Occupy Wall Street's Anti-Greed Campaign Will Fail
There are a number of interesting things that the OWS crowd advocate, but being anti-greed will fail and may actually undermine the movement in the long run. by Walt Thiessen
(libertarian)
Sunday, October 16, 2011
It sounds so universal, doesn't it? The idea that corporate greed is what got us into the current economic mess we're in is the dominant theme of the crowd occupying Wall Street as well as the sympathetic rallies taking place in cities around the country and around the world. But the people who are promoting this idea are really missing the boat. The problem isn't corporate greed per se. Instead, the problem is the elastic monetary and banking system.
It's the elastic monetary system (fiat money) that fed both the dot com bubble and the real estate bubble, which culminated in the near collapse of 2008. Nor is that threat behind us. Europe is dealing with round two of the financial crisis right now, although most Americans aren't aware of it. Despite the fact that the Fed has created trillions of new dollars in cash for banks to use, the big banks continue to have huge exposure to massive amounts of bad debt, far more than they can settle without more bailouts (or without those same banks failing). It's fair to say that not only is the financial crisis of 2008 not really over, but the worst is yet to come.
Now, if they claimed that the elastic monetary and banking system is what fuels corporate greed, they'd be on to something real and tangible. Moreover, they'd be revealing a truth that most people don't even realize exists.
Without an elastic money supply, there would have been no huge infusion of available cash for lending, for people to use to keep bidding the price of real estate up over the decades, until it finally reached the point where we had run out of buyers willing to mortgage their entire futures in order to put a house into their family's asset column. Elastic money is expanded by central bank money creation followed by local bank lending. The feverish speculation on sub-prime mortgages would have happened regardless of whether Glass Steagal was repealed, because it's the elastic monetary system which creates all the excess cash to be loaned out by the banks. Reinventing Glass Steagal would only have separated investment banks from commercial banks. It would not have stopped the commercial banks from lending, and it would not have stopped the investment banks from buying up the resulting securities.
Without fiat money, there would have been no huge influx of cash for the major corporations to use to grab ever greater control of the economy. Remember, most major corporations fuel their expansions primarily using large corporate loans. Stock issues only account for part of their available capital. All that monetary expansion we experienced at the hands of the Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan and then Ben Bernanke toward the end of the real estate boom made the huge expansion of corporate activity possible. When the bubble finally burst, when there wasn't enough ability and desire of people to continue to qualify for enormous loans to keep the madness going, the real estate market fell apart, and with it the banking sector went kablooie as well.
Add in the fact that in reality it is impossible to outlaw greed and expect greed to thereby actually go away, and it becomes clear that the anti-greed campaign cannot succeed. It fails to address the correct issue. The protestors seem to forget that everyone is greedy to one degree or another, including the protestors themselves. Pretending that some people being more greedy than others is the cause of our troubles is truly blind to reality.
Of course, if you shout that you're anti-greed, it may make you feel better to shout it to the world, but it won't actually accomplish any constructive changes, even if the world listens and acts. I'd rather see the protestors call for a level, steady money supply. That change would do more to overcome the negative effects of corporate greed than anything else.
Calling for an end to corporate greed won't stop banks from continuing to lend out depositors' money without their written permission. It won't stop banks from lowering lending standards when the next round of false prosperity comes round and the next money supply-drive bubble comes along. Nor will it get the economy going again now. Nothing short of liquidation of all the bad debt out there will accomplish that goal.
Shouting down greed won't create new jobs. It won't stabilize the housing market. It won't end unemployment. It won't stop inflation. It won't block the military/industrial complex. It won't bring down the cost of health care. It won't lower taxes. And it won't prevent the Bernie Madoffs of the world from doing their crooked deeds. On the other hand, permanently leveling and steadying the money supply will accomplish all of those things over time.
Most people don't realize that economic recovery has to happen at the grassroots level, and that cannot happen as long as the money supply continues to be manipulated and all the bad debt out there doesn't get settled. They don't realize that the reason why the Fed convinced Congress to bail out the banks is that the banks have long practiced lending out depositors' money without their written permission, without depositors agreeing that they won't get their money back until the loan is repaid. When those loans go bad, the threat is that there won't be enough cash to settle all depositor demands for withdrawal. By definition, this is default, and the threat was that there'd be massive runs on the major banks. Instead of shouting "no more greed", the protestors should be shouting, "no more lending my money without my permission!" Or "no more fiat money". Or "no more elastic money".
