@Jacob,
Good call on Henry Ford there. It didn’t come to my mind immediately. That’s quite an apt reference here, because his workers did end up going on strike, by protesting against the mind numbing drudgery of it alll….. which bemused him to no end!

@LOL,
You can read more on that Ford quote and the tie-in to ERE, in the guest post I wrote here.

And here is the real kicker about the so called “gilded age”or the Fordian/Robber barons’ era:

This was actually part of a poster campaign during the 1920s!

Debt incumbent home owners don’t go on strike!

How much more of a damning indictment does one need about the game being rigged against the general populace?

Excellent post – I agree with the general idea that most people in these protests don’t really know what they want. They pointed out a problem, but failed to understand the cause of the problem. In most cases, I get this as most people would disagree with what I’m about to suggest.

The problem is the structure of civilization itself. There is always been a hierarchy to it and always will be thus the problem of uneven wealth will always occur. In order to get rid of the problem would require use to move past civilization itself into something else.

I’m always amazed how often people get lost in the details of these arguments. You the people control the government, so if you don’t like it change the system. If even 51% of that 99% agree (heck even less than that based on the latest voter turnouts), guess what it happens. The masters can bitch and whine, but you can choose to change things or even get rid or complete redo your style of government. If you think it will make things better you can even just default on your sovereign debt and rewrite your constitution (like Iceland is doing right now).

Yet these changes are typically superficial as they don’t address the core issue of the hierarchy itself. Perhaps we need to get creative and come up with another social organization. After all animals have tried lots of different methods of organization, why can’t we? Or are humans doomed to follow civilization into an early species grave?

@ Surio:

> Amy Dacyczyn did it with kids

Not true. I guess we’ve read different versions of “Tightwad Gazette” :-).
Yeah, she has cut some expenses but she was buying expensive boat, house, farm, furniture, etc. She did not ERE either, since she just became a small business owner & writer who was making a lot of money. You might want to reread the book and pay more attention to details.
Here is the quote about her:
“During that time, another $38,000 went to major purchases such as cars, furnishings and appliances.”
http://dandilyonfluff.com/2011/05/the-dacyczyn-decision-interview-with-americas-favorite-tightwad-amy-dacyczyn/
This is 100% opposite of what Jacob is trying to preach.

> If anything, Latin American, Southern European >and Asiatic cultures ought to be more offended by >the message of “Every man for himself” that you >accuse this blog of propagating.

No way. I would never be offended by “Every man for himself” motto, since I believe in it.
But the more I read the original article and Jacob’s latest comment, the more I think that he has just posted some very confusing statements, which are incorrect or inaccurate.

For example: “99% slaves” with the further clarification that “slave” means “slave mentality”, i.e. people who demand things.
First of all, it is a wrong number to use. 99% in a popular culture/media really applies to people who own 60% of wealth, i.e. top 1% owns ~40% (38% to be exact) of resources.
I don’t know what Jacob’s intentions were in using “99%”, but it seems like (from his comment) he meant totally different thing vs. what he used the number for.
IMHO, there is no correlation between “slave mentality” and 99% (“poor”) vs 1% (“rich”). I’d recommend to everyone to read “Richistan”. Great book, which shows that many of so called “rich” actually might have more “slave mentality” in comparison to most 99% “poor”.

Jacob, keep up the good fight–I don’t think I’d agree with you on everything political, but your voice is very important, and under-heard. I plan on increasing your popularity, and if you don’t mind my comments, I’ll also inject the voice of someone who spent the first 34 years of my life trying to escape real difficulties imposed on me by abusive people–not things I could “choose” not to experience. Things I chose to plan to escape, worked hard to get out of. But things that someone like you may not have considered in the grand scheme of challenges to developing wealth.

Now, at 37, I have been able to make pretty much all the choices about my life for 3 years, and I rather like where things are going. And right now is a great time to listen to someone who echoes and expands on the life-wisdom of my Great Depression Era-raised granny.

