Occupy Wall Street: What’s Really Going On

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181

What system is better for the environment? For people?


Let’s approach it from another perspective, we have huge bureaucracies setup to protect us from the "rapacious instincts of private mining, lumbering and fishing industries", and what have we got to show for it?  How are all those vaulted protections working out for you?  We have government encouraging over fishing, we have private companies being bailed out.  We have incentives for all kinds of bad behavior - all via that great and wonderful government.  As government control has grown all those things you seem concerned about have become worse…  Perhaps a correlation? I know, I know, it’s just we haven’t given the government enough control over our lives yet - just a bit more and I’m sure it will all get better… Are you sure I’m the one in the fantasy world?

Yes, we had Love Canal and superfund sites and rivers catching on fire in the 70s, but to a large extent we cleaned up our act. Eagles have been re-introduced where DDT once made them leave a habitat. We now make governement entites and utilities follow OSHA and EPA guidelines (this was not always the case) - mainly due to lawsuits. There is at least some accountability here because you might get sued. That sort of thing does not happen in a centrally-run state. When was the last time you heard of someone suing the Poltiboro or the Chinese Communist party? Compare the USA's environmental record (not perfect, I know)  to centrally run economies where there is no accountability. The former Soviet Union pretty much killed the Black Sea and caused all sorts of pollution that only came to light after it fell. Air polition in China was so severe that they almost despaired of bringing the Olymics to Bejjing. Let's call fiat money "economic pollution." What' will clean it up in both American government and on Wall Street is ACCOUNTABILITY and I really have to wonder if the OWS protestors have a plan to bring that about, other than to bring down the existing system and use certain elements as scapegoats. Scapegoating is not accountability: sometimes scapegoating can be a means of evasion.  Sometimes, like when Hitler blamed the Jews, it can be a way of siezing poilitical power. My concern is that the OWS protestors will attack scapegoats and will not address underlying structural problems.  This is, in large part, since few people see or understand the underlying structural problems. And that is most likely because the mainstream press has abdicated its role as journalists doing exposés. We were failed when our politicians were bought and therefore did no oversight, and this was the sort of corruption our system was supposed expose via a free press. It was a failure due to greed, yes. But don't tell me that capitalism equals greed. There are greedy people under ALL sytems. They are easier to thwart when you have a truly free press and the ability to sue the government. My left-of-center friends here have stated that they believe the mainstream press has been co-opted by capitalists. I think the mainstreaam press was co-opted by socialists in the universities trying to spread their ideology via "advocacy journalism" - advocating socialism as the only way to go. But maybe we are both right: maybe the socialsts are totally in bed with big business. Yes, the system is broken, but let's be clear about what broke, and why. Fiat currencies are broken. Peak oil means that it's absurd to bail out a major car manufacturing company and then offer government road repair jobs: these are "buggy whip" industries, part of a dying sytem that they are propping up to get votes and power. True capitalists would have let these so called "too big to fail" banks and indstries FAIL  Yes, it would have been painful, but so is surgery for cancer. What happenned instead was not capitalism, it was corporate cronyism. Anyone hoping for a worldwide revolution to bring about world socialism is a statist. Many at the OWS protesters seem to have that aim. And I am not for a revoution that brings more state conrtol since the State, by and large, is not enforcing the laws on the books on their corporate bedfellows. AND, historically, whether you are talking about kings or communists, a state with absolute control is less likely to be accountable.. Until we clean house and let businesses be accountable to their shareholders (and banks be accountable to their depositors) and let them go out of business when they make bad decisions (instead of getting fiat-printed government/taxpayer handouts to cover their losses) , I fail to see how more dependence on the state, any state, will help.
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You guys can have your big rocks and trees, I’ll just set up a toll booth on the road that runs through my property.  What’ll I charge?  A silver eagle would be too much, I wouldn’t want to be accused of being rapacious.  I know, a pre-65 dime.  Perfect, small, easy to store and carry.  And, I can buy a couple beers per car.
Darbikrash

Thanks for the essay, lots to think about there.

