Occupy "World" Protests- Decrying Everything "Evil"

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**Rented Tritium**

Easy E wrote:So, I exercise my rights by excluding myself from the rights.

That's a real catch that catch-22.

I don't think you understand how this works.

A company represents the combined will and resources of its owners.

If you own stock then that company represents the combined will of you and the other shareholders.

If you don't feel like your will is being represented, remove your stake from the company.

I am not sure how you think you have a "right" to demand that companies you do not own say a certain thing. You still have the same rights. Your money buys the same ads it always could. Go find another company that DOES represent your will and put your lots in with them.

I feel like you're missing a key philosophical concept here as to what a company actually IS.

**Easy E**

I get it. What you aren't getting is how as part owner of the company I "exercise leverage" over what the company to stop doing something I disagree with when i am also an employee.

So, if I am a shareholder, I am part owner and 'do" have a say in how the company is run. Right?

If I am not happy with the way it is going, the best way to show my "leverage" is to sell those stocks so I am no longer a part "owner" of the company. Which is what you said I should do.

So, once I sell my ownership, how exactly does that help change the political donations that I don't agree with? Oh, it doesn't, and now the other owners don't have to hear me raise the issue.

Well, everyone wins! Except the company that I work for is still doing stuff I disagree with. So, I guess I don't win at all.

Well, I have a feeling of what you think I should do then. Quit! That will show them. Now I don't need to be associated with those acts I find objectionable. of course, the company is still doing them, but not by the profits I am helping them make. Then, the real world kicks in, and I have to find a job at some other place that is most likely doing the exact same thing.

People think I'm idealistic.

Pretty simple message. Corporations are not people. They are legal contracts. Contracts do not have free speech rights.

**Frazzled**

If you are a shareholder you can bring opposition to a policy at the next shareholder meeting. If there is suffiicent opposition you can interrogate management, even force a vote on the issue.

You can't do that if you are not an owner.

**Rented Tritium**

Easy E wrote:I get it. What you aren't getting is how as part owner of the company I "exercise leverage" over what the company to stop doing something I disagree with when i am also an employee.

So, if I am a shareholder, I am part owner and 'do" have a say in how the company is run. Right?

If I am not happy with the way it is going, the best way to show my "leverage" is to sell those stocks so I am no longer a part "owner" of the company. Which is what you said I should do.

So, once I sell my ownership, how exactly does that help change the political donations that I don't agree with? Oh, it doesn't, and now the other owners don't have to hear me raise the issue.

It doesn't. It just mean's you're no longer a party to it.

See this is a thing you are not getting. You do not get to tell other people what to say. When you leave and take your money, YOU are no longer saying it. That is LITERALLY ALL you are allowed to control in this country. What YOU say. When you sell stock, YOU are no longer saying it. Someone else is. And that SOMEONE ELSE still has RIGHTS even if you don't like what they're saying.

Well, everyone wins! Except the company that I work for is still doing stuff I disagree with. So, I guess I don't win at all.

Correct. Working for a company means you do not have ANY rights to tell them what to say. It's just a job. You work for them. You and they are separate entities. You do not and should not have any say over what your company does. If you object morally, you can quit.

Well, I have a feeling of what you think I should do then. Quit! That will show them. Now I don't need to be associated with those acts I find objectionable.

You are very good at this! That is what I just said up there! We are truth-knowing buddies now.

of course, the company is still doing them, but not by the profits I am helping them make.

Freedom

Then, the real world kicks in, and I have to find a job at some other place that is most likely doing the exact same thing.

That's sad, but I mean, the alternative is that we allow you to subvert the free speech of the shareholders. I'm not ok with that.

People think I'm idealistic.

That's allowed

Pretty simple message. Corporations are not people. They are legal contracts. Contracts do not have free speech rights.

Legal contracts between people who have rights and are free to exert those rights THROUGH that contract.

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You really should read the actual supreme court ruling. The majority opinion explains my position WAY more clearly than I can.

**dogma**

Rented Tritium wrote:
IMO, that argument doesn't work. The shareholders literally own every penny of the company. If they don't like what their company is doing, they are 100% free to take their dollars out.

Provided that their willing to incur any possible loss, that's true. However, that isn't overly far from a definition of freedom that doesn't really allow for its absence.

Of course, that isn't necessarily a problem, as the idea that you can have your freedom taken away, in general, isn't particularly salient; ie. you're always free to do something.

**Rented Tritium**

dogma wrote:
Rented Tritium wrote:
IMO, that argument doesn't work. The shareholders literally own every penny of the company. If they don't like what their company is doing, they are 100% free to take their dollars out.

Provided that their willing to incur any possible loss, that's true. However, that isn't overly far from a definition of freedom that doesn't really allow for its absence.

