An emergency plan if everything falls apart or an alternative that would be what the 1% fear more than anything else: “Either give a representative government that isn’t bought and paid for by corporations or there will be no centralized government and the workers will take over the corporations!”

I believe that our problems with the economy and the power of corporations are based on a structure that began when we started using money in exchange for goods. Money became the basis by which we measure value and we have developed a science for analyzing the value of every effort by assigning a dollar everything we can conceive.
What we perceive as crimes by large corporations is seen as just good business sense when looked at it “objectively” on the spreadsheet. Government can fine a corporation and this can be figured into the analysis. “Can we still come out with a profit after paying the fine?” Corporations feel like they have a moral obligation to their stockholders. Our puritan work ethic makes us feel morally obligated to do what we were hired to do.

I hope that, at the very least, this movement will force the government to break up corporations that have become wealthier and more powerful than any government, and create financial incentives that will make responsible decisions by corporations cost effective.

Ideally, I would like for the system to change so completely that we no longer see money as the measure of all value. The only way for this to work is for money to have no value and this change could be brought about by a mass effort to stop making all payments to corporations, but to keep working while developing new ways and systems to distribute our goods and services to others freely.

“Are you suggesting we go back to a barter system, Birdman?”

No, I envision an anarcho-syndicalist system, similar to what the occupiers are doing. No one is worrying about trading services and achieving some sort of equity. People are working and helping each other. I pray to God that we do something like this if the stock market completely crashes and the corporations go belly up and most of the people are out of work. We should keep working and GIVE the services away, NOT TRADE. In a crisis we must feed anyone who is hungry, take in anyone who needs shelter and treat anyone who needs medical help. Why can’t we do this before we are in a crisis? Because, everything is OWNED by someone who is trying to get the highest possible price for their goods and services. This was efficient and is still certainly more efficient than bartering, but haven’t we evolved enough that we can just do our work and help others every way we can and have faith that we will be helped by others? Probably not…but may we please work towards something like this?

I will sign all the petitions. I agree with ever idea and every demand on everyone’s “laundry list,” but money does cause people do things for its sake alone. It abstracts value and takes it away from the real good that it is supposed to represent. Wars are fought for mere numbers on a ledger. These numbers become meaningless just as soon as we say so.

“Are you suggesting that we start a communist revolution? Communism seems to have failed in the USSR. People seemed to not be free and had so few choices of goods and services.”

This could be seen as a pure form of communism: a form we have never seen in recorded history. The USSR really isn’t a good example of this since it was a socialist country with a very centralized bureaucracy. The lack of choice was mostly because of a bureaucratic elite that decided what would be the most efficient ways to meet everyone’s needs. I believe, like some other posters here, that we should not have a central authority. There could be people whose roles are to find services for others, suggest different types of products, etc. based on informed analyses of trends in technological development, social demographics, lifestyles, etc. However, they would not have any authority to enforce their ideas. Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” of capitalism would be alive and well; healthier, in fact, than it is now with corporations being so large that they control what is available for us to buy and what the prices will be. The big difference with capitalism is that we would take money out of the equation. We would only be concerned with determining people’s needs and finding the best means to meet those needs. These decisions would be made collectively by those making the products or providing the services, not by a central government. Each corporation would continue to exist, but be controlled by those who work in them, not by an administrative elite. I see no reason why there would be less choice of goods and services. It seems to me there would be more because more people would be working, creating, inventing…

I am not proposing a total lawless anarchy. We will need the protection of police, military, etc. but these must serve the people’s needs, determined by a true democracy: something we have never really seen either. All laws would go from local consensus to a national consensus. It is possible that our present nation is too large and would need to become separate autonomous regions, however, continued associations with wider regions could help provide us with more goods and services, greater security and general harmony with the rest f the world. Obviously all of this would work best if it happened globally.