Doug

183

[quote=DamnTheMatrix]Rhare, you are even weirder than I thought…  Now I understand how you came to have the world’s biggesr renewable energy system.
[/quote]
LOL, I guess I have lots of company.  We have the 3rd largest in our immediate neighborhood (of the systems I know about) - and that’s after we expanded to 13 kW.  A private school in the neighborhood just put up 5,000 panel 1MW array. I guess us capitalists are just in the right position to take advantage of all the socialists who want to take money from others and throw it at us… :-)  Yeah - go socialists! 

184

SafewriteI think you’ve pointed out the excesses of both yourself. Left to their own devices, an unregulated corporation will do like what oil companies have done in Ecuador and Nigeria (after all, when it’s all extracted, there’s no incentive to stay and eat off the oil-soaked soil), or used to do to the Love Canal and other places before government stepped in. Left to their own devices, a powerful government like the USSR will ruin the Black Sea.
Worst is when corporations and government work together for profit at the expense of others. Where exactly are coal plants keeping their coal ash slurry again? In "government-regulated" coal slurry ponds. Where does chicken poop end up? In cow feed. Would nuclear plants be profitable if the state didn’t backstop losses and limit losses? Of course not - private insurance either won’t insure, or would set premiums through the roof while making sure there were limitations and exclusion clauses.
How many millions of people build in flood plains and by rivers and beaches - all with cheap government-backstopped flood insurance that loses money every year in terms of premiums versus claims payments?
I think the key is to keep everything small and have multiple competing factions, each with little power and lots of mistrust of each other. They say business likes a divided government. Okay, I say we should also have divided businesses, too. They broke Standard Oil and Ma Bell (with the rented telephones) and the various trusts and monopolies, didn’t they? Why do we have too big to fail banks that command bail-outs? Recently, Bank of America just shifted TRILLIONS in potential derivatives liability to a subsidiary that holds FDIC-insured deposits and has access to the Fed discount window…
Poet

185

 
Does anyone here actually work on “Wall Street”. Are you employed by a financial company and go to that location to work? It would be very interesting to know what you and your coworkers are thinking and saying about the protester and their growing movement. I would think it would be seen as pretty ominous.

Travlin

 

186
dimasok wrote: Its funny that everything that is NOT capitalism is automatically seen by everyone as socialism, communism, fascism or utopianism - obviously, everything is seen in a negative light. The fact of the matter is that despite the history of these obsolete systems, not even once did anyone truly attempt to enshrine a system OTHER than capitalism! Everything eventually turned to capitalism and that's why they feel it is inevitable. Of course it is - until the people realize that the same problems lies at the heart of each and every system bound to repeat themselves. It's INSANE to keep doing the same thing and expect different results! I went through the "communist" regime in Russia, but was it really communism? private ownership? check class stratification? check government corruption? check poverty? check elite control the means of production while claiming they don't? check or any other problem you care to mention. It was capitalism masquerading misleadingly as something else (another "ism"). If by "funny" you mean obnoxious and tiresome, then I agree. "Enshrining" a system is indeed part of the problem, as all approaches to economics thus far have relied, to some degree or another, on traditional notions of material value, morality, and a fixed human nature. So far, human history is a cyclical chess game of replacing idiosyncratic management approaches derived from folkways with ever-more bizarre ones. The basic approach has been to establish social institutions in an attempt to modify human behavior in some way favorable for those few who establish said institution. All political systems will have this problem, and all price systems are by definition, political. I.e., subject to special interest control. Not once has a statistically significant number of people adopted a scientific approach to managing their society. An emergent, fluid system rather than an "enshrined" one. I've spent wah-aaayyyy too much time debating with people who, it would seem, feel a need to practice "begging the question" by making circular arguments along the lines of capitalism alone being able to manage resources through trade via a price system. They begin with tautologies based strictly on the definitions of "capitalism," "price system," etc. and jump to a conclusion that does not, by any stretch of the imagination, or, much more importantly, FACTS, follow from the ill-formed and ill-informed hypotheses. It turns out, however, that these same people are often dissatisfied with the present system nonetheless, seemingly on the grounds that what we have is not "true capitalism." Perhaps in an effort--a subconscious one--to cloak their alienation from this system, their desire to see a more "true" manifestation of capitalism seems to stem from a deeply-rooted superiority complex which inevitably reveals itself within prolonged dialogue. I tried to keep that as an existential generalization rather than a universal one, but probably sound like an armchair sociologist anyway. My point is: the number of people who are dissatisfied with this system is much, much larger than the number of people who support the direction of this movement or anything similar. Upon sufficient exposure to the modern understandings of science, particularly evolutionary biology, physics and a good dose of history, I think there's a chance they'll see things a bit differently. Namely: a realization that the individual is not the common gravitational center of the universe; yet, the sacrosanct autonomy of each individual can be maximized if and only if their individual efforts are coordinated cooperatively to that end, for the benefit of all members of society. Otherwise, when each individual must compete for the right to express their economic preferences, the autonomy of others is inevitably trampled by the interference inherent in any system of differential advantage. It's also important to mention the use of extraneous energy (via machines), and the scaling effect it has on each individual's ability to affect their environment, including other people. This explains why, as our collective extraneous energy use has risen and continues to rise, the traditional systems break down in an accelerating fashion as the internal interference mechanisms within them are exasperated.
  This is not a post I wrote, but recently came to a thread within TZM forums.  I thought it was a well articulated post that everyone here might benefit from, if they choose to read it of course.
187

