#Occupywallstreet >

[pandabear]

I'm afraid you won't grasp it.
**edit: hmm... I think someone merged two threads together**

[AllNightDayDream]

I think it might even be three threads...

There is hope that some of these protestors may be halfway informed:
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booyakasha!

[magma]

my country is full of fucking morons.

if any of you are participating in this shit you are a fucking moron

Wall Street is a reactionary entity. If you do not understand this occupy a fucking library and learn how our economy works.

Look at the name of the computer you're on, look at your headphones, look at your shoes, your socks, the tv, the furniture, the fridge, the oven the microwave. Look in your driveway, where you bank, where you buy food from, likely where you work.

Wasted too much time on facebook trying to educate friends. You're all assholes for not paying attention in school.

Why being so fighty, pkay?

I'd say there was a fairly strong current of anti-banker feeling in both our societies... not that people genuinely feel Wall Street and the City need to disappear, but they do feel that they need to take a bigger responsibility for their actions and the effects they have on the rest of the country. Yeah "Wall St" isn't a single target, but it's clearly the most appropriate geographical location to make their point.

Yes, the City and Wall St bankroll a LOT of things with their profits and taxes (and a capitalist economy simply can't work without a credit mechanism), but equally, they're left with the ability to entirely fuck the global economy through reckless behaviour... in fact, they're so bulletproof that the public have to mop up after them... Goldman Sachs received $13bn and were paying out million dollar bonuses the next year - that NEEDS to stop, it shows an absolute disregard for the pain they've (however accidentally) caused normal people.

I work for an investment bank, so you certainly can't accuse me of backing the protesters for no reason. Yeah, they're a disperate group - but actually, the only things that matter are the things they agree on. More regulation. More tax. More accountability. More *respect*.

We simply can't go on allowing our financial sector to strut around as it does... at a very basic level it makes society feel unfair and more than a bit grubby.

Occupy Wall Street certainly isn't perfect, but it's a start... it's got a conversation going. A very necessary conversation.

The only people sounding like morons are those living in democracies and unwilling to engage themselves in a conversation with their fellow citizens. The whole point of society is talking about stuff like this.

[Genevieve]

I think it might even be three threads...

There is hope that some of these protestors may be halfway informed:
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booyakasha!

How is this informed? He's naively playing into the left/right mudslinging like pretty much everyone else without any substance, except he does it without stumbling over his words and with confidence. He's elonquent and clear in his message, but the contents are no different from the ones we see on message boards on a daily basis. You can see in his eyes how much he gets off on his own voice and him actually giving Fox News a piece of his mind, because Fox News just couldn't wait to hear him talk. Narcisistic idiot.

[pkay]

Sorry, I just can't honestly believe an intelligent person thinks the solution is to control the OUTGOING money on wall street.

That's just a ridiculous misunderstanding of very basic economics.

They're going to get theirs regardless. If you doubt this god help you. If you take a piece of their pie they'll simply make a bigger pie and you'll be supplying the ingredients.

This whole thing is ass fucking backwards.

[Genevieve]

Sorry, I just can't honestly believe an intelligent person thinks the solution is to control the OUTGOING money on wall street.

Is this srsly what this is about? That's hilarious. The money supply would still be inflated, except the general population would get a slightly larger chunk of it. Essentially, they would be getting more and more money that is worth less and less with time.

[magma]

Sorry, I just can't honestly believe an intelligent person thinks the solution is to control the OUTGOING money on wall street.

That's just a ridiculous misunderstanding of very basic economics.

They're going to get theirs regardless. If you doubt this god help you. If you take a piece of their pie they'll simply make a bigger pie and you'll be supplying the ingredients.

This whole thing is ass fucking backwards.

Your reliance on not saying anything of substance but saying "If you don't understand you don't understand economics" is pretty cheap.

What exactly is your problem with making investment banking more transparent and forcing investment traders to pay higher rates of tax? Surely, especially with the transparency aspect only good things can come considering that at present they pay too little tax to cover their own bailouts and are able to hide practises capable of sinking the world economy?

What's your alternative? I see a lot of "you're a moron" and pretty much zero "This is what people should actually be doing". Or are you all rhetoric?

Incidentally, I studied economics for a fairly long time... don't worry about going over my head. Bring out your best...

[pkay]

Sorry, I just can't honestly believe an intelligent person thinks the solution is to control the OUTGOING money on wall street.

That's just a ridiculous misunderstanding of very basic economics.

They're going to get theirs regardless. If you doubt this god help you. If you take a piece of their pie they'll simply make a bigger pie and you'll be supplying the ingredients.

