@dave86, how would that make sense, after all we have been through, could we pretend to have been borne yesterday, haven't we gone through a decade of hanging chads, redistricting electoral maps, locking out voters, automating voting machines, media manipulations of candidates, etc. Even if we did not have any of that we would still be presented with a list of candidates (of any color or brand you like, why not a "communist" or "socialist" too) preselected by the profit machine (i.e., candidates who would have had to raise enough money to even make a name, i.e., would have had to be appealing to money or capital not the number of voters). And with the gap ever widening and elections / selections more expensive than ever, the lower class candidates do not stand a chance of even becoming known. Once again ignoring the economic principles of the system you operate in could turn your political ideas and wishes a fantasy. Didn't selection (or apparent election) of Obama teach anything?

I would argue that not voting is more important these days than ever as it sends a message to the rest of society that the political system is rigged and illegitimate. Voting for one of the evils makes you an accomplice in crime, for avoiding cognitive dissonance makes you pretend things are better than they really are since after all you voted for the guy in charge, demoralize the rest of society who feel trapped by the stupid sheep that help the masters to keep them enslaved, as well as reinforcing the idea to the capitalists that the sheep are so dumb to fall for such a con game thus emboldening them.

"Many past Americans in the past bled and died to protect our right to vote." but in vain as we have experienced over the past at least one century. Our problems are fundamentally economic and so deep in fact to be rooted at the level of private ownership itself (the ultimate enabler for profit and the division of 1% vs. 99%). Structural economic problems cannot be solved by political means and solutions such as voting. However, structural economic solutions (i.e., a new economic system based on more sustainable economic principles) would be the appropriate response and would also affect a real sustainable change in the politics - because economic is the infrastructure and the real seat of power due to it survival role whereas politics (also culture, spirituality, ideology, etc.) are part of the superstructure dependent and expressions of the former.

The movement must move strategically to establish a new economic system. Voting could be used tactically but only as a secondary support measure for an already established effective economic measure. That is where sufficient work has been done on a grass roots level locally to gain enough "informed" support from the public that voting would just be a formality - i.e., play their game only if you know you are going to win (after all that is how they play it).

Direct action, direct democracy, engaging with people you know actively and directly (not virtually like through the internet) and can hold responsible in your daily interactions will be the politics of the new economy - small-scale, real, fool-proof and resistant to manipulation, but scalable and modular through networking and P2P interactions with other survival units ("egalitarian communes"). Voting will become a smaller and smaller part (increasingly operating based on a consensus level) as the groups become more internally and externally harmonized with a balanced knowledge of responsibilities, needs, abilities, and wishes applied locally to globally.

we all agree! .....the problem is THEM ....................not US

@Marrand:
Thank you for your kind words. We do in fact agree on many points. However you stated that "Let me attempt to summarize what we both want:
We want to restore functional capitalism without exploitation of the less fortunate ones."

I wouldn't say we agree on restoring functional capitalism as I see it as Slave does, that capitalism is now basically doing what capitalism does, this is the way it operates and we're seeing the effects of it. There has been no time in this country's history when capitalism operated in the way you want it to, no "golden age" of capitalism we can fondly look back on and wish to regain because it never existed. As I've explained, the exploitation of those without capital is absolutely necessary for capitalism as an economic model to operate, period. It can't work without it. If you could ever find a business owner who would be willing to pay his workers what their labor is worth or even pretty close to what their labor is worth in terms of value added, e.g. people doing $20 of work an hour and getting paid $18 or $19/hour to perform this labor, the business owner probably wouldn't even be able to cover his overhead costs like utilities, price of the raw material he's having made into finished goods/wholesale cost of his merchandise that he is having retailed etc. let alone keeping any profit for himself. Overhead aside, if the business owner isn't taking home hardly any profit or no profit at all then he isn't going to bother keeping his business open. He's certainly not going to keep it in business so that his workers will have an income. If he raises his prices to account for paying his workers close to what their labor is worth, paying his overhead costs and still keeping a profit for himself he will have priced his products far out of salability. Nobody would buy them and he'd go out of business, his former customers buying instead from someone paying their workers much less and able to price their products much cheaper.

And even if customers are still just as willing to pay the much higher price for his merchandise that means that the value of his workers' labor also went up just as much by virtue of the items still being salable at their higher price. They're still making them and he's able to now sell them for a much higher price, meaning the items are individually worth more as is the labor to produce them. Meaning he WOULDN'T actually be paying his workers what their labor is worth even then, bringing us back to the same problem. And that is with business owners making the totally illogical choice of risking being shunned by consumers because of their drastic price hike, made in order to give his workers a decent life, something I could not realistically envision even a few of them doing. The unavoidable problem with capitalism is that it cannot work without there being that large difference between what the workers' labor value is and what they're getting paid to perform that labor, in other words the workers have to be ripped off, exploited daily, or else the wheels come off the whole economic model. Because that is the case, capitalism doesn't deserve to be in existence. And with all due respect, for anyone who for familiarity's sake or whatever other reason wants to keep capitalism in place and merely reform some of its more egregious abuses, the onus is on them to figure out how we can both get workers paid what they deserve to be paid and still have functioning capitalism with business owners still making enough of a profit to keep their doors open. I don't see any way to make that possible and it is infinitely more important that we do right by the overwhelming majority of people, giving them a better quality of life and ending their enslavement, than it is to avoid inconveniencing the exploiter class.

