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[Heron TSG]

Considering that 1% of the people own more money than the bottom 53%, they're not really a minority. A majority in the power department, at least. That's the problem; the populus majorus is the financial minority, and they're being discriminated against.

[mainiac]

Very few revolutions make things BETTER at first. It just changes power. Even the USA had to change it's government after the initial rebellion, and had a secondary Rebellion after that.

The constitutional convention wasn't a rebellion.  It was a peaceful assembly.

[Aqizzar]

Very few revolutions make things BETTER at first. It just changes power. Even the USA had to change it's government after the initial rebellion, and had a secondary Rebellion after that.

The constitutional convention wasn't a rebellion.  It was a peaceful assembly.

It was unlawful though.  So was the Second Constitutional Convention, when many of the same men and a bunch of new ones got together to draft a new government, because the Articles of Confederation weren't working.  Both were quite explicitly acts of treason against their standing government, seeking to replace one authority with a new one, even if few people in the conventions themselves wanted to put it such.

Funny thing, unlawful actions can proceed bloodlessly when (essentially) no one wants to oppose them.  In their case, it was a plurality of state legislatures, but you get the idea.

[Duuvian]

Also, I should note that John Hancock was the most successful (and well known) smuggler of his day. This likely had an influence on his being the first to sign the Declaration and adds even more humor to it.

Basically, what the crown would have considered a lawless rogue not only the first to sign the declaration, he did it in such a fashion that it was more or less the most prominent signature as well.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

John Hancock smuggled French made goods to the American colonies from the French West Indies, as they were cheaper than British goods. This was because the British were unrealistically attempting to keep control of their monopoly while simultaneously charging more for same/similar goods.

Also, I will say that I don't want a system other than capitalism. What needs to change is the structure of the capitalism. A handy way to start would be to remove corporate money from the election process. After all, a good politician should be in favor of local jobs anyways. It seems to me that corporate money in elections is mostly useful for 'convincing' politicians that they should be in favor of whatever the corporations want.

After that it would be nice to eliminate the requirement of obtaining campaign funds in the first place, but first steps first I suppose.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

If it were me I'd severely limit what politicans can spend to attract votes. I figure if they can't get their message across on an online forums (which I could see the government providing as it would be a good thing for how much it would cost) and from being invited on Television for debates or talk shows (or invited to write a column for a newspaper) then all they would need money for is to distort the truth.

[RedKing]

Also, I should note that John Hancock was the most successful (and well known) smuggler of his day. This likely had an influence on his being the first to sign the Declaration and adds even more humor to it.

Basically, what the crown would have considered a lawless rogue not only the first to sign the declaration, he did it in such a fashion that it was more or less the most prominent signature as well.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

John Hancock smuggled French made goods to the American colonies from the French West Indies, as they were cheaper than British goods. This was because the British were unrealistically attempting to keep control of their monopoly while simultaneously charging more for same/similar goods.

Also, I will say that I don't want a system other than capitalism. What needs to change is the structure of the capitalism. A handy way to start would be to remove corporate money from the election process. After all, a good politician should be in favor of local jobs anyways. It seems to me that corporate money in elections is mostly useful for 'convincing' politicians that they should be in favor of whatever the corporations want.

After that it would be nice to eliminate the requirement of obtaining campaign funds in the first place, but first steps first I suppose.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

If it were me I'd severely limit what politicans can spend to attract votes. I figure if they can't get their message across on an online forums (which I could see the government providing as it would be a good thing for how much it would cost) and from being invited on Television for debates or talk shows (or invited to write a column for a newspaper) then all they would need money for is to distort the truth.

Which means I should import and sell pirated Chinese DVDs, because hey...it's what the Founding Fathers would have wanted. Or at least how'd they'd have tried to make a shilling off it.

[Duuvian]

Also, I should note that John Hancock was the most successful (and well known) smuggler of his day. This likely had an influence on his being the first to sign the Declaration and adds even more humor to it.

Basically, what the crown would have considered a lawless rogue not only the first to sign the declaration, he did it in such a fashion that it was more or less the most prominent signature as well.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

John Hancock smuggled French made goods to the American colonies from the French West Indies, as they were cheaper than British goods. This was because the British were unrealistically attempting to keep control of their monopoly while simultaneously charging more for same/similar goods.

Also, I will say that I don't want a system other than capitalism. What needs to change is the structure of the capitalism. A handy way to start would be to remove corporate money from the election process. After all, a good politician should be in favor of local jobs anyways. It seems to me that corporate money in elections is mostly useful for 'convincing' politicians that they should be in favor of whatever the corporations want.