This whole thing is ass fucking backwards.

Your reliance on not saying anything of substance but saying "If you don't understand you don't understand economics" is pretty cheap.

What exactly is your problem with making investment banking more transparent and forcing investment traders to pay higher rates of tax? Surely, especially with the transparency aspect only good things can come considering that at present they pay too little tax to cover their own bailouts and are able to hide practises capable of sinking the world economy?

What's your alternative? I see a lot of "you're a moron" and pretty much zero "This is what people should actually be doing". Or are you all rhetoric?

Incidentally, I studied economics for a fairly long time... don't worry about going over my head. Bring out your best...

My solution is there is no solution because Americans aren't willing to change how they function on a daily basis. This has come up in many debates on this forum. We want to control how people react to our very predictable behaviors without changing those very predictable behaviors.

My proposed solution, if you are unhappy with wall street, is to limit from a consumer side of the market how much control you give to wall street. You can't shop at walmart and then be mad when walmart acts like walmart. If you want the convenience of buying a box of condoms, a bottle of wine, and ghost on DVD from the same store, walmart needs investment monies, they need distribution, they need employees, they need manufacturers, they need that to bring you that convenience or you won't have your lovely walmart. You cannot say "walmart I want my condoms, bottle of wine, and ghost on DVD so I can get my g/f to do the clay potting scene with me but bro can you lay off how you effect me on wall street?" That is absolute LUNACY. You would never even know the luxury of Wall Mart if it wasn't for the market we have. You'd have to go to the liquor store for your wine, the drug store for your condoms, and we wouldnt have net flix so you'd likely still have to go rent ghost from blockbuster or some shit.

Point being, if we're all in a gruff about Wall Street let's make some motherfucking change. Fuck walmart, fuck nike, fuck reebok, fuck your mac book, turn off your router cause you need to fuck the internet, etc etc. Let's do it man. Let's change shit and guarantee 100% if we do this shit man those greedy fucks on wall street won't be able to exploit us because we've limited our exposure.

But man.... walmart has some bomb ass frozen burritos.... and man I dunno if I can rock any other shoe but the air force one.... and fuck I really love my mac book. So shit.... lets occupy wall street instead

Fuck

that

ignorant

shit

[magma]

Hmm, all well and good but the sentiments get lost when they require over 300 Million people to all make the same decisions, largely for relatively tiny personal gain or to their own inconvenience. You will never organise a mass-scale boycott of WalMart because WalMart is an insanely useful company no matter how dirty people might feel admitting it.

Actually, corporations the size of WalMart need not have a negative impact on society... they just need to be kept under enough control so that they don't abuse their position whilst they make their profits. In the same way that both our societies have Labour laws to try and reduce the amount of effective slave-labour (it still happens, yes), we also have anti-monopoly laws and other bits of legislation to stop companies being absolutely led by money.

A company's raison d'etre is money... the bigger the company gets, the further it's actions as an entity stray from an individual human's... morality naturally starts to disappear when decisions and responsibility is split between so many individuals... the nation MUST regulate behaviour of profit makers in order to make sure that they don't run contrary to the interests of society.

It's been fairly clear over the last 5 years that for the best part of the last 25 years (at least) the investment bank arms of our financial sectors have had far too much freedom. They've preyed on people who didn't understand what they were getting themselves into - yeah, they shouldn't have taken on the loans, but *everyone* needs a home and not everyone has an economics degree... there is always going to be a need for someone to stand in the middle making sure that the little man isn't getting fucked.

In very basic terms, it's quite simple - big companies have all the protection in the world via cash reserves, solicitors and brand.... individual humans have very little indeed. The individual needs protecting, the companies can (do, and will) look after themselves.

A little humanity is all that's needed... we must keep markets human, they've become far too abstract and, frankly, nonsensical. Have you ever worked with Fx markets or looked at Risk algorithms? I see them every day and, frankly, it makes me feel pretty sick to see how people are making money occasionally... it really is far more antisocial than selling crack, only it's done in a sharp suit under the protection of corporate anonymity so nobody realises.

[Genevieve]

Actually, corporations the size of WallMart need not have a negative impact on society... they just need to be kept under enough control so that they don't abuse their position.

You trust a government to decide who to control and not to control? Look, in some sort of utopian society where the government loves you, that's seriously fair. But governments don't work for the good of the citizens, but for their own good. And they get that from the corporations.

You know, America's anti-monopoly laws were lobbied by corporations to keep the competition from growing. Believing that granting the government 'more control' over the market that they already fully control is really contradictory. How about you get rid of all regulations, so that regulatory authority cannot be abused by the government?

