In retrospect, the Occupy movement totally succeeded.

[Bat Dad]

[YT]O-253uBJap8[/YT]

 

[Bat Dad]

fucking morons..... mic check! derp

[YT]3QZlp3eGMNI[/YT]

 

[LucasWithLidOff]

Everyone made fun of them for camping out and making noise, and when they left everyone called their movement a failure, myself included. But now we're looking at the very real possibility of our country electing a self-avowed democratic socialist to the most powerful office in the nation, whose entire campaign revolves around taking power away from the billionaires and giving it back to the working class. Occupy got people's attention, it just took a while to digest. Despite all the mockery and dismissal, they changed the way Americans think. It's been very interesting to watch this unfold.

What? That socialist fool has no chance in hell of winning. A one legged man would have a better chance in an ass kicking contest. The overwhelming majority of Americans are pro establishment.

 

[Dalarna3]

Never thought of it this way. I think you're largely correct.

 

[JosephDredd]

Any economic system involves:

1) The collective creation of wealth
2) The distribution of that wealth to the individual actors within that collective in specific quantities

You just like the individual players who get awarded the highest percentages of the collectively created wealth by a capitalist system of distribution. And I can't really begrudge you your preference if you are one of the few who can arrive at a condition of legitimate material prosperity through that system.

But make no mistake... Your position has nothing to do with morality and everything to do with self-interest.

Great post.

 

[JosephDredd]

Uhh what? I am confused, this makes no sense. We are about to elect Trump, and he is the definition of 1%er. Our current president is a socialist, not even a democrat. Just a socialist. His approval rating is low, and the economy is at an all time low. The occupy movement was a bunch of ignorant lemmings being funded by 1%ers like George Soros, to spread propaganda...

Your post honestly doesn't make sense. What you are describing is the exact opposite of what is happening. Again, right now the leading candidate for PotUS is Donal Trump. He has said that we are going the wrong way, he is the definition of a 1%er, and he is not a politically correct little bitch. He is the exact opposite of what the Occupy movement was about. Yet, the country is rallying. My democratic aunt and uncle that adored Obama are fed up with him, and they sent photos from the Iowa state fair yesterday wearing Trump pins. People are disgusted...NO ONE WITH HALF A BRAIN supported the occupy people. Nothing good came of it, and it had literally no influence.

It was kind of a joke, like people coming out after that guy in Missouri...you can find a video of that "gentle giant" guy beating the hell out of some old guy over nothing. He was a criminal and a thug, and he died for attacking a cop.The same exact people that came out in occupy, were the ignorant, uninformed, racist thugs that ignore the facts and riot in the streets...these criminal thugs make up something to be offended about, and then use it as a justification for them to break the law. Haha it is hilarious, and Soros is rubbing his grubby little paws in glee.

Posts like this reassure me that I do the right thing by abstaining from posting in threads I don't understand.

 

[second sight]

Posts like this reassure me that I do the right thing by abstaining from posting in threads I don't understand.

well I wouldn't have even read that post if you hadn't quoted it, so thanks for that

 

[Farmer Br0wn]

Any economic system involves:

1) The collective creation of wealth

No, there is only one source of all wealth, individual human intelligence.

2) The distribution of that wealth to the individual actors within that collective in specific quantities

Only a coercive economic system, not a voluntary one.

You just like the individual players who get awarded the highest percentages of the collectively created wealth by a capitalist system of distribution. And I can't really begrudge you your preference if you are one of the few who can arrive at a condition of legitimate material prosperity through that system.

No, I don't like people initiating force against peaceful people to steal their property in the name of a false altruism. When in reality the goal is self enrichment at the expense of others.

But make no mistake... Your position has nothing to do with morality and everything to do with self-interest.

The reason you feel the need to minimize the moral argument I'm making, is because it gets to the very heart of all the supposedly "moral" arguments of those who support forced wealth redistribution. If the billionaire is somehow "immoral" or "greedy" for keeping the wealth that he/she accumulated over their lifetime (by invention, sales, production, service, inheritance, gifting, speculating, hedging, and whatever other ways a wealth is accumulated, keep in mind an individual human intelligence was required to be the source of any of the forms of accumulation listed or could be listed), what makes the socialist redistributors and all they pay off with others money, any less greedy when they decide to take and receive the wealth of others?

The answer you wish to avoid is: The socialist redistributor is not only just as greedy as the billionaire, the socialist redistributor is actually MORE GREEDY than the billionaire. The redistributor desires what he/she did not earn and very very likely could not earn themselves. They think stealing the wealth of another will somehow make them equal to the ones who created it.

 

[Commissar]

Our current president is a socialist, not even a democrat. Just a socialist.

Everything else said aside, this is not true. You said it either because you think it sounds cool and scathing, or you simply don't understand what a socialist is.

 

[therealdope]

The overwhelming majority of Americans are pro establishment.

I completely agree with this.

 

[lil billy]

yeah it succeeded in making me want nothing to do with that side of the Left.

a bunch of dirty college graduates who picked sociology or race theory as their majors and quickly realized all that crap adds nothing of value to the economy.

all they were left with was sleeping in the bushes, shitting in the corners, and gathering around dumpsters fires at night.

all while regurgitating the lessons of their leftist professors - who had also never held a real job. this is why, no matter what school they went to, they all walk in lock step with the same narrative : 99% v 1%, white privilege, social justice, blah blah blah.

seeing those bums cry and complain provides more motivation than any Anthony Robbins type speaker can give you. i will NEVER end up alongside those hippies

 

[TheGoodNews]

In reality what you (and every other socialist/statist) actually want is to take some (if not all) of the Billionaires money and give a portion to yourself,...

