Occupy Wall Street: The Movement Grows

[georgephillip]

Constitutional-law nitpick: the enumerated-power justification for the EPA is found in the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce, not in the "general welfare" clause. There is no power granted to Congress to "promote the general welfare." There is, rather, a power to tax and spend to promote the general welfare (Article I, Section 8, first clause), and that power does not fully describe what the EPA is doing.

Thanks for the correction.

It's becoming more and more obvious to me how many of our current problems stem from that first Secret Constitutional Convention that was presided over by the wealthiest landowner in the country.

Maybe it is time for a second convention with delegates that aren't limited to 1% white males?

Why?

How about starting by listing your top 3 Grievances, why they are unjust, and what you propose to remedy them.

Let's start with one grievance from which many stem, imho.

The Founders created a government with special protections for property rights at the expense of human rights. While the Civil War ended the profit from chattel slavery, that special emphasis for property rights has become a bedrock of corporate power.

Tell me why property rights should count for more than human rights, like subsistence and education, for example?

 

[georgephillip]

Are you advocating Change through Fear and Intimidation?

Of course.

Violence and the threat of violence are the core of the left.

There is Nothing Noble in that Editec. I know influence through Reason and valid argument is tough for a group so unfocused, with so many contradictory claims and denials, but it is the High Road. We the People, have a Right to be Concerned about Riot and Insurrection. Why would you even question that?

Reason is the domain of the right. The left seeks change through violence, always.

It wasn't the left that was seeking change through violence in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, was it?

Don't you ever gag when swallowing Wall Street's Shit?

 

[Katzndogz]

Thanks for the correction.

It's becoming more and more obvious to me how many of our current problems stem from that first Secret Constitutional Convention that was presided over by the wealthiest landowner in the country.

Maybe it is time for a second convention with delegates that aren't limited to 1% white males?

Why?

How about starting by listing your top 3 Grievances, why they are unjust, and what you propose to remedy them.

Let's start with one grievance from which many stem, imho.

The Founders created a government with special protections for property rights at the expense of human rights. While the Civil War ended the profit from chattel slavery, that special emphasis for property rights has become a bedrock of corporate power.

Tell me why property rights should count for more than human rights, like subsistence and education, for example?

This is where you go wrong. There is no human right to subsistence or education that is paid for by someone else. You have the right to subsistence, which means that the government cannot prohibit you from legally providing subsistence for yourself. The government is supposed to protect property rights to prevent theft of property. It is not supposed to grant RIGHTS to take the property of others.

 

[Uncensored2008]

Let's start with one grievance from which many stem, imho.

The Founders created a government with special protections for property rights at the expense of human rights.

There can be no human rights without property rights.

The recognition that a person is the rightful owner of his mind and body, thus the owner of what is produced as a result of his mind an body, is the foundation of all human rights. Deny this, and all rights are gone.

We must remember our foundations. The right is predicated on the notion that the individual is supreme, that each person is unique and that the universe is diminished by the loss of any individual. As a result, the rights of the individual supersede all other rights.

The left is based on the idea that society is supreme, that individuals have value only in their function to society as a whole. Any given individual is replaceable, some are more valuable, but any person can be replaced and their loss is of no import, people are mere cogs and gears in the machine of the state. The extension of this is that all things rightfully belong to society, i.e. the state. Property rights accrue to the state and the rulers, not to the cogs and gears that turn the wheels.

This is why individuals in leftist societies don't have any human rights, one does not accrue rights to bolts and wires. There are many rules on how to treat the cogs and gears of the machine, rules and run manuals are part of the philosophy of the state as supreme, but the concept of individuals as having worth is anathema to the left. The death of one or ten million to a Mao, Stalin or Chomsky is no more relevant that a truck load of parts being destroyed. They will have to be replaced, but those lost had no significance on their own.

While the Civil War ended the profit from chattel slavery, that special emphasis for property rights has become a bedrock of corporate power.

Quite the opposite.

Corporations have chaffed at property rights since the days of the robber barons. Corporations turned to the state to drive people off of their land so that railways and oil wells could be built "for the greater good."

Tell me why property rights should count for more than human rights, like subsistence and education, for example?

There can be no human rights without property rights.

Tell me why the state is more valuable than the individual?

 

[Unkotare]

Are you advocating Change through Fear and Intimidation?

