Occupy Wall Street

[Tinker]

I think it's interesting all the people predicting OWS's demise when we are farther along in a month and a half than the Tea Party was in a year and a half.

[Hoosiernorm]

[Tinker]

If the Police are not antagonistic to the Occupations, then people could actually deal with the police in a civil manner and turn to them for help. It's kind of like the experience with clubs and raves because of the drug war. The police being set in opposition to the communities involved they don't want to call the police or authorities for help out of fear that the police will be a greater threat to their safety than the events that are occurring.

It's really too bad that the police in this country are set in opposition to the people.

[Demon of Undoing]

[Hoosiernorm]

http://www.komonews.com/news/local/132064518.html

SEATTLE -- A man accused of exposing himself to children at least five times across Seattle was arrested early Tuesday morning.

Seattle police say he was taken into custody at his Kenmore residence around 1 a.m.

Officers had been given a composite sketch of the suspect and detectives learned he had been at Westlake Park taking part in the Occupy Seattle protests.

[Hoosiernorm]

[Tinker]

[Tinker]

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

Tinker,

You know I sympathize with you here and I'm somewhere between you and Alph on this.

But social networking is definitely the most effective method of groupthink that has ever existed. There is no sugarcoating this point.

There is no "organization" because if you don't consent to the same thoughts you effectively become a non-entity or a non-person.

It's very easy to live in a utopia-free world where everyone is equal when everyone comes to think the same and have their thoughts constantly reinforced by their network.

It frightens me personally. And it is the dark side of this "revolution."

[Tinker]

[Hoosiernorm]

http://www.unionleader.com/article/2011 ... /710289961

MANCHESTER - A city woman is accused of pimping a 16-year-old girl she met in Victory Park during the Occupy NH demonstrations.

Justina Jensen, 23, of 341 Hanover St., is charged with felony prostitution. Police allege Jensen met a teen at the local protest, which is an offshoot of Occupy Wall Street, and used the Internet to arrange a first liaison for the girl with a man who turned out to be an undercover police officer

[Hoosiernorm]

http://content.clearchannel.com/cc-comm ... 803351.pdf

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

[Mr. Perfect]

[Mr. Perfect]

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

[Mr. Perfect]

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

[Mr. Perfect]

I'm sure that what you had to say was genius in it's own way.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

[Alph]

[Mr. Perfect]

[Tinker]

[Tinker]

[Tinker]

Think of physics, the same matter and energy at different scales has different properties. It's kind of like that.

Back before antiquity when we'd just learned to use sharp rocks to remove skins to wear as clothes, we organized based around a pack structure, not too dissimilar from how wolves or gorillas organize today. Genetically homogenous groups would unquestioningly accept the culture in which they were being raised and would behave somewhat similarly. This is fine when the scale you are working with is below a certain level, this is the family level.

Then we get to tribe. The tribe is like a family of families. Still genetically similar, but large enough that there can be an organization between the family units, where the family units are together.

Then as tribes get larger, we get clans. The tribe subdivides into numerous clans, which are families of families. These clans then compete with each other for the same resources, but may come together against a larger outside threat.

From clans we get feudalism. Some strong leader unifies several clans into a larger tribal entity and sets down terms and conditions for involvement.

Somewhere around feudalism, we get the invention of writing. With writing the terms and conditions begin to become systematized so that we have ways to judge notions of fairness. Standardized weights and measures, messengers that can travel great distances to keep the relationships of the family together. At this degree of sophistication, the concept of hegemony comes into play.

At the level of tribal hegemon, the hegemon rules over a stronger clan that then becomes a caste unto itself and that caste rules over the lesser clans. The clans war for which clan gets to be the supreme caste. Sometimes the supreme caste will marry into a lesser clan in order to elevate their rivals so as to promote harmony. This is the stage where genetic similarity as the primary organizational methodology breaks down.

From there we start to see the early experiments in Democracy, which were essentially the ruling caste giving more power to its own individual members while they ruled over other castes that they excluded from this process. At this stage in the game, things are still more or less authoritarian, might still makes right, but the notion of what constitutes 'might' is called into question. The pen is mightier than the sword, so to speak. This is how a less brawny and brutish, but literate man can rule over men twice his size, with twice his capability in arms.

From this state, it vascillates with a form of feudalism, and from that forms what is known as 'aristocracy'. The caste system has formed its own ethnic subgroups. The ruling caste is no longer actually related by blood to its subject castes. Thus the primary method for organizing people becomes law.

