Well… these last few weeks have been very interesting to say the least. There have been a lot of promising trends… but also a lot of discouraging ones too. The public occupation of Wall Street went off to a bit of a rocky start, with an underwhelming turnout in the beginning, but with the police doing the usual Statist pimp slapping, and videos of this going viral on the internet (since the Old Media preferred to pretend it wasn’t happening), it ballooned very quickly, and as of this week, it has gone global. A number of events are even taking place down here in Australia… sadly none in my city.
So what is my impression of Occupy Wall Street, or rather… Occupy Earth? I have mixed feelings. On the whole I find it very encouraging, but I definitely have some concerns.
OK, so to get what I find discouraging out of the way… firstly, there’s a very strong vibe that reeks of Marxist class warfare. While I definitely agree that the big mega-banks such as Goldman Sachs are getting a way too easy ride at everyone else’s expense, its not a matter of ‘The 99%’ being an issue of rich and poor. This ’1%’ that have stood in the way of our freedom and prosperity are in place because they have been able to get into and use the government to force their terms upon the rest of us.
One of the mechanisms of this control system that is key to the continuation of the oligarchy is the Federal Reserve. Ultimately this applies to every other central bank in the world with the authority to churn out fiat currency, but what makes the Federal Reserve especially heinous is the fact that it is a privately owned bank masquerading as a ‘federal’ bank. Its taken a lot of effort for people like Alex Jones, Ron Paul and their supporters to educate people of this fact.
But does millionaire film maker Michael Moore recognize that the Federal Reserve is at the heart of the problem? Well…
And there is definitely a loud presence of people who agree with Michael Moore’s message that capitalism at fault for corporatist collusion with government. Now… ultimately I have to question whether Michael Moore really is all that genuine about his criticism of capitalism. The millions of dollars he made on his many documentaries over the years (though I do admit to liking Bowling For Columbine) wouldn’t have been possible without capitalism… or rather, that tiny sliver of it that is left in America. Not to mention the cameras and DVD players used to shoot his films and distribute them, and the stores that sell them wouldn’t have been possible without capitalism. The cellphones and cameras used by those who fall in line with his stated belief in socialism are capitalist innovations that wouldn’t have been possible just ten years ago. Hell, you could even buy his documentaries digitally on such software as iTunes thanks to capitalist innovation.
To say that capitalism is the problem is akin to dealing with your house’s roach problem with dynamite. Yes… there is a very unpleasant element in the marketplace who absolutely detest competition with more competent players in the market and will squeeze them out using all manner of unscrupulous tactics. I don’t doubt that. But the most unscrupulous tactic they have at their disposal comes thanks to this socialist idea that we need a big government to take care of everyone. They will use the government to push for crippling regulations against their competition and will have themselves granted exceptions (as an aside, this is why the carbon tax will do nothing to stop pollution and will just make everyone who is not General Electric pay more for everything… but that’s a story for another blog post).
A discouraging development very much related to the Michael Moore/Democracy Now/smelly leftist college kid bloc I’ve mentioned is the concerted effort by certain groups to try and co-opt the movement. Of course, it shouldn’t be all that surprising that George Soros types would attempt to take control and ownership of this movement, or claim credit for creating it… after all, the Tea Party began as a libertarian group out to promote Ron Paul and ending the Federal Reserve and the government bailouts and by early 2009 had become the circus we now know it to be. It would do a great disservice to the legions of people worldwide who are participating in these protests for Occupy Wall Street to turn into the Leftist Tea Party. An opportunity of this scope to challenge the global ruling establishment might not come again for quite some time if this gets quashed the way the Tea Party did. Worse still, there are some zombies out and about pushing to reelect Obama.
Also, for the first time in my life I saw a real hive mind, and I have to tell you, seeing so many dead souls in one place does give me chills 
Finally, I get uncomfortable with the obsession with ‘democracy’ that is rife amongst all of these protests. Its a shocking thing to hear, I know, but I don’t like democracy. I see it as the ultimate form of collectivism, as the individual is completely trampled on by the majority. In fact a segment of the population as large as 49.9% can be preyed upon by a segment as small as 50.1%. I’m an anarchist… I see the prospect of a person having their life or their property voted away by a collective bloc of voters as something equally as heinous as that person having their life or property seized by a dictator or an oligarchical group of ‘elites’. If I absolutely had to pick one system of government over all others, republic is definitely how I’d roll. Having checks and balances in place to keep the government as small as it is functionally possible to be, and the liberty and property of individuals being protected is preferable to all of the others. But since the United States (and Ancient Rome) began as a republic and has reached this point of being on the precipice of a descent into despotism, I’d only ever think of the Republic as a temporary solution… a stepping stone on the way to getting rid of government altogether.
But its not all bad. If we can all keep it outside of the Lefty-Righty box that has been used to divide and conquer us, I think we do have a chance at a peaceful revolution out of this. There are definitely some very encouraging developments out of this movement as well.
For one thing, as I already mentioned, there’s a visible element who rightly identify the Federal Reserve as a major part of what’s so wrong with this system. Out of this, there’s a golden opportunity to educate on the fact that the Federal Reserve is about as ‘Federal’ as Fed Ex and is owned privately. Its also a golden (pardon the upcoming pun here ) opportunity to promote an alternative to fiat currency.
The fact that the banksters of Wall Street are also being put on notice goes to show that many are waking up to the idea that the government is not going to change things, that in fact they are more interested in taking bribes from the bankers. Of course, lets not forget who really rules the world…
Of course, with so many people rallying before this idea that the big banks are screwing us, here’s an awesome strategy to really hammer the message home…
If you’re still banking with Chase (J.P Morgan), Citibank, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, or any of the other large banks who screwed up, and you hate the way they do business… I really have to ask, why are you still banking with them? If you went to a restaurant only to find that the waiter is rude, obnoxious and unclean, the food is awful, there’s a foul smell wafting out of the bathroom and there’s a biker bar owned by the Hells Angels playing excessively loud music next door, would you ever do business with that place? What makes the banks so special that you should ignore all of the fraud, reckless gambling of your money and the fact that they can cry ‘too big to fail’ to get free money from the government after they trash the entire financial sector of the economy? This is something that I’m sure many people are starting to get. Go open an account with a credit union, or find a bank that knows not to gamble away its customers’ savings and crash the economy.
On another note, down here in Australia, it sounds like Occupy Sydney and Occupy Brisbane started fairly well. I definitely like that Occupy Sydney is situated outside the Reserve Bank, Australia’s counterpart to the Federal Reserve (apparently its just as privately owned as the Fed too). If I can get to Sydney any time soon, I’m definitely swinging by that way. Maybe I’ll have some photos and video to put up if I do.
So, much as I have my concerns about certain elements of Occupy Wall Street and all of its adjoining worldwide protests, so long as it remains leaderless and the focus can remain on the banksters and the Federal Reserve, Reserve Bank or any of the other privately owned banks masquerading as publicly owned, state run central banks, and we remember that government helped create the problem, so its not a good idea to look upon them as the solution, this could very well be the big break the people of this world have been looking for… a once in many generations opportunity at a real revolution through peaceful non-compliance.
