ryan_meets_wall

Former military here also.

I'm somewhere in the middle. I think terrorists should be killed brcausr they aren't reasonable and will never put down their weapons. Drone strikes are a good way to protrct my brothers and sisters on the front line.

But what concerns me is the same thing that happens in all wars: how do we protect civilians while eliminating threats? To suggest that drone strikes don't kill civilians on occasion is non sense. There are plenty of innocent people dying in these wars.

Obviously the media is doing a poor job reporting the facts but I also can't sit here and say burn em all let god sort em out.

I think the Occupy movement and Rolling Jubilee are part of a bigger movement. If you look at say, women's suffrage or the Civil Rights movement, or the Union movement in the 1870s to 1940s, there were a lot of small start ups that generally died out after a while. But the idea was to move forward, and also to gain experience in organizing and helping people.

So now, we have a whole group of people learning how our debt system works, and how organizing works. Ideally, and a as a matter of historical precedent, sometime in the future, a new generation of go-getters will be shown by this group of people how its done. Its a sort of snow ball effect.

I would guess that these movements main goal is just to do SOMETHING. I don't think its a good idea to say, "okay, we need to eliminate the insane debt system we have". A better goal would be "lets just see how the system works so we can twist it to the common man's (or woman's) advantage. Its easy to say "what the hell is your goal?" because we live in the present, but remember, movements take a long time to develop. This should probably be viewed as a beginning, though with the internet as prevalent as it is, I suspect it will be a much faster snowball effect than in years past.

Finally, I think in terms of what is illegitimate debt, you have to ask is it hurting the country or economy? If debt is hurting our economic solvency or hurting the country, don't we need to fix it?

For example, I completely agree that you sort of know what you get into with student loan debt. However, I also think it greatly damages the economic system because that huge amount of money being paid back is money that could have boosted the housing market, or the car industry, or money that could have been saved so if a person loses their job they don't have to immediately turn to government aid. Student loan debt, and medical debt for that matter, seem to me to damage the economy. Im not an economist, but it just seems common sense to me. I could be wrong.

Anyway, the point is, when asking questions about the debt we accrue, the bottom line is, does the debt hurt or help the country. A certain amount of the right kind of debt, like a housing loan, is great. But student loan debt doesn't do anything for anyone except guarantee a degree, which doesn't guarantee anything really. Its a loan for nothing essentially.

Further, companies can hide and manipulate the facts so that you don't really know what you signed up for. I do think the government taking on the responsibility of student loan debt helps limit that, but its still got to be a concern.

TL;DR Dont be so concerned with what the end goal of the movement is. Its just a building block. Save those (excellent) questions for when the ball really gets rolling.

If money was not an issue, what would you improve?

Thank you for answering! I know we are a big country but I believe this can be a possibility!