Of course, that isn't necessarily a problem, as the idea that you can have your freedom taken away, in general, isn't particularly salient; ie. you're always free to do something.

Right, like. Freedom of speech is the freedom to use your will to express anything you want.

It's not the freedom to force company X to say or not say thing Y. Not being able to do that is not a loss of freedom.

But if you OWNED some of company X, company X benefits from your freedom of speech. Since the company is made up of the collective wills of people who HAVE freedom of speech, then the company has it. To restrict it is restricting the will of the owners who are in fact people who have a first amendment right to speak with their resources.

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To make a horrible analogy, if I split the cost of a megaphone with a friend, both of us using the megaphone is still protected speech.

If I split a company with a friend, we can still use the company to express things.

Just because a lot of people own a company and each of them might not have a controlling stake doesn't mean the company doesn't REPRESENT their collective wills. If your company isn't representing your will, you should definitely make it not your company any more, just like you would get rid of a broken megaphone.

You wouldn't say "I have freedom of speech, why won't this megaphone listen to me", you'd just trash it.

**dogma**

Rented Tritium wrote:
Right, like. Freedom of speech is the freedom to use your will to express anything you want.

It's not the freedom to force company X to say or not say thing Y. Not being able to do that is not a loss of freedom.

True, but there you end up running into the distinction between a single person, in command of all faculties relevant to expression, and a group of people wherein no single actor has total control (barring certain conditions).

It wouldn't be a stretch to posit that groups of people are not capable of expressing a particular desire, due to the insensibility of the concept of collective will.

Rented Tritium wrote:
But if you OWNED some of company X, company X benefits from your freedom of speech. Since the company is made up of the collective wills of people who HAVE freedom of speech, then the company has it. To restrict it is restricting the will of the owners who are in fact people who have a first amendment right to speak with their resources.

See, but that isn't freedom of speech, its freedom of expression. While they are broadly considered to be the same under US law there are still unique limits on expression that justify placing similar restrictions on the expenditure of resources in a particular way.

**Easy E**

Frazzled wrote:If you are a shareholder you can bring opposition to a policy at the next shareholder meeting. If there is suffiicent opposition you can interrogate management, even force a vote on the issue.

You can't do that if you are not an owner.

I bet I could form an outside pressure group and get just as much response out of a company (if not more) than if I tried to follow the shareholder path. Therefore, there are ways to influence a company despite not being an owner. So,

However, the point was, as an employee the company can do what ever they want with the company, and I have no say in the matter; even if it is directly against my own interests. Why should the "companies" speech be able to override my own? I'm pretty sure that a company has more resources as a whole than any one employee does.

If a group of people get together and form a company, those people's company should get no "speech" rights, since each individual that forms the company all ready has them seperately. Now if you create a company, you have speech rights for yourself and your imaginary friend.

**Rented Tritium**

Easy E wrote:
However, the point was, as an employee the company can do what ever they want with the company, and I have no say in the matter; even if it is directly against my own interests. Why should the "companies" speech be able to override my own? I'm pretty sure that a company has more resources as a whole than any one employee does.

How is the company's speech "overriding" your speech exactly?

Saying things you don't like is not in ANY WAY infringing upon your speech.

Why do you as one shareholder feel like the other shareholders are less important? Who's overriding who here? You're the one who thinks that as an employee he gets to demand that his employer change what they are saying or not say anything.

**Easy E**

Why shoudl someone who is part of a corporation have different speech rights?

I believe there are still limts on what an individual can contribute?

**Rented Tritium**

Easy E wrote:Why shoudl someone who is part of a corporation have different speech rights?

I believe there are still limts on what an individual can contribute?

Ok, I tried to explain it, but it is obviously not working. Here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf

Please set aside some time and read this carefully. The opinion is very well written and does a better job explaining this than I can.

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If you like, we can even argue pieces of it. If you want to point out parts you disagree with by page number, we can debate them.

**sebster**

Frazzled wrote:You shouldn't lend to anyone who doesn't meet loan criteria. Millions didn't.

On the flip side you have the absolute degredation of standards like you saw in California. People acquiring mansions on loans at 5x - 10x income. Thats not sane. Yet it happened, a lot. And thats the fault of the mortgage lenders permitting their standards to fall, on the mistaken belief the market would continue to grow, in other words, a perpetual bubble.
Same that happened in Japan.

Yeah, the asset bubble was fueled by poor bank practices who loaned on the assumption of ever growing asset prices that would keep everyone's bonus cheques getting paid. This is not news.

You're not getting it. Responsible lending practices would not have lent the money in the first place.

No, you're not getting it. There is a whole world between 'too stringent lending controls that deny lower income people the chance of owning their own home' and 'no effective controls, as banking governance is abandoned is favour of chasing an asset bubble'.

