On October 28 2011 03:17 bonifaceviii wrote: Nothing. It just fits well into the protesters' narrative.
Honestly, it would behoove you to read the articles sometimes.
Yeah I did...
I still don't get the point of this.
Why is it the businesses' fault that they pay their CEO's a bunch of money? Shouldn't the real question be why those businesses have not gone out of business due to their seemingly poor management and policies?
Well, it's kind of a big circle, isn't it? The business has people in Washington passing the legislation that makes their poor business policies possible, whether it's through regulations or bail outs. And then you have people saying, blame the government, or blame the business. But really, they're all part of one big interconnected web. So, yea, it is the business' fault at the end of the day.
If you have to place fault, why so fast to dump gov's accountability and just say buisness? Take away all the faces, all parties, all the names, and visualize the U.S. under one President, one party, who over time, with bankers/business interests who got us to this point. How would you fix it?
I'm not. I'm saying gov and business for all intents and purposes here are the same thing. You protest one, you're protesting the other.
I would fix the problem by voting in people that do not accept "campaign contributions". And I'd do this by starting grass roots movements to make people aware of the current corruption.... hm...
Seems to me that we're on the right track already.
Cain is on the right track? Obama is on the right track? Romney?...
The problem with this is it's a very temporary solution, and it's so easy to the government to trick people with legislations that's thousands of pages long.
The real solution is to get the government completely out of the business of managing economy.
You get them out of the economy completely, and lobbyism will become useless.
There has to be some level of involvement between the government and business. While I completely support removing many of the hurdles that government regulation creates, you can't remove them all. Specifically, who protects the environment? Child labor? Building standards?
I believe Kiarip would expect us to make the smart decisions and somehow be completely aware of the companies that aren't up to snuff and just not interact with them, which i think is impossible people are busy living their lives unless such information is publicly gathered and posted in an easy to find location most people wont spend the time before they buy. But that's me putting words in his idealistic mouth, which frankly paints humanity in a nicer light then what i believe.
I fully expected Kiarip to respond the same. It's too bad there's a couple hundred years of evidence showing that the majority of people choose what's cheap in the short run, not what's efficient/safe/sustainable in the long run.
I also don't know what kind of system could fix the issue with corruption in politics without extreme oversight(which is still corruptible). Even with no government initiated business regulation, government would still control property rights and contract enforcement, which would still allow them to set the rules so that it's not a level playing field, thus making it effective to buy them out the same as they do now
If it's cheap in the short run it still ahs some value to it. In the end when these things get exposed the problem isn't that some people earlier on didn't know and made mistakes they would have preferred to not make, but the fact that the government support of inefficient businesses is so strong that when everything gets unraveled the business still won't go under.
I think the ban on shark fin harvesting thread shows that a good number of people don't care about or understand the importance of preserving the environment. I think it's also well established through history that too many businesses would rather illegally dump pollutants to save money rather then worry about destroying the environment. To say it's government support that keeps unethical businesses running is laughable imo.
In an ideal world preserving the environment is fine and dandy. In the real world it's only worth it if the ends justify the means.
Destruction of the ecosystem due to X is a risk. The risk's average damage can be estimated. You can then estimate how much it will cost to reduce said risk, and you can do the cost/benefit analysis regarding the 2.
In a situation where pollution is destroying private property or its value, you need a court system that respects humans' property rights.
In cases where something is more global like the possibility of a drastic shift in an ecosystem that may also cause damage you have purely constitutional grounds to ban, and enforce (via increased tax revenue, after all this is part of protection of the citizens.)
Of course all bans come with a backlash, so this is something to keep in mind (and is the reason why enforcement is necessary and will be expensive.)
Why is it the businesses' fault that they pay their CEO's a bunch of money? Shouldn't the real question be why those businesses have not gone out of business due to their seemingly poor management and policies?
Well, it's kind of a big circle, isn't it? The business has people in Washington passing the legislation that makes their poor business policies possible, whether it's through regulations or bail outs. And then you have people saying, blame the government, or blame the business. But really, they're all part of one big interconnected web. So, yea, it is the business' fault at the end of the day.
If you have to place fault, why so fast to dump gov's accountability and just say buisness? Take away all the faces, all parties, all the names, and visualize the U.S. under one President, one party, who over time, with bankers/business interests who got us to this point. How would you fix it?
