Occupy Wallstreet - a guiding philosophy

My two broad assumptions:

(1) The State does not serve as an effective counter-weight to corporate interests. Rather than responding to the will of its constituents, the State has increasingly become a tool to protect the financial interests of the politically connected.

(2) Republicans and Democrats offer the illusion of choice. An unsustainable status quo is perpetuated, premised on the proliferation of the warfare-welfare State, regardless of political party.

If premise (1) is true, then it follows that giving more power to the State can not be an effective solution. If premise (2) is true, then it follows that voting in a certain political party can not be an effective solution.

But, we still (for the time being), have to operate within the current power structure.

So what can be done? Here are some practical ideas as for "demands." This is in no means all-inclusive and all of the below is my opinion only.

- Have more meaningful, but not necessarily more regulations which are measurable. More regulation is not a panacea, especially for larger firms who are often, through the use of clever lawyers and accountants, one step ahead of regulators. By more meaningful, I mean regulations that do not contain conflicts of interest. For example, the OCC is one of the organizations that regulates banks, yet its funding does not come from Congress, it comes from the banks themselves; the banks are funding an organization that regulates them.

Regulation "by whom" and "for what ends" are two important questions that should be addressed. "By whom" should be addressed in order to examine potential conflicts of interest and "for what ends" should be addressed to make sure the regulation is actually doing something beneficial, for example, decreasing systemic risk. Further, the effectiveness all regulations should be quantifiable through metrics.

- Re-enact Glass-Steagall, there should exist a firewall between commercial and investment banking interests; this will help decrease systemic risks.

- Drastically scale back the role, or abolish The Federal Reserve. Sanders' recent audit of The Fed revealed that over $16 trillion dollars was granted to American foreign banks and businesses, this is unacceptable especially when we hear calls of necessary austerity.

- Drastically scale back our empire abroad. No more nation building, no more unnecessary wars. End our foreign adventurism in Iraq and Afghanistan as soon as prudently possible.

- End the War on Drugs immediately. This increasingly violent war is not justifiable on economic grounds nor on the grounds of freedom. If you contend you own your consciousness, you ought to be able to modify your consciousness as you see fit. True freedom starts from the ground up, legalize the tools of consciousness modification. Making parts of nature illegal is a ridiculous notion.

- End prison privatization. By maximizing shareholder value, the private prison industry operates in direct opposition to the values and goals of citizens.

- Reform campaign finance, one idea is publicly financed elections.

- Overturn the ruling on Citizens United v. FEC, 80% of those surveyed opposed (and 65% strongly opposed) the Citizens United ruling. This will help scale back corporate and union influence in the election process.

- Corporations should be taxed at the corporate tax level regardless of whether their incomes are derived domestically or internationally. No corporate tax holidays. End the incentives for corporations to move income abroad.

- Did you know there used to be 2 additional tax brackets? From 1964 back, there was a bracket of $500,000 and above and $1,000,000 and above. First, index all brackets to inflation, re-instate higher income brackets, and lower income tax rates for all other brackets. Better yet, discard the whole system (and the IRS), and adopt a consumption tax.

- Adopt a "no loss socialization" policy. The losses of privately held businesses should never again get to use the taxpayer to absorb their losses or make them whole from their poor decisions.

- Examine "too big to fail." The banks are now fewer in number, because of industry consolidation and other causes, and assets are even more concentrated, system risk has grown because of this.

- Nearly none of the underlying causes of the previous financial crisis were dealt with. The bad debt was never purged from the system. We should allow the process of creative destruction to reign. The government is not there to protect the financial interests of the politically connected.

- End all government subsidies to all industries.

- The measure of GDP for economic progress should be reexamined.

- Lower the barriers to entry for alternate political parties to get on ballots. By enforcing extremely high barriers to entry, the Republican v Democrat false choice duopoly continues onwards.

- End capital punishment - we are no longer barbarians. I'd like to think we have progressed past the Code of Hammurabi.

- Re-examine our cozy relationship with Israel, this should be obvious; Republicans and Democrats would be strongly against such a thing. When both parties have serious issues with a particular policy measure, that usually is a litmus test for whether it is against the status quo in a positive way.