reposting some of what I posted over on the furrytofurry forums.
"As far as the protests go..same deal as the 60's protests, mostly a lot of well meaning but misled people being used by small groups who want to be corporations some day manipulating them to tear down the big corporations. They're doing it in the wrong place. There are plenty of corporate watchdog groups working hard at making sure the things some of these corporations (or, I should say, what some people in those corporations) do right and what they do wrong. Why not help them out? I'm sure they could use the people, and they're making real change.

Standing around and holding up signs really only works when you have a clear, concise message and plan of action. Look at he civil rights marches of the 60's, or the marches in Germany in the late 80's, the gay rights movement, the feminist movement...all had a clear message and plan of action. The peace protests of the 60's were

Of course, it doesn't help that some cop who had been accused of rights violations in the past chose just this particular moment in time to mace some women..not once, but twice. Now, everyones shouting 'conspiracy'. Ugh. There's a lot of derp to all of this. It's really hard to get into just what I agree with and disagree with because theyre so all over the place.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/....._n_997825.html
(The Daily Show clip in the post above applies)
I think it's generally a good sign that your intentions have been perverted when someone like Russel Simmons, founder of Def Jam recordings and one of the richest record executives on the planet (dude has gold plated toilets in his house) is 'sponsoring' your movement. How's that work? Protesting corporations yet sponsored by someone who owns a corporation? Or Ben & Jerries, who have just started supporting it. I wonder how Unilever, the corporation that owns them, feels about it?

I wonder how many of the people protesting Wall Street understand just how many social programs are funded by corporations, or just how many charities are supported by corporations. Places like the Hasbro childrens hospital. How many of these people are bronies?

I also wonder how many of these people use cell phones? Or realize that most of the chips that are used in cell phones are manufactured using materials from mines in the African congo, and that a civil war has raged for over ten years and cost the lives of over five million people, many of them children, all for control of those mines?

There are ways to solve the issues we face, or at least work out a comprimise. Protests are all well and good but protests that are so disorganized and make so many broad generalizations and don't offer any real solutions are stupid. These people just look ignorant. Yes there are greedy people out there. Guess what? There are a lot of giving rich people, too.

These people want to throw the baby out with the bath water. People seem to think being rich is a bad thing. Just how 'rich' is 'rich'? A million? Two million? A dollar more than they themselves have in their bank accounts?

I think it's generally a good sign that your intentions have been perverted when someone like Russel Simmons, founder of Def Jam recordings and one of the richest record executives on the planet (dude has gold plated toilets in his house) is 'sponsoring' your movement. How's that work? Protesting corporations yet sponsored by someone who owns a corporation? Or Ben & Jerries, who have just started supporting it.

I need a citation for the Russel Simmons gold toilet thing, and to be honest the people who you have name were part of the 1% at a time. They werent born rich, what if the get donations from organizations like these, what they aren't allowed to support them? And yes SOME people are Anti-Corporations, but mainly its the working class people who got majorly fucked into subprime loans offered by the BANKS. And went the BANKS fucked up they still got rewarded, they hate the fact that high tier lobbyists get control of the people basically.

I wonder how many of the people protesting Wall Street understand just how many social programs are funded by corporations, or just how many charities are supported by corporations. Places like the Hasbro childrens hospital. How many of these people are bronies?

Again, banks, politics.

I also wonder how many of these people use cell phones? Or realize that most of the chips that are used in cell phones are manufactured using materials from mines in the African congo, and that a civil war has raged for over ten years and cost the lives of over five million people, many of them children, all for control of those mines?
I guess you saw this:
http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l.....n0rko1_500.jpg
Let me respond with this:
http://i.imgur.com/oX84G.jpg

There are ways to solve the issues we face, or at least work out a comprimise. Protests are all well and good but protests that are so disorganized and make so many broad generalizations and don't offer any real solutions are stupid. These people just look ignorant. Yes there are greedy people out there. Guess what? There are a lot of giving rich people, too.

These people want to throw the baby out with the bath water. People seem to think being rich is a bad thing. Just how 'rich' is 'rich'? A million? Two million? A dollar more than they themselves have in their bank accounts?

Isnt that what we are trying to do, organize and get a set solution or a set of solutions. Not everything that comes out of a factory is ready to go. Again this is not ARGGG RARGH RICH PPL R EVIL

Capitalism works for a few and screws over the masses. I'm glad the masses are rising up and actually blaming the right people this time.

Not defending the walstreet racketeers, But don't knock capitalism. Bear in mind that Every form of government eventually ends up working well for the top 1%, screwing over everyone else. Has to do with people being dicks to each other on an industrial scale.

I'm pretty sure applied socialism would work out pretty well for everyone, including the top 1 percent.

It denies human nature. With idealized humans, it'd work, but remember that a good fraction of the human population are greedy, lazy, wasteful, or otherwise. Capitalism has built in checks and balances for these people.