 If the people knew about it, they would demand it.

 Several decades ago, Margaret Thatcher claimed: "There is no alternative". She was referring to capitalism. Today, this negative attitude still persists.   I would like to offer an alternative to capitalism for the American people to consider. Please click on the following link. It will take you to an essay titled: "Home of the Brave?" which was published by the Athenaeum Library of Philosophy:   http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/steinsvold.htm   John Steinsvold
Perhaps in time the so-called dark ages will be thought of as including our own.
--Georg C. Lichtenberg
188

Occupy Wall Street: My One Demand
By Jinger Dixon

October 18, 2011 "Information Clearing House" –   I was recently asked what I thought the “one demand” should be for the OWS protest. That’s a tough question. I’ve seen many lists of the things people are suggesting. Most seem well intended. However, no one demand alone even begins to scratch the surface of what‘s wrong here. In fact, in a way, it points out how far we really are, from seeing where we really are. To sum it all up in one demand seemed impossible, so I decided to try. After much thought, I constructed the following analogy to describe my take on this whole One Demand issue.
Take a map and draw a circle, then say, everyone outside the circle is to have their labor and resources exploited for the benefit of those inside the circle. If you live outside the circle you say, “this system is completely fucked up.” If you live inside the circle you say, “this is capitalism and it’s the best system on earth you should try it it’s awesome. Sure, people outside are suffering, but who gives a fuck about them?” Now as the circle shrinks, as it is designed to do, concentrating accumulated wealth, people begin finding themselves suddenly outside of the circle. They jump up and down and cry foul, but the ones still in the circle say, “tough shit, you were too slow, shoulda run faster to stay inside the circle“. But then, they soon realize that they too are too slow to keep up with the rapidly shrinking circle, and quickly they find themselves left out, so they cry foul. “The system is broken!!!” they decry! But is it? Isn’t this the way the system has always functioned? Why is it now broken just because they, we, no longer reside within the bounds of its benefits? We stand outside the ever shrinking circle, yelling fixes, throwing band-aids, making demands that the ever shrinking circle expand! at least big enough to include us so that we can go back to not giving a fuck about the people outside, but alas, it will not. The circle does not expand, it does not know how. It only knows how to contract, concentrate, condense, like a dark star collapsing in on itself. There is no “demand” that will drag the borders of the circle back around us. And even if you could, would you? Would you go back to fucking the rest of the world to have your cable TV and your steel belted radials? I hope not. I hope the world is ready to say no more. No more. Therefore, since it is my sincere belief that the circle is/was and always will be fucked up, I say, surround them and demand that they collapse in on themselves and disappear into their own black hole.
That is my One Demand.

