But I understand. I realize that the OWS movement – and the populist opposition to business bailouts in general – isn’t about these particular bailouts, but the issue of bailouts per se. The opposition to these particular bailouts is just the excuse to have a referendum on this kind of behavior, and thus determine the course of America’s political future. Let’s look at what the OWS people would have that future look like.

Unlike the typical member of the “Tea Party”, the typical OWS protestor isn’t opposed to bailouts *on principle*, but simply bailouts to rich people at the expense of poor people. If it were the other way around – if the government had taken money from rich people and given it to some poor person to “bail him out” from a life spent buying menthol cigarettes and shiny 18″ wheels when he should have been paying for groceries – they would be all for it. In fact, that’s what they’re advocating. They aren’t saying that “bailouts”, period – no matter who the “bailer” and who the “bailee” is – are wrong; they’re saying that all of the money the government refun – er, gave – to rich people could have been spent on poor people. In other words: unlike the Tea Partiers – who were appealing to the principle of LIBERTY – the OWSers are appealing to the principle of COLLECTIVISM.

They aren’t saying “Don’t tread on me” as a general expression of notion that man – individual man – is not be tread on. They’re saying it, but with the addendum “… tread on him, instead” slipped in implicitly at the end.

Financial markets don’t need to be regulated (even more than they already are; the repeal of Glass-Steagle notwithstanding). They need to be freed from taxes, regulations, and all the other altruism-motivated government dictates of their business practices (ie: NINJA loans), so that they can make money performing less risky behavior. Of course, in today’s environment, it is true that certain people are attracted to Wall Street that, in any other era, would be common criminals who couldn’t dream of working there. Mice rush in where lions fear to tread. But that isn’t the essence of the problems on Wall Street today. The essence comes from the behavior of the men who WOULD be there even in a completely free economy. The hard-nosed, practical, narrow-minded men who take their fiduciary duty (ie: THEIR FUCKING JOBS) seriously, and who simply react to the rules of the game as they’re set by their overlords in Washington. These men are not inherently evil (as the OWS Marxist-altruists want you to believe), but nor are they inherently good. They’re simply workers like everyone else, and if you want them to perform work that benefits not just themselves, but everyone else – kind of like small business does, the darling of the faux-capitalist left these days* – then set them free to fucking do it.

*Have you looked at a small business these days? Computers, phones, automobiles, plane tickets, office supplies, packages being delivered, etc, etc, etc. Small businesses “are the back bone of America”? Bullshit. Big business is the back bone of small business – and thus the back bone of America.