Occupy Wall Street Protests

As accurately as they decide to be, each representative on their own individual basis. Maybe the people should make better decisions on who they give the power to. Or, maybe, just maybe, the entire world doesn't agree with your opinions and that they actually are representing the people just fine.

Edit:


Actually, it's not an Oligarchy yet. It's your opinion that it is an Oligarchy, and even if OWS gains a foothold or some legitimacy, it still probably would not be classified as an Oligarchy.

If that were the case I don't think we'd have very many voters at all.
Sadly more people are naive than I'd like to give them credit for.

But the scary part is not so much being disagreed with on a political and policy level, but rather when sides clash on even the most fundamental, inalienable things that I start worry. And it's already happening sadly.

who classifies it?the government? or who does it? if you say it's republic then it is your opinion as well as my opinion is that it is oligarchy.

I found it amazing how well my city is responding to the Occupy movement here in Fredericton New Brunswick.

Not once have the police been involved. The Mayor deals with a lot of this by himself talking to the 'leader' of the small occupy group we have.

They have been camped out for a good while in front of City Hall, and were asked to move their camp for the Christmas tree that is position normally where there camp is currently, and they responded well, moving behind city hall (I think?) I have not been that way in a good while.



Thought I’d share this little bit of information from the eastern coast of Canada.

It's good to see both sides of the bar maintaining some civility over there Dark. Sadly the more people you got, and the wider the gap between opposing sides in a heavily populated city like New York; it's predictable and downright inevitable that there would be a greater and more violent struggle between the two.

I like how we decided to argue a point that will result in neither of us ever truly being correct lol.

Oh I agree for sure on that. Our police force and RCMP are relaxed here however. I'm sure they could come to violence, but I could never picture it since its so rare in this area.

Our population here in our city is only a small thirty-thousand, that’s including the surrounding area. I'm surprised to even see the movement pick off here. It gets quite cold already overnight. Also on every lamp post and poster board they have posters up about Occupy. (They are using internet memes to advertise.. should of taken a few pictures of those as well, some are actually quite clever.)

Holy ***. I like that guy.

If the local government didn't like protestors demonstrating in a certain area then they should have begun negotiations to move the demonstrations elsewhere. Instead what we got were hostile government leaders annoyed that they had to deal with the very citizens they work for.

When we expect cooperation between public officials and demonstrators, what we get instead is antagonism, media slander and any excuse to return to the status quo. Who exactly is the government working for in that case?


Permits that were intentionally not being given out, regulations designed to obstruct peaceful assembly and a mayor that was annoyed with having to deal with his constituents who further sent police to break up the protests while smokescreening the journalists? Hmm..

We keep talking about costs to the cities but never about solving the concerns the protestors have. Why is that exactly?

A democracy that only effectively represents a small portion of the citizens is not a proper democracy.

The ideal democracy would be that every american voted directly on every piece of legislation in congress, and majority wins. Since that isn't practical, we take the next best step and have a smaller group of people represent the rest of us. Again, an ideal democracy would have the tally of votes from the smaller group equal to the tally of votes from the whole populace.

(One of) the main problems OWS wishes to change is that there is significant disparity between the elected group's decisions and what the entire populace would have voted - at least, that is their belief. It is of course nearly impossible to prove, but that's their stance.

Really disagree with the way that was handle by Bloomberg sending NYPD in the middle of the night with no previous request or warning for them to evacuate. His response was that they violated city standards by placing tents in the park. Not voting for him next elections as a former resident of the city of New York, he lost my vote.

No press or helicopters, so that if they have to beat the ***out of a few people they won't have anyone see it on camera.

They really are going about that the wrong way. I worry for the kid who thinks pulling his cell phone out to take a video is a good idea during the evacuation.

(not criticizing your post, just commenting on it)

Even though we aren't a true democracy, the people within a representative democracy can choose who they want to represent them. And if the people that are representing them are the problem, they can elect someone else to do a better job, or just not elect them to begin with.

I mean, that is how the system is supposed to work after all, and also how the OWS movement should have addressed the issue. I mean, the last election wasn't even a month ago and they've been at it 3+ months now iirc.

Correct me if I'm wrong because I can't remember off hand and am unable to look it up at this time, but couldn't have 1/3 of the senate and 1/2 of congress been replaced? That's 250 of 536(?) total representatives (house/senate/president).

