Won't happen. American legislators are too much in the pocket of the finance industry and too stupid to see the forest from the trees. American banks' resistance to Basel III and its subsequent watering are well-known; in particular, Jamie Dimon's tirade against Mark Carney is now rather infamous. Unfortunately, the US Congress is not made from the same stuff that Mark Carney is, which is saying something, given that he's a Canadian banker.
(Also note the irony in the CEO of one of the American banks that caused the great financial meltdown of 2008 and then had to be bailed out ranting against the banking regulations proposed at the former central banker who shepherded his country through the 2008 crisis with the least damage and fastest recovery of the G7 countries, and has earned worldwide recognition for doing so. Short memories, eh?)
Wait, are you surprised that Jamie Dimon is a piece of shit?
This was more than just shitty behaviour. He was raging at basically the defacto head of the G20 central bankers right now. It was a combination of douchebag-insane and self-inflicted-wound insane:
Mr. Waugh witnessed his countryman absorb a torrent so aggressive that Goldman Sachs Group Inc. CEO Lloyd Blankfein felt the need to try to smooth things over with Mr. Carney, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker, by e-mail.
It'd be like a pedophile bishop screaming at the pope.
Agreed, but for all the hand wringing and end-of-times rhetoric we hear these days, I don't think we're really all that close to that point. There are things that need to be done, for sure, but there is also a way to accomplish those goals within the current system. It is slow, and painful, no doubt, but it can be done. However, that certainly doesn't happen with a Republican controlled House and Senate, so why not work towards removing that roadblock? And if the Democrats that get elected know that OWS is the reason, shouldn't that make it easier to get them to enact the reforms we are seeking?
How do you propose we elect enough senators to nuke the filibuster and secret holds? And how can you guarantee that your proposal will actually work? If you want to plan this out over the course of multiple elections I need to remind you that unless there's an incumbent it can sometimes be pretty hard to even guess who will run or what they'll make their platform so that puts an extra burden on you to prove that the environment which might ensure success for one election will not have entirely changed by the next. If we can't do it that way then I just don't see what good the act of merely voting for more representatives will do within the current two-party system.
Yes voting straight-ticket D is still better than straight-ticket R by a mile but when that mile only marks the difference between insane robots of death and the incompetent Repo crew sent to try and clean up the robot's mess and fix the damage whenever it gets lose then that doesn't exactly portray a very healthy picture of my choices on a given ballot. If we could say, make the repo crew not incompetent by firing Droopy Dog and their other misfits all at once I'd love to. But I just don't think there's any reasonable way to do that. There always seem to just be enough Blue Dogs that it doesn't seem to matter which specific ones it is, someone is there to put the stops on progressive legislation favored by most of the nation, for better or worse, and has been for as long as I can remember us actually having the ability to not have to capitulate to Republicans to pass anything...when was that last again? ;p
I am so goddamn tired of the "Every single person in Congress is corrupt" claim. It's complete bullshit, as you'd know if you actually studied politics for a few months. The vast majority of members never get their names in the news. They just quietly do their jobs. Also, Exriel, there are plenty of Republicans in the House from California, as well as in the state legislature, and given how the districts aren't being drawn to keep everyone in office this time there's going to be plenty of turmoil - and opportunity.
I'm not saying that everyone of them is corrupt. But rather that enough of them are corrupt or so sufficiently and utterly incompetent as to pass for obviously corrupt to such a point where I do not have any remaining faith in the actual ability for us to elect enough politicians in the right places to override the collective cock-blocking of the current partisan congressional environment. Do you? Because it just takes 41 votes to stop anything other than bills passed under budget reconciliation. Do you know any way you can guarantee that there will exist the environment where we can have even 40 or 39 Senators that are not unreasonable assholes exploiting procedure to destroy any legislation they just happen to, for whatever reason, personally dislike?
If the best you can come up with against someone who's patently ignorant is to yell back at him, "Yeah? Well there's BOOKS, and they say you're WRONG!"
Then honestly you're not coming out of this looking great either.
All the local "bad-ass guy" radio stations around here were making fun of OWS for like the past week. Not sure why.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
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TL DRNot at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered Userregular
I love the "no cohesive demands!" argument. My response is two-fold:
1. Yes, they do. Getting the money out of politics and returning the focus of government to addressing the needs of the majority of the population. In a word: democracy.
2. It wouldn't matter if they didn't. As the ruling class has royally fucked things up, it is perfectly valid for the masses to say "HEY. FUCKING FIX IT. WE DON'T CARE HOW, JUST FIX IT."
It wouldn't matter if they didn't. As the ruling class has royally fucked things up, it is perfectly valid for the masses to say "HEY. FUCKING FIX IT. WE DON'T CARE HOW, JUST FIX IT."
All the local "bad-ass guy" radio stations around here were making fun of OWS for like the past week. Not sure why.
Probably to act as a way to reinforce a social meme that Macho guys can't support OWS and support things that are also supported by hippies. The people who I've noticed on my stations that tend to make fun of OWS all seem to be hammering that meme down pretty hard when they mention it.
If the best you can come up with against someone who's patently ignorant is to yell back at him, "Yeah? Well there's BOOKS, and they say you're WRONG!"
Then honestly you're not coming out of this looking great either.
I am so goddamn tired of the "Every single person in Congress is corrupt" claim. It's complete bullshit, as you'd know if you actually studied politics for a few months. The vast majority of members never get their names in the news. They just quietly do their jobs. Also, Exriel, there are plenty of Republicans in the House from California, as well as in the state legislature, and given how the districts aren't being drawn to keep everyone in office this time there's going to be plenty of turmoil - and opportunity.
I'm not saying that everyone of them is corrupt. But rather that enough of them are corrupt or so sufficiently and utterly incompetent as to pass for obviously corrupt to such a point where I do not have any remaining faith in the actual ability for us to elect enough politicians in the right places to override the collective cock-blocking of the current partisan congressional environment. Do you? Because it just takes 41 votes to stop anything other than bills passed under budget reconciliation. Do you know any way you can guarantee that there will exist the environment where we can have even 40 or 39 Senators that are not unreasonable assholes exploiting procedure to destroy any legislation they just happen to, for whatever reason, personally dislike?
That has nothing to do with corruption or incompetence. Most of the Senate thinks the current system works fine. They're wrong, but it's not because they're corrupt or incompetent.
