Forum Post: The coolest thing in America!
Posted 12 years ago on April 5, 2012, 11:39 p.m. EST by TheEvilFuckaire
(208)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
OWS and THE TEA PARTY! two groups which have some common ground both want to get rid of the banksters both want a government that is responsible to the people not corporations. OWS has real left wing views of community ownership. TP has an underdeveloped anarchists view of a small government that is only there to protect property rights. They fail to see the fact that property (land) ownership infringes on the rights of others to access the land that is claimed by the individual. ALL land is community property. If it is not then we start playing a big game of Monopoly until a few people own the whole board. people without properties are slaves in real life they don't get to just quit.
The Tea Party is out to destroy public education and social security. They have proven that they do not stand for the American people. There is no way around this.
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30985.htm
Someone else on this forum posted this link in a different thread. Noam Chomsky seems to also have a skeptical view of public education.
He is discussing cost increase.
They don't want those systems to go away, they want the government out of education, and health care, I do not support their position on those issues but I understand the want to have a smaller less intrusive government. I think education and crime prevention should be in the public sector at least.
They want a corporate run education because we should trust corporations moar (yes, that was misspelled intentionally). Yet, they have no problem inserting themselves into my life in nefarious ways.
I agree. No part of the criminal justice system should be privatized. Public education should be out of the hands of corporations. Health care needs to be in the public sector because corporations have not done a bang up job here.
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OWS is grass roots and TP is AstroTurf bought and paid for by Koch Bros, facilitated by Dick Armey.
It got hijacked by the Koch brothers I agree. The common people that support it are Libertarians they want to privatize everything. I don't think that is the way to go. At least it is a position the Dems and Reps Have no position other than the one where they bend over for the corporations. They should just merge and call themselves the Corporate Party.
There is a segment of the Dems that are really Cons, but today's Republicons have descended into a cult and their Charlie Manson is a segment of the 1% who are completely controlled by greed.
Dems would have a better smile for you if the Cons were not so focused on knocking out their teeth.
They all take money from Goldman Sachs and they don't care about us.
Yes, through our public negligence of our political system, money has become the major weapon in political battles. We have allowed a situation where if a politician DOES NOT take money from whoever will give it, they don't stand a chance of success. We have to get the money out of politics. When we do that we will take away the power of Citizens United to damage our government any further. We should also work on impeaching the Roberts Court Five responsible for Citizens United, who were appointed by dirty rotten Republicons. So instead of whining about problems that your negligence has caused, we should get involved and work to repair the damage. And stay involved.
Unite and Win! Unite and Win! 2010 Never EVER Again!!
Register and Vote! Register and Vote! "We the 1%" NOT What They Wrote!!
If YOU Don't Vote, YOU Don't Count!!
Voting is a facade, put up by the rich, to let the ignorant proletariat masses have the delusion that they have some say in their lives and how they are governed. The rich rule trough power and fear. Votes are not counted only money and slaves are counted 1,2, me and you SLAVES. As long as any group or person can print money out of thin air and the rest of us have to work to get it SLAVES.
If that was so, why would they (the rich) spend so much to sway elections their way? It should be mandatory to Vote!! If we all voted we would get better results.
The rich rule by ownership, influence, bribery and cronyism.
RE: Slavery: Wage slavery has been substituted for traditional slavery, cuz it's a whole lot cheaper. No room and board and incidentals, just a minimum wage.
Don't get mad, get elected!
How do we enforce mandatory voting? With a fine for not voting? Who gets the money? Oh, the people who own the world, of course, just another rule for them to use to take more from us. We may be able to protest without violence, but they will not give up their power without bloodshed, that is what history has shown, that is how it will eventually play out.
Australia.
What are you, 10?
What is your view of rights in general. Freedom is property rights. It starts from the idea that i am not a slave, I OWN MYSELF. In an extension of my self ownership i own the fruits of my labor since i exerted energy in the labor, so i should be entitled to that which i earn. In your scenario how would a dispute of land use be solved. A governing agency would need to be established in order to (temporarily) give use of land to one party or another. In this propertyless society you set out, property would then be under the control of that governmnet. Then the government would own all the land. Without private property you lose most of your rights. You have no privacy since there is no place to store your personal items, you can't be alone since their is no place you can be alone, and you can't have any property that you can't carry on your back, since their is no safe place to store it.
A home or a dwelling can be built by a human and can therefore belong to a human. Land can not be made by man it exists, with the sky, and the water, independent of humanity. Look at the way lakes and streams are used currently anyone is allowed to use them and no one owns them, but you can own a boat. To give use of land temporarily to an individual for farming would not be an issue. Obviously city dwellers have no use for farmland and in rural areas people generally know their neighbors. If everyone within 3 miles knows who the family is that lives on a property, and someone forces them out of their house, the neighbors will take care of it.
I mean, it's sort of contradictory to on one hand try and help those facing foreclosure, yet on the other hand, say all property should be community property? I guess we can justify it on the basis that having a bank take a home away is worse than an individual family keeping the home, but I'm not sure about the idea of drawing such a bright (and dogmatic) line.