I thought I had more to this post but I got side tracked and forgot what I was talking about lol. Oh well.

You are 100% correct - if it were possible to easily elect new representatives. Although it should be as simple as just voting in a new person, it's not.

Gerrymandering votes is a significant chunk - Barney Frank retiring is a very good example. If you ensure the only people that get a chance to elect you are ones you know already like you, you're gaming the system.

The other is corporate money - most politicians bend to corporate lobbying, since they need the money to stay in office. This means that even "pure" newcomers are highly likely to become affected, if not actually corrupted, by the corporate money.

Since the amounts of money invested into the republican and democratic parties is beyond massive, it just makes things that much worse. Most world democracies have more than 2 parties - some, many more.

That's not to say all elected officials are bad. I was ecstatic to see both of the Oregon senators (my state) vote against the military bill + amendments recently. And then you have guys like Al Franken that are highly unlikely to bend to corporate will because of their background. But they're in the minority usually.

Get the corporate money out of wall street, or at least, pare it back. Fix gerrymandering, use Iowa as a good example (or at least, good enough). Give the american public a chance to directly vote on more issues - I would be more than happy to do a monthly-vote on all things political.

Who decided this was a good idea anyway >.>

And on an unrelated topic - people seriously need to stop shouting and acting like jerks.

The 1% CEO video above was great - for the 1% guy. He has his points and reasons. He's being calm and sane and trying to debate a point, with people yelling in his face. If you have to raise your tone of voice when discussing options, you lose.

I know people get emotional when talking about politics, I do too, but come on guys, we can do better.

Gerry did! I knew a Gerry in HS once, he was a badass guy. 5'3", but a wrestler and would tear anyone apart.

But seriously, this is a picture that really drives it home for me. The shaded area is one whole district ... c'mon ...

there is only one solution to this problematic government. REVOLUTION!!!!!!!!! now we just gotta put on the war paint and cruise into town on horseback with big swords

You can't vote for Bloomberg again as this is his 3rd and final term.

While it may be a joke to speak about revolution on these boards, it is only a matter of time before people start really pushing back if things don't change in this country. So many fronts are in need of a new coat of paint without the unemployment issue looming over the whole country.

We can argue OWS or the Tea Party all day but corporations own our elected officials and it's only a matter of time before we go past the point of no return. We still have a chance to turn things around but if we think that corporations and special interests are going to do anything but cover their bottom line, think again.

So much of what's going on in this country right now is a result of self-inflicted wounds and a leadership vacuum.

Yeah, but what am I, some random engineer as part of the 99% going to really do? I have a wife and animals to support, blah blah blah. I don't like the way things are, but I don't have the luxury to spend 3 months in a park without totally ruining my way of life. I'm sorry if it sounds selfish, but I'm not willing to throw away my life improving society for everyone else.

I'll do my part by voting and writing letters and talking on boards, but there is a limit to what I'm going to do.

That's what really sucks. The largest median has to maintain their lifestyle of slave wages to make ends meet and don't have the luxury to go outside their routine and security of keeping whatever job they were fortunate enough to keep. It's really only until a staggering majority are forced into more unpleasant alternatives like crime and more violent protests that things will be put into change.
But I have to admire those starting the flame now for us and sacrifice what (little) security for their lifestyles or even survival alone for the sake of the many that feel oppressed by the way things are going.

Yep. And to put it into perspective, our gripes are peanuts compared to the Egypt and Libya stuff. If I were -that- opressed, you really would find me risking my job and life to make gains. But as bad as things seem to be here, they're still pretty damn good.

That doesn't mean things can't improve, but we're nowhere near my personal threshold for occupation-level protest.

It won't be you. It'll be the people who are tired of being unemployed, tired of working the dead end career after doing the right thing for years, tired of watching the MNCs rake in billions while they get roadblocked at every turn all while their elected official sit pretty taking those campaign contributions. We can only continue down this road for so long before things cross the line into violence.

That is what worries me daily. I see the media, politicians and MNCs shuffling the pain of the American people off to the side while they talk about how much X company made, how great China is, how the Tea Party/Occupy movements are fruitless yet no one wants to address how to solve the reason we're in the mess. All we get are excuses and more political exercises than you can shake a stick at.

