Goldman Sachs and your beer cans

[hey]

World peace what are you smoking ?

Just kill anyone who won't listen.

[archibaldcrane]

Well, it looks like at least JP Morgan is going to get out of the commodities shell game.

http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/201...ties-unit.html

[SamanosukeShiva]

Since when has capitalism ever implied that?

Capitalism 101, the market decide and sort everything out, ie. if you have shitty product, no one will buy it -> you go out of business it also encourages healthy competition etc etc, go google it or something. But the market ain't deciding shit here because the bank controls everything and majority of the supply.

[Amiricle]

Capitalism 101, the market decide and sort everything out, ie. if you have shitty product, no one will buy it -> you go out of business it also encourages healthy competition etc etc, go google it or something. But the market ain't deciding shit here because the bank controls everything and majority of the supply.

Thank you. Was sick of the 'hey it capitalism, get over it' crap and was trying to think of an easy way to put that.

[Ksandra]

Capitalism 101, the market decide and sort everything out, ie. if you have shitty product, no one will buy it -> you go out of business it also encourages healthy competition etc etc, go google it or something. But the market ain't deciding shit here because the bank controls everything and majority of the supply.

I don't think anyone on bg uses the word capitalism as if it was fair.

[edit] for that matter, I don't even think that definition suggests everyone gets a fair shot.

[Niiro]

Competitive markets ≠ capitalism, it's certainly a common aspect but it's far from the main tenet.

[Jaybar]

Capitalism 101, the market decide and sort everything out, ie. if you have shitty product, no one will buy it -> you go out of business it also encourages healthy competition etc etc, go google it or something. But the market ain't deciding shit here because the bank controls everything and majority of the supply.

I don't think anyone on bg uses the word capitalism as if it was fair.

[edit] for that matter, I don't even think that definition suggests everyone gets a fair shot.

In fact, I'm pretty sure people are using it in this thread as irony because all the conservative talking heads love to talk about how America is the perfect model of capitalism (and they think America is running a TRUE capitalist system mind you, with regulations).

[arus2001]

Always going to be someone that has something you don't. Being jaded about wealthy people seems irrational cause they don't care about you to begin with.

It's one thing for someone to have more wealth than another. It's another to use that wealth to keep people from making their own.

In my family's case, this competition had had their own store in the area probably since before I was born, and in all those years they'd never branched from that. Suddenly my folks open and within a year they're doing the same thing? Competition on its own doesn't bug me, but a M&P vs. a chain store rarely ends well for the former when they had to struggle for loans, secure inventory, attract customers, and maintain stock (we did have people steal/destroy our stuff). It's basically a smaller scale version of what Wal-Mart's done to a lot of places. And in the end, once we got run out, they tried to get greedy and it backfired on them. I'd like to think in part because some people were pissed they ran us out, but I'm guessing more they just got some other hare-brain scheme as since then that shop space has been a deli, sub stand, and probably more I haven't seen since I don't go there often.

Either way, knowing how time has progressed since then, I know we wouldn't be open now. Still could've been enough for my mom to retire by 60, though.

[Rhyis.]

Kalm I sympathize with you and I feel the same way but our attitudes are breeding complacency.

You're just as useless as he is. He's just more aware of it then you are.

[Cantih]

Capitalism 101, the market decide and sort everything out, ie. if you have shitty product, no one will buy it -> you go out of business it also encourages healthy competition etc etc, go google it or something. But the market ain't deciding shit here because the bank controls everything and majority of the supply.

Something that gets me is, that's how it's supposed to work, but in our observing and codifying of all this, the whole damn thing has become crazy gamed.

It's supposed to be, if you make a shitty product, nobody buys it because it's shitty.
But what's actually happened is that you make a shitty product, and you do your damnedest to make people not know it's shitty so they buy it anyway. (Or convince people that your competitor's product is shitty even when it isn't, so it doesn't sell.)
The actual merits no longer matter, only the believed merits.

[Kalmado]

You're just as useless as he is. He's just more aware of it then you are.

I have no issue admitting my faults Honest question, what could your average joe do about something like this?

Cantih, I agree w/you. It's my personal belief that the majority of people do want a product or service with merit but budget no longer allows them to purchase it.

[Mazmaz]

start another occupy

[Callisto]

That changed so much the first time around, it's bound to work

[Cantih]

The problem was the camping, drumming, and drugs of the sit in. (And the people's mic is kind of heebie-jeebie inducing.)
While plenty of people have got issues with the situation at hand, the average joe doesn't really want to associate with some kind of neo-hippie, regardless of how noble the goal.

If you had a bunch of normal people, just hanging around someplace, with shifts to keep the numbers up instead of tents, you probably would have seen the Occupy thing go a bit better than it did. It might have even survived being nebulous with too many goals (though to be fair, a lot of shit needs fixing simultaneously, so it's hard to not have so many goals.)
But nah, just camping in parks and plazas won't work again, just a bunch of people in a place. And I doubt you could get people together now anyway, the Restore the Fourth thing didn't get all that big on the protest side of things.

What concerns me is that, since we've seen just getting bodies someplace isn't going to do anything/won't be listened too, that anyone wanting to make a change in the future is going to take more drastic and unpleasant measures.

[Salodin]

Occupy doesn't work because there's too many problems to fix. The entire system is broken and you can't picket to fix a problem that the system enables; you either fix the whole thing (which the occupy movement can't do) or just go home.

Short of a revolution, nothing will change. Fuck it, if you can't beat em, join em.

[SamanosukeShiva]

I have no issue admitting my faults Honest question, what could your average joe do about something like this?

Cantih, I agree w/you. It's my personal belief that the majority of people do want a product or service with merit but budget no longer allows them to purchase it.

Call your local state representative, they listen. First step of how we to fix this is to overturn Citizens United. Get money out of politics.



http://www.wolf-pac.com/

[djzombie]

Short of a revolution, nothing will change. Fuck it, if you can't beat em, join em.

relevant:

[notorious bum]

I'm shocked and appalled.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/0...usaolp00000003

FERC Accuses JPMorgan Chase Of Manipulating Electricity Market

WASHINGTON, July 29 (Reuters) - The U.S. power market regulator took a step toward charging JPMorgan Chase & Co. with gaming electricity prices on Monday, confirming months of media reports about "manipulative" trading schemes that have rattled the bank.

The "notice of alleged violations", which outlines bidding strategies used by traders in California and the Midwest, is an intermediate step by the regulator,but brings details of the investigation into public view.

The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) staff has found "eight manipulative bidding strategies" used by a JPM affiliate in 2010 and 2011, the regulator said.

JPMorgan declined to comment.

[ronin sparthos]

Occupy doesn't work because there's too many problems to fix. The entire system is broken and you can't picket to fix a problem that the system enables; you either fix the whole thing (which the occupy movement can't do) or just go home.

Short of a revolution, nothing will change. Fuck it, if you can't beat em, join em.

Focusing on one topic to change would help rather than the clusterfuck the original Occupy was. Hell, someone to lead the charge and be the mouthpiece of the movement would also help rather than a million internet talking heads.

Things can change as they've been worse than what we have now.

[Salodin]

I don't think we've ever had such an uphill battle like this before Tbh. I mean, these people are as close to the kings of the world as we'll ever see and most people don't even know it.