My local OWS facebook page was fairly worthless...
I'd encourage you to not stop there, since that is just one of many, many groups attached to the economic justice movement.
Edit: I do recognize that it is much easier to criticize and ignore than to try to participate or even get basic facts, but I'd postulate that it is worth my time, although convincing PA denizens of anything is not.
I didn't stop there, as the rest of my post pointed out. I'm not anti-OWS, the reason I want to see it fix it structural and message control is because I want income inequality to be solved. But I guess it is easier to criticize and ignore that than talk about ways to work on that. I'd postulate that that would be worth anyone's time, even at PA.
I would simply respond that merely talking about it on PA forums will not get your message to OWS, and getting in touch directly through FB or other means could. If you want to influence political movements you actually have to participate, despite the inconvenience. :P
Right, because having a discussion on a forum means that one would be doing nothing else. Good to know. But I would simply respond that this is exactly the point of this webzone. When I write in the primary forum or the film thread I don't expect Mitt Romney or George Lucas to read and consider my points, I do it to sound ideas out and get other points of view.
If you're not interested in that, there's a little red X at the top of your window that you can use.
I don't know or care to know every detail of your personal life, but if I called it wrong on your OWS involvement then I apologize.
On the other hand, I only made that suggestion because I genuinely believed it would aid you in your stated goal of helping OWS, but you are certainly welcome to ignore that suggestion.
However, Facebook is not hard to use, nor would I consider things in Facebook to be hidden or "... less readily available ...", because it has far more users than corporate TV media. In fact, Facebook is constantly criticized for how easy it is to find out information about users and this remains the case for OWS and other groups involved working toward economic justice with a Facebook presence. Naturally, some of these groups are better at social media than others.
So....ummm....locally speaking and in your experience, how are they engaging?
The local online people I interact with are great, but in KC the actual protestors in the Occupy camps are thieving idiots, with no direction, that make the movement look terrible here.
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
No one's ignoring anything here but you, hanskey. I don't care to share my personal involvement with anything, that's not what this thread is for. Your input is just as valid as anyone else's, but if you don't think this thread is worth your time stop posting in it.
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Deebaseron my way to work in a suit and a tieAhhhh...come on fucking guyRegistered Userregular
This is the "engagement" the sleep over crowd at union square seems to be involved in.
It's neither clever, nor helpful. Also, the "live updates" on the occupywallstreet site seem to start in the evening. It's almost as if the dude posting them is more interested in picking a fight with the cops than spending the day spreading the word.
The "occupation" side of OWS has become a sad fucking parody of itself. Wealth disparity is a serious issue and these chucklefucks are just straight trolling.
Congratulations! you kicked down a barricade and got a picture of yourself on top of the Wall Street Bull. That'll show the man! It's totes like the arab spring.
No one's ignoring anything here but you, hanskey. I don't care to share my personal involvement with anything, that's not what this thread is for. Your input is just as valid as anyone else's, but if you don't think this thread is worth your time stop posting in it.
I have no idea what you mean.
Edit: It would seem that you are reading something into what I have said that I did not intend, because your tone seems increasingly angry, but I can't for the life of me figure out why.
It's neither clever, nor helpful. Also, the "live updates" on the occupywallstreet site seem to start in the evening. It's almost as if the dude posting them is more interested in picking a fight with the cops than spending the day spreading the word.
The "occupation" side of OWS has become a sad fucking parody of itself. Wealth disparity is a serious issue and these chucklefucks are just straight trolling.
Congratulations! you kicked down a barricade and got a picture of yourself on top of the Wall Street Bull. That'll show the man! It's totes like the arab spring.
This is remarkably similar to the stupidity in KC.
My main thought though is that participation costs nothing and those of us who are dissatisfied have lots of room to make up for the deficiencies we see in OWS through reforming or fixing things from within or stating our own similar groups with different tactics and organizational structure.
Edit: As I said yesterday, none of the participants in the movement for economic justice are likely to have any real success in impacting policy until messaging is more clear, and charismatic leaders are found.
hanskey on
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
No one's ignoring anything here but you, hanskey. I don't care to share my personal involvement with anything, that's not what this thread is for. Your input is just as valid as anyone else's, but if you don't think this thread is worth your time stop posting in it.
I have no idea what you mean.
Edit: It would seem that you are reading something into what I have said that I did not intend, because your tone seems increasingly angry, but I can't for the life of me figure out what it could be.
Fair enough, I could be reading wrong.
For clarity: I don't see a problem with talking about things here, it doesn't mean one cannot/will not act in the real world. If it did that would indeed be a sad state of affairs.
No one's ignoring anything here but you, hanskey. I don't care to share my personal involvement with anything, that's not what this thread is for. Your input is just as valid as anyone else's, but if you don't think this thread is worth your time stop posting in it.
I have no idea what you mean.
Edit: It would seem that you are reading something into what I have said that I did not intend, because your tone seems increasingly angry, but I can't for the life of me figure out what it could be.
Fair enough, I could be reading wrong.
For clarity: I don't see a problem with talking about things here, it doesn't mean one cannot/will not act in the real world. If it did that would indeed be a sad state of affairs.
Surely you are correct! In fact, I would think an all inclusive and constructive approach would be very effective. Discuss things here so we can come up with clever ways to help, or to move beyond OWS if it won't be moved. Hell, PA spins off huge numbers of small groups to join fitocracy or ME3 together, why not the Economic Justice movement? Kind of a "Don't like OWS? Make your own!" idea or possibly "Don't like OWS? Join up and fix it!". Then those groups can ally with OWS without having to suffer the annoyance of actually being a participant in OWS itself (sorta like Occupy London maybe). Splinter groups can reduce the effectiveness of a movement, but I think there would be more to be gained by bringing in the people that support economic justice, but have no interest in protests or OWS's internal structure.
IMO, Economic Justice is simply too important to be left in the hands of only one leaderless group and it's something we should all think about much the time if we want to create real change for the better.
Edit: In fact, would individual PA denizens prefer to help OWS from within or start up a better organized group to join the movement as an ally of OWS? There seems to be positive and negatives for both, so where do people come down on that?
The crux of OWS is that the system needs to be fundamentally changed, not "engaged with" or "reformed." Adding charismatic leaders would give the system a target for slander and dirt, building a platform gives the system positions to ridicule and destroy (or worse, co-opt). The idea behind OWS is not to affect policy, but to destroy policy altogether.
Patriarchal capitalist systems aren't exactly a mayoral town hall meeting you can just walk up to and demand change from.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
It's neither clever, nor helpful. Also, the "live updates" on the occupywallstreet site seem to start in the evening. It's almost as if the dude posting them is more interested in picking a fight with the cops than spending the day spreading the word.
The "occupation" side of OWS has become a sad fucking parody of itself. Wealth disparity is a serious issue and these chucklefucks are just straight trolling.