Of course.

Violence and the threat of violence are the core of the left.

There is Nothing Noble in that Editec. I know influence through Reason and valid argument is tough for a group so unfocused, with so many contradictory claims and denials, but it is the High Road. We the People, have a Right to be Concerned about Riot and Insurrection. Why would you even question that?

Reason is the domain of the right. The left seeks change through violence, always.

It wasn't the left that was seeking change through violence in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, was it?

Sure it was. The left was just cheering for the other side.

 

[georgephillip]

Why?

How about starting by listing your top 3 Grievances, why they are unjust, and what you propose to remedy them.

Let's start with one grievance from which many stem, imho.

The Founders created a government with special protections for property rights at the expense of human rights. While the Civil War ended the profit from chattel slavery, that special emphasis for property rights has become a bedrock of corporate power.

Tell me why property rights should count for more than human rights, like subsistence and education, for example?

This is where you go wrong. There is no human right to subsistence or education that is paid for by someone else. You have the right to subsistence, which means that the government cannot prohibit you from legally providing subsistence for yourself. The government is supposed to protect property rights to prevent theft of property. It is not supposed to grant RIGHTS to take the property of others.

There's no human right to subsistence or education in an inhuman economic system like capitalism.

But, there are alternatives.
Social Credit as conceived by CH Douglas, for example:

"Douglas disagreed with classical economists who divided the factors of production into only land, labour and capital. While Douglas did not deny these factors in production, he believed the 'cultural inheritance of society' was the primary factor.

"Cultural inheritance is defined as the knowledge, technique and processes that have been handed down to us incrementally from the origins of civilization.

"Consequently, mankind does not have to keep 'reinventing the wheel'. 'We are merely the administrators of that cultural inheritance, and to that extent the cultural inheritance is the property of all of us, without exception.'[5]

In our present economic system the dividend from our collective cultural inheritance is claimed almost exclusively by the richest 1% of humanity. OWS is saying it's time to change that dynamic.

Social Credit - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[georgephillip]

Let's start with one grievance from which many stem, imho.

The Founders created a government with special protections for property rights at the expense of human rights.

There can be no human rights without property rights.

The recognition that a person is the rightful owner of his mind and body, thus the owner of what is produced as a result of his mind an body, is the foundation of all human rights. Deny this, and all rights are gone.

We must remember our foundations. The right is predicated on the notion that the individual is supreme, that each person is unique and that the universe is diminished by the loss of any individual. As a result, the rights of the individual supersede all other rights.

The left is based on the idea that society is supreme, that individuals have value only in their function to society as a whole. Any given individual is replaceable, some are more valuable, but any person can be replaced and their loss is of no import, people are mere cogs and gears in the machine of the state. The extension of this is that all things rightfully belong to society, i.e. the state. Property rights accrue to the state and the rulers, not to the cogs and gears that turn the wheels.

This is why individuals in leftist societies don't have any human rights, one does not accrue rights to bolts and wires. There are many rules on how to treat the cogs and gears of the machine, rules and run manuals are part of the philosophy of the state as supreme, but the concept of individuals as having worth is anathema to the left. The death of one or ten million to a Mao, Stalin or Chomsky is no more relevant that a truck load of parts being destroyed. They will have to be replaced, but those lost had no significance on their own.

While the Civil War ended the profit from chattel slavery, that special emphasis for property rights has become a bedrock of corporate power.

Quite the opposite.

Corporations have chaffed at property rights since the days of the robber barons. Corporations turned to the state to drive people off of their land so that railways and oil wells could be built "for the greater good."

Tell me why property rights should count for more than human rights, like subsistence and education, for example?

There can be no human rights without property rights.

Tell me why the state is more valuable than the individual?

Just as labor is prior to and more important than capital, property doesn't exist in any meaningful way without humanity. State versus individual is a straw man. When one percent of the individuals in any state dominate government to the extent the richest 1% of Americans dominate both major political parties today, any foundation for human rights vanishes and even property values go into decline occasionally.

 

[georgephillip]

Of course.

Violence and the threat of violence are the core of the left.



Reason is the domain of the right. The left seeks change through violence, always.

It wasn't the left that was seeking change through violence in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, was it?

Sure it was. The left was just cheering for the other side.

Do you celebrate killing children for oil?

