How Occupy Wall Street Led To The Current Woke Crisis

“Being a villain is such a waste of time!” – The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show

The way she set up the pieces, I think she might be planning on eating them, rather than playing a game.

Once in a while, it’s good to take a step back.  Where are we?

First, it’s important to review that the economy is not the financial system.  The economy consists of the stuff we make, and the people who make it, and their productivity.  It’s matched with people who want that stuff.

Stuff can be anything people want to pay money for:  PEZ®.  Cars.  Machetes.  Beer.  Zirconium nose hair trimmers.  Video game software.  Pictures of PEZ©.  Gasoline.  Streaming movies about PEZ™.  Velvet Elvis™ paintings (I still need one, I prefer the “mid-carbohydrate, wearing sunglasses and a sequined jumpsuit” King).  Houses.  People to polish the PEZ® statues I keep in my yard.  Did I mention beer?

Notice that the stuff is physical stuff as well as information and services.

What’s not required?

I have the heart of a lion!  I have the eye of an eagle!  I have the legs of a gazelle!  I also have a lifetime ban from the zoo.

Money.  Debt.  Interest rates.  These are fundamentally constructions of humanity, and are meant only to make transactions easier.  They are not required.  When Pepsi® wanted to do trades with the Russians, they traded cases of Pepsi™ concentrate for seventeen submarines, a frigate, a cruiser, and a destroyer.  Think about how cool that was:  for a time, Pepsi© had a navy that could have probably made France surrender in a fury of carbonated corn syrup.  Again.

And how cool would it be for a soft drink company to stage a march down the Champs-Élysées while Parisians cried?  Honestly, it probably would have led to a better outcome than they currently have.

But what happens when the tail (finance) wags the dog (the economy)?

I guess the best answer goes right back to France, but this time not to around 1990, but to around 1790.  What did the masses see?  They saw the upper class scamming and cratering the economy while eating piles of bacon-wrapped shrimp, or whatever passed for a delicacy in 1790s France.  The system really was rigged, but it was so rigged that poor Marie Antoinette couldn’t imagine actual hunger.

I will admit, they had cutting edge technology.

Here, though, I think that the Powers That Be see the end coming.  Remember Occupy Wall Street?

Yeah, it was a bunch of smelly hippies that mainly spent time arguing about who was in control of the collective, and it featured all of the woke crap that is currently being paraded, but back in 2011 only the smelly hippies took it seriously.  Oh, my, to be back in 2011.

Anyway, what happened after 2011?

The media and the Powers That Be were scared.  How scared?

A neutron walks into a bar.  The bartender says, “For you, no charge.”  The electron next to him yells “That’s discrimination!”

They upped the ante.  If people were unhappy about the manipulation of the banks and the mortgage-led meltdown of the Great Recession, the answer was simple from the Powers That Be:  “Look, a squirrel!”

They doubled down on every single thing that is Woke.  And, why not?  The seeds were simmering as the Leftists took control of the education system and threw children into sex education that was really indoctrination, often without the knowledge of the parents or their consent, was yet another thing that finance could get behind.

And when finance gets behind it?  All the companies that require finance get behind it, too.  The attempt is gone a bit farther – an attempt to regame the system so that the financial imbalances built on decades of mismanagement could be controlled.  Every aspect of finance and money, if it were only in the control of the Powers That Be, well, then the tail (finance) could really control the dog (the economy).

Looks like the Woke want to refund the police?

But here is the salvation.  The Powers That Be only understand the financial side of what’s going on – the shadows on the wall.  They do not understand the systems that they need to survive.  Remember Mike Bloomberg in 2016 saying, “I could teach anybody, even people in this room, to be a farmer.  It’s a process.  You dig a hole, you put a seed in, you put dirt on top, add water, up comes the corn.”  This is the shallow understanding of a person whose feet have never left asphalt and concrete, and learned all he needed to know about farming by watching Green Acres.

Mike Bloomberg doesn’t understand where the food he eats comes from.  He does not understand it, and cannot recreate it.  No matter what Mike Bloomberg does, he cannot use his financial magic to create one kernel of corn, not one molecule of water.  Financial magic encourages production of corn, but cannot make it.

  • Woke culture cannot produce prosperity, or a single PEZ®.
  • Printing money cannot produce a single steak.
  • Financial manipulation cannot produce a single velvet Elvis©.
  • The tyranny of the Left cannot produce a human civilization.