Congratulations! you kicked down a barricade and got a picture of yourself on top of the Wall Street Bull. That'll show the man! It's totes like the arab spring.
This is remarkably similar to the stupidity in KC.
My main thought though is that participation costs nothing and those of us who are dissatisfied have lots of room to make up for the deficiencies we see in OWS through reforming or fixing things from within or stating our own similar groups with different tactics and organizational structure.
Edit: As I said yesterday, none of the participants in the movement for economic justice are likely to have any real success in impacting policy until messaging is more clear, and charismatic leaders are found.
This lack of leaders also raises an interesting questions regarding how we judge OWS. Since the group is so broad, and there is no central leadership to determine what are "official" opinions or actions (other than the unwieldy general assembly) it seems to be impossible to point to a facebook group, protest, blog, etc. and say "this is what OWS thinks." You said earlier on this page that you like the KC facebook OWS crowd but not the people on the ground, but who is to say that the people you dislike aren't KC OWS just as much as the thoughtful FB people? It seems to me that the whole thing is fair game, which is why they NEED to get organized and have leaders that set policy and keep people on message. The movement needs to grow up and play the political game if it wants to have a shot at changing things through it, and part of that is solid messaging. Maybe what OWS really needs to do is use some of that ice cream money to hire a PR firm.
The crux of OWS is that the system needs to be fundamentally changed, not "engaged with" or "reformed." Adding charismatic leaders would give the system a target for slander and dirt, building a platform gives the system positions to ridicule and destroy (or worse, co-opt). The idea behind OWS is not to affect policy, but to destroy policy altogether.
Patriarchal capitalist systems aren't exactly a mayoral town hall meeting you can just walk up to and demand change from.
Good luck on that until you can replace the Federal Reserve System with a publicly owned, Constitutionally permitted, central monetary issuer directly under the authority of the Congress. You simply will never fix American capitalism until you can stop the Fed from debt bonding the entire nation to secret private shareholders.
On a related note did you all catch the ominous NPR report stating that there is a trial program by BOA (I believe) to forclose on people and turn them into renters? Seems like this whole housing bubble explosion may be a great way to do what was done in Europe long ago with regards to land ownership. That seems like something worth protesting to me.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
The crux of OWS is that the system needs to be fundamentally changed, not "engaged with" or "reformed." Adding charismatic leaders would give the system a target for slander and dirt, building a platform gives the system positions to ridicule and destroy (or worse, co-opt). The idea behind OWS is not to affect policy, but to destroy policy altogether.
Patriarchal capitalist systems aren't exactly a mayoral town hall meeting you can just walk up to and demand change from.
Good luck on that until you can replace the Federal Reserve System with a publicly owned, Constitutionally permitted, central monetary issuer directly under the authority of the Congress. You simply will never fix American capitalism until you can stop the Fed from debt bonding the entire nation to secret private shareholders.
On a related note did you all catch the ominous NPR report stating that there is a trial program by BOA (I believe) to forclose on people and turn them into renters? Seems like this whole housing bubble explosion may be a great way to do what was done in Europe long ago with regards to land ownership. That seems like something worth protesting to me.
That is hardcore. I suppose the next step is the return of debtor's prison (all privately owned and operated, of course).
My local OWS facebook page was fairly worthless. Though the Tampa papers covered the protests fairly well I think.
While there was under representation on the national media stage, from my point of view there is some serious paranoia surrounding OWS, especially here at PA.
Though if you think you can affect change by just circling around outside of the system and somehow bringing awareness without media coverage, good luck with that.
Atrios was pointing out the other day that Florida being so hugely suburban really hurts OWS' potential in the state. There aren't really that many large public spaces to occupy.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
It's neither clever, nor helpful. Also, the "live updates" on the occupywallstreet site seem to start in the evening. It's almost as if the dude posting them is more interested in picking a fight with the cops than spending the day spreading the word.
The "occupation" side of OWS has become a sad fucking parody of itself. Wealth disparity is a serious issue and these chucklefucks are just straight trolling.
Congratulations! you kicked down a barricade and got a picture of yourself on top of the Wall Street Bull. That'll show the man! It's totes like the arab spring.
This is remarkably similar to the stupidity in KC.
My main thought though is that participation costs nothing and those of us who are dissatisfied have lots of room to make up for the deficiencies we see in OWS through reforming or fixing things from within or stating our own similar groups with different tactics and organizational structure.
Edit: As I said yesterday, none of the participants in the movement for economic justice are likely to have any real success in impacting policy until messaging is more clear, and charismatic leaders are found.
This lack of leaders also raises an interesting questions regarding how we judge OWS. Since the group is so broad, and there is no central leadership to determine what are "official" opinions or actions (other than the unwieldy general assembly) it seems to be impossible to point to a facebook group, protest, blog, etc. and say "this is what OWS thinks." You said earlier on this page that you like the KC facebook OWS crowd but not the people on the ground, but who is to say that the people you dislike aren't KC OWS just as much as the thoughtful FB people? It seems to me that the whole thing is fair game, which is why they NEED to get organized and have leaders that set policy and keep people on message. The movement needs to grow up and play the political game if it wants to have a shot at changing things through it, and part of that is solid messaging. Maybe what OWS really needs to do is use some of that ice cream money to hire a PR firm.
I can see where you are coming from but the practical reality is that most of the people that are sympathetic to the movement are working too much to be the help they would like to be, and frankly the risks of being a protestor are enough that most responsible adults simply need to see a realistic possibility of positive results before they will be willing to take that kind of risk. This means that much of the physical protest movement is filled with homeless and young people, neither of which are particularly effective at communicating to society at large, thanks to their marginalized positions in society.
The crux of OWS is that the system needs to be fundamentally changed, not "engaged with" or "reformed." Adding charismatic leaders would give the system a target for slander and dirt, building a platform gives the system positions to ridicule and destroy (or worse, co-opt). The idea behind OWS is not to affect policy, but to destroy policy altogether.
Patriarchal capitalist systems aren't exactly a mayoral town hall meeting you can just walk up to and demand change from.
Good luck on that until you can replace the Federal Reserve System with a publicly owned, Constitutionally permitted, central monetary issuer directly under the authority of the Congress. You simply will never fix American capitalism until you can stop the Fed from debt bonding the entire nation to secret private shareholders.
On a related note did you all catch the ominous NPR report stating that there is a trial program by BOA (I believe) to forclose on people and turn them into renters? Seems like this whole housing bubble explosion may be a great way to do what was done in Europe long ago with regards to land ownership. That seems like something worth protesting to me.
That is hardcore. I suppose the next step is the return of debtor's prison (all privately owned and operated, of course).