"These results provide strong evidence that the Gulf war and trade sanctions caused a threefold increase in mortality among Iraqi children under five years of age. We estimate that an excess of more than 46,900 children died between January and August 1991. (N Engl J Med 1992;327:931–6.)"

MMS: Error

 

[Katzndogz]

That's not true.

However, for TRUE GENIUS, take this protester.

The WISDOM of OWS on exhibition.

Weasel Zippers » Blog Archive » Occupy Portland: Super-Genius Handcuffs Himself Inside Concrete-Filled Barrel…

 

[Uncensored2008]

Just as labor is prior to and more important than capital, property doesn't exist in any meaningful way without humanity.

Labor has no value and is completely unimportant. Marx was a fool.

Oh this startles you? The dogma you live by says that labor is noble and is the highest good.

Nonsense, labor has no value at all. Go dig a hole in the desert. Have you not labored? What value did your labor create?

Don't like that? Okay, grab a 50 pound bag of carrots and start chopping. I'll plug in a food processor. Not only will I do in a minute that which takes you hours, the quality of results will be far higher from me.

Labor is irrelevant, results matter. It is the mind that produces results, sometimes through labor, most times through automation.

State versus individual is a straw man.

Hardly, it is THE issue. Every aspect of the conflict between left and right boils down to whether one holds the individual or society in preeminence.

When one percent of the individuals in any state dominate government to the extent the richest 1% of Americans dominate both major political parties today, any foundation for human rights vanishes and even property values go into decline occasionally.

Now THAT is a straw man.

 

[Intense]

Thanks for the correction.

It's becoming more and more obvious to me how many of our current problems stem from that first Secret Constitutional Convention that was presided over by the wealthiest landowner in the country.

Maybe it is time for a second convention with delegates that aren't limited to 1% white males?

Why?

How about starting by listing your top 3 Grievances, why they are unjust, and what you propose to remedy them.

Let's start with one grievance from which many stem, imho.

The Founders created a government with special protections for property rights at the expense of human rights. While the Civil War ended the profit from chattel slavery, that special emphasis for property rights has become a bedrock of corporate power.

Tell me why property rights should count for more than human rights, like subsistence and education, for example?

Rules for Changing a Limited Republican Government into an Unlimited Hereditary One

Volume (?)

1784-1796

Organizing the New Nation

THE ANNALS OF AMERICA
---------------------
Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc.

100

Philip Freneau
Rules for Changing
a Republic [into a Democracy, then] into a Monarchy

Those who had opposed the constitution thought their fears justified by the conduct of the government that began to function in 1789. Under the aggressive leadership of Alexander Hamilton, the secretary of the treasury, economic measures were taken that favored the few, while a effective party machine was organized and the army strengthened in such a way as to suggest an intent to control rather than to represent the many. The whole tone of Washington's administration was aristocratic, favoring as it did the educated, the wealthy, the clergy, and the press, who were fearful of "mob rule" and preferred to see what Hamilton called "gentlemen of principle and property" in command. As Hamilton had at his service a newspaper - John Fenno's Gazette of the United States - to support his policies, his opponents, led by Jefferson and Madison, decided to establish a rival newspaper, the National Gazette. Philip Freneau, an experienced journalist of known democratic leanings, was chosen to edit the paper. The editorial, reprinted here, is typical of those in which Freneau criticized the Hamiltonian program from 1791 to 1793.

Source: American Museum, July 1792: "Rules for Changing a Limited Republican Government into an Unlimited Hereditary One."


Rules for changing a limited republican government into an unlimited hereditary one.

1. It being necessary in order to effect the change, to get rid of constitutional shackles and popular prejudices, all possible means and occasions are to be used for both these purposes.

2. Nothing being more likely to prepare the vulgar mind for aristocratical ranks and hereditary powers than titles, endeavor in the offset of the government to confer these on its most dignified officers. If the principal magistrate should happen to be particularly venerable in the eyes of the people, take advantage of that fortunate circumstance in setting the example.

3. Should the attempt fail through his republican aversion to it, or from the danger of alarming the people, do not abandon the enterprise altogether, but lay up the proposition in the record. Time may gain it respect, and it will be there always ready, cut and dried, for any favorable conjuncture that may offer.