I'm not. I'm saying gov and business for all intents and purposes here are the same thing. You protest one, you're protesting the other.
I would fix the problem by voting in people that do not accept "campaign contributions". And I'd do this by starting grass roots movements to make people aware of the current corruption.... hm...
Seems to me that we're on the right track already.
Cain is on the right track? Obama is on the right track? Romney?...
The problem with this is it's a very temporary solution, and it's so easy to the government to trick people with legislations that's thousands of pages long.
The real solution is to get the government completely out of the business of managing economy.
You get them out of the economy completely, and lobbyism will become useless.
There has to be some level of involvement between the government and business. While I completely support removing many of the hurdles that government regulation creates, you can't remove them all. Specifically, who protects the environment? Child labor? Building standards?
I believe Kiarip would expect us to make the smart decisions and somehow be completely aware of the companies that aren't up to snuff and just not interact with them, which i think is impossible people are busy living their lives unless such information is publicly gathered and posted in an easy to find location most people wont spend the time before they buy. But that's me putting words in his idealistic mouth, which frankly paints humanity in a nicer light then what i believe.
I fully expected Kiarip to respond the same. It's too bad there's a couple hundred years of evidence showing that the majority of people choose what's cheap in the short run, not what's efficient/safe/sustainable in the long run.
I also don't know what kind of system could fix the issue with corruption in politics without extreme oversight(which is still corruptible). Even with no government initiated business regulation, government would still control property rights and contract enforcement, which would still allow them to set the rules so that it's not a level playing field, thus making it effective to buy them out the same as they do now
If it's cheap in the short run it still ahs some value to it. In the end when these things get exposed the problem isn't that some people earlier on didn't know and made mistakes they would have preferred to not make, but the fact that the government support of inefficient businesses is so strong that when everything gets unraveled the business still won't go under.
I think the ban on shark fin harvesting thread shows that a good number of people don't care about or understand the importance of preserving the environment. I think it's also well established through history that too many businesses would rather illegally dump pollutants to save money rather then worry about destroying the environment. To say it's government support that keeps unethical businesses running is laughable imo.
In an ideal world preserving the environment is fine and dandy. In the real world it's only worth it if the ends justify the means.
Destruction of the ecosystem due to X is a risk. The risk's average damage can be estimated. You can then estimate how much it will cost to reduce said risk, and you can do the cost/benefit analysis regarding the 2.
In a situation where pollution is destroying private property or its value, you need a court system that respects humans' property rights.
In cases where something is more global like the possibility of a drastic shift in an ecosystem that may also cause damage you have purely constitutional grounds to ban, and enforce (via increased tax revenue, after all this is part of protection of the citizens.)
Of course all bans come with a backlash, so this is something to keep in mind (and is the reason why enforcement is necessary and will be expensive.)
You act as though modifying taxes to push an agenda is different then enacting laws that do the same thing. In the end, they're both government interventions that can be corrupted to serve individual interests. I fail to see how this changes anything that the current system is plagued by.
Yeah... I addressed a lot of your concerns a couple of posts ago (and a billion times before that in this and other economics related topics.)
maybe you should respond to that instead.
Yeah i read it and for the most part i disagree with you, a few parts i found a reasonable 50/50 either of us could be right i mostly looking at an immediate 20 year time frame for change. But a lot of it sounded like trickle down/horse and sparrow economics to which we are at a cross road. See i didn't feel like doing the same dance on that topic but Jormundr did it.
And having people decide who the money goes to makes no sense either, the point of the campaign is to introduce the people to the candidate's policy and political stances, and it would make sense that people could be aware of those things before they chose whether or not to give the money to his campaign.
This sentence right here baffles me esp considering what comes after... We have completely different ideas in how a person should be bought into politics. My train of thought would be ideally essentially party-less system in which candidates would gather local and then state support which turns into them being put on the federal stage, it heavily relays on people not all throwing in their vouchers all at once, perhaps cut the voucher into sections to which you could spend it?, but people holding out. Again i'm not suppose to be the details man i'm just throwing an idea out there. I imagine there would have to be some money set aside for debates to be ran at the state and federal level, and entry into such a debate would require a show of a certain amount of support, ie show the books on how many vouchers you collected. At the local level i imagine one can gather and do this between themselves.
