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[ChairmanPoo]

People will stop paying attention to them when they stop being jobless, homeless, and having social services progressively slashed

[Nadaka]

I doubt these protests will turn violent. Maybe a few troublemakers in the crowd from time to time, but it'll never turn into a riot.

The protests will just die out once people stop paying attention to them, like every other protest movement in recent years.

You mean like the protest movements that topled the governments of Tunisia? Egypt? Libya? That are ongoing with violent suppression in Syria, Yemen and took massive violence to suppress in Iran and China?

You are right, these protests won't just turn violent, it will take the murder of protesters at the hands of the authorities for that to happen. I am not as confidant as you that that will not happen in the US, and I am absolutely certain we will not put up with as much suppression as many of those countries.

[GlyphGryph]

I think my major point of disagreement with the cracked article is the wall street/DC thing.

Protesting at DC is worse than useless - you need to protest where people can see you, and DC is built to ignore protesters. And obviously everyone who wanted to participate would have to go to DC.

Wall Street is symbolic - it's the home of many of the companies that caused the damage, and even if what we want is change from the government, it makes sense to protest there.

If this movement had started in DC, I doubt it would still exist.

[Virex]

I doubt these protests will turn violent. Maybe a few troublemakers in the crowd from time to time, but it'll never turn into a riot.

The protests will just die out once people stop paying attention to them, like every other protest movement in recent years.

You mean like the protest movements that topled the governments of [...] Egypt?

You mean the one that replaced their previous junta with a new junta?

[Nadaka]

That isn't accomplishing nothing. And the protests are not over.

[Truean]

After thinking about that Cracked Article for a bit, the problem isn't necessarily that corporations are Greedy, its that they are short sightedly so....

Forgetting for a second the destruction of the middle class, etc,etc,etc.

Bedbugs.... These used to be largely extinct in the US after WWII. There was something called bedbug repellent added to all mattresses and it seemed it worked rather well. Then all the mattress companies stopped paying for it around 1995, considering it a joke akin to headlight fluid.... The lack of repellent in mattresses combined with increased international travel.... And bedbugs are a major problem in the US again http://www.bedbug.com/
http://www.bedbugmundo.com/bed-bug-exterminator.html
http://www.bedbugznyc.com/


Short... sighted.... But hey, they didn't have to "waste" money on that bedbug repellent....

[Zangi]

Soo... what happens when nothing happens?

Probably the same thing as happened in London a few months ago; people get tired of being blithely ignored by everyone in power and resort to throwing bricks at the cops and setting fire to buildings just to get the government to acknowledge the fact the protests are happening at all. Only in the US it will be much worse -or much more effective, depending on your point of view- because it's considerably easier to get hold of a serious firearm.

It's easier, but the majority of people don't own firearms, it's just that the ones who do usually have a few of them.

Consider that the US was founded on revolution with the right to bear arms and what-not.  Its probably the biggest argument in favor of gun folks and the reason why it hasn't gone the way of UK.

Violent riots only work when there are enough people in favor of the cause and 'path' to the 'solution'.  More then 70-80% I figure... otherwise, politicians will just demonize it... and nothing gets done, except for lots of people getting jailed and further movements become much harder...

[Siquo]

I saw this sign: "At some point the poor will have nothing left to eat but the rich".

I think it symbolises the sentiments. "We're peaceful now, and telling you to turn this around, but when people get really hungry, shit's gonna hit fans."

[DJ]

The point of protests is to get a sufficiently large number of people to share the protesters' sentiment, so that somebody who campaigned on the issues that bother the protesters would win the elections. A sufficiently charismatic politician could take the country by storm riding on the wings of these protests even if all the media were against him. Whether such a man would keep his promises after he wins is anyone's guess.

[Reiina]

After thinking about that Cracked Article for a bit, the problem isn't necessarily that corporations are Greedy, its that they are short sightedly so....

Forgetting for a second the destruction of the middle class, etc,etc,etc.