The people who are protesting are relatively peaceful if not annoyed when they speak yet they are driven into the ground just for speaking out. You mentioned in the 1% vs 99% video that the 1% guy wins because he spoke eloquently and didn't lose his cool? I ask you: Why would he lose his cool? Things are going fine for him while many of the people surrounding him are likely feeling the pain.

Quite right. But the 1% are in power, and if you give them a reason not to listen to the 99% screaming masses, they won't. If I were the elected official, part of what would influence me is who makes a better case for their viewpoint, and acting like an idiot does not help.

A biblical Job reference probably applies here (even though I'm athiest, lol!). Gandhi is probably better - OWS people would be more effective if they'd protest and occupy AND by rational and calm and helpful as much as feasible. They might get their point across regardless, but they'll do better if they act better. Daily Show's coverage a few weeks ago really stressed that point.

Napolean once wisely said an army marches on its stomach - I think you could say that a protest marches on its toilets.

I don't really agree with most of Occupy Wall Street. At this point, a lot of them are (honestly) the same leftists I've always disagreed with on (most) economic issues.

Except one, major point:

If there's anything a government must do in order to preserve and protect not just democracy, but capitalism itself, it's to ensure that the playing field isn't stacked against free and open competition. This is where Adam Smith (the father of capitalism itself) differs from the current Tea Party and Republican base.

The government does have an active responsibility to ensure that any one of you has the ability, through hard work, good ideas, determination, and some good business know-how, to start from nothing and turn yourself into a success. Without the ability for competition and informed consent to drive the invisible hand of capitalism, the system fails.

And that's the problem. Every single objective metric in this country has shown that we are no longer the land of opportunity. We now rank behind nearly every European country in social and economic mobility -- the capacity to come from nothing and make something of yourself. And they're a helluvalot more "socialist" than we are, so I don't want to hear it.

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The real complaint about "The 1%" that OWS misses, and gets lost in their general re-distributionist chatter, is that our ability to create and preserve a level playing field has been chipped away at steadily, and methodically, for the past 30 years. Not just the last 3. Or the last 10.

Republicans blame government regulation, but what they fail to acknowledge is that most of the government regulation is completely in the pocket of big business because they wrote the *&#$ing regulation in the first place.

Look at Tim Geither and Hank Paulson. Our last two Secretaries of the Treasury (under Republican and Democratic administrations, respectively) were both NY Federal Reserve / Goldman Sachs chairmen. They're writing regulations for the corporations that pay them. We (the taxpayers) loaned the big banks $7.7 trillion during bailouts by both Republican and Democrat administrations. The government won. Businesses won. We got screwed.

What we're seeing now is a convergence of both government, and big business, and for-profit sensationalist media on both sides, to squeeze out 99% of us and establish a blanket oligarchy with all the social mobility of old-school feudalism.

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And so we sit here and squabble, with the hardcore righties screaming about government regulation and everything wrong about Obama, and the lefties screaming about greedy corporations and everything wrong with Republicans. Diligently tuning into our Reality Show-like cable political news rot of choice and then faithfully repeating that tired crap as though political debate was some kind pro sports-like tailgate party.

And "The 1%" on both sides, who are sitting there on television in full makeup spoon-feeding us this crap to begin with, laugh all the way to the bank.

OWS is right about one thing. 99% of us are getting screwed. And so far, the 1% is doing such a good job -- like the Romans with their Colosseum games -- of distracting us with 24/7 sensationalist scandal-driven attack politics bloodsport as "news," that most of us don't care. Because no matter how your life sucks, it's clearly all the other guy's fault.

And sadly, that's just about as far as any of us are willing to think.

capitalism in it's actual form is the issue.
the government has to regulate the corporations and the financial market.
if the government doesn't do so, then things screw up.

here's the issue simplified:

1 Company
1000 costumer with $1000 start money each

now the company wants to get a profit of 10k per month.
the time line will look like this:

after first month:
1 Company $10000
1000 costumers with $990 each

after second month:
1 company $20000
1000 costumers with $980 each

after third month:
1 company $30000
1000 costumers with $970 each

and so on, till the monent at which costumers can't afford anything anymore and the company has all the money.that's the way a profit-related-capitalism works and what it will lead to, always.