The children continue to be angry

Following on from the realisation that the world's economy is basically in tatters from spending far more than we earn for far too long, I notice the idiotic "Occupy Wall Street" protests have now spilled out worldwide, demonstrating not only a lack of understanding of economics of the participants, but a woeful capability of geography as well.

Late last year and earlier this year we had the student riots where the self-empowered snowflakes of the work stamped their collective feet at the idea of having to actually pay the cost of the education that would provide them with BMWs and smartphones in the future.  In the last few months we have seen the rabble (rabble most foul, in the Greek variety) protesting that their free ride is over, and that all of a sudden there aren't any more handouts, there are no more artificial guarantees, and that basically - the party is well and truly over.

The OWS protesters are as much victims of manipulation by the organisers of the rallies as they think they are by the corporations they are protesting against.  Their basic protest seems to distill down to "Hey, why are other people making more than we do?  That's not fair!".  Gee, the last time I looked, that was called Socialism, morphing into Communism depending on how far you take it.  But if you look around, the protesters are all wearing Adidas shoes (made by corporations), designer clothes (made by corporations), and they're all clutching the latest iPhone/Blackberry/Whatever smartphones (all made possible by smartphones).  If you suggested they get rid of the latter they'd all just shrivel and die if they couldn't check their Facebook page every five minutes (ooh, another corporation).

In effect, the OWS protesters are the ultimate hypocrites, protesting about the evils of something when their actual complaint is they don't own a large enough slice of the evil for themselves.  As my fellow blogger says here, their "solutions" to the "problems" all come down to "give us more money".  Blacklistednews points out that the protesters are actually espousing concepts that create precisely the situation they are complaining about, due to a combination of being managed by the coordinators of the protests, and the protesters themselves having no idea whatsoever.

Mind you, not all the protesters are camped on public property, cover the place in crap, feeling virtuous because they're wearing Birkenstocks (ooh, another corporation - couldn't be seen in something not trendy, could we?) and waving mindless slogans on bit of cardboard.  (BTW, I particularly like the sign in this photo that says "Turn off TV" - presumably it's a form of mind control for the masses?  Yeah right, the same scruffy clueless would storm the local TV station the first time they realised they were missing Survivor.)  No, some of them are blogging too.

"The real enemies are the faceless oligarchs behind the Federal Reserve and the other central banks of the world. The real enemies are the wealthy families who understand how the central banks are destroying the middle classes and concentrating more power in governments and more wealth unto themselves."

What a load of socialist commie twaddle.  If the western world didn't have an effective banking system we'd be stuck in the pre industrial revolution, because nobody would ever have been able to invest in anything, nobody would ever have been able to finance an idea, and nobody would ever have been able to do anything more than they could afford here and now at this point in time.  The concepts of long term planning, development and progress wouldn't exist, we'd all be buying something for dinner tonight - if we could afford it - because we'd be living from hand to mouth.  Even if we could afford to buy food for several days, the refrigerator would not have been invented to store it, because nobody would have ever been able to start the company that would build them.

By the way, it's the 21st century, where's my flying car?

The 99% need to internalise the fact that society compensates leaders for leading.  That while they're happy to consume the benefits of organised society like iPods and Nikes they are also espousing precisely why society works the way it does - because they want it to.  They all want the new iPhone 4S, but don't see why they should have to pay for it.

This pathetic, confused, and easily manipulated mob of sheep are to be both pitied and despised for their cluelessness, lack of independent and skeptical thought, and willingness to be manipulated at the thought of a few trinkets.  After their smartphones go flat, and they haven't had a decent sustainably grown and ecologically friendly harvested latte with skim soy milk for a few days, they'll all go meekly home to the creature comforts provided for them by the very corporations they claim to despise, and post proud little messages of rebellion on Twitter (another corporation) about the evils of a corporate imperialist society.  They'll all go to work the next day wearing designer clothes (made by corporations), in their nice airconditioned car with stereo (made by a corporation) and made possible to buy by a bank who was willing to extend them tens of thousands of dollars of credit so they can have their little luxuries now.

When this mob can actually demonstrate the principles they claim to believe in for a lousy five minutes I might be impressed, in the meantime send in the water cannons.  Hippies were dealt with in the 60's, and this is simply the same mentality fifty years on.