Key 1: Image

The first thing to understand is that the majority of Occupation Protestors want to address an injustice, or more accurately, they want to take on the image of a fighter for justice. But they have three fundamental problems in doing so.

First, they live in America so they have no significant injustice to address, no more than a college student does in protesting the disparity among grades. Second, they don’t have the talent or understanding of the world required to make serious change, like doctors, scientists, and entrepreneurs. Third, they don’t have those talents, or aren’t using those talents if they do happen to have them, because they lack the fortitude to make an investment in real change, like dedicating their lives to a science or otherwise contributing to society.

Key 2: Zero-Sum Fallacy

They chant it and rant it. The top 1% control %90 of the wealth. (It’s actually 42%) Regardless, they see this as an injustice. Why? Because the Occupation Protestors collectively suffer from the Zero-Sum fallacy. In other words, if you have a dollar it’s because someone else does not have that dollar. So they, and Liberals/Progressives, want more aggressive income redistribution, so things will be fair.

Because their logic is based on a fallacy though, it won’t work. There is no tap from which wealth pours. The top 1%, or top 5% or 10% of wage earners or wealth controllers didn’t get their money due to a system that unfairly distributes wealth. They created or earned that wealth doing things and creating things of value in a system that allows people to create wealth. It’s called freedom or Capitalism. If you decide to start redistributing their rewards for doing and creating these valuable things, they’ll find something else to do, and that wealth you were counting on redistributing will disappear. The Occupation Protestors don’t, or refuse to, understand this.

Key 3: Goals

To a person, none of these protestors can articulate what the movement wants. This conclusion I came to from listening to NPR’s coverage. The best they can do is cite “education” as their goal… Not education in the form of educating themselves on how the world currently works, but rather in the form of informing others of profound things they have recently learned but the rest of us have known for the past 20 to 80 years. Interestingly, if you listen to NPR’s coverage, about two thirds of these protestors happen to be students or recent graduates of ivy-lead schools, almost everyone they interview.

Key 4: Actual Goals

Do you wonder how so many people can just take a few months out of their lives and go camping—especially in a country that is supposedly so economically unfair? Could you afford to do that? There are supporters. Many of the supporters are no different than the average protestor. They want to take on the image of a fighter for justice, but without having to actually fight. So they contribute funds to the big make-believe fight.

Other supporters include Leftist groups. These groups want a pure form of democracy, the kind that moves swiftly to European style socialism. These groups’ goals have been on life support since the near, and still possible, collapse of the Euro zone and subsequent move toward austerity, and since the Tea Party movement abruptly and rudely kicked the training wheels off the Obama administration. They need something that looks like a populist movement in America to prevent the erosion of what little progress they have made in recent years, and to possibly get them another juicy chance to pass more Progressive Change.

Summary

So essentially that’s it, they are a force for Socialism. They are trying to close those ports in order to harm corporate profits. Not any corporation specifically, but corporations in general, because they disagree with the inherently unfair system that allows the creation of profit-seeking entities. The fact that regular people will lose jobs and see increased living costs is worth their long-term goals fairness and equality. Of course, their goals will never be achieved because, as I’ve explained, they’re based on a Zero-Sum fallacy.

I’ve got a quick rant. I was listening to NPR, and they were doing one of their pro-interviewee interviews of this lady who was running a book store at the Wall Street Occupation.

At the end, the interviewer lets the Occupation librarian explain her philosophical thoughts. She explained that she doesn’t like the way our country treats our weakest members, minorities, etc. Not unreasonable, right? Then she goes on to explain that her biggest issue, the thing she think is the priority, is to transition to a carbon neutral  society, and that the reason we aren’t is because the ‘oil companies’ are preventing it. lol

It’s this kind of utterly ignorant thinking that makes my teeth itch. Earlier in the interview she was saying that the library represents the Occupation movement’s purpose of educating people and educating themselves. lol I guess there aren’t any math books in that library, or books on business or technology.

