Soup

I bring up libertarianism because if you are libertarian and believe in an unregulated free market economy, then that saves me a lot of time trying to convince you that a government with subsidies and tariffs is not what you want. I can then just explain how those subsidies and tariffs occur through our lobbying of congress. Because that's what a populist movement is. In so many words, A demand for wealth redistribution through welfare programs and other forms of government intervention.

That's using a lot of fancy words. In layman's terms you're suggesting that OWS is a populist movement because populists insist on the self-inflated role that the government plays in welfare and wealth redistribution, which began after the great depression. I dont see it that way. I see OWS as a third party that doesn't derive its power from the public or the private sectors. It has its own voting process that is inclusive of everyone and derives its power from that. I think there are populists involved in OWS, but they are not the majority. I think Herman Cain is more populist than OWS.

If only the answers to those questions were snakes... I shorthanded the answer because i already answered those questions. So how to say this in as few words as possible. If you like all of those libertarian economists, believe in a free economy, and so on you agree that corporations shouldn't be giving money to politicians in exchange for special favors. The duty of a government is to serve in the interest of the public, not the private. That sounds incredibly simple but because of corporate personhood, we think of private entities as public persons with constitutional rights... and under those rights corporations are given the rights to lobby for their own self interest. Its not good. I can sit here and post hundreds of examples how special interest groups have rendered congress useless, have thwarted fairness in free market capitalism and even how they caused the entire housing crisis.

I'm not getting it. Where does populism factor in?

I've talked about it a lot already so I'll just cliff notes it: Lobby reform, campaign finance reform, ending private interest groups, ending senators and congress and elections on every level from president to school board official being won through wealth and publicity. End tariffs and subsidies and government favors to corporations (but this is the hardest one when we live in a state capitalist world). End asymmetrical accounting of the GDP, because if you end that and people could visibly see the effect the BP oil spill has on people's businesses and lives, nobody would want to support BP.

Do you even read my posts? I talked about citizens united. It didn't overturn a law banning free speech. It overturned a law effectively banning private interest groups, like corporations, from spending unlimited money to fund campaign ads for or against any federal candidate they wanted. Frankly I dont want any private interest groups influencing any part of the federal government. There should only be public interest groups. And secondly limited liability is a fraction of the problem around corporate personhood. I gave you so many more examples around the problems of corporate personhood. Limited Liability is ridiculous because it's effectively a subsidy awarded to every company involved in the BP oil spill by forcing on the American Tax-Payers to clean up the mess. Why the hell should limited liability exist?

I think that podcast does a great job at describing how the police chain of command works. You have police departments not going after serious crimes because if they do, they have to write it up and overall crime in that city looks higher on paper. You have cops talking people out of reporting their own vehicles stolen, talking rape victims out of reporting rapes, and so on. You have police departments pressuring cops to illegaly shake down civilians and make illegal arrests to make sure the police force is feared and respected. It's entirely plausible that the police forces are targeting OWS protestors because while they're tied up with that fiasco they're not chasing down real crimes, which means real crimes aren't being written up, which means overall crime seems far less than it actually is, and therefor the police stations look like they're doing a good job.

Police only enforce the laws that benefit them, in a way that benefits them. Not that we need any examples but heres an entertaining one. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/414/right-to-remain-silent?act=2

Well excuse me. Its not that i want you or anyone else to accept my point of view, it's that you shift gears in your argument and flip flop around to different topics to avoid either of us coming to any sort of agreement on anything. That's not a discussion. Theres a whole other thread you're avoiding precisely for the reasons I specified: You are here not to discuss. You're here to troll. Edit: actually YOU specified the same thing by saying you're a anarchist/troll who will use anarchy/troll tactics to filibuster GA meetings at OWS. Sooo yeah. If that's your thing, nobody should respond to you. K I'm done.

Frank is a wannabe anarchist/troll who wants to watch the world burn one post at a time..... yeah... Just leave em be. And to Mercer, I'm not opposing AoD's view. In fact I support his view. I just enjoy the discussion because I want to get our facts straight. And this all ties into the discussion about OWS because what we're discussing is the actual basis of the movement and questions posed by OWS protestors. How do we create better wages and more jobs? How do we create a banking system we can trust? What part of "the system" has failed us? What is the government's role in all of this? What is wall street's role in all of this? Frankly the questions posed by OWS are as old as dirt and the entire world has yet to agree upon an answer. It cracks me up that people are now asking OWS for one.

