[Roosh]

Quote:

Tomorrow, Occupy Wall Street protesters will leave Zuccotti Park at 11 AM and head to the Upper East Side to see how "the 1%" live.
They're calling it, "NYC billionaires Walking Tour

Americans have a great sense of humor.

[Easy E]

(10-10-2011 07:14 PM)blurb Wrote:  

Humans are inherently selfish beings. We like to think of ourselves as higher beings, as moral, and superior to animals, when we really aren't that much different. When the shit goes down, who will rise up? It is in fights, battles, and war that you see the true side of people. I see people talk about how they don't want a handout, only an opportunity to work, when I know that most of them, if they were in the elite's position, would run off with all our money just like the bankers did.

The sad thing is too many American idiots think they will end up in the elite, so they wind up being their pawns and defending them.

By definition, only 1% of people can end up in the top 1% of income/wage earners. This little fact seems to escape a lot of people.

[gringochileno]

(10-10-2011 07:39 PM)Easy E Wrote:  

(10-10-2011 07:14 PM)blurb Wrote:  

Humans are inherently selfish beings. We like to think of ourselves as higher beings, as moral, and superior to animals, when we really aren't that much different. When the shit goes down, who will rise up? It is in fights, battles, and war that you see the true side of people. I see people talk about how they don't want a handout, only an opportunity to work, when I know that most of them, if they were in the elite's position, would run off with all our money just like the bankers did.

The sad thing is too many American idiots think they will end up in the elite, so they wind up being their pawns and defending them.

By definition, only 1% of people can end up in the top 1% of income/wage earners. This little facts seems to escape a lot of people.

If you ask people to rate themselves on a variety of metrics like intelligence, physical attractiveness, various skills, etc., the majority will say they're above average and almost no one will say they're below average, a statistical impossibility. Everybody thinks they're gonna get rich someday and then they DON'T WANT THE GUMMINT TAKING THEIR MONEY AND GIVING IT TO THE LAZY POORS. It's very easy to get people to vote against their economic interests, just appeal to their vanity.

[Chad Daring]

"God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables – slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won't. We're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."

[PDX]

(10-10-2011 07:14 PM)blurb Wrote:  

words...

I agree with everything you say...

however...

the "look around, you don't have it so bad" is the same argument I'd be using if I was a Goldman Sachs millionaire hedge-fund manager who didn't pay a dime in taxes, and who still has a job because the government (who you elected) just gave me a handout of millions, paid for by your taxes, to basically just keep doing the same thing that caused the economy and job market to tank in the first place.

[blurb]

Quote:

the "look around, you don't have it so bad" is the same argument I'd be using if I was a Goldman Sachs millionaire hedge-fund manager who didn't pay a dime in taxes, and who still has a job because the government (who you elected) just gave me a handout of millions, paid for by your taxes, to basically just keep doing the same thing that caused the economy and job market to tank in the first place.

Apex fallacy. People still keep looking up at the wealthy and aspire to be just like them, while completely ignoring the considerably worse-off lower classes. People rage at the rich, but their desire to be just like them eventually show their true colors. It is like the hypergamous nature of women. They complain about CEOs, doctors, lawyers, engineers, and all other professions at the upper echelons of society as being male-dominated and complain about gender discrmination, etc., while completely ignoring the fact that men are both at the top and bottom of society. Who commits more suicides? Who makes up the majority of prison populations? Who are the majority of homeless people? Who live shorter lives? Who die more in work-related deaths in dirty, dangerous jobs? The answer to all of these questions is men.


Oh, I never wrote anything about defending the corrupt elite and their theft. By now, everyone basically knows how far corruption have caused the elite to prosper. I was merely pointing out the advantages that are afforded to people who live in the west as compared to other parts of the globe. Immigrants in America tend to do very well here from personal experience. Especially, African, Indian, and Asian immigrants.

America is far from a perfect country. It is what you make it. Both the good and the bad. Every country has some sort of corruption. It is ludicrous to think otherwise.