With law, you can create large group structures that do not depend upon family bonds, but to a degree do depend upon ethnicity. Non-Patrician Romans form Legions ruled by Patrician Romans and go out and subjugate foreign tribesmen.

The cycle of authoritarianism/feudalism continues. If the larger entity breaks down it often does so back to the earlier genetic tribal lines. But out of this we get the idea of the nation. The nation can be a grouping of people who do not share a genetic heritage but have shared a geography long enough that they share many cultural characteristics, enough so that they feel that the 'rules' are understood and that anyone who is part of that culture can understand those rules and behavioral norms can be predicted. The ability to predict behavioral norms is essential to a high level polyglot population of millions of people. i.e. stepping on someone's foot doesn't result in a knife being drawn as long as you mouth the appropriate apologies. The apologies being accepted as a basic norm of society, no one gets stabbed.

At this level, society becomes so sophisticated that the specialization of labor must stratify. Throughout history up to this point it had been stratifying on caste lines. You had your royals, your nobles, your priests, your artisans, your peasants and your undesirables. But now, a different form of organization is required to accomplish the increasingly complex goals of the society.

From this grows the corporation. Originally the corporation would be chartered to do one very specific thing, and when that very specific thing was finished the corporation would end and the unity of purpose that the members of the corporation felt during the process of building whatever thing they meant to build dissolves with it. Works great in a mercantile society.

Then comes capitalism. Capitalism is this really high-minded notion that if you allow people to profit from the fruits of their labor, they will do so and become productive members of society. However, because feudalism and authoritarianism never left, groups seek to end-run the notion of this free and fair trade and the seek to create trading blocs that will dominate particular resources, because it is easier to profit if you have a monopoly rather than have to face competition.

Now comes the corporate person, the immortal corporation. Now, this is the scale where it starts to obliterate the family/tribe/genetic organizational tool for good. People lose touch with their families as they are moved around like replaceable parts, often thousands of miles away. Individual relationships are not as deep as they were in the tribe, but this is a feature not a bug, because it is easier to leave shallow relationships behind than it is to leave strong ones. These corporations in constant tension come into conflict with the nation-state. Prior to this point corporations were completely subordinate to the nation-state, their existence depended upon the corporate charter provided by that state. But as their resources became transnational they stopped being dependent upon a particular state, and the states increasingly became dependent upon them.

So the process of corporate atomization lead us to the development of telecommunications, to keep these vast and broad networks in touch with one another and to decrease the amount of time it took to accomplish goals, as the primary 'work' of these corporations was communication. So this reduced certain layers of logistics.

The corporations realized that they could profit by selling their logistical technologies to everyone that could afford it. The technologies ended up becoming the products themselves. As the business tools continued to Democratize, the techniques that were previously high-level organizational tools in order to run far-flung mining consortiums and railroads, to connect cities with one another started being used to organize dinner dates. As this technology grew more sophisticated, it continued to replace jobs. This was ok as it also continued to create jobs.

Then we hit the knee of the curve around 2000, and the increase in advance of these technologies began to outpace their ability to create jobs. So new technologies to replace human work arose, and the machine rather than a tool built to support humanity became the purpose in and of itself. Somewhere along the line the idea of aristocracy had lead those who controlled the machine to think of their human subjects as material resources. The needs of those subjects stopped being relevant to the masters of the machine.

At the same time however, the dependency upon those masters of the individual became less and less, because those individuals themselves learned how the machine worked and learned how to replicate its functions. They also learned how to use the machines to organize in alternative ways. Because of the nature of the corporate environment and its constant competition for resources, these people can use that corporate technology because the corporations are dependent upon the resources of the people that it deems, 'consumers'.

And that brings us to now, with the social network, where the prior peasants are able to become temporary Kings and mobilize armies using the same technology, where those armies can dissolve and coalesce on short notice. The corporate aristocratic machine seeks to control this mechanism and limit its use. It seeks to keep those people from organizing and gathering together in assemblies, because if they do then they will create alternative power structures. They will create new post-corporate (yes an outgrowth of the ancient methods of human organization.) competitive structures and the monopolizing entities absolutely hate competition. They created these complex rules for organizing large groups of people, ostensibly to protect people and care for their safety, but also as barriers to entry into the marketplace. You can assemble, IF, you acquire this permit, that bit of insurance and don't disrupt the flow of commerce. People collectively organizing without the legal constructions, without the permits, without the insurance works outside of this system, it is more difficult to control, it is more difficult to BUY. How can you BUY an organization that isn't an organization? The aristocratic caste of these corporations (that's you Alph) didn't really understand the thing they were looking at. It was so similar to what they already understood, so the small but fundamental differences were overlooked. The lack of adhering to the proper channels, the lack of having a legal fiction chartering and legitimizing the agency of the people was anathema to every organizing principle they'd always adhered to. They didn't see how this sort of organic non-hierarchical system could even work. The corporate aristocratic caste sent its agents from the government to try and force those people to conform, but the government itself drew its legitimacy from the people, so its legitimacy was continually undermined by its attempts to deligitimize the will of those people.