So, I have some questions about this:

1.       Which “oil companies” is she talking about?

2.       If these oil companies are humans, residents of earth, and they know of a technology that could replace oil – Why do they stick with earning peanuts selling oil??? 

3.       The idea that there’s a secret technology the oil companies are hiding, for several decades has been a favorite random claim of idiots who think making erroneous statements sounds smart. Assuming they’re wrong, we’re left with non-secret non-carbon-releasing energy technology. In that case, remembering that you’re already concerned about how our weak members and minorities are treated, how are poor people going to eat and not freeze to death????

Right, that’s one thing that improves our competitiveness. Some modern factories can run all night with no people there. It’s like a big copy machine, you just set it up and let it go. Annoyingly, last time I had a conversation with someone who repairs robots, which was a couple years ago, the robots came from Europe. That seems like something we should make.

Essentially, it’s a solution to our high labor costs. We can’t pay low-skilled laborers a globally competitive wage because our standard of living is too high, or because unions have corporations by the balls. So you replace 320 workers with a set of robots, a setup guy, a programmer and a repair guy. The programmer and repair guys service numerous factories. It’s like one human doing the work of 10′s or 100′s of humans. Or, it’s like a single $100/hr human doing the work of 10′s or 100′s of $50/hr humans. China can’t beat that, nor can Africa. Although, robot technology does have a ways to go yet. And items usually have to be designed, at least somewhat, with robots in mind.

The trouble is, we can set these factories up anywhere. US regulations not only make factories expensive, they make them take longer to build. Every day that a factory isn’t running can be hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. And with idiot bills like cap/n trade, and Presidents who have proclaimed that electricity bills will, “Necessarily sky-rocket,” it makes for a poor case to locate in the US. There’s also the high corporate tax along with the capital gains tax on all this stuff.

So basically, we don’t need to build robots, we need to adjust regulation. If it’s profitable to build things here, then people will build things here, and it will most likely include robots.

Maybe Obama should unwisely invest some of our tax dollars in an obsolete robot company instead of obsolete solar panel companies? LOL, just kidding. That’s poison. Robots don’t join unions. If the Democrats don’t have unions, they’re kind of screwed. Can you imagine the shit Obama would get thrown at him if he advocated automation out-loud? LOL He’d have to dress it up, “Robots only do the jobs that are too dangerous for people, or jobs no one wants to do.”  Maybe Pelosi will pass a law that requires some dumb-shit union asshole to babysit each robot. There’s a Washington solution for you.

Dana Vashon said something interesting on Red Eye a few weeks ago, It’s not a lack of demand, it’s a drought of good ideas, and it’s got me thinking.

Let’s understand where we are. We’re not in a recession. Recessions are a psychological condition where a people hangs onto its money due to uncertainty. In our case though, the recession has lasted too long, and we know that many of our economic loses are permanent. This is a retraction, a permanent change in size.

We’re undergoing an information and technological revolution, and many of the jobs we’ve lost have been replaced by that technology. Much of the consumer demand our economy became accustomed to was fueled by home equity and wildly available credit. But through the housing collapse we lost over $2 Trillion in home equity, which shut off the easy-credit, and that won’t change because the home equity came from a pumped-up housing market. We’re also seeing our overseas competition advancing in all areas, including technology, America’s former monopoly.

During a recession, stimulus can be effective in “shocking” the economy back by filling in the missing demand and alleviating uncertainty. But in our situation, the lost demand is permanent, that’s why stimulus has been so miserably ineffective (and the fact that it wasn’t honest stimulus). The thing we’re trying to shock awake is gone. Washington sprinkling borrowed money into our economy isn’t going to recreate those lost jobs or consumer spending. Many of the unemployed people lack the skills required by the new jobs, and many of the consumer spenders now have under-water mortgages, are paying high rent, have ruined credit, or are trying to pay down expensive debt. Stimulus won’t make those people spend.