You on the other hand are hoping that there can be some kind of system of over-sight where at the very top of it is some kind of person of amazing virtue, that he doesn't accept bribes... because if you introduce oversight for the government who's going to oversee this oversight?... Oversight is also a position of great power, and as long as the government has the power to control the market, if you're a large corporation there will always be someone you could offer a little(or a shitton) of money under the table in order to get a little government boost
Well this is just off the top of my head, but it would be something like they are elected though a system in which money is in small amounts given by the people and is transparent, essentially every president and congressmen should be a populist president/congressmen. To whom they propse and make laws, which is reviewed for legality by a judiscal system, which i'm not sure how would appointment to upper courts would work. They would be legally obligated to be transparent and put on an accessible place their transgressions. They any law or regulation would be further put under core principals of a justice governance, to which details i do not know but would be put in place to which your direct subordinates would be under your responsibility established a chain of guilt. And 3rd party watch dogs groups which have always been around would watch the watchmen, again i'm not sure what fourm would be set to bring this to the public. And now i'm just rambling i'm not the person to write out a complex set of rules ideally it would be done as a group and further refined, being a bottom up method.
I would love for our media outlets to be more concerned with what our political people and their relationships with their donors and with in detail the laws and crap that we are putting out there. And for the news if they wanted to be called news be legally obligated to be correct, and so 24/7 "news" outlets would have to be labeled as opinion not news. I would love for an reinvestment by the people for investigate journalism, yet the biggest group of journalist that would do that came form the news paper who can no longer afford such costly ventures. And so our news is filled with superficial crap essentially being no better then tabloids.
On October 28 2011 04:56 Moonling wrote: I don't like the fact that the media is blaming police, 99% are just doing their jobs
Oakland (and all other localities that I've checked so far, probably most if not all) specifically requires police officers(and many other public servants) to take an oath of office which includes upholding the constitution of the united states of america. "Doing their job" would mean protecting civilians from the police officers that are violating citizens rights. The police officers in question are not doing their jobs, they are instead "Just following orders", the distinction between these behaviors is really terrifying.
Before any Officer takes the Law Enforcement Oath of Honor, it is important that they understand what it means. This oath is a solemn pledge that an Officer makes when they sincerely intend to do what they say. The following words are hereby defined and included in the Oakland Police Department “Oath of Honor”. Honor means that one's word is given as a guarantee. Betray is defined as breaking faith with the public trust. Badge is the symbol of your office. Integrity is being the same person in both private and public life. Character means the qualities that distinguish an individual. Public trust is a charge of duty imposed in faith toward those you serve. Courage is having the strength to withstand unethical pressure, fear or danger. Accountability means that you are answerable and responsible to your o
Oath of Honor I, (Officer’s Name), Pledge on my honor That I will never betray my badge, My integrity, My character, Or the public trust. I will always have the courage To hold myself and others Accountable for our actions. I will always uphold the Constitution, The laws of my Country, State and Community, And the agency I serve, So help me God.
On October 28 2011 03:12 Kiarip wrote: are you just trying to waste my time now? I've answered all of this before.
Not completely, but there has been a pretty consistent trend of the economy being in better shape the free'er the market is. A lot of countries in Europe right now actually have a less regulated economy than us (the "capitalists,") I'm talking about economy of course, not overall size of government. For example Switzerland is unapologetically capitalistic, and has been doing great, only recently has they had a slight economic decline when their Federal bank decided to print some money (for the first time in a long time,) but they have been doing great. Sweden has a pretty large government, but it has some largely unregulated industries (compared to the US at least,) and they're providing both their customers with high quality low cost products (thus raising the total wealth of their citizens,) and their workforce with fair wages and employment.
On October 28 2011 03:12 Kiarip wrote: Labor rights are stupid. There are no special "employer rights" why should there be special "labor rights." All labor rights should be defined in the contract between business and the worker, contracts can be negotiated via unions. Unions are perfectly fine in a free market capitalist economy, as long as the government stays out of it.
Same thing (though less common because it is harder to manage an efficient union than it is to have a running legal department) happens on the side of unions. Too lazy to dig any up. Read on some of the adverse effects of teacher unions.
