What if Greece is like the fall of the Berlin Wall for predatory capitalism?

[yurbud]

Probably the singular political moment in my life was the fall of the Berlin Wall. The enemy we were told was implacable and eternal collapsed in on itself.

Maybe the protests in Greece will be the crowds tipping over the Berlin Wall of profits-before-people, predatory capitalism.

Like the implacable enemy, we have been told that amoral capitalism is like the laws of gravity and evolution. In one sense, it is: but so is the course cancer, AIDS, and other diseases. We intercede to stop those natural processes from cutting lives short.

So it will be with the amoral predators of Wall Street and banks. They may always exist, but if not contained and starved of power and money, they will kill not only people but whole countries. And now that they have clearly turned the ''Shock Doctrine'' tactics on the US and Europe, they are destroying Western civilization itself, so that a handful of people who already have more money than they could spend in a thousand lifetimes will have even more, even if it means wiping out the public education, jobs, and home ownership that allowed a middle class, and therefore democracy to exist.

Too many are enduring too much for the benefit of too few.

We can't take it much longer.

If the Democrats can't break the financial elite and make them subject to the laws of society like the rest of us, and subordinate their avarice to the public good and the good of humanity as a whole, the Wall will fall on them too.

[marmar]

1. Maybe that's a good thing

nt

[Oregone]

2. Capitalism is predatory. Don't be mistaken

Its a system that distributes wealth created through production from the laborers producing it to the few elite owners; it strips workers of the ability to profit from their labor, reducing them to nothing but a cost of production (like a machine or a desk). Controlled or uncontrolled, that sounds predatory to me.

Is it any wonder that this system will perpetually contribute to a disparity in wealth (and thereby, increase poverty of the general population)? And when a few elite people amass such wealth and power, this economic system naturally becomes intertwined with the political system. When this begins to happen, the "predatory" behavior of preying on the poor becomes legal and the status quo due to the rich's lobbying efforts.

Capitalism starts off as bad deal for the laborer, and it becomes a worse deal after generations of disparity allow just a few to call all the shots in their favor

[maTRIarch]

13. And totalitarianism is better because...?

[Name removed]

14. Deleted message

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[Name removed]

17. Deleted message

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[Oregone]

22. False dichotomy

[villager]

3. I hope so, Yurbud...

The planet needs it...

[fascisthunter]

4. hoping it is.... "Tear Down This Wall!" - fascisthunter

I get credit, see how easy that was?

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

5. What predatory capitalism?

Who were the predators and what did they do to cause this?

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

6. Delete. Dupe.

[NoNothing]

7. Greece is not a victim

Any more so than someone who lives the high life by racking up credit cards.

At the bottom, they were consuming the resources and the labor of others without any concern for paying it back, and are upset that will not be able to continue doing so.

That's not a path to a sustainable future.

[Dreamer Tatum]

11. Don't confuse people with facts

It just makes them angrier.

[readmoreoften]

20. Yeah there were *so* many facts in that post.

I'm not sure you'd know what a *fact* is if one smacked you in the face. :eyes:

[readmoreoften]

19. And what part of CAPITALISM IS GLOBAL do you not get? Yeah, the Greek capitalists

screwed things up, just like the American capitalists have, just like the French and German capitalists have. Capitalism IS living the high life by racking up debt on the backs of the working class. It's extracting capital out of labor, then laundering it by trading it on a market. But the law of diminishing returns means that you can only steal so much for so long. The well is dry, and Greece is just a symptom.

You act as if NATIONS are one unified body acting as one people. They aren't. They're made up of political and economic groups. A minority of Greek profligates have run the country in the ground, and you blame the victims who they impoverished.

[NoNothing]

21. The primary beneficiaries of Greece's borrowing

Were the citizens of Greece. It allowed them to have more government spending with lower taxes. As far as I know, they are a democracy, and if their politicians chose to run their country's finances that way, I have a hard time seeing how that's somebody else's fault. The debt was not racked up "on the backs of the working class," it was racked up *on their behalf*, on the backs of those who loaned them the money, by the politicians they elected.

[T Wolf]

8. Predatory capitalism is much more powerful than the Soviet Union ever was. And the

capitalist cretins are more than willing to destroy an entire nation to perpetuate their monopoly control over our lives.

They are much more ruthless than the Soviets ever were.

And much less humane or spiritual than those godless commies could ever hope to be.

There is no comparison between the evil and destruction brought down by those two entities.

And the Soviets fought against the Nazis in WWII. The capitalists played both sides (Prescott?)

[glitch]

9. And the Soviets fought against the Nazis in WWII. The capitalists played both sides (Prescott?+++)

Good point.

[rockymountaindem]

25. Well, that wasn't their intent

The USSR only came into the war because the Germans invaded them. Stalin had hoped to secure his frontier by annexing the Belorussian/Ukrainian parts of prewar Poland and taking over the Baltic states (succeeded) and watching from the sidelines while Britain, France and Germany destroyed each other (that didn't work out).

[QC]

10. +1

[Dreamer Tatum]

12. Explain to me how the crisis in Greece is predatory capitalism

Because I think they simply ran out of money to finance their obligations.

And I'm almost certain that I am correct.

Feel free to address the actual issue, and not whether a bank will make money off the crisis, as those
are not really the same issue.

[Greyhound]

15. If you were truly interested there are about a dozen posts laying the scheme out.

But having followed your positions for a while now, I predict that you will not learn anything beyond the parasite's propaganda.

[kctim]

18. Yes, you are very correct

But the nature of those obligations prevent people from accepting it.

[Dreamer Tatum]

23. If obligations are greater than receipts, then something has to change

That is simply a fact. Demonstrations won't change it.

People will have to accept less from the state, or they have to pay higher taxes.

Looks like tax evasion might be part of the culprit, of course.

[Rex]

16. Predatory capitalism needs to go bye bye.

If you eat all your food and don't let them have time to reproduce, you're fucked sooner or later.

[Cali_Democrat]

24. There seems to be something very shock doctrine-like about what's going on lately

It got me really thinking. Were the powers that be demonstrating their power yesterday by plunging the Dow 1000 points in a matter of minutes?

This may have served as a warning to the European Central Bank, the US govt and China.

On Thursday, the ECB failed to cut interest rates and provide banks with more liquidity via quantitative easing. They also ruled out buying Greek junk bonds, taking them off the balance sheets of the banks. This pissed off the banks big time.

China is also trying to slow down their bubble economy by raising capital requirements for banks. And of course the US Congress is debating financial reform.

Was the 1000 Dow drop nothing more than a warning shot of things to come?

It's all about the shock doctrine.

The events of yesterday have really got me thinking. It was pure madness.

[moondust]

26. Global monopoly capitalism will not end overnight.

The Soviet Union, for all its shortcomings, at least provided an alternative to capitalism. That was enough to keep the capitalists honest and engaged to some degree in winning over hearts and minds with real freedom, justice, and prosperity for most. When the Soviet Union collapsed those hearts and minds had nowhere else to go, or threaten to go.

Countries dismantle domestic monopolies under their jurisdiction because they lead to abuses. Who will dismantle the global monopoly of capitalism and/or end its abuses?

Greece may be just the beginning of people revolting over being squeezed back into "have not" status by the return to feudalism.

:shrug: