heh I wonder what would happen if someone in the crowd shot a cop with a rubber bullet. Somehow I don't think it would have the same reaction that people are having to protesters getting shot.
It only works in small settings where each person is knowledgeable on the subjects. Representative helps keep things balanced from people voting out of ignorance. So no majority can misplace a minority.
Where representative breaks down is the rep supposed to be knowledgeable of all sides of an issue and compromise where possible and have the foresight so see what such a law would do down the line. Many however are just appeasing a majority as they see it as their constituents and trying to get reelected.
Politicians do vote out of plain ignorance when it comes to certain matters, like global warming, for example. At least they pretend to, not wanting to discuss it and not acknowledging it as scientific truth, just because there is not 100% certain, taking advantage of the very fundamental characteristic of a scientific truth, which is to be relative and falseable (i'm exposing Karl Popper's definition of scientific truth).
They also do vote out of their own prejudice, especially when it is a socially accepted and acclaimed prejudice. Why vote for someone decide things for you when you could exercise your own sovereignty and vote in what you want, and not in what is popular or in what favours this or that sponsor for their election campaigns?
anyway, i now the textbook justification for representative democracy, but
they were all written for a reality without easy access to information.
there was once a time when there was no currency. ppl would trade what they produce for what they wanted, and that made commerce mostly inviable in the X/XI century. i find really hard to believe we can do without money. if we didn't have money, we would have food stamps, or anything like that. currency is just a resource used in a system made for distribution of assets, or maybe made to perpetuate an oppression of the wealthy against the poor, dunno really.
the only thing i think that should be pursued worldwide are ways to exerce direct democracy. to me this representative system has no logic anymore. i'm just a law student from brazil, and from where i stand i sincerely believe that only parasites occupy the high stances of the governments.
It is possible to form a society that doesn't use currency or trade. It just takes an entirely new way of thinking. We have all been brought up to believe that we need money to facilitate production. A common belief, but not a fact. Money is just an incentive to promote a particular form of economic model. It is focused on the requirement that one trades the value of their goods for the value of another person's goods. A tit-for-tat, if you will.
Another way to do it is an "all for one and one for all" model, to use a phrase from the "Three Musketeers". One person works for the good of all and everyone else does the same. In this way, everyone takes care of the needs of everyone else. This requires something more though, it requires that the basic necessities be produced in abundance for everyone so that nobody has to work to achieve the minimum of subsistence. Anyone who is focusing their labor on taking care of their physical needs is not contributing to society in more meaningful ways. Fortunately, technology is at the point where we can start automating the basic infrastructure of our society (energy, food, shelter, etc.) and focus on higher goals such as education, art, and technology. The main ethical rule here is that all resources must be used to benefit all of society equally and not be used exclusively to benefit a minority. The fact is, the resources of this planet is nobody's property, but it's the common wealth of all life here.
anyway, i now the textbook justification for representative democracy, but
they were all written for a reality without easy access to information.
Misinformation as well. Look how many sites attempt to disprove climate change? At least getting crony capitalism out of the voter box would be a start as a representative wouldn't have to back such ignorance because its bad for his election campaign contributors business.
Misinformation as well. Look how many sites attempt to disprove climate change? At least getting crony capitalism out of the voter box would be a start as a representative wouldn't have to back such ignorance because its bad for his election campaign contributors business.
any reasonable person knows how to sift the wheat from the chaff, but i know i'm being optimistic.
direct democracy to me is more of an ideal than a practical possibility.
anyway, what do you believe would be a way to unstimulate crony capitalism? public funding of campaigns?
direct democracy to me is more of an ideal than a practical possibility.
anyway, what do you believe would be a way to unstimulate crony capitalism? public funding of campaigns?
Basic public funding. Private contributions are allowed from individuals capped at $1000 a year per person tied into the current value of the currency, so that amount will rise or fall with economy.
Secondly, term limits. My personal idea is that a "two in a row at a time" idea. In that a person can run for a office twice in a row. But they have to step out the third time. The next election cycle after that they can attempt to run again. This way it shakes things up and representatives that do work well aren't locked out of the system period after two terms.
"That is what I see as the reality of capitalism or at least the reality of our economy."
Fair enough. What I see is a bunch of oligarchs using whatever leverage they have. Certainly assholes have oppressed the weak under every economic system and in every era. Basically I think what's happening can be summed up with this question:
Technology reduces the need for labor. Where do you think that trend ends up?
"What you define as capitalism seems to be very broad as to encompass almost any type of trade that involves trading goods for currency."
Here are my definitions: basically if the vast majority of property is owned publicly, then it is socialism. If you can own things and are somewhat free to trade it is capitalism. I think those definitions are clear and useful.
Anybody trying to use those words as a smart-sounding synonym for "bad" is a fucking idiot. (e.g. "public healthcare is socialism!")
"You're clearly a student of economics as pioneered by Adam Smith, a rational economics supporter"
More or less. I mostly follow the "Austrian school" which takes a kind of euclidean approach. People don't always behave rationally, but they do often enough to make strong predictions. It is not so different from physics in that way -- you can predict the path of a ball through the air, but that doesn't mean there won't be a gust of wind in real life. That said, economics is not very precise in some areas, and so you need to know what is and is not predictable. A lot of the economy is a chaotic system and is better modeled using other approaches.
It was unfair how I characterized your attitude towards intellectual property. Sorry about that.
Here are my definitions: basically if the vast majority of property is owned publicly, then it is socialism. If you can own things and are somewhat free to trade it is capitalism. I think those definitions are clear and useful.
More or less. I mostly follow the "Austrian school" which takes a kind of euclidean approach.
The very basic most simple definition of socialism is "the workers owning the means of production". Communism (or state socialism, but that's a subset of the larger system) is where the state owns the companies/equipment/land. So that's just wrong from your definition. You can very easily have market forces and personal ownership in socialism, basically every variation other than state socialism contains ownership, it's just spread across all the workers and not just 1/2/3 dudes.