Therefore, both unions and businesses need legislation to check their power.
On October 28 2011 03:12 Kiarip wrote: Pretty much all monopolies in history have been propped up by the government.
Walmart and Intel stand out here, as well as our wonderful telecommunication service providers.
On October 28 2011 03:12 Kiarip wrote: Price gouging results in net loss of profits. Collusions always result in some of the members losing out on profits (while others get increased profits,) but even if the profits are redistributed, collusion simply increases the risk/reward of competing against them. It also costs significant amount of money to push your competition out of the market, it's not always a smart investment, and when it is successful it is generally due to your competitors having a less competitive business model in the first place.
First you say that monopolies increase the risk/reward of competition. I agree. To rewrite your last sentence, " It also costs significant amount of money to push a monopoly out of the market, it's not always a smart investment, and when it is successful it is generally due to your competitors having a less competitive business model(read: no luck in the patent section of the legal department) in the first place.
On October 28 2011 03:12 Kiarip wrote: If people take out loans they can't pay back they will have to file bankruptcy, and then it is the BANK that loses money... Obviously the person also loses credit ratings, and etc. but the only reason those credit ratings exist is because when you are loaned some money it is the LENDER that bears the fiscal consequences of you defaulting, not you.
This is pure capitalist propaganda. A basic bank investment structure will still net exorbitant amounts of profit even without a bankruptcy system in place. It's funny then that the person with the account has no such assurance of safety for their own money from the bank (again, this limited assurance comes from government regulation).
On October 28 2011 03:12 Kiarip wrote: The idea of bankruptcy is perfectably acceptible in a capitalist free market. Saying it's not a part of the capitalist free market, is like saying that the possibility of a person who owes money dying isn't something that's considered in capitalism... It is. That's why the bank wants to be paid interest, and creates the monthly payment systems for being paid back, it's so that if you die, or just don't have the money it can cut its losses.
Since there should be no regulation on this by the government, it is up to the Bank Account Holder's Association(BAHA) to act as the negotiating body between the account holder and the bank?
On October 28 2011 03:12 Kiarip wrote: That's why it's a lot better when there are no complicated rules. You have the human rights which protect people's voice, property, freedom from slavery, and etc. and then you put the rest of the power in the hands of people. THe people have more bargaining power with the market than they do with the government. Creating regulations like you said yourself serves to benefit those who can afford to pay the lawyers to find ways to dodge the regulations.
This statement has some truth to it. In our current system, ~ the top 1% have the greatest power and the greatest ability to gain more power by dodging regulations. The next 9% below them have the rest of the bargaining power. This is from a pure monetary standpoint. Obviously the next 90% have SOCIAL bargaining power, but that is severely limited because our nation does not have a strong + unified social identity. In the system you propose, wealth grows exponentially because there is nothing to stop it. Unfortunately this only occurs to those who already have substantial capital (capital is a resource which delivers income without input. an example of this is land, or a patent collection) or assets. This means that you have to either be born rich, be lucky enough to be the first to capitalize on innovations, or win the lottery to accrue wealth.
On October 28 2011 03:12 Kiarip wrote: Let's look at a simplifed example. 90% of the MONEY is in the hands of the few, and they are sitting on it, not willing to spend it. 10% of the money in the country is in the hands of the poor and they're spending all of it just to get by on all the products that exist in the marketplace.
Current supply meets current demand
On October 28 2011 03:12 Kiarip wrote: Now say the wealthy decide to spend all their money... the effective monetary supply all of a sudden increase 10 times, but the amount of goods available remains the same... this means that every all the goods on average will becoem 10 times more expensive... but will the poor actually have 10 times the money to afford the same amount of stuff as they did before? No they won't.
This is an amazingly unrealistic situation, as there is no motivation for the wealthy to convert their capital into money into goods. Yes, a superfast redistribution of wealth will cause inflation. There is no incentive for that to happen. If it did, it would also cause an increase in demand for items associated with standard of living, which would, along with the cessation of money being printed, eventually bring the buying power of the dollar back up to a more normative value.
On October 28 2011 03:12 Kiarip wrote: It's the lack of production.
It's actually the lack of sweatshops. Businesses have little incentive to have production facilities here rather than in China, with the exceptions of transport and tariff concerns. Therefore, freeing the market regulation would not create jobs in the United States. It will create plenty of low paying jobs in China though.
