Forum Post: You have no alternative

You mostly act as if you are moral crusaders and the rest of us are either oppressed minions of evil dictators or greedy self serving animals (Pigs seem to be a commonly used analogy).

I am all for speaking out against things that make you unhappy, but I have been to the protest camp sites and I have never seen such an uneducated group of people in my life. The majority have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. "Down with the system". Do you have ANY idea of the implications of a breakup of the banking system? We are talking medieval living standards within a year. Interest rates, mortgages, exchange rates, stock price fluctuations are essential to every aspect of your life regardless of whether you like it or not.

The alternatives are: some sort of Utopian society where people dont use money and rely on a system of barter or exchange of services. i.e i will wash your windows in exchange for a your bag of grain. This would never work, firstly people dont realise money does exactly this already, money isnt evil it is just a tool for valuing other peoples goods, Money, services, rice, wine, spices are all units of value that have been used throughout history and always will/have lead to gross "inequalities" where a top minority dominate the majority, it is human nature to amass resources, in fact it is more likely to happen if there is one "rogue" trader among a group of morally superior people as opposed to a system of competition where everyone is fighting for the most efficient route to wealth .

So this leaves us with the political alternative, where we keep the current structure but through taxes/ legal enforcement the rich are forced to give their money to the people that have less.

This again is impossible, firstly the state controlling what you earn and what you give away is tantamount to a dictatorship. This is the sort of actions they took under communism not to mention the dictatorships we are outraged at around the world. But on practical terms all it would take is one country in the world to not abide by these rules and the entire business community would move to that location, thus destroying your economy, try taxing 60% of people that earn no more than a maximum of $30,000 a year and see how far you get. Meanwhile the nation that keeps capitalism would make the current civilized world look like Iraq.

Thirdly, we bailout the public instead of companies, ok, so say we write a cheque for $100,000 of every citizen in the world instead of giving x billion to the banks. That will not work either, if everyone's level of wealth increases 50% say, at an equal rate the price of all goods and services will increase at that rate, so in effect you will have no more money because everything is 50% more expensive.

Also, keep in mind, speaking as a staunch capitalist I am against the bailout of the banks, these bailouts are a socialist measure. The banks should be punished financially. And my post (rant) is aimed at the people that are under the assumption this is capitalism. It isnt. We should be moving more right wing. The basics of Capitalsim is people that lose money/take gambles that dont pay off, go out of business.

I just dont get what these protesters want?