There’s capitalism, and then there’s … capitalism.

A friend of mine posted on FB today about how preposterous she found the Occupy Wall Street protests: What kind of idiot protests capitalism while carrying Apple computers and drinking from Starbucks, both of which are capitalist triumphs?
I didn’t respond——I figure whatever people want to post on Facebook is their own business, and I don’t like having political arguments with friends (I have too many conservative friends for that——it’s better to talk about other things). But since I’m here on my own blog …
My immediate thought was that there’s a world of difference between the capitalism of making a good computer, or even a good cup of coffee, and the capitalism of Wall Street over the past decade. One form created stuff which has enriched our lives; the other basically shifted money from pile to pile, moved into ever-more elaborate schemes and finally devoured most of the cash, except for what went into their pockets (as Alternet argues here, there’s plenty of economic growth, but it’s not going to anyone but corporations and the big-money boys).
And while I realize it’s not a formal protest with a precise plan of action, attempts to draw up a list of demands or issues (here and here) make that pretty clear. They want things like re-regulating the financial sector, with prosecution for anyone who actually broke the law; close corporate tax loopholes; stop regulators going to work in the industries they once regulated; and strip corporations of their status as legal persons; and they’re pretty steamed about the foreclosure fraud mess too.
That’s not anticapitalism. It’s anti-corporate power and anti-crook. Which works for me.
Meanwhile, the efforts to explain it’s really the poor who are at fault continue. As Roy Edroso points out, right-winger Victor David Hanson, in a recent piece, goes beyond accusations the poor aren’t paying to enough taxes to call them “noncompliant”——i.e., that they’re not simply underpaying, they’re cheating the taxman. For sheer gall, that’s impressive.