What I've suggested does have some similarities with capitalism, like competition remaining a factor, but it is certainly not a capitalist system in that capitalism enshrines the ability of a single person to be able to own the productive assets and employ others to work for him, with him as the business owner being able to keep what he is able to as profit and pay them much less than what their labor is worth. That kind of private ownership of the productive assets won't be possible in what I'm suggesting beyond the tiniest of businesses like hot dog stands and newspaper kiosks and drug dealers because those small businesses can truly be operated entirely by that one owner, hence they too would be worker-owned businesses. Anything that requires even one single additional worker to be employed at a business would by law have to be worker-owned in order to prevent the otherwise-inevitable exploitation of the worker from occurring. And that kind of a notion is a world away from capitalism.

@Dave86:
As Slave has said, voting in this country is worse than worthless, it achieves LESS than nothing by sending the message to the billionaire elite that, no offense intended, the person doing the voting is gullible enough to think that it really makes a difference who wins when the mountain of evidence shows the opposite, that the process is rigged by the choices being controlled. Vote this one out and his replacement will be just another puppet of the oligarchy. Vote that replacement out and replace him with yet another puppet of the oligarchy. That isn't working and can't realistically be expected to work. The U.S. can't be meaningfully changed by working within the confines of a political system designed to prevent change from happening. We have to go outside that framework, tear it down completely and start over from the ground up to build a political system that reflects the wants and needs of the average American. Part of that will mean amputating some of the arms of the existing government, like the Senate, the concept of an Electoral College, the C.I.A. etc., and putting in place barriers to prevent the government from ever again being just a tool in the hands of the elite, e.g. by banning all private campaign donations, enforcing strict transparency of governmental decision-making and having a recall mechanism in place that allows the public to recall any politician at any level if they start to become destructive to the needs of the people.

None of that is remotely possible within the confines of the current system where we can choose between two scarcely-different sets of conservatives, one with an R next to their name and the other with a D but both working for the interests of the same class. Obama is an excellent example of the pathetic limitations of American pseudo-democracy and its shallow and meaningless version of representation. If Obama coming into office with a Democratic supermajority in the Senate, a sizeable Dem majority in the House and himself being an allegedly Democratic president couldn't give the people of this country a health care reform bill that embraces single-payer health care as a majority of Americans want, it should tell you all you need to know about the inherant falsity of American politics. In short, holding your nose and voting for one or the other is precisely what the elite wants you to do. It lends their expensive dog & pony show false credibility and makes America look more like a democracy in the eyes of the world when it is really nothing but a belligerant police state with fake elections and an enslaved populace.

@Skoalbite:
"We could at least try to get the rampant corruption out and reform what we have before we try to abolish it."

As I've explained above and earlier in this thread, you can't reform the abuses and exploitation out of capitalism. It will never happen. Without exploitation you have no capitalism, period. Hoping we can turn capitalism into something that doesn't exploit people would be like hoping we can still have wars, with all the shooting and bombing and shelling and other assorted violence that goes along with it, but at the same time thinking we can have those wars but without anyone on either side being hurt or killed. It is impossible, as wars by their nature involve killing and without killing they wouldn't be wars but military exercises, a universe of difference. Exploitation and the abuse of the underprivileged many by the overprivileged few is every bit as necessary and central to capitalism as killing is to wars.

@slave,
Sorry, but I have a problem with what you said. On many points.
On the philosophical level, I believe that competition and profits are good for the functioning of society. You called it capitalism, which by your standards automatically leads to exploitation. You are saying it's the system which exploits. My view is exact opposite: it's the people who exploit.

You counter that the capitalistic system forces or pushes or cajoles the successful ones to exploit the less the fortunate. If that's what you are truly saying, then my dear Sir, you have a very negative and pessimistic take on human nature. I believe humans are better than that, so readily led to hurt others. As if hurting others is our nature. Sorry, I will not accept that part.

And then you became personal. "...you are more concerned about your personal comfort level than finding out how reality functions - i.e. laws of economics and nature". Yeah, as if to you I am the dumb bunny, not at all interested in learning reality and focused only being fat and happy. But perhaps you didn't really mean it that way.

Since you brought up my comfort level, are you saying that YOUR system will deny me my comfort level? That somehow pursuit of happiness is no longer my basic freedom? If I exercised it, I will be derided? You certainly showed disdain for the concept of comfort level.

But then you doubted my concept of reality, or rather my wish to find out how reality functions. Let's examine YOUR reality. You talk about law of economics. They don't exist. Economics was created by humans for humans, it is not a science, and complex patterns we observe are far from the logical laws which we apply in the study of nature. But you can talk about laws of gravity or law of thermodynamics; sure, you can argue about limits or exceptions, but scientists in general apply the word "law" to a theory which does a great job of predicting future events. And in the study of nature we certainly have the ability to predict with phenomenal precision.

When I claim economics isn't a science I look at it from the lack of ability to predict. You can extrapolate the math formalism, do a lot of sophisticated accounting and statistics, but predicting the future is something which economics cannot do well at all. And if we are to ponder which system is best to live under, the study of economics is a crutch but certainly doesn't represent sufficient reality to make judgements.

Some people here say money is bad, let's do away with it. But trading is the second oldest profession, and trade requires currency. Or do you disgree? Once you have currency, you are stuck with the concept of accumulating it, and further more, the idea of being rich. Does that offend you? When a person works hard, under any system, saves and becomes rich? This can be done not only under captalism; even in the extreme of the Soviet Union the most self reliant managed to save and become rich relative to others. When communism finally fell, millionaires rose up like mushrooms after a good rain.