The regular person has spoken this week – Bud Light® is now off the menu for millions and I’ve heard that it lost up to 70% or 80% sales last week.  Will it kill Bud Light™?  I doubt it.  Drunk people often don’t make the best decisions, but, then again, I’m here.

How to remove 80% of beer drinkers with this one simple trick.

I think bud light will manage to survive, but we are seeing the cracks in the woke agenda that showed up after Occupy Wall Street – at some point, regardless of all of the financial shenanigans, at some point someone has to want the crap that’s being produced.

To those that look at the mess that we’re in, I can assure you of this – it’s all going away. It’s merely a matter of time.  The economy is not the financial system, and a bank cratering doesn’t destroy all the corn that Mike Bloomberg has no idea how to grow.

Or maybe he could teach me otherwise?

Author: John

Nobel-Prize Winning, MacArthur Genius Grant Near Recipient writing to you regularly about Fitness, Wealth, and Wisdom - How to be happy and how to be healthy. Oh, and rich.

32 thoughts on “How Occupy Wall Street Led To The Current Woke Crisis”

  1. Switching beer brands may not hurt the company as much as you think. Most of the major beer brands appear to be owned by the same company. Your hard earned cash may still end up in the same place. They probably knew that when they launched the campaign and figured the financial risk to them was small. Do a little research. But they did get to learn who may not be on board with their agenda.

      1. AB InBev is Belgium owned. Their brands include all Anheuser Busch, Miller, Moson, Coors, Modello, Heineken and many other brands. It was a little shocking to learn that. Not easy to avoid.

        1. Anheuser-Busch and, Molson Coors are the two big companies in USA beers. A article from 2020, https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/03/18/the-most-popular-beer-brands-in-america/111416118/ gives a quick overview of who owns what in the top 25. Duckduckgo says the Molson Coors is still a separate company. They appear to be as woke as Budweiser, just have not stepped in it lately.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AB_InBev_brands gives AB InBev brands worldwide. An impressive list. If you want to boycott AB InBev craft beers and imports are not a safe choice without checking this list.

          Mike G

      2. Dropped Budweiser yesterday. Back to MGD, and a great local microbrewery; Oaken Barrel brewing.
        To be clear, I don’t want this type of propaganda forced on me. That demographic, is less than. 05% of the population.

  2. Three legged dog enters the bar. Bartender what you need? Dog says I am lookin for the guy that shot my pa

    We need a laugh or I have to drink all day

  3. I think the end of the line is near. When almost all normies think this gender bs is insanity, things unravel

  4. Consult for a few bankers who are also friends, plus have The Retired Financial Compliance Queen who is my Life Partner. She (and the banksters) say that their current/former employers C-suite gang march in lockstep with the WEF/DEI agenda. And, they rate potential borrowers by their ESG “score” – if too low, no loan or higher %.

    So, if the Big 5 Banks go belly up from DEI, bring it on. I’m mildly dyslexic, so lets just rename DEI as DIE.

  5. Now THIS is why I come to WW&W! I need your periodic/frequent reminder that the way life works is that you live it every day as best you can.

    Power doesn’t flow from the barrel of the gun at all (though Kill Pez do). Power flows from within. And at some point, the Bloombergs of the world discover that /memento mori/ applies to both them and their absurd ideas.

    Deo Vindice.

  6. “To those that look at the mess that we’re in, I can assure you of this – it’s all going away.”

    Yeah, but I’m afraid it’s going to go away in mushroom clouds courtesy of Russia and China.

      1. Our larger-than-the-rest-of-the-world homes have a LOT of space to store supplies/prep. I doubt that most of the Left realizes just how much GOOD stuff resides in homes, basements, attics, garages, and sheds and storage units.
        Good being:
        – Guns/ammo and related items
        – Tools – for cars, home equipment, general purpose. MOST of us have multiple flashlights, now that those LED ones are practically given away with purchase of something else.
        – Machinery that could be repaired/restored if needed (we tend to set such things aside and buy another, with new features. But, we continue to store the old ones, and – in a pinch – they could be once again made useful
        – Food
        – Water/filtering apparatus
        – Clothes/blankets/extra coats/boots/shoes – most of actually don’t need to buy another clothing item for the rest of our lives
        – Technology – SOME of which, being older, is easier to use to swap parts in or out of – and, most of them were designed to use older software that isn’t dependent on web access. Old oscilloscopes, multimeters, inner tube repair kits, extra parts – it all lives in America’s garages.
        We, the Redneck Rebels, could hold out for a LONG time with what is sitting in our homes. Not true of Urban/Upscale America.

