The Occupation of Wall Street Spreads

[Flagg]

What, people discovered swift internet self-censorship by the "free" media? I've already said that this shit is downright fucking ubiqutous in Russia (in fact, one of the articles titled "Russia leads by the number of billionaires in Europe" was changed during a timeframe of 15 minutes into "The richest Russian man has been determined" and "Russian pension age to be raised, says Minister of Finance" was changed to "Russian pension reform progress debated" in ca. 20 minutes).

Free media, my ass.

Well that's what happens when you live in a corrupt oligarchy with little to no free press. And apparently Russia, too.

[Simon_Jester]

The press is free- it freely chooses to self-censor inconvenient stories that might get the people stirred up about abuses of power. Giving control of the press to the owner of the press is the very definition of a free press; that doesn't mean the free press can be depended upon to report abuses of power, if there are no mechanisms in place to keep presses out of the hands of abusers.

[Siege]

Giving control of the press to the owner of the press is the very definition of a free press.

No it isn't. A reporter beholden to the interests of the owner of his newspaper, radio station or whatever is no more free than a reporter beholden to a government censorship directorate or a corporate PR department. Freedom of the press means that journalists can pursue research, fact-finding missions and field contacts and share their findings with the public without fear of reprisal from an owner, a government or a corporation. Reprisal is reprisal is reprisal, and journalists living in fear of reprisal, whether it comes by summary firing or a knock on the door at four in the morning, are not by definition "free press".

[Todeswind]

Apparently some retired marines are coming to help the protestors.

“I’m heading up there tonight in my dress blues. So far, 15 of my fellow marine buddies are meeting me there, also in Uniform. I want to send the following message to Wall St and Congress:I didn’t fight for Wall St. I fought for America. Now it’s Congress’ turn.

My true hope, though, is that we Veterans can act as first line of defense between the police and the protester. If they want to get to some protesters so they can mace them, they will have to get through the Fucking Marine Corps first. Let’s see a cop mace a bunch of decorated war vets.I apologize now for typos and errors.

Typing this on iPhone whilst heading to NYC. We can organize once we’re there. That’s what we do best.If you see someone in uniform, gather together.

A formation will be held tonight at 10PM.

We all took an oath to uphold, protect and defend the constitution of this country. That’s what we will be doing.

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/10/01 ... ll-street/

[Zaune]

They'll be ex-Marines pretty quickly if they turn up in uniform, I expect. Or in civilian clothes for that matter, at least if they get hauled off to the cells when another fight breaks out.

[K. A. Pital]

Giving control of the press to the owner of the press is the very definition of a free press.

No it isn't. A reporter beholden to the interests of the owner of his newspaper, radio station or whatever is no more free than a reporter beholden to a government censorship directorate or a corporate PR department. Freedom of the press means that journalists can pursue research, fact-finding missions and field contacts and share their findings with the public without fear of reprisal from an owner, a government or a corporation. Reprisal is reprisal is reprisal, and journalists living in fear of reprisal, whether it comes by summary firing or a knock on the door at four in the morning, are not by definition "free press".

Yeah, I agree. "Free press" right now is no longer "free press [from the private corporation X]" but free journalists who can't be threatened by firings and crap like that. Thankfully, civil journalism is developing.

[Lord Zentei]

Sigh. Twenty points to wade through.

I think we need to append these together... I'm cutting out points on agreement, and the quibbling about whether it's possible to calculate GDP in a command economy. While I hold that it's possible to estimate in various ways, it's not terribly central to either position.

Did you miss the part where they and their buddies got hundreds of billions of dollars in handouts? Or did you miss the part where a government sanctioned monopoly - the federal reserve - can give out an unknowable quantity of free money to their well-connected buddies?

That's true and undeniably the worst case of hypocrisy However, I was more referring to the pre-crisis situation where certain companies were expected to have a certain value by market players and then this value just vanished overnight. Yes, after that the government stepped in with the bailouts and demonstrated their true allegiance to the ruling class, but... before that - the government did not set the stock prices for either of those banks and companies.

The pre-crisis situation is no more free-market than the bailouts were, especially in the case of the banks and the financial companies. There are several reasons for this, but three spring to mind as being particularly important:

First, there's a reason the Federal Reserve is so hated by libertarians and those who are libertarian-leaning. As you're no doubt aware, when the government prints money the result is inflation, because of the increased money supply. This shifts wealth to the holders of new money, both because their relative share of the overall money supply increases, and because prices are sticky - they don't change rapidly in the short run, allowing the holders of new money to profit quickly. In other words, it's a kind of tax. As it happens, the Fed is authorized to produce any amount of fiat money it deems necessary, and hand it out to any persons or companies it sees fit. Of course, the well-connected financial companies and banks are almost always the ones to benefit from such windfalls. This is literally a tax that special interest groups can levy on the general population, and has nothing to do with free markets since those who lose money (the people the Federal Reserve is empowered to de-facto tax) don't gain anything in return for their losses, nor did they consent to them.

The second reason the way the commercial banks and investment banks were united, permitting people's savings to be used as collateral by speculators (regardless of the wishes of the people who owned the money). Here's an important point: property rights apply to average people too.

Third, poorly drafted regulations intended to cut back on the power of the powerful can have a negative effect in practice. While they cost powerful corporations money, they are capable of handling such costs better than smaller ones, and as such these regulations can actually reduce potential competitors from challenging them. Lobbyists write a lot of the regulations, and Congressmen often don't bother even reading all of the stuff they vote on.