I mean, I like 19th century anarchist literature as much as the next anarchist, but this isn't the 19th century (and there's more nuance to this issue than I think rigid statements lend themselves to) :)
And the tea party, they're not going to support us, not ever, although I understand the desire (at one time, not long ago, I thought maybe we should try and reach out to that crowd, after all, we're good people ... that's why we have liberal hearts, but here on earth, not everyone shares our good will.
Community land ownership does not preclude the right to a home. The natives used Totems not only for villages but for individual structures, they marked a use based ownership. If a dwelling appeared unoccupied the small 6' totem would be knocked down by a person wanting to take over use of the structure. they would check back after a month and if no one had raised the totem then it was available to move into. A low tech registration system. Natural law always applies, invade an occupied home and face possible death.
But what makes anyone think, for even a second, that any but the tiniest fraction of the American population, would be willing to entertain this view? I mean, this is completely divorced from reality. Frankly, with the utmost respect for our Native American fellow humans, I (and I think I'm speaking for virtually ALL Americans) do not want to live a tribal life. I have no doubt that it works for Native Americans, and I certainly wouldn't presume to impose my cultural norms on anyone, but the idea that the average American will do anything but laugh at this idea, is absurd.
We should at least correlate our calls for change with reality. I think it would be great if more rental properties were owned by nonprofits (and allowed the tenants to manage their own building), or likewise, allowing tenants in public housing projects to manage the building, but these sorts of ideas aren't such a radical departure from what we have now, and it certainly doesn't require confiscating residential property from families (and whether they're still allowed to live in the property or not, even if they have exclusive possession, if they lose title, it is confiscation, and no one will view it any differently). I'm quite sure that the people, facing foreclosure, whom occupiers are helping, did not sign up for such a far fetched idea (and thankfully, I'm also quite sure that most of the occupiers helping them, are not trying to impose such a radical idea). People just want to keep their homes.
I mean, I think we'd have to suffer a nuclear war, or an extinction event, or some sort of mass catastrophe, before we devolved to that sort of state (and I'm not in favor of endorsing ideas that require a nuclear war, or some similar catastrophe, as a precondition to implementation).
You are under the false impression first of all that you own any land. Look at a deed sometime it will most likely say "Tenant Deed" and since you do not own it (Allodial title is real ownership) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allodial_title You can be taxed for living on that land, the government can use eminent domain to take it away, because they are the actual owners. You pay a bank $200,000 for the privilege of renting from the government. The feudal system is here it never left. The lords own the land and we just live on it.
I'm a lawyer for god's sake, and you're not accurately describing how title in real property works. I mean, yes, if you have a mortgage, the bank has a claim on title, the government can take property via eminent domain (not that this happens very often, but it's possible). We could certainly address the eminent domain issue by virtue of participatory democracy, as for our mortgage lending system, there's certainly many ways we could improve that system that do not involve confiscating peoples homes, where in many cases there's generations of family history (and most homeowners are middle or working class people, struggling to make ends meet).
I'm sorry, but an idea like that just seems cruel. The same sort of top down sledge hammer approach, who cares what the human cost is, which has been fucking over the human race for centuries, and certainly not the sort of thing I would ever sign up with.
I'm just interested in good ideas that help people. I'd prefer to reduce wealth disparity by making average people richer, not by making everyone equally poor. That doesn't mean we don't need to raise the top tax rate or whatever (common sense tells us we obviously do, and for conservatives to act as if Clinton era tax rates are somehow confiscatory, is ridiculous anyway, they're just trying to manufacture an issue to remain relevant). But confiscating people's homes, in most cases the only real asset they have, is theft by violent compulsion of the state.
Then are you saying that you see this neo-fuedal system or do you not see it? The lords have have renamed themselves CEOs, the nights are now cops and the peasants/slaves are the rest of us.
I'm an anarchist (at least mostly) and I don't even view this in such dramatic terms. Look, if you want to try and sell your idea of confiscating people's homes, I certainly won't stop you. I won't agree with you, nor will most people (not even most occupiers, at least I don't think), and yeah sure, you might be able to draw some loose parallels with feudalism, but if we had participatory democracy, a healthy society, etc. (all the things OWS supports), then maybe we wind up taking a different view of property (I'm not sure if this will happen, but if it does, it should originate from the bottom, not be imposed from the top down). Middle class homeowners John and Sally Smith are just not in my cross hairs. I'm concerned with obscene abuses of wealth and power, corruption, lack of true democracy, and the fact that the interests of average citizens are barely considered in the calculus of our policy makers.
I am not talking about HOMES houses are built by people and people should own what they can make. LAND is the issue we need a way to grant fair use of it without ownership of it. All the land has already been confiscated it is either privately owned or government owned. All land subject to tax is by definition government owned. After you buy a watch do you have to pay a fee to the government every year in order to not have it confiscated? No because it is yours. The land based feudal system takes advantage of the fact that you cannot fly. You have to stand somewhere so you gotta pay for standing somewhere. If you truely believe in Anarchy the first thing that needs to go away is individual ownership of anything not created by man.
