Lemony Snicket's Occupy Wall Street Observations | Hacker News Reader

Lemony Snicket's Occupy Wall Street Observations

occupywriters.com

12 pointsswilliams9 comments

I wish the same people who supported the occupation of wall street supported the rights of software developers and musicians.

More money is demanded from the protesters, yet when developers and musicians have a problem with people downloading their hard work without any compensation, the answer is: "you aren't guaranteed a profit".

Well occupiers, now it's my turn to say the same thing when you tell me you have a $50,000 student loan debt and you can't find a job or when you want a government-sanctioned wage increase for not doing anything more.

I feel like people that are successful are being attacked here. I've seen it time and time again with the protesters. They try to silence anyone that even has a hint of success.

Amen to that. After going to Occupy Vancouver and hearing the Marijuana Party Representative speak saying we should be having an annual income, and people saying that they shouldn't have to work to live a decent life, I can't say I support the protest in Canada anymore.

Lots of people here with uneducated opinions on how the world should work. Never mind the people trying to add a pro-marijuana stance at Occupy Vancouver, which is just so fucking wrong on every level. It's like saying "Hey, people are $50k-(insert large number here) dollars in debt in the states, so lets legalize marijuana! Yay!". Honestly, fuck those people, very disrespectful and confusing to what the movement should be achieving. Too much sheep putting up with that shit too because they get free weed out of it.

I didn't go to Occupy Vancouver because, after seeing the same people shouting for the same things at a variety of different protests, I figured it would be a waste of time. I think that's probably an artifact of Vancouver's political climate, however, and not a reflection of the Occupy movement as a whole. The economy in Vancouver never realyl took a hit (except for a couple lean years in construction), property is just as expensive as ever, and most people are doing reasonably well. That just leaves the perpetual malcontents with the energy and desire to go protest.

I don't think the same is true of other cities and protests.

I totally agree that Vancouver is not a reflection of the occupy movement as a whole, and that's the part that angers me the most. We could be helping out the people in our neighbouring country by showing our support of what they are doing, but instead we are prancing around saying how terribly oppressed we are, and how we live in a facist nation.

>when you want a government-sanctioned wage increase for not doing anything more.

Outside of unionized public servants, this really doesn't describe anyone.

>I feel like people that are successful are being attacked here. I've seen it time and time again with the protesters. They try to silence anyone that even has a hint of success.

Bullshit. Nobody's blaming the rich for being rich, they're blaming the rich for using their influence to secure ever sweeter deals from the government, privatizing the profits and socializing the losses, while everyone else suffers. Nobody's calling out Warren Buffett for being a billionaire, they're calling out the greed of those who use their wealth and influence to gain more wealth and influence without regard for the people they hurt in the process.

I know plenty of people, and have seen plenty of comments on the internet lynching many rich people. I don't think this was the original intent of the movement, but it is definitely an unintended side effect

Wherever there are protesters there will be a fringe of kooks riding the wave who want nothing more than to attract attention, either by breaking shit, hurting someone, or by trying to shock with their extreme opinions.

I find it fascinating that every time a group of people does X, someone else is sure to come up with a wildly tangential topic Y and blame those X people for not supporting or somehow messing up Y even though it's certainly the case that most of the X people probably had nothing to do with Y and don't have any particular position (any different than the average person on the street). How dare you oppose animal cruelty when children in the world are starving! Good grief. Nobody's attacking successful people because they're successful. They're attacking the lawmakers and their corporate cronies that have engineered the tax laws to the extreme benefit of the filthy rich AND showered them with generous bailouts and bonuses as a reward for devastating the economy all while hollowing out the social safety net. That's the issue.

Interesting, glad I read it.

I don't like to nit-pick, but I am always a bit uncomfortable when there is an implication that wealth is a "zero-sum game"

And that does seem to be implied here.

Wealth creation is complex. Be aware of oversimplification.

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