Or how government regulation is subverted to their interests? These sources of cash are NOT free-market. It is NOT "silly" to reject them as being anti-market.

I asked about the market evaluation of their value, though, not the sources of their cash after the bailouts, which is pretty much clear as day is nothing but a massive transfer of public funds to the failed mega-instititutions.

Their market value can be inflated with free money granted from the Federal Reserve, and due to regulations which are supposed to curb the power of big money actually harming smaller agents more (since they have less easy of a time getting past regulatory barriers than their more powerful counterparts).

Not so. I said that in order to minimize suffering, you're better off maximizing production (other things being equal). That does not mean that minimizing suffering requires a market, merely that a market is a very powerful mechanism to achieve a vital prerequisite for that goal. Moreover, it is meaningless to speak of morality mandating a system to achieve such and such an outcome without first specifying what people are entitled to. You claim that all people want to minimize suffering - well and good. So what? That doesn't mean that they can make demands of anyone unless you assert that they have a right to do so.

Oh, okay, that is more well-explained. And of course people have "a right" to demand to lower suffering from their rulers, who are supposed by the very virtue of the democratic system to be accountable to them and execute a utilitarian policy ))).

The issue though is when one right cancels another. But that's nothing to do with the basic point of disagreement, i.e. whether rights-based systems throw morality out the window at the outset (they don't).

Moreover, who can decide what causes a person to endure suffering but they themselves?

Seriously, that is an argument from stupidity. For example, a person who cannot read and write, but is very pious, concludes that the bad harvest was due to a witch and then tortures and burns to death a girl in the neighbor house. An educated and literate person understands that the bad harvest was due to a pest that the uneducated inquisitor did not notice, and in fact, could not notice or even comprehend this bug. Who is more qualified to decide what caused the person to endure suffering - the person himself or the other person? *laughs* Yes, my arguments from technocracy are cruel. But no less are the arguments for a complete and utter submission to the popular will, which might be influenced by stupidity and lack of education more than anything. Needless to say that Nigeria ranked good on some "happiness indexes", but I doubt malnourished people deserve to be malnourished even if they're stupid enough to classify themselves as "happy" or perhaps do so as a psychological defensive reaction from teh abyss of suffering that surrounds their every step.

No, it's really not. The point is that people's tastes and priorities differ - while one person might demand higher pay, another demands more time with his family and so on. Incidentally, I don't subscribe to arguments from a submission to the popular will at all - and nether do classical liberals in general. To the contrary, the popular will is often ignorant and additionally indifferent to the needs of the minority, hence the importance of the rights of the individual to balance the will of the populous.

How are you going to achieve this general goal without allowing each person to define for themselves what they want? In particular, how are you going to achieve the elimination of coercion (which seems to be an issue of some importance to you - good for you on that point, BTW) if people themselves cannot decide what they want?

That is a long story which can't be told short. I have two conflicting positions, one being technocracy and the other radical democracy. They are not very well combined, except, unless, I would espouse some sort of theory that the "scientists" should take over and introduce a technocratic system that would raise the educational and material level of the people's existence and thereby destroy the very grounds for its own existence. It is really a hard question, because progress triumphs through coercion and existing power classes never give up their power willingly (which posits a natural problem for any putative revolution or evolution...). It is a crappy point where my theory is a bit deficient. I prefer to think that my future PhD might help me to develop one.

Ah, so. Well, perhaps we can then discuss it when that happens. But whatever.

And my point was that Cuba has not eliminated suffering. It has only spread it out evenly. And I find it perplexing that you don't associate prosperity with reducing suffering.

Cuba has eliminated the extremes of suffering. When everyone has water, you can start making sure everyone is fed. When everyone is fed, make sure everyone is clothed. And so on and so forth. Elimination of suffering is a gradual step which starts from eliminating the most extreme forms of suffering - radically! - and then building up from there. Prosperity can be conducive to the elimination of extreme forms of suffering only if there is such a goal and distributive systems achieve them. Otherwise a generic total "prosperity" of a society with a handful of well-fed oligarchs and millions of malnourished citizens is an absolutely vainglorious thing. I did not glorify poverty - in fact, it is the worst thing on earth - but noted that poverty cannot be an excuse for maintaining extremes of suffering. Even a poor and struggling state can eliminate the extremes of suffering. Richer states have no excuse.

That depends on efficiency also. If you achieve only a very limited success for everyone, how do you know that this is better than a adequate success for most people and less success for some (and high success for a few)? Though I surmise this means that you would Walk Away From Omelas, correct?

Achieving zero child malnourishment is a fine achievement, but not the only achievement that a society can make. Notwithstanding the fact that Cuba is a place people are eagerly trying to escape from not to, and that other Latin American countries have a greater prosperity overall, even though they haven't focused on several very specific socio-economic objectives that they can point to and crow at their more prosperous neighbors.

See, this betrays a perception. For example, a certain person grows up non-malnourished in Cuba. But he cannot become rich. And so he decides that now, after using up the resources Cuban society spent, he can go off to elsewhere and try himself there. Be richer, live better. That does not detract from the Cuban achievement, it underscores their failure to ensure the next stage: universally high life standard for all. Given their embargo, I can't really say their failure is a fully internal thing, but I tend to err on the side of caution and always demand impossible of the communists. The communists should be able to turn a small island locked by enemies into an economic hyperpower that will crush all enemies, into a communist version of the British Empire's all-conquering metropole in the Albion.

And it is certainly not the only achivement to make, but it is an achievement which should be made AHEAD of other achievements. No wealth of the oligarchs excuses extreme suffering such as malnourishment.

