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Occupy George

occupygeorge.com

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Re: Occupy George

#41

Post by jamieb »

scottjad wrote: post #35

"The richest 1% of Americans control over 1/3 of the wealth, leaving the bottom 80% with less than 1/5." This suffers from the pie fallacy covered in http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html Also if you look at http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html table 3 you'll see that the distribution of wealth between 1% and 99% in 2007 (which I assume is pretty much the same today) was essentially identical t…

If by the pie fallacy you mean that people are forgetting that the 2011 pie now represents a much greater total number of dollars than the 1920 pie, then I must point out that the simple economic fact that if we just multiplied everyone's bank balance by 1000, nobody would be better off, even though they now had 1000 times as many dollars.

And while it is true that a 1920's person could not buy an iPad, this is of scant comfort to a homeless family in 2011.

Re: Occupy George

#42

Post by greyman »

potatolicious wrote: post #23
Shenglong wrote: post #11

Can someone brief me on what Occupy Wall Street is trying to do? I can't quite figure it out. If they're mad about being unemployed, marching sure isn't going to fix their situation. If they're mad about government corruption, what exactly would they like done? If they're mad about the economy in general, isn't Wall Street the worst place to be protesting? I feel like the traders on Wall Street would be the first peo…

The OWS movement is certainly pretty confused and vague when it comes to demands. It would be a mistake, IMO, to use this to dismiss the reasons why people have chosen this time to protest. If you look at the people and signs at a #Occupy protest, you will find a familiar theme: income disparity and unemployment. People are running scared in an economy where social mobility has been utterly destroyed, unemployment ru…

Why is something fundamentally broken?

Re: Occupy George

#43

Post by yosheryosh »

Shenglong wrote: post #11

Can someone brief me on what Occupy Wall Street is trying to do? I can't quite figure it out. If they're mad about being unemployed, marching sure isn't going to fix their situation. If they're mad about government corruption, what exactly would they like done? If they're mad about the economy in general, isn't Wall Street the worst place to be protesting? I feel like the traders on Wall Street would be the first peo…

Going to march is better than sitting at home saying "marching sure isn't going to fix my situation."

Re: Occupy George

#44

Post by mappu »

jamieb wrote: post #30
Shenglong wrote: post #11

Can someone brief me on what Occupy Wall Street is trying to do? I can't quite figure it out. If they're mad about being unemployed, marching sure isn't going to fix their situation. If they're mad about government corruption, what exactly would they like done? If they're mad about the economy in general, isn't Wall Street the worst place to be protesting? I feel like the traders on Wall Street would be the first peo…

I feel like the traders on Wall Street would be the first people to want an economic bounce back. Hence your failure to understand OWS. Wall Street's job is to make money. Period. If it happens that it is effective to make money by repeatedly crashing and booming the stock market, then that is exactly what they will do. Well, it turns out that it is extremely effective to make money by repeatedly crashing and booming…

I find the most interesting part of this 'hack' is how it's next to impossible to pull off a successful protest in civilised society: The greatest trick the upper echelon have pulled, is convincing the masses that using violence to achieve your ends is uncivilised.

As a non-US-er, we sometimes look down on the US for having a gun obsession, but there's no way anything OWS does would escalate to the point of seriously grabbing everyone's attention like, say, building an army, storming a building and forcibly arresting a CEO. They say OWS is inspired by the Arab Spring[1][2], but that would be a pretty tame example compared to the revolutions in Egypt and Libya. The people in OWS are upset, but not desperate, and I'm not sure this can lead to any sort of radical change unless the 1% agree voluntarily, which is obviously unlikely. It's very hard to think of a non-violent way to actually incite some change.

"The USA should invade the USA and win the hearts and minds of the population by building roads, bridges and putting locals to work." - Paul Myers

As a postscript, the amount of copycat protests are also slightly embarrassing. It's great to show solidarity, but for instance I don't think there needs to be one for my town. It's just awkward and trivialises the situation, since our economic problems are negligible compared to the US.

________

1. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Arab_Spring

2. http://occupywallst.org/about/

Re: Occupy George

#45

Post by epscylonb »

jforman wrote: post #26
Shenglong wrote: post #11

Can someone brief me on what Occupy Wall Street is trying to do? I can't quite figure it out. If they're mad about being unemployed, marching sure isn't going to fix their situation. If they're mad about government corruption, what exactly would they like done? If they're mad about the economy in general, isn't Wall Street the worst place to be protesting? I feel like the traders on Wall Street would be the first peo…

One of the common outcomes I've heard called for is a "separation of corporation and state," in response to what people feel is an outsized voice in the democratic process for corporations at the expense of individual citizens. The backlash against TARP is a good example of fairly broad sentiment that federal policy favors financial institutions and high-value investors over "Main Street." Lawrence Lessig has spoken…

I am convinced that that in the same vein as america pioneering the separation of church and state, the next big government evolution will be the separation of state and business.

It will be extremely hard to accomplish though because historically money and power have always been bedfellows.

The real problem is the people are complacent, most of what western governments legislate is in the interests of lobbyists, but people only care about lawmaking when they are personally poor or if it concerns foreign policy (TERRORISM).