That was my first thought, but then I thought some more and realized: why bother when the whole state is already a de facto debtor's prison thanks to the Federal Reserve System?
hanskey on
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
It's neither clever, nor helpful. Also, the "live updates" on the occupywallstreet site seem to start in the evening. It's almost as if the dude posting them is more interested in picking a fight with the cops than spending the day spreading the word.
The "occupation" side of OWS has become a sad fucking parody of itself. Wealth disparity is a serious issue and these chucklefucks are just straight trolling.
Congratulations! you kicked down a barricade and got a picture of yourself on top of the Wall Street Bull. That'll show the man! It's totes like the arab spring.
This is remarkably similar to the stupidity in KC.
My main thought though is that participation costs nothing and those of us who are dissatisfied have lots of room to make up for the deficiencies we see in OWS through reforming or fixing things from within or stating our own similar groups with different tactics and organizational structure.
Edit: As I said yesterday, none of the participants in the movement for economic justice are likely to have any real success in impacting policy until messaging is more clear, and charismatic leaders are found.
This lack of leaders also raises an interesting questions regarding how we judge OWS. Since the group is so broad, and there is no central leadership to determine what are "official" opinions or actions (other than the unwieldy general assembly) it seems to be impossible to point to a facebook group, protest, blog, etc. and say "this is what OWS thinks." You said earlier on this page that you like the KC facebook OWS crowd but not the people on the ground, but who is to say that the people you dislike aren't KC OWS just as much as the thoughtful FB people? It seems to me that the whole thing is fair game, which is why they NEED to get organized and have leaders that set policy and keep people on message. The movement needs to grow up and play the political game if it wants to have a shot at changing things through it, and part of that is solid messaging. Maybe what OWS really needs to do is use some of that ice cream money to hire a PR firm.
I can see where you are coming from but the practical reality is that most of the people that are sympathetic to the movement are working too much to be the help they would like to be, and frankly the risks of being a protestor are enough that most responsible adults simply need to see a realistic possibility of positive results before they will be willing to take that kind of risk. This means that much of the physical protest movement is filled with homeless and young people, neither of which are particularly effective at communicating to society at large, thanks to their marginalized positions in society.
Please see my posts earlier on this page and the last where I was arguing for an end to the constant physical precense in favor of channelling resources and effort into discrete, issue driven events. It seems to me that maintaing the physical protests is really both a waste of resources, and a time bomb that will explode into another rape scandal or something worse at some point.
It's neither clever, nor helpful. Also, the "live updates" on the occupywallstreet site seem to start in the evening. It's almost as if the dude posting them is more interested in picking a fight with the cops than spending the day spreading the word.
The "occupation" side of OWS has become a sad fucking parody of itself. Wealth disparity is a serious issue and these chucklefucks are just straight trolling.
Congratulations! you kicked down a barricade and got a picture of yourself on top of the Wall Street Bull. That'll show the man! It's totes like the arab spring.
This is remarkably similar to the stupidity in KC.
My main thought though is that participation costs nothing and those of us who are dissatisfied have lots of room to make up for the deficiencies we see in OWS through reforming or fixing things from within or stating our own similar groups with different tactics and organizational structure.
Edit: As I said yesterday, none of the participants in the movement for economic justice are likely to have any real success in impacting policy until messaging is more clear, and charismatic leaders are found.
This lack of leaders also raises an interesting questions regarding how we judge OWS. Since the group is so broad, and there is no central leadership to determine what are "official" opinions or actions (other than the unwieldy general assembly) it seems to be impossible to point to a facebook group, protest, blog, etc. and say "this is what OWS thinks." You said earlier on this page that you like the KC facebook OWS crowd but not the people on the ground, but who is to say that the people you dislike aren't KC OWS just as much as the thoughtful FB people? It seems to me that the whole thing is fair game, which is why they NEED to get organized and have leaders that set policy and keep people on message. The movement needs to grow up and play the political game if it wants to have a shot at changing things through it, and part of that is solid messaging. Maybe what OWS really needs to do is use some of that ice cream money to hire a PR firm.
I can see where you are coming from but the practical reality is that most of the people that are sympathetic to the movement are working too much to be the help they would like to be, and frankly the risks of being a protestor are enough that most responsible adults simply need to see a realistic possibility of positive results before they will be willing to take that kind of risk. This means that much of the physical protest movement is filled with homeless and young people, neither of which are particularly effective at communicating to society at large, thanks to their marginalized positions in society.
Please see my posts earlier on this page and the last where I was arguing for an end to the constant physical precense in favor of channelling resources and effort into discrete, issue driven events. It seems to me that maintaing the physical protests is really both a waste of resources, and a time bomb that will explode into another rape scandal or something worse at some point.
I don't have any particular problems with that analysis, but I think that the current protestors will be harder to convince. This is one of the reasons that I am attracted to creating a sister movement that is focused on learning from OWS and applying that learning to actually changing the system.
Naturally, I feel that the issue of corporate personhood is critical, as is a constitutional amendment stripping corporations of any constitutional protections and so is the end of money as speech, but I think that OWS is missing a major piece by overlooking the private secret sharholders that own all our money. The Fed and all private central banks are truly evil institutions that have never succeeded in their mandate to "stabilize the value of X currency", and have only succeeded in bringing entire people's under the absolute (albeit indirect) control of unknown persons and making those people a fuck-ton of money.
hanskey on
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
It's neither clever, nor helpful. Also, the "live updates" on the occupywallstreet site seem to start in the evening. It's almost as if the dude posting them is more interested in picking a fight with the cops than spending the day spreading the word.
The "occupation" side of OWS has become a sad fucking parody of itself. Wealth disparity is a serious issue and these chucklefucks are just straight trolling.
Congratulations! you kicked down a barricade and got a picture of yourself on top of the Wall Street Bull. That'll show the man! It's totes like the arab spring.
This is remarkably similar to the stupidity in KC.
My main thought though is that participation costs nothing and those of us who are dissatisfied have lots of room to make up for the deficiencies we see in OWS through reforming or fixing things from within or stating our own similar groups with different tactics and organizational structure.
Edit: As I said yesterday, none of the participants in the movement for economic justice are likely to have any real success in impacting policy until messaging is more clear, and charismatic leaders are found.
This lack of leaders also raises an interesting questions regarding how we judge OWS. Since the group is so broad, and there is no central leadership to determine what are "official" opinions or actions (other than the unwieldy general assembly) it seems to be impossible to point to a facebook group, protest, blog, etc. and say "this is what OWS thinks." You said earlier on this page that you like the KC facebook OWS crowd but not the people on the ground, but who is to say that the people you dislike aren't KC OWS just as much as the thoughtful FB people? It seems to me that the whole thing is fair game, which is why they NEED to get organized and have leaders that set policy and keep people on message. The movement needs to grow up and play the political game if it wants to have a shot at changing things through it, and part of that is solid messaging. Maybe what OWS really needs to do is use some of that ice cream money to hire a PR firm.
