Those changes aren't enough when the people who make them don't have enough accountability. What incentives do the lions of the senate have to change anything when their only goal has become consistent re-election? No one is advocating the type of revolution you'd see in third world countries, but the changes made to Wall Street will have to be mirrored by some serious changes in Washington, even if it just means voting a lot of fresh faces into office.
think about this: you're talking about playing the same game they are playing. they are masters of this game. they've been playing it for much longer than us, and they're much better at it than us. so... i assume if were going to play the game, we have to pick a piece to play with. so that means we gotta find some derp to be a leader. then, that derp supposedly is speaking in the interests of EVERYONE? when one person gets power like that, things can go wrong. one person can easily be corrupted. our piece would become their piece. how can we play this game? edit- also, WHY cant we change the system? why not a revolution? i think that people are socially indoctrinated to believe that we absolutely must have this system for our lives to work. that if capitalism falls, the free world falls. the USA system is the best system and trying to change that will cause the world to collapse or something. we are so conditioned to believe that this is the only way it can be. its not. and im not accusing you of that necessarily pac, just generalizing [br][/br]Edited by merge: How Egypt Justifies Its Brutal Crackdown: Occupy Wall Street LIVE in Egypt NOW: Watch Now - Al Jazeera English
You keep saying things like "we" or "they". Ambiguous terms sound nice in a speech but once things come down to actually doing something people need to hear specifics. Who are "they", who is the "we". The entire American people? The entire American people have a mean age of 38.6 and there are many more Americans over the age of 50 then under the age of 50. (The largest issue with the Social Security problem) There are 435 House of Representatives and 100 senators and not all of them are corrupt assholes. Some of them really do want to fix things and they draft bills all the time to do so. Unfortunately noone hears about them because of the nut-jobs that get all the media attention and no one can last 10 minutes through C-SPAN without falling asleep. So it's hard for the American people to throw all their support behind bills they don't know exist and until some large media source tells them about it it goes unnoticed and ultimately voted down by the corrupt ones. Does that sound like a rigged system, sure to those that don't want to put the effort into looking up the good from the bad. If people did then it would be an entirely different case. Because history has shown what happens in the other systems. Communism never works, its a good utopian ideal but a horrible practical system of government/economy. Pure socialism doesn't work either. France, Germany, England and many other European countries that pay for pretty much everything have ultra-strong Unions and ultra-high unemployment. (You think our 9 something unemployment is bad just look at France's 9.6, and that's down from over 10% from last year) Obviously Monarchy, Dictatorship, Oligarchies, or Parliamentary government's aren't the answer either as countries in Africa, Southern Asia, the UK and Middle East would tell you. Technically the profitable system out there right now is China's and they're cheating. They claim their a "communist" nation but there more capitalist at this point then we are. No, the mixed economy and representative democracy system has worked for the United States for three hundred years and despite some ups and downs along the way we still are considered a "super power" country. So why not a revolution? Because the majority of Americans don't want one and things are not nearly that bad. Just thinking it is basically offensive to the people that did have revolutions. Countries where people were being killed by the government, the standard of living was very low for most people, and the livelihood of every person was in jeopardy. Wanting progressive change in which we fix the inadequacies in the system does have historic precedent, (Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, Abraham Lincoln's Abolitionist movement, Women being able to vote) and is the most reasonable thing to want and the best chance we have at fixing the country's problems.
The point is if you want change it has to be within the system. Every U.S citizen has the tools to have their voice heard and talk of "revolution" is just silly and the ultimate result would be we'd be worse off because of it. Revolution is a very very strong word and the countries that have recently had revolutions are not much better off then they were before hand. Crime rates are high, death is still high, and mass confusion about what happens next occurs. They might be better off in the long term but the short term's usually a *****. But, maybe you mean revolution how I mean progressive change but then that has to happen within our system of government and yes its a slow process but like I said, small progressive change begets larger progressive change and before you know it you have a reform movement and everything turns itself around. But, bringing it back on topic. I don't think the occupy movement has the unified message yet that the government needs to hear. Whatever is on the internet isn't what the occupy movement is, the occupy movement is on the streets not the internet. So, if there is a clear message or a specific list of what they want on some site written by some clever person or persons then that list needs to be spread around to the thousands of people in the streets protesting and getting pepper sprayed by idiot police.