You're right, corporate personhood as it was understood when originally created in the 1800's was simply the constitutional rights of "freedom of assembly" and "freedom of speech" put together. It also allows judicial systems to prosecute corporations altogether for any wrongdoing instead of trying to make a charge stick to one individual. That part of corporate personhood can probably stay. But what it's created since 1800's hasn't been that great. Because corporations are now, in some instances, prosecuted as people they've wanted to rights to protect themselves, as people too. The progeny of corporate personhood has been special interest groups who now under a slew of laws like Citizens United can buy as many presidential candidates and laws as it wants. Through lobbyists corporations have effectively bought the entire republican party to fight for their special interests. This means that the people in the senate are only making decisions based on what lobbying committee gave them money that week, and even the super committee, which was designed so that there were fewer external forces, is the target of some of the fiercest and most expensive lobbying campaigns of this year. it stagnates the political process because now there's more talking heads in every room. It enlarges the political process because with more money republicans can reach out to grass roots movements and even flood local school board elections with hundreds of thousands of dollars. And it shrinks the amount of progress being made to this country because now everybody's only thinking about what's good for one or two companies. Government and politics are supposed to represent what the "gist" of the American population believes to be good. It's not supposed to benefit one company while hurting another. It's not supposed to be about companies at all. Your points on Unions I agree with you on. I've never been part of a union but I know people who are and they've always said the same thing. They hate that a chunk of their income goes to paying union fees and making union leaders rich, but in this day and age it's also a necessary evil to counteract the political prowess of corporate personhood. If the government was just an institution that represented the needs of "humanity" then you wouldn't see this whole escalation of one private interest group popping up to counteract another private interest group.

My Spring 2012 Purchase: Jackson buy the cheapest dumbest 125 you can. When you move up to a 250, buy a GSXR600 with a governor on it. THere's just about nothing redeemable about the run of 125's and 250's.

Yeah but dont discredit the reason WHY the government was forcing banks to give out loans. It was because of the Greenlining Coalition's Community Reinvestment Act of 1977. Banks were profiling entire neighborhoods and refusing to give out loans to poor and financially risky areas. If you lived in a poor neighborhood you couldn't get a line of credit. I mention the last few presidential administrations because they were ALL trying to win elections on promising home ownership. And yeah this whole ordeal dates back to the great depression with fannie mae and freddie mac, which are given a lot of the blame and too were created in response to home-owner unions... but the housing recession became a housing crisis because they collateralized debt obligations— banks lending many times over the actual capital they had on their books— which was all Wall Street. Another thing to look at is the Glass-Steagall act. The glass-steagall act made sure banks couldn't buy or act as brokerages and do these types of CDO's. But then in the 80's brokerages like Meryll Lynch began to act as banks, offering checkings accounts with higher interest rates than the banks could offer. Banks began to lose money and lobbied to have that stopped but there was no way a law limiting Merill Lynch was going to go through. The idea became if the Glass Steagall Act was repealed then banks would have a more diverse portfolio of investments and be more financially stable... so in 1999 the act was repealed. HAD it not been repealed, the only companies that would've tanked during the subprime housing crisis would've been Wallstreet. The affect of toxic assets would've been more isolated and Banks wouldn't've demonized. Regarding bank bailouts in the US during the great depression, this is a goodun: Well the stimulus didn't hurt anybody. The government made money, companies made at least enough money to pay it back with interest ahead of schedule... but did it help? REAL Keynesians say the 700B wasn't enough to see economic growth (they wanted more like 10% of the GDP or 1.4 trillion) BUT Its been calculated that the GDP is about 6.8% higher than it would've been had there been no stimulus, but that also created a higher deficit. Then you've got to ask, is the american deficit BAD? Well according to this secret government document, it's not: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/10/21/141510617/what-if-we-paid-off-the-debt-the-secret-government-report The world economy is so reliant on US treasury bonds that if we payed our debt off and removed them from the world economy, there would probably be a serious global recession. Also, the issue with subsidies is that they actually benefit that country's market but hurt every other market in the world. GM was failing because Japan subsidizes their car makers. Solyndra failed because china subsidizes their solar companies. Rice markets in the Philippines nearly failed because India subsidized their rice markets.... The unregulated unsubsidized state-free market economy hasn't got a chance in a global state capitalist market.... and there's no fucking way you're going to stop state capitalism in China, India, Brazil etc. IDEALLY subsidies wouldn't exist but if one country does it, every country has to too. IM not for it, just telling it like it is. Well the administration didn't give them money to keep doing what they were doing. They gave them money so everyone involved in those industries could keep their jobs. Imagine what detroit would look like if GM failed.... Or if our banking industry failed. You really want to rely on Meryll Lynch or Goldman Sachs for your banking? You know, OWS gets a lot of shit for not having any solutions to the problems they're protesting, but neither does anybody else. thanks to a govt tax and regulatory bureaucracy unlike the world has never seen. It definitely starts with a lot of lobbying and campaign finance reform, so that includes repealing corporate personhood. Unions can stay and be a part of it, but that's it. They need to take orders, not give them.

