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A dad-like guy at Occupy Boston
By adamg on Tue, 10/04/2011 - 7:11am
Dennis Fox has been spending several hours a day at the Occupy Boston encampment in Dewey Square:
My impression so far is generally positive. It’s great seeing so much youthful anti-capitalist energy. The Twitter feed is constant with schedule changes, appeals for supplies, weather reports; my favorite so far was the tweet reporting that a “dad-like guy dropped off four cases of soda!” Lots of people speaking up in groups are articulate, focused, and experienced dealing with organizational and tactical issues. It’s exciting! When it doesn’t drone on!
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Comments
And thus their true objective is revealed
Anti-capitalism. Fantastic. Why don't you go ask some people who emigrated from the Soviet Union how positive anti-capitalist energy turned out to be for them.
Think for yourself
Go down there and ask them how anti-capitalist they are. They aren't. It's a poor characterization of the people there by one blogger's opinion of it. However, you are appealing to a fallacy of an extreme. Your "go ask the Soviet Union" shtick doesn't apply. Nobody is saying that the government should control all forms of production. Nobody. That's an extreme position and it doesn't work as you correctly note. The opposite extreme is completely unchecked corporate action. Do whatever you want for the sake of getting more money. We're not exactly there either right now...but we're a hell of a lot closer to that extreme these days than we are to the Soviet Union approach. Each day, a new corporate-sponsored, "business-friendly" bill that is written by people paid for by gigantic corporations with more money than the Federal Reserve these days gets passed to help "unregulate" and "give confidence" to the "job creators". That doesn't appear to be working either, does it?
This is about moving the pendulum back the other way. Nobody wants to turn American into the Soviet Union of the 80's. However, do you think the way things are now is hunky-dory?
The central philosophy of Capitalism
... is NOT every man for himself!
Ever hear the trope "freedom isn't free".
That goes for FREE MARKETS, too! Yes! It does! Free markets exist because GOVERMENT keeps them free.
You can play sandlot soccer without a referee. You cannot run an international futbol league without referees.
Get it?
"the ref is blind!!"
Actually the ref is a whore. The idea that our government has been policing anything other than the populace at large is laughable. An enforceable set of rules that we all have to play by does indeed sound good. Unfortunately that's not what we've had for many years. How many people who actually had decision-making power in the crash of 2008 went to jail? How many of them walked away with billions and are still employed making billions? Something is wrong with the ref. And that is why people are out there in the mud, camping out and being laughed at by the media.
The U.S. government has been used as a boot scraper on which the corporations have scraped off all the shitty "external costs" of their businesses. They are not "job creators" because jobs are an expense. And at this point in time, down-economy - no one is spending (or borrowing and spending), they have no incentive to hire. It cuts into profits. Better to have the govt eventually do something about the unemployed and then start to make money off those people again, which would result in the need to hire some folks. It's a completely illogical, circular system that violates basic rules of logic and can only work if you continually pass the bill to someone else to pay. Eventually the system will crash. And now that the entire system is global and even the Commie Chinese are wrapped up in it, God knows what happens.
The basic rule is entirely everyman for himself. In fact, it's make money or die. If you can circumvent the rules while others are following them and not get caught, you make more money and you win. The problem now is that the only players left (in the banking world, in the media, in ag-industry, in big pharma) are the ones breaking the rules. There's no one left to lose, but us.
OMG Socialism!!!!
No not really. In the context of the article, anti-capitalist is used as anti-guys working up there in those "investment" banks.
If you bothered to read the article, he goes on to state the protestors are a mismatch of anything from radical anarchists (libertarians?) to reformists.
Oh, and we don't have capitalism anymore in this country, nor democracy. It's a consumerist plutocracy.
oh no, scary big words!
It's not "anti-capitalism"
This article correctly points out that in order for the Occupy groups to be "anti-capitalist", then the target of their demonstrating would have to be capitalist in the first place. They aren't.
Since the system socializes the losses (TARP, zero-interest Fed lending) and privatizes the gains (Goldman Sachs bonuses, etc), it is by its very definition not capitalism. Government intervention prevented the financial industry from going under...that's not capitalism. In fact, the only anti-capitalists around here are running the banks.
Indeed
It is what we who consider ourselves Libertarian (and others, of course) might term "corporate welfare".
Capitalism thrives when corporate entities unable to turn a profit, especially due to mismanagement, are allowed to fail. It is no more the duty of government to bail them out than it is the duty of government to buy me a new car if mine gets wrecked because I plowed through a red light and got hit by an oncoming truck.
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
Preach it Sully!
:]
Soda is one of the most
Soda is one of the most capitalist & imperialist corporate products out there man! /the irony
Lots of people speaking up in groups are articulate, focused, and experienced dealing with organizational and tactical issues.
Professional protestors are lots of fun. When they finally grow up they usually take the same jobs at the same companies they spent their entire youths protesting against and collecting indirectly trust fund check from.
Blather On
Most of these people would take most any job offered to them.
The problem: NO JOBS.
When you get laid off - and that's WHEN you get laid off - I'm sure you might finally GET that.
Correct me if I'm wrong
But isn't capitalism, be it small or large businesses, what will create jobs and rev up the economy? Sure it could be one better or be more fair, so why not protest stupid capitalism instead?
head er da nail
I think you hit upon the problem for many folks. In the same way that the national discourse in the media seems to have a poor understanding of terms like fascism and socialism, capitalism as a term is poorly managed. I suspect that most Americans do not want to see an end to capitalism because for so long we have erroneously equated it so closely to Democracy. Freedom of choice in our purchases is seen like our freedom to choose who to vote for. We talk about our government like it was just one big corporation -- in fact people like Mitt Romney run for President equating their ability to make lots of money as an executive to being the same as running the country as President.
If there is one thing I hope comes out of this Occupy business, it is a conversation among people in the streets about what capitalism is or should be about and whether or not what we have is actually that thing. There are a lot of people who I suspect would like to see our current capitalist system overhauled and then others who would say they want to see it abolished -- but how it's being discussed by many is still pretty vague and confusing. I think some people here on UHub have done a decent job talking about it. Thanks.