Forum Post: OWS - Why Are You Against Freedom?
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 8, 2011, 9:08 p.m. EST by Frank
(19)
from Washington, DC
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
I understand the anger against Wall Street but only to the extent that they received bailouts and lobby government.
You have to know that any government based on the principle of redistribution will be, by definition, corrupt. There is no way on earth to stop that. As Madison said there are no angels among us and to appoint an elite to rule us is asking for serious trouble. Even a leftist like Obama is in bed with corporations and his buddies on Wall Street.
Get rid of regulations, keep laws and stop redistribution. Protect the individual and the free market. It is regulation that corporations love, because they can always skew it to their advantage and keep the little guy out. Rich people have it much easier when they can buy influence and that will never change because government will always act according to special interests.
The assumption of socialism is that the people are too stupid to manage their own lives and must be protected by the state. The state? And how are the rulers any different or are they omniscient?
I used to be a liberal (btw not a Republican) until I realized that redistribution makes everyone poor, that trying to force equality makes us all live in misery. You may not like capitalism but a job is a hell of a lot better than a handout. Also, I find it a very demeaning attitude, "you're helpless and we are here to save you". Bill Gates could have given up his career and worked for the poor, instead of lifting millions he would have kept a handful in poverty.
Disregard this troll.
One simple answer to your question can be seen in this video. Please share:
The Greatest Speech Ever Made 99% ♥
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pK2WJd5bXFg
Who doesn't like capitalism? I owned a small business and NOT on a corporate level, until I got taxed right out of business. I also don't believe in redistribution, mainly because it's all been redistributed to the rich, the corporations and the politicians, while the middle class has paid for the bulk of thier lavish lifestyles via higher taxes. I believe in putting anyone who can work to work with a proper education...but that's the problem. There IS NO work!! The imaginary notion that Social Security benefits and Unions are destroying the country is Fox News propagandical BULL crap to divert attention from the fact that big government and big corporation are robbing us to the point of poverty. We have got to STOP this right wing vs.left wing garbage that the media has created and cultivated to perfection and band together as a middle class and fight the real demons. Speaking of regulations...Banking regulators begged Bush not to lift the mortgage regulations that were in place...they told him it would cause a major financial meltdown...look where we are now.
Stop seeing this as a left/right dichotomy.
It is simple economics. Unions are perfectly fine as long as they operate without the influence of government. However the original objective of unions is severely in question. Often, once the core demands are met the group takes on a life of its own. It no longer serves its original principle but now stakes out a position to enrich itself at the expense of others. This is what happened in the USA. Unions wanted salaries and benefits that were out of line with the free market. The bills are now coming due and the middle class is balking at paying the price. Pensions are under funded, salaries are higher in the public sector (security as well) and you have guaranteed retirements. The private sector worker has no such guarantees and is now struggling just to survive.
There's just a bunch of retards on here who made their life shitty. Now the retards are grouped up in the masses. Only way to stop them now is declare martial law.
DO IT BROBAMA DO SOMETHING RIGHT FOR A FUCKING "CHANGE"
What’s YOUR occupation?!!!
It's exactly as you say, all about wall street greed and not as you fear, about overtrhrowing society. Freedom is not limitless. There are practical and moral lines, basic needs and interest of others and of our communities which you can not just simply discard out of self interest; for they are not just 'game rules': We do not live in a virtual world, we are real people, and there are real children living on the streets, dying out there, in the US, for no justifiable or other reason but the shere lack of proper health care and good housing. Life is not a movie or soap or competetion. It's all too real, and the thing now is, it's draining the light and lifeblood out of peoples hearts. It is also about corporate interest having gained way too much influence over politics through the media they own, through the donations they throw at candidates, which for them is profitable business to get their tax breaks, the majority can't ever compete with. Because they simply have not the money to spare, they need it for food and many are about to lose their homes if not alreasy evicted. And these are pensioners as well, that worked long and hard all their lives. And it is also the amassed wealth is clodding up the fiancial system, this is a classic economical problem, and the solution is not redistibution, but making core changes to let money do it's primary function: an trade asset, a means to exchange goods for services, labour for food, etc. It seems more and more it is a proof of status, of power, to take as much of it out of rotaion to serve one self. Finaly, uin this way, the financial system of 'making money with money' which is was never intended for, is impossible to maintain if you were to to make a logical analysis of it.
