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There are several things which appear to be unrelated to this issue but are all contributing parts to this whole problem.

Having a big government system. Big government allows for lobbyists to come in and corrupt the system. If big government does not exist and a governments only role in life is to ensure that rights and liberty is preserved then there can be no lobbyist influence in the first place. Its only that the government has become so vast and corruptible that big corporate interests can get their foot in the door in the first place.

The need for vast amounts of cash. Money in politics really is disturbing as this gives smaller sections of society an unfair advantage when campaigning and turns the election process into a bidding war between who can buy the interests of politicians while at the same time forces politicians to pander their manifestos towards the big special interest groups - rather than having the outcome of an election be determined by the substance of the candidates policy views.

There are plenty of politicians out there who have the right ideas, just they are marginalised by media which is also corrupted by big financial industries.

Which brings me to the mass media. A good documentary on this issue in general is Orwell Rolls in His Grave, which discusses the way that the media's roll was redefined by the FCC and essentially perverts the whole notion of the whole purpose of mass media. "A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both." comes to mind here.

The hijacking of the tax payers money to fund wars the people do not support. The majority of the money spent on the war has stayed in America, only you don't have it any more and a small group of war profiteers do. The government just pays your tax dollars to war profiteers and large corporations who are players in the military industrial complex. It's not like people couldn't have seen this coming, President Eisenhower did warn about it in his farewell address. But again this plays into the idea of big government and how useful it is in practice. While the country has gone bankrupt the war profiteering racket has made trillions of dollars, and we paid for it. Just as Voltaire once said "In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other." This is your 'war on terror' in action.

Finally, the slow but steady eroding of liberty as mentioned above with various acts like the Patriot Act, combined with the general apathy of the population has allowed this to get to where we are today. Sure people are angry now and movements like Occupy highlight the general sense of frustration felt across the world with the current state of affairs, but at the same time can we be honest with ourselves for one moment and cast our minds back to only 5 years ago, before the housing credit meltdown, where money was being thrown about left, right and centre and the majority of people, probably yourself and myself included didn't give a flying fuck about any of the above because the good times were rolling.

The point is, liberty should be defended by all of us, all of the time, not just sometimes, or when it personally affects us. It reminds me of the old saying 'First they came'

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

This is so true. I've spoken to so many friends that just say things like, "doesn't affect my life at all." They can't wrap their heads around the fact that the whole point is that one day it could affect you, and judging by the fact that humans seem to not learn from history, it will.

+1 for Freedom Watch- my favorite news show for sure.

This will all be moot when the U.S. Government crashes the dollar and takes the world economy with it. (This will happen- not if, when) At that point the world will certainly be different. IDK how or in what ways but it will damn sure be different.

+1 for Freedom Watch- my favorite news show for sure.

This will all be moot when the U.S. Government crashes the dollar and takes the world economy with it. (This will happen- not if, when) At that point the world will certainly be different. IDK how or in what ways but it will damn sure be different.

Enlighten us young one

Enlighten us young one

the dollar is the reserve currency of the world. if the dollar collapses, the entire world goes into a Depression like nothing we've seen before.

the dollar is the reserve currency of the world. if the dollar collapses, the entire world goes into a Depression like nothing we've seen before.

I keep hearing that the dollar will collapse but I just don't see how it possibly could. I guess that's where the "like nothing we've seen before" comes in if it's true.

If anyone could send me some info on where to find out some background info on this topic I would really appreciate it.

I'm doing a persuasive speech for my public speaking course on either this issue or "Why online poker should be legal", Although I'm somewhat weighted towards doing it on SOPA because people in my class could actually relate.

Well we are already seeing it- gold has risen sharply, all commodities have, that is a decline in the value of a dollar. A collapse likely won't happen overnight but over time the dollar will continue to fall in value, I guess we get to decide when it has "collapsed". Is 10 dollar/gallon gasoline a collapse? Is 20 bucks for a burger a collapse? At a certain point regular people just won't have much of a standard of living at least nothing like what they are used to.

Just like 5-7 years ago $1 was around 10 SEK, and worth almost the same as the €URO. Now it is worth 6.80 SEK and € is worth 9.20 SEK.

I am not familar with what it is depending on, but it seems to me like the collapse started already a few years ago. The SEK might have been a little stronger, but still, the € haven't changed at all that much.

EDIT: The € might be going down to, depending on what's happening with Greece?

The Bailouts, or 'Quantitative Easing' = Printing money

Once you begin to print more money to pay off existing obligations then the value of your money goes down.

The less value money has, the more expensive actual commodities become.

This means the average person pays more for the same product. Hence a lowering of living standards.

Unlike others in the thread, I'm quite cynical about any effort to change.

It's rigged in such a way that no amount of representative calling or protest is going to change anything. The people are too greedy, too addicted to power, too dependent on the financial non-entities that lobby them into office.

agree with tHeBoYmUsTdIe here. i don't think ten million random people calling congressmen will influence SOPA. that's the difference between government and business. it's the difference between small money and big money.

business rely on small money--small, daily interactions with the little people. that's why the ATM card fee protests worked. but politicians only understand big money. they don't care about your threat to not vote for them. they don't need me or you to vote for them. they need big money to convince other people who don't care about issues to vote for them. SOPA = big money domain. we're not part of this debate.

i just hope Google, Facebook, ebay, and Yahoo have more clout than Hollywood and the record companies. we'll see what we see.

George Carlin anyone?

Throwing our hands in the air and declaring that nothing can be done is not the answer.

but how is giving up our privary to lost causes going against the government and opening ourselves to be targets better?

BUMP!!!!

EDIT:

Thats's pretty f**k'd up.

So is SOPA officially in action?

whatever i think of SOPA (whose fight this is, who can stop it), extorting people to side for your cause is an abuse. if you can hold information hostage, that information was never free, Wikipedia.