On October 28 2011 03:12 Kiarip wrote: If they live off low percent interest and don't spend most of their money, how much wealth are they actually consuming? Say you have enough money in principle to get 100k$ a year via interest, so you just live off the interest and don't spend any of the principle ...
Sure, you can be totally lazy, and not do anything at all productive in life, but you're techinically living off the dividends from the investments that the bank makes with money you gave it, if you didn't have all that money in the bank, the bank would have less of a money supply, and it would be forced to higher the interest rates, which would make it harder for new businesses that took loans from the bank for starting capital to succeed. So you're technically helping the society by both allowing your money to be spent by other people, AND by not increasing the demand which results in lower prices for other people that do want to spend, the 100k$ interest is the dividends you get for this. Then if you only spend 100k a year, you're only consuming as much wealth as a person who makes 100k$ a year normally, so you can't live the life of a more rich person unless you're willing to spend more of your money.
Flawed assumption in that you assume that money spent is not going to return right back to bank. Sure, there might be one or two people/businesses keeping their money in a mattress, but that probably won't affect too much...
On October 28 2011 03:12 Kiarip wrote: You'er gonna argue that you're getting money doing nothing, but what you gotta realize is that no one wants to get money just to have a bunch of paper, people get money so that they could spend it, people work, which creates some kind of value, then they get paid based of some percentage fo the value they create, and then using that money they can consume roughly as that percentage of wealth that they created... it's a closed system in this way. All money that exists is supposed to be responsible for a certain piece of the total wealth (actual stuff.)
The problem with this is that the percentage of perceived value skyrockets for the higher income brackets.
On October 28 2011 03:12 Kiarip wrote: Not being able to find jobs because of over-regulation doesn't help the bottom either. Companies getting bail-outs doesn't help the bottom either.
Bailouts yes, jobs lost due to regulation, no. Our job problem is more societal then political. The american dream just doesn't have anything in it about working for $3 a day in a shoe factory. There is a giant social stigma against blue collar jobs in this country and this is what props up minimum wage laws. Doing away with minimum wage would only be possible with a massive societal shift in values.
On October 28 2011 03:12 Kiarip wrote: Capitalism tries to ensure that people get paid according to what they produce. There will always be a bottom 99%, a bottom 90%, a bottom 10 %, and a bottom 1%, that's just due to the laws of mathematics.
Please read: http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html We are talking about the distribution of wealth. Yes, there will always be wealthy and poor. However the distribution is currently very uneven. The European countries you mentioned, Sweden and Switzerland, are ranked by their Gini coeffiecient (a statistical measure of inequality) as 1st and 42nd respectively. We are ranked 93rd.
Here is a video of Peter Schiff at OWS. I know some of you might not like him or his views but I thought I would show this video anyway. Just to warn you of possible bias, he is a libertarian and this video is done by a libertarian youtube channel, so there might be some selection bias with the people they show him talking to.
Walmart and Intel stand out here, as well as our wonderful telecommunication service providers.
Our telecommunications was bell a government backed monopoly, which was broken up and created the 7 baby bells, which given time actually just reformed themselves back into at&t and Verizon our two large monopolies pretty much XD. So we traded one monopoly for two in the US and supposedly that's okay becuase it's not 1 big company it's 2.
Walmart i'm not sure on history
Intel is interested becuase without dell and ibm essentially creating AMD to produce intel products so that if intel went under or was hurting their supply of chips wouldn't be hurt. Largely the apparently like monopoly i would blame on amd not competence with advertising in the 90's with intel, hell they barely compete not with advertising. The fist group of chips in which were not given to AMD and AMD did not give their designs to intel, was the Pentium chips as you cannot brand a number like 8086 so the moment intel decided to abandon the practice of sharing designs, they pushed a very aggressive marking campaign which i would say worked. At points in time AMD had the upper hand in chip design compared to intel but the squander their lead esp in the past few years, it's just been sad. Ofc what patents are held by which company and how that effected their chips and profits is up for further debate, but i would say intel won with marketing not though patents.
