The "Occupy _____" demonstrations are a symbolic statement from the people against a degenerating system that no longer bears any semblance to its once meritocratic ethos. No, there is no concrete set of demands. Does there need to be? For too long we have said nothing.
Now it is not only the large banks that have reaped an inordinate share of the national wealth. It is also the universities who routinely rip off and deceive their most significant stakeholders, the students. The tuition rates are now at absurd levels, and they have of course no relation to the starting salaries that graduates can expect.
Every semester, the student population has no choice but to pay up. Why? To redemocratize our society, we have to fully democratize our education system. Students are not passive consumers. The university system must be transformed into one where the students have a voice, as it is in most developed countries and even in many far-from-developed countries.
So, yes, occupy Wall Street, occupy Sallie Mae, but also occupy the authoritarian universities that are milking you dry.
Those in charge have almost guaranteed "access" to higher education, but at a cost. Who benefits when universities pump out an excessive number of underemployed graduates? The students and their families do not. Society does not, for it would have been better served to have labor allocated in a more productive fashion.
But the usurers benefit. The deans benefit. The arrogant professoriat benefits.
Some in the education reform camp favor eliminating state involvement in tertiary education altogether. Others just want to see student loans discharged in bankruptcy.
Yet perhaps we should consider a system that takes into account the needs of society in determining who attends which institution. Perhaps we should eliminate the price factor altogether. Education is not merely a matter of consumer choice, if it is at all. It is a matter of social utility, and ultimately of the national interest.
Colleges and universities are part of an extortion racket. They know that they are the "gatekeepers" to most jobs that offer any prospect of having any sort of middle-class life--or, increasingly, to almost any job at all. So they know what they can get away with, and charge accordingly. Really, what's the difference between them and those mob-owned carting companies that force small businesses to pay exorbitant rates so they can comply with city codes and stay in business?
ReplyDeleteProtest it all. They're all corrupt. But if they'd been smart, they wouldn't be leaving an educated populace with no opportunity to do something good in society. They brought it all on themselves so I can't say I'll shed any tears if some social justice results because the official channels refuse to get off their butts and do their jobs.
ReplyDeleteI'll bring my banjo!
ReplyDeleteYes I agree with Dona. I would also add that the schools have more information than do the students - and what information they release (read: employment statistics) is distorted (read: lies). None of this is helped by the government, which, by meddling in the student loans business, masks the true risks inherent in high-cost education. If the government got out, student loan rates would be much higher and fewer people would be suckered into the debt trap, thus lowering prices. But its collusion between government & business/universities, as always.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I would say about the protesters: they may be college graduates, but they are totally clueless about the real reasons for the current situation (much like the people on this post, I'm sad to say).
They just fall back on "blaming capitalism". They refuse to see Obama's role in all this. As Gordon Ramsay would say, "more importantly", they are in a way lazy and refuse to learn why they keep repeating the mistakes of the past. I bet these kids will once again vote for Obama or some similar Wall Street shill candidate in 2012.
Yes at times like this our freedoms, such as freedom of speech, become all the more valuable. Don't get me wrong-I'm a huge supporter of these protesters. But they demonstrate their ignorance as much as they demonstrate their outrage. And they're a testament to the fact that colleges teach most students nothing of any real value and instead produce legions of brainwashed drones that can only mutter "this is all capitalism's fault." The fact is that most of their hated Wall Street banks would be bankrupt were it not for the GOVERNMENT's intervention (under BOTH the Bush and Obama administrations). In other words, their trusted government is in bed with, and helps sustain, the very Wall Street banks that they so loathe. I remember reading that both Obama and McCain listed Wall Street banks as their most prominent sponsors.
Don't they know that the system will use their ignorance against them to install a totalitarian fascist state ruled by a select few?
Not to toot my own horn, but I at least want to learn about what the mistakes were. Most people, I fear - even the people on this blog - are much less concerned with learning about and improving society and far more concerned with complaining and reiterating their belief system, as outdated, mistaken, and useless as it is.
Capitalism is not the problem - crony capitalism is the problem. If government and the fed stopped subsidizing their buddies' banks, they would all fail tomorrow and we would be all the better for it. But hey that's the truth and the truth is always so unpopular, especially when it's this obvious.
INFOWARS.COM
ZEROHEDGE.COM
I would just like to add that you only need look in Obama's cabinet to see a star-studded lineup of Wall Street executives. Jeff Immelt, the "jobs czar" is CEO of GE, which received government bailouts, not to mention shipped countless jobs overseas to China. William Daley, the big O's chief of staff, formerly worked at JP Morgan. Timothy Geithner worked for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Larry Summer and Peter Orszag both worked for Citigroup. The big O practically sucks at Warren Buffett's teet and Buffett and Wall Street are basically interchangeable. It is just so, so in your face.