Then you maintain that it's capitalism the system which is reponsible for so many people being miserable today, right here in USA. "Capitalism is not being mismanaged by some incompetent gangsters who have hijacked it giving it a bad rap." Ok then. The hostile takeovers or attempts to do so of successful companies who produce good stuff, of which Phillips Petroleum several decades ago is one example I remember well: a bunch of these gangsters, yes I will call them gangsters, having accumulated huge wealth, attempted a hostile take over. In the proces they came close to bankrupting the company, and causing many people to lose jobs. We all know the goal was to milk the company out of more money. You dont' call those people gangsters? Who certainly give capitalism a bad rap? What about Enron? It was run by even more vile gangsters, out to make money for themselves without delivering good products to the society.

And then OWS started attacking those gangsters in the Wall Street banks, and people agreed. I wrote here before that all the foreclosed mortgages were totally banks' fault; people were sold defective product, the unpayable mortgage, and the damage was the same as selling defective tires - they bust, car crashes, some people die. Some blamed the consumers, they should have known they said. But the expert is the banker, trained and skilled in the business realities, and only they knew the odds of a contract failing; not the people. They proceeded cheating people nevertheless, and those are the gangsters which gave capitalism a bad rap. (Remember: every mortgage has an approval signature; why not force that guy to pay up from his own wealth?)

In sum, it's the people which destroy the system; no system has a self destruct button. You can talk about games, feudalism, socialism, capitalism, expoitation, sustainable economic principles, and all that sounds very good and erudite. But in the end it's the people who determine whether a given system works, and where.

@dave86
As if following slave's ideas, you propose going to socialism to cure the ills. No thank you. The people can screw it up just as well - socialism can have its own gangsters to exploit others. It seems that under capitalism the temptation to do evil resides in the corporations. But in socialism, this temptation resides in the government. I don't like either, but at least I have learned the skills needed to survive under capitalism and managed to achieve a certain comfort level. At least under capitalism I have ideas how to fix things. Maybe not good ones, maybe not completely in tune with current economic textbooks, but it's the best I can do.

@Durandus,
You sound angry. But why?

@Brutal_Truth,
Enjoyed reading your follow up, and have many things to say but not enough time to say it. Perhaps we have to define exactly what exploitation is. In my mind, selling unpayable mortgages to unsuspecting customers knowing they are defective is certainly exploitation. Hostile takeovers of productive companies just to milk all the profits from them is even worse exploitation.

Anyway, I am all typed out. Next time.

I am sorry to see that you are being disingenuous taking the "moral" upper ground instead of addressing the issues squarely.

"You talk about law of economics. They don't exist."
I am sure the capitalists (including the "financial engineers", the "feds", with all their huge debt, derivatives, and unemployment creations) would love to believe that now that they are in big trouble. We could suddenly have another bull market, right?

"In sum, it's the people which destroy the system; no system has a self destruct button. You can talk about games, feudalism, socialism, capitalism, expoitation, sustainable economic principles, and all that sounds very good and erudite. But in the end it's the people who determine whether a given system works, and where."

So the economic systems just happen? There was no reason for capitalism to follow feudalism, it just happened? There was no reason for capitalism or feudalism to rot except for bad people? Why then not restore the old slave system of the antiquity (e.g. Egypt, Greece, and Rome), since it was just the bad people who destroyed that system?!

It seems that evolution and ecology would be foreign concepts to you in which case I can hardly hope to communicate with you.

Sorry you are taking this so personally, but give it some serious thought. Some day soon your life may depend on it.

Oh my - where do I begin?

@Brutal_Truth, you said, "The U.S. can't be meaningfully changed by working within the confines of a political system designed to prevent change from happening. We have to go outside that framework, tear it down completely and start over from the ground up to build a political system that reflects the wants and needs of the average American. "

Brutal-T, how do you expect us to do this exactly? I mean, give me specific step by step how are we going to "tear it down completely and start over from the ground up." I believe we are committed to being a non-violent movement so I am assuming you are NOT suggesting violence as a means to overthrow the government.

The structures of government, our economy, and everything else is not going anywhere. Already - the Occupy Movement is creating its own social institution that depends on the division of labor and other capitalist institutions. People around the country, who have jobs, are donating goods and money to the Occupy campers. We spend our time camping out while they spend their time making money and raising their families. Several media sites, for both good and evil, have been covering the Occupy Movement to make it the success it is today. These media companies by in large depend on income from commercials. All the products you are using and depend on, from donations and else where, are made by capitalist companies- that they themselves depend on other capitalist companies and government funded infrastructure to keep the trades of goods and services across the country feasible.

Voting, and other means of societal pressure through our institutions, is needed to change the society for the better. I believe the current framework, while not ideal, is sufficient to change society if people are active.

Obama has achieved political victories and passed policies that have and will saved thousands of lives. If McCain was elected we would have never left Iraq or Afghanistan (we are now on our way out) and we would have never seen any reform on Health Care, while imperfect, will save the lives of over 40,000 people a year who may have died from preventable illnesses due an inability to afford health care. (Harvard Journal of Public Health.)

Obama began to fail in 2010 because youth our age stopped coming to the polls, democrats lost their majority in congress, republicans rode in and made passing anything sensible impossible. NOT VOTING will never convince the political elite that the system is illegitimate. NOT VOTING will only help reinforce the status-quo because youth, aged 18-30, are already NOT voting!!!!