189

"As far as the ‘requirement for growth’ argument, as suppose capitalism doesnt require growth, but without it a feudal society emerges, with a few super rich owners, and a majority poor workers (with technology it’ll soon be-majority poor/unemployed). Growth in GDP is the only way to better a societies standard of living. Without growth, we see continual deflationary contraction, and with that continual increases in poverty, and with that, continual increases in crime and depravation, for the sake of maintaining an outdated ideological system that is centuries old. "
 

without growth, capitalism turns to feudalism?  What kind of bullshit is that?  You just made that shit up.  Look… you are young, at least I gather that from your post.  Well, I have been making shit for 28 years in high tech industry… and the best ideas have come here, in America, because capitalism allows them to flourish… at least it has so far… and I have my concerns that it won’t in the future.  You really don’t know what you are talking about.  Think about all the things that have been invented here.  Almost everything you can think of.   Think about why that is? It’s a big worlk, right?  Still, we just announced a few weeks ago that the 450mm semiconductor inititiative, funded by companies WW to the tune of several $B, will be centered in NYS.  Why?  I don’t argue that we are headed for something more feudal… only that this is not capitalism… it is crony capitalism… and it will be the end of us if we allow it to continue.  You can comment all you want from the sidelines… but you are not in the mix… so don’t get so arrogant.  My 15 year old daughter thinks she knows it all too… and I will vouch for the fact that she is smarter than I… and you may be too.  

 

Your comments are valid when applied to the monetary system… but capitalism is NOT a monetary system…  separate the two, and you will find your answer.    
 

190

What…?  The rest of the world is incapable of coming up with good ideas?
I own a french car that has hydropneumatic suspension.  I’m yet to drive ANY American car that has decent suspension!
Australians invented:
Refrigerators
Underwater torpedoes
Electric drills
Electronic Pacemaker
Coupé utility
Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer
Solar hot water
Flame ionisation detector
Black box flight recorder
Staysharp knife
RaceCam
Wave-piercing catamaran
Winged Keel (which allowed Aussies to wrest the America’s Cup from you bastards after 130 yrs of ownership!)
Multi-focal contact lens
Scramjet
and I could go on…  what is it about Americans they think they’re the best at everything?

191

Sounds like you have had free market capitalism working there in Australia… did you guys really invent scramjet… 'cause that is just really cool.  My point is really not about America… it is about free market capitalism.  Who invented Mel Gibson?  Love, Jim 

192

[quote=John Steinsvold] If the people knew about it, they would demand it.
 Several decades ago, Margaret Thatcher claimed: "There is no alternative". She was referring to capitalism. Today, this negative attitude still persists.
 
I would like to offer an alternative to capitalism for the American people to consider. Please click on the following link. It will take you to an essay titled: "Home of the Brave?" which was published by the Athenaeum Library of Philosophy:
 
http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/steinsvold.htm
 
John Steinsvold
Perhaps in time the so-called dark ages will be thought of as including our own.
–Georg C. Lichtenberg
[/quote]
There are many necessary jobs that are not fun. People take them in order to earn the money required to do things that are more fun. Take away the reward and the jobs will not be done. Dream on.

193

DTM-Aren’t you being a little touchy?  It’s not to deny other nations don’t come up with great innovations, only that on a comparitive basis a very large number of them were created in the US.  I think the point he was making is that capitalism, as flawed as it may be in some respects, can be a significant driver in innovation.  Australia is considered a capitalist economy, so some of the innovations you mention below may have benefitted from a system where people could invest and invent with relative freedom.  On a personal note, I find it interesting that as the US economy and government got as large as it did, the number of inventions and innovations being produced has decreased. Obviously there are other factors at work, but it’s worth giving some thought.  Anyway, I argue that scale and size has as much (or more) to do with the problems we see in the current capitalist/socialist/crony-capitalist/corporatist/fascist/whatever-the-hell-we’re-calling-it American economic system than anything else.  Perhaps we should be looking at capitalist systems is smaller countries and smaller economies, not just the US.  How about Iceland?  They experienced a huge problem in their capitalist system, but the country was small enough to be responsive enough to its citizens, and the citizens were able to prevent their country from being sold down the river to overseas banks and institutions…
(and FYI scramjets are not an "Australian invention"… Australia has been involved in recent experimental work, jointly with the US, but the first work was done in the US and UK with the first patent established in the United States.  Russia and Australia and other countries have done work on them since then.  At best you can consider it a joint invention, and it’s one that still has yet to go beyond experimental prototypes.)