[Thorfinnsson]

Our financial system is in need of deep reform, and these protests can highlight that. The reforms in the wake of the financial crisis were paper thin, and people are angry. More to the point, living standards are declining for most Americans while a small minority continues to accrue wealth. Like Roosh, I also enjoy when people challenge the status quo because I have a dissident mindset.

Unfortunately, these protests suffer from the same problem as most other protests: they are made up of ill-informed, badly dressed youth with nonsensical demands. I don't blame them for not being organized, the Tea Party originally lacked organization (and might be better off going back to that), but I do blame them for being the same old sacks you see at every dumb protest. I especially loathe them for shutting down the Brooklyn Bridge, a very important transport artery for both commercial and personal traffic.

I am not happy with the Citizens v. United Supreme Court ruling, but that's a far cry from ending corporate personhood, which takes the prize for worst political fad of the 21st century. The whole point of corporate personhood is that it allows limited liability corporations to exist and be subjected to government regulation and our legal system--just like a real person. It should be obvious to everyone that the very fact that we have corporation law means that corporations are not treated just like persons.

People who want to abolish corporations are fools. Efficient industrial organization requires the enormous concentration of capital and managerial talent, and a great way to facilitate that is to create legal vehicles for many different investors to pool their capital into a single entity where they are only liable for the sum of capital they have invested. It's not just business (or the consumers that purchase products from businesses) that benefits, but also NGOs, labor unions, charitable organizations, universities, and churches.

Lastly, I am very annoyed with the reigning ideologies of this country. The left has basically swallowed nonsense fairy tales about political correctness, abhors data and facts (especially about failed/failing groups), and seems to want every fucking human on the planet to be a special little snowflake protected at all costs. The right on the other hand has degenerated into a pointless anti-government ideology where all taxes are bad, all billionaires are good, labor unions are nefarious, and government regulation is the root of all evil. Do either of these groups ever step outside, adjust their eyes to actual sunlight, and see the reality out there?

Memo to the left: not everyone is good, and I don't have to like everyone. In fact some people (and peoples) are bad, and this truth should not be concealed. Shame is a very powerful motivator. If you don't uphold personal responsibility, people will not act responsibly and eventually everything falls apart. Your "non-conformist" act is a crock of shit, you're conforming to a very fashionable subculture which is present in every major urban center in the Western world and is catered to by massive, profit-seeking corporations like Apple Computer. When you dress like a slack jawed pot smoking hippie, this is exactly what older, middle class people who have some skin in the game (you know, mortgage, kids, obligations, responsibility will perceive you as.

Memo to the right: capitalism is a creature of the state, its laws, its leaders, and its institutions. It was not created by heroic John Galts. Alexander Hamilton and Abraham Lincoln are more important to the history of capitalism than John Jacob Astor or John D. Rockefeller. It requires regulation to curtail its abuses, to make sure the fruits of industry are widely distributed, and even to make it more efficient. Taxes, particularly those levied on consumption and personal income rather than on investment and corporate income, have little long-run relationship to economic growth and are necessary to fund the operations of government, up to and including a robust welfare state.

[ea303]

Thorfinnsson thats the best post on Politics I have seen in a while.

[Hooligan Harry]

(10-10-2011 07:14 PM)blurb Wrote:  

The average westerner has taken all of the benefits and privileges in society that he has for granted. Compared to the third world, the middle class is born with a silver spoon in its mouth. We are now seeing people have those things taken away from them. Things such as a job that pays decent wages for survival, a home, food, clothes, electricity, and water. I wrote a post on this topic in Real-Life Wisdom, but made the mistake of making it too long for anyone to take notice or read. Without pain, there is no value. You don't know what you have until you lose it.

The average westerner is out of touch with reality. He is shielded from the harsh realities of a poor, miserable third-world lifestyle by a wide array of comfortable air-conditioned buildings and safety nets that included job security, job benefits, family for support, etc. We are blind to just how tumultuous life can be through our idyllic credit-crazy consuming culture. Now, those pillars are eroding, and people are waking up. People are starting to see what is truly important in life besides the crass materialism crammed down everyone's throats.