Obama, in his victory speech in Chicago, said him being elected was only the first step in achieving the change we seek. We all have to keep coming to the polls in record numbers, writing to our representatives, letting them know that we are registered voters and if you do not support (for a example: a public option or stronger regulations for Wall-street) then we will vote against you and then we have to back it up by VOTING.

I promise you, thinking you can change society by withdrawing away from it, will only bring failure and cynicism.

I swear I can show you a path to radical reform through voting and civic involvement.


@marrand - I don't actually believe we should become socialist. I am just arguing, at a base level, we all should vote for what we support. If one believes socialism is the answer, just as an example, then they should vote for the socialist candidates.

I can't understand this idea, coming from some here with us, that we will achieve change by not voting. If you don't believe in any of the candidates at least vote and write in "none of the above" or write in "I am the 99%" so you at least will show up on the radar. If you choose to totally abstain from the process then you won't be communicating that "we the people believe the process is illegitimate," you won't even show up on the radar and people will assume were young kids who don't really care about politics. I know this is true because this is already happening! People are age are already abstaining from voting and this is the reality we are living in.

I want to see the same world that you all want to see, but to get there we have to be pragmatic.

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@Brutal_Truth

I think I mostly agree with your position (I want to get rid of capitalism). However, I'm curious as to how you define value.

Someone who is pro capitalism would say that Rush Limbaugh creates far more value than his audio board operator. So paying Rush $100 million and paying his audio board operator $30k is not exploitative because that is the value each are contributing.

People tune in to hear Rush, not to hear how well the audio is mixed.

So if they are both getting paid the value they contribute, then it is not exploitative.

How would you counter this point using your line of reasoning?

But I do not, will not, use this energy for Entropic ends for anyone...except to say that I will NOT support the current regime that We understand is THE culprit in Our Condition, right alongside of our own Apathy. We should remember as We proceed in this Process that We are just as culpable for the state of affairs as the worste offender, in that it only takes good men/women to stand idle to allow bad men/women to succeed. We must correct that fault of Ours in order to reverse that fault of Theirs...and so We shall...so I aver.

FD...you are talking about Consumer Value, at best...I am talking about Moral Value.

@Durandus

But the economy is an economic system, not a moral system. So it should measure consumer value, not moral value.

Is it immoral to pay people based on how much consumer value they contribute?

The economy actually reflects the Values of People, which are mostly manipulated by Advertisers/Marketers...and People are NOT amoral, but essentially Moral...that is to say, we are NOT automotons/machines, which are the only amoral things in the Cosmos, besides rocks, elements, viruses, psychopaths and unconscious animals. I think the psychopathic essence of an economic regime such as Capitalism is, at bottom, amoral...yes...in the sense of Deviation from the Norm. Have you ever heard of Mammals working together, even empathizing with each other across species? It is a well documented FACT that they DO, or are capable of it and have demonstrated the capacity...which means that Mammals ARE moral creatures, not counting Predators.

@Durandus, @FullDemocracy, @marrand, Let us realize that all of us are supporting capitalism and by extension its various political faces / regimes whether or not we like it. You only have to be doing one of the three things (in reality almost all of us do all three) to be empowering capitalism and by extension the capitalists who use the profits from our labor against us:
1) Buy or Sell - profit generated after transaction is complete by charging a higher price than the real costs of production for the items sold (e.g., consumer goods), and by payying at a lower price than the production cost or the real value of goods (e.g., natural resources)
2) Be Employed - profit generated by the wages not paid for the value of goods generated
3) Pay Taxes - profit generated by the government of gangster capitalists supposedly for the benefit of maintaining "public" institutions but actually for the welfare of their political class and to maintain the profit regime for all the gang members

These are the very ways that capitalists enslave us in their system. And with no alternative economic system we are prisoners, all of us empowering their lifestyles and schemes despite our protests and indignations. Most people would like to believe otherwise and claim "free will" (to avoid cognitive dissonance) but there is no such thing as "free" and that is the way it is whether you like it or not.

The only way out of our chains is by not doing 1), 2), and 3). That is only possible by establishing an alternative economic system where our labor does not end up as profits used against us and for rich man's luxury welfare. The key to this new system is abolishing private ownership (which is the basis of profit / capital) and replacing it with common ownership. This way we will have to work cooperatively and exchange and distribute goods in a shared manner based on need and ability to produce and lastly want. 1), 2) and 3) will thus become impossible and so will the dominance of man by man (1% over 99%). This is now possible due to the incredible productive powers of science and technology - the same productive forces that are causing labor to be unemployed in droves because they are hostage to capital / profit.

We may not be able to become "free" but we can become equal. True (i.e., practical and sustainable) freedom is only possible through equality.

Equality, Comradery, Solidarity

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@Durandus, That is why we must part with such sentiments and persuasions. They are ultimately centered in parts of brain (brainstem) that are easily titillated and reframe our reality for short-term concerns (fear, greed, lust, hate, other impulses) bringing out our individualistic "animal spirits" - a fact that the ruling classes have always known "naturally" and taken advantage of, dividing and conquering individually.

