Not to be political but.THIS IS WRONG

[Big J]

I love capitalism. I love rich people too. Most of all, I love filthy lucre. Anybody who wants to get rid of their dirty capitalist money, let me know. I'll be glad to help out with that...



to those who don't know...

The National Debt Clock....better than $18 trillion, and counting.
http://www.usdebtclock.org/

Good link, thanks for posting.

I don't have a problem with money. I like it a lot.
I just got a problem with people who post oblique comments and then tell me I must be stupid if I ask them what the hell they're talking about[huh]

 

[Fading Fast]

Heading down a dangerous road here, folks. Being anti-American and being critical of capitalism are not the same thing.

Absolutely correct. If America wants to change it's economic system, it could work within the construct of the Constitution and, via a series of ammendments - legally voted on and passed - could do so. But I wonder if being for a revolution - even though that is how America came to be - wouldn't, by the laws of America, be the same as insurection or plotting the overthrow of the country and that, I believe, would be unconstitutional and, thus, unlawful? This is not a facicious question, I know that you can't legally plot to overthrow the gov't, but I regularly read calls for a revolution - is this one where the gov't looks the other way until the threat becomes meaningful or is there some legal nuance I don't understand?

Also, in case anyone cares, I think the challenges and problems we have today aren't with private ownership of property or businesses (or capital writ large), it is that all factions - big business, small business, unions, environmental groups, banks and on and on have so much influence that our politicians don't set policy for "the man in the street," but for whatever special interest group he or she is in bed with. And "crony capitlaism" where business partners with government in an underhanded way to manipulate the market in favor of business is not, IMHO, capitalism, but just more corrupt or, at minimum, dirty politicis, but it is not capitalism and, actually, undermines capitalism.

 

[tonyb]

Speaking of stars and stripes ...

My fear is that absolutists of any stripe gain much power and influence. The absolutists, the true believers, the utopians, whatever you wanna call 'em, may indeed do much good in drawing our attention to new ways of thinking. But no political or economic model is without its shortcomings. Absolutists have so much of their own personal identities invested in their political points of view that any challenge to their political perspectives is taken as a threat to those peoples' very selves. So they deny any reality that might conflict with their preferred narratives. They blindly pursue their own agendas, and to hell with the wreckage so doing leaves in its wake.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The kind of revolution I favor is the kind that doesn't happen first at the ballot box -- it happens in the hearts and minds of people who come to understand that what they've got isn't the best they could get. I know I've never pledged allegience to capitalism, nor do I or would I -- I pledged allegience to "one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice *for all.*" I don't think Mr. Bellamy, being a Socialist and all, had unilateral rule by the massed forces of monopoly capital in mind when he wrote that line.

That said, I don't call for storming Wall Street with bombs and guns. Ideas will do the job just fine. It's just a matter of time before we, as a society, figure out that having the bigger sandpile than the other kid is not the most important thing in the world. The more time I spend around millenials, the more hope I have this will eventually happen -- so long as they can avoid being bought off like their parents were. It won't happen until after the last Boomer dies off, so I won't live to see it. But there's no doubt in my mind that it *will* happen.

As for the legality of revolution, one way or another, well, the American Revolution itself was illegal. Every government in power makes revolution illegal, regardless of how committed to "freedom" it says it is. But revolutions keep happening, just as long as people are dissatisfied with the hand they're being dealt. The closest we ever came to an actual revolution in this country post Civil War -- which was an attempted revolution or treason, depending on which side of the Mason Dixon line you were reared on -- was the 1930s. The New Deal prevented a full-scale uprising of the people, but it was nevertheless a revolution -- a "soft revolution" -- in itself.

As far as the legality of "advocating revolution" is concerned, there were attempts to use the Smith Act of 1940 as a tool for imprisoning those who the Government contented were guilty of such -- several leading members of the Communist Party USA were imprisoned in 1949 for merely discussing, in theoretical terms, the idea of a revolution. But the Supreme Court threw out this interpretation of the law in 1957 -- while it can be illegal to actually take up arms against the Government, the mere discussion of revolution as an idea or concept is fully protected under the First Amendment.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I'm just trying to understand what his point is Lizzie. So far he just keeps telling me what he's not [huh]

Understood, I wasn't aiming at you, and I hope it didn't come across that way. I was just heading out the door to observe Memorial Day when that group of posts started, and was worried about what I'd find when I came back if a preemptive caution wasn't offered.

 

[Zombie_61]

...As for the Stetson advert, I'm prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt in that everyone involved in the ad was unaware of the sacrilege & didn't intend to harm anyone's sensibilities. After all, it would be bad for buisness

Or they approved the ad's concept hoping it would generate controversy, thus generating more publicity, having more people see it, and getting more sales than they otherwise might have.

 

[Fading Fast]

The kind of revolution I favor is the kind that doesn't happen first at the ballot box -- it happens in the hearts and minds of people who come to understand that what they've got isn't the best they could get. I know I've never pledged allegience to capitalism, nor do I or would I -- I pledged allegience to "one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice *for all.*" I don't think Mr. Bellamy, being a Socialist and all, had unilateral rule by the massed forces of monopoly capital in mind when he wrote that line.