IMHO, the failure of the next stage is in no small part because of lack of economic efficiency maximizing production. But a fair point on the embargo, nonetheless. Of course, it's not like every country respects it.

A last point to make - escaping from somewhere only signifies relative levels of poverty. A lot of people escape from countries that are not Cuba to the USA, too. Mexicans, but also Bolivians, etc. try to breach the visa barriers and escape their nations. Unlike Cuba, they don't have a command economy, so it seems that their "greater prosperity" is also very, very questionable in and of itself.

That's true. Though I doubt that Bolivia is a good example of any system.

You mean it's trivial? How is it so?

Because property itself becomes a source of power in a market society, and as we know without power you cannot coerce. You don't necessarily coerce with power as well, but power is a pre-requisite for coercion. I cannot coerce my employer, but he can coerce me if he so desires.

That doesn't mean that you can deal utilitarian harm to others without transgressing against their rights, unless you're defining "utilitarian harm" very broadly, or their rights very poorly.

But you need to define "suffering reduction" too - seems to me that you can't exactly avoid adding to that concept as time goes by.

The reduction of suffering is progressive by itself. Elimination of the worst forms of suffering is just the beginning. You progress until everything that can be described as suffering (at least in a biological sense) is eliminated. After that, yes there'll be a massive huge redefinition which will require it to change to "pursuie of happiness", and at that stage universality most likely will fly out of the window. But that will be in another society, much more developed and much more enlightened. I dread to say but I fear I will not see it.

I don't know that it is possible at all, since the path to it and it's conception is too vague. No offense, but I'm sort of reminded of Karl Marx's vague allusions to Utopia and the lack of rigor as to how it was to be achieved, except that the previous society needed to be bulldozed out of the way to make it happen.

Meanwhile, the underlying premise of "enlightened self-interest" and the basic goal of "pursuit of happiness" as long as you don't transgress against other people's pursuit of same is rather more flexible, especially since different people value different things.

It is "more flexible" only in one sense - it is easier to apply to existing primitive systems of social organizations, it does not require radical change, it does not require fundamentally different super-efficient productive systems and corresponding relations of property, it does not require much change aside from purely political and institutional change. It is closer to what we have now and it is more easily achievable.

My dream is higher. As for "people valuing what's best for themselves", that is not something I entirely agree with. As any communist, I understand the necessity of both democracy and technocracy and why those arise. The example of the illiterate peasant killing the witch is more than apt.

If people don't value what's best for themselves, then that's either due to masochism or due to lack of information. In the latter case, people can be educated. In the former, why force them to be something other than what they want?

You don't arbitrarily define your own rights, they are part of the model and are supposed to be reflected in the constitution of the country you live in. You define your desires, which is what the market is for, and you assert your rights, which is what the courts system is for. But having the right to a fair trial and representation in it is among the first rights anyone possesses. It's one of the foundational rights, in fact (i.e. one that makes the others possible).

Um... isn't the constitution subject to amends by plebiscite or even far more simply by government action in legislative branch? You don't just "assert" existing rights - you demand new rights and create new rights. It is preposterous to view rights as external to the person, that is bullshit. By that logic the slaves wouldn't have any rights, and the blacks too, since they would only be able to define their desires that would never materialize into rights.

That's not so. People create and define new rights constantly. The right to a fair trial doesn't make other rights possible. You can have a right to a fair trial and yet be a slave. Formally there's no contradiction. You can technically have an independent courts system and combine that with slavery. Or apartheid, for example.

Court trial rights are not automatically creating other rights. And the opposite is also possible - there can be no right to a fair trial, but you can get new rights for your nationality in a non-fair system where courts are not fair as well. A revolution of natives against colonizers to gain new rights might not immediately produce a workable system of fair court representation, but the natives will get new rights.

Slaves did have "rights" in the sense of natural rights, that were violate by the slave trade. I think that this point we're disagreeing on is due to the fact that there's a difference between rights as recognized by the society and rights as something a person is entitled to by dint of being a sapient being. As for the point on courts, they don't enable other rights, that's technically true, but other rights aren't manifest unless people can get a redress of their grievances before a court.

Are you talking about the CEOs of the companies that were bailed out by the government, or companies in general?

The parachutes were agreed on before the bailouts even came into play. Yes, it is stupid that they weren't redefined, but I think we all agree that the initial problem was the very creation of the parachutes? And that did not require bailouts. It was a sector-endemic plague.

The parachutes are part of a problem in corporate culture where managers and directors have increasing influence in the decisions of this sort at the expense of the shareholders (i.e. the actual owners of the capital). While it is true that many managers also are shareholders, that's not a universal case, and in any case, they don't own all the shares. In other words, a culture of bureaucracy that's taking power away from those who are meant to wield it.

In any case, when I'm talking about "eliminating poor performers" that certainly doesn't entail killing the poor (obviously). It means that companies that perform poorly are put out of business.

Well, that is good. At least bodies corporate differ in "rights" from individuals - the individual has an absolute right to life, whereas a body corporate does not. That's something I could agree with.

Indeed. In fact, the legal fiction that corporations are "people" is an unfortunate one, at least the way it was implemented. The idea was that the corporation was legally distinct from the people who work for it as well as from those who own it. It's obviously more practical that way, so you don't have to shut a company down just because the owner goes to jail or something stupid of that nature. So, distinct liability and distinct finances. Not that they have the same rights as actual people. Additionally, from the pro-business side of things, it helps undermine awareness that taxes on companies are, ultimately, taxes on people - and that these people are split between owners, workers and customers. It's not like corporations are some kind of powerful supermind hidden away in a fortress somewhere a la GLaDOS or Skynet or whatever.