I can see where you are coming from but the practical reality is that most of the people that are sympathetic to the movement are working too much to be the help they would like to be, and frankly the risks of being a protestor are enough that most responsible adults simply need to see a realistic possibility of positive results before they will be willing to take that kind of risk. This means that much of the physical protest movement is filled with homeless and young people, neither of which are particularly effective at communicating to society at large, thanks to their marginalized positions in society.
Please see my posts earlier on this page and the last where I was arguing for an end to the constant physical precense in favor of channelling resources and effort into discrete, issue driven events. It seems to me that maintaing the physical protests is really both a waste of resources, and a time bomb that will explode into another rape scandal or something worse at some point.
I don't have any particular problems with that analysis, but I think that the current protestors will be harder to convince. This is one of the reasons that I am attracted to creating a sister movement that is focused on learning from OWS and applying that learning to actually changing the system.
Naturally, I feel that the issue of corporate personhood is critical, as is a constitutional amendment stripping corporations of any constitutional protections and so is the end of money as speech, but I think that OWS is missing a major piece by overlooking the private secret sharholders that own all our money. The Fed and all private central banks are truly evil institutions that have never succeeded in their mandate to "stabilize the value of X currency", and have only succeeded in bringing entire people's under the absolute (albeit indirect) control of unknown persons and making those people a fuck-ton of money.
And this is where we substantively disagree (in part). I agree that we need massive campaign finance reform, and that we should not allow entities (of any type, including corporations and unions) to make campaign contributions at all, but corporate personhood is a complex concept with many completely benign applications (like treatment as a person under the tax code), so I would not want to see a wholesale abandonment of the concept. Better to deal with the problems directly, instead of torching the whole concept, and all of the law that relies on it.
The crux of OWS is that the system needs to be fundamentally changed, not "engaged with" or "reformed." Adding charismatic leaders would give the system a target for slander and dirt, building a platform gives the system positions to ridicule and destroy (or worse, co-opt). The idea behind OWS is not to affect policy, but to destroy policy altogether.
Patriarchal capitalist systems aren't exactly a mayoral town hall meeting you can just walk up to and demand change from.
Good luck on that until you can replace the Federal Reserve System with a publicly owned, Constitutionally permitted, central monetary issuer directly under the authority of the Congress. You simply will never fix American capitalism until you can stop the Fed from debt bonding the entire nation to secret private shareholders.
On a related note did you all catch the ominous NPR report stating that there is a trial program by BOA (I believe) to forclose on people and turn them into renters? Seems like this whole housing bubble explosion may be a great way to do what was done in Europe long ago with regards to land ownership. That seems like something worth protesting to me.
I didn't say "fix" american capitalism. I said "fundamentally change." American capitalism is predicated on an abusive system that drains wealth from the rest of the globe and from all other living people on this planet and reroutes it into the hands of the American people. Replacing the fed and solving the crazy debt crisis we're in won't stop the inevitable crunch as we run out of finite resources to fuel our unsustainable economic system.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
The crux of OWS is that the system needs to be fundamentally changed, not "engaged with" or "reformed." Adding charismatic leaders would give the system a target for slander and dirt, building a platform gives the system positions to ridicule and destroy (or worse, co-opt). The idea behind OWS is not to affect policy, but to destroy policy altogether.
Patriarchal capitalist systems aren't exactly a mayoral town hall meeting you can just walk up to and demand change from.
Good luck on that until you can replace the Federal Reserve System with a publicly owned, Constitutionally permitted, central monetary issuer directly under the authority of the Congress. You simply will never fix American capitalism until you can stop the Fed from debt bonding the entire nation to secret private shareholders.
On a related note did you all catch the ominous NPR report stating that there is a trial program by BOA (I believe) to forclose on people and turn them into renters? Seems like this whole housing bubble explosion may be a great way to do what was done in Europe long ago with regards to land ownership. That seems like something worth protesting to me.
I didn't say "fix" american capitalism. I said "fundamentally change." American capitalism is predicated on an abusive system that drains wealth from the rest of the globe and from all other living people on this planet and reroutes it into the hands of the American people. Replacing the fed and solving the crazy debt crisis we're in won't stop the inevitable crunch as we run out of finite resources to fuel our unsustainable economic system.
It's neither clever, nor helpful. Also, the "live updates" on the occupywallstreet site seem to start in the evening. It's almost as if the dude posting them is more interested in picking a fight with the cops than spending the day spreading the word.
The "occupation" side of OWS has become a sad fucking parody of itself. Wealth disparity is a serious issue and these chucklefucks are just straight trolling.
Congratulations! you kicked down a barricade and got a picture of yourself on top of the Wall Street Bull. That'll show the man! It's totes like the arab spring.
This is remarkably similar to the stupidity in KC.
My main thought though is that participation costs nothing and those of us who are dissatisfied have lots of room to make up for the deficiencies we see in OWS through reforming or fixing things from within or stating our own similar groups with different tactics and organizational structure.
Edit: As I said yesterday, none of the participants in the movement for economic justice are likely to have any real success in impacting policy until messaging is more clear, and charismatic leaders are found.
This lack of leaders also raises an interesting questions regarding how we judge OWS. Since the group is so broad, and there is no central leadership to determine what are "official" opinions or actions (other than the unwieldy general assembly) it seems to be impossible to point to a facebook group, protest, blog, etc. and say "this is what OWS thinks." You said earlier on this page that you like the KC facebook OWS crowd but not the people on the ground, but who is to say that the people you dislike aren't KC OWS just as much as the thoughtful FB people? It seems to me that the whole thing is fair game, which is why they NEED to get organized and have leaders that set policy and keep people on message. The movement needs to grow up and play the political game if it wants to have a shot at changing things through it, and part of that is solid messaging. Maybe what OWS really needs to do is use some of that ice cream money to hire a PR firm.
I can see where you are coming from but the practical reality is that most of the people that are sympathetic to the movement are working too much to be the help they would like to be, and frankly the risks of being a protestor are enough that most responsible adults simply need to see a realistic possibility of positive results before they will be willing to take that kind of risk. This means that much of the physical protest movement is filled with homeless and young people, neither of which are particularly effective at communicating to society at large, thanks to their marginalized positions in society.
Please see my posts earlier on this page and the last where I was arguing for an end to the constant physical precense in favor of channelling resources and effort into discrete, issue driven events. It seems to me that maintaing the physical protests is really both a waste of resources, and a time bomb that will explode into another rape scandal or something worse at some point.
I don't have any particular problems with that analysis, but I think that the current protestors will be harder to convince. This is one of the reasons that I am attracted to creating a sister movement that is focused on learning from OWS and applying that learning to actually changing the system.
