. This is Corporatism at work. But i am saddened to see that the worldview today is so straightforward and simple minded. Sure the Occupy crowd is right, but no one in it mentions that Corporatism can only be "installed" if the Government has no "UAC". We have a big and weak government (the worst kind actually), where legislation which creates Freddie and Fannie (inducting huge market distortions), Housing Acts etc, etc, which do more harm than good. And when the corporations mess up, they get bailed out whereas people have no jobs and no income. No wonder that the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street have more than 30% common variance. This is perceived unfairness. One wants the Government out, the other the corporations down. Both are right. And while I agree with you on each and single argument you have there, put one from me on that list: Screw the Government because it is the only one with legislative power and have done nothing but crap with it. Screw them because they have taken away our freedom in the name of defense. Screw them because they are in the same boat with corporations, who in my view want nothing to do a Free Market. All they want is Government protection and consumer gouging. In fact, screw them all.
I take my children to see Madonna(..), but I never for once ever thought I was in the same business.Chris Rea.
That what I was thinking. The indignados who occupied Sol on the 15th of May didn't choose to protest on the 15th of October because of something which started in New York in September.
It might not technically be a valid form of argument; but this is forum were we are reacting to and pontificating on a protest movement. Its hardly an academic debate we are having here. So even if its not a valid argument form its still worth pointing out the hypocritical nature of some of what they are doing and asking for.
Generally in my practical experience when you find people preaching something other than what they practice one or both of the following is true. They are profoundly lacking in self awareness and understanding of their own situation, or they preaching something that is impractical and often impossible. They may or may not admit it.
I listened to NPR interviewing one of these protesters, he talked about no knowing how he was going to pay all the debt he had, yet called himself middle class. This is the United States, class here is supposed to be about what you have and what you do not what you are. If your net worth is negative, you are not middle class. That is called poor. Is it good to be poor, no, but it does not have to be a permanent condition. I can understand the desire to protest over the lack of mobility, even support it. I find it hard to take political prescriptions from someone who can't even admit or can't understand, perhaps both; his own situation though.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Isn't the point that they want the government to grow some balls and bring down actual justice to the economy sector? If we punished people in proportion to the damage they caused half of wall-street would have life sentences by now and the other half would probably think twice before they do stupid shit to get 0.5% more profit.
Since they're a movement and not an organisation, no they do not have any specific demands.
The core of the movement is the idea that the 1% should be forced to share their wealth with the other 99%, which will have to happen sooner or later, or we'll get another French revolution.
The specifics of -how- the 1% should be forced to share, and how their wealth should be distributed is not an area where there is any notable unity yet.
The occupy crowd is not right. They are touting economic models that have failed in every single country they have been tried (communism, Marxism, socialism). It may be the case that the economic prosperity of the last ten years was illusory. But then even so, the economic model that brought us to this position (Capitalism) has resulted in our current prosperity, which you cannot deny is an order of magnitude greater than comparable regimes managed in the same time. So it is completely wrong to say that Capitalism has failed, and that these "usual suspects" of Trotskyists, anti-Americans and anti-Capitalists have a point. The fact of the matter is that in the UK at least, the top 10% of earners pay 50% of all income tax. The bottom 10% of earners pay 0.6% of all income tax, and the problem with government spending is not that it taxes too little, but that it spends too much.
You know, every once in a while you would see a comment like this on /. But as of late they are very common. I'm an easy going fellow, and not one who would promote affirmative action under any circumstance, but this is getting ridiculous. I can make a relevant comment and get moderated into oblivion, but some how this crap is sitting here at the top of the thread for everyone to see. I consider myself a member of the Slashdot community and I do not want to be associated with this outlook. I don't care if it is trolling or not, if it is trolling it is not very good. A good troll is subtle and smart.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
There are only so many art history graduates the economy can absorb. At my workplace the average age of electronics engineers is very high indeed simply because their aren't enough of them around. Students these days don't want to study something "hard" like that. They'd much rather study something "interesting", but totally useless in the real world. This is why I think making them actually pay for their education is a good idea. It concentrates the mind.
