No Contradiction
Oct. 17th, 2011 08:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsAndrew Sullivan points us to this photograph, and claims "Sometimes, the contradictions overwhelm."
I've seen that photo before, and yet I have to wonder, where is the contradiction?
With the exception of the few flakes FOX News gleefully hunts down with the tenacity of a truffle hound, most of the protestors in Occupy Wall Street have no problem with Panasonic, Sony, Weyerhauser, Canon, Starbucks, Gap, Eddie Bauer, or Clairol. Because those companies use labor to make stuff. They employ people. They create jobs.
The tea party and libertarian ideal is that wealth is generated by excellent service provided and exquisite products delivered. Occupy Wall Street is on the same page. What most of America is outraged about was in that Venn diagram Sullivan linked to several days earlier: the regulatory capture of our government by Wall Street, and the capture by campaign donations of our elected officials, who then look the other way. OWS is opposed not to capitalism or corporations, but to "corporatism." OWS is opposed to the way the regulatory mechanisms have become so corrupted that America no longer favor those who use labor to make stuff, but to those who, as Warren Buffet put it, "use money to make money."
The commentary is not equivalent. People protesting taxation on taxpayer-paid-for property would be an amusing contradiction if it wasn't woeful ignorance on display. People wearing and using manufactured products to protest institutions that make money while making manufacturing jobs disappear is neither ignorant or contradictory.
I've seen that photo before, and yet I have to wonder, where is the contradiction?
With the exception of the few flakes FOX News gleefully hunts down with the tenacity of a truffle hound, most of the protestors in Occupy Wall Street have no problem with Panasonic, Sony, Weyerhauser, Canon, Starbucks, Gap, Eddie Bauer, or Clairol. Because those companies use labor to make stuff. They employ people. They create jobs.
The tea party and libertarian ideal is that wealth is generated by excellent service provided and exquisite products delivered. Occupy Wall Street is on the same page. What most of America is outraged about was in that Venn diagram Sullivan linked to several days earlier: the regulatory capture of our government by Wall Street, and the capture by campaign donations of our elected officials, who then look the other way. OWS is opposed not to capitalism or corporations, but to "corporatism." OWS is opposed to the way the regulatory mechanisms have become so corrupted that America no longer favor those who use labor to make stuff, but to those who, as Warren Buffet put it, "use money to make money."
The commentary is not equivalent. People protesting taxation on taxpayer-paid-for property would be an amusing contradiction if it wasn't woeful ignorance on display. People wearing and using manufactured products to protest institutions that make money while making manufacturing jobs disappear is neither ignorant or contradictory.