Also Austrian economics is a farce of a travesty, and I'm lolling that you subscribe to it, but at the same time not surprised if you received an economic degree in the US. The US has *literally* followed Austrian economics for the past 50+ years and is exactly why we are in this mess. How many direct failures does this model need to create before people see it for the ridiculousness it is?
Tell me this. If you can sell things in libertarian free-markets, socialism, and capitalism, why is the overbroad "you sell stuff" as a definition of capitalism worthwhile at all? (it isn't). There has to be a functional difference between capitalism and socialism for their to be a distinction, and the *main* one is how the profit (value in excess of raw material goods and equipment costs) is split between workers and owners.
Your examples are horrible, just flat out atrocious for someone with an economics degree.
1 anyone who loses money is not a capitalist - wrong, this is a failed capitalist. Their capitalist business model didn't work.
2 any person who runs his own business without employees is not a capitalist - Ding ding ding! this is not capitalist and no one ever said it was. An individual (or a spouse couple sharing 50/50) is the very definition of a socialist organization. The workers own the means of production.
3 any person who is poor and hires a rich person is not a capitalist. First, what rich person is running a business by their lonesome. If I hire bill gates, his wealth came from exploiting the employees of microsoft. If I hire a lawyer, he has unpaid interns. (though the equal partner law-firms are actually nearly socialist other than their poorly paid underlings) There aren't any "rich" people who did every single aspect of their job 100% by themselves.
4 and a rich person hiring a rich person is not a capitalist - what? Yes they are. If Warren Buffet hires an extremely wealthy interior designer who uses less well paid underlings to do the furniture moving = capitalism.
Your understanding of what is and isn't socialism is really rudimentary. You are mistaking individual financial transactions with how profit within a company is shared (assuming more than one employee).
Also Austrian economics is a farce of a travesty, and I'm lolling that you subscribe to it, but at the same time not surprised if you received an economic degree in the US.
Holy shit that is so sad... Comments like "Nice chart. Means nothing to me. Sorry if I don't trust measuring devices made 200 years ago......or even 50 years ago....." are so damn depressing. Yeah sure, scientists use thermometers from 200 years ago to determine such charts... I'm currently enlisted in a course called "Marine Biology", which is all about sedimentation rates on the ocean floor, and using proxies to determine the age of stuff etc. so i'm pretty well read in this area. Problem is that if you hang out with intellectual people all the time, you forget how fucking stupid some of the guys crawling around the earth are.
If this paper could cause somebody on Fox News to tell the world global warming wasn't a scam after all, and that actually there was no uncertainty among scientists as to what the cause of global warming was, i would be a happy man. One can dream, right?
The largest banks are larger than they were when Obama took office and are nearing the level of profits they were making before the depths of the financial crisis in 2008, according to government data.
Wall Street firms independent companies and the securities-trading arms of banks are doing even better. They earned more in the first 2-1/2 years of the Obama administration than they did during the eight years of the George W. Bush administration, industry data show.
The very basic most simple definition of socialism is "the workers owning the means of production"... There has to be a functional difference between capitalism and socialism for their to be a distinction
So this includes a lot. It includes people, for example, since labor is a means of production. It includes all resources. If everyone is "owned" by the collective, then there are no labor markets. If all resources are owned by the collective then there are no commodity markets. It is not exactly a trivial difference.
Also Austrian economics is a farce of a travesty, and I'm lolling that you subscribe to it, but at the same time not surprised if you received an economic degree in the US. The US has *literally* followed Austrian economics for the past 50+ years
Alan Greenspan started out with some free market leanings -- all told he had a pretty good run. Some of the free market policies did lead to this situation, like globalization, but honestly I have no problem with that. I am not some kind of rabid American protectionist.
Other than that, American economic policy has been mostly Keynesian.
Anyway, I started with that background. In college everything I learned was Keynesian. I learned the Austrian stuff on my own. I went to their conferences, and these guys were just university teachers mostly. Not exactly fat cats.
Your examples are horrible, just flat out atrocious for someone with an economics degree.
You must have skimmed the post. I used those examples because they were stupid. They were examples of how stupid a definition that was for capitalism.
[edit] Oops, I made a mistake above. "means of production" is a special Marxist phrase that excludes labor. I thought it was the same as "factors of production"
On the topic of doing something productive to help OWS:
Besides those images I posted earlier (which made it to 2nd place on the OWS subreddit), I was working on some other propaganda type stuff. Ultimately I didn't think it was very good, or completely honest, so I shelved it, but just as an example of something I did:
Still trying to come up with some more good ideas.
With all due respect to Cenk, this has never been a democracy. Our government has been in the pocket of the 1% since its founding. The first congress was flat broke when they started and the bankers bought them to get a central bank chartered in spite of Jefferson's stern warnings and predictions, which turned out to be correct. They've been trying to take control of this nation from the very beginning and they succeeded.
With all due respect to Cenk, this has never been a democracy. Our government has been in the pocket of the 1% since its founding. The first congress was flat broke when they started and the bankers bought them to get a central bank chartered in spite of Jefferson's stern warnings and predictions, which turned out to be correct. They've been trying to take control of this nation from the very beginning and they succeeded.
Just another reason we need to wrest control from the 1% for our own good: pollution with no accountability.
Now you're talking sensibly. It's kind of weird that almost everyone in this thread agrees but goes off on wild hair brained tangents for pages at a time.
With all due respect to Cenk, this has never been a democracy. Our government has been in the pocket of the 1% since its founding. The first congress was flat broke when they started and the bankers bought them to get a central bank chartered in spite of Jefferson's stern warnings and predictions, which turned out to be correct. They've been trying to take control of this nation from the very beginning and they succeeded.
this is crazy talk! are you guys wearing tin foils ? i took off mine a while ago it feels much better. where is tomdunne....
