Lawrence O'Donnell on Police Brutality at Occupy Wall Street

Originally posted by conar
Lawrence O'Donnell is one of the only voices of reason in the main stream media

I think this video is more on-topic than meets the eye:

Hear the one guy screaming "MARXIST!!!" about every single thing that everyone says? Sounds like a select few people active on ATS surrounding these issues. Unfortunately, it often seems more like they're just proud of themselves for finally learning a 2-syllable word; much like how children will overuse words that they recently learned to impress people.

Originally posted by PsykoOps
This is a very important point in my opinion. The cameraman was not arrested because he had a camera. He assaults the cops. That's why he is rightfully arrested. You can see that in the beginning of this video.

Holy crap. Lol...

What the hell was he thinking?

Hi guys,

I guess I am new to ATS. I'm not sure... was the marxist comment aimed at me?

Isn't revolutionary times, times when new forms of system have historically been built on this planet.

My take on Marxism and Capitalism and democracy etc... is that it isn't the "system" that makes the difference. Rather it is the people who make the difference. People create systems that can be even handed or otherwise. But systems (which are controlled by human beings for human beings) are not capable of saving people in and of themselves.

If you look at the structure of communistic systems vs. capitalist systems, it is a difference merely in ownership of "system"/privately owned property. In a communistic system there is a single tree structure which runs/owns the entire system, and in a capitalistic system there are multiple tree structures that own/operate the entire system.

I am reminded of a principle that I came up with that was later written out by Margaret Heffernan in her book "Willfull Blindness". I will extend this to include monetary systems. Essentially, the analogy that is the core of this theory is as follows:

If rain were to fall on a desert for a long period of time - while initially, the entire desert is well watered. Eventually, streams form and they join to form tributaries which join to form rivers, which go to the oceans, as the path of least resistance is taken. So, the well-watered desert eventually becomes dry because water is well channelled off to the sea.

I believe the same is true of any human created system of "networks", with regards to the flow of money. This is also similar to how the game of monopoly works. I could go on for pages and pages about how this mimics a monopoly game and what effects you see near the end of a monopoly game (many of which we are starting to see right now).

My contention that one would have to start a manual labour farm is not that ownership should necessarily be centered in one place. It doesn't matter how you place the organisational tree structures. Eventually, any system is defined by the people and the way in which they distribute goods and power and eventually the ability to contribute for the average joe in a meaningful way to society, so that his ability to survive is not destroyed ever.

This is what you are fighting about right now: no jobs - essentially no means to produce a survival. If you can't look to the numerous corporations on wall street, you end up looking to your government. I would argue that there isn't a "sacred way" - just that there are people who realize that the monopoly game is detrimental to the continued health of modern existence in general. (at this point in time).

Systems that re-distribute wealth, when the monopoly game gets out of hand is what is really necessary for your continued survival. Large scale supplants small-scale in a modern world. But it supplants small individual's means of survival too. This reduces the market size continually. Market size is directly proportional to the monopolization of wealth.

My mistake.

Market size is inversely proportional to monopolization of wealth.