No, the question is whether rights based systems can do so, and whether basing your worldview on rights "throws morality out the window" at the outset, as you contended. Rights are ensured by independent courts and rule of law. Competition is meant to weed out inefficient service providers, and reduce the cost of production. Regardless, competition does reduce utilitarian harm between partners in a trade, since the harmed party can end the deal and move to the competitors. What you're pointing to are examples of externalities, not refutations of the market model.

Rights are a dynamically evolving body. Someone would not consider women fit to vote a century ago. That right came into being because people (a) first theoretically envisioned it (b) desired it (c) acted to create it and then enshrine in corresponding documents. As one can note, rights are not primordial and they come into being of people's desires. My position is that by picking a "primal rights" view one ignores the transient nature of rights. A husband's right to spousal rape, by the way, was extinguished by modern law. Replaced with the right of the wife to file for rape in case of the above. So one person lost a right, the other got a right. Rights change fast and sometimes chaotically. I do not think today's rights are a good framework; as any set of static rights, they will be subject to mass changes, and a lot faster than suffering will cease to exist on Earth.

The concept of suffering is equally transient, and subject to cultural bias. For every "right" that you care to mention that has changed with time, I can cite a perception of "suffering" that has changed as well as people's attitudes towards it. Remember that story where the RCC kidnapped ridiculous numbers of infants from their single mothers? A point was raised there that people of the time could seriously have considered that to be in the best interests of the child and mother! But overall, I think that the issue of whether one should be define things in terms of rights versus suffering is at bottom one of whether one trusts people to be independent and informed and masters of their own destiny, or whether one embraces paternalism and collective values. Sorry if that seems a bit of a loaded way of putting it, but that's just the way I see it.

What are you talking about? What authoritarian is in control of economic matters?

The owner of the private property is in full control of said property and economic decisions related to the same. Owners of private property, collectively, control the entirety of productive property in society - personal consumption excluded, although there are nice examples of personal consumption items and means of production blurring together, like computers.

Quite so. Though that's hardly "authoritarian" outside of a legally mandated monopoly.

With regards to your point, of course it is possible to point out that democratic methods are ineffective at making certain types of decisions. Neither is it warranted or reasonable to demand democratic decisions in all things - obviously you can have democracy without everything being decided on in a democratic way. If you permit private property on any level, then that follows naturally. Besides which, democratic systems are a method of organizing interaction of individuals, not a mechanism for creating a collective intelligence (<- hyperbole). It strikes me that this kind of thinking shows that those who use "pro-democracy" arguments are no less hidebound than the people they criticize for thinking in terms of markets all the time. Perhaps more-so, since at least marketeers generally are pro-democracy in some things.

*laughs* See a few paragraphs above. I have two tendencies: radical-democratic and technocratic. But you chose to ask me why I feel that "I know better than the person" and then you explained it: democracy is not replacing intelligence.

I actually meant "why do you know better than the average person with respect to that specific person's needs and desires", not with respect to how they might vote in democratic elections, where they don't have first-hand information about the situation. In the latter case I doubt we are in disagreement.

Oh, wow. So what happens if the person who buys the company is incompetent and brings it to ruin? That's your counterargument? What happens then is that the company is ruined. Same thing that happens whenever some incompetent buffoon takes over any management in any system.

That is an example of how the interests of a person and a body corporate can diverge even if the person owns the body corporate. And of course, the interests of an idiot or of a competitor's plant who has to sabotage and destroy the body corporate will significantly diverge from the interests of the body corporate. The plant would be hostile, while the idiot would simply have too primitive interests to adequately manage the company. And Jobs? His interests diverged, so he just sold the company. )

No, it is not. It's an example of incompetence, nothing more. It doesn't mean that the person wants to destroy his own company or that he benefits more from doing so than from running it properly, or from selling it to someone who can do so. The one case where this scenario might come in a company which isn't doomed to collapse regardless of what anyone does is when the company gets sold to someone for less than its market price, like what happened in the "privatization" of Russia (read, the "theft" of Russia), when people who want to buy aren't forced to bid against each other. This is one important reason why it's desirable to sell things to the highest bidder, incidentally: it reduces the probability that he'll benefit from liquidation.

[Simon_Jester]

That depends on efficiency also. If you achieve only a very limited success for everyone, how do you know that this is better than a adequate success for most people and less success for some (and high success for a few)? Though I surmise this means that you would Walk Away From Omelas, correct?

Heh. This isn't really an agreement, or a disagreement, but...

"At times one of the adolescent girls or boys who go to see the child does not go home to weep or rage, does not, in fact, go home at all. Sometimes also a man or woman much older falls silent for a day or two, and then leaves home. These people go out into the street, and walk down the street alone. They keep walking, and walk straight out of the city of Omelas, through the beautiful gates. They keep walking across the farmlands of Omelas. Each one goes alone, youth or girl, man or woman. Night falls; the traveler must pass down village streets, between the houses with yellow-lit windows, and on out into the darkness of the fields. Each alone, they go west or north, towards the mountains. They go on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas."

The story is a good parable.

[Lord Zentei]

Seeming to know doesn't mean that they do.

[Todeswind]

An interesting little tidbit.

