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Occupy Wall Street Reflects Increasing Frustration
I'm not the only one unhappy with economic systems based on constant growth and endlessly increasing exploitation of finite resources — systems that concentrate wealth in the hands of a few while so many people struggle.
Since September 17, protests have spread from New York to a growing number of cities across the United States, Europe, and Canada, in a movement dubbed "Occupy Wall Street." The protesters' aims aren't always clear; in some case they seem downright incoherent or absurd — such as calls for open border policies and increased trade tariffs at the same time.
It may seem like there’s no hope for change, but we have to remember that most of these developments are recent, and that humans are capable of innovation, creativity, and foresight (photo: sarabeephoto via Flickr).
It's interesting that those credited with spurring the movement did so with a single question: "What is our one demand?" The question was first posed in my hometown of Vancouver by Adbusters magazine. Editor Kalle Lasn said the campaign was launched as an invitation to act more than an attempt to get an answer. Focusing on a single demand may or may not be a useful exercise, but the conversation itself is necessary. Thanks to the attention these protests are generating, union leaders, students, workers, and others have a public forum to raise questions about our current economic systems.
Why have governments spent trillions of dollars in taxpayers' money to bail out financial institutions, many of which fought any notion of government regulation or social assistance, while doing nothing for people who had life savings wiped out or lost homes through foreclosure? And why have governments not at least demanded that the institutions demonstrate some ecological and social responsibility in return?
Why do developed nations still give tax breaks to the wealthiest few while children go hungry and working people and the unemployed see wages, benefits, and opportunities dwindle — and while infrastructure crumbles and access to good health care and education diminishes?
Why are we rapidly exploiting finite resources and destroying precious natural systems for the sake of short-term profit and unsustainable economic growth? What will we do when oil runs out or becomes too difficult or expensive to extract if we haven't taken the time to reduce our demands for energy and shift to cleaner sources?
Why does our economic system place a higher value on disposable and often unnecessary goods and services than on the things we really need to survive and be healthy, like clean air, clean water, and productive soil? Sure, there's some contradiction in protesters carrying iPhones while railing against the consumer system. But this is not just about making personal changes and sacrifices; it's about questioning our place on this planet.
In less than a century, the human population has grown exponentially, from 1.5 to seven billion. That's been matched by rapid growth in technology and products, resource exploitation, and knowledge. The pace and manner of development have led to a reliance on fossil fuels, to the extent that much of our infrastructure supports products such as cars and their fuels to keep the cycle of profits and wealth concentration going. Our current economic systems are relatively new — methods we've devised both to deal with the challenge of production and distribution for rapidly expanding populations and to exploit the opportunities.
It may seem like there's no hope for change, but we have to remember that most of these developments are recent, and that humans are capable of innovation, creativity, and foresight. Despite considerable opposition, most countries recognized at some point that abolishing slavery had goals that transcended economic considerations, such as enhancing human rights and dignity — and it didn't destroy the economy in the end, as supporters of slavery feared.
I don't know if the Occupy Wall Street protests will lead to anything. Surely there will be backlash. And although I wouldn't compare these protests to those taking place in the Middle East, they all show that when people have had enough of inequality, of the negative and destructive consequences of decisions made by people in power, we have a responsibility to come together and speak out.
The course of human history is constantly changing. It's up to all of us to join the conversation to help steer it to a better path than the one we are on. Maybe our one demand should be of ourselves: Care enough to do something.
Written with contributions from Ian Hanington, David Suzuki Foundation editorial and communications specialist
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Show All"Why does our economic system place a higher value on disposable and often unnecessary goods and services than on the things we really need to survive and be healthy, like clean air, clean water, and productive soil?"
Don't worry. That will be rectified as "our economic system" continues to pursue its global privatization agenda for all of "the things we really need to survive and be healthy." But relative valuations of various commodities have wide-ranging implications; so be careful what you wish for. For one thing, it often implies the destruction and/or pollution and/or elimination of any and all alternative sources.
