I was a regular attendee to my local Occupy protest for the first few weeks of the protest and went until we were evicted. I support the basic goal of Occupy to remove corruption from our government.
I just did an exercise to see the richest people in history, and made a spreadsheet with their wealth in a spreadsheet. The richest man in history was Mir Osman Ali Khan, the sultan of Hyderabad who when adjusted for inflation had a miraculous $790,341,000,000 in 1948 adjusted for inflation. This has not been surpassed. The second richest man in all of history was John D. Rockefeller at 663.4 billion dollars adjusted for inflation. You keep going down the list and you will not find anyone whose business deals with money for moneys sake until Warren Buffett, and there are no CEOs of major banks with billions of dollars (according to Forbes) who have not got their wealth through investments. However, look back at number 2, John D. Rockefeller, the man who was the CEO of Standard which had to be broken up by the Federal Government for their monopolistic practices. After then there were a handful of corporations that controlled the economy, moving the oil industry from a monopoly to an oligopoly.
Banks are different however. If I chose to, I could set up a bank of my own. It's a free market in the vast majority of the economy, as it should be! Credit unions are across the nation that give people better rates, better service, and better deals. People have the right to move their money from one to another, and people should to save their wealth. That is why I would have taken part in bank transfer day if I didn't already have all my money in credit unions.
The biggest problem is the system, this consensus model that was used failed. Things that should have been decided were not, and the anarchists had the ability to destroy Occupy. I wouldn't be surprised if people from the Tea Party had infiltrated camp and caused trouble, this caused no decisions to be made, which caused real problems really quickly and shut down the camps efficiently.
The Tea Party had one thing right. Their goals were unpatriotic and slightly treasonous, but they wanted to make real change to our system by electing people to Congress and Legislatures. They have now made real changes to our political landscape that has damaged our nation giving more power to the corporations they truly represent. See Citizens United. If Occupy had done the same thing we could have filled Congress with new representatives and senators who would have been able to make real positive changes to America's economy and make sure that the government listens to all the people, not just the rich. And by keeping our major check and balance for two years through organizing, setting up a real third party with real potential, and sending letters to them to keep them based in reality, we could make real change that is necessary to the survival of our nation. No nation can survive long with a large underclass and a small ruling class where the ruling class tramples the underclass, the Soviet Union proved that along with many other examples throughout modern history. This is the key to our ultimate success, or failure. It is up to us and no one else!
Also, when Occupy was evicted they didn't move out into the area around the cities which could have been a really powerful tool. We can still do this, and hopefully we will. I hope that we can end the corruption in our government and make our country a better place.
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