Occupy Wall Street 3: Now What?

I was really happy to hear about that

i think a lot of people are happy that things like banks and investment and retirement funds exist

Until they're wiped out by corrupt speculation, of course.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to "smash the state" entirely bcz I know I'll be eating dog food if I make it to 70, stateless.

Reform, as beautiful as a rock in a cop's face.

right i mean my mantra, rather than 'smash the state' tends to be 'supersede the state' precisely bcz "hey congrats you smashed the state, now wtf are you gonna do about the lady across the street who's been relying on social security checks to buy groceries"

of course, of course

jesus said "no usury" not "no loans"

and i mean "supersede" imo implies a shit ton more legwork and internal "figuring our shit out" than "smash" but that's worth it i think

First protest activity in Chicago around this weekend's NATO meeting--rushing the building that houses Obama HQ:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/natosummit/chi-protesters-march-outside-obama-campaign-headquarters-20120514,0,86274.story

jesus said "no usury" not "no loans"

― the late great, Saturday, May 12, 2012 1:33 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well I don't know what the definition of usury was in biblical times, but in european christendom it literally meant the charging of any interest at all. Without interest, you basically don't have loans.

There are also things that are effectively loans but avoid the letter of the law on interest: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/07/realestate/07nati.html

Sure, there's a whole discipline of "Islamic Finance" designed to get around things like anti-usury religious laws.

Of course it's very much a technicality -- the borrower will (likely) pay the same amount over the purchase price over the lifetime of the islamic loan. Actually I wonder if the banks might charge even more for it.

God bless the Catholic Workers.

well you do have loans w/o interest, there was an interesting article i read awhile back by an anthropologist who was talking about how evidence pointed to credit predating currency, giving loans is a form of insurance. if you have capital just sitting around doing nothing you're inclined to loan it out because you don't know if you might need to collect on it in the future

so like picture two tribes meeting to trade. one's got furs and skins and the other's got dried meats. suppose the meat tribe shows up empty handed one summer, what's the other tribe going to do? stockpile the furs in a cave where they might rot? no, they'll just hand off the furs w/ the understanding that they'll get paid back in the future, because you'd rather have the promise of more meat next summer than a pile of useless furs sitting around.

also in european christendom there *were* loans so i don't know what you're talking about hurting

my understanding of medieval xtianity is filtered through lutheran disapproval, but my understanding is that the prohibition on usury just meant the church could hit up anybody working in finance for penance

There were loans in european christendom, and they were at interest.

well you do have loans w/o interest, there was an interesting article i read awhile back by an anthropologist who was talking about how evidence pointed to credit predating currency, giving loans is a form of insurance. if you have capital just sitting around doing nothing you're inclined to loan it out because you don't know if you might need to collect on it in the future

so like picture two tribes meeting to trade. one's got furs and skins and the other's got dried meats. suppose the meat tribe shows up empty handed one summer, what's the other tribe going to do? stockpile the furs in a cave where they might rot? no, they'll just hand off the furs w/ the understanding that they'll get paid back in the future, because you'd rather have the promise of more meat next summer than a pile of useless furs sitting around.

― the late great, Monday, May 14, 2012 11:40 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Sure. But money doesn't "rot" the way furs do. You are better off with it sitting your own coffers at no risk than lending it out to someone at zero interest with the risk of never getting some or all of it back. Plus you may be able to find some more "productive" use of the money.

"by an anthropologist ... credit predating currency" - are you talking about Graeber & 'Debt'?

yes thank you

now you're going to tell me he's already been completely discredited

i don't know how much you're risking when you're lending it to your own serfs or the dude in the shop next door. this is a much less mobile and dispersed society we're talking about.

also doesn't it create social ties and to some extent indenture people to you?

re: Graeber, you can click 'show all', ctrl-f and decide for yourself, he's been discussed at length since he helped organize what became OWS.

from what i've heard he sounds pretty legit

<3 graeber but what do i know

You are always risking that the person won't have the money to pay you back. But yes, sure, you can have small-scale loans in close-knit communities without the interest. This still occurs in even the most capitalistic families in the modern west among family members (one of Graeber's big ideas iirc is that mini-versions of alternative economic systems almost always exist within dominant economic systems -- we always have capitalism and communism to greater and lesser degrees, etc.). Part of the idea is that, yes, someday in the future, you might get a loan from that person, or some other favor. Or there's just a general social duty or obligation. What you're not going to have is a system where you're neighbor can loan you $300,000 to buy a house, because your neighbor will never have the $300,000 available (just like you won't either unless you save for, IDK, 15-30 years). A bank will, but it will want interest or some other compensation for loaning the money to a stranger at some risk and for tying up their capital. There are non-profit models of this, like credit unions, but they still require interest.

What you're CERTAINLY never going to have (or at least I don't see an answer in Graeber's way of thinking -- maybe there is someone who has one) is an interest-free means of financing larger business operations. That means "bad" stuff like oil and investment banking but also good stuff like solar energy innovation and the internet.

we were talking about european christendom and rome, remember?

in modernity usury means excessive or unfair interest

In european christendom loans at interest continued to exist in spite of usury laws, just in ways that got around the prohibition in one way or another, e.g. Jews made loans because they were not governed by the church.

now you're going to tell me he's already been completely discredited

― the late great, Monday, May 14, 2012 11:16 AM (47 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think he's got in some online scraps that made him look bad, but that's it. like, quibbles about his characterization of certain things or ignoring contrary evidence here and there, and he responded in a "see how the machine of empire mobilizes to silence me!!" kind of mode

but that's my third-hand take obv, still have not read 'debt'

he posts extensively in the comments threads to reviews of his book on amazon. Which doesn't really credit or discredit him, just sort of funny.

customer service!

i don't understand what you're even getting at hurting

oh hey, rally and sit down in Times Square tomorrow evening.

http://anothernyc.org/may-15/

i just got handed the keys to @occupykst on twitter. awesome. gonna try to run it collective-style like @occupywallst does.

:o

What's kst

@occupyksh

K Street, home base of the ppl who own your leaders.

xp

so this is like one of those splinter factions hood mentioned?

er hoos

what's ksh?

occupy kush

haha occupy ksh

K St is the home (in the sense that Wall St is the "home") of the lobbying firms and think tanks. When DC set up its encampment we were at McPherson Square, at the intersection of 15th and K, a block from the White House. It's effectively "the other end of the pipeline of bullshit."

what is ksh

haha ksh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNlZ32wTWiU

ksh is ksh

its a koan

i know what kush is. never heard anyone call it ksh. i feel like i'm missing something here, maybe i'm just overthinking it.

you know in sd the occupy thing got completely hijacked by the mmj people which i understand is a valid concern but it definitely didn't do the movement (either one) any favors. in fact i'll go so far as to say that a hell of a lot of mmj activists in san diego do more harm than good to their cause.

think maybe i mentioned this upthread though

looks like i even used "hijacked" up there too

(ksh is ilm dude aka kshighway aka [MYSTERY POSTER]

^ now the fun begins

i had never seen "mmj" before, that is a fun little abbreviation. is it common on the west coast?