4. In drawing all bills, resolutions, and reports, keep constantly in view that the limitations in the Constitution are ultimately to be explained away. Precedents and phrases may thus be shuffled in, without being adverted to by candid or weak people, of which good use may afterward be made.

5. As the novelty and bustle of inaugurating the government will for some time keep the public mind in a heedless and unsettled state, let the press during this period be busy in propagating the doctrines of monarchy and aristocracy. For this purpose it will be particular useful to confound a mobbish democracy with a representative republic, that by exhibiting all the turbulent examples and enormities of the former, an odium may be thrown on the character of the latter. Review all the civil contests, convulsions, factions, broils, squabbles, bickering, black eyes, and bloody noses of ancient, middle, and modern ages; caricature them into the most frightful forms and colors that can be imagined, and unfold one scene of horrible tragedy after another till the people be made, if possible, to tremble at their own shadows. Let the discourses on Davila then contrast with these pictures of terror the quiet hereditary succession, the reverence claimed by birth and nobility, and the fascinating influence of stars, and ribands, and garters, cautiously suppressing all the bloody tragedies and unceasing oppressions which form the history of this species of government. No pains should be spared in this part of the undertaking, for the greatest will be wanted, it being extremely difficult, especially when a people have been taught to reason and feel their rights, to convince them that a king, who is always an enemy to the people, and a nobility, who are perhaps still more so, will take better care of the people than the people will take of themselves.

6. But the grand nostrum will be a public debt, provided enough of it can be got and it be medicated with the proper ingredients. If by good fortune a debt be ready at hand, the most is to be made of it. Stretch it and swell it to the utmost the items will bear. Allow as many extra claims as decency will permit. Assume all the debts of your neighbors - in a word, get as much debt as can be raked and scraped together, and when you have got all you can, "advertise" for more, and have the debt made as big as possible. This object being accomplished, the next will be to make it as perpetual as possible; and the next to that, to get it into as few hands as possible. The more effectually to bring this about, modify the debt, complicate it, divide it, subdivide it, subtract it, postpone it, let there be one-third of two-thirds, and two-thirds of one-third, and two-thirds of two-thirds; let there be 3 percents, and 4 percents, and 6 percents, and present 6 percents, and future 6 percents. To be brief, let the whole be such a mystery that a few only can understand it; and let all possible opportunities and informations fall in the way of these few to cinch their advantages over the many.

7. It must not be forgotten that the members of the legislative body are to have a deep stake in the game. This is an essential point, and happily is attended with no difficulty. A sufficient number, properly disposed, can alternately legislate and speculate, and speculate and legislate, and buy and sell, and sell and buy, until a due portion of the property of their constituents has passed into their hands to give them an interest against their constituents, and to ensure the part they are to act. All this, however, must be carried on under the cover of the closest secrecy; and it is particularly lucky that dealings in paper admit of more secrecy that any other. Should a discovery take place, the whole plan may be blown up.


Cont.......

Freneau: Changing a Republic into a Monarchy (1792)

 

[Intense]

Property


CHAPTER 16 | Document 23

James Madison, Property
29 Mar. 1792Papers 14:266--68

This term in its particular application means "that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual."

In its larger and juster meaning, it embraces every thing to which a man may attach a value and have a right; and which leaves to every one else the like advantage.

In the former sense, a man's land, or merchandize, or money is called his property.

In the latter sense, a man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.

He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them.

He has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person.

He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them.

In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.

Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.

Where there is an excess of liberty, the effect is the same, tho' from an opposite cause.

Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own.

According to this standard of merit, the praise of affording a just securing to property, should be sparingly bestowed on a government which, however scrupulously guarding the possessions of individuals, does not protect them in the enjoyment and communication of their opinions, in which they have an equal, and in the estimation of some, a more valuable property.

More sparingly should this praise be allowed to a government, where a man's religious rights are violated by penalties, or fettered by tests, or taxed by a hierarchy. Conscience is the most sacred of all property; other property depending in part on positive law, the exercise of that, being a natural and unalienable right. To guard a man's house as his castle, to pay public and enforce private debts with the most exact faith, can give no title to invade a man's conscience which is more sacred than his castle, or to withhold from it that debt of protection, for which the public faith is pledged, by the very nature and original conditions of the social pact.

That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest. A magistrate issuing his warrants to a press gang, would be in his proper functions in Turkey or Indostan, under appellations proverbial of the most compleat despotism.

