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Forum Post: Is OWS going after the wrong target? Government versus business.

Posted 12 years ago on Dec. 16, 2011, 12:19 p.m. EST by Karl101 (-6)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement

Most of our problems are caused by our big government not business. OWS is going after the wrong bad guy.

18 Comments

18 Comments


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[-] 5 points by orz (83) 12 years ago

You introduced a false disjunction, either government or business is the problem-causer, simply stated that government is the cause, and so "business is not the cause" is your argument's conclusion.

It's like you went to a fallacy handbook.

Maybe most of our problems are caused by simplism... you may want simple answers to complex problems, but creating, say, a false dilemma, EITHER/OR, where there are plenty more than two options, is not only bad reasoning, it convinces some people of ideas they should not accept.

There's no reason to accept your simplistic disjunction. There's no reason to accept your statement that the government simply is the cause.

[-] 0 points by Karl101 (-6) 12 years ago

Mr Orz, well at least you agree with me on one thing. OWS is oversimplifying the cause of the U.S . economic problems i.e. that it's wall street.

[-] 5 points by XaiverBuchsIV (508) 12 years ago

MODS: Please set up code to change all instances of "big government" to "wig wonderment", as the trolling on this phrase has reached Ron Lawl proportions.

Thank you.

[-] 2 points by BlueRose (1437) 12 years ago

OMG I love it!

[+] -5 points by Karl101 (-6) 12 years ago

Mr XaiverButtsIV . What?? LIke most OWS goons you make no sense.

[-] 4 points by XaiverBuchsIV (508) 12 years ago

Like most self-styled conservatives, you have a degree in stupidity with a major in ignorance.

[+] -4 points by Karl101 (-6) 12 years ago

Mr xaiverButtsIV, How old are you? Does your mommy know that you are on the computer?

[-] 4 points by BlueRose (1437) 12 years ago

You REEK of Koch Brothers, along with everyone else on here using words like "crony capitalism" and "govt tyranny." (edit) Yep, "big govt" is more smelly than "govt tyranny", for the record.

[-] 3 points by DemandTheGoodLifeDotCom (3360) from New York, NY 12 years ago

Yes, let's get rid of government so that we can have a libertarian society: A society where everyone fends for themselves so that the strong can dominate the weak until society is eventually ruled entirely by a small group of rich people.

[-] -2 points by economicsguy (16) 12 years ago

You do realize America was originally set up as a libertarian society, don't you?

And that led to us becoming the most prosperous country the world has ever seen.

EDIT: for those downvoting this comment, please state how it's wrong...

[-] 2 points by BlueRose (1437) 12 years ago

Slaves and all?

[-] 1 points by economicsguy (16) 12 years ago

Yes. At that time in the world there were practices considered acceptable which wouldn't be today, including slavery and no right for women to vote.

[-] 1 points by DemandTheGoodLifeDotCom (3360) from New York, NY 12 years ago

See, you are catching on. Just like slavery is no longer acceptable, a libertarian society where a small group of wealthy consume most of the wealth and power is no longer acceptable.

All our wealth has come from science, not libertarianism.

We are wealthier than other countries only because we have been developing longer than them.

[-] 0 points by economicsguy (16) 12 years ago

A libertarian society, a free society, is where wealth comes from. That's just a fact.

We haven't had a very libertarian, free market society in America for a long time. What he have had is crony capitalism, and fascism, which is why there is only a small group of wealthy.

[-] 1 points by DemandTheGoodLifeDotCom (3360) from New York, NY 12 years ago

A fact that only exists within Ayn Rand's cult.

Cell phones come from understanding physics and doing experiments, regardless of the economic system. Advances come from technology and technology comes from science. They don't magically appear through deregulation.

Capitalism just allocates our wealth unequally. It should be replaced with democracy.

Just like we replaced monarchies, and its private ownership of government, with democracy so the means of law making are publicly owned and controlled for the equal benefit of everyone, we should replace capitalism, and its private ownership of the economy, with democracy so the means of survival are publicly owned and controlled for the equal benefit of everyone.

Despite the fact that we have the resources and technology to produce a near unlimited amount of anything, the thug system of capitalism, where you take as much as you can and to hell with everyone else, has left 97% of all workers earning a below average income (3), 50% of all wage earners making less than $26k, ONE HALF of all Americans near or below poverty, 18% underemployed, 52 million without health insurance, and 55% of all workers wasting their lives doing pointless jobs that can be automated with existing technology (2).

To make society fully democratic, all elections should be publicly financed. AND all businesses should be publicly financed. AND the total income produced by all businesses should be democratically allocated through collective bargaining at the national level.

This would limit differences in pay to whatever was necessary to get people to do difficult work and give their maximum effort, which would enable us to pay everyone from $115,000 to $460,000 per year (1) - enough to make everyone wealthy and eliminate nearly every social problem we have. And since we can automate half the jobs we do, we can pay these incomes for working part time (2).

Capitalism is simply a backwards, medieval, barbaric, cruel, uncivilized system that has no place in the modern, democratic world.

People deserve a government of the people, by the people, and for the people and they also deserve an economy of the people, by the people, and for the people.

(1) http://occupywallst.org/forum/solution-raise-the-minimum-wage-to-110000-per-year/#comment-339860

(2) http://occupywallst.org/forum/are-you-rebels-or-revolutionaries-choose-revolutio/#comment-71303

(3) http://occupywallst.org/forum/solution-raise-the-minimum-wage-to-110000-per-year/#comment-335999

[-] 1 points by FreedomIsFree (340) 12 years ago

I went searching for your intelligent and well-informed posts that were ignored or downvoted out of existence. If this comment is any example, you are going to have to survey the crowd with a little more discernment, and know that there is ZERO possibility of a comment like this garnering any support to your cause, and will invite nothing but ridicule and hatred from the gatekeepers and sanctioned trolls.

Not that I necessarily disagree with what you've written, but surely you understand that certain words, candidates, and -isms signal open season to mod you into oblivion and heckle you off the site.

They are succeeding. Regroup, and frame your posts in a way that is not going to immediately mark you for compulsory demonization.

[-] 3 points by BLUTODOG (111) 12 years ago

Your wrong because in a CORPORATIST State the two over lap big time.

[-] 1 points by hymie (391) 12 years ago

This is a question of "Who is our enemy?" and I would like to suggest that our main enemy is the same as the one we had since the beginning of our history. Could it be Satan? Yes, I mean no, well kind of.

Actually, our enemy is what is left over of the British empire, which never was based on the nation of England, but rather was a corporate empire. Wall Street, the City of London financial district (being the center) are all parts of a vast corporate empire.

Originally, that corporate empire was mostly the British East India Company which first colonized India, then with the vast wealth it had stolen, returned to colonize England, the US, etc.

The reason why this is important to know is because if you are fighting an enemy, it is necessary to understand who that enemy really is and what are its strengths and weaknesses.

Since the British empire had lost its capacity to defeat the United States in a war, instead, it pursued a covert strategy of corrupting us. Big government is a result of that corrupting process.

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