[K. A. Pital]

The pre-crisis situation is no more free-market than the bailouts were, especially in the case of the banks and the financial companies. There are several reasons for this, but three spring to mind as being particularly important:

First, there's a reason the Federal Reserve is so hated by libertarians and those who are libertarian-leaning. As you're no doubt aware, when the government prints money the result is inflation, because of the increased money supply. This shifts wealth to the holders of new money, both because their relative share of the overall money supply increases, and because prices are sticky - they don't change rapidly in the short run, allowing the holders of new money to profit quickly. In other words, it's a kind of tax. As it happens, the Fed is authorized to produce any amount of fiat money it deems necessary, and hand it out to any persons or companies it sees fit. Of course, the well-connected financial companies and banks are almost always the ones to benefit from such windfalls. This is literally a tax that special interest groups can levy on the general population, and has nothing to do with free markets since those who lose money (the people the Federal Reserve is empowered to de-facto tax) don't gain anything in return for their losses, nor did they consent to them.

The second reason the way the commercial banks and investment banks were united, permitting people's savings to be used as collateral by speculators (regardless of the wishes of the people who owned the money). Here's an important point: property rights apply to average people too.

Third, poorly drafted regulations intended to cut back on the power of the powerful can have a negative effect in practice. While they cost powerful corporations money, they are capable of handling such costs better than smaller ones, and as such these regulations can actually reduce potential competitors from challenging them. Lobbyists write a lot of the regulations, and Congressmen often don't bother even reading all of the stuff they vote on.

Poorly drafted regulations existed well before the Federal Reserve came into being, and the ability of powerful companies to "wade their way" through regulations at the expense of their less lucky competitors likewise predate the age. That libertarian argument has never been very compelling. The second reason is a more compelling one, but - am sorry, everybody signed an agreement with his or her bank fully knowing that this bank can use their money in such-and-such fashion. In fact, if they were so willing, upon learning that the bank is an investment bank, they could have taken their money elsewhere to a bank that wouldn't be able to use it as collateral. I am sorry, but that simply does not follow. In the theory of the rational consumer (don't tell people what they want, don't tell people how to use their money!) - that is simply not possible. Are you trying to say that in some cases you should, in fact, dictate how someone's money may be used on a government level? Because that's what the separation barrier between investment and savings is. As the point below is the same, I'm simply appending it.

The issue though is when one right cancels another. But that's nothing to do with the basic point of disagreement, i.e. whether rights-based systems throw morality out the window at the outset (they don't).

You can cancel the rights of a person and even destroy them if it is necessary. Like I said, the right to spousal rape or the right to stone women can be extinguished or infringed upon. I don't see a problem. A right is only reflecting the current level of social development. With progress, one set of rights is extinguished and another comes into being.

No, it's really not. The point is that people's tastes and priorities differ - while one person might demand higher pay, another demands more time with his family and so on. Incidentally, I don't subscribe to arguments from a submission to the popular will at all - and nether do classical liberals in general. To the contrary, the popular will is often ignorant and additionally indifferent to the needs of the minority, hence the importance of the rights of the individual to balance the will of the populous.

So in your idea, you can't dictate to a person what is the reason for his suffering, to make him do pest control instead of going and burning witches, which is the most he can understand at his given level of knowledge and cultural development? That is absolving yourself of responsibility - "if people are idiots, let them be idiots". That is not a reasonable attitude towards society or an attitude which seeks to make society better at all.

Ah, so. Well, perhaps we can then discuss it when that happens. But whatever.

I maintain that technocracy and democracy are just instruments to a cause. If we are talking about a highly advanced and educated population, there is little need for a technocracy. If we are talking about a bunch of illiterate peasants, there's a lot of need for technocracy. Something like that.

That depends on efficiency also. If you achieve only a very limited success for everyone, how do you know that this is better than a adequate success for most people and less success for some (and high success for a few)? Though I surmise this means that you would Walk Away From Omelas, correct?

Oh, not only. I would walk away from Omelas and start gathering weapons to annihilate their cruel system. If you once again ask me why I am seeing myself fit to judge, I'm afraid the anwer would be "I can't just look at human suffering and accept it as such".

IMHO, the failure of the next stage is in no small part because of lack of economic efficiency maximizing production. But a fair point on the embargo, nonetheless. Of course, it's not like every country respects it.

Yeah, most do though, and I doubt Cuba is going to become the Next Big Thing from trading with Venezuela. And the failure of the "next stage" is also observed in most Latin American economies, it is universal to them. None of them is a global superpower with a high life standard as far as I gathered. The point below is essentially the same, so skipped once again.

That doesn't mean that you can deal utilitarian harm to others without transgressing against their rights, unless you're defining "utilitarian harm" very broadly, or their rights very poorly.

I already demonstrated how in fact you can deal utilitarian harm to others even if their rights are not defined very poorly. If someone annihilates a competing company in a price war, it is highly unlikely he even for a second thinks about the fates of people in the annihilated competitor. Same goes for competition or larger levels, e.g. international, of course.

I don't know that it is possible at all, since the path to it and it's conception is too vague. No offense, but I'm sort of reminded of Karl Marx's vague allusions to Utopia and the lack of rigor as to how it was to be achieved, except that the previous society needed to be bulldozed out of the way to make it happen.

