You mean Republicrat and Democran? Not the protesters?
Occupy Wall Street
- Thread starter ymu
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You mean Republicrat and Democran? Not the protesters?
dilute micro
esse quam videri
I'm sorry, you're arguing that the US Constitution has successfully guarded against the accumulation of wealth by a small minority?
The original one did.
dilute micro
esse quam videri
No, just not ignorant or selectively ignorant.
Crispy
The following psytrance is baṉned: All
How? With quotes.
dilute micro
esse quam videri
Can't speak for every protester but most of what I've heard isn't that they don't want the government to have guards against power. They just want that power used in a certain way. The problem there is that it isn't based upon any principle but 'being in charge'.
Anyone can say 'tax the rich according to their wealth'. And that's who would get taxed if they were in charge. But when someone else is in charge they could just as easily target another group. There's no principle - nothing to protect that next demographic. It's happened before and will certainly happen again. The foolishness is in thinking that you're always going to be in charge.
dilute micro
esse quam videri
It was a capitalist country for sure. But my point was that the government wasn't constructed for the purpose of making a few people rich. Anyone who has studied American history knows that there was a struggle from the very beginning to turn the federal government into one that would do just that.
Lo Siento.
Second As Farce
complete logic failure here. If the constitution wasn't able to prevent its supposed "subversion"* then evidently it wasn't sufficient to prevent the accumulation of great wealth.
(*obviously I don't actually believe it was "subverted" as it was a document written by the privileged for the defence of their privileges, but for the purposes of this argument we'll ignore that)
dilute micro
esse quam videri
In a capitalist country you're going to get wealth. The difference being that the government itself wasn't designed to let people use the government to do it for them.
Lo Siento.
Second As Farce
See, you've got it completely arse-about-face, the rich and the government are the same thing, the same one continuous interest group. Changing the form of government but leaving the basic economic structure in place is a nonsense. Imagine America was a village with 1,000 people. You've elected a mayor and 10 town councillors, but the property of the town is all owned by 5 other people. The 5 other people decide what is made in the town, how it's made and how it gets distributed afterwards. Without questioning their ownership rights to the entire economy, what constitutional arrangement could possibly limit their power over the rest of the citizenry?
Lo Siento.
Second As Farce
there ya go! Capitalist economics produces accumulations of wealth, which enables the powerful to corrupt and co-opt political institutions. As you've just stated that very process is written into the very DNA of capitalism.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
He's a state's righter - he wants the inequality to be managed close to home, a crudely updated version of Calhoun.
Exactly!
dilute micro
esse quam videri
It's not, and wasn't, a clause. It was the whole construct of the federal government and its relationship with state governments. I mentioned it in an earlier post in this thread.
dilute micro
esse quam videri
Your analogy is off. When the US government was first drawn up the "mayor" didn't have authority...and neither did the 10 town councilors. There were no 5 property owners determining who got what. The desire to be able to control who got what was what fueled the struggle to centralize the government. That fight began before the US was even founded. They lost the vote. It took the republicans to finally get it done. That's when the political patronage went full blown and what facilitated the corporate control.
dilute micro
esse quam videri
To a certain extent that danger can never be gotten rid of. But if you do follow the rules set to govern your government then buying control is much harder.
Greed makes people ignore the rules. Other people who don't make any profit will still support ignoring the rules because it suits their political interests.
AKA pseudonym
Well-Known Member
there were arrests in San diego earlier.. though protest still ongoing...
'An "Occupy Raffles Place" page has been created on Facebook for protests in Singapore, referring to the city state's central business district. The event is planned for 2 p.m. local time and participants intend to march toward the SGX Center, where local stock exchange is located, the page said. The Singapore Police Force, in an e-mailed statement, urged the public "not to be misled" into participating in an "unlawful activity."
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/10/14/bloomberg_articlesLT29OF07SXKX.DTL#ixzz1amtVpDpc
Mmm, good luck with that,
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/10/14/bloomberg_articlesLT29OF07SXKX.DTL#ixzz1amtVpDpc
Mmm, good luck with that,
"They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority"
James Madison
dilute micro
esse quam videri
Both of them got what they wanted,protection of the rich from democracy and the vast centralisation of power.And Hamilton wanted a king...
dilute micro
esse quam videri
No they didn't.
dilute micro
esse quam videri
As I was saying...OWS will fail because it doesn't really stand for anything. The haves will see this as nothing more than a tug-o-war between them and the have nots. The have nots see this as a tug-o-war between them and the haves. The haves are going to win.
The fact they'd have to bring in people means they aren't going to get any help from the people who are there now - even if they were able to piece together a unified platform. They aren't going to change lawmaker minds. At best they'll get a hushpuppy thrown at them.
The fact they'd have to bring in people means they aren't going to get any help from the people who are there now - even if they were able to piece together a unified platform. They aren't going to change lawmaker minds. At best they'll get a hushpuppy thrown at them.
Lo Siento.
Second As Farce
My analogy is bang on actually. There was, and is, a class of people in the United States (and the world) who hold a monopoly on the means of production and distribution. Who determined what was made and distributed if not the owners of private property? I'll ask again, what possible constitutional arrangement could have prevented that class of people from dominating the country?
Lo Siento.
Second As Farce
But the rules are irrelevant! You just don't get the disparity in power between political office and owning the means of production, even in the unlikely event that former was designed to be used against the latter. Imagine an alien landed on Earth and told you the president was the most powerful man on the planet, he'd laugh in your fucking face.
dilute micro
esse quam videri
No it's not actually. You're making the mistake of assuming the government has always been the way it is now. You're not going to prevent rich people from holding office but you can prevent them from using that office to stay in office. The federal government originally had rules to regulate its operation and had those rules been adhered to we wouldn't have what we have now with corporate control and running the government as a business.
dilute micro
esse quam videri
No the rules aren't irrelevant. What % of laws are irrelevant at the outset? If federal money was spent according to the rules we wouldn't have bailouts, earmarks or subsidies propping up failing business or any at all.
Lo Siento.
Second As Farce
the government is what it is now, because of what it was before. Even if I believed in this golden age of freedom (which I don't), it was, at best, the historical context from the which the present situation developed. It's no more a corruption of the US constitution, than Stalinism was a corruption of the democratic ideology of Marxism-Leninism. If, if Leninism functioned like it did in Lenin's State and Revolution there would've been no mass-murdering dictatorship, but a radically democratic state with social ownership. But the social structure of the Soviet state that they created could've produced no other outcome.
Lo Siento.
Second As Farce
But federal money isn't spent according to the rules, is it? It's spent according to the whims of the powerful. You can't change that by yelling "follow the constitution", but by stripping the powerful (NOT the politicians, they're irrelevant, BUT the capitalist class) of that power.
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