Again, this could be either an emergency plan if everything falls apart or an alternative that would be what the 1% fear more than anything else. “Either give a representative government that isn’t bought and paid for by corporations or there will be no centralized government and the workers will take over the corporations!

A good friend of mine told me something to the effect that for so long, we have been like occupants inside a broken down, antiquated car, arguing about which direction we should drive in; when what we should do is to decide to get out of the car and step into a new one, then decide where to go. We need a paradigm shift in the understanding of how we relate to one another, then we can decide together the best course of action.

We are not a set of numbers or consumers. We are people first, life and persons should be respected. Americans, flesh and blood persons, not corporations. We comprise other abstract entities, they are not as equal to any of us.

We use currency as a tool for the exchange of goods and services, in order to facilitate those transactions. It should be used to this end only, not to put an end to any person’s rights and freedoms.

The ‘politicians’ we have been tricked into sending to office have failed us. They decided to take the bribes and waste their time ‘campaigning’ instead of organizing and leading their country. Instead of building lasting, accessible infrastructure, encouraging safe, reliable products for our people and creating fair, law-abiding institutions that work for the public good, they sold out to corporate interests and blindly approved their recommendations.

Today, we have most or virtually all government institutions absolutely in the pockets of private interests; while their worldwide power and access continues to grow. Now we have worldwide systems that, in conjunction, are extracting and consolidating most of the wealth and power of our country and the world.

Setting a goal for an envisioned outcome in our country or the world, without it addressing the complex, networked nature of our cultures and societies, comprehensively and with research, is impractical. And attempting to address the serious problems we face today with the same tools that are defined in our deplorable system is futile. We need the tools from the past utilized, redefined for the common good of our future, today.

Humanity has build this world from the ground up. We have established countless systems and laws to relate to one another. Now, there is hope that with all the knowledge and technology we have, starting with local efforts, we could eventually deploy a massive effort in the stabilization of our resources, sanity, and institutions. That’s what the occupy movement is all about.

The answers are out there; why can’t we stop, get out of our vehicles, and search for them together? There is a fundamental lack of compassion and forgiveness in people. This is part of the shift in consciousness that is inevitable in the resolution to this movement. Once we get inside this new car, our path will be clearly laid before us.

Power to the People

“That said, the mix of good intentions but semi selfish ones are what worries me about occupy. Alot of people I know do not agree with the movement because right now its standing for nothing but ideas of some whole new world with new rules. I think its nice (because I’m an idealist) however, it is not realistic.” (austinru)

Two points. 1) No one ever said making every person on this planet free from want would be easy, but it is absolutely dishonest to say that it is impossible. 2) What makes it appear unrealistic is because you don’t think that you can succeed at it. And therefore you won’t.

That is not to say that belief in my success will guarantee my success (because that would be absurd), because the eventual success (Freedom from the state and corporations, freedom to do mutually beneficial work with each other) is something incomprehensible to us. And that incomprehension is by our world that rewards us to watch TV, isolate from each other, and occupies (haha) our days so regularly and fully with busywork that we hardly have time to think of anything else.

One of the *reasons* that people can’t identify with Occupy is because they see themselves as somehow separate from those people. They are separate, certainly, but not in their economic struggle; they are separate in how they see themselves in their economic struggle. Instead of caving into the absolutely specious ideal of “realism”, I’d rather try to talk to leftist liberals, classical liberals, or even conservatives, about what it means to be free. At the very least you find something in common: the enemy.

I am not personally convinced that reform will actually save this government, but pushing for more “realistic” reforms is an acceptable tactic to me. Go for it. And it’s not apathy through which I”m saying that; I can support the tactical, strategic use of realistic demands because if they are realized (say, end to Marta fee hikes) then that is at least one small step to the path of the larger revolution.

Oh, this too “This could be seen as a pure form of communism: a form we have never seen in recorded history.” (Birdman)

I’d kinda count the Paris commune. It was unsuccessful though… too nonviolent.