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Occupy George

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Re: Occupy George

#51

Post by nhebb »

maximusprime wrote: post #29
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…

They're angry that success is rewarded with money. They'd rather failure also be rewarded with money.

Actually, many are angry because failure was rewarded with money. The core issue was that the financial sector took huge risks with mortgage backed securities, which weren't properly rated by firms like S&P, and when that lead to the financial meltdown, the government bailed them out. Other than Lehman, Wall Street firms weathered the meltdown fine but the people of the US - and other countries - felt the brunt of the downturn.

Since the beginning, many groups with different goals have been attracted onto the OWS movement, and the message has been scattered. My bet is that the movement will peter out due to lack of focus and won't have a lasting impact on politics or policy.

Meanwhile, the mortgage industry is still partying it up on your dime: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/business/fannie-mae-and-fr...

Re: Occupy George

#52

Post by nhaehnle »

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…

This may come as a surprise to you, too, but the IMF has finally caught on to the fact that inequality hurts economic development: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/sdn/2011/sdn1108.pdf

Obviously, forced total equality is unlikely to be good either. But from a certain point, inequality causes macro-economic imbalances that prevent natural growth of the pie.

Besides, what the "pie fallacy" ignores is to discuss the relationship between income and wealth and the talent required to obtain it. Think about it that way: by almost all measures in almost all areas, talent, work ethics, whatever you can think of, it is all essentially normally distributed. But if income should reflect those virtues, then we would expect income to be essentially normally distributed as well. So why do income and wealth essentially follow an exponential distribution?

Something really fishy is going on there, and it is only appropriate to challenge a status quo that leads to such an outcome.

Re: Occupy George

#53

Post by antihero »

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…

"The greatest trick the upper echelon have pulled, is convincing the masses that using violence to achieve your ends is uncivilised."

Bam.

I amazes me that when 500,000 people marched in London on the 26th of March, people were dumb enough to ignore the messages being sent, and instead focus on some superficial property damage.

Re: Occupy George

#54

Post by ErrantX »

maximusprime wrote: post #31
furyg3 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sad to think that the organizers of this will probably be arrested for "conspiracy to deface government property" or something. Or, since they're also advancing a political message of 'fear', maybe it will be terrorism?

The correct course of action for them, is to put up candidates to be elected into office. That's what a democracy is about. You don't get anywhere by whining and moaning on the streets that life isn't fair. You certainly don't get taken seriously by anyone.

Or in a slightly more cynical way (as one of my favourite bloggers commented):

> If you hold a protest and you aren't throwing rocks it will fail.

Re: Occupy George

#55

Post by nknight »

maximusprime wrote: post #31
furyg3 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sad to think that the organizers of this will probably be arrested for "conspiracy to deface government property" or something. Or, since they're also advancing a political message of 'fear', maybe it will be terrorism?

The correct course of action for them, is to put up candidates to be elected into office. That's what a democracy is about. You don't get anywhere by whining and moaning on the streets that life isn't fair. You certainly don't get taken seriously by anyone.

A long time ago, some crackpots thought protests were worth protecting. Can't remember who they were, must not have had much impact...

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Re: Occupy George

#56

Post by scottjad »

jamieb wrote: post #41
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 sc…

Your characterization of the pie fallacy is wrong.

pg: "I can remember believing, as a child, that if a few rich people had all the money, it left less for everyone else. Many people seem to continue to believe something like this well into adulthood. This fallacy is usually there in the background when you hear someone talking about how x percent of the population have y percent of the wealth. If you plan to start a startup, then whether you realize it or not, you're planning to disprove the Pie Fallacy."

Re: Occupy George

#57

Post by rajivrnair »

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…

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/10/the-occu...

I think this article summarizes the point of the "Occupation" well.

Re: Occupy George

#58

Post by seabee »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #50
epscylonb wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To a large extent this is the purpose of the House of Lords in UK parliament.

The selection process for its members is not at all democratic which leaves a bad taste in many people's mouths. But the general concept of an elected body whose members serve over several terms of government can be helpful to limit overtly populist or ill-thought-out legislation.

Re: Occupy George

#59

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…

which I assume is pretty much the same today

a) Why would you assume that after a major crash the distribution is the same?

b) And the paper that you quoted says this: "So as of April 2010, it looks like the wealth distribution is even more unequal than it was in 2007."

Re: Occupy George

#60

Post by nknight »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #46
potatolicious wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 app…

I have two very simple questions for you:

1) Do you believe it right that the financial sector was, and is still being, bailed out?

2) If not, how do you describe the system producing that result, if not "fundamentally broken"?

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