That has nothing to do with corruption or incompetence. Most of the Senate thinks the current system works fine. They're wrong, but it's not because they're corrupt or incompetent.
Okay I'm sorry, I forgot to include crazy in my list of personality traits which could create similar behavior -_-;; It just seems to be such a given these days that there's not much point in repeating it.
If the best you can come up with against someone who's patently ignorant is to yell back at him, "Yeah? Well there's BOOKS, and they say you're WRONG!"
Then honestly you're not coming out of this looking great either.
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ChanusHarbinger of the Spicy Rooster ApocalypseThe Flames of a Thousand Collapsed StarsRegistered Userregular
I am so goddamn tired of the "Every single person in Congress is corrupt" claim. It's complete bullshit, as you'd know if you actually studied politics for a few months. The vast majority of members never get their names in the news. They just quietly do their jobs. Also, Exriel, there are plenty of Republicans in the House from California, as well as in the state legislature, and given how the districts aren't being drawn to keep everyone in office this time there's going to be plenty of turmoil - and opportunity.
I'm not saying that everyone of them is corrupt. But rather that enough of them are corrupt or so sufficiently and utterly incompetent as to pass for obviously corrupt to such a point where I do not have any remaining faith in the actual ability for us to elect enough politicians in the right places to override the collective cock-blocking of the current partisan congressional environment. Do you? Because it just takes 41 votes to stop anything other than bills passed under budget reconciliation. Do you know any way you can guarantee that there will exist the environment where we can have even 40 or 39 Senators that are not unreasonable assholes exploiting procedure to destroy any legislation they just happen to, for whatever reason, personally dislike?
That has nothing to do with corruption or incompetence. Most of the Senate thinks the current system works fine. They're wrong, but it's not because they're corrupt or incompetent.
If you're under the assumption your broken system is working just fine, you're at least incompetent.
All the local "bad-ass guy" radio stations around here were making fun of OWS for like the past week. Not sure why.
Probably to act as a way to reinforce a social meme that Macho guys can't support OWS and support things that are also supported by hippies. The people who I've noticed on my stations that tend to make fun of OWS all seem to be hammering that meme down pretty hard when they mention it.
Yeah they called it a hippie homeless movement because they should occupy everything like homeless do. Or something. They're pretty retarded in general though, what with being reject comedians on a radio talk show.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
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syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
Most of the Senate thinks the current system works fine. They're wrong, but it's not because they're corrupt or incompetent.
Half of our senators are millionaires, and only the tiniest sliver of them fall into the bottom 80% of American income earners.
Passing legislation to end the kind of deregulation and "corruption" born of insider trading on a federal level would essentially be passing laws explicitly against their own financial self interest. Which is a damn hard thing to ask anyone to do.
Again, read that article I linked. The institution of the Legislative Branch has been massively compromised.
If you want to plan this out over the course of multiple elections I need to remind you that unless there's an incumbent it can sometimes be pretty hard to even guess who will run or what they'll make their platform so that puts an extra burden on you to prove that the environment which might ensure success for one election will not have entirely changed by the next. If we can't do it that way then I just don't see what good the act of merely voting for more representatives will do within the current two-party system.
Isn't this essentially what political organizations do? Why do we have to guess about who will and won't run? Why aren't we going out and finding suitable candidates, then helping them run for office? You're right, waiting for the perfect candidate or just voting for imperfect ones without taking a more active role in the process is not going to change much, but that's not really what I was suggesting.
I love the "no cohesive demands!" argument. My response is two-fold:
1. Yes, they do. Getting the money out of politics and returning the focus of government to addressing the needs of the majority of the population. In a word: democracy.
2. It wouldn't matter if they didn't. As the ruling class has royally fucked things up, it is perfectly valid for the masses to say "HEY. FUCKING FIX IT. WE DON'T CARE HOW, JUST FIX IT."
1. Ok, so maybe "cohesive demands" is the wrong way to frame it. Your statement seems like a good place to start, but just saying it over and over isn't going to do much, in my opinion. I mean, I'm all for "Yay democracy", but how is that being translated into action? How is the movement reaching out to those people that may agree with what you say, but don't think that the Occupy protests are the for them, for whatever reason (no time/can't leave work/have skills better suited to other activities/scared of dudes in viking costumes/etc.)?
2. Totally justifiable sentiment, but I think that's something you can only enforce at the end of a sword, so to speak. Unless your are suggesting starting an armed rebellion, politicians having gotten very good at smiling, showing compassion and then ignoring the fuck out of you once they realize you either A) aren't going to donate a chunk of cash to their campaign or aren't capable of organizing a large enough group of people to vote in a block. But that's just my opinion, which, in all fairness, may only be valid in TV land.
Isn't this essentially what political organizations do? Why do we have to guess about who will and won't run?
You said you wanted OWS to back candidates or specific political parties. Do you know a way of guaranteeing results? That was just part of my suggestion of how you could win via voting. Work really super duper hard to elect enough progressive senators to get rid of the secret holds and filibuster. That's one way you could do it, might not be the most effective or only way but one way. What's yours?
Why aren't we going out and finding suitable candidates, then helping them run for office?
Isn't that also what political organizations are supposed to do? Either they do these things well or they do not. The real question is WHY these organizations do not appear to be doing their job very well. In the case of the Democrats as a party? I would place the blame pretty squarely on cash requirements to get elected. With income and wealth inequality getting worse, costs likely to continue to rise over time, the ability for a Democratic politician to run for office without making concessions to their wealthy donors is just going to get worse and worse.
You can't get money out of politics though short of constitutional amendment or mass judge retirements thanks to Citizens United. So that doesn't leave me with a lot of faith in elections working.
You're right, waiting for the perfect candidate or just voting for imperfect ones without taking a more active role in the process is not going to change much, but that's not really what I was suggesting.
Why do you think the system is not broken? Why do you think that near glacial rates of change are what we need right now?
If the best you can come up with against someone who's patently ignorant is to yell back at him, "Yeah? Well there's BOOKS, and they say you're WRONG!"
Then honestly you're not coming out of this looking great either.
Work really super duper hard to elect enough progressive senators to get rid of the secret holds and filibuster.
This is my suggestion. Don't think it's going to be easy, but that's partially why I came here, to find out what I can be doing to help in this admittedly monumental task. I'm not sure I see any other way to change the system, short of armed rebellion followed by civil war, and I don't really think enough people are willing to die for this cause just yet.