Applied capitalism (In an ideal world) drives people to be better than they would be otherwise, through competition. With ideal humans. In a vacuum. It's just broken by by the bankers, because they make themselves loopholes that normal people can't exploit, and effect the greater market in ways that leave the rest of us hanging.

Human nature isn't a valid argument for something like this, mostly because people don't agree upon what human nature exactly is. Are we all truly selfish beings, darwinistic savages who put survival first? Or are we altruistic creatures with higher thought who want to improve our world? Or are we something else?

Socialism balances out greed, laziness, wastefulness, and other faults with people. It's basically a more strict government, we balance out the inconsistencies between different groups and try for social equality. Mind you I did not say economic equality, socialism isn't about economic equality, it's really about creating a system that works the best for all people. We create systems that provide adequate medical service, access to technology and education, as well as limiting the uncontrolled greed of corporate and wall street interest.

I don't think initiating competition within people will make them strive to do better, it would and does make them strive, instead, to outdo others. Outdoing someone doesn't necessarily mean they're doing something better, it just means they wanna do better than someone else, rather than a standard based upon a personal sense of self-achievement.

The American government is implicit in the kind of greed the banks get away with. They allow this great divergence between the super rich and the middle class. More and more people are falling into the proletariat, and less and less people are remaining bourgeois. If that crack keeps going, things like Occupy Wall Street will grow larger. The masses will overcome, that I do know.

How does socialism balance out the negative character traits people possess?

I've been a deep study of many different governmental systems, and the one thing they all have in common is a ruling class, and a poor underclass. Show me an economic system that works in the real world, and that brings equality to a vast population of real people (Who are vastly unequal individuals, everything from PHDs, nobel winners, walstreet sharks and cunning CEOS, all the way down to highschool dropouts, meth heads, and the criminally insane) And isn't unfair to the people who wish to truly succeed?
Why bother to truly achive your potential or improve anything, do a good job, or do more than your part if your reward is unaffected?

Capitalism rewards venture. It's a problem that it's rigged at the top.

By the way, what do you do for a living? I'm honestly curious.

Nevermind, you're a student. Sociology no less.

No wonder you're butthurt over the economy, liberal arts and humanities aren't precisely cash cows.

I'm looking to teach for a living, it's what I've always wanted to do (other than make movies, but I'm pragmatic). I'm not looking to be super rich, my odds of that, based on my class, are pretty low, but at least in status I have the potential to outdo my parents.

Socialism balances out negative character traits in that it takes into account people's negative traits. People are greedy, balance out the distribution of wealth. People are lazy, encourage people into the jobs they'd rather do rather than force them to all become businessmen, scientists and lawyers. People are wasteful, have the government control some means of production so that resources are put to better use.

Societies, in general, have ruling classes and underclasses, the division between these two groups increases as the size of society increases, this we accept as a common social fact. Perhaps I misuse the word equality. A society this large, a world this connected, cannot be truly equal. Relative equality, in terms of the basic needs of human life, such as a need to work, a need for food and shelter and health care and affordable travel and, these days, internet access (hey the UN announced it as a human right, not me), is a desirable thing to accomplish. We can do many things within our infrastructure to encourage relatively equal opportunity to obtain the basic needs of modern human life among people in this country and in others, since American policy does effect the rest of the world.

I don't see Socialism as a blockade to those who want to succeed, because well, success is also relative. It depends on what you want to succeed in. If success is the same thing as economic capital, then perhaps you'll have less people who are worth $100 million or more in the world, but you'll still have millionaires and billionaires and a wealthy class, they just won't be as wealthy as they currently are.

Capitalism doesn't really reward venture, it rewards people who already have money. The rich usually have always had money. The cases of people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, or if we look to the past, Andrew Carnegie, William Randolph Hearst, and John D. Rockefeller, who were able to accrue great wealth in their lifetimes, are few and far between. Generally the rich have kept their money for generations, and the system is set up for them to be able to easily keep their money. Wealth in a capitalist society does not trickle down, that is the great myth of the 80s. Wealth rarely rewards venture, we just, as a people, look at those stories and think to ourselves "maybe we can be those people one day," and most of the time, we'll be wrong.

P.S. While I have been defending Socialism as a good idea for a couple of hours now, I should go on record and say I'm not a Socialist. I'm not a Capitalist either. I see that both systems have their advantages, I think for different groups though. Socialism certainly does have its faults. For example, if a Socialist government is ineffective in applying their policies and services, little can be accomplished. I especially have issues with people who claim to be Socialist. They tend to be, from my experience, far too concerned with "the movement" or "the workers" or whatever radical reading they have of Karl Marx, who he himself was merely a critic of Capitalism in the same way Roger Ebert was a critic of movies: they both can find great faults in things they like.