The new economic system, will not only be different in some aspect of economic principle (as with the economic systems prior to capitalism) but in the aspect that is arguably most fundamental - i.e., type of ownership of the means of production. For common ownership (in contrast to private production) to be "restored" after about 10,000 years since the advent of agriculture and "civilization" a paradigm shift of unprecedented scope is necessary. One that would have its ideological manifestations (framing of our thinking, including centers of brain activity) in the way we perceive the world, gather information, and process such information to formulate thought and implement behavior. So the old ways of discourse and "persuasion" will necessary have to change, arguably away from the more subjective "sentiments" rooted in the lower brain centers to the more objective / or at least considerate / measured / dispassionate and insightful higher brain centers. This is not to say we would need to become unemotional but merely to gain better control of our emotions - thus enabling us to relate to one another better, consider other possibilities that we may not have considered including being wrong, consider that thinking itself is not an individual act and derives its elements from the bigger human collective / history / and nature including the limits imposed by the economic system, and finally consider the value in collective research and debate to test ideas for objectivity against the greater knowledge / nature / reality.

Ultimately we must go even further than collective reasoning / rationalization - we must subject these ideas to experimental proof or face the possibility of deluding ourselves except collectively now. Human species having journeyed through the age of impulse and emotions, and the age of private reason / science, must enter the age of collective evolutionary consciousness / experimental science. This would be a final admission and acceptance of the only constant in man's nature and nature itself - change.

@slave,
Let me try again. Yes, I wrote that laws of economics do not exist and explained why. Instead of giving examples, you invoke the financial gangsters we talked about, and of all things, the bull market. What does the former have to do with the later?

You challenge with "so the economic systems just happen?". Again I wrote that they are the creation of humans, and certainly just didn't happen.

And then you do some name dropping, evolution and ecology, being yourself very disingenuous taking "intellectual" upper ground, talking as if you are the intellectual elite and those you disagree with are inferior and dismissable.

Yes, I do take it personally when you talk down; and yes, if you like, I do take the moral ground by claiming that human nature is good, and not designed purposely to hurt others. And that is one reason I focus on the human causes - the gangsters, and not the systems.

Be careful friend; someday, someone will take the time to prove you wrong, and then what will you do? In the meantime you are right: you and I cannot communicate.

@Brutal_Truth,
Back to your Nov. 20 post. You say you see it as Slave does. Since then I wrote a long rebuttal to Slave, he dismissed it as intellectually inferior, and in effect we parted ways.

In sum, I am arguing that the misery is caused by humans acting greedy and exploiting others, not by any system. The systems as poeople call them are the inventions of the human minds, they comprise a set of conditions and rules and exceptions, and people operate within that framework. When things go wrong, I look at who did it. And thus you saw my take off on the concept of gangsters introduced by Slave.

Was there golden age of capitalism? No, I don't recall reading of any. But then I ask you: what do YOU consider capitalism? You already agreed on profits, on competition, on some working harder and thus getting richer - in your mind, that makes it capitalism? If you add a robust safety net for those less fortunate, does that compromise capitalism?

You introduce the term "those without capital". I understand it as those who have nothing, or very little and no resources to earn any. Those then live in the safety net, and thus not exploited. Ok, you suggest further that those with a lot of capital will exploit those with much less? If I own a fully furnished house and several cars and have modest savings and income, but you own ten times as much, how would you go about exploiting me? We both have the stuff to meet our material needs plus a few extras to make life more fun. But you are worth ten times more in terms of capital/assets. Just how do you exploit me? How much better is your life than mine?

Yes, I understand how the rich one will become enamored with his riches and want more and more and more. And to get more, he will have to find ways to take some away from people like me. That is what I see as exploitation: taking away what I already have. Sure, he can stop me from earning, but in your system of capitalism we already agreed that production would be owned by workers, and all those who want to work, can work.

Again, you say your system is similar to capitalism in that it includes competition, and I think later you agreed to profits, owned by all workers, but not by top individuals. As I wrote before, that makes sense to me. The key point for me was: that the ownership of the production means is not owned by government, but by a group of people all of whom contribute to the success of this production. If all work hard and make better stuff, which is bought by more consumers, then all get richer. But in the end the fruits of their labor go into their pockets, and not the government. Does that make sense to you?

Most of you concluded that without exploitation you have no capitalism. However, since I maintain that people exploit people, not some abstract system, then any system is subject to exploitation. And that's what everyone seems very concerned with: how to remove or reduce the exploitation of the less fortunate.

Many believe that going to socialism will do the trick. Other believe that one must totally transform capitalism to reach this end. Seems like there are myriad of systems conjured in peoples' minds which achieve this end AND preserve the material benefits of the current system. In any case, none of you propose to take away person's right to pursue their happiness just to please a system.

@Dave86
I don't understand how voting is worthless; seems like it's one of the most powerful tools regular folks have to affect their lot. How do the gangsters cheat? By forcing you to vote their way? I don't think so. Their only method is manipulation of counting machines. Are you implying that the true numbers are purposely adjusted all over the country to meed the goal of some dark cabal?

Yet, later you write that "voting.....is needed to change the society..". Now you got me confused as to your position.

When I first saw the OWS movement, I said great, they are after the capitalist gangsters in Wall Street banks who have screwed the people. And I saw people around me enthusiastic and supportive of that goal. But now you are introducing government and politics, and went so far as to praise Obama and what he did for us. Are you saying that OWS is here to reelect Obama, rather than force the government to met out justice to these gangsters, and in some manner compensate those injured?

@Durandus,
You wrote: "The economy actually reflects the Values of the People, which are most manipulated by Advertisers/Marketers....and People are NOT amoral, but essentially Moral...". I agree when describe people thus.
I disagree when you can assign morality or lack there of to a system, any system.

Allow me to add: being that we are humans with emotions, feelings and needs, needs for goods and human contact, we should not part with sentiments and persuasions en masse. After all, they are the drivers of our efforts to communicate.

