COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

The Futility of Occupy X One can hardly go long without hearing about the Occupy X (x being whatever city the protestors are occupying at any given time) protests breaking out nationwide. It is a new phenomena to me as I was not around in the 70’s to witness similar movements in those days. One thing I do know from history though, is that they never work toward the intended purpose, and things only get worse when and if they dissipate. First of all – Occupy Wall St, or any other Occupy protest is doomed to fail on principle alone. Anytime you get a mass protest, it invokes group thought which requires people to surrender their individual knowledge and ideals to that of the rest for a time on the grounds that some change is better than no change. This of course leads to a multitude of mixed signals that only serve to undermine the protest as it becomes unclear what exactly the protests are being held for. All those protested against know is that you have a large group of upset and confused people. Within these groups you have a remarkable range of individuals that in time, start forming into individual groups within the main body. You have some protesting to end the fed, you have some seeking government to tax the rich and give them more goodies, and you have some who are protesting just because they want to be part of something. Yes there are far more groups then that, but it serves to give an example of the scope of people involved. The libertarians are blaming the leftists for co-opting their movement. The liberals are blaming the conservative ‘tea-baggers’ for messing up their streets and twisting their message. The anarchists being the minority are trying in vain to show all of the above why they think they are wrong. Then an interesting thing happened, and the 99% joined the fray. I find the 99% to be a funny group, and they provide me with quite a bit of laughter. First of all, they are not even close to representing 99% of anything. Then they have a nice list of demands that in order to meet, would require more of the same policies that they blame for making them broke to begin with. However the part of the 99% that is the most genius is how so many people are convinced that they are indeed ruled by 1%. To start out with – hundreds of millions of people voted to put the 3% or more in power over them. This means that they cannot even understand the reason such a small group can control so many to begin with. The reason is simple: We are a governed people. Those who govern are put in power by people who want something they cannot obtain themselves. This means that those who govern have to find a means that those who elected them could not, and to do this, a lot cheating and lying is involved. After all, how can one give money and favors to those who elected them when they do not use their own? Because the taxes required to meet these demands would be so high it would start a revolution within months, debt is used. Who buys and manages the debt? The top 3 percent of course (i.e. – government, power brokers etc). Yet people join the 99% because they have the herd mentality of safety in numbers. If they truly understood what it would take to get what they want, they would be the most cunning of criminals in methods of stealing. But legal plunder (as Bastiat put it so well) seems to be perfectly acceptable as an alternative on ‘moral’ grounds. Yet because they don’t even have an inkling on what the real problems are, they do what all other animals do – gang up and attack what they don’t understand; which is why they always lose. The psychological aspect is interesting to. Convince people that the majority is finally rising against the unfair minority, and people will join whether they understand what’s going on or not. I am not surprised at this however – after all, economics can be boring, and requires some knowledge of history. Most people care little for either, so misleading them is by far the easiest thing in the world. So now what? You have a group so helplessly split on ideals, marching toward many of the same institutions that their government draws its power from – asking the government for more favors that would require even more favors from the institutions that the people are marching on. It would almost be funny if it wasn’t true. During the tea party movements, it was very rare to find any kind of issues with the local law enforcement at all. During Occupy X, you have police stunning people, beating them, arresting them, people getting raped, poop and garbage in many places. Oddly enough, the tea partiers are being blamed for this. But I digress. If this continues, martial law will be enacted in some if not all of these cities. This will of course further anger the people who are already mad enough at the altercations between some of the protestors and the police. However if it does not continue, and the protests just burn out then the public will assume that the government is not doing anything about it, and will then use the elections to accomplish what the protests could not. Now here is the bad news. The chances of the protests fixing anything is 0. They are protesting for the wrong reasons, and they are asking for an even more evil system to be enacted whether they know it or not. Regardless of what outcome these protests bring from law enforcement (the media will be pitting the conservatives vs. the liberals as they always do), the political one will remain – more nationalization, and less freedom. For those of you who seek to go out and ‘educate’ the 99% – or any other socialistic/fascist leaning groups – be aware that you will be adding to the number of protestors granting them more perceived numbers, while having your voice lost in the hurricane of nonsense. Nothing sensible can ever come of such large movements in focused places, and to think otherwise is a pipedream. Some people left their jobs to protest. Some people had nothing better to do. Some people did it because they are convinced that this is their shot to change something. Sorry to tell all of the above, but the road to hell they say is paved with good intentions; and we just build ourselves a freeway with this mess. Thank you all for taking a problem and making it worse. Think about it this way – you have a very serious problem with a multitude of complexities, and people think that chanting slogans in mass with a poorly thought out list of demands will fix it. Really? So the only thing to do now is take a look down the street and say ‘now what’. Well to be frank, things will not get better. The government cannot comply with the so called 99%, and if the protests die down, they will resort to even worse measures. If however the government surpasses all previous levels of gross stupidity (which is a possibility given its nature) and grants the 99% even half of their demands, we will have an equal uprising by the opposite side of the fence that cannot take it anymore. In short, regardless of what happens now there will be mass chaos, a major economic collapse, and probably martial law shortly following. Of course future generations will turn and blame anarchy, but that’s another story. So be prepared for a lot on nonsense in the upcoming year. There will be riots on an unprecedented scale, a major collapse of the economy, and the government trying to stay in power. The only thing I can recommend is to make sure wherever you live is a defendable location, you have plenty of defensive measures, a reserve of some kind of hard currency like silver or something for when you need something you cannot trade for, and food. A lot of people reading this will be laughing and calling me a nut – but I am okay with that because I won’t be the one up the creek without a paddle. By the way, let history record that democracy is once again largely the cause – and that the anarchists we not the ones rioting, crapping on the sidewalks, chanting mindless slogans, making demands from the government etc. Remember this. Also – it is all to often ignored how dumb it is to be barking up the wrong tree: http://peacefreedomprosperity.com/5671/the-wall-street-vs-main-street-runaround/