NYPD: R.I.P. OWS

Ah, but if that's true, isn't OWS than partially a protest for the tenets of a truly free market?

We have tax money being diverted to save banks that would have gone under. We have tax money gauranteeing the deposits in said banks. We have these banks being able to borrow taxpayers' money at 0% interest and then loan it back at 3%, effectively a subsidy. Billions of dollars, which your average citizen would have been otherwise able to use for his or her own self-benefit.

So maybe these protests are a good thing. Some day soon, Wall Street is going to wake up, decide that it's not going to take that filthy government money and lead a virtuous, laissez faire life.

 

The Tea Party is fighting that battle.

 

Sure, I definitely think that's what these protests are about. Well, that and some people really love the idea of being protesters.

 

Because the greedy grasping shriveled minds of Teabag America don't want to do any of that shit. They want the firemen and teachers to work for chicken scratch (actually they want to get rid of public education altogether), they don't want to pay one rusty nickel for speech therapy or Head Start, they don't want to pay any medical expenses for anybody, if you go bankrupt it's your own damn fault and if the poor little old lady had invested her money wisely she'd be rich and wouldn't have to worry about freezing and maybe shivering through a few winters will teach the bitch a lesson, and they don't want to play one bent penny of tax money for anything.

And they want funding for every goddamn thing the government does beside building bombs to be eviscerated so the richest of the rich don't have to pay one dime more in taxes, because Ronald Reagan said they could be rich too some day so they want taxes on the rich to be low when it finally happens. In the meantime all you peons will just have to suck it up.

 

Yeah, I can see why the Sixties still get romanticized four decades or so later. To fight against The System and to sorta win, not get disappeared into some far-away gulag, must be heady brew.

The thing of it is that most people who work on Wall Street are extremely hard-working. Are extremely smart and well-educated. There's no denying that. It's that those at the top don't seem to particularly practice the free-market gospel they preach. That's the rub.

 

That too.

 

They're still free to pursue economic self benefit. They just have to pay the price that allows them to do so. That means paying taxes for a better society.

And what guarantee is there that society will be better off if money is taken out of social programs and put in the economy? As we've seen, whenever that happens, the money ends up in some rich guy's Cayman Islands bank account.

 

So they can pursue the freedom, but there's a restriction on what happens if they do. That's pretty much what restricting means.

And I agree, sometimes society is better pursuing options that are suboptimal economically. You need to carefully weigh the consequences and the opportunity costs and decide what is best.

 

Love this: http://soundcloud.com/megrobertson/announcement-on-new-ows-effort#

 

It looks like photographers like the limelight.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/21/business/media/occupy-wall-street-puts-the-coverage-in-the-spotlight.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=occupy&st=cse

This section piqued my interest because the freelancer who wrote the Gawker piece can't honestly say that her role as a protester is OK because OWS doesn't have a clear message.

 

Philadelphia & LA about to get evicted:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/us/for-occupying-protesters-deadlines-and-decisions.html?hp