I just get the sense that people who support this Occupy "movement" have noooooooooooo clue what they're talking about, and just want to crusade and be a part of something. All I ever hear are vague accusations and rhetoric. SPECIFICALLY, who is doing what? "The rich are preying on the poor" is not good enough. "The government is being bought out by bankers" is not good enough. "Politicians are corrupt" is not good enough. No specifics. How can you believe that this stuff is happening, and not have specifics to base your beliefs on?
What would be a 'smoking gun' for you? We'll never get signed confessions man!
There are many viewpoints out there as to what the causes are and what the solutions should be. The information someone gives you will depend on their own political bias. Also the problem is not just a national one but a global one so at what level do you try to fix the problem? Anarcho-communism makes sense to me....you just need to try and hear as many viewpoints as you can and see what makes sense to you.
Followers of the Austrian School of economics might argue that we need to return to the Gold standard, which had been agreed at Bretton Woods (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Monetary_and_Financial_Conference ) and that the US should never have switched to fiat currency under Nixon (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_Shock)
However some might caution against this on the basis of who they believe is now holding the most gold. They might instead advocate a government controlled supply of paper money such as the 'greenback' made by Lincoln.
Some followers of the Austrian school of economics might argue for 'anarcho-capitalism' which to me sounds like a total nightmare. The 'end the fed' campaign is being fought in the US, with Ron Paul being a major flag bearer. That doesn't mean i disagree with everything these guys are saying because i don't. They make a lot of sense when they are diagnosing the problem, but i do not agree with their solution (another form of capitalism...i want to see capitalism go altogether)
Some are followers of the ideas of the Frankfurt school, others are critical of it and some implicate it in a wider plot to control society.
Some are Keynesians (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics) , some are monetarists (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetarists )
Some will say that 'freemarket fundamentalism' caused the crisis and that we need greater government interference in the markets, while others will counter that by saying that we did not have 'real capitalism' and 'free markets' in the first place.
You can argue for hours over this stuff and get no nearer to a resolution. So what is actually happening on the ground?
Unemployment is up. I'm sure you could find some nice graphs to illustrate this easily enough, if you like that sort of thing.
Inflation is increasing, public services are being cut, pensions have dissapeared, debt both individual and national is rising, small businesses are failing (and some big ones too!), people are losing their homes, wars are raging, the environment is being damaged.
I'm sure you could get facts or figures or graphs for all of these easily enough online...forgive me if i don't spend my evening looking them out for you; if you're interested enough, you can find what you're looking for.
As a backdrop to all this we are seeing a seemingly endless stream of stories about corruption in high places. Giving you examples in my home country the UK would be easier for me but i'm sure the story is the same in the US. For example we all know that the rating agencies were passing off toxic debts as 'triple A' (which means that they are a safe investment). Meanwhile 'regulators' such as the FSA (Financial Services Authority) have been caught napping as they have not stopped any of the practices which have lead to the crisis, which reinforces what many of us suspected that the regulators do not really regulate but are really there only to give an illusion to the public that someone is protecting the public. In high profile cases regulators have failed to protect the public in a number of areas for example: price fixing by large corporations (such as supermarkets), mobile phone contracts, energy costs.
Our politcians have been caught up in expense scandals, sleaze, torture and have been exposed as lying to take us to war.
The press is owned by billionaires such as Rupert Murdoch whose papers have been found to be illegally tapping peoples phones....the police were involved as well with the head of the metropolitan police having to resign over it.
So again and again it has been proven that the very bodies the public expect to represent or protect them (the police, the politicians, the regulators, the press) have not been protecting them at all. This has lead to people losing faith in these groups and taking to the streets in protest.
Some capitalists have thrown their free market principles out of the window by creating what they call 'too big to fail' corporations so that when they failed they then got governments to bail them out. Do some research into where that bailout money has gone. Also look into why bankers are still getting such big bonuses after their organisations have failed.
Some would argue that this is part of a larger agenda to indebt countries to the global investors and to pressure governments into selling off assets cheaply which the global investors can then buy up. You can find stories about government 'firesales' if you look for them.
You will hear many ideas out there as to what should be done from anarchism to fascism, for various forms of capitalism but the protests have arisen out of very real factors which are affecting peoples lives. Most people have been living lawfully and paying their taxes but have found that the authorities have not only been lying over many issues but have also been aiding the movement of public wealth into private hands (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism)
In the wider world US based institutions such as the world bank and IMF have been exploiting other countries (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_consensus)
To say the protestors don't know what they are doing is wrong. Due to the internet many people are very savy about what is going on. So far they have waged a successful and peaceful campaign. With winter on the way it is yet to be seen what will hit them first, cold weather or an authoritarian government intent on protecting the bankers that fund their political campaigns (i'm sure you could get some facts and figures about lobbying and campaign funds online easily enough).
If you don't mind the fact that it is run by the Russian government (and is therefore obviously russian propaganda!) then RT (Russia Today) usually interviews people with some interesting viewpoints which you won't find in the western corporate mainstream media, for example the Keiser Report, which has all its back dated episodes as well...you might find it interesting as a counter point to western propaganda! (
http://rt.com/programs/keiser-report/)