Isn't that also what political organizations are supposed to do? Either they do these things well or they do not. The real question is WHY these organizations do not appear to be doing their job very well. In the case of the Democrats as a party? I would place the blame pretty squarely on cash requirements to get elected. With income and wealth inequality getting worse, costs likely to continue to rise over time, the ability for a Democratic politician to run for office without making concessions to their wealthy donors is just going to get worse and worse.
Well yeah, but it's much easier for a group like OWS to fill the gap left by the Democratic Party than for them to topple the whole government. Don't like the way the DNC goes about its business? Then let's show em' how it's done. The more boots on the ground being filled by Occupiers, and less by Blue Dogs, the better.
Why do you think the system is not broken? Why do you think that near glacial rates of change are what we need right now?
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Because while this is frustrating now, it also prevents things you probably think are bad policy from becoming law. Governments are large, complicated organisms and changing them, even in a small way, can have far reaching implications for millions of people. It's the same reason why Airplane parts and anything used in a Hospital is like 5x more expensive than the version you or I could buy in a store. While you may grumble that your $1500 dollar donation could purchase just a single Wii for the local children's hospital and that it took an extra 3 months to get there, aren't you glad that it's been thoroughly tested so as not to short out some kid's heart monitor?
How do you propose we elect enough senators to nuke the filibuster and secret holds? And how can you guarantee that your proposal will actually work? If you want to plan this out over the course of multiple elections I need to remind you that unless there's an incumbent it can sometimes be pretty hard to even guess who will run or what they'll make their platform so that puts an extra burden on you to prove that the environment which might ensure success for one election will not have entirely changed by the next. If we can't do it that way then I just don't see what good the act of merely voting for more representatives will do within the current two-party system.
You can't change the nation for the better in a single year. Quick actions are pretty much always myopic and harmful. Making the world a better place takes not only effort, but time, and continued effort. That's why it's so hard for such a short-sighted population. You're demonstrating the same kind of apathy that causes students to only bother voting in presidential years. You have to work FOREVER to make things better. There is no one-and-done. That's not how reality works. You work today so that people ten generations from now will have it better than you do. If you're lucky, things will even be better during the last five years of your life.
Most of the Senate thinks the current system works fine. They're wrong, but it's not because they're corrupt or incompetent.
Half of our senators are millionaires, and only the tiniest sliver of them fall into the bottom 80% of American income earners.
Passing legislation to end the kind of deregulation and "corruption" born of insider trading on a federal level would essentially be passing laws explicitly against their own financial self interest. Which is a damn hard thing to ask anyone to do.
Again, read that article I linked. The institution of the Legislative Branch has been massively compromised.
This article pretty much lists out just how fucked we are. And anyone that thinks we can get unfucked, OWS or otherwise, are fooling themselves. Basically, this is an entire country experiencing the five stages of grief.
- The majority of Americans are in Denial.
- OWS is in Anger.
- Elected Democrats are in Bargaining.
- I'm personally sitting somewhere between Depression and Acceptance.
- Elected Republicans are in a strange quantum multi-state of Denial, Acceptance, and Extorting the Death of America for Personal Gain.
Basically, the sooner everyone gets through the process, the sooner we can all roast marshmallows over the funeral pyre.
Because while this is frustrating now, it also prevents things you probably think are bad policy from becoming law. Governments are large, complicated organisms and changing them, even in a small way, can have far reaching implications for millions of people. It's the same reason why Airplane parts and anything used in a Hospital is like 5x more expensive than the version you or I could buy in a store. While you may grumble that your $1500 dollar donation could purchase just a single Wii for the local children's hospital and that it took an extra 3 months to get there, aren't you glad that it's been thoroughly tested so as not to short out some kid's heart monitor?
Okay but here's the problem. If we can't break the filibuster and secret holds? What is it that gives you any faith in our ability to repair the economy in the next four years? What gives you the faith that the economy will continue to survive another four years if no action is taken? Our current congress seems pretty entirely unable to do anything that we actually have proof would, you know, stimulate the economy in any way that helps the poor and middle class. The banks are getting right back into the same speculative problems they were having before with Bank of America transferring $70 trillion in derivatives, yes Trillion with a T, into a federally insured subsidiary. This means if European Debt goes bad? The taxpayer could very well foot the bill, yet again.
You can't change the nation for the better in a single year.
Can't or shouldn't? Because if we can at all then I would love another opportunity to make the case this is exactly what we need to be finding a way to do right now if we don't want the sword of Damocles hovering over our collective heads for the next four years as far as the economy goes.
Quick actions are pretty much always myopic and harmful. Making the world a better place takes not only effort, but time, and continued effort.
Always or always in our current government? I mean if you were talking about rushing something like the Patriot Act then yeah that was myopic and harmful but that was reactionary legislation to a major national disaster where thousands of Americans died. Which is pretty unprecedented. Is there no way we couldn't do something like convene a constitutional convention that wouldn't also have a better shot at actually fixing the structural problems we have right now both in government and the added benefit of us being able to vote to kick out whoever we don't like if enough of America agrees they are horrible representatives?
That's why it's so hard for such a short-sighted population.
Short sided? We have made social progress yes but economically speaking we've been in a progressively worsening downward spiral. I mean yes businesses are healthier than ever but savings are down, consumer debt is way up, wages have stagnated since the 1970s, social services have been slowly been hacked away at, social mobility is way down. About every indicator of what the average person's ability to find and sustain themselves and a family through hard work has just been getting worse since about the days of Regan and in some cases a bit before so. No we are not at Gilded age levels yet, but what do you believe is going to actually reverse this trend and why do you believe it will work?
You're demonstrating the same kind of apathy that causes students to only bother voting in presidential years. You have to work FOREVER to make things better.
What makes you think we can improve economic policy without campaign finance reform?
There is no one-and-done. That's not how reality works. You work today so that people ten generations from now will have it better than you do. If you're lucky, things will even be better during the last five years of your life.
Really? Because reality as told by the flurry of statistics OWS presence has deluged us with seems to show signs of things actually getting worse at an increasing rate. Right now we are essentially relying on the hope that in the event that the economy craters and mass civil unrest starts that the government will consider revising economic policy rather then considering jailing a large number of Americans with either the military and/or heavily militarized police force. Not to say they certainly would, but given our current congress and current electorate I really wonder where the political calculus on the hill would put this congress or our likely next congress.