They've assassinated four US presidents to get this power. The evidence is right there in the history books, you just have to look it up.
Lincoln: Tried to issue the greenback as the official US currency to wrest control from the banks. Assassinated by John Wilkes Booth.
McKinley: Passed the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Assassinated. Replaced by Theodore Roosevelt who repealed the actions against the Trusts (The banks).
Garfield: Publicly spoke out against the central banks. Assassinated only four months into office.
Kennedy: Signed an executive order to revoke the Fed's power to create money and transfer that power to the US Treasury. He was assassinated and Johnson threw out the EO after Kennedy's death.
Four presidents slain and all of them involved in attempts to take away the monetary power of the banks? That's no tinfoil conspiracy, it's a pattern that is easy to see when you view all of the facts together.
my point is, this thread is becoming a massive waste of time. discussions/sepcualtions about what economic systems we should follow or we should make is very impractical and at this point in time it is almost impossible to discard capitalism completely without unleashing all out chaos.
also you are wasting too much time typing walls of text only to convince others.
just incase you havent seen this old thread, here are some of my favorite posts from there.
So do yourself a favor, go back to working on your portfolio and forget this thread.
you are wasting your time! i know i wasted a lot of time in that old thread trying to share information that i know to be true only to be called a crazy conspiracy theorist and even asked to move to Iceland(ref to Ben Mathis) and what not! lol.
other wise, keep the thread to only exclusive Occupy events news/discussion.
They've assassinated four US presidents to get this power. The evidence is right there in the history books, you just have to look it up.
Lincoln: Tried to issue the greenback as the official US currency to wrest control from the banks. Assassinated by John Wilkes Booth.
McKinley: Passed the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Assassinated. Replaced by Theodore Roosevelt who repealed the actions against the Trusts (The banks).
Garfield: Publicly spoke out against the central banks. Assassinated only four months into office.
Kennedy: Signed an executive order to revoke the Fed's power to create money and transfer that power to the US Treasury. He was assassinated and Johnson threw out the EO after Kennedy's death.
Four presidents slain and all of them involved in attempts to take away the monetary power of the banks? That's no tinfoil conspiracy, it's a pattern that is easy to see when you view all of the facts together.
Lol what, how do you go from perfectly reasonable stuff like "save the environment, end corruption"(paraphrasing) to "They've assassinated four US presidents to get this power. The evidence is right there in the history books, you just have to look it up."
No conspiracy theorist thinks that they are a conspiracy theorist. Nobody walks around going "Hey buddy, wanna hear my latest conspiracy theories?!?!".
Seriously guy, do you not know what sort of connotations these statements arouse? Spouting off this nonsense just makes you look like a raving nutter.
Lol what, how do you go from perfectly reasonable stuff like "save the environment, end corruption"(paraphrasing) to "They've assassinated four US presidents to get this power. The evidence is right there in the history books, you just have to look it up."
No conspiracy theorist thinks that they are a conspiracy theorist. Nobody walks around going "Hey buddy, wanna hear my latest conspiracy theories?!?!".
Seriously guy, do you not know what sort of connotations these statements arouse? Spouting off this nonsense just makes you look like a raving nutter.
It's simple logic, four US presidents attempted to remove monetary power from the banks and four US presidents were assassinated. They all tried to do the same thing and they all ended up dead. There isn't an assassinated president that hasn't tried to oppose the banks, so I fail to see the "craziness" of my comment.
Lol what, how do you go from perfectly reasonable stuff like "save the environment, end corruption"(paraphrasing) to "They've assassinated four US presidents to get this power. The evidence is right there in the history books, you just have to look it up."
No conspiracy theorist thinks that they are a conspiracy theorist. Nobody walks around going "Hey buddy, wanna hear my latest conspiracy theories?!?!".
Seriously guy, do you not know what sort of connotations these statements arouse? Spouting off this nonsense just makes you look like a raving nutter.
Wow. I guess people shouldn't form their own conclusions and post them in a forum surrounding the topic of "banks", because they might piss people like you off. Shhhhh quiet guys, make sure you don't post anything that might make him call someone a retard for the 10th time...
I'm sure all the people in control of the banks would NEVER hurt anyone in order to keep things the same They've always had the common people at heart when making most decisions right?
I totally agree with MM that its a waste of time..none of the theoretical models or systems being thrown about will ever be realised.. so flawed on so many levels with a nice thick coating of naivety.. go do something else thats more constructive..
and if you feel so damn strongly about the OWS movement go join them stop preaching to people that dont care..
and four dead presidents all linked.. sure.. I got dan browns phone number and I told him you'll give him a call .. he cant wait to write another book ..
I totally agree with MM that its a waste of time..none of the theoretical models or systems being thrown about will ever be realised.. so flawed on so many levels with a nice thick coating of naivety.. go do something else thats more constructive..
and if you feel so damn strongly about the OWS movement go join them stop preaching to people that dont care..
and four dead presidents all linked.. sure.. I got dan browns phone number and I told him you'll give him a call .. he cant wait to write another book ..
lol quiet guys, lets not talk about occupy wallstreet or the banks in the thread labelled "occupy wallstreet" or else we might be basically told to shutup by this clown shoe.
It's simple logic, four US presidents attempted to remove monetary power from the banks and four US presidents were assassinated. They all tried to do the same thing and they all ended up dead. There isn't an assassinated president that hasn't tried to oppose the banks, so I fail to see the "craziness" of my comment.
Every conspiracy theorist is using "logic". Unfortunately their conclusions are generally borne of misinformation and incomplete conclusions.
Kennedy: Signed an executive order to revoke the Fed's power to create money and transfer that power to the US Treasury. He was assassinated and Johnson threw out the EO after Kennedy's death.
Here's a solid example.