You wrote, “The problem appears when the capitalists no longer carry the risk and expect labor to make up for it when they fuck up. That’s wrong. It’s inequitable. It goes against the spirit and definition of capitalism. It is only possible when the political system allows it.”

Some people truly are just whinging, did not take opportunities to educate themselves out of the debt-consumerism-mantra. Others really have been exploited. If you want to know what the most enlightened, intense members of OccupyWallStreet are up to, they’re focused on this specific problem:

That whatever their voice is, that whatever the problem is, whatever the solution is, they have had all political control taken away. Witness the call for a jobs-bill, answered by? an abortion bill. I’m not saying the jobs bill would have been brilliant, right, wrong, etc. … I’m saying it’s what people asked for, but instead received a very WEIRD law that came from … NOT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

Our politicians have been run by corporations on an increasingly intense basis over the last 30+ years, to the point that Congress cannot regulate ITSELF out of the situation. They follow the puppet-masters or they are destroyed, removed from “power.” It isn’t that OccupyWallStreet doesn’t know what it wants–it’s that it’s real protest, at the heart of the whole thing, is against having no voice. It is, underlying, not “the mob” but an attempt by We The People to say, “Please don’t push us to the point where we have NO other choice but to become the mob. Give us back our voice BEFORE the breaking point.”

People without jobs who have been looking for jobs sometimes run across niches in which they can make their own good luck, but at some point sheer numbers actually do win out. I win, in this scenario, because I’m smart, both college- and self-educated, and I know how to forecast the right spot to stand in when times are tough. Always have, it’s how I survived abuse. Not everyone knows how to think about that sort of thing–yes, natural “slaves,” followers. For every one of me, there are two or three jobs hungry for someone intelligent, inventive, strong, (and perhaps you might say “cunning,” but not in a cruel sense). But for every ten slaves there might be one job. There aren’t resources for them to even hear your voice–unemployment office gives them one answer, support groups give them one answer, society gives them one answer. No one says there might be another way, or if they do say it, they say it like a club over the head, accusing them of being wrong when, every step of the way, they were being told that what they were doing was right.

They aren’t fed anything but the debt-consumerism model and don’t know there is anything else–your blog is really the first place I’ve seen all these different threads brought together intelligently, not as a bash-the-poor commentary.

I’m a bit confused about one thing. Who says these protestors are making 80,000 a year and complaining? What about those on minimum wage? What about those who can’t find a job at all? Sure they could do what you’ve done if they make a salary which is reasonable enough that they can save some money – say 30,000 a year. But if you can only get a minimum wage job, there is no prospect of saving. It’s a struggle even just to live frugally, to make even 10,000 a year. You can’t just assume that everyone has the opportunity to make a reasonable salary for 5 years and hence can put away 80% of that reasonable salary. Not everyone has opportunity, and that’s what they’re protesting about.

Loved this post… you’ve put into words so many things, that I think, but couldn’t have expressed.

The “Occupy” movement has some legitimacy to it. That being the “system” has some clear short comings, but that tends to get lost (in my view) because a minority of protesters can actually state the issue.

I guess for me… I see the whole system as a game. You choose how you play it. As you said, 2 choices: get stuff, go in debt and pay your debtors OR save and become a debtor or investor and collect. The key being you choose.

But again, as you state… most see no choice (natural slaves) and we get scores of the middle class heavily in debt living beyond their means.

Thanks again for this post.

“The 1% didn’t get to be the 1% by whining and asking for someone to give it to them. They got there by working hard and taking it for themselves.”

Uh, remind me again who got billions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts, in addition to the profits they made by wrecking the global economy? I am so sick of this b.s. calvinist mythology that the wealthy have more virtue, more character, more BALLS, when the truth is they just have more lobbyists and are more sociopathic. And they get more welfare than anyone!

Jacob wrote a fantastic blog post. The main dissent seems to coming from an excuse mentality. “X can’t happen because X” which dominates the mentality of those who remain saddled with financial insecurity. I’ve seen it often enough in my personal life.