The multinational corporate empire has already made great strides with the ownership of productive soil and patented genetic modifications to the things it produces. And access to clean water isn't really so far behind, although their "progress" in that area may be more apparent in places like India than it is in North America. Private ownership of clean air access methodologies may take just a little bit longer, but you can bet that it hasn't been overlooked. Japanese face mask filter manufacturers are just the low-end introduction. TEPCO and partners and working on it.
The protesters are beyond "frustrated"!
Many of the protestors have reached the end of the ir rope, having nothing left and nothing to lose. They are the first wave of Americans who have been bled dry by the cartel (corporations and the politicians they own).
The cartel will eventually systematically bleed dry 99% of Americans.
Not if protestors can help it...
from the article:
~ Why are we rapidly exploiting finite resources and destroying precious natural systems for the sake of short-term profit and unsustainable economic growth? ~
because killers stole our land, declared themselves the 'governments' and 'banks' they designed, and began forcing us to work for them for all necessities, which continues to this day...
" although I wouldn't compare these protests to those taking place in the Middle East"
Why NOT compare the protests in the US to those taking place in the middle east?
The central issue is precisely the same.
In the Middle east (eg, Sauid Arabia, Egypt, Iran, Syria etc), a very small minority has held a monoply on power, wealth and income. And they have used that monopoly to keep the rest of the population down.
The very same thing is now happening in the US.
Above all else, ALL these protests are about the fact that one very small group exercises control over another much larger one (through repression, money, propaganda, etc). In other words, at it's core, this is all about democracy -- or more precisely, the lack thereof.
And make no mistake.
It's NOT "frustration" that people are feeling (Obama used the same mealy mouth word).
People are pissed off, big time.
It is anger and complete disgust (at the way their "leaders" have behaved) -- in many cases based in desperation.
If Obama and the others actually believe that folks are simply "frustrated", they are making a huge error.
For those who have lost their jobs, their homes and their life savings this is not about being frustated. It's about survival --for themselves and their children.
I agree with all your points. Thanks for making them so articulately.
Why why why? Well its pretty obvious we have an anti-people agenda at work at the top, which is probably looking to reduce the global population through die-offs. The "occupy" movement seems at first glance positive yet the choice of words is inappropriate to downright sinister. Starting with the word "occupy". Remember our anti-war slogan "occupation is a crime from Iraq to Palestine!" Occupations are done by invading armies, occupations are not "good" things. Think of the West Bank. We are all Palestinians, not occupiers.
>>>> n some case they seem downright incoherent or absurd — such as calls for open border policies and increased trade tariffs at the same time.
Neither incoherent nor absurd -- open border policies apply to people, trade tariffs apply to goods.
Thank you for saying the same thing that jumped right out at me in the beginning of this article.
In the current situation, people are fixed in place while capital and goods travel freely.
That is what we call "free trade."
In the ideal situation, capital and goods are subject to restrictions, while people move freely.
That is what we call "fair trade."
Excellent. Amazing isn't it that today capital and goods are entitled to more freedoms and protections than people?
Systemic revolutionary and permanent change needs to happen if worldwide demonstrations are to get anywhere. The 99% are either re-arranging chairs on the Titanic or removing their cause of oppression, the 1%.
The corporate and banking oligarchy will continue to ignore and repress demonstrations until their violence escalates to open warfare that will not end until they are defeated and the rule of the 99% is established.
Direct democracy
P.S.:
In case one doubts the resolve of the 1%, think of how many decades of propaganda, how many millions of lives lost and how many trillions of public dollars the oligarchy fraction of 1% has spent fighting any system, whether communist, socialist, anarchist, religious, nativist, etc., that has threatened their gargantuan wealth and enormous military and police power.
eze -
Ah, the minds of the psycopaths! Maybe gazillions used in plotting, but no skin off their backs. Our own resources were used against us and continue so today. The Death Cult's ambitions operated under a veil of secrecy that is no longer concealing their dark deeds. Love and Truth will ultimately prevail. Go Occupy, in body or spirit!!