Naturally, I feel that the issue of corporate personhood is critical, as is a constitutional amendment stripping corporations of any constitutional protections and so is the end of money as speech, but I think that OWS is missing a major piece by overlooking the private secret sharholders that own all our money. The Fed and all private central banks are truly evil institutions that have never succeeded in their mandate to "stabilize the value of X currency", and have only succeeded in bringing entire people's under the absolute (albeit indirect) control of unknown persons and making those people a fuck-ton of money.
And this is where we substantively disagree (in part). I agree that we need massive campaign finance reform, and that we should not allow entities (of any type, including corporations and unions) to make campaign contributions at all, but corporate personhood is a complex concept with many completely benign applications (like treatment as a person under the tax code), so I would not want to see a wholesale abandonment of the concept. Better to deal with the problems directly, instead of torching the whole concept, and all of the law that relies on it.
Actually, we completely agree on that, I just didn't get specific enough for you to know that. Thanks for the excellent analysis.
The crux of OWS is that the system needs to be fundamentally changed, not "engaged with" or "reformed." Adding charismatic leaders would give the system a target for slander and dirt, building a platform gives the system positions to ridicule and destroy (or worse, co-opt). The idea behind OWS is not to affect policy, but to destroy policy altogether.
Patriarchal capitalist systems aren't exactly a mayoral town hall meeting you can just walk up to and demand change from.
What OWS needs is to do the opposite. Rather than being nameless and faceless they need a platform to distinquish themselves from their enemies (so what if it gets attacked? That's already being done with their flimsy agenda now), otherwise they've got no direction. Sure, it's good temporarily but it won't change anything if they stand for nothing worth defending.
They not only need to diversify into sub-groups that do specific tasks they need multiple charismatic leaders. That way no matter if one leader gets torn down, there will be ten others replacing them.
Another improvement is to find people to teach them how the system works. This is what political organizations do with their leaders. Only they should broaden it to many fields, to assist the movement on many fronts. From public speaking to computer hacking to accounting. Of course, for this they need money. Perhaps creating a financial wing for members to donate to. To keep everything from being taken down in one place they'd need to do everything in triplicate or more to everything is redundant.
They also need to learn how to pinpoint vulnerabilities in their political enemies to better exploit them to their advantage.
Another function they need is to find moles from police or any other group who tries to undermine them.
The crux of OWS is that the system needs to be fundamentally changed, not "engaged with" or "reformed." Adding charismatic leaders would give the system a target for slander and dirt, building a platform gives the system positions to ridicule and destroy (or worse, co-opt). The idea behind OWS is not to affect policy, but to destroy policy altogether.
Patriarchal capitalist systems aren't exactly a mayoral town hall meeting you can just walk up to and demand change from.
Good luck on that until you can replace the Federal Reserve System with a publicly owned, Constitutionally permitted, central monetary issuer directly under the authority of the Congress. You simply will never fix American capitalism until you can stop the Fed from debt bonding the entire nation to secret private shareholders.
On a related note did you all catch the ominous NPR report stating that there is a trial program by BOA (I believe) to forclose on people and turn them into renters? Seems like this whole housing bubble explosion may be a great way to do what was done in Europe long ago with regards to land ownership. That seems like something worth protesting to me.
I didn't say "fix" american capitalism. I said "fundamentally change." American capitalism is predicated on an abusive system that drains wealth from the rest of the globe and from all other living people on this planet and reroutes it into the hands of the American people. Replacing the fed and solving the crazy debt crisis we're in won't stop the inevitable crunch as we run out of finite resources to fuel our unsustainable economic system.
The Federal Reserve is way more than just a debt crisis. It is a mechanism for perpetual debt bondage which provides a non-elected elite group complete control over our economy via control of the supply of money. In a private central bank scenario, paying off the national debt would make the currency worthless and nearly all the terrible practices of our capitalism are directly related to how we interact with money, which is entirely controlled by the privately owned Federal Reserve System.
"Paying off the debt would make the dollar worthless?" you ask. The answer is yes, because if we completely paid off the national debt then the Fed would no longer have the ability to back the dollar, since the Fed's Reserves are composed entirely of treasury debt. As a fractional reserve system it must have reserves (government IOUs, Treasure Bonds) of %1 of what it lends out to banks and financial institutions (which then lend out to businesses and people) and 1% of 0 dollars is 0. So good-bye dollar, unless Congress takes it's Constitutional power to make money back from the Unknown Profiteers.
The reality is that the Federal Reserve and it's cronies (banks, major corporations) are the only ones actually benefiting from our highly exploitative colonialist capitalism, you and I and the vast majority of Americans get a very pretty, but ultimately worthless pittance. However, likely the Fed system can be perpetuated for a very long time, since the whole point is to suck as much money out of us as possible. Basically, what the IMF does to third-world nations, the Fed does to us and did before the IMF and as such it supplants democracy and our personal sovereignty, with Fascism and elite supremacy.
You can't fix us without fixing that, because they hold all the levers of power they need to weather any lesser storm.
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
We would never pay off the Federal Debt, that isn't a goal that anyone should be going after. The idea is to have manageable debt that doesn't out grow our ability to pay it off (which is hasn't yet, it is only projected to 15-20 years from now).
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VanguardBut now the dream is over. And the insect is awake.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
You would swear that people have seen boobs before. This pasty white girl had her shirt off in Union Square and people kept filming her, taking pictures, etc. Probably about 150 people there right now.
The crux of OWS is that the system needs to be fundamentally changed, not "engaged with" or "reformed." Adding charismatic leaders would give the system a target for slander and dirt, building a platform gives the system positions to ridicule and destroy (or worse, co-opt). The idea behind OWS is not to affect policy, but to destroy policy altogether.
Patriarchal capitalist systems aren't exactly a mayoral town hall meeting you can just walk up to and demand change from.
What OWS needs is to do the opposite. Rather than being nameless and faceless they need a platform to distinquish themselves from their enemies (so what if it gets attacked? That's already being done with their flimsy agenda now), otherwise they've got no direction. Sure, it's good temporarily but it won't change anything if they stand for nothing worth defending.
They not only need to diversify into sub-groups that do specific tasks they need multiple charismatic leaders. That way no matter if one leader gets torn down, there will be ten others replacing them.
Another improvement is to find people to teach them how the system works. This is what political organizations do with their leaders. Only they should broaden it to many fields, to assist the movement on many fronts. From public speaking to computer hacking to accounting. Of course, for this they need money. Perhaps creating a financial wing for members to donate to. To keep everything from being taken down in one place they'd need to do everything in triplicate or more to everything is redundant.
They also need to learn how to pinpoint vulnerabilities in their political enemies to better exploit them to their advantage.
Another function they need is to find moles from police or any other group who tries to undermine them.
Exactly. You have put it very eloquently Dres.