Bedbugs.... These used to be largely extinct in the US after WWII. There was something called bedbug repellent added to all mattresses and it seemed it worked rather well. Then all the mattress companies stopped paying for it around 1995, considering it a joke akin to headlight fluid.... The lack of repellent in mattresses combined with increased international travel.... And bedbugs are a major problem in the US again http://www.bedbug.com/
http://www.bedbugmundo.com/bed-bug-exterminator.html
http://www.bedbugznyc.com/


Short... sighted.... But hey, they didn't have to "waste" money on that bedbug repellent....

Slightly off topic but thought it was worth posting, an old article:
http://www.searchlores.org/realicra/modernze.htm
And more generally:
http://www.searchlores.org/realicra/realicra.htm

Worth a read .

[mainiac]

Anyway, I think a good portion of what fucks the economy so often is fractional-reserve banking. No more banks that are "too big to fail" and no more bank runs if it gets removed.

NO NO NO NO NO!  That is just ignorance.  Fractional reserve banking is a very, very good thing.  It allows us as society to make investments based off future expectations rather then current capitol distribution.  Without fractional reserve banking, banks only lend at prohibitively high rates, it becomes very hard for people to open up small businesses (and I mean real small businesses, not "so what if I have 10 million dollars?" small businesses) and our society gradually becomes owned by multinational corporations who aren't inhibited by such a stupid policy because they have access to foreign credit markets.

What's more the bad things wall street did that got us into this mess were completely not the fault of fractional reserve banking.  It was irresponsible gambling with other people's money pure and simple.  That can and has happened in the past with or without fractional reserve banking.

If going back on the gold standard would be trying to drag our economy back putting us back in the 19th century, banning fractional reserve banking would be setting us back to the 16th.  If this policy were actually enforceable, it would result in a huge, huge decline in our national output, something that makes the great depression look like a tea party.  The only saving grace is that it would be completely unenforcable as people would instantly revert to using barter and IOUs to accomplish what fractional reserve banking accomplishes right now.  So it would just be taking the economy from the semi-managed world of the dollar exchange and putting it into a chaotic system of a billion different means of barter and credit that would be enormously prone to speculation, chaos and scams.  This is the sort of thing you would expect from a country going through a civil war or a national default, not as the deliberate result of the policies of a creditworthy economy.

It is good to be fed up with the greedy and destructive practices of the plutocratic class.  But we need to be careful what ideas we embrace.

[squeakyReaper]

Has this been shared yet?

[Siquo]

But we need to be careful what ideas we embrace.

This is why I'm not sure what to think of this "occupy" movement.

Personally, I think the people are to blame. All of us.
Thinking that it's someone elses fault.

[Frajic]

But we need to be careful what ideas we embrace.

This is why I'm not sure what to think of this "occupy" movement.

Personally, I think the people are to blame. All of us.
Thinking that it's someone elses fault.

The people aren't the one that buy up all the congressmen and presidential candidates and lobby for their own agendas.

And in any case, this is the people's way of fixing it.

[Siquo]

But we need to be careful what ideas we embrace.

This is why I'm not sure what to think of this "occupy" movement.

Personally, I think the people are to blame. All of us.
Thinking that it's someone elses fault.

The people aren't the one that buy up all the congressmen and presidential candidates and lobby for their own agendas.

Yes, they are. They're also voting them in place, and those congressmen? They're the people, too. What money buys them? Money from companies. Companies the people buy their stuff from. This information leaks out, once in a while. Does everyone stop buying from that company? Hell no. Is your chocolate covered with slave sweat? You don't know? Why not, couldn't be bothered to spare the time? Does the bank holding your assets invest them in weapons factories whose sales are keeping dictators in place? You don't know? Why not? It's your money! How much poison was sprayed to make the cotton for your shirt? Was it sewn together by a kid whose idea of sunlight is that little window in the roof? No? How do you know for sure?

This is democratic capitalism. You vote both with your wallet and your vote. Take some fucking responsibility already, instead of clamoring for "the other people" to fix it. There is no evil endboss at the end of the game.

We're the evil ones, trying to get by.