I actually hate being this gloomy about the future but the problem is I haven't yet been able to identify any real X factor that will change things, something new put into the mix that our current history doesn't show us will be ineffective if at all implemented in time to fix the economy.
If the best you can come up with against someone who's patently ignorant is to yell back at him, "Yeah? Well there's BOOKS, and they say you're WRONG!"
Then honestly you're not coming out of this looking great either.
I live in a city, so my district already has a democrat for a Representative (however crazy she might be) is there somewhere I can go, some source of information that covers OTHER districts? Districts in, say, Texas that might swing from R to D?
If the best you can come up with against someone who's patently ignorant is to yell back at him, "Yeah? Well there's BOOKS, and they say you're WRONG!"
Then honestly you're not coming out of this looking great either.
Because while this is frustrating now, it also prevents things you probably think are bad policy from becoming law. Governments are large, complicated organisms and changing them, even in a small way, can have far reaching implications for millions of people. It's the same reason why Airplane parts and anything used in a Hospital is like 5x more expensive than the version you or I could buy in a store. While you may grumble that your $1500 dollar donation could purchase just a single Wii for the local children's hospital and that it took an extra 3 months to get there, aren't you glad that it's been thoroughly tested so as not to short out some kid's heart monitor?
How does America's veto-point-heavy legislative process prevent bad policy from becoming law? If anything, the difficulty of passing legislation means that many more people can hold it hostage until they get their own piece of the legislative pie, watering/weighing the legislation down with irrelevant interest-group crap.
America's legislative process is a woodchipper for good policy, and it makes reform of that shredded policy extremely difficult.
It makes good policy bad, and it makes it difficult, often impossible, to make it better.
How does America's veto-point-heavy legislative process prevent bad policy from becoming law? If anything, the difficulty of passing legislation means that many more people can hold it hostage until they get their own piece of the legislative pie, watering/weighing the legislation down with irrelevant interest-group crap.
America's legislative process is a woodchipper for good policy, and it makes reform of that shredded policy extremely difficult.
It makes good policy bad, and it makes it difficult, often impossible, to make it better.
I think the idea was predicated on the belief originally that congress passing any law was bad because centralized power is bad. So the founders would've rather congress be able to pass no laws without near unanimous consent then pass a lot of bad laws with just a simple majority out of fear those laws would be tyrannical by their very nature. (Hint: Upset the status quo of Richness)
It's easy to forget how widespread fear of centralized power was once upon a time. So they designed a government built on the idea that even a tiny faction of the population had the power to destroy it's effectiveness to operate. The problem was that tiny faction as we later found out, was not required to have a sensible reason for doing so based on evidence. Hence, the Tea Party problem we have today.
Republicans realized all they needed to do to win was make government appear ineffective by insuring perpetual gridlock when they can't take credit for anything good that happens and then thanks to the media the public assumes whoever was the President now is unfit to govern and that lets them even as a minority party ensure a return to power eventually by making sure that rational compromise is impossible.
It's really no wonder we have the government we do today. It was predicated on the idea of tyrannical leaders acting in bad faith because they thought that centralization of power of any kind magically created tyrants (which considering the times did appear to be true with monarchies,) when rather what creates tyrants isn't centralization of power itself it's unaccountability for decisions made and an inability to properly enforce negative consequences on someone for a decision they made.
Like Scott Walker and the recall elections, the public has to have a way to enforce consequences on elected officials for passing bad policies and not doing their due diligence to listen to reason and their constituents instead of lobbyists. That's also I think the real rub about politics. In America, elected officials represent political ideologies and not people anymore.
You're not electing individuals with solutions to actual world problems you're electing an elephant or donkey figure that represents a platform that only represents a set of beliefs about how to solve certain problems. The thing people miss on this is that the Dem and Republican platforms only have to reflect their voter's beliefs, and don't need to be realistic ways of solving actual problems faced by Ds and Rs in their everyday lives. Politicians tell people exactly what they need to hear to get your vote and then go straight to their lobbyists to craft policy just good enough the people don't revolt.
Because to get elected politicians have to get lots of money, making them beholden to contributors more than the people, who they now have found are cheaper to placate through the media with that very same money, rather than craft effective policy for them, because they noticed just how little most people pay attention and are currently exploiting that.
TL;DR: D.C. Cocktail Circuit be messed up man, this entire system of government was designed to fail if it was ever taken over by corrupt/evil/stupid people, the gridlock we see is the very symptom of that. We won't get a better government until we design a better system of decision making guaranteed to succeed.
If the best you can come up with against someone who's patently ignorant is to yell back at him, "Yeah? Well there's BOOKS, and they say you're WRONG!"
Then honestly you're not coming out of this looking great either.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
The point of civil disobedience is to be disobedient. :P
Yes you should break appropriate or unimportant laws.
No you should not have to pay a fine or insurance.
Or perhaps the Boston Tea Party should have paid for those goods they dropped in the harbor first, so that those poor businessmen not paying import tariffs would be compensated for the trouble?
If you destroy public or private property, you should be required to pay for the damages, yes. I don't care what your cause is.
The OWS protestores occupying McPherson Square should have been required to obtain insurance or to otherwise compensate the taxpayers for the damage their protest is causing to the park.
Adults take responsibility for their actions.
I agree with this 100%. Protest all you want, but don't infringe on someone else's property rights to do it. What right does anyone have to say that their message trumps a law abiding citizen's property rights? I actually think this point is absolutely fundamental to our continued existence as a society, since people will only buy into the rule of law if they trust that they will not be disadvantaged by people who break those laws. My most strongly held political belief is that if I follow the law, I should never be disadvantages relative to someone who chooses to break the law.
These "occupy the waterfront" protests have the greatest possibility to actually disrupt the economy, but they really are not hurting the kind of businesses which destroyed the economy.
Also spacekungfuman, what about the possibility that the laws are create by and for one class of people, including the regulations about peaceful protest. If the city really cared about maintaining a safe area in terms of sanitation they could have provided facilities for that at a much lower cost then the overtime for hundreds of policemen.
There are many things which city governments do to disrupt peaceful freedom of association which "camping" helps prevent, such as closing down the area and cordoning it off when the protesters go home for the night.
