November 16, 2011 - Over the Edge

MY OPINION
PIECE OF MIND

Why | Will Not Occupy Vancouver

BJ BRUDER
CONTRIBUTOR

riving into downtown with some friends last Saturday, I was
D= aware of the presence of the “Occupy Vancouver” pro-

testers not because of their ubiquity (there seemed, as we passed,
to be about 30 of them) but because of the lack of traffic flow past the art
gallery. Police, ambulance, and fire fighting personnel were set up around
the perimeter, the traffic crawling around them in part due to rubberneck-
ers wanting a view of the so-called protest.

Critics of the Occupy Vancouver protest have been pressing the city
of Vancouver and the RCMP for the costs associated with the event, and
the Province newspaper reported Thursday that so far, the bill is around
$500,000. This accounts for the RCMP and VPD on site and on standby,
and costs for ambulance and other emergency staff. This figure does not
account for the portable outhouses that were brought in for the protesters,
nor the costs for the restoration of the grounds of the art gallery after ten-
ters have dug trenches and killed all fauna underneath their tents.

The stress on city infrastructure is tangible, but what probably will

not be measured, or cannot be measured, is the impact that the “Occupy
_ ” movement will have on anything important.
This is one of the major issues with the “Occupy” program, begun by
‘culture jammers’ at Adbusters magazine. One cogent explanation of the
movement states that the Occupy Wall Street movement seeks to end the
“monied corruption of America.” The blog also states that a manifesto of
demands would be presented to President Obama on the seventh day of
the protest, which would have been seven days after September 17th...
which would make the date...er...come and gone. So?

And, the folks downtown in our city have so many signs up, the aver-
age member of public (e.g., me) has no idea what is really being pro-
tested. Homelessness? The debt crisis? Religious pluralism? Boredom?
And, what do Tibetan prayer flags have to do with any of those things?
Even more pressing, the Magnificat written on a Tibetan prayer flag...?

Another troubling implication of a 24 hour protest is that the folks that
spend whole days shouting on art gallery steps really have nothing better
to do. Do these people not have jobs? Sadly, many may be laid off, or
unemployed, or homeless, or disabled and unable to work, so protesting
may be something tangible these people can do to improve their lives
and create awareness. And living in a tent ain’t no thang to folks used to
sleeping on streets, or crammed next to others on the floor of a shelter. I
get that. What I do not understand is the people I see protesting downtown
that look like they have taken showers in the recent past, wear designer
jeans, and by all appearances, look able bodied.

To these people I would like to suggest, Occupy A Job. Or, better yet,
Occupy a Volunteer Position. Coach basketball, teach literacy to others,
as it seems like you are more than qualified, Mr. I’m Reading Kafka and
Smoking On the Steps. If you have the time to protest for seven days,
then you are either a privileged student, unemployed, or homeless. One of
these things is not like the other ones.

While I may seem judgmental and myopic...I am. If the protest truly
is about stopping, or at least bringing an awareness of “monied corrup-
tion,” then the most effective protest I can think of is the public cutting
of personal credit cards. Or only using credit when there is capital to pay
for it. The debt crisis begins with the individual—-do you own your own
car? Take out a student loan this year? Have a mortgage? Even if “we are
the 99,” we need to take a look at our own propensity to spend needlessly,
oppress, coerce, corrupt. Otherwise, we are no better than the things we
protest.

But, what does “We are the 99” even mean? If we want to end corrup-
tion in the world, money-based or not, it needs to start with ourselves. If
we started thinking less about our entitlements and more about others,
everyone would benefit. The money spent on employing police officers
for the “peaceful protest” could be spent on education, housing facili-
ties, literacy programs...or real police work. What if each person that was
protesting gave an equal amount of time to working at soup kitchens or
picking up garbage? Donating extra money to their neighbours. Letting
someone else have their seat on the bus...like me, I’m tired of standing.

FREE MARKET

Good servant, bad master

THOMAS CHENEY
CONTRIBUTOR

consider myself to be a political
[overs I am not interested in

change for change’s sake but am
for change that leads to the better-
ment of humankind and the other sen-
tient creatures that I share this planet
with. Cognizant of the fact that I am
only one moderately intelligent pri-
mate who has occupied this planet for
a mere 26 years, a geological instant,
I realize that I do not have all, or even
most of the answers. Nonetheless, and
with some humility, my 26 years of
human experience has led me to con-
viction that the world is heading in
the wrong direction.

The current direction is likely to

lead to dismal future. It is because of
my personal desire to change course
that I support the Occupy Wall Street
Movement.
Regardless of whether I have chil-
dren, I fundamentally believe that
there is a moral imperative to ensure
that the every generation leaves a bet-
ter world for the one which follows
them. This imperative means that they
have a planet and economic system
that gives them the ability to exercise
their whole human potential.