Also, having no leaders and no obvious, specific goals has made it easier, in my mind, for the corporate media to mis-characterize, ridicule and marginalize (destroy) OWS.
Look, Thejakeman. Most of the people I know (conservatives and liberals) support stripping the power of corporations in the way I described (change corporate personhood definitions, redefine speech to not include money, amend the constitution to strip corporations and all non-humans of constitutional protections) but few actually support OWS in any substantive way.
Personally, I believe that OWS is only a small part of what actually should be going on to change this exploitative debtors hellhole back into a Nation of Free People. Part of that is returning to the founders use of public banking to eliminate the problems that arise from private central banks, because you cannot be free when you cede control of your money to a third party. Ask 19th & 20th century Europe about that.
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
You would swear that people have seen boobs before. This pasty white girl had her shirt off in Union Square and people kept filming her, taking pictures, etc. Probably about 150 people there right now.
There's boobs in Union Square? *hops in plane*
Tits and Teeth, Vanguard, tits and teeth.
Why did the pasty white girl take her shirt off? If I had boobs people wanted to see I'd write stuff on them. Those pictures are going everywhere, they might as well carry information, eh?
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
You would swear that people have seen boobs before. This pasty white girl had her shirt off in Union Square and people kept filming her, taking pictures, etc. Probably about 150 people there right now.
There's boobs in Union Square? *hops in plane*
Tits and Teeth, Vanguard, tits and teeth.
Why did the pasty white girl take her shirt off? If I had boobs people wanted to see I'd write stuff on them. Those pictures are going everywhere, they might as well carry information, eh?
Exactly what I was thinking. Free, widespread distribution of your message.
We would never pay off the Federal Debt, that isn't a goal that anyone should be going after. The idea is to have manageable debt that doesn't out grow our ability to pay it off (which is hasn't yet, it is only projected to 15-20 years from now).
We definitely disagree on some parts of that. The idea of those that own the Fed is to keep us in constant and maximally manageable debt, but that should not be the goal of anyone who is not a banker.
We should never pay back our debt while under the Federal Reserve System, I agree since it would make the dollar completely worthless, but being debt free can and should be a goal of a US that is not governed by private banking concerns, because interest on our National debt is a huge and unnecessary expense that sends our tax dollars to persons unknown. Plus, then we wouldn't have to deal with the Fed propping up other countries and businesses with our money without our consent (see Europe).
The debt is only a problem when the interest payments become greater than the good you get from spending the money now rather than later. Right now that's probably the case, but it isn't always going to be that way.
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VanguardBut now the dream is over. And the insect is awake.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
edited March 2012
Except they're not particularly fun to look at. She was sitting in what looked like a meditation circle. Maybe she thinks her third eye will open a little wider if she flashes her tits to the world.
Vanguard on
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Except they're not particularly fun to look at. She was sitting in what looked like a meditation circle. Maybe she thinks her third eye will open a little wider if she flashes her tits to the world.
Lets not forget that the NYTimes declared some other topless girl the spokesperson/greeter of Zuccotti Park when the whole thing started. Maybe she's trying to recreate that?
The debt is only a problem when the interest payments become greater than the good you get from spending the money now rather than later. Right now that's probably the case, but it isn't always going to be that way.
No. The real problem is that an unknown group of people own the right to make our money (from nothing) and to profit by charging us interest on that money for the privilege. You can't audit them (see Reagan's attempts) and you don't get to know who the U.S. actually owes that $14 trillion to. They can expand or contract the supply of money at will and have used that power to trigger recessions and depressions (see Bernanke's comments on the Fed reducing the money supply by a full 1/3 to trigger the Great Depression). How does a democracy have any power to control it's destiny when it can't even control it's currency?
Seems like a bit too much power concentrated in the hands of an unknown few based on a worthless fiat currency.
Edit: Plus since all U. S. banks are fractional reserve banks, they don't actually have most of the money you borrow, because they can and do loan up to 10 times the value of their assets.
So I ask: why are you and other loan recipients paying interest, when as a whole the bank's loan recipients are promising to give the bank 9 times more than the bank actually had in the first place?
Seems like a 9-fold return on investment is a fucking amazing ROI, so why do we also pay interest, again?
Of course the challenge now would be to replace that system with a public monetary authority that moved from a fiat currency to a specie backed one. Gold and silver are the popular backers, but literally any real object of value could back a non-fiat currency, like sand (all the sand on earth is worth far more than all the diamonds on earth according to a Geology professor I know).
hanskey on
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Of course the challenge now would be to replace that system with a public monetary authority that moved from a fiat currency to a specie backed one. Gold and silver are the popular backers, but literally any real object of value could back a non-fiat currency, like sand (the sand on earth is worth more than all the diamonds on earth according to a Geology professor I know).
I disagree that we need to go to any sort of hard money standard. Our money is backed by the strength and reputation of the United States of America, and if we reach a point where that isn't enough to make our currency credible, then I think we are probably in a world where notions of intrinsic value for things like gold or diamonds (or sand apparantly) are out the window, because that would almost certainly be some sort of post apocolyptic scenario.
Of course the challenge now would be to replace that system with a public monetary authority that moved from a fiat currency to a specie backed one. Gold and silver are the popular backers, but literally any real object of value could back a non-fiat currency, like sand (the sand on earth is worth more than all the diamonds on earth according to a Geology professor I know).
I disagree that we need to go to any sort of hard money standard. Our money is backed by the strength and reputation of the United States of America, and if we reach a point where that isn't enough to make our currency credible, then I think we are probably in a world where notions of intrinsic value for things like gold or diamonds (or sand apparantly) are out the window, because that would almost certainly be some sort of post apocolyptic scenario.
I agree that it would be foolhardy to go to gold or silver as a standard, since Reagan's investigation of Fort Knox discovered that the largest repository of gold on earth (ours) is all held by the Federal Reserve as collateral against the national debt. That's why I suggest another intrinsically valuable commodity to back our money, and I think sand would be highly acceptable considering it's abundance. However, moving to specie backed currency would also require the return of monetary authority to Congress, which could create the money interest free.
Hell, things would be much improved simply by continuing with the current fiat currency but created interest-free by Congress directly with Treasure Bonds, and retiring the National Debt instead of continuing to give non-elected persons extra-Constitutional control over our nation and the additional gift of massive amounts of interest on money that didn't even exist until they "created it" using fractional reserve lending on Treasury Bonds.
However, since our money is only backed by the "Full Faith and Credit" of the U. S., we'd better hope the world keeps believing in it, or "post-apocalyptic" is exactly the position we'll be in. Thankfully we are the only superpower, so that is a bit of a hedge against that possibility, but frankly, the system is disturbingly fragile by virtue of being a fiat currency coupled with fractional reserve lending, does not achieve the goal of monetary stability (the dollar has lost 95% of it's value since the Federal Reserve came into being), and the private Central Bank has usurped our sovereignty (another way to say freedom), and completely corrupted our government through it's agents: other banks and corporations.