Also kind of the point of the wall street protests:
If you destroy the economy and political system, you should be required to pay for the damages, yes. I don't care what your cause is.
The major corporation and international business entities occupying every seat of power in the country should have been required to obtain insurance or to otherwise compensate the taxpayers for the damage their horrible lobbying policies and business practices have caused to this country (and the world).
Adults take responsibility for their actions.
He's a shy overambitious dog-catcher on the wrong side of the law. She's an orphaned psychic mercenary with the power to bend men's minds. They fight crime!
Also spacekungfuman, what about the possibility that the laws are create by and for one class of people, including the regulations about peaceful protest. If the city really cared about maintaining a safe area in terms of sanitation they could have provided facilities for that at a much lower cost then the overtime for hundreds of policemen.
There are many things which city governments do to disrupt peaceful freedom of association which "camping" helps prevent, such as closing down the area and cordoning it off when the protesters go home for the night.
Also kind of the point of the wall street protests:
If you destroy the economy and political system, you should be required to pay for the damages, yes. I don't care what your cause is.
The major corporation and international business entities occupying every seat of power in the country should have been required to obtain insurance or to otherwise compensate the taxpayers for the damage their horrible lobbying policies and business practices have caused to this country (and the world).
Adults take responsibility for their actions.
Wait. . . Are you contending that laws supporting property rights are created for one class of people? If we did not have a rigorous system of rules for protecting people's claims to their personal property, then how could we function as a society at all?
Wait. . . Are you contending that laws supporting property rights are created for one class of people? If we did not have a rigorous system of rules for protecting people's claims to their personal property, then how could we function as a society at all?
Imagine if say, property laws were established in such a way that it was impossible to own property if you were not already wealthy, and that there was no such property in existence except for private property owned by the already wealthy. Wherefore art the land to practice our 1st amendment rights? Without strongly protected public commons our property laws more exactly appear to favor the interests of large, wealthy landowners who are slowly but surely on track to shift the "Rights" to most property in America into the hands of a select few businesses and/or wealthy individuals.
The housing crisis is one of the moments where the middle class, one of America's only other property owners, ended up losing most of their land, and what does that leave us with? Well a society with strong property rights...if you're lucky enough to afford property, and fat chance earning that money doing any kind of ethical and honest work.
If the best you can come up with against someone who's patently ignorant is to yell back at him, "Yeah? Well there's BOOKS, and they say you're WRONG!"
Then honestly you're not coming out of this looking great either.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Wait. . . Are you contending that laws supporting property rights are created for one class of people? If we did not have a rigorous system of rules for protecting people's claims to their personal property, then how could we function as a society at all?
Imagine if say, property laws were established in such a way that it was impossible to own property if you were not already wealthy, and that there was no such property in existence except for private property owned by the already wealthy. Wherefore art the land to practice our 1st amendment rights? Without strongly protected public commons our property laws more exactly appear to favor the interests of large, wealthy landowners who are slowly but surely on track to shift the "Rights" to most property in America into the hands of a select few businesses and/or wealthy individuals.
The housing crisis is one of the moments where the middle class, one of America's only other property owners, ended up losing most of their land, and what does that leave us with? Well a society with strong property rights...if you're lucky enough to afford property, and fat chance earning that money doing any kind of ethical and honest work.
But in your world, what room is there for government? I'm not sure that freedom of association would exist in a world where there is no public property, unless the government owned some of the bundle of rights we traditionally associate with property ownership.
So a pretty disheartening little update from my own local occupation. They had the hearing for the three misdemeanor charges against those arrested (illegal camping, trespassing, and unlawful assembly). All dropped except the unlawful assembly - strange, considering it's written as an anti-riot law and was thought to be the likeliest one to not stick.
The plea they offered was outrageous: two years probation, community service, and those arrested foot the bill for the $88,000 spent on police overtime when they raided everyone and harassed the group around the clock the weeks after.
Going to be interesting seeing all of the similarly ridiculous shit coming out of local courts as the legal battles begin over OWS-related arrests.
The point of civil disobedience is to be disobedient. :P
Yes you should break appropriate or unimportant laws.
No you should not have to pay a fine or insurance.
Or perhaps the Boston Tea Party should have paid for those goods they dropped in the harbor first, so that those poor businessmen not paying import tariffs would be compensated for the trouble?
If you destroy public or private property, you should be required to pay for the damages, yes. I don't care what your cause is.
The OWS protestores occupying McPherson Square should have been required to obtain insurance or to otherwise compensate the taxpayers for the damage their protest is causing to the park.
Adults take responsibility for their actions.
I agree with this 100%. Protest all you want, but don't infringe on someone else's property rights to do it. What right does anyone have to say that their message trumps a law abiding citizen's property rights? I actually think this point is absolutely fundamental to our continued existence as a society, since people will only buy into the rule of law if they trust that they will not be disadvantaged by people who break those laws. My most strongly held political belief is that if I follow the law, I should never be disadvantages relative to someone who chooses to break the law.
And if our society even remotely resembled this, in any way, shape, or form, I could see it as being a viable argument.
... those arrested foot the bill for the $88,000 spent on police overtime when they raided everyone and harassed the group around the clock the weeks after.
This part is the bizarrest to me. By this token, poorly achieving students should have to pay for teachers' overtime, people whose houses catch on fire should have to pay for firefighter overtime, people who get caught in a disaster need to pay for emergency services' overtime, and Afghanistan should pay for the US military's overtime.
This is how things are going to roll--all the protesters who were arrested are being fucked/going to be fucked financially (more than many already have been) behind the scenes and in court, after everything cools down. Hell, it's already happening to a friend of mine. His trial date is set for Jan 13th.
But in your world, what room is there for government? I'm not sure that freedom of association would exist in a world where there is no public property, unless the government owned some of the bundle of rights we traditionally associate with property ownership.
There is, because this is not just my world, this is the Planet Earth. Currently in America on Planet Earth our government is horribly corrupt and refuses to listen to or help the vast majority of Americans. The banks crashed the economy in 2008, got bailed out, paid their executives record bonuses and yet homeowners were all still evicted from their homes despite the fact the bailout was practically the U.S. government buying all of those homes from the banks at their fully inflated value when you count the secret Fed loans we now know about. Top that off that most of them were evicted through an illegal robosigning process and you have a situation where no, you really don't have a choice about property rights at this point. The government does not want to listen, the banks got away with murder, and are now taking people's homes after practically crashing the economy on purpose (I'd count willful blindness as on purpose myself, and Sarbanes Oxley agrees with me! ;p) and what does that leave us to do?
