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[Ogdibus]

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[RedKing]

Seriously? The banking and financial system has fundamental structural flaws....so go buy some organic tomatoes? 

And who's being pointless and confused here?

Aqizzar is right. I didn't choose to pay my ex-CEO $10 million for getting fired. I didn't choose to freeze my pay, nor did I get a say in who they chose as the CEO who *did* make the choice to freeze our wages while he got a million dollar bonus. I didn't choose to invest a crapton of money in sketchy financial instruments, I didn't choose to hold a gun to the economy's head and demand that everyone else cover the losses, and I certainly didn't choose to reward this kind of reckless failure with more bonuses.

The average Joe is mad as hell because he's realizing that he has ZERO power over the corporate world, and the corporate world has all kinds of power over him.

[Truean]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrnU5KGKHz8&feature=related

[mainiac]

Newsflash Siquo:

Not everybody is an expert in every detail of the universe.  This is why professional ethics exist.  Nor is everybody equal in power or capable of acquiring an equal amount of information.

Furthermore it would be a tremendously stupid waste of resources to try and make everybody equal in these ways.  We need to work together for anything to get done.  We can do that with a sense of justice or we can do that by letting the powerful screw the system by taking advantage.

Now please take your moral nihilism and GTFO.

[nenjin]

Anyone see that episode of South Park on the economy?

I feel like people who are still in the "blame yourselves" mode are basically Randy Marsh. It's crazy to me that people think we should blame ourselves for policy decisions that are so far removed from our lives it might as well be another religion. It's only slightly less crazy than insisting the only way we're not hypocrites is if we were the first one to pick up a gun and start saying "HELL NO!"

Even though, you know, 1.5 years ago those were the people the "mainstream" were calling crazy. The real irony of the Occupy movement is that it came so fast on the heels of the Tea Party.

[Nadaka]

The rise of the tea party was a wake up call. It has shown us that the system isn't going to get better on its own, but it can crash and burn on its own.

[Siquo]

Not everybody is an expert in every detail of the universe.

No, but you'll have to be because nobody else does it for you, and lying has become the norm. It's just ignorance piled on ignorance and everyone is innocent. Does the CEO of H&M know that his clothes are made by little kidslaves in sweatshops? Well, there's just so much he can do about checking it without hurting his bottom line. Not making enough profit gets him fired by the owners. The owners want to make more money, and don't really know what goes on with those kids either. It's all so deniable. And why do they make shitloads of money? Because we all buy it. Why is advertising even allowed? 90% of that shit is lies, pretending to be better. If you have two products, one with good advertising and bad quality, and one with no advertising and good quality, the former will win. And yet, nobody was protesting.

Look, I know you feel helpless and think you've given everything, to make the world better, but until (almost) everyone does, nothing's going to change. And that's not just about the 1%. There's another 99% of the population just as shit as they are.
We've built mountains, now they're toppling on top of us, and we blame the guys who are sitting on top of the mountains for it.

Now please take your moral nihilism and GTFO.

Relative isn't nothing. I've got my own set, and it's probably very similar to yours, but I don't pretend that my set of morals is universal and every living thing should abide by them.

I've already posted a counterargument that you haven't addressed, Siquo.

Yeah you did, sorry I missed that.

Well, I don't really know what's so fundamental about it.
For instance, life "used to be better". At the same time, a lot of other people in the world were getting the short end of the stick, and getting it worse and worse. Where was everybody then? On the barricades? No, complacent.

Now, you're on the short end of the stick. Other people (your 0.1%) are getting better and better. Where are they? On the barricades? No, complacent.

Just. Like. You. Why are you blaming them for doing what you've been doing? Or if not you, then what your neighbour has been doing? Why aren't you blaming him?

Seriously? The banking and financial system has fundamental structural flaws....so go buy some organic tomatoes? 

Again, I'm all for reforms, and the financial system has fundamental flaws, but if you don't like how your bank behaves, you can change banks. That's what I'm saying.
But did we? I did. Didn't do much good yet, but slowly, perhaps, if we all try...

I stand by my point: the 0.1% are not the only guilty ones. The entire western world and then some (don't think there's no billionaires in Africa ) has been living above and beyond what is sustainable, it has been borrowing from the rest of the world, but once it's payback time (and believe me, this is not even CLOSE to when that happens) for the partying that everybody did, people point to the people who threw the party. This has all been happening for so long under everyones noses... Why now? What happened? Oh, now it's actually affecting you, then you start caring. I've been pissed off at about 90% of the world (that's a lot of bad decisions, people) for more than 18 years now. Can't say I've got a lot of "being pissed off" left for this subject, perhaps that's why don't understand this whole Occupy thing. For me it's more holistic. I see this mountain of shit flying towards a fan in slow motion for the last two decades, and it hasn't even hit yet. And I'm a hypocrite as well. I look around me and live the good life that my birth gives me, and hope it doesn't end before I do.

I'm not getting why this is so upsetting for you lot (this you is about the forumites)... Your reactions are... way beyond the normal level of cool-and-calmness.

[mainiac]

Not everybody is an expert in every detail of the universe.