Hear hear!
Here is what George Carlin said about that:
Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice … you don’t.
You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own, and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought, and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear.
They got you by the balls.
They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying … lobbying, to get what they want … Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I’ll tell you what they don’t want … they don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking.
They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that … that doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests. That’s right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table and think about how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fuckin’ years ago. They don’t want that.
You know what they want? They want obedient workers … Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your fuckin’ retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They’ll get it … they’ll get it all from you sooner or later cause they own this fuckin’ place. It’s a big club and you ain’t in it. You and I are not in The big club.
By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table has tilted folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care.
Good honest hard-working people … white collar, blue collar it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard-working people continue, these are people of modest means … continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t give a fuck about you … they don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t care about you at all … at all … at all, and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. That’s what the owners count on. The fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick that’s being jammed up their assholes everyday, because the owners of this country know the truth. It’s called the American Dream cause you have to be asleep to believe it …
WHY I OCCUPY
A hungry child continues to cry...
That is why I Occupy
The killing drones continue to fly...
That is why I Occupy
The Pentagon still continues to lie...
That is why I Occupy
45,000 uninsured continue to die...
That is why I Occupy
Corporate dollars continue to buy
That is why O's Occupied
:)
Corporate dollars continue to buy
That's what with O's Occupied
Glad to see some verse here, Jimbojangles and Rosemary!
The free market solution to our free market economy will be "let them die."
"I'm not the only one unhappy with economic systems based on constant growth and endlessly increasing exploitation of finite resources — systems that concentrate wealth in the hands of a few while so many people struggle."
We're beyond being unhappy with elite control of the economy and policy. Beyond that lies happiness - with popular control of the economy and policy. The 99% has only one demand of the elites: Get out of our way. And what they think of as demands, are policy ideas we will implement ourselves. But first a philosophy.
I think everyone can agree on an agenda to realize and maintain a high degree of universal enlightenment/truth, universal equity/justice.
We will assign the level of that in the USA/Mexico today as one. The level in Japan/Germany today (1950s USA) as two. The level in Sweden/Norway today as three. And that much increment more as level four.
We can raise one level every five years so we will reach level four in 20 years. In pockets across the country we can reach level four in only a couple of years.
Our goal requires the free flow of information. No trade secrets and no secrets at all. Our goal includes changing the K-12 curriculum to eliminate the monopoly of supply-side kapitalism, and mythical religion.
Supply-side kapitalism is the convention that suppliers should influence/manipulate consumer demands in the markets. Instead of this, and instead of secret kapital flows to suppliers, the mechanisms of monopoly, the school curriculum will teach the civic duty of the people to actively demand from markets what is in the people's better interests. Kapital will not flow to suppliers, because a demand-driven economy does not need kapital. We will strongly enforce antitrust laws, limiting the size of private ownership/control to 100 man-powers. 10 man-powers is ideal but 100 is a compromise we need while Merkans undergo de-indoctrination. This limitation of private market power is implemented in the idea of localism, which generally keeps the market in servitude to the better interests of the people. This means many things, and among them there is no market growth and no speculation but rather markets are secure/stable. This is fundamental to our goal of universal enlightenment/truth/equity/justice.
To achieve universal enlightenment/truth we have to give up mythical religion. All the dots connect in the real world. Life evolved on planet earth in interaction with the physical, not the metaphysical. So our reverence has to shift from the metaphysical to the physical, to the elements, the earth, the sun, moon and stars. This allows us to for example cultivate/enjoy our fulfillment with resonance from facts such as the moon's influence on the human reproductive system. Such resonance is key to the people's health/happiness. When the dots connect we get resonance. We won't subjugate ourselves to mythology any longer, because we recognize it for what it is. We are enlightened.