His executive order amended an already existing EO that allowed the treasury to issue silver certificates without presidential approval. It had absolutely nothing to do with the Federal Reserve and did not revoke any power. It was in fact part of an initiative to phase out silver certificates from circulation to be replaced by federal reserve notes. (thus if anything, strengthening the fed.. Those silly assassins can't figure out who's on their side!)
Johnson did not reverse his executive order, Ronald Reagan did in 1987 after it was long obsolete.
Between the assassinations of Lincoln and Kennedy there are dozens of conspiracy theories, the uncanny belief that you REALLY know what happened is what puts you in league with the rest.
and if you feel so damn strongly about the OWS movement go join them stop preaching to people that dont care..
Well... given this is a thread about OWS... I'd say it'd make more sense if the people who want to kept talking, and you shut up and left the thread if you don't care about it
It's simple logic, four US presidents attempted to remove monetary power from the banks and four US presidents were assassinated. They all tried to do the same thing and they all ended up dead. There isn't an assassinated president that hasn't tried to oppose the banks, so I fail to see the "craziness" of my comment.
It may seem simple, but that's actually faulty logic. Even if you are fully correct in all facts presented, you are ignoring that correlation does not equal causation. For instance - all four assassinated presidents were white men with brown hair. This does not mean that all four were assassinated because they were white men with brown hair.
If you wanted to claim that the presidents were all assassinated because of them stepping on the toes of financial institutions, you'd need some sort of real evidence. Until then, it just remains a theory (which isn't to say it shouldn't be followed up upon, just that it shouldn't be considered as true).
Haha! Ah cheer up MM, brush that chip off your shoulder.
Sometimes I've encountered people here who are disproportionally critical of western shortfalls meanwhile exploiting all the opportunities and comforts offered. After a while it just blurs into endless brooding babble, that is hard to take seriously.
I am a Russian transplant myself so I've sometimes a unique outlook on things.
Haha! Ah cheer up MM, brush that chip off your shoulder.
Sometimes I've encountered people here who are disproportionally critical of western shortfalls meanwhile exploiting all the opportunities and comforts offered. After a while it just blurs into endless brooding babble, that is hard to take seriously.
I am a Russian transplant myself so I've sometimes a unique outlook on things.
haha, i was just teasing you man. i criticise the severly corrupted government of Bangladesh as well. i just dont do it here since there is no audiance for that here.
i would be a fool not to enjoy the benifits of this awesome country. but like many other occupy protesters, critisizing it is needed if you want to keep it that good or make it better. just like critiqing art.
Every conspiracy theorist is using "logic". Unfortunately their conclusions are generally borne of misinformation and incomplete conclusions.
Here's a solid example.
His executive order amended an already existing EO that allowed the treasury to issue silver certificates without presidential approval. It had absolutely nothing to do with the Federal Reserve and did not revoke any power. It was in fact part of an initiative to phase out silver certificates from circulation to be replaced by federal reserve notes. (thus if anything, strengthening the fed.. Those silly assassins can't figure out who's on their side!)
Johnson did not reverse his executive order, Ronald Reagan did in 1987 after it was long obsolete.
Between the assassinations of Lincoln and Kennedy there are dozens of conspiracy theories, the uncanny belief that you REALLY know what happened is what puts you in league with the rest.
Okay, that's apparently wrong. Kennedy probably wasn't shot for that reason.
Although, I could see the Fed getting upset about the idea of debt-free currency in circulation as it would be a threat to their debt-backed currency and may have chosen to remove him even though he had no actual intent to revoke their economic power. This is all conjecture nevertheless.
Andrew Jackson did actively fight against the central banks' power publicly and had attempts on his life, which failed. So, to say that the banks didn't try is as foolhardy as claiming that it's a carefully orchestrated and premeditated plan to take out any government office that attempts to block their domination of the world economy. I don't think it's any more a plan than it is for a mob boss to mark someone for a hit. Not really a "plan" per se, but a desperate reaction to opposition.
Lincoln was also publicly open about his plans to break up the banks' power on the economy. He issued "greenbacks" as legal US tender to pay the soldiers and win the war without debt to the banks after the fact.
Okay, that's apparently wrong. Kennedy probably wasn't shot for that reason.
Although, I could see the Fed getting upset about the idea of debt-free currency in circulation as it would be a threat to their debt-backed currency and may have chosen to remove him even though he had no actual intent to revoke their economic power. This is all conjecture nevertheless.
Andrew Jackson did actively fight against the central banks' power publicly and had attempts on his life, which failed. So, to say that the banks didn't try is as foolhardy as claiming that it's a carefully orchestrated and premeditated plan to take out any government office that attempts to block their domination of the world economy. I don't think it's any more a plan than it is for a mob boss to mark someone for a hit. Not really a "plan" per se, but a desperate reaction to opposition.
Lincoln was also publicly open about his plans to break up the banks' power on the economy. He issued "greenbacks" as legal US tender to pay the soldiers and win the war without debt to the banks after the fact.
Greevar, your backpedaling now. You have to admit you made quite a conspiracy statement with four presidents supposedly killed for the same reason. It does not help your position when its disproven that there is no "4" with the correction given to you about JFK, moreover McKinley was killed by if anything, a person with a viewpoint similar to yours.
Now, before jumping on me as well. Ask yourself. Do you want this thread closed? Because if all we are doing is arguing with you versus supporting things we can do with the protestors (like work with the Wolf-pac for a constitutional amendment for barring corporate personhood). This thread is being wasted on ideal forms of government when at this point and time, we have to focus on just getting people to agree to one idea that may in the future allow more revision.
Okay, that's apparently wrong. Kennedy probably wasn't shot for that reason.
Although, I could see the Fed getting upset about the idea of debt-free currency in circulation as it would be a threat to their debt-backed currency and may have chosen to remove him even though he had no actual intent to revoke their economic power.