American culture glorifies rugged individualism. The idea that through your own hard work, you make it on your own. I'm sorry to say, but I'm seeing fewer and fewer people actually like this. People are dependent. People are scared. I find few people that are creative, can think analytically and critically, and can innovate. They talk about finding a comfortable, secure, well-paying job instead of starting their own business and staking it out on their own. People have become brainwashed zombies. It's sad actually.

Most people don't completely comprehend just how utterly fragile life is. Your foot missteps on a flight of stairs and you fall down cracking your head open and die. One molecule in a base nucleotide sequence in your DNA mutates which causes abnormal gene expression which leads to cancer and you die. One drunk driver running a red light and killing you. You get foodpoison.

Humans are inherently selfish beings. We like to think of ourselves as higher beings, as moral, and superior to animals, when we really aren't that much different. When the shit goes down, who will rise up? It is in fights, battles, and war that you see the true side of people. I see people talk about how they don't want a handout, only an opportunity to work, when I know that most of them, if they were in the elite's position, would run off with all our money just like the bankers did.

The answer I am afraid is one that will not appeal to most peoples more liberal view of the world these days, at least in my mind. I am on the opposite side of the spectrum to Thorfinssin.

I have seen enough of Eastern Europe and Russia to know how devastating socialism and communism can be, and if Scandinavia with all its liberal social policies and high taxes is now actually being considered a viable alternative, you can stick that shit right up your ass. The grass may look greener, but it certainly is not.

I have no desire to live in the sort of egalitarian utopia socialists dream of. It does not work and will never work. It cannot be sustained because its contrary to human nature and its almost always ultimately rejected.

Quote:

Egalitarianism, which claims only to want an "equality" in end results, hates the exceptional man who, through his own mental effort, achieves that which others cannot. Trends in modern education reflect this egalitarian hatred of achievement. In an attempt to "dumb down" all students to the lowest common denominator, today's educators no longer promote excellence and students of superior ability. Rather, they focus on the slow and the diseased, crippling the most talented in the process.

Imagine the following Academy Award ceremony. There are no awards for best picture or best actor. Instead, every picture gets a certificate and every actor receives a prize. That is not an awards ceremony, you say? So it isn't. But it is an egalitarian's dream -- and an achiever's torment.

An egalitarian wants equality, not under the law, but in all practical consequences: equality of income, of praise and blame, of rewards and punishments. He derides, as "elitist" and individualistic, all rankings, evaluations, competitions. Said Richard Rodzinski, executive director of the Van Cliburn Piano Competition: "We must stamp out the concept of 'better.' It should always be understood that we're not saying number one is better than number two."

At the Iowa State Fair some years ago, the 4-H Club gave 3,500 competitors identical multicolored ribbons, in lieu of first-, second- and third-place ribbons. Why? Because it didn't want to single out any one entrant as more deserving than another.

That some people are exceptional -- that some have more intelligence, are more beautiful or work harder than others -- is a threat to egalitarians. Talent and ability create inequality. To rectify this supposed injustice, we are told to sacrifice the able to the unable. Egalitarianism demands the punishment and envy of anyone who is better than someone else at anything. We must tear down the competent and the strong -- raze them to the level of the incompetent and the weak. We must worship a zero and sneer at a creator.

Feminists thus smear fashion models for being more beautiful than ordinary women. Liberal commentators chastise Americans for being proud that our Olympic athletes won more medals than did other athletes. Industrial giants, such as Bill Gates, are vilified for making "too much" money. And America's greatest companies are persecuted by the Justice Department's Antitrust Division for having better management, and thereby a larger market share, than does the competition.

The egalitarian's hatred of excellence has metastasized throughout the culture. In order to level everyone down to the lowest common denominator, egalitarians sacrifice the achiever. Nowhere is this more dramatic -- and tragic -- than in education.

In the past, educators nurtured students of high intelligence. Such students were showered with magnet schools, accelerated curricula, individual attention and academic merits. Now, though, the entire focus has shifted. Education today cripples the bright and inquisitive child by ignoring him -- by not spending time and money developing his superior ability. In the name of not rewarding brains, the attention is now on students who are unable or unwilling to learn. For example, the state of New York spends one-quarter of its budget on slow learners.

