Even in its present corrupted and cronyized form, “modern capitalism”—which Deirdre McCloskey defines loosely as “private property and unfettered exchange”—is a goose that lays golden eggs, and not merely for the super-rich. If you disagree, ask yourself how many of those claiming to speak for “the 99%” have smart phones, which Louis XIV couldn’t have bought for all the gold in France
tldr: a lot of occupiers have their hearts in the right place but through clever radicalization and misinformation (even as a supporter I wonder what’s circulating in their cardboard public library) have succumbed to the Democratic echo chamber and believe thinly veiled proto-socialism is the only defense against today’s standard of American capitalism; as though the only alternative to the color black must be its immediate opposite white, giving little attention to the shades of grey between the two. this is the kind of stuff that i agree with “wall street” on when they scoff at protesters. even though i wholly support the protesters. take a deep breath before considering that this is actually possible.
So, reading the article linked, I wonder: Does anyone here seriously believe that the government should not attempt to regulate the financial sector ever, or, in fact, anything? Because that is what I take away from that article.
The poll that author links shows, so it says, that the OWS people are “dangerously out of touch with the american public” and “support radical redistribution of wealth”, when what I read in that article seems like fairly reasonable, if left wing, policy, and not radical in any way at all. Demands to raise taxes on the wealthiest first and on other people later are hardly anything new, and considering taxes are silly low in the USA, hardly shocking. That access to health care is a human right, not a privilege, seems obvious to me, as well.
I am not really sure about the “moderate swing voters who want smaller government and lower taxes, not additional stimulus or interference in the private sector”, either. Is that what people want, after things like the deepwater horizon oil spill and BP weasling their way out of doing much about it, and after a global financial meltdown caused by predatory lending - these just being the major USA-related examples I can think of offhand?
I’m going to go ahead and say this: There is a moderate, sane position here, and it is certainly not the extremist US libertarian position that article, it seems to me, is advocating. Nor is it “smashing capitalism”, which some, certainly the most outspoken - as these things go - but by no means all or even a majority (The poll linked does not show things are either way) of OWS protesters want to do. It is a social-democratic state, with a free - but regulated - market, with laws enabling competition (Yes, enabling - in some markets, there will be no competition unless there is at least some regulation, this is a fairly obvious thing, but it apparently needs to be said) and protecting consumers and the state itself. That is because “capitalism”, in it’s present corrupted and cronyized form - a form which it is bound to slip into without regulation keeping it on its toes - does not lay any kind of golden eggs. People working for companies which make things do. Capitalism is supposed to incentivize doing so. Right now, it often doesn’t do this very well. If you think it does, ask yourself how much potential is wasted by institutional laziness caused by monopolies, huge patent pools and madmen repeadetly wrecking finance in general so badly that it starts being hard to get a loan to start a company.
The actual demands of at least parts of the movement, which a majority seem to share (You will not get concrete universally shared demands out of a movement like this. There will be internal discussion and people who do not agree. This is a good thing and any party or movement where this is not happening is probably full of crap.) are things like introducing a tax on financial transactions and splitting commercial and investment banking properly, and these go exactly in that direction.
P.S. if the most quotable line from an article is a dig at people presenting a message as opposed to the message…
ding ding ding we have a winner. the smaller dog barks loudest, so the fringe on both sides is going to sound as though they represent the majority simply because they’re yelling the loudest.
mainstream media (who like any sane worker holds the interests of their employer over the interests of their customer) has pushed for this group to formalize a list of complaints and grievances and identify their position as a whole, so that they can be more easily generalized and appeased. “There will be internal discussion and people who do not agree, this is a good thing” is not, in most voting pools, how either sides of US politics see their fields. Adherence to the central managing powers’ message is key to staying popular and staying alive politically, so the amount of open, genuine, policy-influencing disagreement within parties is laughably nonexistent. Every now and then there’s a major internal disagreement but then two weeks later it’s tabled for the next big thing of the now and magically a “party consensus” comes out. So much so that not only do republican candidates hardly do enough to differentiate each other on major issues, stances between democrats and republicans on actual issues are often nearly identical, the only difference being anti-opposition rhetoric.
the problem with regulation is that it’s too sparse and too easily ignored. the fed will not allow itself to be regulated by the government despite being, despite what its name might imply, a private entity wholly separate from the government. oil can pay their way out of regulation, same with finance. practicing sound regulation is often an altruistic pipe dream. certainly the government should regulate the finance sector, but then again, regulators should have smelled trouble in fraudulent securities and credit default swaps designed to fail and didn’t. whether bribes or just sheer stupidity are to blame is something we may never know, but the blame for recent economic problems should fall at least partly on the regulatory offices that allowed toxic assets to accumulate to the point of a major collapse.
(Source: awizardharry)
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greengang reblogged this from velveetabloodfucker and added:
Ehhh, I’m not so sure that what they’re pushing for, or what they might get is really proto-socialism (which may also be...
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awizardharry reblogged this from bapeonion and added:
with all this talk...“radical change”?...system works...
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deejberndt liked this
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mno00 liked this
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bapeonion reblogged this from halcy and added:
ding ding ding we have a winner. the smaller dog barks loudest, so the fringe on both sides is going to sound as though...
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nazerine reblogged this from halcy and added:
The problem the US has is that there are people here who don’t believe that human life is worth anything (can’t afford...
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halcy reblogged this from inoshi and added:
So, reading the article linked, I wonder: Does anyone here seriously believe that the government should not attempt to...
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inoshi reblogged this from bapeonion
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glopdemon liked this
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muswagga-atatwerk reblogged this from ihavenomouseandimuststream
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ihavenomouseandimuststream reblogged this from awizardharry
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awizardharry posted this