You are desperately ignorant of history if you think that that Nazism was 'status quo' to any significant stretch of German history. Nazism was a revolutionary movement that overthrew the Weimar Republic and cleared away the last vestiges of power held by the German aristocracy. They instituted huge swaths of legislative change at every level and in every corner of life in Germany. And while many of these laws were indeed draconian measures intended to strengthen the power of the state, people allow crimes like the holocaust to blind them to the fact that this was still a government of men who wanted to believe they were benefiting their country in some way, and in fact many positive reforms were instituted as well.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
If you are lower or middle class and ever have any hope of enjoying life when you are of retiring age, you better join them.
Why exactly is that? Sitting around in a park won't change anything. In the US, we have a perfectly functional system for overthrowing the government on a periodic basis: voting. You want *actual* change, then actively work to vote out the current regime. That generally means doing your part to convince at least your family and friends of your position. Few if any will be convinced to change their vote just because some people are camped out near Wall Street, and the politicians will ignore you unless you actually threaten their ability to be re-elected (see original point).
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.
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
If that's what you think, then you're packed full of shit and completely out of touch with reality.
The real reason there are no young EEs in the UK and America is because you older fools shipped off all of the entry-level jobs to India and China. Thus the students who do study EE in college and university graduate, but then find that they can't get any sort of a job in the UK or America because they need at least 5 years of on-the-job experience even to be considered for an interview. They don't even have the chance to gain that experience at all, even those who would gladly work 18 hours days for that whole period of time. So they move on to other endeavors, often in fields totally unrelated to EE.
You older guys can't have it both ways. You can't cut costs by handing off the simpler work to third-worlders, but still expect there to be American- and UK-born/trained EEs ready to take your places.
I recommend reading the work of Steve Keen, an academic economist who went public in 2005 predicting this crisis. He's just published his second edition of "Debunking Economics" a text that systematically destroys the very foundations of "neoclassical" economics. He's also been working on dynamic modelling of the economy that has the potential to actually be useful.
Our lives are going to suck until all the debt our banks created is destroyed. There's no way we can afford to pay it all back, that would cripple the global economy for the next 30 years. Instead these debts should simply be abolished.
Unfortunately our governments don't have the will, or the know how, to actually fix things.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
Wait are you saying that corporations are actually just a group of people, and that corporations don't screw you, actual people screw you? Amazing.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
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?
The problem that the top 10% pay 50% of income tax could easily be fixed by keeping their increase of income in line with the other 90%. This is the only group that has seen substantial income increases over the last decades so they also pay more taxes. Soon they'll make 99% of all income and pay 99% of all taxes. And they will complain about this "injustice..
So should we just throw out property and other fundamental human rights so we can rape the rich? And what happens once we've fleeced that sheep?
Government backing isn't the only thing that allows people to go to college. If more educated people meant more higher paying jobs we wouldn't have a financial crisis. Should going to college require crippling debt for the next 30 years of your life? No, and an easy way to bring the price down is to reduce the demand. If everyone had a college education we'd be in the same place we are now, with the same (or even worse) unemployment we have now, with far more debt than we have now: education is good but it's not a magic panacea. Not everyone should go to college: not everyone can handle it and not everyone should be able to handle it. If you're too stupid to design a bridge properly, why the hell would I want you to design the bridge I'm driving on? If you're a history major and I need a brick layer, why should I pay you two or three times more than another individual who knows just as much about brick laying?
I get it, you want to fleece the rich. Because that wool will never run out, right? And once we've begun cannibalizing ourselves as a country, where does it end? Should we go after the middle class once the rich are all gone? What about personal property rights? Are fundamental human rights volatile? Do they only exist when it's convenient? Do equal rights have no meaning? And what's more greedy than going out on the street and demanding money in exchange for nothing? Do people know how stupid they sound when they're protesting greed while demanding a handout?
I'm not saying all rich people earned every cent they've made in their lives (the same can be said about all tiers of society), but many of them are rich because they've earned it. You can't just make a better society because you mandate it by law, if you could it would have been done already!
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.
More likely, the foundation of this prosperity was a new and plentiful source of energy, oil. The prosperity of human civilization has always been very closely tied to the availability of energy, and for a while oil has been extremely cheap, and basically unlimited.
Now, as the era of (cheap) oil is over, the prosperity will go back to the norm, except that we now have a lot more expectations and a lot more people to feed.