Marx actually never considered communism to be any sort of utopia. Not any more than capitalism would be a utopia by feudal standards. But I may desire to bulldoze the previous society - that is a matter of preference. I have seen too much evil to remain blind to it, to say "Well, but it still deserves a chance". It does not. If someone wants to beat women with stones, I will beat him until he stops even thinking about it. If someone wants a New Dark Age, I will push him into a New Enlightment, even against his will. If someone wants to keep his primitive industry, I will destroy it for the sake of the Ultra-Industrial Revolution, which would create a new industry fundamentally superior to the past. If someone wants to live his pastoral life, behind which the cruelties and ugly grimasses of the traditional society hide, I will pull him out of it and destroy his idillia. I am the new Jacobin. Amusing the poor, consciously consuming, supporting the status quo, maintaining the system? Fuck it. The real humanist is not the one who helps the poor; it is he who abolishes poverty. Not one who helps the hungry; he who abolishes hunger. I am not going to throw my ideals into the rubbish bin simply because someone said "That's impossible".

If people don't value what's best for themselves, then that's either due to masochism or due to lack of information. In the latter case, people can be educated. In the former, why force them to be something other than what they want?

If people can be educated, you admit that they and their desires can be reformed and transformed. Their desires are not some sort of constant thing given from outside. He who desired to kill witches will no longer do so if he is properly educated since school. He who wants to exploit his fellow humans will no longer want to do so if he cannot fathom the concepts. If people can be transformed into better people, people who desire something else than they did when they were dark and uneducated, so can society be transformed, as it is nothing but the sum of all people living in it. And education can come with violence. Ataturk did not secularize Turkey by standing at the side. Islamist clerics incited their followers to kill school teachers in Soviet Central Asia. The battle for the mind is often the battle fought with weapons of war.

Slaves did have "rights" in the sense of natural rights, that were violate by the slave trade. I think that this point we're disagreeing on is due to the fact that there's a difference between rights as recognized by the society and rights as something a person is entitled to by dint of being a sapient being. As for the point on courts, they don't enable other rights, that's technically true, but other rights aren't manifest unless people can get a redress of their grievances before a court.

Like I said, political rights can manifest before the courts. An electoral right in a de-colonized nation can manifest itself before the new government sets up courts. The issue of rights springing up is not as easy as "Make courts, get other rights". Sometimes it is "get political rights >> get all other rights, including courts".

The parachutes are part of a problem in corporate culture where managers and directors have increasing influence in the decisions of this sort at the expense of the shareholders (i.e. the actual owners of the capital). While it is true that many managers also are shareholders, that's not a universal case, and in any case, they don't own all the shares. In other words, a culture of bureaucracy that's taking power away from those who are meant to wield it.

You said yourself that this is but a natural consequence of people who are not willing to run the company personally, but still willing to make money (the owners of capital) hiring smart people to do it for them, as this is "far easier than liquidating the company and getting funds out of it". Now you are unhappy. Why? It is a natural development of capitalism, which you acknowledged.

Indeed. In fact, the legal fiction that corporations are "people" is an unfortunate one, at least the way it was implemented. The idea was that the corporation was legally distinct from the people who work for it as well as from those who own it. It's obviously more practical that way, so you don't have to shut a company down just because the owner goes to jail or something stupid of that nature. So, distinct liability and distinct finances. Not that they have the same rights as actual people. Additionally, from the pro-business side of things, it helps undermine awareness that taxes on companies are, ultimately, taxes on people - and that these people are split between owners, workers and customers. It's not like corporations are some kind of powerful supermind hidden away in a fortress somewhere a la GLaDOS or Skynet or whatever.

Heh. I agree. But man, corporations are powerful. Not Skynet-level powerful, but they are pretty cool when you look at some of the shit they pull. It sort of reminds me of the British Empire, a combination of ugliness and magnificence in one entity.

The concept of suffering is equally transient, and subject to cultural bias. For every "right" that you care to mention that has changed with time, I can cite a perception of "suffering" that has changed as well as people's attitudes towards it. Remember that story where the RCC kidnapped ridiculous numbers of infants from their single mothers? A point was raised there that people of the time could seriously have considered that to be in the best interests of the child and mother! But overall, I think that the issue of whether one should be define things in terms of rights versus suffering is at bottom one of whether one trusts people to be independent and informed and masters of their own destiny, or whether one embraces paternalism and collective values. Sorry if that seems a bit of a loaded way of putting it, but that's just the way I see it.

Yeah. To be fair, I'm not really surprised that we look at it differently. Perceptions of suffering do change, but at least some of it is biologically quantifiable. The psychological issues (which is basically what the RCC argumented, and which I find a bullshit argument) - like I said, I'm not willing to be universalist here and demand that once everyone is fed and clothed, people should also follow some pre-determined path to "psychological happiness". No, that is for themselves to decide. My task is to provide nobody is on the extreme downside, there's no Omelas-like situation. After that - I really hope the people would be educated enough to be able to reach psychological happiness and develop their own nature as they see fit.

Quite so. Though that's hardly "authoritarian" outside of a legally mandated monopoly.

Well, it creates hierachical structures from the start - that is what I was arguing about. And that's why I'm not sure communism would look like a typical command economy, too. Hierarchical structures are prone to problems. Capitalism's companies are miniature economies; there is not much point in combining them into one unless you really know why you're doing it and what you're going to achieve.

I actually meant "why do you know better than the average person with respect to that specific person's needs and desires", not with respect to how they might vote in democratic elections, where they don't have first-hand information about the situation. In the latter case I doubt we are in disagreement.

Well, like I said above, I am not concerning myself with desires of the higher order while there is still someone suffering extremely in our world. Give him at least a level of support to ensure stable survival, and after that we can talk about what to do next. And sometimes I do feel that this question is somewhat strange. Why do people let economists and financiers in banks manage their money? Maybe because these financiers are more well-informed? What's the difference between me and a financier - that I don't seek my own enrichment as well? I guess that's the only thing.

