What would you do if someone
stole your
bike -- walked up and grabbed it off your
porch and walked away with it? Surely you'd want to get it back. And if they left it sitting on their own porch, you'd have every
right to go up there and take it, for it is
your bike, and becomes no less yours for having been stolen. And, providing you had obtained it legally in the first place, the full weight of the
law ought to be at your back as you do so. Now, suppose it is Bill Smith who has stolen your bike; would the
situation be any different if instead of Bill Smith stealing your bike with his own grubby mitts, he told his
big brother Bob, go get me that bike? Suppose Bill Smith could make out a great
charity case, that his bike had a flat tire and was too tired to walk all the way home, and couldn't be let to sleep on the street? Well Bill Smith's
hardship is no answer to your lawful
ownership of your own bike (and never mind that Bill's flat tire came from Bill gleefully pounding his bike through a field of jagged rocks and
cacti). Oh, he could ask you for a
loan of it, and you might give it to him, but you don't owe him anything, and so if he takes it, or has someone else come and take it and give it to him, you've every right to take it back. And even more right to go right up to Bob Smith and demand that he
get that bike back.
And look what
Wall Street did, in the Autumn of 2008 and the Spring of 2009. They came to the
government hat in hand, and they begged that their
banking businesses were going bankrupt (their masters
having run them ragged over the sharp rocks), and that the whole country would go down the drain if they didn't get somebody's bike to ride home. All of our bike's actually. And Wall Street's big brother went and got all the bikes and gave them to Wall Street, so Wall Street didn't have to sleep in the street; and now Wall Street is back on its feet, with all our bikes all shined up on its porch. Is Wall Street planning on giving us back our bikes? Seems not. Seems like they're glad to have them and keep them and pretend they came honestly by them, and if somebody ever suggests that a bike or two ought to be returned, Wall Street turns on the waterworks and the fear machine and starts rumbling about market instability and dire consequences.
Well fuck Wall Street. I want my god damned bike back, and I think most every citizen whose bike was transplanted as if by a thief in the night wants their bike back, and you know what else? I think we've a right to it, every one of us, to go up to Wall Street (or one of its outposts spread across the land) and
demand our bike back; and if they won't have that, to
take our bike back, to take from them whatever matches the value of what they've taken from us. And, yes, I know the government won't tolerate that, won't hesitate to jail whosoever should take back what's theirs and was taken from them and given to Wall Street, so perhaps we really ought to be going straight to the source, straight to the government and telling
it, go to Wall Street and tell them you're taking back all the bikes, and if they refuse to return them you'll simply open the
floodgates to allowing
we the people to come and get them back themselves.