That's a moot point because the currency already existed long before Kennedy took office and was already on its way out as congress had repealed the Silver Purchase Act (which basically allowed the currency to exist) before Kennedy made his executive order to shift authorization away from the presidency to the Treasury. The repeal which Kennedy signed himself stated that the Fed could begin issuing bills in small denominations to replace the silver certificates, so it's impossible that the federal reserve did not know what his intentions were.
Kennedy also isn't the only example, let's look at your assertion that McKinley was assassinated over his supposed "passing" of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
McKinley: Passed the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Assassinated. Replaced by Theodore Roosevelt who repealed the actions against the Trusts (The banks).
Like the Kennedy argument, every statement in this is wrong.
1) McKinley had basically no involvement with the Sherman Act other than voting for it as a congressman (which EVERYONE did, it passed UNANIMOUSLY in the house) 7 years before he would even become president. In spite of serving out almost his entire first term, and claiming he was beginning a new era of "trust-busting" McKinley didn't enforce the act at all.
2) Roosevelt repealed nothing from the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and trusts (as defined by the act) are not banks but monopolies and organizations designed specifically with the intent of fixing prices and subverting competition. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act was essentially dead in the water and lay there as unenfoced law since its creation. Until Roosevelt became president that is...
3) Roosevelt became the first president to actually use the Sherman Anti-Trust Act after it had spent nearly a decade in disuse by anyone (including McKinley) and he successfully employed it to break up the Northern Securities Railroad (owned by J.P. Morgan... sound familiar?) among many other companies.
If the object was to kill McKinley so that Roosevelt would go easy on trusts, they fucked up big time. These assassins just can't get it right can they...
Lincoln
One thing does not indicate the other. Lincoln led a country split in half to war and forced it back together. He was such controversial, polarizing, and iconic figure that trying to associate his death to bank assassins is seriously grasping at straws.
Andrew Jackson
Here is basically your only example of merit. Unfortunately he was like Lincoln, polarizing and controversial. The only reason I give this any credit is because he himself said "The Bank is trying to kill me, but I will kill it"
So if your argument is that one President in the 1800s may have had an attempted assassination on him because of his aggression towards central banking... I'd say maybe you're right, who knows.
Alright, I was wrong about everyone but Jackson. Issue dropped.
I just wanted to make a point that bankers have been meddling in our government since day one, therefore it has never been a democracy and it turned into a debate about completely irrelevant issues.
I don't even know what I was trying to accomplish with this anymore other than make clear how truly corrupt our system is to the core.
On topic:
The corporations have always been built from the ground up to externalize costs, skirt the law, ecological responsibility, and deny any wrongdoing. They are a textbook definition of a sociopath.
Corporations must be stripped of their "personhood"
They must be restricted to a limited time span depending on need and public benefit.
They must be barred from owning other corporations.
They must hold the public good above all other priorities as this is the reason they are granted a corporate charter in the first place.
The executives must be held personally accountable for any illegal actions the corporation takes, be it fraud, pollution, labor abuse, failing to perform for the public good or political manipulation.
The consequences of these violations should be punishable as well by a revocation of their charter, stripping the company of its limited liability status.
These are all demands that the OWS should make to congress and the president in order to protect the people from the powerful few.
We also need to demand the Fed be dissolved and a constitutional amendment that only the US treasury may create and issue currency. It must also outlaw any form of interest charges on any kind of loan. It's the interest system that put us in this mess and we don't need it. We need a debt-free currency and an interest-free national bank system that is contingent on responsible lending. No more liar loans and sub-prime mortgages.
Finally, all political campaigns must be funded with public money and volunteers will work to promote candidates they support. Nobody will be paid to provide support or pay to support any candidate. Nor will any lobby group be allowed to exist to sway a congress person's vote on a particular law. Only individuals may contact their own representative assigned to their district. No one out side of your district may contact your rep nor can you contact another district's rep. Any attempt will be placed in the circular file.
These three things OWS needs to put at the front of their demands if they hope to make life better for the 99%. Then we can deal with education (the system and tuition), healthcare, energy, pollution, etc. because we won't have the monied interests buzzing in our reps' ears.
A lot of this I've mentioned in past posts and much of this is already in the preliminary demands from the GA, but I think these are important enough to repeat and I hope they come to the same conclusions I have.
Replies
Politicians do vote out of plain ignorance when it comes to certain matters, like global warming, for example. At least they pretend to, not wanting to discuss it and not acknowledging it as scientific truth, just because there is not 100% certain, taking advantage of the very fundamental characteristic of a scientific truth, which is to be relative and falseable (i'm exposing Karl Popper's definition of scientific truth).
They also do vote out of their own prejudice, especially when it is a socially accepted and acclaimed prejudice. Why vote for someone decide things for you when you could exercise your own sovereignty and vote in what you want, and not in what is popular or in what favours this or that sponsor for their election campaigns?
anyway, i now the textbook justification for representative democracy, but
they were all written for a reality without easy access to information.
It is possible to form a society that doesn't use currency or trade. It just takes an entirely new way of thinking. We have all been brought up to believe that we need money to facilitate production. A common belief, but not a fact. Money is just an incentive to promote a particular form of economic model. It is focused on the requirement that one trades the value of their goods for the value of another person's goods. A tit-for-tat, if you will.
Another way to do it is an "all for one and one for all" model, to use a phrase from the "Three Musketeers". One person works for the good of all and everyone else does the same. In this way, everyone takes care of the needs of everyone else. This requires something more though, it requires that the basic necessities be produced in abundance for everyone so that nobody has to work to achieve the minimum of subsistence. Anyone who is focusing their labor on taking care of their physical needs is not contributing to society in more meaningful ways. Fortunately, technology is at the point where we can start automating the basic infrastructure of our society (energy, food, shelter, etc.) and focus on higher goals such as education, art, and technology. The main ethical rule here is that all resources must be used to benefit all of society equally and not be used exclusively to benefit a minority. The fact is, the resources of this planet is nobody's property, but it's the common wealth of all life here.