Define greed. It is nothing less than rational self interest. Am I greedy because I don't take the same care of an apartment I'm renting instead of owing?
Did "greed" suddenly appear in 2007? Also, any "basic need" is a basic right to the labor of someone else, so please consider that. You virtually have to make a slave out of a person to fulfill your need. There are no interests of "communities", these are made up of individuals, not some amorphous mass of people. When the community asserts rights over individual rights, you have no more freedom. Simply put, all I have to do is obtain a majority and then I can do whatever I want. Tocqueville referred to this as the tyranny of the majority. The amassed wealth you talk about is being put to use in the economy, moving it around doesn't change a thing. A rich man who buys a 200 million dollar yacht employs just as many people than if he were to spend it in restaurants or supermarkets. Money is money.
A hundred milion dollar spent on a yacht will not have the same route or effect as a hundred million invested directly into healthcare. A hundred million dollar spent on healthcare will help people which will be able to than do work to the benefit of society. Why do you denounce, even denie the existence of communities? I live in a community. Don't you? It's just places with people living in houses on streets. Does it make you think of communism? Here it is plainly a word to define the town, village, city we live in. Does the word together also install you with fear? You just think of a pack of laborours with individual interests. Clearly they do not need collective enterprise, collaborative efforts, communal places like parks, streets, bridges or hospitals, shared risk insurance. I guess that is why in your world the bridges are falling down, the dikes and levies give way to the waters, kids die of tooth aches and it's all for one selves, it's already like, your army has become unaffordable, and the Chinese hold your debt papers. Through discarding your collective interests, you are doing a better job than the communists in bringing your economy down. They've already got your jobs! Not because the American Worker won't produce, but because their management sold out to China.Buit hey, who cares! To you, this hundred million dollar yacht has a bigger priotiry than to have a proper collective military defense. The problem is, you have not the faintest grasp. These yachts? They are made in China by now. They are import. As are your computers. Rich people did not get rich overpaying for anything. They're cheap bastards, loking for the best deal. So, they get their stuff from the Chinese. A great capitalist nation, and how comvienient, it's not a democracy! It is your Utopia. Individual have no rights though... Still it's the world as you finance it. As I see it? We have collective needs, communal interest, we are group animals, we've hunted together, grown crops together, build cities together; the succes of the collaborative species we are as humans. Somehow you have not evolved into the full awareness of the benefits of co-dependency. You did not master the concept of equal collaboration. You feel better than most, you remain locked within the limitations of selfishness to sing that same old song, "If everyone just takes care of themselves, everyone is taken care of..." Well, that just is false. It does not work that way. An infant can not take care of him of herself. And elderly persons can't take care of themselves. The sick can't heal themselves, most women can't bare children by themselves. Our contract with eachother, with family, with community, with human kind, among peoples, with loved ones is that we care for, can depend on eachother, to help in times of need, but also just as neighbours, watch out for eachother. That is what I am trying to get across to people like you, because I care for you, not because I envie your society or want to take anything from you. All that comes before the yachts you seek to own, who serve noones interest but to have someone vacationing on it, while most of us can not afford vacations, how ever hard they work. This is because the amount of money, capital, going round is limited and it becomes a problem when too much of it get's locked down in objects like yachts, mansions, jewelery, or in stock, bankaccounts, etc., The value will not flow back into the economy just like that, but just amass in the pockets and stock of already rich people or get invested in useless property. It's destruction of usefull capital. So I think you have to take another thougough look at the precise economics behind it, before you throw away society over an nice holiday, as long as you can afford one, or a oversimplified example of owning a yacht. Sink it, before it takes you down with it.
Frank -You explain this way better than I do.
not against freedom, freedom to be criminals for some people is not freedom for the rest of us. freedom to run down people in your car? all freedoms hinge on responsibilities. we are for freedoms and understand that freedom requires responsibilities. socialism has nothing to do with any of this. we don't live in capitalism we live in corporate oligarchy.
to get serious requires a few things they don't have. like chat admins who aren't ego serving propaganda tools, a wiki, 1001 sub forums, an actual game plan, a straight up political platform... you know.. basic organizational things sane people do BEFORE protesting.. like figure out a diplomacy and logic centered metaprocess to give their chatadmins so that they don't really just drive out even more people than the trolls. Adminatrolla. trollaAdmin. Whats the difference to somebody whos got the truth facing a propaganda tool abusing admin powers to push their agenda? how can you prevent such a thing? Metaprocess. did i mention metaprocess? and science diplomacy science psychology science sociology and all those textbooks to read B4 protesting?
you can't have capitalism without a free(SLAVE) market. but you can have a free market without capitalism. And thats strangely the only way it CAN work.