It seems like those people were not willing to go gently into that good night in an era of job obsolescence where human beings were called things like, 'resources', and 'consumers'. They seemed to be rebelling against the very thing that provided them sustenance. It was inconceivable, because production put food into their bellies, so it was right and good and just to value the producers over the consumers. Nevermind that the monopolizing influence often undercut the ability of the people to be producers in their own right due to their inability to compete with the corporate monopolies that now so owned the institutions of government that they could extract money from the people without providing a service in return, in order to subsidize their monopolization of all production and land use. They continued taking land away from the people, and then argued that these people who were having their land taken from them should not be assembling unlawfully on 'private' land. It would seem that the very existence of these people was becoming an inconvenience for the monopolizers who were building their grand machine and shutting out an increasing number of people from the system of provision, because they simply were not needed. The narrative went that because there were not jobs for these people they were conversely lazy or entitled. If they didn't go the traditional paths of education to acquire a job provided by the corporate aristocracy they were lazy. If they did go the traditional path that over-qualified them for unskilled labor, but were on the wrong side of the supply/demand curve on their chosen vocational training they were called, 'entitled'. It didn't really matter what these people did, they were worthy of contempt.

But these people began to realize, they had the education to build all of the tools of the corporate monopolizers. They had enough of the resources of the corporate monopolizers to create alternative power structures that provided for them and those around them. They stopped adhering to the 'speciailzation of labor' dynamic that inefficiently distributed them as 'human resources', and simply started doing jobs that needed to be done that they were capable of doing. They cooked food, they washed dishes, and the built bicycle generators for when the government came to take away their gasoline powered generators.

The arms race had begun. They accelerated the system of reverse engineering, finding ways to circumvent the corporate monopoly and government control of communications lines. They used their cellular phones to create wireless mesh networks to share data amongst themselves. They continued to use the systems of the corporate machine that still at this point benefitted them to create the structures that would eventually supplant those mechanisms when they failed.

While the banks continued to devalue the fiat currency while sucking up the gold, hedging against a collapse of that currency, the people found ways to operate without the fiat currency and without the gold. An uncomfortable equilibrium continued, because the corporate monopolizers still required the complicity of the people, and the people still depended upon the corporate mechanisms, but as the relationship became more adversarial, each side found new ways to reduce their dependency upon the other. The massive megalithic centralized corporate structures were vulnerable, and the highly educated people understood those vulnerabilities. They understood the concepts of supply chains, power grids and other centralized systems of distributing resources. By reducing dependency (though not eliminating it) they were able to increase their own resource efficiencies and devote more of those resources toward the systems that were still favorable to the human being. The more the corporate aristocracy attacked the people, the more people stepped off of the sidelines and joined them.

The corporate aristocracy continued to push their propaganda of division. They relied on obsolete political categories of division, they told the people standing on the right that the people standing on the left were against them, and they told the people on the left that the people on the right were standing against them. But the thing was, these people were able to communicate with one another directly. They understood the divisions that separated them, but those divisions started to fade. The more the corporate monopoly bought the government, the more the people who in the past looked toward the state for their protection began to understand that the state did not necessarily have their best interests in mind. The more the people who were wary of the state saw the state acting against folks they could recognize as being similar to them, the more they realized that the state may very well at some point come for them too.

And the corporate monopolizers who thought of human beings as 'resources' who doubted their ability to think for themselves, doubted their ability to make decisions without externally applied, 'incentives', were baffled. They couldn't understand how people could en masse simply agree to work together without some elite fashioning the system for them. They didn't understand how sitting in a park, thinking educated people could speak to one another and put their knowledge together to create solutions that actually work. This went against all of the organizational doctrine of the prior century that looked at human beings are merely thinking machines, meat computers that only acted in an organized fashion when stimulated by smarter people than themselves. They saw the rising competition, and they didn't like it.

First, they ignored us. Now, they are laughing at us. Next, they will fight us.