[NikFu S.]

Originally Posted by LetItSnow

Naturally, you can see the awesome progress that this thread has achieved for the cause.

Information is the most powerful tool of this, or any age.

"We're in tents fighting the system!"

Severe over-simplification.

"You're in tents making a mess of and destroying public property, harassing and assaulting innocent citizens, costing taxpayers millions in necessary law enforcement and making a great case for why your unemployed are unemployed."

Might be true in some cases, but not all. Definitely not the majority of cases.

I don't think you can claim a loss of tax dollars here. Whatever number these police rack up is insignificant compared to wasteful government entities and corporate tax dodging. You will pay taxes regardless of where the money goes, and the money will be wasted regardless of whether it is on ridiculous legislation, Presidential comforts, police overtime, the military-industrial complex, whatever you can think of. This is not a valid argument against OWS.
The destruction of public property is extremely rare. The police have actually done more of this than the protesters. Not a valid argument.
"Harassing and assault", also rare as far as I know. Have yet to see one case of assault from a protester, but I guess it's within probability.
As for the case of the unemployed... you are showing a lack of sympathy here.

The U.S. economy is designed to create as much cheap labor as possible. It is this way because that is the effect corporations have had. The people believe a high gain with a small loss is a success, and success should be both rewarded and sustained. I can agree with that in concept, but in practice the gain of one often tends to be a great loss for another, sometimes of many.

So who is losing and who is the primary beneficiary of these losses?

Regular people are losing. Regular people are not to be given the opportunity to win, because that would create a loss for those whom are already successful. That is why unemployment must be sustained. Sounds far-fetched?
If there was no unemployed the business sector would be over-run with qualified people who refuse to take dead-end jobs that pay very little. Wages would remain high. They would be unable to fire people because the positions would remain vacant. Wealth inequality would not be an issue, taxes would be plentiful, the economy would be sustainable.

In order to believe in the current corporate system we have to make at least 2 assumptions:
- 1) The corporation will look out for it's own interest.
- 2) The interest of the corporation is of greater importance than those from whom it gains.

The first is absolutely required, the second just happens to be the reality we are facing. When the OWS protesters protest crony corporatism they are in spirit protesting the machinations of this system, which includes the unemployment cycle.
Jobs are few, education is increasingly expensive, morale is low, or at least it is low until some kind of hope is injected, as with the case of OWS.

Aside from that, self-importance of the corporation has lead to the abuse of government, squandering of resources, unethical transactions in which the lives of many people were negatively affected.

As a Constitutionalists my main beef with self-important corporatism is the praise of a system in which the liberty of real-working class people is superseded and even sometimes eradicated for the sake of this gain/loss game in which the working class never wins, sometimes because a building with a logo is treated as an entity with human rights that supersede the rights of actual people.

I eagerly await your response. I hope you think out your response a little next time.

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Slightly unrelated:


OWS and Arab Spring are closely associated, so I'm putting this here.


Maybe some of you enjoy this, or think the people deserve it.