On October 28 2011 05:23 relyt wrote: Here is a video of Peter Schiff at OWS. I know some of you might not like him or his views but I thought I would show this video anyway. Just to warn you of possible bias, he is a libertarian and this video is done by a libertarian youtube channel, so there might be some selection bias with the people they show him talking to. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGL-Ex1CD1c&feature=channel_video_title
God damn, this video makes me hate this movement anymore. Not one person pointed out a valid point. This shit pisses me off.
Contagious Obviously all those who beat on drums and march must be nothing but lazy no good hippies. Clearly the civil war was fought by one hippie camp vs another hippie camp.
As far as the video with the fast talking guy who interrupts people and disorients those who are untrained to speak is proof for you, then why is it a video with cuts in it? possibly because someone who holds up well to his reprimanding of the OWS movement was video taped, or possibly just to save time. Furthermore his points are found without parts of the OWS movement which is a diverse group some parts more libertarian then liberal, he's not defending the 1% becuase in his hypothetical world the 1% is only there because of government.
Yeah... I addressed a lot of your concerns a couple of posts ago (and a billion times before that in this and other economics related topics.)
maybe you should respond to that instead.
Yeah i read it and for the most part i disagree with you, a few parts i found a reasonable 50/50 either of us could be right i mostly looking at an immediate 20 year time frame for change. But a lot of it sounded like trickle down/horse and sparrow economics to which we are at a cross road. See i didn't feel like doing the same dance on that topic but Jormundr did it.
Well this would make sense if our economic problems were simply limited to the rich owning all the money...
This isn't the problem though. The problem is we don't produce nearly enough to sustain our consumption.
And having people decide who the money goes to makes no sense either, the point of the campaign is to introduce the people to the candidate's policy and political stances, and it would make sense that people could be aware of those things before they chose whether or not to give the money to his campaign.
This sentence right here baffles me esp considering what comes after... We have completely different ideas in how a person should be bought into politics. My train of thought would be ideally essentially party-less system in which candidates would gather local and then state support which turns into them being put on the federal stage, it heavily relays on people not all throwing in their vouchers all at once, perhaps cut the voucher into sections to which you could spend it?, but people holding out. Again i'm not suppose to be the details man i'm just throwing an idea out there. I imagine there would have to be some money set aside for debates to be ran at the state and federal level, and entry into such a debate would require a show of a certain amount of support, ie show the books on how many vouchers you collected. At the local level i imagine one can gather and do this between themselves.
OK I see what you're saying there, I'm not necessarily against it, however, politicians get money from lobbyists not just for their campaigns.
You on the other hand are hoping that there can be some kind of system of over-sight where at the very top of it is some kind of person of amazing virtue, that he doesn't accept bribes... because if you introduce oversight for the government who's going to oversee this oversight?... Oversight is also a position of great power, and as long as the government has the power to control the market, if you're a large corporation there will always be someone you could offer a little(or a shitton) of money under the table in order to get a little government boost
Well this is just off the top of my head, but it would be something like they are elected though a system in which money is in small amounts given by the people and is transparent, essentially every president and congressmen should be a populist president/congressmen. To whom they propse and make laws, which is reviewed for legality by a judiscal system, which i'm not sure how would appointment to upper courts would work. They would be legally obligated to be transparent and put on an accessible place their transgressions. They any law or regulation would be further put under core principals of a justice governance, to which details i do not know but would be put in place to which your direct subordinates would be under your responsibility established a chain of guilt. And 3rd party watch dogs groups which have always been around would watch the watchmen, again i'm not sure what fourm would be set to bring this to the public. And now i'm just rambling i'm not the person to write out a complex set of rules ideally it would be done as a group and further refined, being a bottom up method.
I feel like this is just a more complicated version of having the constitution actually be the supreme law of the land. You're introducing more safeguards which would be necessary if the Federal system is to have more complicated responsibilities liek you're implying it should, which of course is going to cost even more tax-payer money to support, and it still doesn't seem to imply a type of immunity from corruption that all these expenses would warrant.
I would love for our media outlets to be more concerned with what our political people and their relationships with their donors and with in detail the laws and crap that we are putting out there. And for the news if they wanted to be called news be legally obligated to be correct, and so 24/7 "news" outlets would have to be labeled as opinion not news. I would love for an reinvestment by the people for investigate journalism, yet the biggest group of journalist that would do that came form the news paper who can no longer afford such costly ventures. And so our news is filled with superficial crap essentially being no better then tabloids.