[magma]

You know, America's anti-monopoly laws were lobbied by corporations to keep the competition from growing. Believing that granting the government 'more control' over the market that they already fully control is really contradictory. How about you get rid of all regulations, so that regulatory authority cannot be abused by the government?

I'd rather put the ability to "abuse" the market in the hands of an elected government than an unelected and purely profit driven market. One is staffed by accountable humans, one is staffed by anonymous people acting like profit-computers. We can kick a government out, we can't kick a Director's Board out unless we invest in the company.

I find that decision pretty easy, but this is why we have a left and right wing of economics. Unlike pkay suggests, there isn't a "correct" answer... but running away from the conversation or insulting those that disagree as "morons" is far below the expectations of decency within a democracy.

[pompende]

Yeah "Wall St" isn't a single target, but it's clearly the most appropriate geographical location to make their point.

...

More regulation. More tax. More accountability. More *respect*.

We simply can't go on allowing our financial sector to strut around as it does... at a very basic level it makes society feel unfair and more than a bit grubby.

Occupy Wall Street certainly isn't perfect, but it's a start... it's got a conversation going. A very necessary conversation.

The only people sounding like morons are those living in democracies and unwilling to engage themselves in a conversation with their fellow citizens. The whole point of society is talking about stuff like this.

What exactly is your problem with making investment banking more transparent and forcing investment traders to pay higher rates of tax? Surely, especially with the transparency aspect only good things can come considering that at present they pay too little tax to cover their own bailouts and are able to hide practises capable of sinking the world economy?

thanks magma. i'd like to think that's what i would have written if i hadn't been so angry drunk last night.

Sorry, I just can't honestly believe an intelligent person thinks the solution is to control the OUTGOING money on wall street.

That's just a ridiculous misunderstanding of very basic economics.

They're going to get theirs regardless. If you doubt this god help you. If you take a piece of their pie they'll simply make a bigger pie and you'll be supplying the ingredients.

This whole thing is ass fucking backwards.

its shit like this that makes me so upset.

first off you really don't know what you're talking about. all i can say is consider a credit union: they still turn profit.

secondly, what you're trying to defend here is greed and absurd wealth. having such an enormous gap between rich in poor in a society is not only morally wrong, its clearly untenable as a status quo!

@genevieve you need a regulatory body for all the reasons magma just said ... it just needs to be a relatively transparent organization with very strict limits over how long anyone could serve in it.

[pkay]

Then you're fucking with risk and reward.

If Walmart is limited to making as much money as lets say a commodity or energy or whatever then Walmart never exists because no one in their mind would take the riskier avenue to make the same reward. They'd go with the surefire thing and at that point you're fucking with innovation, job growth, lending, etc. Walmart only exists because the money is there.

Some may say that's great but we'd simply create another walmart because our consumer demands have not changed.

[magma]

Did you read the bit where I said WalMart was ok? It's the investment and credit model that is the main problem, not the megacorps themselves. The megacorps just do what they can... that might change slightly due to regulation, but they won't just jack it in because things get more difficult.

Profit makers make profit. It's what they do. Nobody is going to sit back and say "You know what, fuck it... if I can only make $2m profit a year rather than $3m I'm just going to get a deskjob like everyone else". It doesn't happen... as long as people can get credit and are allowed to have ideas we will always have entrepreneurs. You can't elevate them to some sacred cow level and protect them forever more - they are the most protected people in the system already.

Entrepreneurs existed in the Soviet Union and exist in China. Hell, North Korea can't even get rid of it's free markets. America really has a LONG way to go before it actually discourages people from wanting to make more money than their peers.

[Genevieve]

You know, America's anti-monopoly laws were lobbied by corporations to keep the competition from growing. Believing that granting the government 'more control' over the market that they already fully control is really contradictory. How about you get rid of all regulations, so that regulatory authority cannot be abused by the government?

I'd rather put the ability to "abuse" the market in the hands of an elected government than an unelected and purely profit driven market.

Yes, we did that. That's what I'm saying. Government uses the ability to abuse the market by granting power to the corporations you don't like. No government is no way for a business (corporations shouldn't legally exist, but right now that's a different, idealistic topic) to regulate the market.

You want accountability? How accountable is a government that grants a president the authority to kill Americian civilians overseas without a fair trial, compared to a private business owner who can be tried if their product/service kills you?