How would establishing a hierarchical leadership help destroy a system of hierarchical leadership?
You're still missing the point. If the fed were gone, if money had real value, if the government had no debt, we're still locked to an unsustainable economic system that hinges on infinite growth to maintain itself.
You want to back money with sand? That makes even less sense. Do you propose to disallow foreign nations from trading a few million tons of sand for cash? What about people going to the beach and picking it up? Silicon, glass and such just got a whole lot more expensive too
You want to back money with sand? That makes even less sense. Do you propose to disallow foreign nations from trading a few million tons of sand for cash? What about people going to the beach and picking it up?
The same can be said of gold and silver.
They have more value per unit than sand because they are far more scarce. However, the item of intrinsic value really doesn't matter when backing money, it just has to be agreed upon by all parties.
After all, even gold and silver are not intrinsically valuable in the way food is, it's just our historical evaluation of gold and silver that color our assessment of metals most people would find useless and therefore worthless in daily life. They are somewhat more intrinsically valuable than they used to be with the rise of their use in electronics, because prior to that there was no utilitarian use of gold and silver except as a vehicle for wealth or as an art object since they are too malleable to be made into effective tools.
This all misses the point, since I'm basically fine with a fiat currency as long as monetary authority is returned to the people and stripped from the Unknown Profiteers. The privately owned Central Bank is not just a drain on our system but a force that can humble our government whenever they want with a few keystrokes and that fundamentally undermines democracy.
How would establishing a hierarchical leadership help destroy a system of hierarchical leadership?
You're still missing the point. If the fed were gone, if money had real value, if the government had no debt, we're still locked to an unsustainable economic system that hinges on infinite growth to maintain itself.
Perhaps we have missed each others points?
I've been writing about the pre-conditions OWS must recognize and address to fix the problems you illustrate.
The point of democracy is to end hierarchy by making individual citizens sovereign and a big part of restoring democracy to the U. S. is to end the Federal Reserve System.
Frankly, you can't make the system sustainable as it exists now because that would cut into profits and our system is controlled by those people who are more concerned about profit than anything else. We can take back that power and then create something sustainable, but that won't be possible until people realize what the preconditions to achieving those goals actually are and find ways to achieve those preconditions.
Posts
On the other hand, I only made that suggestion because I genuinely believed it would aid you in your stated goal of helping OWS, but you are certainly welcome to ignore that suggestion.
http://gothamist.com/2012/03/23/video_occupy_wall_street_protesters_1.php
It's neither clever, nor helpful. Also, the "live updates" on the occupywallstreet site seem to start in the evening. It's almost as if the dude posting them is more interested in picking a fight with the cops than spending the day spreading the word.
The "occupation" side of OWS has become a sad fucking parody of itself. Wealth disparity is a serious issue and these chucklefucks are just straight trolling.
Congratulations! you kicked down a barricade and got a picture of yourself on top of the Wall Street Bull. That'll show the man! It's totes like the arab spring.
Edit: It would seem that you are reading something into what I have said that I did not intend, because your tone seems increasingly angry, but I can't for the life of me figure out why.
My main thought though is that participation costs nothing and those of us who are dissatisfied have lots of room to make up for the deficiencies we see in OWS through reforming or fixing things from within or stating our own similar groups with different tactics and organizational structure.
Edit: As I said yesterday, none of the participants in the movement for economic justice are likely to have any real success in impacting policy until messaging is more clear, and charismatic leaders are found.
Fair enough, I could be reading wrong.
For clarity: I don't see a problem with talking about things here, it doesn't mean one cannot/will not act in the real world. If it did that would indeed be a sad state of affairs.
IMO, Economic Justice is simply too important to be left in the hands of only one leaderless group and it's something we should all think about much the time if we want to create real change for the better.
Edit: In fact, would individual PA denizens prefer to help OWS from within or start up a better organized group to join the movement as an ally of OWS? There seems to be positive and negatives for both, so where do people come down on that?
Patriarchal capitalist systems aren't exactly a mayoral town hall meeting you can just walk up to and demand change from.
This lack of leaders also raises an interesting questions regarding how we judge OWS. Since the group is so broad, and there is no central leadership to determine what are "official" opinions or actions (other than the unwieldy general assembly) it seems to be impossible to point to a facebook group, protest, blog, etc. and say "this is what OWS thinks." You said earlier on this page that you like the KC facebook OWS crowd but not the people on the ground, but who is to say that the people you dislike aren't KC OWS just as much as the thoughtful FB people? It seems to me that the whole thing is fair game, which is why they NEED to get organized and have leaders that set policy and keep people on message. The movement needs to grow up and play the political game if it wants to have a shot at changing things through it, and part of that is solid messaging. Maybe what OWS really needs to do is use some of that ice cream money to hire a PR firm.
On a related note did you all catch the ominous NPR report stating that there is a trial program by BOA (I believe) to forclose on people and turn them into renters? Seems like this whole housing bubble explosion may be a great way to do what was done in Europe long ago with regards to land ownership. That seems like something worth protesting to me.
That is hardcore. I suppose the next step is the return of debtor's prison (all privately owned and operated, of course).
Atrios was pointing out the other day that Florida being so hugely suburban really hurts OWS' potential in the state. There aren't really that many large public spaces to occupy.
Please see my posts earlier on this page and the last where I was arguing for an end to the constant physical precense in favor of channelling resources and effort into discrete, issue driven events. It seems to me that maintaing the physical protests is really both a waste of resources, and a time bomb that will explode into another rape scandal or something worse at some point.
Naturally, I feel that the issue of corporate personhood is critical, as is a constitutional amendment stripping corporations of any constitutional protections and so is the end of money as speech, but I think that OWS is missing a major piece by overlooking the private secret sharholders that own all our money. The Fed and all private central banks are truly evil institutions that have never succeeded in their mandate to "stabilize the value of X currency", and have only succeeded in bringing entire people's under the absolute (albeit indirect) control of unknown persons and making those people a fuck-ton of money.
And this is where we substantively disagree (in part). I agree that we need massive campaign finance reform, and that we should not allow entities (of any type, including corporations and unions) to make campaign contributions at all, but corporate personhood is a complex concept with many completely benign applications (like treatment as a person under the tax code), so I would not want to see a wholesale abandonment of the concept. Better to deal with the problems directly, instead of torching the whole concept, and all of the law that relies on it.
I didn't say "fix" american capitalism. I said "fundamentally change." American capitalism is predicated on an abusive system that drains wealth from the rest of the globe and from all other living people on this planet and reroutes it into the hands of the American people. Replacing the fed and solving the crazy debt crisis we're in won't stop the inevitable crunch as we run out of finite resources to fuel our unsustainable economic system.