Inflation is the hidden tax that robs mattress stuffers and enriches the financial elite because whenever the government decides to dilute the currency, those at the top get to use the money at the non-diluted value, while those who get it after trickle-down, get to use it at its deflated value. Rinse and repeat and the hard earned $1000 you put in a cookie jar in 1970, which would have paid rent for 10 months, will barely cover a month of rent in an extremely modest apartment, i.e., it's worth $555 in 2010. The mattress stuffer got robbed.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
"When there are multiple university graduates competing for a part-time job at the local supermarket, something is horribly wrong."
I resemble this comment. Sadly.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
The problem with the Tea Party is it was coopted by people like Bachman, Palin and DeMint largely with the help of the main stream media and Republican establishment who wanted to gut the Tea Party's populist economic message and defend the status quo. They did a really great job at it too. They managed to turn the Tea Party image from economic populism in to right wing social conservatism. Social and racial issues have absolutely no place in the Tea Party. I really hope OWS saw what happened to the Tea Party and use their diffuse leadership structure to avoid being coopted. Unions and the Democratic party, in particular, will be pure poison to OWS if they manage to insert themselves in the spotlight. Unions are a nice idea in theory to counter corporate excess but in practice they've become just as bad, and corrupt, as corporations and just as much a part of the problem. They are a complete turn off to most American as a result. Its a total farce for Obama to think OWS is on his side, the second he hired Summers and Geitner to run the economy he proved he was part of the problem, not the solution, and "Change you can believe" was total bullshit.
@de_machina
While you're right about the origins and original anger of both...
Firstly, the Tea Party seems to had started in opposition to the bailouts. That is fine. I actually think the bailouts needed to happen...and all such receiptients should have been broken up afterward. But I understand the anger, and why people think they shouldn't have happened at all. (And since no one can change the past, it's a moot point. At this point, everyone can agree corporations that cannot fail should not even exist.)
That was the one shining moment of sanity. And then the Koch brothers hijacked them into nonsense. They started complaining about utterly imaginary taxes they thinks were raised, when we're actually under some of the lowest taxes ever. And they seem to think the debt has something to do with their individual financial situation, and that the government should balance the budget, something which has absolutely no bearing at all on any individual. They also demand the government stop 'printing money' and causing inflation, apparently completely unaware that inflation has, for the last for years, utterly and completely stopped. (Because the superich keep sucking money out of the system faster than we print it.)
I'm sorry, but any movement that operates from such ignorance is not very useful, because the demands make no sense. But that was just random stupidity, and could be understood, at least. 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.
But that was ignorance, not malice. It happens in any actual grassroots protest movement.
But then the Tea Party was hijacked (1) to oppose government health care, which had nothing to do with their original complaints. In fact, the cost of health care is the major cause of bankrupcy, so at this point the Tea Party is literally facing backwards in trying to make things better for themselves. Thanks to that idiocrary, we ended up with a 'solution' that essentially let the insurance companies run it. Good work, Tea Party!
Then after that, more nonsense kept getting added. Oh, look, the Tea Party is now against abortion. Or whatever.
And, look, the Tea Party is now the Republican base.
I'm sure there are a lot of Tea Party members out there with basically the same complaints and near identical goals as OWS...and they need to look around at where they are standing, and then need to ask themselves what they actually want. And if, perhaps, they are standing in the wrong protest movement.
1) The 'Tea Party' was never really hijacked. Protests managed to exist outside corporate control for a few weeks. But the second it was given a name, it was in corporate control, it was the very first thing corporations did, making it about 'freedom from taxes' instead of 'freedom to not have our government hand shitloads of money to people who blew up the economy'.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I'm afraid I have to disagree with some of your conclusions.
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.
They were lucky. Their immediate ancestors were the group of people who caused the Great Depression, still considered to be the worst economic collapse this country has ever experienced. The government was largely unsuccessful at fixing it until World War II rolled around and restarted our economy. Suddenly the manufacturing capacity was needed to supply ourselves and our allies with weapons.
In hindsight, this was the peak of middle-class America.
I'll agree with that, but point to WWII as the source again. Must of the rest of the industrialised world had been destroyed by war. Factories and production through out Europe and Japan had been destroyed to win the war. The US responded by rebuilding them, which involved selling our industrialised services to them. When you are the biggest or only source of an item or service, of course you will be doing well.