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Posted By: Bill Gee
Date: October 17, 2011 07:25:02 AM
Walt,
You give these people WAY too much credit. Of course it's the fiat monetary system that caused all these problems, but most of participants have been brainwashed just like the rest of us into believing that there's no other way to run an economic system. Most people barely understand how the fiat system works in the first place. The only thing these kids truly understand is that they have no future under the current system.
So imagine yourself attending the planning meeting of one of these protest camps. You are surrounded by a combination of "Tweens", Laid off civil servants, and aging Socialists who worship Samuel Gompers like Christ on the Cross. The Socialists want to turn this into some sort of Working Man's Revolution - you can use that to your advantage because you need people who understand on a deep level that it's the entire system that must be changed. The Civil Servants want to steer the movement into some sort of government-sponsored welfare state, which is understandable because they've spent their entire careers caring for the very lowest rung of society- they can be useful because they are really good a putting a human face to actual suffering. And then you have the "Tweens" who are generally clueless about everything outside of technology and social networking. These kids have also been raised on one of the most censored, corporately controlled media dispensories in American History, but they are very useful because it's these people who understand on the deepest level that unless something radical changes, their chances of any sort of bright future is gone. At this meeting, you're planning a march and an education event for people at the camp, but you want to do it in a way that won't alienate your supporters and confuse your audience.
Okay - we all know that it's the monetary system that got us in this mess, but we also know that the system cannot change unless we can 1) get the corporate brass out of the room, and 2) kill the banking system and introduce something that will phase out fiat money. Killing the banking system is a VERY radical idea, it's an idea that unless you've studied the works of Ron Paul and other "north-of-center" economists you're not likely to really understand, and one that a lot of protestors would have a hard time accepting because they have been programmed to believe that the system works even when it clearly doesn't. Therefore, in order to get to our first goal, we have to demonize the enemy using a universal archetype that everyone can understand - Greed. So now we need to formulate a message around that theme that will evoke passion and anger. "Corporate Greed kills American jobs!"
In the meantime, while the first message has a chance to really get into the general vernacular and subconcience of the population, you can start working on the second goal by educating the converted and presenting a clear, workable plan for its execution. And what I mean by "workable" is not some government-imposed ultimatum, or any type of phased-in approach that will gradually change the economy. The only way I see this working is by first getting the corporate interests out of Washington through a Constitutional Amendment.
I know Ron Paul has a plan to make this work under the current system and I would really like to see him succeed, but by hitching his star to the Republican Party (largely seen as the "enemy" of the working man and the tool of the corporate class), he's going to have a really hard time convincing the protestors that he's on their side. Perhaps if the Movement goes on into the Primary season, Dr. Paul can attempt to break with his Party and run as an "Occupy Independent", but that's likely to backfire as he loses scores of his more socially conservative support.
Posted By: Jahfre Fire Eater
Date: October 17, 2011 09:50:41 AM
Without limits on government and limited government conservatives on the ballots and in the government at EVERY level, there is no chance to ever end the corruption.
The poor protesters are merely products of the progressive indoctrination system we call public education. They have no other tools in their arsenal besides outrage and pep rallies...that is what they have been taught by the State...they are simply acting out their training. The progressives have won.
Tea Party futile behavior is rooted in the same indoctrinations. Third party antics, same cause. The progressives have won. The love for Herman Cain is more proof that the progressives have won. The American electorate is intellectually crippled and culturally constrained such that only destructive policies based on the politics of envy are acceptable to most.
Posted By: Bill Gee
Date: October 17, 2011 03:23:42 PM
I wish you'all would stop talking about Progressives like they were the ones that engineered this mess in the first place. Like the desire to eliviate suffering and educate the masses into a more educated workforce was part of some massive corporate conspiracy designed to turn us all into Orwellian robots!
Indoctrination doesn't just happen at the schools. It happens more frequently on the televisions, popular literature, news outlets and (more recently) social media. One of the ironies of the Occupy Movement is their wholesale acceptance of technology developed by mega-corporations and made affordable by economies of scale while at the same time denouncing those same mega-corporations as ruling our lives and controlling what we know.
I'm not sure what you'd rather have the protestors do beside the "outrage and pep rally" approach? We already know that violence doesn't work, we know that industrial sabbotage only leads to violent reprisals, and we also know that voting in a rigged election system doesn't work either. Being a product of "Progressive education" I suppose that makes me incapable of seeing another alternative, so why don't you enlighten me?