To accommodate the slowest learners, the entire K-12 curriculum has been "dumbed down." And high schools on both coasts are dispensing with awards honoring top seniors. They don't select "the most likely to succeed" or the "most talented." These schools no longer offer class rankings, nor do they select a class valedictorian. In today's age of achievement-hatred, it is okay to spend millions on playground psychopaths. But it is considered morally low to honor a bright student.

If you have ever wondered why the number of great artists, intellects and achievers has dwindled, you should blame egalitarianism.

And you should seek out a cure -- a view of justice which tells you to evaluate and reward a man based on his talents. Yes it is true that some people are born with greater natural endowments. But it is also true that it requires choices, effort and thinking to develop endowments into talents. Michael Jordan was born with fabulous athletic potential. But it took years of excruciating effort to hone that potential into masterful skills. Thomas Edison was born with great native intelligence. But the knowledge required to create unprecedented inventions was the result of his heroic mental effort. Other inventors gave up when problems became intractable. But Edison developed the courage and pit-bull determination to persevere.

What would happen to a Thomas Edison today? If he survived school with his mind intact, he would be shackled by government regulators. His wealth would be confiscated by the IRS. He would be accused of "unfair competition" for inventing so many more products than his competitors. And university professors would get tenure arguing that a wino is his moral equivalent.

Is it any mystery why there isn't more talent in the world today?

http://www.capitalismmagazine.com/cultur...-Rack.html

[Pilgrim37]

For those that haven't ,you should watch this Doc. :

And this interview:

Also,"23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism"...
This interview is pretty interesting debunking certain capitalist myths,he's quite funny to listen to aswell.
The Real News with Paul Jay really has some of the best in depth interviews available,Subscribe!!:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7m9wfFnH...ure=relmfu



I believe in the free market and innovation etc etc ,but it has to be regulated!
Otherwise greedy scumbags that care more about money than they do about people fuck it all up!
They want to gamble..go for it but not with other peoples money and with no government support

[tenderman100]

(10-11-2011 09:12 AM)Thorfinnsson Wrote:  

I am not happy with the Citizens v. United Supreme Court ruling, but that's a far cry from ending corporate personhood, which takes the prize for worst political fad of the 21st century. The whole point of corporate personhood is that it allows limited liability corporations to exist and be subjected to government regulation and our legal system--just like a real person. It should be obvious to everyone that the very fact that we have corporation law means that corporations are not treated just like persons.

In your otherwise excellent post, this comment muddies the water.

Citizens United was about censorship. The McCain-Feingold law basically prohibited a filmmaker, who established the Citizens United corporation to market and distribute a film about Hilary Clinton, from showing it two weeks before the election because it was considered to be "corporate electioneering."

This is one of the greatest decisions for free speech in the history of the republic, trashing this stupid law that tries to regulate and control speech.

This notion, promulgated by the unthinking left, that this ruling will open the gates to huge spending by corporations to influence elections, is bunk. Corporations are ALREADY influencing government --but quietly -- through the use of lobbyists.

(10-11-2011 09:12 AM)Thorfinnsson Wrote:  

Memo to the right: capitalism is a creature of the state, its laws, its leaders, and its institutions. It was not created by heroic John Galts. Alexander Hamilton and Abraham Lincoln are more important to the history of capitalism than John Jacob Astor or John D. Rockefeller. It requires regulation to curtail its abuses, to make sure the fruits of industry are widely distributed, and even to make it more efficient. Taxes, particularly those levied on consumption and personal income rather than on investment and corporate income, have little long-run relationship to economic growth and are necessary to fund the operations of government, up to and including a robust welfare state.

We shouldn't have a "robust" welfare state. We should have a basic safety net.

Meanwhile, the problem we have today is not capitalism, but "corporatism." In other words, business, through manipulating government to fix the rules, is trying to minimize the hazards -- or I would say the benefits of -- the greatest FEATURE of capitalism: "creative destruction." Cars kill buggies, computers destroy typewriters, the iPhone destroys the Blackberry.

