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Resistance See other Resistance Articles Title: Forgive the Debts Forgive The Debts! The expected shakeout of the Occupy Wall Street movement continues. Given the great media sympathy for this movement, and the overt support it is receiving from local governments – ignoring permits and restrictions, visits by public officials, restrictions on police activities – the path this will take will be very different from the “Days of Rage” during the Viet Nam era. There is no conscription, and thus no great force driving educated middle class young men into the protest movement – and of course the big incentive of the Left in my undergraduate days, “free love”, is no longer very effective. It’s no longer exclusively the Marxist girls who wear wool stockings who proclaim a right to sexual equality. Actually, the Marxist girls of the 1950’s still used words like slut and public pump, and would have been horrified by the hookup culture. They wanted at least a pretense of commitment. But I digress. One of the driving force demands of the OWS is “debt forgiveness.” While the demand is for all debts to be forgiven – this is the 99% demanding release from debt to the 1% — there is special attention to student loan debt which has resulted from the education bubble. The bubble was created by the continuous injection of money into the higher education system. That started with the GI Bill, and I was certainly a beneficiary of the Korean War GI Bill. I probably would have got through Memphis State College (as it was known in 1950, having been elevated from West Tennessee Normal School to Memphis State College a few years before) because I had enough connections in Memphis that I could manage to work my way through, and there was in essence no tuition for those who had completed the College Prep programs in high school. I might have got through and perhaps found a way into graduate school, but I might not: the GI Bill left me with some freedom of choice. But over time more and more money has been injected into the University and College system. If they have the money they will spend it. Eventually the Iron Law governs, faculty, administrators, and staff get ever increasing raises and benefits, admission requirements fall, demand for more public money rises – well, you get the idea. Tuition rises. The answer to that is to inject more money in the form of loans. Unforgivable loans. Loans that will destroy social mobility, as everyone who doesn’t inherit a college education finds himself – herself – a bondswoman for life. But as tuition rises, fewer want to pay, so more and more students must be admitted regardless of qualifications. Public programs that were supposed to be restricted to the smart people who might become boffins have to be extended to everyone regardless of qualifications – or even of background. A program that was supposed to be for veterans is replaced by programs that must be available to all. Programs expand. Campuses multiply. The bubble continues. And here we are. The OWS won’t get what they want. There aren’t enough of them actually to storm the centers of power, and they haven’t the discipline to stay peaceful and orderly and build more and more public sympathy as did the veterans camped in Washington and the other occupants of Hoovervilles did in the early days of the Great Depression. They haven’t any consistent views of the world because their college educations are often worthless. They are shocked to discover that there is a real criminal element among them, and the criminals are quite content to be parasitic and feign whatever sentiment is popular on a given day. I can feel a bit sorry for them. The Obama administration has not been kind to them, and has no concept of how to end the Second Great Depression. On the other hand, the Country Club Republicans and their rapacious allies calling themselves “compassionate conservatives” and “big government conservatives” went stark mad in a spree of needless war and exponentially rising spending. The OWS people have every right to be disgusted. They also have the right to be damned fools, but that’s not a right they ought to exercise. For those contemplating a rebellion, I remind you again: good guys take responsibilities. Good guys clean up after themselves. Good guys look more than ten minutes into the future. Good guys can be fools too, but they don’t go seek folly. If you want to go protest, look into the Tea Party. It’s got some dolts and asses and predators and a few dammed fools, but for the most part it believes in freedom, and understands that there isn’t a big government remedy for the mess we got into ourselves. There won’t be any big central action – a general strike, or rising up and erecting guillotines in the public squares, however momentarily attractive that notion may seem – none of that will save us. It took a while to dig this hole, and it will take a while to get out of it. But we are not surrounded by ruins. Many of the tools of prosperity are in storage or even for sale on eBay (Art Robinson has managed to find a lot of equipment his Institute could never have afforded). We still have a capable work force with good work ethics even if many are now retired; they can still teach apprentices. We are not prostrate under the occupation of a foreign enemy. We have oil and coal and natural gas. There is no requirement that we continue to support an educational establishment that drains our substance while stupefying the bright kids we need to educate. We have all the elements for recovering and sustaining that recovery. All we need is Freedom.
Poster Comment: Jerry Pournelle almost always makes sense. 99% owe to 1%. That sounds about right.
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#1. To: Turtle (#0)
(Edited)
Paraphrasing a comment I read somewhere recently: Back to the bankers' thin air from which they came. Edit to move apostrophe. ------- "They're on our left, they're on our right, they're in front of us, they're behind us...they can't get away this time." -- Col. Puller, USMC
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