For the record OWS was left-libertarian in origin.

...while telling yourself your motivations were altruism because you also gave a portion of someone else's money to others

And where did that "someone else's" money come from in the first place if not, as is often the case, from the productivity of the workers themselves? Perhaps that "someone" else is siphoning off others' money via the wage system, not too mention massive tax breaks for the wealthy and billions in bailouts for large companies. You don't seem too bothered by that.

OWS did succeed in bringing the issue of income inequality into the public conscious. People here may be saying that they were failures but even here you see people use the terms 1%/99%. Of course those terms may have been used before but OWS popularized them along with the issue,

Very much so. And since 2011 we've seen the rise of "The Fight for $15/hour", Occupy Sandy, the election of Kshama Sawant, the Bernie Sanders campaign, the Rolling Jubilee, and (as you mentioned) the popularization of the "We Are The 99%" slogan. Even if some of these movements had existed before OWS, they sure have moved forward in the four short years since. Things are moving.

 

[Bloodworth]

The wrong people started showing up

 

[Aegon Spengler]

It was a successful tactic in that it brought "the 1%", as a phrase or an idea, into the American political conscienceness.

Pissing off Wall-Street goons and Sherdog idiots was a lovely little side bonus.

I'm glad it happened and I wish they would renew their efforts.

Oh and "the majority of Americans" are not "pro-establishment". The statement "politicians are scumbags" is almost taken as a truism in America.

 

[Jack V Savage]

And where did that "someone else's" money come from in the first place if not, as is often the case, from the productivity of the workers themselves? Perhaps that "someone" else is siphoning off others' money via the wage system, not too mention massive tax breaks for the wealthy and billions in bailouts for large companies. You don't seem too bothered by that.

A lot of those guys don't realize how property itself involves forced redistribution.

In right-wing loonytopia, if I inherit a pin factory and have never seen it and have no idea how it works, all the pins that are produced were *earned* by me and not the workers. The workers wanting more of it or the gov't expecting me to pay for my ability to forcibly take those pins is "greed" or even "theft."

 

[7437]

yeah it succeeded in making me want nothing to do with that side of the Left.

a bunch of dirty college graduates who picked sociology or race theory as their majors and quickly realized all that crap adds nothing of value to the economy.

all they were left with was sleeping in the bushes, shitting in the corners, and gathering around dumpsters fires at night.

all while regurgitating the lessons of their leftist professors - who had also never held a real job. this is why, no matter what school they went to, they all walk in lock step with the same narrative : 99% v 1%, white privilege, social justice, blah blah blah.

seeing those bums cry and complain provides more motivation than any Anthony Robbins type speaker can give you. i will NEVER end up alongside those hippies

Teaching is not a real job now, nice.

 

[Possum Jenkins]

Everyone made fun of them for camping out and making noise, and when they left everyone called their movement a failure, myself included. But now we're looking at the very real possibility of our country electing a self-avowed democratic socialist to the most powerful office in the nation, whose entire campaign revolves around taking power away from the billionaires and giving it back to the working class. Occupy got people's attention, it just took a while to digest. Despite all the mockery and dismissal, they changed the way Americans think. It's been very interesting to watch this unfold.

Pretty much.

Anyone that's looked at or studied social movements even a little bit knew that OWS was very significant after a few months went by and they picked up steam nationwide.

Idiots made fun of them because they wanted things to change literally next week. They wanted a OWS party to spring up, win the very next elections, and have march organizers and demonstrators in positions of power by the end of the year.

But that's not how movements work. No movement has worked like that. At least not in modern democracies. Things take years and years (often decades) to build up. Prior to OWS, talking about income inequality was only done by SJWs and academic types.

Now even many elected Republicans are identifying it as a problem. NYC elected its most progressive mayor in about 50 years, Seattle elected someone from the Socialist Party to city council, Bernie freakin' Sanders is neck and neck with Hillary for the Dem nomination...

All of these things were helped by OWS.

 

[Possum Jenkins]

Teaching is not a real job now, nice.

Of course it's not.

This is why professor positions at universities are notoriously easy to attain. They just give these things away like candy.

 

[Madmick]

Trump has a bigger chance of becoming president.

No, he doesn't, but I will be flabbergasted if when the actual election comes we have anything other than a Hillary vs. Jeb showdown.

I don't really think the OWS movement is responsible for this change in thinking. I think the FM&FM meltdown coupled with the recession is what weighed on people's minds (and more importantly: wallets). Jon Stewart was the one who relentlessly educated the public on Super-PACs and made it a household term. Furthermore, anyone who tunes into the news has seen stories about the correlation between campaign donation totals and election success.

I think the above-water corruption has just risen to a level where the American people are genuinely pissed off about it. I'm just not convinced we're angry enough, yet, to send a real message. When it comes to the actual election voters in this country are still most powerfully influenced by their fear, not their anger.

 

[VulcanNervPinch]

Everyone made fun of them for camping out and making noise, and when they left everyone called their movement a failure, myself included. But now we're looking at the very real possibility of our country electing a self-avowed democratic socialist to the most powerful office in the nation, whose entire campaign revolves around taking power away from the billionaires and giving it back to the working class. Occupy got people's attention, it just took a while to digest. Despite all the mockery and dismissal, they changed the way Americans think. It's been very interesting to watch this unfold.

Saying Sanders has a very real chance is possibly overstating things.
(Very rough oddsmaking, I can't give him more than 15% right now)

However, I think it is true that Occupy was a valuable part of steering the national conversation towards widening wealth inequality.