Misinformation as well. Look how many sites attempt to disprove climate change? At least getting crony capitalism out of the voter box would be a start as a representative wouldn't have to back such ignorance because its bad for his election campaign contributors business.
any reasonable person knows how to sift the wheat from the chaff, but i know i'm being optimistic.
direct democracy to me is more of an ideal than a practical possibility.
anyway, what do you believe would be a way to unstimulate crony capitalism? public funding of campaigns?
Oh trust me, you are.
http://www.rctech.net/forum/chat-lounge/561275-global-warming-backed-new-study-funded-anti-global-warming-groups.html
Basic public funding. Private contributions are allowed from individuals capped at $1000 a year per person tied into the current value of the currency, so that amount will rise or fall with economy.
Secondly, term limits. My personal idea is that a "two in a row at a time" idea. In that a person can run for a office twice in a row. But they have to step out the third time. The next election cycle after that they can attempt to run again. This way it shakes things up and representatives that do work well aren't locked out of the system period after two terms.
"That is what I see as the reality of capitalism or at least the reality of our economy."
Fair enough. What I see is a bunch of oligarchs using whatever leverage they have. Certainly assholes have oppressed the weak under every economic system and in every era. Basically I think what's happening can be summed up with this question:
Technology reduces the need for labor. Where do you think that trend ends up?
"What you define as capitalism seems to be very broad as to encompass almost any type of trade that involves trading goods for currency."
Here are my definitions: basically if the vast majority of property is owned publicly, then it is socialism. If you can own things and are somewhat free to trade it is capitalism. I think those definitions are clear and useful.
Anybody trying to use those words as a smart-sounding synonym for "bad" is a fucking idiot. (e.g. "public healthcare is socialism!")
"You're clearly a student of economics as pioneered by Adam Smith, a rational economics supporter"
More or less. I mostly follow the "Austrian school" which takes a kind of euclidean approach. People don't always behave rationally, but they do often enough to make strong predictions. It is not so different from physics in that way -- you can predict the path of a ball through the air, but that doesn't mean there won't be a gust of wind in real life. That said, economics is not very precise in some areas, and so you need to know what is and is not predictable. A lot of the economy is a chaotic system and is better modeled using other approaches.
It was unfair how I characterized your attitude towards intellectual property. Sorry about that.
The very basic most simple definition of socialism is "the workers owning the means of production". Communism (or state socialism, but that's a subset of the larger system) is where the state owns the companies/equipment/land. So that's just wrong from your definition. You can very easily have market forces and personal ownership in socialism, basically every variation other than state socialism contains ownership, it's just spread across all the workers and not just 1/2/3 dudes.
Also Austrian economics is a farce of a travesty, and I'm lolling that you subscribe to it, but at the same time not surprised if you received an economic degree in the US. The US has *literally* followed Austrian economics for the past 50+ years and is exactly why we are in this mess. How many direct failures does this model need to create before people see it for the ridiculousness it is?
Tell me this. If you can sell things in libertarian free-markets, socialism, and capitalism, why is the overbroad "you sell stuff" as a definition of capitalism worthwhile at all? (it isn't). There has to be a functional difference between capitalism and socialism for their to be a distinction, and the *main* one is how the profit (value in excess of raw material goods and equipment costs) is split between workers and owners.
Your examples are horrible, just flat out atrocious for someone with an economics degree.
1 anyone who loses money is not a capitalist - wrong, this is a failed capitalist. Their capitalist business model didn't work.
2 any person who runs his own business without employees is not a capitalist - Ding ding ding! this is not capitalist and no one ever said it was. An individual (or a spouse couple sharing 50/50) is the very definition of a socialist organization. The workers own the means of production.
3 any person who is poor and hires a rich person is not a capitalist. First, what rich person is running a business by their lonesome. If I hire bill gates, his wealth came from exploiting the employees of microsoft. If I hire a lawyer, he has unpaid interns. (though the equal partner law-firms are actually nearly socialist other than their poorly paid underlings) There aren't any "rich" people who did every single aspect of their job 100% by themselves.
4 and a rich person hiring a rich person is not a capitalist - what? Yes they are. If Warren Buffet hires an extremely wealthy interior designer who uses less well paid underlings to do the furniture moving = capitalism.
Your understanding of what is and isn't socialism is really rudimentary. You are mistaking individual financial transactions with how profit within a company is shared (assuming more than one employee).
This puts you real deep in troll country.
If this paper could cause somebody on Fox News to tell the world global warming wasn't a scam after all, and that actually there was no uncertainty among scientists as to what the cause of global warming was, i would be a happy man. One can dream, right?
Ok, sorry for going off topic but this irked me.
The largest banks are larger than they were when Obama took office and are nearing the level of profits they were making before the depths of the financial crisis in 2008, according to government data.
Wall Street firms independent companies and the securities-trading arms of banks are doing even better. They earned more in the first 2-1/2 years of the Obama administration than they did during the eight years of the George W. Bush administration, industry data show.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/wall-streets-resurgent-prosperity-frustrates-its-claims-and-obamas/2011/10/25/gIQAKPIosM_print.html
So this includes a lot. It includes people, for example, since labor is a means of production. It includes all resources. If everyone is "owned" by the collective, then there are no labor markets. If all resources are owned by the collective then there are no commodity markets. It is not exactly a trivial difference.
I don't know anything about communism. It is some type of government I guess. Not an economic system.
Alan Greenspan started out with some free market leanings -- all told he had a pretty good run. Some of the free market policies did lead to this situation, like globalization, but honestly I have no problem with that. I am not some kind of rabid American protectionist.
Other than that, American economic policy has been mostly Keynesian.
Anyway, I started with that background. In college everything I learned was Keynesian. I learned the Austrian stuff on my own. I went to their conferences, and these guys were just university teachers mostly. Not exactly fat cats.