ReplyDeleteI mean you do not have to be a clairvoyant to see this. It is so obvious and arrogant that only the most delusioned, foolish, hypocrital, or willfully blind cannot see this. In fact, to protest against Wall Street is to protest against the Obama administration! Instead they naively believe that Obama will do something for them! Hahahaha. But I will give these protesters the benefit of the doubt - I will grant that they cannot possibly be so foolish; therefore they must be hypocrites and liars.
Unless I add this next paragraph I know that people will think I'm a big Bush supporter. I'm not. Bush's Secretary of the Treasury was Paulson, formerly of Goldman Sachs.
I mean this is all so obvious, I am utterly amazed at what people cannot see is happening.
It's also hilarious how the NY Times characterizes Robert Rubin as "free markets" - the same man who lobbied heavily for the biggest government interventions in history during the 2008 panic. What a crock. Journalism is dead, too, if it ever was alive to begin with.
Obey the false Democrat / Republican dichotomy, sheeple!
Ron Paul 2012.
infowars.com
zerohedge.com
Also here's an interesting article regarding this movement, which suggests it's potentially influenced by George Soros, a predatory financier:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.infowars.com/occupy-wall-street-a-globalist-op-designed-to-destroy-efforts-to-end-the-fed/
I trust infowars about 100 times more than the New York times or Fox news for that matter.
infowars.com
zerohedge.com
In the Fall of 2005, the NYU grad students held big protests because the school would no longer negotiate with their union and was cutting benefits.
ReplyDelete79 students were arrested.
Their demands were not met.
Protests are generally ineffective. I think a more effective tactic would be to get a student org or a sympathetic professor to hold a transparency and academic ethics symposium. It's generally easy for student orgs to get some a room in the evenings.
Infowars is crap. Just wanted to make that clear.
ReplyDeleteThere's a write up on Edububble comparing the University of California to Bank of America. If anything, the folks at the Univ. of Cali make more than the fat cat bankers.
ReplyDeletehttp://edububble.com/dpp/?p=2107
@Knut...it's crap? Hahahaha.
ReplyDeleteYes some of it is crap...but certainly not all? They've been right about an awful lot of things. Please explicate!
"I think a more effective tactic would be to get a student org or a sympathetic professor to hold a transparency and academic ethics symposium. It's generally easy for student orgs to get some a room in the evenings."
ReplyDeleteYeah, a symposium! That's the answer!
Please.
All of the protesting is just sooooooo exciting!
ReplyDeleteWe are gonna win for sure!
@Filmco lawyer-they're not educated. They're a bunch of mislead "liberals" (that word is in quotes because it's lost all meaning-most "liberals" are actually ANTI liberty, anti-freedom) who believe govt is the answer to all of their problems when it's really the cause.
ReplyDeleteA true "liberal" would be in favor of freedom-many of these people want a fascist totalitarian state. How do you think that worked when the working class "rose up" in Russia in the early 20th century?
Educated my ass...brainwashed more like it.
I swear people like you and many of those protesters will be the downfall of this country, not its saviors.
Also there is a news link that this is all George Soros and Michael Moore-yes that Michael Moore who makes millions of dollars under this system yet "hates capitalism".
A good rule of thumb is do the opposite of what Hollywood wants.
infowars.com
The other thing is WHY DOES NO ONE ON THIS BLOG EVER RESPOND TO ANYTHING? I swear it's like talking to a fuc*ing brick wall.
ReplyDeleteYou never discuss anything. You are all cling to your ideas even if they MAKE NO SENSE. Not one person has answered a SINGLE THING I'VE SAID ABOUT OBAMA.
Not one person on here replied to anything I said about the economy in the last article. Are you even awake?
It's like you're all a bunch of f*cking zombies, just walking and talking but dead.
KNUT REPLY TO SOMETHING! WHY IS INFOWARS WRONG? Why? Just because Knut says so? Do you agree or disagree with anything that I said?
Ahh it's all pointless anyway. All in all you're just another brick in the wall.
I think the OWS movement is going at it wrong. I think they have a point, but they are flawed humans too, and in the end, I think they would show the same greed.
ReplyDeleteAs for the system we have, I have no doubt it must change. But how? That I don't know. I don't think the OWS people do either.
@Terrified Law Student 11/11: also the mainstream media is misrepresenting OWS to serve their ends-
ReplyDeleteBut yeah it's pretty obvious that just making student loans dischargeable like all other debt would be good enough, no?
Yeah it's great to get stuff for free-I love free stuff, but at least I'm internally coherent enough to realize that there's no such thing as "free" someone has to work to make that thing so that someone else can receive it for "free".
What incentivizes that work? The profit motive of course.