Yeah i worry that most of OWS doesn't translate into Australian that well. e America is one of Australia's biggest trading partners so any economic protest in America is obviously going to be big important news for you guys. Same with Japan. There was a list of demands made at the beginning of the OWS movement. Im somewhat glad nobody references it because the way it was written sucked. Some factual inaccuracies, referenced wallstreet, banks, the government etc as "THEY," which sounds conspiratorial and uninformed. That doesn't make the list of demands invalid, it just means it needs to be rewritten and "Needs better education" should be added to that list. Obviously unemployment is a big issue, because so long as people are getting payed and capable of buying what they want, nobody ever protests. It's only when the quality of life diminishes, even in a first world country, that people begin to protest. Why is it deminishing? I can go into the housing bubble, the credit card crisis, etc, but basically Americans were being idiots. We went from a country that believed it was the American dream to own your own house. As Hoover put it "A car in every garage, a chicken in every pot." Regan, Clinton, Bush 1 and Bush 2 administrations ALL were pushing home ownership. But we being the greedy retards saw everyone buying houses and got into the habit of "Flipping homes." No longer were people buying houses for the practical purpose of living in. People were buying them to stack and trade like baseball cards. Think about how many House Flipping shows were on TV. Nobody understood that the housing market was artificially inflated. Around 2008 was when banks were giving people loans of up to 100% of the house's worth. That means with no down payment nobody had anything to lose by walking away from it, which people did. Why did banks loan all that money? It wasn't their money they were loaning. It was investors. People actually thought these CDO's were too big to fail. So banks were selling these mortgage backed securities out to investors to pay for the loans, the government was all for it because while CDO's did well it made them look like geniuses, Wallstreet was making money on every transaction, AIG and insurance companies were making money on insuring these Mortage backed securities and so on. Then the motherfucker tanked. No more house flipping. Everyone's credit was shot so no more Escalades with 20's and TV's in the headrests (which were so fucking prevalent up until 2008). No more construction workers with 50" plasma tv's. No more College kids running up $7,000 in debt on credit cards buying clothes and stupid shit. So everybody was doing better than they were actually doing. Now that everybody's doing EXACTLY how they're actually doing theres a bit of discontent. That's problem number 1. Mortgage backed securities were by far the most poorly designed investment Wallstreet has ever created. Thats an undisputed fact, so it's VERY easy to pin this whole economic recession on Wallstreet when Presidential administrations, homeowner unions and so on all have a piece of the fault. Now it's still 2008, so Obama just gets into office, conservatives hate him, he needs to do something. Our automakers are considered one of the biggest employers of blue collar jobs. Our financial industry is one of the biggest industries in America. And keep in mind MOST historians and economists look at the Great Depression and say it never would've happened if the government and the Fed bailed out banks. So what did we do this time? We fucking bailed them out. Obama set into motion a 700 BILLION stimulus with the idea in mind that a chunk of it would go building local solar power companies and training high school grads how to install solar panels, other money would go to banks that needed more capital to cover the mortgage backed securities, other money would go to successful banks so that they could GROW and create more jobs. Other money would go to american car makers if they created green electric vehicles.... When that stimulus package first came out it was one of the most exciting things to have ever been done in a very, very long time. But that's not how it played out. SOME banks took that stimulus money and bought a few failed banks, which was a good thing, but the problem with other banks, and especially american auto makers, was that they didn't change their incompetent administration around, they just gave their CEOS bigger salaries. Jobs weren't created. Jobs haven't been created. Jobs continue not to be created. This is problem number 2. The next reason stems from America's companies moving their production from manual labor to machines and specialists since the 1970's. Theres a HUGE number of disenfranchised blue-collar families that can't keep up with the times. Before about 1973 blue collar workers made good money, could afford houses and savings and retirement plans. They didn't need a high school or college education. They didn't even need to be hygienic. The problem now is changing all these people's behaviors to being pro-education, pro-hygiene, pro-desk job. It's not going to be easy, especially with our educational system not only failing, but receiving cutbacks and getting worse. The only jobs that have been created in the last twenty years has been TEMP work. The biggest employer for the last twenty years, behind the federal government, has been a temp agency. That's problem number 3. Everybody's promising jobs, but nobody knows how to create them. Problem number four is that the economy is growing slower than the population. Problem number five is that no politician does ANYTHING without some lobbyist paying them first. I mean look at this whole fiasco over Banks charging debit card holder $5 a month. That $5 was enacted to cover debit card transactions because Wallgreens and Target didn't want to pay $0.68 every time a customer used their debit card. Are they dropping their prices by $0.68? Nope. And In 2010, Citizens United v FEC ruled that corporations should be allowed to give unlimited campaign contributions, which really was just legalizing something they were already doing... Its the whole unfair mix of corporations, lobbyists and politicians running the country when what people want are politicians that represent them, corporations that represent them, and the two should never fucking meet. Now this union thing.... I dont know if I like how supportive everyone is becoming of labor unions. Granted I dont know that much about unions, but America has a very colorful history with labor unions, and for the most part socialized police forces, teachers and firefighters are great... BUT theres still a lot of corruption within unions. Or i shouldn't say corruption. There's a lot of idiots that run ineffectively run unions, give unqualified people the wrong jobs, over pay some, underpay others.... To me it doesn't seem like Occupy Wallstreeters who are demanding equality and fair wages would WANT to side on the side with unions. Historically it makes sense because labor unions historically fight for fair wages, but even still.... Have they created fair wages amongst union workers, or are union leaders living fat off backs of others?

