The Occupy Wall Street demonstrations might fade away soon … or,

The Occupy Wall Street demonstrations may grow or simply be ignored or the movement might grow in all directions and change the country! In any event, the unfairness is not ended by itself, the structural failures are ongoing. Credit is breaking down, the costs of inputs are being repriced. The establishment is frantic to hold the existing system together as long as possible and their collective efforts are failing. There is nothing shocking or random about this: it is the consequence of entropy taking place within a complex, energy-driven system.

The need is to beat a system that has run off the rails.

Can Occupy Wall Street accomplish this? Do participants want real change or do they want more system rewards for themselves, do they want merely to switch places with the bankers they revile? Because the issue is thermodynamics, the system will continue to run-down (fail) regardless of what managers attempt. What must be done is a new cadre of tenders must take the responsibility to shut down the system before the ‘failure dynamic’ causes catastrophic damage.

The question is important because all of us are at risk. How can people prevent the system from taking everyone off the cliff? How and why should people opt out?’

Stopping the Train

People need to focus on one thing (and keep it simple).

Demand Accountability And The Rule Of Law.

Protests should leave other issues to take care of themselves. Accountability is unrelated to those demanding it. A crook can demand justice as effectively as an honest man. Accountability is a virtue that exists on its own, its potency does not rely on the character of those who demand it. When “dirty hippies” and “subversives” are demanding accountability rather than citizens or the bankers themselves, regulators or administrators, all credibility vanishes. What remains is embarrassment.

Accountability is both past-due and inevitable. The alternative to a voluntary application is for the system to run itself into the ground: accountability by default. After that unhappy day the managers will certainly find themselves hunted animals, under the gun. Managers currently use the promise of recovery to dance in the shadows just out of reach: they become vulnerable as the promised recovery fades. The end result is pain and revulsion — the job prospects for financiers diminishes and people go to jail — but a more responsive and responsible system emerges from the ruin. This is how the business cycle operates, or would with accountability.

Opting Out

What is meant by opting out is to stop being unquestioning consumers of the finance-driven gambling casino and the waste-based economy. The casino is rigged and the economy is bankrupt. There is no future with either, it’s time to build/find something better. Because the current system is hegemonic by design, the current system doesn’t allow a replacement to emerge.

Within the general decline, the oligarchs skillfully manipulate the public expectations for a better future. The expectations are there because television instructs people to have hopeful ‘confident’ expectations. People believe everything they see on TV. Meanwhile, the ‘business’ types are slinking off to tax havens in the Caribbean or to chalets in Switzerland. The hopeful are fools: best to follow the smart money and opt out as well.

Strategically, there are few alternatives to opting out. Individuals lack the resources to tackle the powerful establishment head-on. Access to management positions is granted only to attractive sock puppets who meet the establishment’s customer (manipulated) desires and expectations. To profoundly alter the current regime requires a revolutionary moment which has not yet arrived. The market for the American Revolution did not exist in 1775: the market for an equivalent New American Revolution does not exist in 2011.

The system is broken because it is literally running out of gas. Folks don’t have jobs and won’t get them because the money that would pay employees — and allow the repayment of student loans, mortgages, medical- and child care — is going to Petroleos Mexicanos and Exxon- Mobil instead. Funds pour into the military in order to maintain access to fuel in the Middle East and elsewhere. The high cost of the military must be added to gallon costs. In order to maintain an auto-centered lifestyle the US borrows funds it cannot afford to repay: the US is literally driving itself into bankruptcy.

Either auto-mania goes, or we go — the USA and its imitators, down the drain.

Opting out is to step away from the widening circle of damage. As more debts are repaid than are originated, credit collapses. Since the system requires wide-scale participation, opting out puts the system under pressure. Opting out recognizes the economy is a Ponzi scheme. Those who exit the scheme starve it of the funds needed to keep it running. Without new funds the Ponzi collapses: the ‘input shortage’ accomplishes what cannot be gained by demonstrations.

Why Beat the System?

• – Patriotic duty: the system is broken and cannot repair itself, it is the duty of the citizen to help unwind the system before it does damage to the country.
• – The current economic and political systems cannot pay their own way.
• – System managers left to their own devices apply increasingly destructive methods to extract benefits for themselves while costs are shifted to those who lack the means to bear the costs.
• – Beating the system is necessary in order to preserve resources for a post-industrial environment.

The need to think strategically.

Street protests aren’t effective because they they can only promise to add the establishments’ costs, presumably rendering the Ponzi less ‘profitable’. Marchers offer to behave themselves for a fee. If the promise/offer isn’t made, the protests are pointless. If the establishment doesn’t make a bid, the only choice left to the marchers is to misbehave until one arrives. If the bid is made and the fee paid, this becomes a cost that is shifted back to the marchers, because they are clients of the establishment!

Other approaches are needed besides street demonstrations:

• – Processes must be simple to implement and easily understood (not needing special training or physical  prowess),
• – Processes must be have immediate effiect (not requiring downstream effects such as appearance of Santa Claus),
• – Processes must not cost much money to implement,
• – They must be effective. Buying silver to cause short-covering by JP Morgan-Chase is not effective.
• – They must be legal or defensible within the legal framework.

Here are some things you can do right now:

• – Get out of debt by any means necessary! This puts you out of reach of banks, credit agencies and debt collection.
• – Throw away your television! All it does is tell you what a worthless piece of shite you are!
• – Get rid of the car and don’t bother to buy another!
• – Become a vegetarian, don’t eat fast/junk/processed food, ever! Learn how to cook, it’s as effective as learning how to farm because you use less food and less fuel.
• – Get yourself in shape, say ‘no’ to drugs!
• – DO something, don’t WATCH: America is a nation of voyeurs dependent on Big Business for entertainment. Start a band, learn a trade, volunteer, feed the homeless, visit the elderly, start a religion, write a book, learn something … that fills the time ordinarily wasted in front of the teevee!
• – Stop being afraid! America has become obsessed with ‘security’ and ‘terrorism’, fearfulness has become institutionalized. It’s past time to start facing our problems with courage and determination, and to stop cowering behind metal detectors and ‘Big Brother’.

More on getting out of debt, next!