You must have skimmed the post. I used those examples because they were stupid. They were examples of how stupid a definition that was for capitalism.
[edit] Oops, I made a mistake above. "means of production" is a special Marxist phrase that excludes labor. I thought it was the same as "factors of production"
If this thread gets closed it will spill back out to regular threads.
http://www.thertv.eu/93
http://occupystreams.org/
Its a site to donate to OWS specifically for the protestors to buy food from the local vendors who are losing business with this.
Besides those images I posted earlier (which made it to 2nd place on the OWS subreddit), I was working on some other propaganda type stuff. Ultimately I didn't think it was very good, or completely honest, so I shelved it, but just as an example of something I did:
Still trying to come up with some more good ideas.
Just another reason we need to wrest control from the 1% for our own good: pollution with no accountability.
Now you're talking sensibly. It's kind of weird that almost everyone in this thread agrees but goes off on wild hair brained tangents for pages at a time.
So fascinating. There can't be one fucking person that can tell me our congress and senate isn't bought and make laws only for themselves and the 1%.
this is crazy talk! are you guys wearing tin foils ? i took off mine a while ago it feels much better. where is tomdunne....
you beat me to the punch dude! I have the whole video on my hard drive.
Missing sarcasm tag? Please tell me you're not that uninformed.
If not, you haven't been a good student of history. Read and learn what they've done and how they've done it. Watch these if you don't feel like reading.
They've assassinated four US presidents to get this power. The evidence is right there in the history books, you just have to look it up.
Lincoln: Tried to issue the greenback as the official US currency to wrest control from the banks. Assassinated by John Wilkes Booth.
McKinley: Passed the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Assassinated. Replaced by Theodore Roosevelt who repealed the actions against the Trusts (The banks).
Garfield: Publicly spoke out against the central banks. Assassinated only four months into office.
Kennedy: Signed an executive order to revoke the Fed's power to create money and transfer that power to the US Treasury. He was assassinated and Johnson threw out the EO after Kennedy's death.
Four presidents slain and all of them involved in attempts to take away the monetary power of the banks? That's no tinfoil conspiracy, it's a pattern that is easy to see when you view all of the facts together.
yes.
my point is, this thread is becoming a massive waste of time. discussions/sepcualtions about what economic systems we should follow or we should make is very impractical and at this point in time it is almost impossible to discard capitalism completely without unleashing all out chaos.
also you are wasting too much time typing walls of text only to convince others.
just incase you havent seen this old thread, here are some of my favorite posts from there.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1345190&postcount=184
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1343966&postcount=155
^ RE: as if the government really wants to balance the budget!
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1345193&postcount=185
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1345343&postcount=214
So do yourself a favor, go back to working on your portfolio and forget this thread.
you are wasting your time! i know i wasted a lot of time in that old thread trying to share information that i know to be true only to be called a crazy conspiracy theorist and even asked to move to Iceland(ref to Ben Mathis) and what not! lol.
other wise, keep the thread to only exclusive Occupy events news/discussion.
just my 2 cents.
Lol what, how do you go from perfectly reasonable stuff like "save the environment, end corruption"(paraphrasing) to "They've assassinated four US presidents to get this power. The evidence is right there in the history books, you just have to look it up."
No conspiracy theorist thinks that they are a conspiracy theorist. Nobody walks around going "Hey buddy, wanna hear my latest conspiracy theories?!?!".
Seriously guy, do you not know what sort of connotations these statements arouse? Spouting off this nonsense just makes you look like a raving nutter.
It's simple logic, four US presidents attempted to remove monetary power from the banks and four US presidents were assassinated. They all tried to do the same thing and they all ended up dead. There isn't an assassinated president that hasn't tried to oppose the banks, so I fail to see the "craziness" of my comment.
Wow. I guess people shouldn't form their own conclusions and post them in a forum surrounding the topic of "banks", because they might piss people like you off. Shhhhh quiet guys, make sure you don't post anything that might make him call someone a retard for the 10th time...
I totally agree with MM that its a waste of time..none of the theoretical models or systems being thrown about will ever be realised.. so flawed on so many levels with a nice thick coating of naivety.. go do something else thats more constructive..
and if you feel so damn strongly about the OWS movement go join them stop preaching to people that dont care..
and four dead presidents all linked.. sure.. I got dan browns phone number and I told him you'll give him a call .. he cant wait to write another book ..
lol quiet guys, lets not talk about occupy wallstreet or the banks in the thread labelled "occupy wallstreet" or else we might be basically told to shutup by this clown shoe.
Here's a solid example.
His executive order amended an already existing EO that allowed the treasury to issue silver certificates without presidential approval. It had absolutely nothing to do with the Federal Reserve and did not revoke any power. It was in fact part of an initiative to phase out silver certificates from circulation to be replaced by federal reserve notes. (thus if anything, strengthening the fed.. Those silly assassins can't figure out who's on their side!)
Johnson did not reverse his executive order, Ronald Reagan did in 1987 after it was long obsolete.
Between the assassinations of Lincoln and Kennedy there are dozens of conspiracy theories, the uncanny belief that you REALLY know what happened is what puts you in league with the rest.
Well... given this is a thread about OWS... I'd say it'd make more sense if the people who want to kept talking, and you shut up and left the thread if you don't care about it
It may seem simple, but that's actually faulty logic. Even if you are fully correct in all facts presented, you are ignoring that correlation does not equal causation. For instance - all four assassinated presidents were white men with brown hair. This does not mean that all four were assassinated because they were white men with brown hair.
If you wanted to claim that the presidents were all assassinated because of them stepping on the toes of financial institutions, you'd need some sort of real evidence. Until then, it just remains a theory (which isn't to say it shouldn't be followed up upon, just that it shouldn't be considered as true).
lol is that your way of saying "go back to where you came from!" ?
wouldnt be the first time i heard that.
jk
Sometimes I've encountered people here who are disproportionally critical of western shortfalls meanwhile exploiting all the opportunities and comforts offered. After a while it just blurs into endless brooding babble, that is hard to take seriously.