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@Durandus,
beautiful: "various sets of assumptions, none standing alone but woven to generate meaning". Seems there is a lot in your mind and even more in your heart, all struggling to get out, to be shared, yet the flow so limited by the written word.
Since you ponder, here is a little thought for you to ponder, regarding capitalism, people, misery, happiness and stuff like that:

Don't the blame the sun for your sunburn!!

HA...so true...but braving out the sun in full force of seeming, shadows dancing on the angles...not here or there in sweeted sympathies, nor couched in dainty flirtings of the mind, comes forms of light and golden verity, clothed in itself...itself a world sublime...substance of being, hope without a fear...this proven faith, indemnified by countless tears..."The Odyssey of Heart"...dvm.

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@Durandus,
Here I sit on a park bench, minding my own business, watching the comings and goings of my heroes in OWS, all is quiet and calm.........but then comes towards me a tired man, sits next to me, introduces himself as Durandus, and tells me of a long journey he took. He has very many pictures of his journey in his bag, and asks me if I would look at them. You with OWS, I ask? Of course, he says with a grin. Ok then Durandus, show me your pictures. This should prove interesting, I decided.

He gets up, opens his bag, takes a huge bunch of pictures in each hand, and throws them up in the air; they scatter all around me and I am confused. I pick one, I pick another, I find a few very interesting.........but wait......why am I doing this work, running around like little kid trying to catch butterflies with my bare hands..........

Why couldn't Durandus just sit close to me, and slowly pull out each picture, starting with those he deems most important, and let me look at each carefully and digest their impact.

Durandus: that's what your thoughts appear to me..........scattered and flying all over the space above me, and I have to reach each one, examine, and pick those I want to savor longer. Hey, that's a lot of work man!! I am not as nimble as I used to be. :)

chuckle*...and you'd be right...I didn't stuff my bag beforehand with any particular catalogue of importance, but gleaned these snippets along the Way, some gems more nicely polished, some rough-hewn and a bit fuzzy along the edges...if you need a light, I have a Fire...take this one, hold it firm...it blazes brighter for a Scope of better comprehension...but understand...I did not come all this way to prattle about fine-clothes the Emperor said is mark of Dignity...but lugging this bag around, johny-apple-seed in the desert some Manna, my Mothers' recommending: the birds care not for an ordered table of delicacy, being wind-born and restless...feed the sparrows...the dogs are already glutted...and sparrows don't bark at my heels...now where did I lay my walking stick?...ah...there, under the Apple Tree...care to try a crisper bite?...look here:

http://www.facebook.com/notes/beingquest-meissen/introductions/128728293896981

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/durandus-von-meissen/19/7a/975

Something more ordered comes this Way...so if you prefer, sit here yet...I Set over there, at the foot of the Mountain, my Party Mask, as you prefer...it is a Costume Ball, good Professor, and U may manage as you like or have energy to indulge these many flittings...the cawing jaws jump about, or Odin's Sentinels observing...where shall We begin?...the Earth is so broad, the seas so raging...ah, yes...beside the Well...but if you knew who asked you sit longer, you'd of offered Me some Water...nonetheless...a good Samaritan has Story also, after the Wonder.

@Dave86:
You ask "how do you expect us to do this exactly? I mean, give me specific step by step how are we going to "tear it down completely and start over from the ground up." I believe we are committed to being a non-violent movement so I am assuming you are NOT suggesting violence as a means to overthrow the government."

You're correct, I'm not advocating violence, far from it. Here's the two-stage process by which we could go about tearing down the American political framework and replacing it with democracy: the first phase is the building of a popular movement for radical change. We have to get the majority of Americans on board with both the understanding that they're being daily exploited, that the political set-up isn't going to allow them to change it in any meaningful way, and that we the people have the power to effect the changes that need to be made with organized, concerted action. Phase 2 is translating that popular movement into action for example in the way the Bolivians did, with a well-organized campaign of non-violent civil disobedience aimed at shutting this country down and keeping it shut down until the system collapses. Blocking off highways, city streets, railroad lines, airports, seaports and anything else we can think of and refusing to be moved. No system on earth is designed to be able to cope with that. We do that for a few days and the elite will get very nervous and call out the military to crush the demonstrations. When the military refuses to shoot its fellow Americans, either at the unit level or at the individual soldier level, there will be mass defections from the military to the movement and the elite, seeing it can no longer count on the military, will pack its bags and flee the country. We then fill the vacuum, hold new elections and arrange the framework like I described above, with completely publicly-funded election campaigns, no Senate, its duties being transferred to the House, transparency of the operations of government, the possibility of recall elections hanging over the head of every politician at all times to dissuade them from straying from the people's wishes etc. So no, I'm not suggesting violence but what I am suggesting is certainly going beyond what is achievable by simply occupying public places that don't in and of themselves present any kind of giant inconvenience to the bourgeoisie. Unless the movement is willing to make the transition to civil disobedience aimed at causing this rotten system to collapse once it gains popular support for radical ideas then it is a movement without any realistic hope of changing anything in any meaningful way. The Egyptians didn't bring down their government by simply camping out where their elite didn't mind them camping out, where it didn't really get in their way. Neither did the Tunisians or the Bolivians.

"Voting, and other means of societal pressure through our institutions, is needed to change the society for the better. I believe the current framework, while not ideal, is sufficient to change society if people are active."

