That was my first reaction to Megan McArdle’s post about the Occupy Wall Street protesters that Glenn linked earlier.
This is a revolt by some of the people who want to tell people what to do against the people who are actually hired for the job of telling people what to do. Forget for the moment that the tell-people-what-to-do position is illegitimate. The plain fact is that despite government expansion, there are not enough tell-people-what-to-do jobs to go around. However, instead of revolting against their “betters” who actually get to tell people what to do, they are revolting against the ostensible target class. Big business. Never mind that it’s your average small business or working class stiff who ends up being targeted. The latter, so OWS claims deceitfully, are “part of” the “99%.”
Neat trick if you can get away with it. But I don’t think they can.
Ordinary people know their potential rulers when they see them, and despite the lofty rhetoric, the OWS protesters want to rule. They want to join the legions of people cranked out by the innumerable schools of control. Schools of Government. Schools of Public Policy. Schools of Urban Planning. Schools of Public Health. And schools which endlessly crank out an endless oversupply of the hordes who are empowered to tell governments, developers, doctors, and everyone else what to do without so much as having to run for office.
Part of me feels sorry for them for not being able to get jobs. But when I think about the jobs they want, I cringe.
I don’t want the “1%” replaced by the 0.032006042740869475%.
Their claim to speak for 99% only reveals their desire to rule.