After that it would be nice to eliminate the requirement of obtaining campaign funds in the first place, but first steps first I suppose.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

If it were me I'd severely limit what politicans can spend to attract votes. I figure if they can't get their message across on an online forums (which I could see the government providing as it would be a good thing for how much it would cost) and from being invited on Television for debates or talk shows (or invited to write a column for a newspaper) then all they would need money for is to distort the truth.

Which means I should import and sell pirated Chinese DVDs, because hey...it's what the Founding Fathers would have wanted. Or at least how'd they'd have tried to make a shilling off it.

Yeah, I suppose that post was out of place a bit. That's just my favorite bit of history about the Revolution that many people don't know about. It was fun reminding the Tea Party guys about stuff like that.

Also I looked up John Hancock on wikipedia after I made my post and the book I learned that from might be out of date, since the wiki says there was no written evidence of Hancock himself smuggling. The book I read basically said smuggling was so commonplace that everyone likely did it.

[RedKing]

It was fairly common, as a way around the mercantilism that kept finished goods from Europe at artificially high prices.

I'd like to think of Hancock as Malcolm Reynolds with a powdered wig.

"And what doth that make us, Thomas?"
"Big damn heroes, John."
 

[Aqizzar]

Oh hey, Barney Frank is retiring from Congress.  Thanks dude, you picked a great time.

[Kogan Loloklam]

It isn't an arbitrary line.

Looking at a dictionary definition, you are right. It was not a single individual that made the decision.
It can be drawn elsewhere though. 1%. 2%. 0.5%. It's still a drawn line.

Aaah, good old reductio ad Hitlerum.

OH MY GOD! I MENTIONED HITLER!
I'm not trying to get emotional responses here, it is what it is. A ruler rises to power by blaming a small minority for all the problems and then persecutes that minority afterward in a large scale. I don't know any American who doesn't immediately see that and go "Oh, It's Hitler and Nazi Germany." Maybe I need to broaden the group of people I know. This even beats out the Witch Trials. Maybe I need to know fewer witches that are WW2 nuts? Perhaps I should poll second graders, since when I read the above statement omitting the last part about what most Americans say to my sixth grade nephew, he immediately responded with this:

Spoiler: Nephew's Statement (click to show/hide)

"It's the German guy who killed Christians. Wait, not Christians, Jews. It's Hitler. Hitler is who you are talking about."

He does say he watched some discovery channel episodes, so maybe the average sixth grader is different?

If you bothered to actually read ... but screw them, they deserve it all.

This is my point. There in is the danger of any us against them mentality, and the smaller the "them" in relation to "us", the bigger the problem. I agree with the main aims of the Occupy Wallstreet movement, but I don't approve of them taking this attitude. I don't believe in having streets run red with the blood of rulers. I would rather see rulers sweep the streets that they used to own. Hard to do that when their heads are busy occupying pikes. There are people in that 1% who support the 99%. Lines generally don't work. 1% means 1 out of 100 people, just to remind people that there is a reality behind the words used.

...It's not even radically different...

There is the problem. The form of government was responsible for the current state of affairs. What you are talking about is the individual voters having problems with the people involved. This became a Government Corruption issue very quickly and ceased being a "Corporate Governance."
Corporations don't actually govern, instead they rule our politicians. The difference between the US and Sweden is just the degree of power that the corporations have over slow erosion of laws. Sweden isn't Immune, it just isn't in the stranglehold that creates the same feedback loop just yet. Prosperity can easily wipe away Sweden's superior position while you aren't looking. Prosperity like what the US had so long. Also, Quick Google Search of Sweden Government Corruption spat the name of Systembolaget out. Here's a link.
It might not be as bad as ours, but all the precursors to serious corruption are there.

The constitutional convention wasn't a rebellion.  It was a peaceful assembly.

That's why the people standing on street corners is such a great thing. Hopefully they stay a peaceful assembly even as crackdowns increase in intensity and frequency. Sooner or later support will be greater for them than the desire for staying out of the cold.

As for OWS's end goals, it smells a lot like Socialism. In fact the people in my local group talk about achieving Utopia. He did this while hiding his mouth from me with clasped prayer hands and repeatedly bowing. Quite an odd fellow.

I CERTAINLY don't want Communism. I don't want Socialism either. I like owning the fruits of my efforts, and it just makes sense that I do so when you boil it right down to the basics. The problem is, when I am producing surplus fruits and only harm comes to others from me having these fruits, we have a problem. I think ideally what we need is a form of altruistic capitalism. The problem is I can't even fathom what a system like that would look like. A place where there is a cap on max wealth, probably, but still allows people to succeed on merit. Without handouts, but greater "hand-ups" I don't have any clue how to make such a thing, but it seems to me to be better than the unfettered capitalism we have.