Marketing 101 was fascinating. I admit thats a lot less than a bachelors but its sure more than enough to see whats really going on given the other things I know. Capitalism is not the problem since it does not exist. corporate oligarchy is the problem. capitalism has never been tried. I am a democracy guy. in order for real democracy to function a free market system is required. Thats not capitalism. thats a free market system. there is a subtle difference there which most people would miss. I will again repeat. Neither capitalism nor marxism nor communism nor socialism has ever existed. All of those governments were oligarchy pretending to be something as a con scam. Telling that simple truth gets one banned out of the Chat by either a capitalist or a socialist whos pissed you just said their pet ideology isn't real. It isn't. anybody who thinks that it is is accidentally playing for team corporate oligarchy as a tool. the ONLY system worth talking about is DEMOCRACY. how democracy HANDLES a FREE MARKET system is dynamic and interesting and NOT capitalism.
o. yes. no. yes. what? making change is not reliant on changing the money system one tenth as much as it is on changing the informational ecology. Going to a gold standard as an idea is a proof of ignorance, not a solution. Really the end game is we evolve out of money. To do that we evolve first new currencies and new economic strategies. this leads to economic singularity in about 50 years. If everyone is a millionaire how much you get depends on exactly the material valuation of that money. Which is to say that by the time money becomes obsolete everyone will live like the current millionaire. Tangible items to other tangible items? the real economy is about ideas, change the ideas and everything changes. the problem with the tangible economy is it does not change; its a static reality. you can't make a meaningful gold standard with only enough gold to represent on millionth of the economy. You can make a purely imaginal money system work; but it has to be subject to moral and ethical laws. This is about pinning down those moral and ethical laws and implementing them in new currencies; not trying to imagine a control freak impossible non solution because of the simplicity with which you go about thinking over the problem.
once again. there has never been a socialist or capitalist economy. in all instances such nations were oligarchies. using a mask and a con scam and telling their dupes and pwns that they were something other than oligarchy. the big hump to get over is that the USA oligarchy and the Soviet oligarchy are in on this lie against the rest of us TOGETHER. Neither of them was ever anything other than an oligarchy. both claimed some other system in order to have US fight over the ideals of THAT system while they secretly shafted us all playing a completely different game.
http://occupywallst.org/forum/stop-playing-the-devils-games/
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150343790359248&set=a.10150264906064248.348293.511989247&type=1&theater
Thank you! Did you get a chance to look at this? http://kinecognition.blogspot.com/2011/10/systems-theory-as-means-of.html A subjective explanation and application to our cause is in progress. Hopefully there will be a decent wiki somewhere soon so both can be living docs for the people's benefit.
thanks, thats an awesome find. great way of explaining it to folks.
oh well we are not against freedom.
we are against fox news on ows which is what people like you are doing now on ows.
anyway, good luck on your job, but ows has its own view and will get support from the people as time goes by
You are against freedom when you pit one special interest group over another.
Fox News is a private company, don't like them, don't listen to them. As an independent though I see far more liberal channels than conservative. It also galls me when I am forced to fund NPR with my tax dollars. That is what I mean about taking away freedom. Easy to say you want government in education or media...until the "wrong" party takes over and they aren't educating or supporting media that you like...
I dont see OWS as being pro liberal or conservative. We are simply pro justice. Trying to link us to either party is where you have made your error.
Frank, you have it all wrong. The depression of 1930 occurred because of the abuses of people trading on wall street. Insider trading was rampant, heads of companies would inflate and deflate the value of their stock and by and sell it to make profits. The SEC was formed in order to keep the stock exchange clean and fair. What trading firms are doing right now is working out side the regulatory framework of the SEC to get back to profiting through basically corrupt deals. The result? 2008 financial collapse...
What I would say to that is the following:
Booms and busts are normal but they are far larger in scope when the government interferes in the market. As a banker I was well aware in 2003 that a housing bubble was being created by the Fed.
How did the Fed create the housing bubble? Wasn't it the deregulation which caused loose lending standards coupled with credit default swaps?