You can remove equity limits while still lending an amount that's reasonable given the homeowner's income. It seriously isn't that difficult.

Meanwhile China decided to become the manufacturer for the world.

The US is still the world's biggest manufacturer. China continues to compete by offsetting it's low labour skill and terrible bureaucracy with very low wage levels.

And China has a very large asset bubble of its own.

Because they are. Lower your standards and get a job. Thats what my parents did when Dad's industry imploded. Thats what I have done.
They aint, so they can suck it.

And here we have the classic example of someone finding it more comforting and more self-satisfying to believe that their own wealth is entirely down to personal fortune.

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Rented Tritium wrote:Here's the thing about that. If I have some money and I'd like to buy an ad expressing my opinions, that's totally unrestricted and legal.

If I have a friend who is doing it as well, that is unrestricted and legal.

But if me and my friend get together and form a company with those exact same dollars, suddenly it's not speech anymore? Sounds kind of silly, doesn't it?

Campaign reform is RIFE with little things like that.

That little conundrum is built around the very silly idea that campaign financing is the same thing as speech, when it isn't. Speech is free because it is just speech. Whereas campaign financing actually involves going and giving someone money, it is an action with a clear benificiary.

There should be no issue with placing controls on either of them.

**Melissia**

sebster wrote:And China has a very large asset bubble of its own.

No kidding... China is having a huge amount of economic issues right now, and only its government-owned companies are really consistently flourishing (because they have more connections than the privately owned ones).

**sebster**

Rented Tritium wrote:IMO, that argument doesn't work. The shareholders literally own every penny of the company. If they don't like what their company is doing, they are 100% free to take their dollars out.

Which relies on the assumption of an active, informed shareholder class who is aware of where the company is spending it's money, and that's an assumption that just isn't true.

The largest owners of company stock in most cases are investment funds, who remain neutral in governance decisions, outside of extreme circumstances. And of the rest, mostly mum and dad private investors, how many have the time to check and see what payments are made to political bodies, if they're even capable of finding that information?

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Rented Tritium wrote:I don't think you understand how this works.

A company represents the combined will and resources of its owners.

Except that it really doesn't work that way. A company is an incredibly complex thing, and a publically listed company can have tens of thousands of investors, each with their own diverse range of values and goals. It is impossible for the average investor to be entirely across the goals and philosophies of the company, and it is just as impossible for the company to represent or even understand every interest of every shareholder.

So instead we have a board elected, who in almost all cases assumes the general will of the shareholders is 'make money without undue risk', and in almost every case the shareholders just watch them do this, unless things go really wrong.

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Rented Tritium wrote:Correct. Working for a company means you do not have ANY rights to tell them what to say. It's just a job. You work for them.

This is fundamentally untrue. Companies don't employ serfs, and it suits neither party to think otherwise. This doesn't mean the individual gets to tell management what they should be doing on every matter, but it does mean that in acting in their role they have a duty beyond just obeying company orders, and those duties include meeting personal and community moral standards.

And no, when company orders and following standards become opposed, the answer isn't just quit. There are so many other options to resolve the issue.

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Melissia wrote:No kidding... China is having a huge amount of economic issues right now, and only its government-owned companies are really consistently flourishing (because they have more connections than the privately owned ones).

And yet so many people are desperate to ignore that, because they want to see a big, looming threat. It's the USSR all over again.

**Frazzled**

You can remove equity limits while still lending an amount that's reasonable given the homeowner's income. It seriously isn't that difficult.

Yes, it is actually. As a lender having cut my teeth in real estate and later small business I have some familiarity with the issue.

**Easy E**

Threadomancy!

I thought this article was interesting. It was about how the Repubs were going to counter OWS talking points with talking points of their own. I just wish there was more to it.

http://www.salon.com/topic/occupy_wall_street/

Here is one of my favorites, and one that I have all ready heard many times.

“You shouldn’t be occupying Wall Street, you should be occupying Washington. You should occupy the White House because it’s the policies over the past few years that have created this problem.”

**davidjones**

China is of course, about to go "pop" as well. If we aren't buying the cheap crap they churn out, then there is no money for people to buy houses in the hosts cities they have littering their country.

A crash there will crash communism, not just make people stop buying taste the difference mince pies.

**Monster Rain**

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/adam-carolla-breaks-down-occupy-movement-fking-self-entitled-monsters/#ooid=s4a2UzMzpXPJ0udzH1lN5S-7jxLaI_Sw

Adam Corolla's extremely NSFW breakdown of OWS.

**Melissia**

Monster Rain wrote:Adam Corolla's extremely NSFW breakdown of OWS.

Idiotic rant is idiotic...

