Occupy Wall Street is spreading all over the country. Young people who played by the rules, getting into huge debt for their education, are rightly pissed that there are no jobs for them. Older folks, like myself, with decades of experience in their chosen profession, are just as angry for the same reason. (I just took a job that will pay me about half of what I used to make, and after long periods of unemployment I’m happy to have it.) We are all in deep trouble. We’re angry, we’re scared, and those emotions are perfectly justifiable.<\/p>\n
But most of the protesters have no idea why their situation is so bad. Capitalism, the system that put clothes on their backs and iPods in their knapsacks and coffee in their veins, isn’t the problem. Corporatism, a.k.a. Crony capitalism, pseudo-capitalism, created all these problems.<\/p>\n
They’re so close. They almost<\/em> get it. They’re protesting the bailouts, handouts of taxpayer money to the people who created all these problems. Failure, one of the most important parts of real capitalism, has been removed from the equation. They’re right when they complain we have socialism for big business and capitalism for the rest of us. But their inability to distinguish between real capitalism and corporatism, their mistake of thinking they are the same thing, makes them turn to socialism for everyone, which would make things much worse. It would replace the Big Huge Government that created this mess with Bigger Huger Government.<\/p>\n Now unions are joining the movement and the protesters are delighted, unaware that unions, who also buy and sell congress weasels, are a big part of the problem.<\/p>\n The solution, which I haven’t heard any of the protesters suggest, is to change the definition of corporate person-hood, stripping corporations of the free speech rights real people have. That would allow congress to absolutely forbid any contributions of any kind to any congress weasel or party. They need to do the same with special interest groups and unions as well.<\/p>\n Of course, the only people who can do that are those who benefit directly from the Congress willfully and gleefully created this mess. They are the only ones who can put a stop to it.<\/p>\n Don’t hold your breath.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Occupy Wall Street protesters are so close. They almost get it<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1524"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1524"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1526,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1524\/revisions\/1526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}bribes<\/s> contributions, so the odds of it happening are pathetically small. But at the very least, protesters should direct their anger, not at Wall Street, which will buy congress weasels as long as congress allows it, but to Washington DC.<\/p>\n