I appreciate these guys giving out applications since many americans have given up on the job hunt, but nobody in this video said they didn't want a middle management job with retirement benefits. To be statistically accurate, that's B.S. Plain and simple. And unemployment among college grads in america is only 2%. Nobody with a college education in america is worried about not finding work.

Occupy Harvard

Its not a movement. Its a venue.

So anarchists are IRL trolls? hahahahah.

Ok see how far you get with that knocking around in your head. You apparently have no value for what I'm saying, so live by your word. If what everyone else is saying is so disagreeable you and AOD can go start your own forum and think whatever you want. Nobody here is buying this no government/anarchy scenario.

Trolling.

What do you think humanity is? It's another word civilization. What do you think government is? It's another word for law and order. What do you think rights are? Litigation. What you're suggesting is that there is a god giving rights to all humans. There is no god, or at least no god who cares that much about humans. There is no form of ethical conduct imbued into mankind at birth. Coexistance is a learned behavior.

This is why real world examples are easier to discuss than these hypothetical ones. I want you to think of a single example of something you or someone does, that isn't hurting anybody, that people would want to stop or at least limit to a certain area or time, that you would utterly refuse to compromise. If you are of the no-comprimises sort, chances are you're better off in the woods alone. Nobody's stopping you. What does that mean, own your own body? I guess I own my own body, but what's stopping a horde of barbarians from skinning me? Nothing, if I'm alone. What's protecting that same horde of barbarians from skinning each other? The laws of the tribe. Get it? Owning your own body is just free will. Rights are given to you by the society you're attempting to alienate yourself from. Where is it scribed across the sky that riding a motorcycle on a public road is an inalienable right? Did build those roads myself? Do I own the people injured in the collisions I created? I have no god-given right to the things I do. The fact that I was ever able to ride a motorcycle at all is a fucking miracle. Where do you get this sense of self entitlement? And I'm not responding to your democrats vs republicans bs because I'm not a democrat or a republican. Take your dumb beef up with someone who cares what side of the same coin is better.

You trolling? The exact opposite is true.

You are only allowed to block out of fear that you, your friends, or your family would be forced to expatriate yourselves from the union if the motion is passed.

This is semantics but what you just described isn't an anarchistic system. You described how anarchists would work to destroy a participatory democracy by abusing the block. A block doesn't stop a motion from passing to its second phase of voting. It moves the motion to discussion to be amended. You would then have to stand in front of everyone from neighbors to parents and personally explain your reasons for blocking. The goal of this discussion is to amend the movement so that you and your family or friends aren't forced to expatriate yourselves from the group. If your goal is to simply weaken the union it won't work. Coercion suggests that there is no logical reason for someone to participate in the system, and that you are being forced against your will to participate.