[AllNightDayDream]

\
How is this informed? He's naively playing into the left/right mudslinging like pretty much everyone else without any substance, except he does it without stumbling over his words and with confidence. He's elonquent and clear in his message, but the contents are no different from the ones we see on message boards on a daily basis. You can see in his eyes how much he gets off on his own voice and him actually giving Fox News a piece of his mind, because Fox News just couldn't wait to hear him talk. Narcisistic idiot.

It's not left/right mudslinging unless you believe fox is an accurate representation of conservative thought. I'm not saying he's the perfect end-all-be-all example of an informed activist but it's an upgrade from the hippie kids playing bongos on the street.

Point being, if we're all in a gruff about Wall Street let's make some motherfucking change. Fuck walmart, fuck nike, fuck reebok, fuck your mac book, turn off your router cause you need to fuck the internet, etc etc. Let's do it man. Let's change shit and guarantee 100% if we do this shit man those greedy fucks on wall street won't be able to exploit us because we've limited our exposure.

How does that address the issue in the slightest? If you can't recognize how wall street plays a central role in the destruction of our economic society than it's clear the only economics you've been taught is the ideological and unscientific shit conservatives spew to undergrads. Consumers en masse don't act like some sort of union that will band together and shun firms with unfair economic advantages. That's simply not how it works. It's the government's responsibility to correct for market failures and set the right rules so competition can play out smoothly, but either through bribery, enticement, or even blackmail, powerful lobbying forces will go to extreme lengths to land their company an unfair advantage in the market, or even create an economic system that is doomed to implode and set the burden on the middle class. All these mechanisms are facilitated by Wall Street, so how is it inappropriate to take our grievances there?

[magma]

You know, America's anti-monopoly laws were lobbied by corporations to keep the competition from growing. Believing that granting the government 'more control' over the market that they already fully control is really contradictory. How about you get rid of all regulations, so that regulatory authority cannot be abused by the government?

I'd rather put the ability to "abuse" the market in the hands of an elected government than an unelected and purely profit driven market.

Yes, we did that. That's what I'm saying. Government uses the ability to abuse the market by granting power to the corporations you don't like. No government is no way for a business (corporations shouldn't legally exist, but right now that's a different, idealistic topic) to regulate the market.

You want accountability? How accountable is a government that grants a president the authority to kill Americian civilians overseas without a fair trial, compared to a private business owner who can be tried if their product/service kills you?

Hmm, I'm pretty sure what people are asking for is for the system to change so that this is less likely to happen. More transparency means more accountability.

Hacking down a call for change with the status quo is a bit short sighted - things will change if we change them (that's what change means!), the way the government interacts with corporations will have to be part of that.

[pompende]

Then you're fucking with risk and reward.

If Walmart is limited to making as much money as lets say a commodity or energy or whatever then Walmart never exists because no one in their mind would take the riskier avenue to make the same reward. They'd go with the surefire thing and at that point you're fucking with innovation, job growth, lending, etc. Walmart only exists because the money is there.

Some may say that's great but we'd simply create another walmart because our consumer demands have not changed.

No you're not fucking with risk/reward. look at denmark. Maersk and Oticon pay plenty in taxes but they're still there aren't they?

again, you do not know what you're talking about. you sound like you're running for a republican nomination right now.... and you keep wanting to talk about walmart? why?

[pkay]

its shit like this that makes me so upset.

first off you really don't know what you're talking about. all i can say is consider a credit union: they still turn profit.

secondly, what you're trying to defend here is greed and absurd wealth. having such an enormous gap between rich in poor in a society is not only morally wrong, its clearly untenable as a status quo!

If you don't understand why a lending institution needs to make money you're dense beyond belief

If you think I'm supporting Wall Street then you need to learn to fucking read kid. My argument is don't be mad at the dope dealer for selling you dope when you have the ability to stop buying dope.

But you're addicted to wall street. Your entire lifestyle is a result of wall street. You keep going back to it because you love the internet, xbox, tv, cocoa pebbles, starbucks. Wall Street got that good dope. You're too dope fucked to realize you control the supply end of the equation.

Asking your dope dealer for a discount isn't the solution. Wise the fuck up and quit being a dope fucked moron and give off that wall street shit.

[pompende]

I SAID LOOK AT CREDIT UNIONS YOU FUCK
I DON'T HAVE AN XBOX. I DON'T WATCH SPORTS ON TV. THATS YOU.

More transparency means more accountability.

yes...we might want some sort of reform or "change" in those regulatory bodies... like maybe there could be some way that we could keep SEC officials from having cocaine-fueled orgies paid for by TAARP funds with CEOs of the firms they are meant to be regulating?