[Aqizzar]

See, where you're losing me at least, is equating all "minorities".  Blaming "all" the nation's problems on rich people is not the same thing as blaming all the nation's problems on Jews.  It's not saying, oh this evil minority controls the money.  It's saying that controlling all the money is their defining characteristic as a minority.

And yeah, I'm in the camp that says, when you're part of the 1% of people who control 90% of a nations wealth, you deserve all the bad words people want to throw at you.  Because at the end of the day, they're just words and you're still a multi-millionaire.  They don't need anyone else to defend them, they have money to do that with.

[SalmonGod]

The 1% is a line, and not even an entirely accurate one.  To be honest, we could probably move it up to the .01%, and still catch the majority of people under that umbrella who are causing the most problems for everyone.  The problem is we're trying to spread an idea, and there has to be some easy to grasp symbolism involved for those ideas to go viral.  Occupy already gets enough flak for not being able to summarize the entire nature of their movement in a catchy soundbite.  The labels of 1% and 99% are easy to understand and stand some chance of drawing people in, where they can then learn more in-depth information.

And very few people have advocated violence against the 1%.  We're aware that the Occupy movement has many supporters within the 1%, including some who have joined in action and been welcomed.  However, there are many (myself included) who believe that violence will be inevitable at some point.  The whole point of the movement is to make people aware of the violence that already exists.  Forcing people into poverty through abuse of authority is a form of violence.  Pointing out that this violence exists has drawn further and more obvious violence from those institutions which enforce the authority of the 1%.  This is already a fight.  We're just taking all the hits, and choosing not to strike back.  When merely suggesting in public that inequality exists and is a problem is enough to provoke massive displays of physical violence via chemical weapons, beatings, and nearly 5000 arrests, what do you think will happen when we get around to actually fixing those problems?

I CERTAINLY don't want Communism. I don't want Socialism either. I like owning the fruits of my efforts, and it just makes sense that I do so when you boil it right down to the basics. The problem is, when I am producing surplus fruits and only harm comes to others from me having these fruits, we have a problem. I think ideally what we need is a form of altruistic capitalism. The problem is I can't even fathom what a system like that would look like. A place where there is a cap on max wealth, probably, but still allows people to succeed on merit. Without handouts, but greater "hand-ups" I don't have any clue how to make such a thing, but it seems to me to be better than the unfettered capitalism we have.

So you want socialism, but don't want it to be socialism?  I just don't know what else to call this.  Socialism isn't about taking one person's hard earned stuff away and giving it to someone else just for the lulz.  It's about making sure everyone has opportunities, and preventing people's lives from being undeservedly ruined because of some unlucky circumstance or mistake.  Even if the wealthy altruistically gave their wealth away to people for this purpose without being asked, they would just be participating in a voluntary form of socialism.

[Lagslayer]

But that's the thing, isn't it? If you just force the people to act socialist, they will be less inclined to do it "right", and so corruption forms. This also works for capitalism, but I believe pure capitalism is more generally accepted than pure socialism.

There's nothing explicitly in the American system that forbids giving your money to others except to our enemies (and donating to the politicians, and we all know how well that's working). Most people are just inclined to hold onto most of their stuff unless it involves someone close to them, personally (complete stranger vs family/friends). This is how it's justifiable, I believe, and to start forcing it one way or the other is just going to make it worse.

That isn't to say, however, that some of the bad people don't need to be purged from time to time. Until we get some hypothetical system that pleases everybody (not sure if it's possible considering the diversity of people and their ideas), we are just going to have to clean house on occasion, and try not to make a bigger mess in the process.

[SalmonGod]

Can't really answer to that, because socialism/communism/capitalism isn't what I personally advocate.  I was only pointing out the contradiction in Kogan's stance.

[Nadaka]

Lagslayer: you can not rely on charity to meet all the needs of society. If you could, they would already be met. People are not perfect, and there will never be a society without greed.

But what you suggest in your last paragraph is a far harsher form of force. "Purging" people from time to time until you kill everyone who does not fit into your ideal society is far far worse than making people pay taxes.

[GlyphGryph]

A place where there is a cap on max wealth, probably, but still allows people to succeed on merit. Without handouts, but greater "hand-ups" I don't have any clue how to make such a thing, but it seems to me to be better than the unfettered capitalism we have.

We don't have anything close to unfettered capitalism. We have corporate welfare out the ass, an economic system than can only exist because its propped up by the government, government enforced monopolies, and a clear willingness on the part of the government to tailor their laws to insure corporate control (while keeping out competitors that don't want to play ball).

That ain't capitalism, buddy.