One such concept that they embraced was outsourcing/offshoring.
This to me is just the conclusion of the rebuild efforts. The US being the only source of high tech products was not a sustainable model. Other countries were sure to develop similar abilities. An example, you never hear much about non-American cars from the 50s. But with the 60s you start to hear more about European cars (like the VW bus so popular with the hippies you metioned) and with the 70s you start to see the sales of some of the now iconic Japanese cars (like the Honda Accord). Similarly during the 50s airliners were generally a US product from companies like Boeing, Lockheed, and Douglas. Once the 70s rolls around and you see the start of Airbus.
The Boomer's precious offshoring, outsourcing and "free trade" destroyed the American manufacturing sector in the 1980s and 1990s.
No, our economy would have declined even had none of those practices ever been employed. We had it good selling to the entire world after a major war. The rest of the world caught up, wanted their share of the pie, and were willing to do things cheaper than we were. We would have lost sales to the rest of the world either way.
So in conclusion, the Boomer's ancestors f-ed things up every bit as badly as we did (the Great Depression), WWII saved our economy and we were lucky there were no major strikes on the US mainland, and finally the world recovered and our position as the dominant producer became unsustainable.
The 66% were companies not covered under the CRA, which did not have to give out the loans. The only reason the loans were a good investment was because they could be repackaged into CDOs and sold off, leaving the risk with the last sucker holding the bag, which was not the underwriting firm.
The investment vehicles used were created to offload bad debt in the 80's, but rapidly became frowned upon because everyone who did it went belly-up and it simply didnt look like the government would tolerate it on a large scale..
It was only when the worst Fannie and Freddie loans started being packaged that way in the 90's that the rest of the market then saw an opportunity to also offloaded bad loans in the same way, with the idea that the government was now never going to crack down on the practice of rating worthless paper as AAA and further that paper wasnt so worthless if the government was guaranteeing at least some of it.
So it was indeed a market distortion caused by government influences.
The individuals who could not pay the mortgage lacked the sophistication to tell they couldn't afford it was only part of the problem.
This is bullshit that assumes that people that take loans that they cant afford simply don't know what they are doing. Poor people arent naive. Most of the time they know exactly what they are doing.
This idea that there is a large class of people too stupid to make decisions is fallacious.. in fact the idea that a lot of people need government to help them was the fucking problem to begin with. Families that bring home $35K/year know that they cannot afford a fucking $300,000 home. Don't let some twat trying to lay all the blame on the banks tell you differently.
"His name was James Damore."
There are terrific similarities between the two groups. They are both angry about the bank bailouts, but one focuses its rage on the government for providing the bailout and the other focuses its rage on Wall Street for taking it. In fact, the biggest difference between the two may be their demographic: Tea Party is mostly older and OWS mostly younger, making this a conflict of generations rather than classes. The problem is the manipulators are hard at work keeping people from finding any common ground by demonizing the other side instead of addressing their grievances.
The Tea Party got this treatment from the Huffington Post, who focused on the most racist signs from the protesters. Now we're seeing the same thing, with Andrew "we have the guns" Breitbart's photographer blatantly staging a photo of a protester supposedly defecating on a police car. Brietbart's previous credits include videos edited to make USDA employee Shirley Sherrod look like a racist and ACORN employees look like they were giving tax evasion advice on running child prostitution rings.
I sympathized with the early Tea Party. Now I sympathize with these protesters, and this constant demonization of them is so heartbreaking. For the first time in my life I'm confronting these people on Facebook, forcing them to support their statements with references or showing them how they are being manipulated (90% of the time by a story I can trace back to Breitbart). For a week they fought back, but then they toned down their attacks... Unfortunately, watching the new Facebook Ticker, I can see that they have merely taken their hatred to where they think I can't see it. Wonderful social experiment that new Facebook Ticker, see what you're "Friends" are saying about you behind your back and there's no way to turn it off.
All we can do is try to get people to see the human beings behind the villainous caricatures. When they try to connect the movement to the "sinister machinations of George Soros," I point out that Soros is a prolific philanthropist and humanitarian. When they call the protesters scum, slackers, and anarchists, I point them to the We are the 99% blog and ask them to justify their position with references from that site.