Average people can't afford a lobbyist. Corporations can. Thus, they have more weight than us. How do you expect to change anything within a rigged system, i ask once again. I am not saying people need to take to the streets and burn down buildings when i say revolution. I mean peaceful revolution. You think progressive change can happen within the system, i say that it cannot until revolutionary changes are first made to the system itself. any time someone talks about a new system for society, where everyone can be provided for, everyone gets all prickly and starts throwing around the isms. burr rah rah thats communism rah rah thats socialism. why not try thinking outside the box, get rid of your labelism, and try to imagine a new system that works for the benefit of the people, combining the good ideas from all systems into one thing? of course that would be difficult, and of course, everyone is too lazy to deal with it. but just taking a step back and thinking idealistically about all this, it is not impossible. but, one thing is definitely for sure: "They" want you to think it is impossible. and, you do. =)
A Lobbyist isn't a multimillion dollar contractor. They're a person who represents a specific thing. "Average people" is again not specific enough of a description. The working class? The lower middle class? Who is "average"? The average annual income for people between 25 to 34 in the United States is about $45,000. There are lobbyists for movements the same as there are for corporations. For instance there are gun control lobbyists that work for no specific corporation. You keep making it sound like its a game with a predetermined outcome for failure. There's a big difference between a rigged system and a corrupt one. A corrupt system can be fixed from inside and the corruption can be removed. A process that takes time. Again, "peaceful revolution" is idealistic nonsense. People can be peaceful for as long as they want but that won't change anything. Gandhi's peaceful tactics were not the only thing that moved the British out of India. What changes? How do those changes get enacted? Where does one start to even change an entire system? This is the largest problem with the occupy movement. It's no different then any movement with some guy on a loud speaker speaking idealistic things that sound wonderful but have no real substance. Change doesn't just happen, it never has. There needs to be a specific plan, how much money will it cost, how will it affect the largest amount of people, all factors in a complex system. ...that was some down right hippie stuff right there. People throw around "isms" because civilized people come up with names for things. Names describe things, they give us something to compare to other things of similar or different nature. Once something is defined it can be taught to other people. What benefits some people doesn't benefit all people. You can't just keep saying, "the people", because the intent is the people that are in the same position as you. There are other "labels" other idealistic people used in similar ways. Karl Marx called them the proletariat and the evil corrupt corporations the bourgeoisie. His ideas were in relation to the industrial revolution and it all sounded great but it too had a lot of practical problems. Problems that Vladimir Lenin found when actually trying to run a country according to those ideals. As far as "taking the best of each system" what is the best of each system? How do they go together? A dictatorship is a very strong system of government maybe all power in 1 person is the best of that system. Or maybe you mean that something completely new should be devised. That's even more complex and not practical. Pretty much every form of government has been considered in the history of people and like evolution itself the best and most stable systems have formed what is around today. Wanting a utopian society is great, we all want that. Getting to there is nowhere near as simple and assuming it is would be pure ignorance. I feel like I'm debating a philosophy professor in which there's no way of winning. We both want the same things but while you seem to be consistently wishing for the ideological impossible, I want the very realistic progressive changes that have happened in the past and can happen again. My way is slow and possibly would take more then a lifetime to get there but it is still very possible.
http://www.change.org/petitions/tell-obama-to-condemn-police-actions-around-the-country http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/11/20/1038364/-An-Open-Letter-to-President-Obama?via=siderecent
I believe this has already been brough up earlier, but the problem with many critics is that they're expecting too much out of OWS, as if they're supposed to have answers or something. For instance, you keep asking what these changes need to be, Pac. The movement isn't necessarily about finding the changes themselves, though there are select people doing that. It's more about starting the conversation and changing the mindset of complacency we've all developed. It's just to get us looking in a new direction, if nothing else. That said, I've been impressed with some of the more thoughtful writing surfacing during this movement, such as the New Common Sense. It's the type of thing that doesn't have to be implemented word for word, but putting the ideas out there is what gets the gears turning.
All it takes is a couple of loud voices to get a conversation started. A movement needs to have a direct purpose with a direct cause. Even though the tea party movement was full of absolute crap (you can't name your group after the largest piece of vandalism and treason in the nation's history and demand taxes that are already the lowest they've been in decades to go lower) they had a very specific unified message. That message allowed them to force there way into political power to spread their message. Again, their message was bigoted, racist, and down right crap...but they knew how to spread their message so the most amount of people knew what it was. All movements in history had a specific message like the non-violent civil disobedience movements of Martin Luther King Jr., or other movements which had a very specific message, a message that appealed to a lot of people. So, at the very least the occupy movement has started the conversations and if that is all they wanted to do then mission accomplished but if they want actual change they need to do better.
what allowed the tea party to succeed was that it was funded by billionaires and fox news. [br][/br]Edited by merge: On January 21, 2010, with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government. Human beings are people; corporations are legal fictions. We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United, and move to amend our Constitution to: * Firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights. * Guarantee the right to vote and to participate, and to have our vote and participation count. * Protect local communities, their economies, and democracies against illegitimate "preemption" actions by global, national, and state governments. The Supreme Court is misguided in principle, and wrong on the law. In a democracy, the people rule. We Move to Amend. We the People, Not We the Corporations | Move to Amend
Well the tea party was/is also predominately a right-wing group, and a fairly extreme one at that. It's not so much about whatever the message is as it is who makes up the movement. OWS is far more diverse, and as a result the message is more broad, too.
Be that as it may if they want success they need to refine that message. If they want to specifically battle corporate greed and get money out of politics then they should show support for specific bills or propose them that do that. None of this, "we need a voice in government" crap. They have one. 40% Of people that could vote did not vote last election. And that number was a lot lower then has been in past elections. I suppose the case could be that people don't like either candidate enough to vote for them and voting for a different party is a throw away vote. Fair enough but even fewer people vote in local elections or for senators and house representatives that are closer to people then the president is.
a lot of people in this country have never felt like their voice will ever matter. this was an interesting article that i read about that: Back to the Future? Generation X and Occupy Wall Street | Occupy Wall Street | AlterNet i mean, we are Gen Y, but honestly its just been worse and worse anyway [br][/br]Edited by merge: ahahaha, i was amused by this post i just saw on G+ [br][/br]Edited by merge:
Voting itself is convoluted as it is. It could definitely be streamlined and relaxed so that more people are able to vote with less effort. However, it's harder to control who votes or guess the results that way, so it isn't exactly favorable for politicians. Something else to consider is who would be voting. We always complain about uninformed voters, but that number will inevitably increase with a higher turnout. The ratio of uninformed to informed may even tip further in their direction. Lastly, the desire for a voice in government almost certainly stems from Citizens United and a few previous cases which essentially ruled that the use of money is free speech and can't be limited as such. This also means that someone who is wealthier than I am has "more" free speech than I do. At least before, politicians would be "bought" indirectly with loopholes and favors. Now that the transaction is practically direct, people are naturally angry about it.