hi! i'm als & this is my blog.

i write about random things.
these days i write pretty sporatically.
sometimes i completely rave about something, like a tv show but sometimes i write pretty serious things.
i write in short phrases, i like the freedom of not having to write in proper punctuation and grammar.
i'm a christian. i also ♥ music, art, photography, movies, tv & books.

hope you enjoy ♥

Monday, October 24, 2011

The Occupy/99% Movement

It irks me that people complain about being in the 99%, when they live in a country with considerable riches, where there are measures to try and make sure the poor don't starve (sure, some people fall through the cracks but the measures are there), furthermore we do tax the wealthy more.

Even more so, some of these people would consider themselves less wealthy just because they cannot afford magnificent houses and cars; poor even. It annoys me because they don't seem to realise how wealthy they actually are. That their problems are when they can't afford new gadgets or things, not because they don't have enough clean water to drink or food to eat.

Furthermore, I feel like these 'Occupy' protests are a bit futile, because even though they are protesting about something, they have no solution. I mean, most protests are like "Free (certain country/people/person)" or "Bring the troops home" etc. and their solution IS the protest. Whereas 'Occupy' (whether it is Wall St, or Melbourne, or Sydney etc.) or 'We are the 99%', these are just statements, not solutions. So, you can continue protesting but nothing is going to happen about this because they don't actually know what to do about it.

By the way, I'm not against the protest, I just think the way that it is going about is rather ineffective.

So my solution to make this protest more effective is: first, work out the solutions to this problem AND then go protest.

But the problem is (and another reason why I believe the protests so far haven't been that effective) this issue is such a hard issue to deal with. How do we ensure the 1% don't control all the wealth? Do we have to spread the wealth? How do you deal with people who genuinely worked hard for their riches amongst some who may have lied/stolen/cheated for their riches? How do you properly spread out the riches evenly so that it isn't a 1% vs the 99%? Do we have to change our system to a socialist one? In that case, don't those who have worked harder deserve more than those that don't work as hard? Plus, many many more questions and issues.
As you can see its a very difficult issue, and not something that can be easily changed with a few protests. Hence, why I believe these protest probably won't be that effective in bringing that much change.

This is also why (because I think the protest is a bit futile), I am a bit annoyed about how people complained about police getting violent because you technically are breaking the law and are not moving when being told. Police don't get violent unless they have to and you aren't doing what they say. People get hurt because they have to be forcibly removed and so they retaliate and hurt themselves, thus coming across as violence.

I mean, it is a protest worthy topic; but it's an extremely hard one to solve. Sort of like trying to solve poverty.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

excellent