I have always thought a jury system for legislation might be a good idea, get the sponsor of a bill to stand in front of 12 randomly picked citizens and have them explain what the bill will do, and most importantly, why they are trying to pass the bill.

Re: Occupy George

#46

Post by JoshTriplett »

potatolicious wrote: post #23
Shenglong wrote: post #11

Can someone brief me on what Occupy Wall Street is trying to do? I can't quite figure it out. If they're mad about being unemployed, marching sure isn't going to fix their situation. If they're mad about government corruption, what exactly would they like done? If they're mad about the economy in general, isn't Wall Street the worst place to be protesting? I feel like the traders on Wall Street would be the first peo…

The OWS movement is certainly pretty confused and vague when it comes to demands. It would be a mistake, IMO, to use this to dismiss the reasons why people have chosen this time to protest. If you look at the people and signs at a #Occupy protest, you will find a familiar theme: income disparity and unemployment. People are running scared in an economy where social mobility has been utterly destroyed, unemployment ru…

I agree with your assessment of why the protesters protest, and that they don't have a clue how to "fix" things. I disagree with your claim that this indicates anything "fundamentally broken", other than the mindset of the protesters in thinking someone else should step in and make their lives better in all the individual ways they consider their personal situations undesirable.

Edit: Clearly people disagree. I'd appreciate some responses to go with the downvotes; I'd enjoy some discussion, rather than silencing.

Re: Occupy George

#47

Post by nhaehnle »

Shenglong wrote: post #18
gaurav_v wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that the movement lacks a coherent message. That being said, one of the large issues in play is that people feel slighted by rising income inequality, which they perceive to have arisen out of a sort of government-industry feedback loop. Certainly this is what the printed dollar bills seem to be about. With regard to your comments about the utility of the protest: I don't think it's a waste in any regard. If…

Shouldn't you have a viable alternative solution in mind, when you express displeasure? I can understand that they're angry - I just can't understand how they want the government to fix it.

CodeMage provided an excellent analogy to answer this question some time ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3080440 - you should check it out.

Another way to look at it is this: The grievances of the protesters cannot be fixed by individual action. They require a change of the rules, i.e. political action. When such grievances become large enough, you (i.e. the people) use progressively stronger methods to try to tell politicians that you're serious about it.

If the political system is flexible and effective enough to react and address the grievances, then the movement succeeds, e.g. the civil rights movement in the US in the 1960s.

If the political system is too rigid and unable or unwilling to react, and the grievances remain, then the state will ultimately fail, e.g. East Germany in the 1980s.

Re: Occupy George

#48

Post by JoshTriplett »

mappu wrote: post #44
jamieb wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like the traders on Wall Street would be the first people to want an economic bounce back. Hence your failure to understand OWS. Wall Street's job is to make money. Period. If it happens that it is effective to make money by repeatedly crashing and booming the stock market, then that is exactly what they will do. Well, it turns out that it is extremely effective to make money by repeatedly crashing and booming…

I find the most interesting part of this 'hack' is how it's next to impossible to pull off a successful protest in civilised society: The greatest trick the upper echelon have pulled, is convincing the masses that using violence to achieve your ends is uncivilised. As a non-US-er, we sometimes look down on the US for having a gun obsession, but there's no way anything OWS does would escalate to the point of seriously…

That sounds like a good way for the people calling themselves the "99%" to lose what little support they might have from the 98.999%.

Re: Occupy George

#49

Post by wahnfrieden »

ars wrote: post #25
acoster wrote: post #20

This is more an annoyance to the 99% that gets such bills (many places don't accept defaced banknotes).

The bill will not be accepted by anyone, so the only one who will see it is the person who printed it. They could deposit it in a bank, but the bank will just send it to the Fed to be destroyed and replaced. (They have automated scanners that look for dirty, worn out, or defaced bills.) So this is pointless if they want these notes to actually circulate - all they are doing is wasting money used to reprint the notes.

I've been given and have consequently used many defaced bills over recent years. You haven't seen all those bills stamped with things like that bill tracking website, or just random notes scribbled in with pen? If there are rules against accepting these, they're not followed by businesses I've dealt with.

Re: Occupy George

#50

Post by JoshTriplett »

epscylonb wrote: post #45
jforman wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the common outcomes I've heard called for is a "separation of corporation and state," in response to what people feel is an outsized voice in the democratic process for corporations at the expense of individual citizens. The backlash against TARP is a good example of fairly broad sentiment that federal policy favors financial institutions and high-value investors over "Main Street." Lawrence Lessig has spoken…

I am convinced that that in the same vein as america pioneering the separation of church and state, the next big government evolution will be the separation of state and business. It will be extremely hard to accomplish though because historically money and power have always been bedfellows. The real problem is the people are complacent, most of what western governments legislate is in the interests of lobbyists, but…

That would turn legislation into marketing. We have a bad enough problem already with knee-jerk legislation passed because it sounds shiny.

Now, as a filter, introduced in addition to umpteen other ways to prevent legislation from passing, it sounds potentially helpful. Anything that makes legislation fail by default without an exceptionally good reason to pass would improve matters.

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