No, it is not. It's an example of incompetence, nothing more. It doesn't mean that the person wants to destroy his own company or that he benefits more from doing so than from running it properly, or from selling it to someone who can do so. The one case where this scenario might come in a company which isn't doomed to collapse regardless of what anyone does is when the company gets sold to someone for less than its market price, like what happened in the "privatization" of Russia (read, the "theft" of Russia), when people who want to buy aren't forced to bid against each other. This is one important reason why it's desirable to sell things to the highest bidder, incidentally: it reduces the probability that he'll benefit from liquidation.

Oh, I agree. But the line between incompetence and misdirection is blurry. What if he wanted his company to go into some new sector and do stuff... but that very direction was wrong - he was just too dumb to realize? Clearly the body corporate and everyone in it would be better off without his "desires" pushing the company towards a fall. Before you chastise me - that is an example from real life, and yes, that decision fucking bankrupted the company. I have seen it with my own eyes.

[Temujin]

News Update - Apparently more confrontations with police. Olbermann interrupted his broadcast to provide what limited info he had. This is what Gawker had to say:

Ten Reportedly Arrested as Protesters Stand Off With Police

Ten Occupy Wall Street protesters have reportedly been arrested after a few hundred people launched an impromptu march on Wall Street following today's huge demonstration in downtown Manhattan.

The NYPD has been using its big orange kettling nets to contain some demonstrators and control the crowd (others have been "fenced in by metal barriers"), and there are unconfirmed reports of police using pepper spray. It sounds like a tense scene, with protesters yelling at (random?) people in suits and generally testing the police. (Others are reportedly chanting the First Amendment.)

You can watch a live stream from what looks like the intersection of Broadway and Wall Street here. We'll keep you posted as the demonstration develops.

[Elfdart]

I'll say this much for the OWS demonstrators: Unlike the Teabaggers, they didn't have the Koch brothers furnishing them with buses, nor did they bring guns and racist signs. Oh, and they can spell better than the Teabaggers, too.

[Crateria]

I'll say this much for the OWS demonstrators: Unlike the Teabaggers, they didn't have the Koch brothers furnishing them with buses, nor did they bring guns and racist signs. Oh, and they can spell better than the Teabaggers, too.

And at least they seem to stand for something desirable for many on this board, right? Punishment of the Wall Street crooks.
Unlike the Tea Party, which just seems to suck corporate dick while being insane.

[K. A. Pital]

Please update me someone on the exact number of protestors, the media says they're becoming "more numerous". Just how many?

I guess after 700 arrests and finally a reaction in the media the thread title also warrants a change. It wasn't an epic fail from beginning to end and it is still ongoing.

[ComradeClaus]

Please update me someone on the exact number of protestors, the media says they're becoming "more numerous". Just how many?

Um...

Over 9,000? XD

Seriously, I hope to heasr more about those Marines planning on joining the march. I'd like to see a cop get the shit beaten outta him after trying to pepper a marine.

No pig is a match for a Devil Dog!

That officer who maced those girls after they were pinned by those orange barriers should be burned at the steak!

Though this protest is missing something... A Anarchist's Mechanized Division of Killdozers, plus a People's Flotilla of Riptides, maybe? To give the protestors something to push the pigs back. And maybe spark a November Revolution.

Though DC would be a better epicenter for such an uprising. democracy in the US has failed, there are only spineless democrats & delusional, facist republicans. The system can't be changed by the ballot. The founding fathers new they couldn't sit on their hands & wait for the King to fix things, they acted. Sic semper Tyrannus!

Seriously, I'm tired of watching the pigs bullying those they claim they "serve & protect". They only serve the elite & protect the corrupt system. They're quasi-gestapo

[K. A. Pital]

And maybe spark a November Revolution.

Remember, remember, the X of November.

The founding fathers new they couldn't sit on their hands & wait for the King to fix things, they acted

Indeed. What I often miss is the philosophy of action to counter the apathy. Apathy and inaction are the real plague of our day; it is not the productive system, which is well-developed and supplies people with a high life standard. It is not the cultural development, which is also okay. It is the apathy and inaction of the well-fed, well-supplied.

I just hope that this protest breeds a new generation of people deeply dissasfied with the situation in the First World and would seek to remake the world into a better place through the neo-modern; screw the "postmodern", screw inaction and useless blah-blah-blah.

[ComradeClaus]

Remember, remember, the X of November.

Indeed. What I often miss is the philosophy of action to counter the apathy. Apathy and inaction are the real plague of our day; it is not the productive system, which is well-developed and supplies people with a high life standard. It is not the cultural development, which is also okay. It is the apathy and inaction of the well-fed, well-supplied.

I just hope that this protest breeds a new generation of people deeply dissasfied with the situation in the First World and would seek to remake the world into a better place through the neo-modern; screw the "postmodern", screw inaction and useless blah-blah-blah.

I love reading your posts, we share many ideals.

Hopefully, w/ all the guys who served in Iraq & A-stan realizing the rot of the empire they fought for, will serve as the core of the resistance, kinda like the vets from 'nam. Those aforementioned marines are a start. I despize apathy (like clinton allowing the rwanda genocide, & bush/ Obama allowing the Darfur genocide) I want to see more passion & action from our pepople, even a willingness to die for their beliefs. like that buddhist who set himself alight in nam & the falung gong in china (too bad the media forgot they existed)

America needs an act of horror to open its' eyes. a hundred protestors going alight or hari kiri in protest of wallstreet (& the 2 party system) would be a far more powerful message that flower children & peace. (They needn't actually give their lives either, just the act of dramatic self-injury would be enough to horrify the media to where it CAN'T ignore their message!)