  • Nickbert
    P.S. - In reference to Jim’s post, who gets the "credit" for Mel Gibson?  We could successfully argue that Australia and the US both share the "credit" for him… however one wishes to interpret that 

What…?  The rest of the world is incapable of coming up with good ideas?
I own a french car that has hydropneumatic suspension.  I’m yet to drive ANY American car that has decent suspension!
Australians invented:
Refrigerators
Underwater torpedoes
Electric drills
Electronic Pacemaker
Coupé utility
Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer
Solar hot water
Flame ionisation detector
Black box flight recorder
Staysharp knife
RaceCam
Wave-piercing catamaran
Winged Keel (which allowed Aussies to wrest the America’s Cup from you bastards after 130 yrs of ownership!)
Multi-focal contact lens
Scramjet
and I could go on…  what is it about Americans they think they’re the best at everything?
[/quote]

194

 I was curious and clicked on the link about Solar Hot Water that you posted and when it showed it was not invented by an Australian I looked at some of the others.  Not sure where you got your list…  Perhaps Wikipedia is lying to me…

[quote=Wikipedia]

In the 11th century, the Muslim physicist and chemist Ibn Sina (latinized name: Avicenna) invented the refrigerated coil, which condenses aromatic vapours.

[/quote]      It does say later in the article that the first ice making machine was invented by a Scotland immigrant living in Australia…

 

 

 

As far as I can tell Dugger was also an American, but I can’t find a good bio - he was at Applied Physics Laboratory at John Hopkins University.

 

195

He’s all yours…  you can quote me for giving him to America!

196

Who knows…  I got that shortened list from Timeline of Australian inventions - Wikipedia

197

I think there is one thing that stands out as the most clear order of business for OWS. The 10 trillion + dollars of tax money being "given away" to banks around the world. That simply must be stopped. And it is not OWS’s fault that this isn’t seen as a focal point - it is the media that edit out this info. The media never discuss the dollars and cents in detail, so they can’t allow the bailouts to be depicted as a coherent issue of OWS - they censor the narative by presenting it as disorganized. Chris Hedges has done a brilliant job presenting OWS to the media: http://www.occupy-wallstreet.com/intellectuals/chris-hedges/

198

While not technically solar hot water Frank Shuman  invention does encapsulate the principle.

On August 20, 1897, Shuman demonstrated a solar engine that worked by reflecting solar energy onto one-foot square boxes filled with ether, which has a lower boiling point than water, and containing black pipes on the inside, which in turn powered a toy steam engine. The tiny steam engine operated continuously for over two years on sunny days next to a pond at the Shuman house.
Shuman built the world’s first solar thermal power station in Meadi, Egypt (1912-1913). Shuman’s plant used parabolic troughs to power a 60-70 horsepower engine that pumped 6,000 gallons of water per minute from the Nile River to adjacent cotton fields.

199

[quote=frobn]While not technically solar hot water Frank Shuman  invention does encapsulate the principle.
[/quote]

[quote=The Encyclopedia of Earth]
Frank Shuman (1862-1918) was an American engineer and solar energy pioneer noted for his work on solar engines, especially those that used solar energy to heat water that would produce steam.
[/quote]
The point DamnTheMatrix said was invented by an Australian , which is why when I read the article he linked to and it said "invented in America" I thought it a bit odd.  It looks like the Wikipedia article he got the list from is not consistent with the rest of Wikipedia - and may be quite wrong since as I checked out a few more items on the list and it appeared to be wrong on them as well.
I’m sure many many things have been invented in Australia (including Mel Gibson ), just not all the items on the list that was posted - which was quite amusing since DamnTheMatrix’s post was intended to show that Australians invent great things.