I was in the financial industry at the time. They did it by artificially lowering interest rates, this caused an explosion in mortgage related lending (especially refinancing).
I was working in Freddie Mac, we were told by the government to lower our lending standards (I can quote you exact numbers if you want them). That is what caused the crisis.
Frank you are one of the few that understands the real mechanism for the housing bubble: had our own socialists not required a lowering of lending standards (am I the only one that noticed unlikely people buying homes left and right?), there would have been no "toxic assets" for the banks to dump....
I would certainly like to know more. The Republicans where in charge then. Were these orders from the treasury department? Housing?
It was the democrats that pushed for loaning to anyone so everyone could own a house.
Yeah. If these OWS idiots were even half interested in ending the influence of money and lobbyists in politics, they would come out AGAINST the government picking winners, losers and recipients of goodies. As long as the government has the power to take what was rightfully earned from one person and give it to another, there will always be people/corporations trying to influence that process.
Alas, I fear the OWS is all for crony capitalism and theft, but they just want to be the beneficiaries.
Exactly. When a group demands free things from the government they are starting class warfare because someone has to pay for it. In Cook County Illinois they decided to raise taxes to support increased govt. spending. People are now protesting, what a surprise. Stop asking for your neighbor to support you.
+1 for real.
yup.
no in order to become beneficiaries there must be something to benefit form right now we have no benefits cause wall street and the gorvenment has gamble it all case and point social security
LOL. Thanks for making my point.
Taking our federal tax dollars to pay for federal tax returns to corporations that pay nothing in federal taxes in the first place IS redistribution of wealth. Please wake up and recognize that.
Corporations are subject to a 34% tax, if they don't pay it is because they either:
Many individuals don't pay a dime in Federal Taxes, is that ok?
I am ok with corporations not paying tax because of the reasons you have stated. I am against them getting subsidies based on obsolete policies. I am against them getting bailed out when they make bad bets. A true capitalistic society would have let these banks go bankrupt. Instead we not only saved them but kept the same guys at the head! What we need it true capitalism. Not whatever we have now.
It's 35% by my understanding, but yes you hit the points right. Well kind of right. I see it as businesses hiding their profits in off shore tax shelters and filing their losses right here in the US. That way they can write off their losses and you and I pay for their "refund." Do you enjoy paying them? I don't. As for the individuals not paying a dime either, I'm against them collecting "refunds" as well.
Yes and no. The USA is one of the few countries that double taxes individuals and business. Having lived abroad I consider that system very unfair. I wouldn't say they are "hiding" their profits offshore, they merely find it less expensive to do business there, and that is driven by the American consumer who demands the lowest price. Furthermore the profits made by China on an Ipad are a tiny fraction of what the USA makes, labor is a very, very small component.
You didn't answer my question. Do you enjoy paying them a federal tax "refund" when they pay zero in federal taxes to begin with? Is it acceptable that their losses are Socialized? Take your time. I have to run but I will gladly continue this with you tomorrow. (Late afternoon most likely)
Ok sir. If they pay zero taxes for the same reason individuals do, I have no problem with that.
Losses being socialized? I agree with you 100%. They should have never been bailed out. But both the right and left gave them money. Can you understand why I advocate limited government?
I somewhat understand the limited government take. From what I see though the government that works, doesn't work for you and I. While less government would spare us things like the Solyndra debacle, it would also allow the legal robbery I've been describing to continue. I don't necessarily want MORE government. I just want the one I'm already paying for to keep us from being ripped off.
Less government would not allow legal robbery. Contract law is still in force and the market quickly handles companies that try to steal from their consumers. Can you cite an example of where a company could steal from consumers?
Consider this, the government forces us to put money into an account for our entire life (Social Security) and is allowed the following:
What private company can do this type of damage to a consumer? Would you deposit your money into a bank knowing that they wouldn't give it back to you or give you returns way below inflation?
BOA, GE, and Citigroup all steal from us. Annually. There are more...
Ameriquest is just one of the brokerage firms that got away with rampant fraud during the sub-prime orgy. One way they did it was to con families into sub-prime mortgages when they qualified for standard, prime loans. The company got huge increases in fees and interest as a result.
A second way was by falsifying documents, which the borrower never saw.
The government should just take care of defending our country (not invading others), making sure contract laws are upheld (legal system) etc. The government is an expense. Why would we want to make it bigger? I agree a lot of people don't see that.