I think everyone who is at all intelligent should be required to read and understand the Federalist papers.

Here is what James Madison said about how law can be a real problem for commerce.

James Madison in Federalist #62 Wrote:

The internal effects of a mutable policy are still more calamitous. It poisons the blessing of liberty itself. It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?

Another effect of public instability is the unreasonable advantage it gives to the sagacious, the enterprising, and the moneyed few over the industrious and uniformed mass of the people. Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue, or in any way affecting the value of the different species of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change, and can trace its consequences; a harvest, reared not by themselves, but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow-citizens. This is a state of things in which it may be said with some truth that laws are made for the few, not for the many.

[tenderman100]

Per usual, Roissy hits the nail on the head. More pretty lies that perish.

http://heartiste.wordpress.com/2011/10/0...cupertino/

Roissy Wrote:

Occupy Cupertino

October 8, 2011 by Heartiste

A lot of these hipster OccupyWallStreet nitwits posting photos of their debt-laden lamentations online (sometimes accompanied by ridiculously pretentious props like manual ribbon typewriters) are targeting the wrong bad guys. The Wall Street bailouts and securitized mortgage repackagings were bad, to be sure, and I wouldn’t mind a day-of-the-rope for a lot of these cognocryptic leeches, but if you look at the OWS complaints you’ll see that a common thread is the neck-deep debt they’ve incurred from student loans.

Yo, braheems, word of advice: you should be directing your righteous rage against the professors, faculty and admin of your chosen school of hard ownage. You went there, they gave you a shitty, useless libtarts degree and saddled you with mounds of debt. You compounded that debt because the college experience just wouldn’t be intellectual enough if you didn’t splurge on status whoring necessities like $5 lattes and Macbook pros. Now the world is changing with smart and industrious billion-plus Chinese coming on board to gut the value of your social media relations dreamjobs that you and the rest of the country wants and you’re pissed about it. Truth is, the university system is the droid you’re looking for.

But no, you’ll obey your leftie professors’ marching orders and fall back on tired old protest cliches, railing against the finance fat cats when the more pertinent oppressors (in your cases) are the monopolists who run academia and the federal government which subsidizes their bust-the-inflation curve tuition hike increases with giveaway loan programs. Coupled with the credentialist zeitgeist pushing idiots into college and open borders human capital depreciation that devalues vocational work and college degrees alike, the academia fleecing steamrolls through your future. And you lash out impotently.

Maybe next time you’re in class, or thinking about that alumni donation, you might want to remember this. A more fitting protest would be reclaiming your parents’ hard-earned dollars spent on useless gadgets with engineered obsolescence and degrees with hopeless prospects. Call it Occupy Cupertino. You can solemnly hold up your iPhones with a burning dollar flickering on the screen.

[no_mas]

Lot of my thoughts have been said by other posters. The only question I have is, WHY IS THERE NO OCCUPY K-STREET?

[Chad Daring]

(10-11-2011 01:07 PM)no_mas Wrote:  

Lot of my thoughts have been said by other posters. The only question I have is, WHY IS THERE NO OCCUPY K-STREET?

If you mean K st DC, there is, I've been following the whole Occupy DC (which revolves around K st) for a while now.
http://twitter.com/#!/OccupyKSt

[Roosh]

6 arrested in DC today:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/2cha..._blog.html

100 people in Boston arrested last night:

http://www.boston.com/Boston/metrodesk/2...&csort=rec

Big Brother's entry at 1:20 is a little scary...

Some action in Seattle:

People in Iowa get arrested (Iowa?):

There's a lot of protests happening but it's hard to find out what's going on unless you dig deep on Twitter and Reddit. The media is not connecting the dots.

[Pusscrook]

(10-11-2011 03:30 PM)Roosh Wrote:  

6 arrested in DC today:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/2cha..._blog.html

100 people in Boston arrested last night:

http://www.boston.com/Boston/metrodesk/2...&csort=rec

Big Brother's entry at 1:20 is a little scary...