Yeah, the media isn't very useful.
A lot of it is about the attitude of the people. The people were slowly worked into this system of caring about the most useless subjects ever, if all of us were replaced with people from a time before this there would be huge vocal country-wide disapproval of the media, but as it is I guess they slowly trained us to be appeased with this garbage we get today.
Peter Schiff is pretty much right about everything in that video. Except for his belief that everyone is greedy and wants something for themselves. There are people out there who don't want anything for themselves. People who don't want to work to support themselves. They either get friends and family to support them, or they get the welfare system to support them. Either way, they're weighing themselves down and dragging other people down with them. Self-sufficient people, in contrast, lift themselves up and lift up those around them.
I don't feel like reading 121 pages to get the full context of this topic. So I'll just give my two cents and see what happens.
The most important issue to remember is what individual rights really are. They are the rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. These rights don't mean you have the right to be given things. They mean you have the freedom from violation by others. The "rights" that the Occupiers seem to want are actually entitlements, and entitlements always violate rights. Right to a job? Provided by who? Right to an education? Right to food? Right to medical care? Paid for by who? These things cannot be given to someone by right without violating someone else's actual rights.
To the extent that the Occupiers are only protesting the government bailouts and cronyism, etc, I can agree with them. But the vast majority of them are ignorant as far as I know, and they lump in the cronies with the legitimate businessmen. Capitalism, once again, takes the blame for the evils of statism, and more statism is demanded to "fix" the problems that it caused in the first place.
Well this would make sense if our economic problems were simply limited to the rich owning all the money...
This isn't the problem though. The problem is we don't produce nearly enough to sustain our consumption.
Yeah there it is, i would think the majority of OWS people believe corruption, not the blatant currption of taking kick backs, but the relationship of money in our political system has benefited over the years the 1% the most, and that's why they became the 1%. You don't think that.
But yeah what i put out there is my beliefs on how to go about fixing that, but in detail i would need a lot of help to actually do something that make sense. My idea is for a Just government not a government built on absolutes ie ideals. I mean what was set forth in the constitution was good idea's but they are not absolutes, as the courts shown you can't shout fire in a crowded theater and yet we still have people claiming the constitution is infallible and completely void of being read in relation to the history of it's drafting.
The Occupy Wall Street volunteer kitchen staff launched a “counter” revolution yesterday -- because they’re angry about working 18-hour days to provide food for “professional homeless” people and ex-cons masquerading as protesters. For three days beginning tomorrow, the cooks will serve only brown rice and other spartan grub instead of the usual menu of organic chicken and vegetables, spaghetti bolognese, and roasted beet and sheep’s-milk-cheese salad. They will also provide directions to local soup kitchens for the vagrants, criminals and other freeloaders who have been descending on Zuccotti Park in increasing numbers every day.
Dali There is no irony. This is simply a problem of logistics. A major practical objective of this protest is its longevity. Resources need to be used to maximise the efficacy of the movement. To see the money of donators going to the homeless and hungry is good and well, but its not helping the movement in any way. As much as I hate to say it, food needs to be prioritized to those who indicate a serious investment of time and effort and this requires a judgment of a person's importance relative to the movement.
Claiming that because cooks don't want to be working/using donated money to feed those who are 'abusing' a system of goodwill is indicative of some contradiction is absurdly short sighted. The whole concept of the movement is to get better food/living conditions to everyone who needs it, not a small collection of moochers.
It seems to me that you're reaching for reasons to dislike the movement.
There is no irony. This is simply a problem of logistics. A major practical objective of this nation is its longevity. Resources need to be used to maximise the efficacy of the market. To see the money of taxpayers going to the homeless and hungry is good and well, but its not helping the market in any way. As much as I hate to say it, food needs to be prioritized to those who indicate a serious investment of time and effort and this requires a judgment of a person's importance relative to the nation.
Claiming that because cooks don't want to be working/using donated money to feed those who are 'abusing' a system of goodwill is indicative of some contradiction is absurdly short sighted. The whole concept of the market is to get better food/living conditions to everyone who needs it, not a small collection of moochers.
It seems to me that you're reaching for reasons to dislike capitalism.