Occupy the Moon?
What OWS needs is to do the opposite. Rather than being nameless and faceless they need a platform to distinquish themselves from their enemies (so what if it gets attacked? That's already being done with their flimsy agenda now), otherwise they've got no direction. Sure, it's good temporarily but it won't change anything if they stand for nothing worth defending.
They not only need to diversify into sub-groups that do specific tasks they need multiple charismatic leaders. That way no matter if one leader gets torn down, there will be ten others replacing them.
Another improvement is to find people to teach them how the system works. This is what political organizations do with their leaders. Only they should broaden it to many fields, to assist the movement on many fronts. From public speaking to computer hacking to accounting. Of course, for this they need money. Perhaps creating a financial wing for members to donate to. To keep everything from being taken down in one place they'd need to do everything in triplicate or more to everything is redundant.
They also need to learn how to pinpoint vulnerabilities in their political enemies to better exploit them to their advantage.
Another function they need is to find moles from police or any other group who tries to undermine them.
"Paying off the debt would make the dollar worthless?" you ask. The answer is yes, because if we completely paid off the national debt then the Fed would no longer have the ability to back the dollar, since the Fed's Reserves are composed entirely of treasury debt. As a fractional reserve system it must have reserves (government IOUs, Treasure Bonds) of %1 of what it lends out to banks and financial institutions (which then lend out to businesses and people) and 1% of 0 dollars is 0. So good-bye dollar, unless Congress takes it's Constitutional power to make money back from the Unknown Profiteers.
The reality is that the Federal Reserve and it's cronies (banks, major corporations) are the only ones actually benefiting from our highly exploitative colonialist capitalism, you and I and the vast majority of Americans get a very pretty, but ultimately worthless pittance. However, likely the Fed system can be perpetuated for a very long time, since the whole point is to suck as much money out of us as possible. Basically, what the IMF does to third-world nations, the Fed does to us and did before the IMF and as such it supplants democracy and our personal sovereignty, with Fascism and elite supremacy.
You can't fix us without fixing that, because they hold all the levers of power they need to weather any lesser storm.
Also, having no leaders and no obvious, specific goals has made it easier, in my mind, for the corporate media to mis-characterize, ridicule and marginalize (destroy) OWS.
Look, Thejakeman. Most of the people I know (conservatives and liberals) support stripping the power of corporations in the way I described (change corporate personhood definitions, redefine speech to not include money, amend the constitution to strip corporations and all non-humans of constitutional protections) but few actually support OWS in any substantive way.
Personally, I believe that OWS is only a small part of what actually should be going on to change this exploitative debtors hellhole back into a Nation of Free People. Part of that is returning to the founders use of public banking to eliminate the problems that arise from private central banks, because you cannot be free when you cede control of your money to a third party. Ask 19th & 20th century Europe about that.
There's boobs in Union Square? *hops in plane*
Tits and Teeth, Vanguard, tits and teeth.
Why did the pasty white girl take her shirt off? If I had boobs people wanted to see I'd write stuff on them. Those pictures are going everywhere, they might as well carry information, eh?
Exactly what I was thinking. Free, widespread distribution of your message.
We should never pay back our debt while under the Federal Reserve System, I agree since it would make the dollar completely worthless, but being debt free can and should be a goal of a US that is not governed by private banking concerns, because interest on our National debt is a huge and unnecessary expense that sends our tax dollars to persons unknown. Plus, then we wouldn't have to deal with the Fed propping up other countries and businesses with our money without our consent (see Europe).
Lets not forget that the NYTimes declared some other topless girl the spokesperson/greeter of Zuccotti Park when the whole thing started. Maybe she's trying to recreate that?
Seems like a bit too much power concentrated in the hands of an unknown few based on a worthless fiat currency.
Edit: Plus since all U. S. banks are fractional reserve banks, they don't actually have most of the money you borrow, because they can and do loan up to 10 times the value of their assets.
So I ask: why are you and other loan recipients paying interest, when as a whole the bank's loan recipients are promising to give the bank 9 times more than the bank actually had in the first place?
Seems like a 9-fold return on investment is a fucking amazing ROI, so why do we also pay interest, again?
I disagree that we need to go to any sort of hard money standard. Our money is backed by the strength and reputation of the United States of America, and if we reach a point where that isn't enough to make our currency credible, then I think we are probably in a world where notions of intrinsic value for things like gold or diamonds (or sand apparantly) are out the window, because that would almost certainly be some sort of post apocolyptic scenario.
Hell, things would be much improved simply by continuing with the current fiat currency but created interest-free by Congress directly with Treasure Bonds, and retiring the National Debt instead of continuing to give non-elected persons extra-Constitutional control over our nation and the additional gift of massive amounts of interest on money that didn't even exist until they "created it" using fractional reserve lending on Treasury Bonds.
However, since our money is only backed by the "Full Faith and Credit" of the U. S., we'd better hope the world keeps believing in it, or "post-apocalyptic" is exactly the position we'll be in. Thankfully we are the only superpower, so that is a bit of a hedge against that possibility, but frankly, the system is disturbingly fragile by virtue of being a fiat currency coupled with fractional reserve lending, does not achieve the goal of monetary stability (the dollar has lost 95% of it's value since the Federal Reserve came into being), and the private Central Bank has usurped our sovereignty (another way to say freedom), and completely corrupted our government through it's agents: other banks and corporations.
You're still missing the point. If the fed were gone, if money had real value, if the government had no debt, we're still locked to an unsustainable economic system that hinges on infinite growth to maintain itself.
They have more value per unit than sand because they are far more scarce. However, the item of intrinsic value really doesn't matter when backing money, it just has to be agreed upon by all parties.
After all, even gold and silver are not intrinsically valuable in the way food is, it's just our historical evaluation of gold and silver that color our assessment of metals most people would find useless and therefore worthless in daily life. They are somewhat more intrinsically valuable than they used to be with the rise of their use in electronics, because prior to that there was no utilitarian use of gold and silver except as a vehicle for wealth or as an art object since they are too malleable to be made into effective tools.
This all misses the point, since I'm basically fine with a fiat currency as long as monetary authority is returned to the people and stripped from the Unknown Profiteers. The privately owned Central Bank is not just a drain on our system but a force that can humble our government whenever they want with a few keystrokes and that fundamentally undermines democracy.
I've been writing about the pre-conditions OWS must recognize and address to fix the problems you illustrate.
The point of democracy is to end hierarchy by making individual citizens sovereign and a big part of restoring democracy to the U. S. is to end the Federal Reserve System.
Frankly, you can't make the system sustainable as it exists now because that would cut into profits and our system is controlled by those people who are more concerned about profit than anything else. We can take back that power and then create something sustainable, but that won't be possible until people realize what the preconditions to achieving those goals actually are and find ways to achieve those preconditions.