Wednesday, October 12, 2011

[qxkggtew] Avoiding Occupy Wall Street from going horribly wrong

Pitchforks and torches!  Let's kill some wealthy CEOs!  Wait.

Recognize that corporations and their highly paid executives are NOT inherently evil.  Each plays the game as best they can, abiding by the rules of the system.  Maximizing your outcome within the rules is the heart of capitalism.

Even influencing the writing of rules to their favor (e.g., buying Congressmen, decreasing regulation) is still permitted within the system.  Lobbyists are vital for information in a properly functioning republic.

Recognize that although our current outcome is bad, very bad, no one, or very few, has done anything seriously wrong.  Rather, something is deeply wrong within the system itself.

Fictional stories like to have an evil villain.  But the real world is not like that.  There are no easy monsters to slay, even though you would like there to be.

Inspired by 1930s Germany, where the Nazi party rose to power on a slogan of restoring power to the people (it says so right in the name), taking it back from those entrenched wealthy who were ruining the country.  Jews were overrespresented among those wealthy and powerful, so presented as a villain: a monster for people to slay, and things would get better.

Let's not make the same mistake again: there are no monsters.

Fixing the system itself will be difficult, but don't take attractive looking shortcuts.

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