This is nothing more then people who feel unappreciated, working out of good will for one thing, being taking advantage of to a certain extent by those who are frauds. This betrayal is why they are upset, not that they are feeding the homeless I'm sure they would love to do so if they had unlimited money and time. Frankly i would try to organize those who are homeless and make them organize themselves as a sub group inside of that movement so that their voice can be heard but in proper context. We shouldn't just totally give up on these people but rather move them to actually believing in the movement, not believing in the food. As random people who are mentally ill or homeless may increase the numbers there but are good opportunity for joke news agencies to paint them as the voice of OWS.
In other words people don't like being lied to, esp when they are trying to do good.
On October 28 2011 05:23 relyt wrote: Here is a video of Peter Schiff at OWS. I know some of you might not like him or his views but I thought I would show this video anyway. Just to warn you of possible bias, he is a libertarian and this video is done by a libertarian youtube channel, so there might be some selection bias with the people they show him talking to. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGL-Ex1CD1c&feature=channel_video_title
The video was produced by an organization with a specific viewpoint. It doesn't help their viewpoint to air cogent, well articulated criticisms of it. We don't know if there were any such criticisms during this specific interview, but there have been thousands elsewhere: Just because this video gives a specific viewpoint, doesn't mean other well articulated viewpoints don't exist. You need to ask yourself what the purpose of creating this video was.
Besides, he's pretty rude, and not actually engaging in dialogue. He's just creating a spectacle for mass consumption, not creating a discussion.
Would someone PLEASE explain to me what the difference is between a "real" protester and the "fraud" protesters? It's simply because they have a different primary motivation for being there?
If you asked them if they wanted the system changed, do you think a homeless person would say "no things are perfectly fine the way they are."
So in order to give food to someone you have to make sure they think the same way you do? Is it enough that they go through the motions and pretend to care? If they hold up a sign will they be allowed to eat?
Current economical system in USA is rotten inside out.
Basically banks lend too much, then they sell these loans with few lies and their AAA / AA ratings - whitch are apparently just "opinions" when they turn out to be utter crap - and once their banks come crumbling down, either politicians come to bail them out or some PRIVATE organization poops 700 billion out of thin air to help banks survive their greed.
In the end, most of this money goes to the infamous 1%, whole bunch of people loose their jobs, homes, are rendered as debt slaves and those that have litle bit of savings find out that their money has lost value. Then some twat in TV tells that we, the 99%, should spend more money in to shit we dont need...
... and then someone wonders why people around the fuckin' world are pissed off at wallstreet and/or banks... oh yes, if people ever wake up, heads will roll.
On October 28 2011 06:13 Sablar wrote: I don't see the irony. Occupy wall street isn't about putting an end to homelessness and giving free food to everyone. Nor was the article about how the kitchen staff was mistreated. They're volunteers.
Obviously they want people there who care about the cause of the protest and not people who are there to cause trouble and/or get free food.
You don't see the irony? Honestly?
What is it you think they are protesting for? Obviously it can be pretty difficult to figure out, but what do you think they mean by all this "99%" stuff? You don't think those hungry or homeless people are also in the 99%? In fact, couldn't some of them have a greater right to this food than the more wealthy or educated protesters?
It's among other things about the top 1% being too rich and getting richer.
If it was about the bottom 1% being poor and being mistreated, then it would be irony. But it's not about that.
Let's be a little more clear here... First of all, there is no such thing as being "too rich," unless you are talking about relative to other people who should have some of the resources, right?
So they are saying "some people have many resources, and this other group of people don't, and they need it more!"
And now I am saying that the homeless people and the hungry people need the free food more than the protesters.
This is not complicated stuff, it is undeniably ironic that they want wealth distributed differently and then turn around and deny hungry and homeless people.
You are painting a total black/white picture where a demand for a more equal distribution of resources must equal more for those in most need. It's not either completely equal distribution or 1% having a lot of resources.
In the long run, you are correct that wealth distribution from top 1% to the bottom 99% would give more to the homeless. Concluding that the demonstrations are thus about the homeless/those in most need is fallacy (based just on membership in the 99% group). Concluding that the demonstrations are about the majority and what the 99% as a whole can get for contributing is a reasonable conclusion.
Which is why it is not ironic that people can suffer while the majority gets more resources.
EPT