  7. “I think bud light will manage to survive….”

    I used to work in the belly of that beast when it was transitioning from a meritocracy to a political snake pit. Spent a lot of time with Marketing despite being a “tech guy”. Here’s the deal….

    NO, repeat NO, declining beer brand EVER rises again. The VP for the brand just consigned it to an earlier grave than would have happened otherwise. Options?

    1) Switch to wine! Plenty of good Spanish/Portuguese red blends out there at $5-7/botlle.

    2) Buy local craft beers suitable to your taste.

    3) Grab a copy of Papazian’s “Joy of Homebrewing” and get started. You can get 8-9 six-packs for $5-6/per and a small investment of time. It is not rocket science. Equipment cost to get started is less than $100.

    Cheers!

    Da Perfessor

    1. DP – The best proof of that hypothesis is SCHLITZ, the best selling beer until the mid-70s. They shortened their brewing aging that completely changed its taste…and never recovered. Bud emphasized their lenghty “Beechwood Brewing Process” and kicked their ass.

      BTW, when Miller introduced Miller Lite, thay called it “Lite Beer From Miller” on TV commercials. Thought it’d fail. We had it in Tuscaloosa as a test mkt in 1975. Every sorority girl was drinking it immediately. Behind Busch Bavarian (cheap 6% alcohol Bud) it becme the #2 seller in bars within a week. Well, at least at The Bahnhof, where Ham Wallace & I would fill in from time to time. And bartenders could drink for free while working back then. Good ‘ol days.

      1. Liquid estrogen. Let the sorority sluts chug it as an excuse for trashy behavior, but to be able to take advantage of that trashy behavior best not to get high on one’s own supply. Alcohol gets in the way of everything important in life. The 2 F’s of course, but racing, jumping and calling in air strikes all are non alcoholic pursuits. All but white wine dampen the reflexes, and only queers drink that.

    2. I’ve got some of 1), Malbecs are awesome. 2), we do have a great one nearby, and 3) I made beer once and it was awful.

      They could be back to their previous market share in weeks if they ran commercials like they did in the 1980s. Hot chicks and beer drinking dogs.

  8. France, finance, 18th Century … I was anticipating reading more about John Law, special deals in currency for the rich, the Mississippi Company scam/fiasco, all of which turned a good idea into worthless fiat money, which collapsed yet again. But for a time those bank notes let their economy expand at an amazing rate.

    If this is your kind of thing, there is an interesting little fiscal history book called The Lords Of Finance

    1. Heheh. I haven’t done one on John Law, have I? He led to one Popular Delusion . . . I haven’t read the Lords of Finance, though. Good?

    2. Really nice website I found a link to (can’t remember from where) is Oceans of PDF – and it has a free download of Lords of Finance on it (along with a whole pile of other novels and non-fiction. oceanofpdf.co m

  9. Hey, Mr. Bloomberg! What’s so hard about building a business media empire? You just go out and talk to bankers, CEOs, and people, then get other bankers, CEOs, and people to pay you to tell them what you’ve heard.

    1. I’d love to see him try to keep up with some of the farmers around here, just for a day . . .

  10. Speaking of Bloomberg, I happened to see a news bite scroll by on BBG TV that a new private equity and/or venture capital operation is spinning up to invest in “companies that make tangible stuff”, having observed that our built environment has been neglected (in favor of financial vapor) for too many years. It’s a novel concept, but it just might pay off. (Too bad, I can’t remember the name.)

  11. John: Regrading beer: To the commenter’s point above, in point of fact it is good to trace back to the parent company and not purchase any of their products. Not hard in this case, as there are so many many superior local brands to the swill (there, I have said it) that is commercially available.

    I will go a small step further and suggest that much of the fallout we are seeing in terms of layoffs and companies struggling or going under (mine included) is due to engaging in practices and programs that do not directly contribute to the bottom line. The economy, as you so aptly point out, is goods and services. Anything that does not directly contribute to the output of those goods and services – be directly, as in equipment and job-specific training, or indirectly, as in benefits that keep skilled employees – is a financial drain. The question is how much of a drain people are willing to accept on profitability. I suspect the answer is going to rapidly dwindle to “just about zero”.

    Bloomberg’s answer (I remember when it was made originally) is the highest form of soft intellectual bigotry and in a way, I am glad he made it. He was, at least, honest. This is literally how Our Political And Social Betters (OPASB) see the people that supply what they need. One hopes Mr. Bloomberg someday gets to put his theory of farming into action.

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