I don't see, in what I understand in the Occupy movement, and how it is working locally where I am, that whenever a General Assembly meeting is, and someone would propose a blanket blocking of capitalism, you couldn't just block it and disagree.  The approach looks like consensus to it, and you are free to go down and express your mind regarding it.  Particularly people on the anarchist side would end up speaking against the entire more government approach.

I would say to go down peacefully and engage there.  Feel free to donate some books on real capitalism.  I would say to try to shape the issue to be against Crony Capitalism.  I know with myself, I am pointing to "Fear the Boom and the Bust" and the sequel, when discussing things when I go.  End the Fed is welcome there.  Some may not agree with it, but it certainly isn't shouted down.  I also believe a get out of debt message would fit also.

Again, engage in this, and see.

I would engage, but I'm from the UK. There are no OWS movements going on near me. In fact, at the University I'm on, I'm guessing that fewer than 50% of the students have even heard of the OWS movement.

I don't see buying air-time as being a significant "end-around" because if an individual or organization wants to spend the money on their own to announce their support for an individual or a cause they should be able to ... But there should be a cap on the amount of money an individual or organization should be able to spend funding politicians and/or political organizations which hide their support.

Or to use an example, if GE wants to spend millions of dollars on an ad-campaign to announce their support for green initiatives to gain billions of dollars in subsidies they should be able to; but they shouldn’t be able to funnel a similar amount of money into a PAC called "Citizens for a green tomorrow" and hide their support to avoid negative consequences.

You are nowhere near any protests?  Maybe a place to engage would be on the web at least.  It might be I benefit from one near where I am, so I can go out to it.  

I will say there is a bit of confusion, or frustration of seeing that it looks like they have been shorted and don't see signs of hope.  A lot of groping for answers here, but that is part of the process.  Considering how much you get prepacked answered pitched all the time, with each person targeted as a consumer, this groping for answers seems different and "not what one should expect from a protest".  It is more of, we are mad as hell at things, and not going to take it any more.  Signs point to bail outs as a problem, and a small percentage doing better and better as the rest end up worse off.

On this, I can say, if there isn't anything Occupy near you, and you are concerned, start some meetings to discuss the fate of the world, and see what can be come up with.  Engage somehow, don't just be isolated.

In smaller strokes yeah.

For example... in my Consumer Psychology class my proffessor talked about a big McDonalds opening in Moscow. it was one of the first McDonalds there, and it was HUGE.  Had 5 Cashiers so there would be no wait.

It did poor buisness and they had to cut the cashiers down to 2.... and then the strangest thing happened.   Buisness greatly increased.

Due to how the USSR used to be, there used to be LOOOOOOONG lines that would take hours to get to the end of, they were so long it often wasn't worth it to go to the front of the line to see what they were giving away because so many people would end up lining up ahead of you.

So they devleoped a habit of just picking the longest line they could find because the longer the line meant the more valuable the product being given away.  If you already had it you could trade it for what you did need.

As such that developed an consumer culture opposite of ours, IE "Long lines = Good because it's a sign of a quality product."

There willingess to spend time was greater then ours, where often we're more then willing to spend money so we don't waste time.

So in broader strokes for example.  Keynsian economics may work in a country like North Korea or China by simply not announcing the government intervention which would give the illusion that private enterprise is doing better, when it's not.

I'd say Keynsian economics doesn't work in the West because people know the goverment is doing it.

When the government says "We're going to spend all this money to fix the economy."

The Keynsian belief seems to be people will thing "Great, lets start buying again right now, since I can be sure the economy will be fixed."

I think the general person's thought is "Great, so if all goes well, we've only got to tighten our belts a little longer. "

Ironically constricting consumer spending more since inaction would lead to the general consesnus.

"This might go on for a long time, so there is no point in putting off my big purchase unless I want to never get it."  (IE: big screen TV, videogame system whatever.)

To the people in North Korea, they'd just think  "Hey things are getting cheaper/better, we don't have to worry as much."

I find the Moscow anecdote fascinating, but it actually adds fire to the bottom-up argument of the Austrian School, on two levels. The first being that Austrian Economists often vouch that there is more to life than money. They realize that different people hold different things to different values (like, for example, the value of a person's time), it's the Keynsians who often view money as being the only important thing - they vouch for equality, but only equality of money, nothing else is important to them. It's like an obsession.

The second point is that Austrian Economists always argue for a bottom-up approach to running economies. Had the Soviets created a burger restaurant in Moscow, and gave it lots of resources, enough to staff 5 cashiers, it would have taken a lot longer for the restaurant to change its business plan to reflect the cultural differences, as it would have had to wait for political decrees from the top-down.

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The Chinese/North Korean example.... I dunno how much I believe that. There are many issues with both the Chinese and North Korean economies. The Chinese may not be aware that the Government are artificially stimulating the economy, but the businesses are - small businesses are having a lot of trouble getting loans in China (much like the US/rest of the world) because the Chinese banks are putting all of their capital into state companies. The banks know that the state companies offer no risk, as they're backed by the Chinese Government. The Chinese economy would probably grow faster if their Government slashed spending. Poor decisions among the Chinese officials, combined with the public becoming too over-reliant on Government assurance have created some massive bubbles. You thought the housing bubble here was bad? There is something like 80 million uninhabited homes in China, which all need to go onto the market at some point.

I think you're right in the sense that, because there's less transparency, certain consumer behaviors under typical Keynsian/top-down economics do not come into play. However, those consumer behaviors are not the only problem with those economic schools.

I wasn't suggesting that Keynesian economcis would work at Moscow, it's just an example to show that cultures are widely different.

There is probably somewhere in the world where people are either optimistic enough or ill informed enough where a typical Keynesian style stimulus actually would provide more then a minor Sugar high.

^^^^ This. And thing is when you really get down to it, coorperatism and capitalism can not coexist which tells you what the economic state of America really is!

I'm sure if you have a small enough population of people, some aspects of a top-down approach work. Still, the Keynsian acts of printing money, running deficits, will still cause problems.