200

[quote=Jim H]without growth, capitalism turns to feudalism?  What kind of bullshit is that?  You just made that shit up.  Look… you are young, at least I gather that from your post.  Well, I have been making shit for 28 years in high tech industry… and the best ideas have come here, in America, because capitalism allows them to flourish… at least it has so far… and I have my concerns that it won’t in the future.  You really don’t know what you are talking about.  Think about all the things that have been invented here.  Almost everything you can think of.   Think about why that is? It’s a big worlk, right?  Still, we just announced a few weeks ago that the 450mm semiconductor inititiative, funded by companies WW to the tune of several $B, will be centered in NYS.  Why?  I don’t argue that we are headed for something more feudal… only that this is not capitalism… it is crony capitalism… and it will be the end of us if we allow it to continue.  You can comment all you want from the sidelines… but you are not in the mix… so don’t get so arrogant.  My 15 year old daughter thinks she knows it all too… and I will vouch for the fact that she is smarter than I… and you may be too.  Your comments are valid when applied to the monetary system… but capitalism is NOT a monetary system…  separate the two, and you will find your answer.     
[/quote]
 
Good god this argument is getting old, I’ve heard the old ‘what we have aint capitalism I tell ya!’ way too much. Its quite saddening.
You think your experience facilitates some superior knowledge of the fundamentals of capitalism?  What a sad disposition to have, truely an illumination of the standard of thinking accepted within older generations.
I too am a producer, I know all about maintaining my supply with demand, cost efficiency in production, distribution methods as well as pricing mechanisms.  I get the whole capitalism bit, and the only reason anyone is going to argue in religious fervor to support its methodologies is due to cognitive and emotional attachements.  It has little to do with objective, criticial analysis of the situation.
For me to meet my expenses, I have to achieve growth in my production, growth in the demand, and in the process, support destructive, unsustainable, and even exploitative means to do so, and so does every single business in existence. Every purchase you make supports a combination of unsustainable-environmental destruction and human labor exploitation.  The computer you are using required thousands of different processes for it to be produced, including mining/extraction of resources (which are heavily destructive as companies need to maintain cost efficiency, therefore make shortcuts which equate to pollution), distribution (which required large amounts of hydrocarbon burning), etc.
Capitalism needs to maintain the cheapest route possible, no where near the best possible. Its problem is that seeking this cheap route, we create a linear system of extraction, production, consumption, waste, which is impossible to sustain itself on a finite planet. A circular use of resources, where landfills are unheard of, is the only sustainable economic use of finite resources.
Here’s a great quote from the post I shared earlier

I've spent wah-aaayyyy too much time debating with people who, it would seem, feel a need to practice "begging the question" by making circular arguments along the lines of capitalism alone being able to manage resources through trade via a price system. They begin with tautologies based strictly on the definitions of "capitalism," "price system," etc. and jump to a conclusion that does not, by any stretch of the imagination, or, much more importantly, FACTS, follow from the ill-formed and ill-informed hypotheses. It turns out, however, that these same people are often dissatisfied with the present system nonetheless, seemingly on the grounds that what we have is not "true capitalism." Perhaps in an effort--a subconscious one--to cloak their alienation from this system, their desire to see a more "true" manifestation of capitalism seems to stem from a deeply-rooted superiority complex which inevitably reveals itself within prolonged dialogue
And your last bit on "capitalism aint the monetary system" is hilarious, how exactly is capital acquired, or transfered, or used in exchange for labor and or goods, without money?  Capitalism is simply an emotionally loaded term for 'monetary market systems of competition and private ownership of resources'. Whereas all the 'communist' examples people may list are simply varying degrees of monetary market systems with extensive government control. All the arguments that 'only if we had true capitalism' are self serving bias of rhetorical, circular reasoning. What we have is what we got, there never was and never will be a 'true capitalism' through your lense of thinking. Only through addressing its faults (not just inefficient legislative govt, but including the destructive consumption based monetary market system) can we meet true alternatives that allow us to prosper.