First there was occupation of the remaining public space, but nope, occupiers all got beaten and evicted by the Police on bullshit made-up charges. So now there's foreclosure defense and event disruption. I'm sorry but if you want OWS to respect property laws you need to give a legitimate way for grievances to not just be spoken but actually listend to and acted on. Do you currently have a way to guarantee that? Because if not then I think what's being done already is about the best compromise we can get between respecting the status quo and protesting what has to be one of the most broken systems of both corrupted government and a rampaging private sector I've ever seen.
If the best you can come up with against someone who's patently ignorant is to yell back at him, "Yeah? Well there's BOOKS, and they say you're WRONG!"
Then honestly you're not coming out of this looking great either.
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Won't happen. American legislators are too much in the pocket of the finance industry and too stupid to see the forest from the trees. American banks' resistance to Basel III and its subsequent watering are well-known; in particular, Jamie Dimon's tirade against Mark Carney is now rather infamous. Unfortunately, the US Congress is not made from the same stuff that Mark Carney is, which is saying something, given that he's a Canadian banker.
(Also note the irony in the CEO of one of the American banks that caused the great financial meltdown of 2008 and then had to be bailed out ranting against the banking regulations proposed at the former central banker who shepherded his country through the 2008 crisis with the least damage and fastest recovery of the G7 countries, and has earned worldwide recognition for doing so. Short memories, eh?)
This was more than just shitty behaviour. He was raging at basically the defacto head of the G20 central bankers right now. It was a combination of douchebag-insane and self-inflicted-wound insane:
It'd be like a pedophile bishop screaming at the pope.
-Goldman Sachs Executives criminally charged,
-Reinstate glass-steagall,
-Overturn Citizen's united
How do you propose we elect enough senators to nuke the filibuster and secret holds? And how can you guarantee that your proposal will actually work? If you want to plan this out over the course of multiple elections I need to remind you that unless there's an incumbent it can sometimes be pretty hard to even guess who will run or what they'll make their platform so that puts an extra burden on you to prove that the environment which might ensure success for one election will not have entirely changed by the next. If we can't do it that way then I just don't see what good the act of merely voting for more representatives will do within the current two-party system.
Yes voting straight-ticket D is still better than straight-ticket R by a mile but when that mile only marks the difference between insane robots of death and the incompetent Repo crew sent to try and clean up the robot's mess and fix the damage whenever it gets lose then that doesn't exactly portray a very healthy picture of my choices on a given ballot. If we could say, make the repo crew not incompetent by firing Droopy Dog and their other misfits all at once I'd love to. But I just don't think there's any reasonable way to do that. There always seem to just be enough Blue Dogs that it doesn't seem to matter which specific ones it is, someone is there to put the stops on progressive legislation favored by most of the nation, for better or worse, and has been for as long as I can remember us actually having the ability to not have to capitulate to Republicans to pass anything...when was that last again? ;p
edit:
I'm not saying that everyone of them is corrupt. But rather that enough of them are corrupt or so sufficiently and utterly incompetent as to pass for obviously corrupt to such a point where I do not have any remaining faith in the actual ability for us to elect enough politicians in the right places to override the collective cock-blocking of the current partisan congressional environment. Do you? Because it just takes 41 votes to stop anything other than bills passed under budget reconciliation. Do you know any way you can guarantee that there will exist the environment where we can have even 40 or 39 Senators that are not unreasonable assholes exploiting procedure to destroy any legislation they just happen to, for whatever reason, personally dislike?
1. Yes, they do. Getting the money out of politics and returning the focus of government to addressing the needs of the majority of the population. In a word: democracy.
2. It wouldn't matter if they didn't. As the ruling class has royally fucked things up, it is perfectly valid for the masses to say "HEY. FUCKING FIX IT. WE DON'T CARE HOW, JUST FIX IT."
"Hey baby, wanna kill all the humans?"
Let 'em eat fucking pineapples!
Probably to act as a way to reinforce a social meme that Macho guys can't support OWS and support things that are also supported by hippies. The people who I've noticed on my stations that tend to make fun of OWS all seem to be hammering that meme down pretty hard when they mention it.
Okay I'm sorry, I forgot to include crazy in my list of personality traits which could create similar behavior -_-;; It just seems to be such a given these days that there's not much point in repeating it.
If you're under the assumption your broken system is working just fine, you're at least incompetent.
Yeah they called it a hippie homeless movement because they should occupy everything like homeless do. Or something. They're pretty retarded in general though, what with being reject comedians on a radio talk show.
Half of our senators are millionaires, and only the tiniest sliver of them fall into the bottom 80% of American income earners.
Passing legislation to end the kind of deregulation and "corruption" born of insider trading on a federal level would essentially be passing laws explicitly against their own financial self interest. Which is a damn hard thing to ask anyone to do.
Again, read that article I linked. The institution of the Legislative Branch has been massively compromised.
http://www.artonissues.com/2011/12/our-unrepresentative-representation/
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Isn't this essentially what political organizations do? Why do we have to guess about who will and won't run? Why aren't we going out and finding suitable candidates, then helping them run for office? You're right, waiting for the perfect candidate or just voting for imperfect ones without taking a more active role in the process is not going to change much, but that's not really what I was suggesting.
1. Ok, so maybe "cohesive demands" is the wrong way to frame it. Your statement seems like a good place to start, but just saying it over and over isn't going to do much, in my opinion. I mean, I'm all for "Yay democracy", but how is that being translated into action? How is the movement reaching out to those people that may agree with what you say, but don't think that the Occupy protests are the for them, for whatever reason (no time/can't leave work/have skills better suited to other activities/scared of dudes in viking costumes/etc.)?
2. Totally justifiable sentiment, but I think that's something you can only enforce at the end of a sword, so to speak. Unless your are suggesting starting an armed rebellion, politicians having gotten very good at smiling, showing compassion and then ignoring the fuck out of you once they realize you either A) aren't going to donate a chunk of cash to their campaign or
You said you wanted OWS to back candidates or specific political parties. Do you know a way of guaranteeing results? That was just part of my suggestion of how you could win via voting. Work really super duper hard to elect enough progressive senators to get rid of the secret holds and filibuster. That's one way you could do it, might not be the most effective or only way but one way. What's yours?