Some action in Seattle:

People in Iowa get arrested (Iowa?):

There's a lot of protests happening but it's hard to find out what's going on unless you dig deep on Twitter and Reddit. The media is not connecting the dots.

So, how did the movement get started? Who is secretly funding it?

[PDX]

Secret funding? It doesn't cost anything to go out in the street and yell.

They're organized by websites & social media.

They get food donations from sympathizers.

A conspiracy, no doubt

[Pusscrook]

(10-11-2011 06:27 PM)PDX Wrote:  

Secret funding? It doesn't cost anything to go out in the street and yell.

They're organized by websites & social media.

They get food donations from sympathizers.

A conspiracy, no doubt

Do you think the "tea" party had any initial secret source of funding, regardless of what it turned out to be in the end?

[PDX]

I honestly don't know. I've paid very little attention to the TEA party.

I only know details about the Occupy movement since they're right in my neighborhood, and I'm somewhat sympathetic. But, if they had "secret" funding, they'd have better signs, clearer messages, etc. However, it's very much a DIY movement, which is both good and bad.

[jariel]

(10-10-2011 07:39 PM)Easy E Wrote:  

The sad thing is too many American idiots think they will end up in the elite, so they wind up being their pawns and defending them.

By definition, only 1% of people can end up in the top 1% of income/wage earners. This little fact seems to escape a lot of people.

+1. Americans love to talk about how this is the country that you can get rich in, failing to accept the fact that 99% of them will NEVER be rich.

Hasn't this Occupy Wall Street Movement already been hijacked by George Soros and company? -- That would explain why the movement supports the re-election of Obama.

How can you be anti-Wall Street, yet pro-Obama?

[Pusscrook]

(10-11-2011 07:59 PM)jariel Wrote:  

(10-10-2011 07:39 PM)Easy E Wrote:  

The sad thing is too many American idiots think they will end up in the elite, so they wind up being their pawns and defending them.

By definition, only 1% of people can end up in the top 1% of income/wage earners. This little fact seems to escape a lot of people.

+1. Americans love to talk about how this is the country that you can get rich in, failing to accept the fact that 99% of them will NEVER be rich.

Hasn't this Occupy Wall Street Movement already been hijacked by George Soros and company? -- That would explain why the movement supports the re-election of Obama.

How can you be anti-Wall Street, yet pro-Obama?

What do you define as rich? What income/tax bracket are we addressing here ? In terms of George Soros and company hijacking the movement, , let's say that was true, are we willing to name who we think instigated the financial collapse we are in today as well? We can do a chart if necessary, and I don't think Obama's name would be anywhere near it.

[tenderman100]

Kanye West (net worth, $75 million) visits the protests in some very expensive threads:

http://www.styleite.com/media/kanye-west...ll-street/

Russell Simmons (net worth $500 million) gets down with the protesters, too.

http://globalgrind.com/news/kanye-west-r...eet-photos

It would be comical if it wasn't so pathetic.

Russell, sweetheart, why don't you give some of these protestors jobs in your various companies?

[tenderman100]

Ultimately violence will be necessary, says Occupy L.A. speaker

idiot speaker at Occupy LA Wrote:

One of the speakers said the solution is nonviolent movement. No, my friend. I’ll give you two examples: French Revolution, and Indian so-called Revolution.

Gandhi, Gandhi today is, with respect to all of you, Gandhi today is a tumor that the ruling class is using constantly to mislead us. French Revolution made fundamental transformation. But it was bloody.

India, the result of Gandhi, is 600 million people living in maximum poverty.

So, ultimately, the bourgeoisie won’t go without violent means. Revolution! Yes, revolution that is led by the working class.

Long live revolution! Long live socialism!”

[Roosh]

Quote:

Kanye West (net worth, $75 million) visits the protests in some very expensive threads

Well that convinced me that the Occupy movement is a total sham. I'm watching Glen Beck and Sean Hannity right now to deprogram myself.

[tenderman100]

Occupy Wall Street Protester Wants College Paid For Because That's What He Wants

I want every 8.5HB to suck my dick and let me cum all over her face. It's just what I want.