Plus such an act would inspire copy cats, create martyrs & spread the delicious flames of revolucion. We need guys like Light Yagami & Lelouch Lamprouge to come to the forefront & make action.

[Crossroads Inc.]

As someone watching things from outside the general debate going on in the thread..

It seems as though the news media at largely is finally starting to notice the new movement as it spreads not just from NY, but to various exchnages across America. From the start of this I was shocked at just how hard it was ignored by large news sources, as well as how much WS in general tried to hush things up, to the point of arresting reporters.

But now, its is being covered by CNN on NPR on MSNBC and of course on Faux News (Though naturally fox is trying to paint things as being a bunch of hippies funded by Unions and Obama)

Overall I hope this movment gains ground and grows all the more. It has been far too long that peopel are shafted by market forces they have little to no control over.

[Simon_Jester]

Seriously, I hope to heasr more about those Marines planning on joining the march. I'd like to see a cop get the shit beaten outta him after trying to pepper a marine.

No pig is a match for a Devil Dog!

That officer who maced those girls after they were pinned by those orange barriers should be burned at the steak!

Though this protest is missing something... A Anarchist's Mechanized Division of Killdozers, plus a People's Flotilla of Riptides, maybe? To give the protestors something to push the pigs back. And maybe spark a November Revolution.

...

You sound like the fakest revolutionary ever.

Though DC would be a better epicenter for such an uprising. democracy in the US has failed, there are only spineless democrats & delusional, facist republicans. The system can't be changed by the ballot. The founding fathers new they couldn't sit on their hands & wait for the King to fix things, they acted. Sic semper Tyrannus!

You're missing something- this is a protest, not a revolution. It's just a big protest, and one that's directed at a different target. Protestors marching on Washington is practically a nonevent; like most capitals of democracies, Washington is prepared to swallow a few thousand protestors without a burp.

A protest going to Wall Street is something else- that is not such a common thing.

[Stravo]

Is anyone else troubled by the almost comical way the mainstream media is covering this story? There are thousands of people camped out in Wall Street for 3 weeks now, 700 people were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge and the media here in NY relegates these to second string stories, page 10 in the paper, brief sound bites, etc. One person is shot during the West Indian Day Parade and we got coverage for days. A fucking helicopter goes into the river yesterday and we got coverage about it up the ass including in depth bios about the pilot, the passengers, etc. 700 People were arrested and city buses were comandeered by the NYPD to haul them away and we got nothing.

This strikes me as odd. Unless, of course, say big media conglomerates prefer not to encourage people to keep protesting things about the inequity of the economy so they quietly decide to not cover it. When there is coverage it focuses on the fact that these are young people, people without focus or direction, one political cartoon points out that they are smelly kids holding up signs like "Pie in the Sky". As if asking for economic fairness is just plain silly.

When young people occupied Tahiri square in Egypt to complain bitterly about joblessness and economic strife they were hailed as brave heroes and taking their part in the Arab spring. When American young people complain about essentially the same thing, they are smelly, listless, trouble makers looking for their pie in the sky.

[CaptainChewbacca]

It doesn't help when the sound bite thats getting played nonstop on the news networks goes like this:

Newsman: What is your goal?
Uninformed Kid: We want to abolish Capitalism.
Newsman: What do you want to replace it with?
Uninformed Kid:

This march doesn't have a leader, a message (beyond things suck), or a motivation.

[Simon_Jester]

It doesn't help when the sound bite thats getting played nonstop on the news networks goes like this:

Newsman: What is your goal?
Uninformed Kid: We want to abolish Capitalism.
Newsman: What do you want to replace it with?
Uninformed Kid:

This march doesn't have a leader, a message (beyond things suck), or a motivation.

Well, it sure has a motivation; as to message, who said a protest has to have only one message?

So one has to ask: is that sound bite getting played nonstop because it's a representative sample, or because the TV news networks aren't into the idea of playing someone's impassioned and coherent criticism of Big Finance, corporate power, and the corruption of government in Washington?

[Stravo]

It doesn't help when the sound bite thats getting played nonstop on the news networks goes like this:

Newsman: What is your goal?
Uninformed Kid: We want to abolish Capitalism.
Newsman: What do you want to replace it with?
Uninformed Kid:

This march doesn't have a leader, a message (beyond things suck), or a motivation.

They themsleves may not have a message but they are bringing a focus on the issue of the economy and just how awful it is for them. If my kid were coming out of College right now I would be terrified for their future with the job market they're currently facing.

So yeah, maybe these kids don't have organization or talking points like the Republican drones but they are accomplishing bringing their plight to the fore front. I think too long we've been walking around not really seeing the wreckage being created by this economy and listening to elements in our society imploring us to not create class warfare by shining a light on the deepening economic divides.

[Siege]

This march doesn't have a leader, a message (beyond things suck), or a motivation.

Or it does have a leader, and (s)he's not getting any airtime. It wouldn't be hard to just interview a couple dozen people, pick out the one slam-dunk you get (media professional versus college kids, you just know you'll have your soundbite in under 30 minutes) and just repeat that ad nauseam until the audience thinks that's all there is to it. You obviously have a serious media bias problem in your country, what passes for news media are engineering a narrative on a level that is, from a professional point of view, obscene, so I wouldn't be so eager to discard this movement as leaderless or lacking in motivation. Because movements without motivations or at the very least some very real anger behind them in my experience don't result in hundreds of people camping out in downtown Manhattan.