No offense, but I dont want you having a say in what I do with my family and home.
No offense taken. Why do you let the state do it? After all I am a living human being, presenting an alternative to individual ownership of land. The state is a concept supported by a body of men. They own your land if you are lucky enough to have some. If you doubt the state owns your land then stop paying your property tax and see what happens. We are all slaves as long as property exists we will remain the property of others.
I would prefer the state didnt have a say in what I do with it either.
I see your point here, very interesting. How about we just eliminate the gov part of it and let the people decide how they want to run their neighborhoods?
Excellent notion but the only problem I see is how do we (if we are in a group) deal with an outsider who has no verbal or written contracts with us? For example, we have a town apple tree and a transient eats an apple from it has he stolen from us or is he free to do as he likes since he is not in our group and has no agreement with us? If we solve this we can have true Anarchy without the violence of a State.
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"ALL land is community property."
Now that's what is called being a true Communist. At least you're honest about your anti-American beliefs.
I find that line of thinking offensive as well. Land is taxed. Rural areas are poor too. No one stops one from buying land and living outside the city. Merely owning land and the right to pay taxes on it does not make you wealthy. I don't see farmers getting rich. And I don't see people grouping up to purchase land for communes. I think with more people living together and larger family units, this would be a great idea. To literally pool money and resources and build a villages across the US would be great and get back to trading and bartering with your neighbors when you can, ordering bulk food supplies of items like rice and wheat by the truckload together and avoiding buying a lot of processed foods. Why alienate farmers instead of encouraging bartering and trading and shopping locally? Why alienate small businesses who are struggling to compete with huge corporations? Why make about left wing, right wing? No wing is standing up to oppose globalization and big banking. All people agree this is a serious problem in this two party system. Everyone knows we need change these overwhelmingly serious issues but lets tack gay marriage on to the 99% declaration? Really? In order for people to get along and work together for the common good, they have to show some respect for the right to hold different views on issues that polarize the country at the very least. Give me something I can swallow and I'll bite all day!
Long before the communist manifesto, humans living naturally especially in North America before the Europeans came, saw all land as belonging to the Tribe or the Nation and not to individuals they lived here for at least 12,000 years and it stayed clean and it was safe to drink the water. We screwed it up! Individual ownership automatically results in serfdom. There is never enough land for everyone to have some because the rich hoard it. In ancient Christian and Jewish practice they had Jubilee every 50 years land ownership was canceled, everyone started at zero again. Land is a prerequisite for survival, your feet must touch the ground, if you must pay another human for having your feet on the ground you are a slave.
the indians were extemely territorial. if you want to go back 12,000 ( + or - )years you might as well include the entire planet.
They were territorial but they were less individualistic. they would fight over a water source but no one person in the group would say that is my river or that is my land. It is our land it is our river. Get it?
Injuns used to fight and kill each other over land and resources before the Great White Devil ever came along. Buffalo's pissed and shit in the water along with everything else, I'm afraid the Utopia you imagine never existed,well maybe in a Star Trek episode but that's about it.
You clearly don't know anything about "Injun" culture. It was Christian savages who screwed everything up over here, and are still doing it today.
Really? Please set me straight won't you?
I wouldn't even waste my time, but you might start with reading a book or getting to know some native Americans.
There is a great myth about savage Indians which I think makes some people forget about the unrecognized mass murder that happened; but the truth is Europeans were welcomed with open arms, until it became painfully obvious what their true intentions were.
Really? What books would you recommend?
So you're generalizing and stereo typing native Americans?
If you're honestly curious try Mother Earth Spirituality by Ed McGaa (Eagle Man). There is a great writeup on how the founding fathers were inspired by the democratic systems used by Native Americans, and the role the Native Americans played in uniting the colonies. It has some references to historical books if you don't believe him.. as well as a good overview of different spiritual practices (e.g. how to use a peace pipe).
I also really enjoy Return to Creation by Manitonquat (Medicine Story), very well written and inspirational, the narrative is like an elder telling you a story as you sit across the fire. Easy read as well.
I don't know about generalizing, but Ed McGaa makes a good point in his book. Imagine what would have happened if Native Americans showed up on the shores of Europe, started taking land, planting corn, and setting up shop. The Europeans of that era wouldn't have welcomed them or shared their food, they would have killed them outright.
I am not saying group ownership is wrong, or that no one ever fought over resources. Individual ownership gives some people the idea that they can do whatever they like to the land, like the land is their slave. When the land is owned by a larger society consensus is needed before spraying insecticide or damming a river. The concept of individual ownership of land requires one to look back to the original "owner" Who did he/she get the land from? If no one was there when the person arrived then they took the land from nature but the truth is one cannot own nature. nature owns you. If another person was there and you took the land by force as is the case of the European invasion of North America, how can you charge me money for land that you took at the point of a gun? YOU STOLE IT! but if I want some I gotta pay?