Isn't that also what political organizations are supposed to do? Either they do these things well or they do not. The real question is WHY these organizations do not appear to be doing their job very well. In the case of the Democrats as a party? I would place the blame pretty squarely on cash requirements to get elected. With income and wealth inequality getting worse, costs likely to continue to rise over time, the ability for a Democratic politician to run for office without making concessions to their wealthy donors is just going to get worse and worse.
You can't get money out of politics though short of constitutional amendment or mass judge retirements thanks to Citizens United. So that doesn't leave me with a lot of faith in elections working.
Why do you think the system is not broken? Why do you think that near glacial rates of change are what we need right now?
This is my suggestion. Don't think it's going to be easy, but that's partially why I came here, to find out what I can be doing to help in this admittedly monumental task. I'm not sure I see any other way to change the system, short of armed rebellion followed by civil war, and I don't really think enough people are willing to die for this cause just yet.
Well yeah, but it's much easier for a group like OWS to fill the gap left by the Democratic Party than for them to topple the whole government. Don't like the way the DNC goes about its business? Then let's show em' how it's done. The more boots on the ground being filled by Occupiers, and less by Blue Dogs, the better.
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Because while this is frustrating now, it also prevents things you probably think are bad policy from becoming law. Governments are large, complicated organisms and changing them, even in a small way, can have far reaching implications for millions of people. It's the same reason why Airplane parts and anything used in a Hospital is like 5x more expensive than the version you or I could buy in a store. While you may grumble that your $1500 dollar donation could purchase just a single Wii for the local children's hospital and that it took an extra 3 months to get there, aren't you glad that it's been thoroughly tested so as not to short out some kid's heart monitor?
You can't change the nation for the better in a single year. Quick actions are pretty much always myopic and harmful. Making the world a better place takes not only effort, but time, and continued effort. That's why it's so hard for such a short-sighted population. You're demonstrating the same kind of apathy that causes students to only bother voting in presidential years. You have to work FOREVER to make things better. There is no one-and-done. That's not how reality works. You work today so that people ten generations from now will have it better than you do. If you're lucky, things will even be better during the last five years of your life.
This article pretty much lists out just how fucked we are. And anyone that thinks we can get unfucked, OWS or otherwise, are fooling themselves. Basically, this is an entire country experiencing the five stages of grief.
- The majority of Americans are in Denial.
- OWS is in Anger.
- Elected Democrats are in Bargaining.
- I'm personally sitting somewhere between Depression and Acceptance.
- Elected Republicans are in a strange quantum multi-state of Denial, Acceptance, and Extorting the Death of America for Personal Gain.
Basically, the sooner everyone gets through the process, the sooner we can all roast marshmallows over the funeral pyre.
Okay but here's the problem. If we can't break the filibuster and secret holds? What is it that gives you any faith in our ability to repair the economy in the next four years? What gives you the faith that the economy will continue to survive another four years if no action is taken? Our current congress seems pretty entirely unable to do anything that we actually have proof would, you know, stimulate the economy in any way that helps the poor and middle class. The banks are getting right back into the same speculative problems they were having before with Bank of America transferring $70 trillion in derivatives, yes Trillion with a T, into a federally insured subsidiary. This means if European Debt goes bad? The taxpayer could very well foot the bill, yet again.
Can't or shouldn't? Because if we can at all then I would love another opportunity to make the case this is exactly what we need to be finding a way to do right now if we don't want the sword of Damocles hovering over our collective heads for the next four years as far as the economy goes.
Always or always in our current government? I mean if you were talking about rushing something like the Patriot Act then yeah that was myopic and harmful but that was reactionary legislation to a major national disaster where thousands of Americans died. Which is pretty unprecedented. Is there no way we couldn't do something like convene a constitutional convention that wouldn't also have a better shot at actually fixing the structural problems we have right now both in government and the added benefit of us being able to vote to kick out whoever we don't like if enough of America agrees they are horrible representatives?
Short sided? We have made social progress yes but economically speaking we've been in a progressively worsening downward spiral. I mean yes businesses are healthier than ever but savings are down, consumer debt is way up, wages have stagnated since the 1970s, social services have been slowly been hacked away at, social mobility is way down. About every indicator of what the average person's ability to find and sustain themselves and a family through hard work has just been getting worse since about the days of Regan and in some cases a bit before so. No we are not at Gilded age levels yet, but what do you believe is going to actually reverse this trend and why do you believe it will work?
What makes you think we can improve economic policy without campaign finance reform?
Really? Because reality as told by the flurry of statistics OWS presence has deluged us with seems to show signs of things actually getting worse at an increasing rate. Right now we are essentially relying on the hope that in the event that the economy craters and mass civil unrest starts that the government will consider revising economic policy rather then considering jailing a large number of Americans with either the military and/or heavily militarized police force. Not to say they certainly would, but given our current congress and current electorate I really wonder where the political calculus on the hill would put this congress or our likely next congress.
I actually hate being this gloomy about the future but the problem is I haven't yet been able to identify any real X factor that will change things, something new put into the mix that our current history doesn't show us will be ineffective if at all implemented in time to fix the economy.
I thought this was well written.
How does America's veto-point-heavy legislative process prevent bad policy from becoming law? If anything, the difficulty of passing legislation means that many more people can hold it hostage until they get their own piece of the legislative pie, watering/weighing the legislation down with irrelevant interest-group crap.
America's legislative process is a woodchipper for good policy, and it makes reform of that shredded policy extremely difficult.
It makes good policy bad, and it makes it difficult, often impossible, to make it better.
I think the idea was predicated on the belief originally that congress passing any law was bad because centralized power is bad. So the founders would've rather congress be able to pass no laws without near unanimous consent then pass a lot of bad laws with just a simple majority out of fear those laws would be tyrannical by their very nature. (Hint: Upset the status quo of Richness)
It's easy to forget how widespread fear of centralized power was once upon a time. So they designed a government built on the idea that even a tiny faction of the population had the power to destroy it's effectiveness to operate. The problem was that tiny faction as we later found out, was not required to have a sensible reason for doing so based on evidence. Hence, the Tea Party problem we have today.
