Forum Post: No Demand is Big Enough.
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 21, 2011, 1:58 p.m. EST by precipice
(220)
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Looking out upon the withered American Dream, many of us feel a deep sense of betrayal. Unemployment, financial insecurity, and lifelong enslavement to debt are just the tip of the iceberg. We don't want to merely fix the growth machine and bring profit and product to every corner of the earth. We want to fundamentally change the course of civilization. For the American Dream betrayed even those who achieved it, lonely in their overtime careers and their McMansions, narcotized to the ongoing ruination of nature and culture but aching because of it, endlessly consuming and accumulating to quell the insistent voice, "I wasn't put here on earth to sell product." "I wasn't put here on earth to increase market share." "I wasn't put here on earth to make numbers grow."
Occupy Wall Street has been criticized for its lack of clear demands, but how do we issue demands, when what we really want is nothing less than the more beautiful world our hearts tell us is possible? No demand is big enough. We could make lists of demands for new public policies: tax the wealthy, raise the minimum wage, protect the environment, end the wars, regulate the banks. While we know these are positive steps, they aren't quite what motivated people to occupy Wall Street. What needs attention is something deeper: the power structures, ideologies, and institutions that prevented these steps from being taken years ago; indeed, that made these steps even necessary. Our leaders are beholden to impersonal forces, such as that of money, that compel them to do what no sane human being would choose. Disconnected from the actual effects of their policies, they live in a world of insincerity and pretense. It is time to bring a countervailing force to bear, and not just a force but a call. Our message is, "Stop pretending. You know what to do. Start doing it." Occupy Wall Street is about exposing the truth. We can trust its power. When a policeman pepper sprays helpless women, we don't beat him up and scare him into not doing it again; we show the world. Much worse than pepper spray is being perpetrated on our planet in service of money. Let us allow nothing happening on earth to be hidden.
The truth is dwindling rain forests, spreading deserts, mass tree die-offs on every continent; looted pensions, groaning burdens of student debt, people working two or three dead end jobs; children eating dirt in Haiti, elders choosing between food and medicine... the list is endless, and we will make it no longer possible to hold it in disconnection from the money system. That is why we converge on Wall Street, and anywhere that finance holds sway. You have lulled us into complacency for long enough with illusions and false hopes. We the people are awakening and we will not go back to sleep.
This is a beautiful article.
China always supported the enviromental movement in America since the sixties. It work we closed our factories and they moved to China where no pollution laws were in place. The end results was China was allowed to pollute the world way more than we would ever put up with. China has ruined their water supply. The enviromentalists have actually made the world more polluted.
If you read the Preamble to the Constitution, no where does it say that there isn't going to be unemployment in the United States. The government wasn't created to "maximize" employment levels. That's a reasonable goal and the government has tried to do this, well, forever and sometimes making decisions that people disagree with decades later.
You mention the rainforest. How long have environmentalists claimed the rainforest will be disappearing? I was made to watch a video in second grade where there was "one glass of clean water" left on all of planet Earth. As if.
Anytime the protesters plan to say the word tax, I encourage them to remember two things. We're spending 37% of GDP, which is way too much, just ridiculous. Second, every country that taxes more than the United States is located in Europe, and almost every one of them is facing the prospect of recession and bankruptcy at this very minute.
I think you are correct in the fact that the government is not going to fix a problem that they helped create. Big industry has too much influence in making our laws, giving them tax breaks, and unfair advantage over competing(often much more efficient and eco-friendly) business. One thing to remember, government jobs don't produce anything and are therefor a burden on taxpayers. Jobs must come from companies that are producing a product or service that is in demand. You will never hear me say,"Man, what I would pay to have a little more government around here." We must limit government and the amount of control they have over industry(esp health, energy, finance, drugs) allowing for more efficient and small businesses to compete.
Ex. Industrial hemp(not pot) can be grown for oil, paper, cloth, rope, plastics, etc but is still illegal because it would cut down on pesticide and herbicide use, and take business away from big oil and logging industries.
We have technology(actually quite simple) that we could use mirrors to collect sunlight to boil water and run steam engines that would provide us with electricity, heat and hot water. The electricity could be used to compress air which could be used to run our vehicles. Think of that, almost no pollution, all renewable and abundant resources.