That said, I don't call for storming Wall Street with bombs and guns. Ideas will do the job just fine. It's just a matter of time before we, as a society, figure out that having the bigger sandpile than the other kid is not the most important thing in the world. The more time I spend around millenials, the more hope I have this will eventually happen -- so long as they can avoid being bought off like their parents were. It won't happen until after the last Boomer dies off, so I won't live to see it. But there's no doubt in my mind that it *will* happen.

As for the legality of revolution, one way or another, well, the American Revolution itself was illegal. Every government in power makes revolution illegal, regardless of how committed to "freedom" it says it is. But revolutions keep happening, just as long as people are dissatisfied with the hand they're being dealt. The closest we ever came to an actual revolution in this country post Civil War -- which was an attempted revolution or treason, depending on which side of the Mason Dixon line you were reared on -- was the 1930s. The New Deal prevented a full-scale uprising of the people, but it was nevertheless a revolution -- a "soft revolution" -- in itself.

As far as the legality of "advocating revolution" is concerned, there were attempts to use the Smith Act of 1940 as a tool for imprisoning those who the Government contented were guilty of such -- several leading members of the Communist Party USA were imprisoned in 1949 for merely discussing, in theoretical terms, the idea of a revolution. But the Supreme Court threw out this interpretation of the law in 1957 -- while it can be illegal to actually take up arms against the Government, the mere discussion of revolution as an idea or concept is fully protected under the First Amendment.

Two thoughts, I'm not sure the millennial will want to give up their Apple products, Starbucks or farm-fed this or that, but maybe. I think the real thing that will get to them - and might speed up your revolution - will be when they realize that they have to fund all the retirement programs that the baby boomers voted to give themselves but didn't want to pay for as they went along. But thank you, your response addressed my questions.

 

[LizzieMaine]

What strikes me as different about the millenials is that they seem to have a much less material-oriented worldview than their parents -- hipster doofuses nonwithstanding. There's a very substantial contingent of kids in their late twenties right now who just aren't impressed by possessions for the sake of possessions -- they don't really care about cars, for example, except for the barest utility transportation. They don't want big, impressive homes. They don't care about impressing the neighbors with visible signs of affluence in the way that many of their parents and grandparents did. They seem to be much more impressed by working cooperatively rather than working competitively, and they value abstract experiences over aspirational acquisition. I think this is a general attitude which is going to lead that generation in a much different direction than parents.

My theory for this is that this is a generation which was not raised with the pervasive Cold War propaganda equating "The American Way" with mass consumption. Their parents, the boomers, were absolutely saturated in consumerism from the moment of their birth, and with it came the subtle message from the mass media of "*This,* not any of that nebulous theoretical stuff, is what really separates us from Those Other People who are trying to take away our sacred and God-given freedom to choose among a Mercury or an Oldsmobile or a DeSoto."

But the millenials don't care about that. Sure they like their electronic trinketry, or at least the most visible hipstery ones do, but you'd be surprised how many of them are into what they call "Low End Macs," which are old obsolete devices they trick up to work with whatever they need them for. This kind of do-in-yourself scrounging is the sort of thing I've been doing all my life, so I think they're right on the right track there. I think, eventually, that ethos will win out over the fetishization of the new and shiny. And without a constant steady stream of keep-up-with-the-Jonesers to feed off, the Boys will, as Marx predicted of the state itself, eventually just wither away. And there's your Revolution.

 

[HudsonHawk]

What strikes me as different about the millenials is that....They seem to be much more impressed by working cooperatively rather than working competitively, and they value abstract experiences over aspirational acquisition. I think this is a general attitude which is going to lead that generation in a much different direction than parents.

My experience with millennials is that they are not competitive because they've never had to be. For them, everyone gets a trophy and they think everyone will be CEO of the company. It gets ugly when they realize the world doesn't work that way.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I haven't found this to be true of the millenials I know -- it's more that they don't *care* who's CEO of the company. That kind of thing doesn't really carry any prestige with them -- they're more impressed by ideas than by titles. Granted, these are mostly working-class kids, and not the scions of Suburbia, but I suspect there's more of the former than there are of the latter. And one thing they most definitely do is vote -- they're far more engaged politically than people my age were at that age. They seem more interested in consensus than in any kind of "I'll lead and you follow" type of deal.

Again, I don't expect overnight changes. But I suspect that by the time the millenials are our age and running the show, the whole system will look a *lot* different than it does now, with even more dramatic changes yet to follow. It took several centuries to get rid of feudalism, but I don't think the transition between late-era capitalism and whatever's coming next will be quite that long.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I haven't found this to be true of the millenials I know -- it's more that they don't *care* who's CEO of the company.

But I think they don't care because they think it's something everyone gets to be. They don't think or care about the stuff, because they assume it'll just appear whenever they want it. They're not impressed with things because they've always had them and assume they always will. But take their stuff away...

This is my biggest fear about them; they are not self starters and they simply don't handle adversity well.

 

[LizzieMaine]

You need to hang out with a better class of millenials. I've had ones here who've had adversity that'd make your hair stand on end, but still they keep plugging. It was really getting to know these kids that changed my mind about their generation.