TL;DR- I have a lot of issues with the achievement ideology. Meritocracy is a hoax.

It would definitely help if anyone had the slightest clue what it is exactly that they're trying to achieve.

http://occupychi.org/2011/10/07/our.....posed-demands/ its a start

Eh, that's better than the other one I saw, but still, I can't help but feel that for the most part, they don't really know exactly what they're fighting or why, just an overarching sense of dysphoria and despair. There's a growing move of the more informed and educated activists working on raising awareness of the specifics and helping to organize more effective activities, but overall, I really feel like they should have worked out their ideas before going out and swarming the streets.

Tear it all down.

END THE FEDEND THE FEDEND THE FEDEND THE FEDEND THE FEDEND THE FEDEND THE FEDEND THE FEDEND THE FEDEND THE FEDEND THE FEDEND THE FEDEND THE FED

No, END EVERYTHING!!!

I support Occupy Wall Street.

Um communism is

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>

¯\("/)/¯

SUP SON

anyone who thinks it's just a bunch of 'lol hippies' or 'lol angry liberals' protesting for no reason is a bloody retard and needs to be slapped

i went to a planning for a general assembly on sunday in my city, and i am going to the actual protest here this weekend. making a sign and everything. i'm only eighteen and admittedly haven't got a lot of life experience, but i think that the atrocities being committed against peaceful protesters in NYC are absolutely fucking disgusting, and i'm even MORE pissed about the fact that the mainstream media is completely ignoring the entire thing. the wealth distribution in this country makes no sense whatsoever, and i think that this could be the turning point for working class americans.

unfortunately, everyone around here is a redneck conservative who don't understand that they ARE the 99%... lolsouthernwhitepeople

wow i worded that last part weird
i'm high don't judge me

Just what mainstream media has been ignoring it? I've seen it on CNN, Fox, and MSNBC, never mind satire shows like the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, which are basically there to parody the mainstream media. Thing is, there's a lot more truth and non-bias in what they have to say than there is in the mainstream media. With all that bias, why would you even WANT to mainstream media to cover it? Go to blogs, that's where most of the real news is. You'll still find bias. There has never been nor will ever be unbiased journalism, people are naturally biased, no matter what they do.

I'm perfectly willing to be open minded and hear what these folks have to say. I'm fully aware of the fact that i'm basing my opinion on what i've seen in the news and media, there's an obvious slant to it. So really, what IS the message? I'd like to know, because i'm poor as fuck too. If this is something I should stand behind, I want to, i'm just not going to jump in blind.

The information is right at your fingertips.

because americans are too bloody lazy to actually go and find information for themselves. if it isn't on prime time mainstream morning news shows, it may as well not exist. or, it isn't "legit".

and i do believe hy posted a link to the proposed demands in the comments above!

Let's be carefull about making unfair generalizations while pointing out how im making unfair generalizations. I HAVE looked into things more.

... wait, when did i say you were making unfair generalizations?

"anyone who thinks it's just a bunch of 'lol hippies' or 'lol angry liberals' protesting for no reason is a bloody retard and needs to be slapped"

oh
so you think it's a bunch of hippies and angry liberals then?
i stand by my statement

also, there is a difference between an opinion and stating something as fact.

No, I don't. Have you read anything I posted after my initial post? I've actually taken the time to look up stuff based on my conversations here. While I still think many of them are misguided, I don't think that all of them are, it's just the derpy ones aren't doing the intelligent, well meaning, constructively doing something that truly matters ones any favors.

Let's be carefull about making unfair generalizations while pointing out how im making unfair generalizations. I HAVE looked into things more.

i am very confused
i never said anything about you making unfair generalizations

here's another one- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8o3.....bQ&index=2 Keith Olbermann reading the transcript, and here is the actual text- http://nycga.cc/2011/09/30/declarat.....new-york-city/

I'd support it fully if the protesters could target specific corporations, laws, and people more clearly (i.e. the Occupy CHI link above), rather than just blame the downfalls of America solely on corporations. And from what I know, 99% percent of Americans haven't agreed on something completely since.. well, even before America became an independent country. Even that, at least the Vietnam era protests had a more specific meaning to it.

This.

Oh and as far as Russell simmons and the gold toilet-http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/2.....latial_ne.html it was also shown in an episode of Mtv Cribs

Kimmora was a how do you say

Princess. Russ is a humbler guy than that really.

Yeah, I have to really stop letting media influence my opinion of others, i'm bad like that sometimes. I'd like to thank you for the thread, tho. It made me look some stuff up. I still feel that a lot of what theyre doing-blocking off access to locations, interfering with other peoples rights-is the wrong way to go about it, but i'm sure it's a small number of misguided people and people either there just to cause chaos or there with some other agenda.

occupy asshoels

dont forget dick u lieberal

HOW WOULD ONE OCCUPY DICK
THAT IS BEYOND ME