I am a Russian transplant myself so I've sometimes a unique outlook on things.
haha, i was just teasing you man. i criticise the severly corrupted government of Bangladesh as well. i just dont do it here since there is no audiance for that here.
i would be a fool not to enjoy the benifits of this awesome country. but like many other occupy protesters, critisizing it is needed if you want to keep it that good or make it better. just like critiqing art.
anyways, back to OCCUPY!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0pX9LeE-g8&feature=youtu.be
Skip to 30 seconds in for the punchline
Okay, that's apparently wrong. Kennedy probably wasn't shot for that reason.
Although, I could see the Fed getting upset about the idea of debt-free currency in circulation as it would be a threat to their debt-backed currency and may have chosen to remove him even though he had no actual intent to revoke their economic power. This is all conjecture nevertheless.
Andrew Jackson did actively fight against the central banks' power publicly and had attempts on his life, which failed. So, to say that the banks didn't try is as foolhardy as claiming that it's a carefully orchestrated and premeditated plan to take out any government office that attempts to block their domination of the world economy. I don't think it's any more a plan than it is for a mob boss to mark someone for a hit. Not really a "plan" per se, but a desperate reaction to opposition.
Lincoln was also publicly open about his plans to break up the banks' power on the economy. He issued "greenbacks" as legal US tender to pay the soldiers and win the war without debt to the banks after the fact.
Greevar, your backpedaling now. You have to admit you made quite a conspiracy statement with four presidents supposedly killed for the same reason. It does not help your position when its disproven that there is no "4" with the correction given to you about JFK, moreover McKinley was killed by if anything, a person with a viewpoint similar to yours.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Czolgosz
Now, before jumping on me as well. Ask yourself. Do you want this thread closed? Because if all we are doing is arguing with you versus supporting things we can do with the protestors (like work with the Wolf-pac for a constitutional amendment for barring corporate personhood). This thread is being wasted on ideal forms of government when at this point and time, we have to focus on just getting people to agree to one idea that may in the future allow more revision.
Kennedy also isn't the only example, let's look at your assertion that McKinley was assassinated over his supposed "passing" of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
Like the Kennedy argument, every statement in this is wrong.
1) McKinley had basically no involvement with the Sherman Act other than voting for it as a congressman (which EVERYONE did, it passed UNANIMOUSLY in the house) 7 years before he would even become president. In spite of serving out almost his entire first term, and claiming he was beginning a new era of "trust-busting" McKinley didn't enforce the act at all.
2) Roosevelt repealed nothing from the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and trusts (as defined by the act) are not banks but monopolies and organizations designed specifically with the intent of fixing prices and subverting competition. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act was essentially dead in the water and lay there as unenfoced law since its creation. Until Roosevelt became president that is...
3) Roosevelt became the first president to actually use the Sherman Anti-Trust Act after it had spent nearly a decade in disuse by anyone (including McKinley) and he successfully employed it to break up the Northern Securities Railroad (owned by J.P. Morgan... sound familiar?) among many other companies.
If the object was to kill McKinley so that Roosevelt would go easy on trusts, they fucked up big time. These assassins just can't get it right can they...
One thing does not indicate the other. Lincoln led a country split in half to war and forced it back together. He was such controversial, polarizing, and iconic figure that trying to associate his death to bank assassins is seriously grasping at straws.
Here is basically your only example of merit. Unfortunately he was like Lincoln, polarizing and controversial. The only reason I give this any credit is because he himself said "The Bank is trying to kill me, but I will kill it"
So if your argument is that one President in the 1800s may have had an attempted assassination on him because of his aggression towards central banking... I'd say maybe you're right, who knows.
Unfortunately 1 incident is not a trend.
I just wanted to make a point that bankers have been meddling in our government since day one, therefore it has never been a democracy and it turned into a debate about completely irrelevant issues.
I don't even know what I was trying to accomplish with this anymore other than make clear how truly corrupt our system is to the core.
On topic:
The corporations have always been built from the ground up to externalize costs, skirt the law, ecological responsibility, and deny any wrongdoing. They are a textbook definition of a sociopath.
Corporations must be stripped of their "personhood"
They must be restricted to a limited time span depending on need and public benefit.
They must be barred from owning other corporations.
They must hold the public good above all other priorities as this is the reason they are granted a corporate charter in the first place.
The executives must be held personally accountable for any illegal actions the corporation takes, be it fraud, pollution, labor abuse, failing to perform for the public good or political manipulation.
The consequences of these violations should be punishable as well by a revocation of their charter, stripping the company of its limited liability status.
These are all demands that the OWS should make to congress and the president in order to protect the people from the powerful few.
We also need to demand the Fed be dissolved and a constitutional amendment that only the US treasury may create and issue currency. It must also outlaw any form of interest charges on any kind of loan. It's the interest system that put us in this mess and we don't need it. We need a debt-free currency and an interest-free national bank system that is contingent on responsible lending. No more liar loans and sub-prime mortgages.
Finally, all political campaigns must be funded with public money and volunteers will work to promote candidates they support. Nobody will be paid to provide support or pay to support any candidate. Nor will any lobby group be allowed to exist to sway a congress person's vote on a particular law. Only individuals may contact their own representative assigned to their district. No one out side of your district may contact your rep nor can you contact another district's rep. Any attempt will be placed in the circular file.
These three things OWS needs to put at the front of their demands if they hope to make life better for the 99%. Then we can deal with education (the system and tuition), healthcare, energy, pollution, etc. because we won't have the monied interests buzzing in our reps' ears.
A lot of this I've mentioned in past posts and much of this is already in the preliminary demands from the GA, but I think these are important enough to repeat and I hope they come to the same conclusions I have.
Oh dear