Should I recognize him from somewhere, or is he just some random douche off the internet?

**Easy E**

Adam Corolla is a semi-famous comedian for such hits as The Man Show, Dancing with the Stars, and Love Line with Dr. Drew.

**BrassScorpion**

This sums up our current horrible situation quite nicely regarding 99% vs. 1%. For the full effect with photos, read this at the link below. I included text only below that.

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/lexus-commercial-rant.php

If you're getting tired of the overbearing drumcirclers of the Occupy movement nothing brings you back around to their point of view quite like a steaming pile of one percenter consumerism. It serves as a reminder that, nope, not everyone is in this together. Some people are doing just fine. Finer, even. It's time for another "December to Remember Sales Event" from Lexus.

This month's festival of excess comes courtesy of the 2011 Lexus marketing campaign, running ad nauseum, which suggests the only way to create a "December to Remember" is to play the Lexus theme song and tie a bow around a 60,000 dollar hybrid SUV that you're giving to somebody for Christmas. I know you've seen these miserable things. They amount to either a terrible miscalculation about what Americans want shot out of their TVs at their faces or a sort of cocky, "deal with it" from Lexus about how gakky our lives are.

I understand that Lexus is a manufacturer of luxury automobiles and I don't begrudge them that. Certain people just need fancier cars to go to their fancy places fancier. If the commies had won the Cold War we'd all be waiting to get our chance for an unpainted Lada made out of tin with features like "front and one side window," "power headlight" and "full floor." At least this way a few hours of busking outside the train station and you can buy enough gasoline to drive your heated '89 Tercel to a different train station to busk, all so you can save up money to buy a Chinese hunk of crap and a couple video games about murdering robots for your ungrateful kids.

Merry Christmas, everybody.

Meanwhile, the catalog models floating in the soft-white sugar plum loft apartments and gated enclaves of the one percent are tying a ribbon around a car and rigging up music boxes and making the elevator play the instantly forgettable Lexus theme song that we all supposedly know by heart. Everyone is smiling and happy and sheathed in sweaters. Golden holiday lights glow out of focus in the background of every shot. Children gather around wondering what mom is going to think when she gets a brand new luxury car.

The music box plays the theme song and we know...YES...another luxury automobile is waiting in the driveway with a bow. Hooray.

feth you, Lexus. Nobody can afford your cars right now. We'll be lucky if we can afford a picture of a Lexus to email to somebody. Did you not notice that the whole world is sliding into a slow economic apocalypse? This is the spin you put on it? Play a music box and light up the faces of little tots with the candy cane dream of a car with heated leather seats and seatback LCDs. I'm glad the hedge fund managers and investment bankers living in your fantasy scenario are throwing around the kind of dough it takes to roll a Lexus off the lot, but isn't there some channel just for rich people you can run these commercials on?

Look at that ridiculous setup. It looks like Michael Cain's house in Children of Men. They're playing the Lexus song on Guitar Hero in a frigging Frank Lloyd Wright house. Do you think people who live like this are sitting around watching Cartoon Network at 2 AM? They're skiing in Aspen at their private lodge or shopping at some specialty all-wood toy store buying a 1/2 scale T-rex skeleton made out of oak for a kid who will be a record producer at age fifteen.

Here's an idea, Lexus: how about you sponsor Kudlow's daily Goldman Sachs ball tickler, slap a sticker on whatever pole Maria Bartoromo is grinding her stink on, and leave the other channels alone. That way the rest of us can wallow in the pacifying glow of singing competitions and vampire TV shows and we don't have to see your messed up alternate reality where people are happy and rich.

The one percenters can have their Lexus champagne parties in the VIP and the rest of us can pretend it's okay that we're underwater on our mortgages and drowning under student loan debt and we'll be fething lucky if our parents' pensions aren't "renegotiated" to zero and we end up with them living with us for the next twenty years and driving the same car we had in college that makes a sound like a cat having its anal glands flushed out with a cleat because blah blah blah American Dream.

It's not jealousy, it's that our misery is heightened by the ecstasy of the select few. It's a parade of excess in the midst of austerity. It's gross. You're gross, Lexus.

Oh, and Lexus, while you're at it, tap the diamond people on the shoulder and let them know that one of their commercials features an adult man sharing a romantic moment with a teenage boy. I think it's for Zales/Peoples Jewellers. I don't know who green-lit that one, but it's also gross. Take your Lexii and catamites and disappear back behind your mansion walls. It's not cool to throw garbage at us out here.

We have train stations to busk.

- Zack "Geist Editor" Parsons

**dogma**

That's literally one of the worst things I've ever read, it goes up there with Atlas Shrugged.

Nobody can afford your cars right now.

I can, and I'm a 25 year old graduate student.

**Kilkrazy**

Well done!