Property: James Madison, Property

 

[Katzndogz]

The OWS shitters really object to property rights. That's what it comes down to.

Say we had that system. You OWN whatever you can protect by whatever means you have available.

OWS might go for that. They won't know what it means, but at that point who cares.

 

[georgephillip]

Just as labor is prior to and more important than capital, property doesn't exist in any meaningful way without humanity.

Labor has no value and is completely unimportant. Marx was a fool.

Oh this startles you? The dogma you live by says that labor is noble and is the highest good.

Nonsense, labor has no value at all. Go dig a hole in the desert. Have you not labored? What value did your labor create?

Don't like that? Okay, grab a 50 pound bag of carrots and start chopping. I'll plug in a food processor. Not only will I do in a minute that which takes you hours, the quality of results will be far higher from me.

Labor is irrelevant, results matter. It is the mind that produces results, sometimes through labor, most times through automation.

State versus individual is a straw man.

Hardly, it is THE issue. Every aspect of the conflict between left and right boils down to whether one holds the individual or society in preeminence.

When one percent of the individuals in any state dominate government to the extent the richest 1% of Americans dominate both major political parties today, any foundation for human rights vanishes and even property values go into decline occasionally.

Now THAT is a straw man.

Rich individual v poor individual is THE issue.

"Those who hold, and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination."

Corporate apparatchiks believe the private property rights of the richest 1% count for more than the collective rights of the society that made private property possible. Individuals experience lives that are short, brutish and nasty without the protection afforded by society. Move to Yemen if you're in doubt.

If you dig your hole in the desert, would you be doing more damage to society than AIG and Goldman Sachs?

Marx was foolish to think an all powerful state was a solution to capitalism.
That doesn't mean he was wrong about its paradox of accumulation.

The Federalist (Dawson)/10 - Wikisource

 

[Uncensored2008]

Rich individual v poor individual is THE issue.

Moving the goal posts does not aid your argument.

You claimed that labor is more important than capital. How does the above claim support that argument?

"Those who hold, and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination."

You claimed that labor is more important than capital. How does the above claim support that argument?

Corporate apparatchiks believe the private property rights of the richest 1% count for more than the collective rights of the society that made private property possible.

Again we see that you, as a leftist hold society as being of greater value than the individual, and accruing rights to society, i.e. the state, rather than to the individual.

Thank you for illustrating my thesis that the divide between left and right is that of state versus the individual.

Individuals experience lives that are short, brutish and nasty without the protection afforded by society. Move to Yemen if you're in doubt.

Humans create cooperative societies, this is true. Those societies which thrive most are the ones that recognize the rights of the individual. Those that follow the view of the left, of humans as chattel, tend to fall in short order. Ever is the claim that society is served by the exploitation and sacrifice of the individual for "the greater good," yet history shows that the individual is the greater good.

If you dig your hole in the desert, would you be doing more damage to society than AIG and Goldman Sachs?

You attempted to dodge the point that labor is irrelevant. Labor means nothing at all.

Marx was foolish to think an all powerful state was a solution to capitalism.
That doesn't mean he was wrong about its paradox of accumulation.

Yet what you advocate is an all powerful state with the individual existing only to serve that state.

Capitalism is the most moral means of people interacting.

The Federalist (Dawson)/10 - Wikisource

 

[georgephillip]

Labor is prior to and independent of capital.
Without labor capital does not exist.
Labor is more important than capital.

 

[Dragon]

Marx was foolish to think an all powerful state was a solution to capitalism.

Marx didn't think that. His folly lay in other areas.

 

[Uncensored2008]

Labor is prior to and independent of capital.
Without labor capital does not exist.
Labor is more important than capital.

Repeating idiocy doesn't lend credence to it.

Labor is irrelevant. Labor is simply a tool. A hammer in the hands of toddler builds nothing. Labor in the hands of fools accomplishes nothing. The skilled craftsman may wield both to magnificent result, yet it is the craftsman and not the tool that makes this possible.

 

[georgephillip]

The craftsman is labor.
The hammer is capital.
You're the fool.

 

[Uncensored2008]

The craftsman is labor.
The hammer is capital.
You're the fool.

George, you're being an idiot because you cannot support your foolish claims.

Labor produces nothing of it's own accord.