There are plenty more elements of the people's agenda and they all fall out of logical calculations based on truth in information, for example, renewable energy instead of fossil/nukular, reduction of Merkans' material/energy consumption by a factor of four. The people can and will meet the challenge of policy-making based on maximizing the health of the biosphere and its support systems. Top-down, supply-side domination/submission cannot fulfill the people. That experiment failed and we need not give it another day.
The problem is the imbalance between population and resources. Blaming Wall St. or politicians or the media, or protesters is not looking deep enough. We human beings have evolved our technology beyond our ability to make sensible trade offs between short term gains and longer term sustainability. It's in our genes whether we like it or not. Denying inconvenient facts is also a part of our human nature.
As much as I hope that we will find some way out of this trap, I find it harder and harder to believe that there are enough of us who are thinking about sustainability or that we have enough time. Even with the Wall St. Autumn my hope is outweighed by despair. I have just heard too many in the movement who seem to be hardening into positions of ideological purity reminiscent of the Tea Party.
The idea of a philosophy first is a good one, but it must have broad appeal, not just to the portion of the 99% who support the Occupy Movement. When I see folks on either side of the Occupy Movement - Tea Party divide who find creative ways to reach across the partisan divide to unite the discontent and frustrations of both groups, the more hope I will have. If that doesn't happen the alternative will be a population crash not unlike our recent population explosion.
Our freedoms are going as we stand by -That is why we occupy!!
In order to have change, because the pressures that require change are becoming larger and still building, their must be a transition between what we have and what we do now, in the totality of our human systems, to what is required to survive and get along together in the future.
The big problem in having a transition is that so much needs to be given up. It is the ending of the current systems that causes grief. The majority of people have at best only a simple part to play, in their job, if they have one, involving distribution and consumption of energy embodied in the food, water and manufactures, and afterwards the hiding, spreading, burying and dumping of waste, which has to go somewhere.
Far too much of the energy is from fossil fuels, which build up emissions in air and oceans. Far too much of the investment in the system, and its monetary rewards, depends on fossil fuels. Growth of outlays, ownership and income have brought riches to a few. Now the system feedbacks and resource limits prevent further growth. The natural system feedbacks will gradually destroy our human systems, by a myriad chain of linked dependency. By incremental disasters, by gradual creeping change, by a momentum of built in changes that takes centuries to spring their traps.
The only way out is to address each and every way our systems make changes on the earth systems, and give up what we have to give up, for each of our ways which will bring future harm. This means adopting all the pathways to sustainability. It means abandoning the fossil fuel energy systems, and substituting renewable sources. It means abandoning profligate use of energy, and the high pace of civlized life for a slower, measured, careful, frugal, waste managed lifestyle. Much of global trade has to be abandoned and replaced with local trade. Global energy and waste management will wither, and may not all be replaced with local. Supportable local population levels and comfort, will be set, by the suffering and death of the unsupportable large numbers of people that currently exist, whose environment will change. Limits to growth will be reached, finite resources dissapated and destroyed, and humans are going to die off in large numbers. Charity and global links cannot support them when every region is undergoing its own limits to growth crisis.
The US has met its own limits to growth. Nearly everyone is given and will have to accept a curtailment of lifestyle and lifetime expectations. Protest is inevitable. It is also inevitable that the very rich will also be cut down, and the disbursement of their wealth will not compensate for the general decrease in total wealth. Wealth and power inequality can be fixed, and bring about better social harmony, but the rich will have the hardest time giving up their undeserved share.
Too bad that our final low level sustainable numbers will be much reduced by the damage we have already done and will continue to do. That is the wisdom of the Universe. Those that cannot live within its limits, and destroy their own means of support, will be most severely curtailed. We can try to change at any time,and give up our ways which are evil to the systems we live in, but our future punishment increases for multiples of years for each single year that we fail to do so.
"...and the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon their sons and daughters, even unto the sixth and seventh generation..."
One solution to work for:
Stop giving individual rights to corporates. They are not human so should not have 'person' rights. The removal of rights can only be done through gradual legislation.
As the saying goes, "I'll believe corporations have individual rights when Texas executes one."