Days of Change

Day 1089 – Who is Joseph Stiglitz?

I really wanted to stop doing Occupy posts, but this is just too bothersome to me.

Last week, I was reading an old blog post of mine from April and poster turned Occupy drone ralphb had the following comment on my debt ceiling post.

It goes to the Joe Stiglitz Maxim: a government of the 1%, by the 1%, and for the 1%.

He’s generally right. In one article some time back, he wrote that economics was a failed profession which should be re-invented from the ground up. No matter what, I like Stiglitz.

Well, if this guy was talking 1% from a while back, I figured he must have something to do with OWS. Actually, Stiglitz is bigger than that. Besides being an economist who seems to hate every other economist (kind of like a less famous Paul Krugman) and he loves protesters.

From Wikipedia:

On July 25, 2011, Stiglitz participated to the “I Foro Social del 15M” organized in Madrid (Spain) expressing his support to the 2011 Spanish protests.

He also spoke at an Occupy rally back on October 2.

It turns out that Stiglitz shows up on the boards of a number of George Soros funded organizations. His economic theories call for more government ownership of the business and banking sectors, while he claims to oppose socialism.

The next time I read a post about Stiglitz, it linked to this article from the IMF (now with less rapists!) about the recovery in Iceland brought about by devaluing their currency (back door inflation) and by letting banks collapse. This has followed with something of a recovery, but while the poor are on a generous government dole, the middle class is saddled with foreign bank debt and devalued wages. Still, some people love this solution because it supposedly stuck it to the banks.

So, let’s take inadequate free-market capitalism, a putative denial of socialism, thumbs up to government control of the economy, the middle finger to bank bailouts and the lionization of street mobs. What do you get? Anarchy.

Here’s the trick. No one really wants anarchy. Some people want it for a while and they are the agitators. After a while, even those people get sick of people with no rules messing with them. Anarchy is, however, an excellent means to an end. The “smart” people are sick of the dumb people making the rules. Imposing order is hard in a democracy, because people get to choose all kinds of wrong things for themselves. You would need to break down society for the general public to accept that kind of order.

The Occupiers are already at the anarchy stage. Most cities have made minor concessions and are frequently thwarted anyway. Arrest them and your city spends a fortune on incarceration. Disperse them and they sue for millions. If this crap keeps going, you’ll see large-scale government crackdowns and the people will enjoy the spectacle. Then we have real old-time fascism.

Anyone who thinks that the average 53%er who pays taxes and thinks the protesters are a bunch of whiny kids is really some big money capitalist whip kisser, watch what happens when the real whips show up. This 0.01% calling themselves the 99% are the dupes for a much more sinister model of fascists waiting for the world to break down.

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