People in the Tea Party should be doing the same thing, putting a human face on their movement. We should be finding common ground. Keeping us fighting each other is exactly what the powers that be need to prevent any significant change.
i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
with such a low uid you should know better.
voting is broken in the US. coke or pepsi? yeah, real choice.
sorry dude but you are signing the song that keeps us dumb. 'vote vote vote! for change'. bullshit. a guy in a suit and a guy in a suit are NOT your friends, now.
voting is broken.
what's the next thing up from that? I forget.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
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."
voting is broken.
I argue that it's the PEOPLE who are irreparably broken, and voting is functioning just fine. We get exactly what we vote for; no one gets installed into office who wasn't voted in, and no one stays in office who has been voted out.
That said, let's allow for the premise that I'm some idiot who doesn't understand the issues. What, then is the goal of these sorts of protests? Outside of voting, the only other way to really change government is a violent overthrow. That won't work in this case; if people won't vote in their own self-interests, they sure as hell won't FIGHT in their own self-interests.
To me, the only way to fix this mess is changing the way people vote. It's a damn difficult proposition; that's why we're in the mess we're in! If it were easy to change, it would already have been done.
You *might* be able to convince me in some way that the awareness the protesters raise will change how we spend and invest our money, thus reducing corporate America's influence on politics. But I think you'll have a far more difficult time convincing people to vote differently than change their cushy lifestyles. (I loves me my Starbucks...)
So what, then? What, aside from pushing people to voting or violent overthrow, is the point? I ask this truly seeking enlightenment, because you seem to see something that I don't.
with such a low uid you should know better.
Eh, a low uid doesn't in any way convey intelligence or experience; it just means that I needed to sign up in order to customize my slashboxes.
Remember when the Nazis tried that?
"So wtf happens? Of course the banks do as required and make loans to people who really shouldn't be getting those loans, the government said they have to."
That's simply wrong. Nobody required banks to make bad loans. NOBODY. Government only required to use the same criteria for loans in 'bad' and 'good' areas.
And facts show that delinquency of loans in 'bad' areas is the same as for the loans in 'good' areas. So government had absolutely no part in it, apart from allowing banks to build CDO scams.
I agree somewhat with what you say but disagree with the idea that sitting around in a park won't change anything. All you have to do is to look up recent south African or slightly older Indian history. Heck, even in America a woman sitting in a bus changed a lot of things.
The idea that you can only change things by voting or by violent overthrow is simplistic. It is also possible to influence how people vote. For example: Nelson Mandela started out with the idea of violent overthrow of govt. (since voting was not a real option), then he moved on to sitting in his jail cell and protesting until the ruling class gave up. And that caused real change -- S. Africa has not had a serious race riot or violence because their leader renounced it. Or in the case of Gandhi, he pretty much convinced his nation (which early on did not care) that the British were a bad idea by repeatedly getting beaten up or thrown in jail for non-violent protests.
This is the age old idea of marketing -- you have to convince the "user" that he needs your product even if the user would not have picked it out from a self-made list of "needs". I believe sitting around in a park may convince some of the electorate that some sort of change is required.
http://slashdot.org/submission/1062723/Cheap-mobile-data-plan?art_pos=2
You are ignoring the colossal gap between what people vote for and what people want. Take some examples of what the protesters want:
Financial transaction tax
accountability for financial executives
closing of corporate tax loopholes
To name just a few, now tell me who I should vote for that will pass these measures...
On the other hand, mass protests send a clear message about what people want, and pressures individual congressional and senatorial candidates to address those concerns while on the campaign trail. Either they will lie, or they will support such measures. Claiming that voting is the only democratic duty of the citizen, and/or the only way he/she can cause change, is dead wrong, you have to shift the debate towards the questions that matter to you, you have to make it clear that the candidate who promises the most things you want will get your vote. The fact that the US has a 2 (1.2) party system makes this especially difficult as the democrats can easily say "well the republicans are going to make more tax loopholes, so you have no choice but to vote for us and we don't promise to close any". In countries with a parliamentary system however, protesting and demonstrating is a clear civic duty and has a significant effect on politics.