Republicans realized all they needed to do to win was make government appear ineffective by insuring perpetual gridlock when they can't take credit for anything good that happens and then thanks to the media the public assumes whoever was the President now is unfit to govern and that lets them even as a minority party ensure a return to power eventually by making sure that rational compromise is impossible.
It's really no wonder we have the government we do today. It was predicated on the idea of tyrannical leaders acting in bad faith because they thought that centralization of power of any kind magically created tyrants (which considering the times did appear to be true with monarchies,) when rather what creates tyrants isn't centralization of power itself it's unaccountability for decisions made and an inability to properly enforce negative consequences on someone for a decision they made.
Like Scott Walker and the recall elections, the public has to have a way to enforce consequences on elected officials for passing bad policies and not doing their due diligence to listen to reason and their constituents instead of lobbyists. That's also I think the real rub about politics. In America, elected officials represent political ideologies and not people anymore.
You're not electing individuals with solutions to actual world problems you're electing an elephant or donkey figure that represents a platform that only represents a set of beliefs about how to solve certain problems. The thing people miss on this is that the Dem and Republican platforms only have to reflect their voter's beliefs, and don't need to be realistic ways of solving actual problems faced by Ds and Rs in their everyday lives. Politicians tell people exactly what they need to hear to get your vote and then go straight to their lobbyists to craft policy just good enough the people don't revolt.
Because to get elected politicians have to get lots of money, making them beholden to contributors more than the people, who they now have found are cheaper to placate through the media with that very same money, rather than craft effective policy for them, because they noticed just how little most people pay attention and are currently exploiting that.
TL;DR: D.C. Cocktail Circuit be messed up man, this entire system of government was designed to fail if it was ever taken over by corrupt/evil/stupid people, the gridlock we see is the very symptom of that. We won't get a better government until we design a better system of decision making guaranteed to succeed.
I agree with this 100%. Protest all you want, but don't infringe on someone else's property rights to do it. What right does anyone have to say that their message trumps a law abiding citizen's property rights? I actually think this point is absolutely fundamental to our continued existence as a society, since people will only buy into the rule of law if they trust that they will not be disadvantaged by people who break those laws. My most strongly held political belief is that if I follow the law, I should never be disadvantages relative to someone who chooses to break the law.
So news on OWS? Seems things are a bit slow over the holidays and I really don't want to kick that dead horse spacekungfu brought back up.
I heard a news blip on NPR about the port of Oakland closure and that major international shippers were considering/threatening pulling business out if that kind of thing happened again. I couldn't find anything specific except things like this from more then a week ago http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2011/12/21/oakland-city-council-avoids-vote-on-port-closure/ .
These "occupy the waterfront" protests have the greatest possibility to actually disrupt the economy, but they really are not hurting the kind of businesses which destroyed the economy.
Also spacekungfuman, what about the possibility that the laws are create by and for one class of people, including the regulations about peaceful protest. If the city really cared about maintaining a safe area in terms of sanitation they could have provided facilities for that at a much lower cost then the overtime for hundreds of policemen.
There are many things which city governments do to disrupt peaceful freedom of association which "camping" helps prevent, such as closing down the area and cordoning it off when the protesters go home for the night.
Also kind of the point of the wall street protests:
If you destroy the economy and political system, you should be required to pay for the damages, yes. I don't care what your cause is.
The major corporation and international business entities occupying every seat of power in the country should have been required to obtain insurance or to otherwise compensate the taxpayers for the damage their horrible lobbying policies and business practices have caused to this country (and the world).
Adults take responsibility for their actions.
Wait. . . Are you contending that laws supporting property rights are created for one class of people? If we did not have a rigorous system of rules for protecting people's claims to their personal property, then how could we function as a society at all?
Imagine if say, property laws were established in such a way that it was impossible to own property if you were not already wealthy, and that there was no such property in existence except for private property owned by the already wealthy. Wherefore art the land to practice our 1st amendment rights? Without strongly protected public commons our property laws more exactly appear to favor the interests of large, wealthy landowners who are slowly but surely on track to shift the "Rights" to most property in America into the hands of a select few businesses and/or wealthy individuals.
The housing crisis is one of the moments where the middle class, one of America's only other property owners, ended up losing most of their land, and what does that leave us with? Well a society with strong property rights...if you're lucky enough to afford property, and fat chance earning that money doing any kind of ethical and honest work.
But in your world, what room is there for government? I'm not sure that freedom of association would exist in a world where there is no public property, unless the government owned some of the bundle of rights we traditionally associate with property ownership.
The plea they offered was outrageous: two years probation, community service, and those arrested foot the bill for the $88,000 spent on police overtime when they raided everyone and harassed the group around the clock the weeks after.
Going to be interesting seeing all of the similarly ridiculous shit coming out of local courts as the legal battles begin over OWS-related arrests.
But since it doesn't, fuck 'em.
This part is the bizarrest to me. By this token, poorly achieving students should have to pay for teachers' overtime, people whose houses catch on fire should have to pay for firefighter overtime, people who get caught in a disaster need to pay for emergency services' overtime, and Afghanistan should pay for the US military's overtime.
There is, because this is not just my world, this is the Planet Earth. Currently in America on Planet Earth our government is horribly corrupt and refuses to listen to or help the vast majority of Americans. The banks crashed the economy in 2008, got bailed out, paid their executives record bonuses and yet homeowners were all still evicted from their homes despite the fact the bailout was practically the U.S. government buying all of those homes from the banks at their fully inflated value when you count the secret Fed loans we now know about. Top that off that most of them were evicted through an illegal robosigning process and you have a situation where no, you really don't have a choice about property rights at this point. The government does not want to listen, the banks got away with murder, and are now taking people's homes after practically crashing the economy on purpose (I'd count willful blindness as on purpose myself, and Sarbanes Oxley agrees with me! ;p) and what does that leave us to do?
First there was occupation of the remaining public space, but nope, occupiers all got beaten and evicted by the Police on bullshit made-up charges. So now there's foreclosure defense and event disruption. I'm sorry but if you want OWS to respect property laws you need to give a legitimate way for grievances to not just be spoken but actually listend to and acted on. Do you currently have a way to guarantee that? Because if not then I think what's being done already is about the best compromise we can get between respecting the status quo and protesting what has to be one of the most broken systems of both corrupted government and a rampaging private sector I've ever seen.
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."