No, but you'll have to be because nobody else does it for you, and lying has become the norm.

Okay, here's your problem.

We have two choices.  We can chose that as a society we have the power to stop bad shit or not.  Everyone else in this thread has chosen the former.  Why on earth would you chose the latter.

It's called a social contract.  The term is hundreds of years old and the concept dates back to pre-history.  This isn't cutting edge stuff.

[micelus]

I'm not getting why this is so upsetting for you lot (this you is about the forumites)... Your reactions are... way beyond the normal level of cool-and-calmness.

Just watching the thread. I guess Bay12er's have their own limits before we all get flaming. Perhaps severe disagreement in economical thought is one. Meh.

[mainiac]

I'm not getting why this is so upsetting for you lot (this you is about the forumites)... Your reactions are... way beyond the normal level of cool-and-calmness.

Just watching the thread. I guess Bay12er's have their own limits before we all get flaming. Perhaps severe disagreement in economical thought is one. Meh.

Or perhaps it's severe condescension.

[Bauglir]

Siquo, you seem to be arguing from the position that since every single individual act of research and moral judgment is possible without causing a problem, the aggregate is possible. As somebody who's still just getting into being an active participant in the world, something my environment has basically prevented me from doing rationally (or fairly to the people in my life and the culture I'm a part of, for that matter), I don't want to start out by going, "Eh, the status quo's great, let's just follow the precedent of not giving a shit." The precedent you're talking about isn't one I've had a meaningful hand in establishing - should I be bound by it, though I've never agreed to it?

I'm sure I have contributed to this problem, but until very recently (the last year or two), I haven't been in a position where I could have been expected to know what would contribute in the first place. So I'm not going to go around blaming myself, or people in a similar situation, until they actually refuse to change. I am, however, going to blame the people who knowingly fucked the system and play the biggest role of anyone in so doing (and they play the biggest role because they own over half the system). Responsibility to manage wealth responsibly increases in direct proportion to how much wealth you actually own.

[mainiac]

Relative isn't nothing. I've got my own set, and it's probably very similar to yours, but I don't pretend that my set of morals is universal and every living thing should abide by them.

Here's another problem.  You assume that just because you chose not to judge, nobody should judge.  That's either amoral, naive or both.  Rather then taking refuge in moral absolutism and comforting yourself with the notion that your principles are internally self consistent, you could have a moral framework that actually provides useful answers rather then apathy.  If you are looking for somewhere to start, John Rawls did quite a bit of grappling with these issues but practically any political philosopher of note has some insight into the issue of when and if society should pass judgement.

[Siquo]

Everyone else in this thread has chosen the former.  Why on earth would you chose the latter.

I... What? Are you saying: "If you're not part of my solution, you're part of my problem"? Because what I've been saying is that we-as-a-society can fix this (instead of the mythical 1%).
Let's recap. My solution: vote with your wallet. Your solution: yell on a square. Both might work, and they're not mutually exclusive, so we can make both of em happen. So why are you so upset? Because I think your idea isn't as good as mine? Being told that your idea wasn't the best is going to happen a lot more often in everyone's life, and it's not worth getting angry about. I'm not angry you all think mine is just about buying organic tomatoes. We're all on the same side, even if we disagree on the method.

the people who knowingly fucked the system

That's the crux, right there (as in: I agree with the rest you said). And I think they're just as ignorant. I have to believe that, because if the opposite is true, and they're knowingly throwing this world into chaos and civil war, that means that they're not stupid, and have a backup plan to stay on top themselves, and there's fuck shit we can do about it. And sitting in a square yelling we want fair... everything, isn't going to deter them. Nothing will, not even brute force. We're all fucking doomed. So I believe they did it out of plain greed and stupidity, and well, who is without sin cast the first stone, etc. If greed were a crime 90% of the people would be in jail.

[mainiac]

Everyone else in this thread has chosen the former.  Why on earth would you chose the latter.

I... What? Are you saying: "If you're not part of my solution, you're part of my problem"? Because what I've been saying is that we-as-a-society can fix this (instead of the mythical 1%).

No, actually, this is exactly what we are objecting to.  You said that we as a society bear a collective responsibility for the actions that fucked the economy because we failed to prevent them.  And a great number of us pointed out that is bullshit.  Much of this information was literally hidden from the world  yet you think we should have been aware.

[SalmonGod]

My response to you Siquo is that I've also been pissed off at the world for almost as long as you.  I'm guessing you're a little bit older than me.  I started figuring this stuff out (unsustainability, how authority figures factor into social dynamics, the nature of money and employment and abstract financial systems) when I was 15-16, and I'm now 28.  If I hadn't had a kid, I would have gone off the grid after graduating college.  I've been actively trying to wake up almost everyone I meet for at least 10 years.

I'm very burned out, but I'm not done being pissed off as you say you are.  I've been waiting for something like this moment for half my life, and all of my intellectually active life.  I'm not going to be told now that everything is my fault for not waking up sooner, and I'm sure as hell not going to be discouraged from taking action now over the observation that it took too long to get something started (and it did).