A number of commentators have noted the unusual gathering of liberal/green folks and conservative/libertarian folks that constitute the Occupy Wall Street movement. While admitting the movement has a long way to go to actually represent “the 99%” (e.g., From Occupy Wall Street to Occupy the Neighborhoods), its transpartisan membership is part of its appealing legitimacy as a “We the People” movement.
Along these lines, this morning I stumbled on a TIME article (below) from 20 months ago – “The Dropout Economy” by conservative columnist Reihan Salam. In light of OWS, and coming from a prominent conservative, it appears intriguingly prophetic in its appreciative description of emerging youth-led community-based alternative economics and culture.
Dear friends: This Gary Horvitz blog post, which I just received by email, is very complementary to what I sent out yesterday, albeit from a more birds-eye view. – Tom Atlee
The Occupation is gaining depth and breadth, nationally and globally. The appearance is that spontaneous actions have arisen and continue to proliferate, cross-pollinate and act independently from the original occupation on Wall Street itself. Though there is a groundswell of coordination, no one is directing, no manifestos have appeared. No leaders have been elected. No one speaks for it all. The message may appear to be muddled, yet action appears everywhere and support materializes as if on cue. This is an open source movement.
To the extent that the metaphor of software development applies, we are speaking of the source code of a popular uprising, the core framework of a perpetually liquid process that is accessible to everyone for development and augmentation. No one owns it, no one controls it, no one approves new forms of usage in advance. There is no hierarchy. No one person or committee of meta-users decides which portions are to be discarded. It's all out there all the time, available for improvisation. It's evolving everywhere simultaneously. It's a circle whose perimeter is nowhere and whose center is everywhere.
Phi Beta Iota: The author speaks of the Story of Us, the Story of Me, and the Story of Now. Earlier Matt Taibbi focused on how OWS is a conscious pervasive rejection of what US society (and global society) have become among the one billion rich with five billion poor disenfranchised. We are watching the death of Epoch A and the rise of Epoch B. The US Government will be the last to “get it,” which is why everyone else is routing around the US Government. Absent the triumph of the Electoral Reform Act of 2012, and the emergence of a universal candidate with a coalition cabinet and a balanced budget, the US Government will remain both toxic and irrelevant.
Basically, the bill eliminates most of the legal barriers (restriction on the number of investors, the type of investors, etc.) to raising small amounts (
Of course, this new capability (if it passes) is going to be abused (bucket shops across the country are gearing up in anticipation). However, most of that will be sorted out in time.
Phi Beta Iota: Disintermediation is proceeding apace. The big challenge right now is that it is still turgidly centered on the one billion rich with one trillion a year in income — until OpenBTS and free cell phone service / free access to the Internet reach the five billion poor with their four trillion a year in income, the current economic malaise will persist.
Wikipedia/Plutocracy: Plutocracy is rule by the wealthy, or power provided by wealth. The combination of both plutocracy and oligarchy is called plutarchy.
Our government is no longer a democracy: ruled by the people. It is a plutocracy: ruled by the wealthy, and it is an oligarchy: ruled by an elite class. The two realities combined form a plutarchy, and are antithetical to a democratic republic. Representative democracy is meant to represent everyone, not just the wealthy and the elite, and not just the wealthiest 1%, as is true today.
Sucks for the 99%. The good news is that organized people can bury organized money any day of the week – key word organized.