Technically, we’ve recovered from the recession, according to growth figures. The trouble is, we’re still missing the jobs we lost. Businesses and investors both have a lot of money safely penned-up. One of the reasons they’re keeping this money safe, besides the high level of uncertainty, is the utter lack of good ideas to put that money in.

To use Dana’s example, Facebook is valued at nearly $50 billion, and what does it do? It reduces productivity… Why are people investing in Facebook? There are no better ideas worth investing in.

The funniest thing is, they started a Facebook group and had a vote to see what their “Occupation of Wall street” would demand. These idiots didn’t even know which of their naïve ideologies to advocate.

But why? Why do these fools protest Capitalism, regardless of the fact that Capitalism is the single biggest force, by far, that has pulled people out of poverty. Why do they protest the thing that has made the free world possible, the thing that has brought about the technological innovation that allows 7 Billion people to live on earth, the thing that, in fact, is essentially freedom????

They’re pretending…

It’s odd to hear it said, isn’t it? But that’s what people do in modern society. They choose an image or character, something that makes them feel unique or strong, and they try to emanate it superficially. Gangsters, rockers, sports, auto expert, Progressive activist… They don’t actually go through the trouble of building their own character, developing the skills, or investigating history or studying political science or economics. That would ruin the pretend. Instead they glom onto something popular. They do things like this, safe happy things that everyone can see. (At least they thought it would be safe, lol)

True, there are credible activists. Credible Progressive activists don’t do things like this. They aren’t putting on an unnecessary show in down town Free World. They aren’t joining Code Pink. Credible activists work for or support Human Rights Watch. They support local programs for vulnerable people. They support organizations trying to fight child prostitution. Real activists don’t have time to clown around intentionally getting arrested so they can brag about it later… They’re too busy trying to fight real injustice, the kind that simply wouldn’t compute in these protestor’s minds.

That’s why I love seeing hippies get beaten down or sprayed with pepper. It’s as if they’ve never been harmed before! It’s so funny and so deserved. The down side is, the beatings give them street-cred and enforce their well-fed and shielded concept of reality.

Ron Paul… He’s a phenomenon in the political arena. He’s sincere. But like other sincere politicians, he’s crazy.

Cain is cool. I like the way he approaches things – systematically and mathematically, the way successful business professionals usually are, or have to be. I doubt his type of revolutionary tax reform ideas could ever get through. It’s possible, if the Republicans get a super majority and pull an Obama-Pelosi-Reid, or as I like to call it, an “Oh-per.” The Dems would fight it tooth-and-nail against it though. Their philosophy ofwild spending depends on confiscating as much cash from anyone who can spare it, because they can spare it.

Backmann is the only one I’m afraid of. Liberal narrative aside, and considering electability and current popularity – Romney and Perry are the two likely, and are both proven and rational leaders. Although, Perry has said a few gaffy things in the past year…

But neither are the hard ideologue, cold-rolled politician that Obama is, especially now that Obama is in wide-opened campaign mode, this time dropping the hope’n change and picking up the fear and animosity. I don’t think it will work for him.

2008:  “Yes We Can”

2012:  “Let’s take theirs”

It’s funny how the arguments go in the GOP debates. One candidate’s like, “You did this perfectly reasonable thing that’s not strictly Conservative.” Then the other candidate’s like, “Well, you did this perfectly reasonable things that’s not strictly Conservative.” “Hey, at least I’m not saying things out loud that are true, and desperately need to be discussed, that sound scary to old people.” “Down with Obama!” “Here here, totally agree. Down with Obama.” “You’d make a great replacement for Obama.” “Oh, my dear sir, you would also surpass Obama in poise, intelligence, and grace, on even your worst day.”

I just made another report to Attackwatch.com:

Here’s an unfair attack on Obama’s jobs plan. It lists all these tax rates which conflicted with his assertion that the rich pay less than the poor in taxes, obviously a Conservative trick.

http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/151.html