Then you have no real idea how the system works Dave86. If it worked like you think it does there would be no need for any OWS movement. We could effect all the changes we want simply by voting. What you don't seem to realize is that voting doesn't amount to a pile of s**t if all the choices are controlled. It is nothing more than a dressed-up version of "elections" in some third-world military dictatorships where you can vote for this or that military hard-liner but nobody who isn't a military hard-liner. In other words, it has all the trappings of democracy and the rituals of democracy but none of the real substance. If you think you can get any kind of real changes made in this country by voting I have a wonderful bridge I'd love to sell you, no paperwork needed. Obama didn't begin to fail because people our age stopped coming to the polls. He started out with the best situation any incoming president could ask for, a supermajority in the Senate and a majority in the House both held by his party. This situation continued for the next two years. Where is our single-payer health care? Why was it immediately taken off the table? Where is our Employee Free Choice Act? Where is a foreign policy that has some daylight between it and his predecessor's foreign policy? Where is the president that will raise the minimum wage above a pittance? His sellouts and betrayals of progressive ideals are too numerous to list. I don't see how you could have been paying attention since January 2009 and been unaware of them. Obama has never, and I mean NEVER governed in anything remotely resembling a progressive manner, far from it. To the contrary he's gone out of his way to piss all over the progressives and govern as a conservative. Face it, you've been had, Obama is nothing but the elite's friendly new face on the same old policies. Continuity they can believe in. You wouldn't have been allowed to vote for any other kind of candidate but a conservative. This explains why the billionaires don't piss their pants and flee the country every four years out of fear we might elect someone radical who will derail their gravy train. They know what you still don't: that THEY control the process, not you and not the rest of the electorate. They USE you and people like you to give them and their artificial process credibility they don't by any means deserve.


@FullDemocracy:
I look at it like this: nobody on earth deserves $100 million/year, not a brain surgeon, not a scientist who finds a cure for cancer, nobody, and nobody needs $100 million/year in order to make ends meet regardless of what they think their work is worth. Someone having way more money than they can realistically use equals many other people not having enough to get by. In the society I'm talking about there would be a drastic reappraisal of value added and this would be heavily weighted toward lifting up those who currently don't have enough and in the process bringing the rich down to a middle-class income level. With a salary cap far FAR below $100 million/year, more like $200,000/year or less, yes there would some millionaires and billionaires who think they're getting ripped off and not making the income they deserve to make. Tough tittie. They've had things their way in America the entire time there has BEEN an America. Things are going to have to change and if that means a great deal of economic discomfort for the exploiter class I'm certainly not going to lose any sleep over it and neither should you. As it is they would still be allowed to make up to the income cap which would mean they would have more than enough to live comfortably, they'd just have to get used to living comfortably as a proletarian. Something has to give and it needs to be those who have more money than they can spend in several lifetimes, not the people currently at the low end of the economic spectrum who are every day being exploited by those with capital. The comparatively small amount of the population that would see their incomes shrink under my plan would probably mostly choose to leave the country anyway rather than have to live as a proletarian and even if they all stayed, if it is a question of someone having to be inconvenienced it is far better to inconvenience the far smaller slice of the population (and at that they'd still be able to live comfortably) so that the rest can have a decent life free from exploitation than the reverse of that.

@Marrand:

Yes, the misery is caused directly by people of course, it could be no other way. But you say "I am arguing that the misery is caused by humans acting greedy and exploiting others, not by any system. The systems as people call them are the inventions of the human minds, they comprise a set of conditions and rules and exceptions, and people operate within that framework. When things go wrong, I look at who did it."

But what I'm saying, and what Slave is saying, is that it isn't a situation where capitalism was intended to be some fair, egalatarian system that somehow was perverted by its adherants and went horribly wrong. The problem is that capitalism itself, by its very nature, the way it has to operate etc. IS the problem and it is just doing what it does, in the course of which causing problems that you exclusively blame on some of capitalism's adherants. Yes individual capitalist exploiters are the ones exploiting their workers, not some abstract idea, but what we're saying is that under capitalism it can be no other way. There has to be exploitation or else capitalism would never work, there would be no businesses, nobody would be employed, no goods would be produced or services rendered with the exception of those that can be produced or rendered by one-person businesses. Barring that, tens of millions of people have to be taken advantage of every day in order for this economic model to work, period, no way around it.
"Was there golden age of capitalism? No, I don't recall reading of any. But then I ask you: what do YOU consider capitalism? You already agreed on profits, on competition, on some working harder and thus getting richer - in your mind, that makes it capitalism? If you add a robust safety net for those less fortunate, does that compromise capitalism?"

What do I consider capitalism? I already explained it my friend. A system that enshrines the ability of an individual to own their own business and employ others to work for them, with the business owner able to keep whatever he is able to keep as profit and pay his workers as little as he can get away with. That is capitalism and completely incompatible with a worker-ownership society like I'm envisioning. What I'm talking about involves all businesses being worker-owned, period. A complete break with current notions of bourgeois property relations in other words.

"Ok, you suggest further that those with a lot of capital will exploit those with much less? If I own a fully furnished house and several cars and have modest savings and income, but you own ten times as much, how would you go about exploiting me?"

I wouldn't unless I was using my capital to open my own business and then employ you to work for me, paying you as little as I can get away with paying you. That's what I'm talking about when I say those with capital exploit those without, because those without capital are in no position to be able to own their own business so they are forced to sell their labor piecemeal to those WITH capital, at a far lower rate than they deserve to be paid, in order to keep from starving. Someone with a $10 million home living next to someone with a $50,000 home isn't exploiting him by living there. Someone with a $10 million home who opens his own business and pays his neighbor a crap wage with no benefits however is.