As a young person, it is sad to

reflect my generation’s opportunities
are far less than awaited my father’s
and perhaps my grandfather’s genera-
tion. Why is this? How are we sliding
backward?
I have one suggestion, and that is the
political consensus that has centered
on the economic and social doctrines
of neo-liberalism. Neoliberalism,
and its close relative, neoconserva-
tism, are choking the moral spark of
humankind that emerged from the hor-
rors of two world wars. Neoliberalism
says the future cannot improve. Like
the terror of Marxism before it, it has
said nothing but material progress
and conflict can rectify our situation.
I believe that a degree of democratic
regulation over the market is required
for just economic relations.

The current path denies the poten-
tial for an improved civic order. This
must not happen: We must create a
good society. It is not capitalism per
se that I am opposed to in princi-
ple. What I am opposed to are the rad-
ical right-wing fundamentalists who
deny our ability as citizens to strive
together for a better life for ourselves
and our descendants.

The irony of the right wing is
that, in their attempt to free the
people, they actually leave them
with fewer choices in their lives. They
incessantly repeat their dogma about
the invisible hands of the market, and
they crack the old Stalinist whip of
“produce more”. Balance in human
existence is being denied to an ever-
greater extent by our heedless experi-
ment in the liberation of the market.
The most egregious misdeeds of cap-

italism have been in part created by a
monetary system, which creates arti-
ficially scarcity. A world with slavery
or bonded servitude, massive environ-
mental degradation, and significant
poverty seems not to be fundamen-
tally a result of private ownership of
what Marx referred to as the means of
production. A significant part of the
problem is the unwise removal of the
state’s power to regulate the fairness
of economic transactions. The other
is how we, thorough our elected “rep-
resentatives,” have given the creation
of money over to banks. Money is not
what it seems to be. For every dollar
that you or I have in the bank, only the
equivalent of a few pennies exist as
paper money or coin. The remainder
is created as debt. Money from noth-
ing. The merits of how money is cre-
ated is far more than an abstract eco-
nomic concept to be debated among
economists. Knowing how money
is created in our society is vital to our
understand our collective conundrum.
Money is created is when a person or

“...the system
creates a
system that
is unjust. ”

corporation gets a loan.

Let’s say that I am going to re-
quest a student loan, a mortgage or
financing for a car. When I go to my
neighbourhood bank branch for a
loan and it is approved, the money is
created from nothing. We are burned
with debt for something for which the
bank gave nothing. The money that
you and I have in the bank or credit
union is practically all chequebook
money. The notes and coin only
amount to a few cents on the dol-
lar. Should corporations have such a
large amount of power? They create
recessions and speculative bubbles.
Furthermore, corporations whose
of behavior differ little
from psychopaths are able to hold

maxims

the people in debt both individually
and collectively through our govern-
ments. However, it is this glaring hole
in our economic system that reveals a
path to a better world.
The fact that most money was created
by banks opens significant potential
for us to create a better future. Rather
than creating loans to fatten the wal-
lets of stock traders and speculators,
we can spend new money in to circu-
lation as low or no-interest loans by
a government bank, a policy that was
followed in Canada until the 1970s.
Our nation had better schools and

a great health care system. The banks
and the dictates of the International
Monetary Fund stole our future.
Much as been said from the parrots
of the right-wing media that our soci-
ety cannot afford to house the home-
less, fix schools, run public transit,
or reduce workhours. Raising taxes
is a tough option considering that,
because of the decline of the middle
class, household budgets are spread
pretty thin. So how then can we af-
ford more public services?
The answer is to ensure that money
is not created as debt, but rather as
credit that is spent into the economy.
Problems with the current interest-
bearing, debt-based money system in-
cludes income inequality, the require-
ment for environmentally damaging
economic growth and denied oppor-
tunities. The origin of the problem is
that the principal of the loan is cre-
ated. However, it is not assured that
the money required to pay the interest
on the given loan is. The only way the
funds needed to pay the interest can
be acquired is through the creation
of more interest-bearing loans. If the
interest rate is higher than the rate
of economic growth, the purchasing
power of money decreases, which is
known as inflation.

The artificial shortage of money
created by the system creates a sys-
tem that is unjust. Banks have profited
by injecting huge sums of money into
the economy. We through bailouts
must pay to clean up their mess. Their
mothers must not have told them to
clean up after themselves. A conse-
quence of this corporate robbery in-
cludes higher housing costs for the
99 per cent. The real estate bubble
enslaves us further to the chains of
banks. Too add insult to this injury,
the vast sums of wealth that the up-
per echelons have made is now used
speculate on real estate, or, more
cynically, creating conditions in the
housing market that ensure you will
fail to pay your mortgage. The aver-
age person loses in this game. We are
left with a society of loneliness and
of abandonment. Homeless and latch-
key children of overworked parents
are the result of the game.

I don’t like the term radical, but
I believe that there are times when
radical social reforms are needed. The
current moment is one such moment.
Changing the banking system in my
earnest opinion will give us great
freedoms. When we are not indebted,
we will have greater freedom to cre-
ate. As the banner for the Work Less
Party states, “Alarm Clocks Kill
Dreams”. I would add to that state-
ment that a shift to public, debt-free
monetary systems catch and nurture
dreams. Change will be gradual, but
a better world is possible.