"Again, you say your system is similar to capitalism in that it includes competition, and I think later you agreed to profits, owned by all workers, but not by top individuals. As I wrote before, that makes sense to me. The key point for me was: that the ownership of the production means is not owned by government, but by a group of people all of whom contribute to the success of this production. If all work hard and make better stuff, which is bought by more consumers, then all get richer. But in the end the fruits of their labor go into their pockets, and not the government. Does that make sense to you?"

Yes, up to a certain point. Correct, there will be no sole proprietors employing several workers but rather those workers each owning a part of that business themselves and the profits being rolled back into payroll, divided equally among the workers of that business (excepting arrangements made among themselves regarding one deciding to take on more responsibility as a manager or foreman etc. and the others agreeing to give him or her that position in exchange for him getting a little higher percentage of the profits and them each getting a slightly smaller percentage) as opposed to a business owner getting the profits or some state governmental organ owning it. Now, I said up to a certain point, that point being the salary cap. Nobody would be able to take home income above that salary cap, instead THAT portion of income would indeed go to the government in taxes to pay for various things from employing the unemployed or helping them start their own worker-owned businesses with other unemployed people, providing affordable single-payer health care, rebuilding the infrastructure etc.

"Many believe that going to socialism will do the trick. Other believe that one must totally transform capitalism to reach this end. Seems like there are myriad of systems conjured in peoples' minds which achieve this end AND preserve the material benefits of the current system."

Well, none that I've heard of that are able to square the circle of ending the exploitation of the non-wealthy but still keeping capitalism in place. That's what I keep asking and I don't mean it sarcastically at all, please, if anyone has ideas as to how we can end the enslavement of America's vast non-wealthy majority and still keep capitalism let me know, I'd love to hear them as that would involve a lot less effort than building a new economic system. They don't seem to exist however because as I've explained profusely capitalism cannot survive without exploitation of the many by the overprivileged few, it's the way it has to work. Otherwise business owners probably wouldn't be able to pay their overhead costs let alone take home a profit, meaning they wouldn't bother being a business owner. Because it can't survive without exploitation is why it has to be removed and humanity has to move on to the next stage of human development beyond capitalism instead of hoping we can keep an economic model that revolves around greed and exploitation and somehow turn it into a system that instead works the exact opposite way to benefit the opposite class of people. Ultimately, since it is infinitely more important to end the exploitation of the masses and give them a decent life than it is to preserve a bourgeois class of people who have more wealth than they could ever use, if both can't coexist then the choice is obvious.

As for what you said to Dave86: "I don't understand how voting is worthless; seems like it's one of the most powerful tools regular folks have to affect their lot. How do the gangsters cheat? By forcing you to vote their way? I don't think so. Their only method is manipulation of counting machines."

Actually, manipulating of voting machines is amateurish. They don't really need to do that to control the process and whatever smallish amount of vote manipulation that goes on has to uniformly be done at the local- or state level by lower-level operatives who themselves have very thick ideological blinders on and think it matters who wins, or are directly employed by this or that candidate for judge of the orphans court or county commissioner etc. and is willing and able to rig the local election process to guarantee he gets elected. If anything it is tolerated by the upper echelons of the party if it can't be connected back to them and as it makes the process look more meaningful and competitive by virtue of people caring enough about the outcome to try to manipulate it. But any kind of vote-rigging doesn't amount to much in terms of changing election outcomes. The real way that the elite controls the process is a lot less technological. They control it by simply buying all the candidates for a given office that we can choose between. That way, no matter if the ignorant public stamps its hoof on the red button and elects a John McCain or stamps its other hoof on the blue button and elects a Barack Obama, it doesn't matter a whit to the elite because they know that an Obama presidency and a McCain presidency are going to differ only in style, not in substance. If anything, Obama can get away with more destruction of progressive ideals than McCain ever would have been able to by Obama being an alleged Democrat. Like "only Nixon could go to China" and open up diplomatic relations with them, as a liberal would have been crucified as being a communist sympathizer. Same principle. But no, vote-rigging is SO third-world and amateurish. America's elite doesn't need to bother with that to control the process, they just control everyone we can choose between so why bother with rigging it? Elect a conservative and get conservative policies. Elect what you think is a progressive and you still get the same conservative policies.

Ask yourself: if you're a billionaire and have all this wealth and power and have a government that operates as your handmaiden, are you really going to NOT buy candidates to ensure the process happens as you want it to and instead just let something as messy as a democracy really just work itself out whichever way it goes with you having no control over the process? Really? Somehow I don't see that happening. Rather the much more realistic scenario is the wealthy using their wealth to control the process by funding puppet candidates who then do favors for them while in office and controlling the outcome of elections by having all the choices in their pocket, thereby avoiding nasty surprises. The last surprise they got was in the early 1960s and even he (JFK) started out as their puppet. Once he cut his puppetstrings and decided to be his own man they had him killed. Ever since then they've made doubly sure that any president and any potential candidate for president knows who he's working for and what will happen if they grow an independent mind. It would be nice if voting in America actually changed things but it doesn't. If it did it would be illegal.

Eight to Awake - Eight top beliefs and wants to awake America

I posted this 11/22/11 in the Action Proposals section in an attempt to put something together reflecting the top beliefs and wants of the Occupy Movement. Please take a few minutes to look it over and provide any feedback or ideas for getting it out.

Thanks!