Occupy Wall St.

[bob]

You're quoting Lyotard on QN -- surprises abound. I am not alone here.

I have a checkered past. But don't tell Dominic: He might take offense if I share my opinion that Derrida is more difficult than differential equations.

Anyway, it seems to me that OWS (not to bring the discussion back to its original point or anything) is a fantastic example of precisely the things Lyotard wrote about in The Postmodern Condition and The Differend. Some seem to yearn for a coherent statement of "their demands"; others lampoon them because they can't seem to articulate anything concrete in this direction. I would argue that what they demand is quite clear, but there is no possibility in established genres of discourse (political discourse, economic discourse) for expressing it intelligibly.

On Friday, I stopped by for a bit and saw them in their ongoing efforts to form, at the very least, a way they can speak among themselves, at least, even if it eventually makes little sense in other terms. I sort of doubt they'll succeed, but it's fascinating to see them try.

 

[TraderJoe]

Well, that is the history of civilizations. There was an era when Britain, France, Spain, and Portugal explored the world and colonized the world and ruled the world.
World War II changed everything and saw the emergence of USA and USSR as economic and military superpowers.
The macroeconomic factors which are currently in play are too powerful to roll back, short of a major war.
It is almost certain that within 10 years China will emerge as the largest economy in the world and within 30 years, India will draw near parity with them.
The sooner the population in USA and Europe adjusts to the new global reality, the better they will be able to deal with it.
If the Wall Street protesters decided to compete instead of complain, they would be better off for it.

 

[Abdel]

Also America has never at any point in its history been the richest country on Earth. It currently enjoys the highest GDP of any country, but "rich" is not how much money a set of people have, it is how much money they have each, else you end up treating India as a rich place, which it ain't.

So what you have is a logical fallacy based upon an assertion that isn't correct in the first place.

Wrong.

To prove my point, look at the standards of living of americans in let's say 1910 VS the living standards of the rest of the world. It was much higher.

If we look at nations and times with very low levels of government we have such success stories as:

Somalia, practically no government at all
Pre-Invasion Afghanistan
Native Americans
Dark Ages Europe, the hint is in the name
Pre-unification Italy is a great laboratory of why you are wrong, but as well as logic, you didn't trouble yourself to learn any history did you ?

You're making the same mistake as Alexei and I discussed this with him already. All the countries/regions you mentioned didn't have a strong legal system. Alexei pointed out that Russia currently have a free market economy and that it was a mess. Sure it is, the head of Russia's justice departement admited that Russia's legal system was ''a mess''.

Respect for private property is one of the keystone of capitalism. If you don't have a strong legal system, it won't work.

You didn't trouble yourself to read any of my previous posts, did you? =)

Did the constitution make the USA great ?
Maybe, I'd like to see some evidence that copes with how you ignore the fact that the greatest competitors to the USA destroyed their economies in wars, was that the constitution or two big oceans ?

The only greatest competitor of the USA that comes to my mind is the Soviet Union. And their empire got crushed because of their big governement, i.e. they went broke.

 

[Abdel]

I have to agree that the constitutional cheerleading is driven by a deep misunderstanding of US history.

Constitutional cheerleading, really? Again, we're not talking about N-E Patriots VS philly Eagles.
You know, no one is forced to live together & no country has a right to exist. The only thing that makes it possible is that social contract.

Amazing the lack of respect for the Constitution.

Thereafter, the US has been a country of boom-and-bust capitalism .

Not capitalism, but a phony bubble distorted economy, thanks to the FED.

When most Americans think of our past greatness, they are really thinking about a slice of 50 years or so after WWII. It's a trick of human memory that those 50 years wind up coloring what came before.

lol sure, during the last 50 years, governement spent all the wealth it accumulated and it does feels good to buy stuff. But the question americans should ask themselfs, is where did that wealth came from? How come other countries couldn't generate that much wealth in such a short period of time?

 

[bigbadwolf]

I have a checkered past. But don't tell Dominic: He might take offense if I share my opinion that Derrida is more difficult than differential equations.

Anyway, it seems to me that OWS (not to bring the discussion back to its original point or anything) is a fantastic example of precisely the things Lyotard wrote about in The Postmodern Condition and The Differend.

Can't stomach Derrida. Foucault is fine, Baudrillard is fine, Debord is fine -- and you might well be au fait with Debord's Society of the Spectacle. An essay on OWS along Debord's lines:

If the Occupy movement is an occupation of leisure, it is much more an occupation of spectacle. Its most brilliant slogan (“We are the 99%”) captures the sublime feeling of statistical supermajority, which today takes its most familiar form as the count of semi-anonymous Internet “hits.” #Occupy has gone viral, and its encampments exist to generate the content that keeps the hits coming. It is a telling irony that the media reaction to the movement has thus far been that the movement lacks content. The content proper to it has in fact been precisely the spectacular content of reproduced assent that the popularity mill of social media, TV news, and political commentary all share.

Spectacular occupation, for all of its new-media penetration, still places its hopes in an old pattern of escalation. The task of short-circuiting the spectacle of accumulating Facebook “likes” and translating discontent into action currently lies the hands of authority, whose illegitimacy is supposed to reveal itself in oppressive control tactics and suppression of basic demands. Occupiers come armed with camera-phones; they obey laws not merely because they believe in peaceful protest but because they await prime footage of police plodding over their innocence, to be posted as links and broadcast to new followers. Or they await similarly blunt attempts by officials and bankers to speak power to truth. Recent events tell us that nothing fills the streets like injustice streaming live; nothing catalyzes choice and action like direct and urgent repression.

These are things US officials know well. The advanced subtlety of homeland security and widespread techniques of accommodation, diversion, and false choice (the creation of phony crises, the relabeling of remote-controlled war, and so on) are specially designed to prevent meaningful escalation, peaceful or otherwise.

 

[DanM]

Oh please, I've heard the "IRS is unconstitutional" bit way too much. Being contested in court does not equate to being proven guilty. Our courts are based on a system of "innocent until proven guilty".

The IRS still exists. That means you are incorrect in your last sentence.

I never said anything about the IRS being unconstitutional. The IRS isn't even a social program.

There are, and have been, social programs that are unconstitutional. The New Deal, for example, had many programs that were found to be unconstitutional by SCOTUS, and were subsequently repealed - one of them being a statutory plan to control agriculture production. And this happens quite often, as there are hundreds (maybe thousands?) of social programs in existence which most people have no idea about. They are unconstitutional because the vast majority of them abuse the general welfare clause which is in direct violation of the 10th amendment (which is suppose to limit the power of the federal government to expand upon the general welfare clause beyond the amendments.) Absent this abuse of the general welfare clause, social programs would be added through an amendment. This would make it a right for everyone (not just for special interests or for certain segments of the population) and more importantly, it would be much more difficult to pass, as it would require 2/3 majority in the senate.

 

[bigbadwolf]

Meanwhile in London:

"I've got quite a lot of sympathy for their message," said Alessio, 41, an investment banker, who like most workers preferred not to give his full name. "Most of my colleagues take a very different view – jokes about people not washing. I don't really challenge them. It wouldn't change anyone's mind, and I don't want to lose my job and end up sleeping in a tent myself."

Robert, a 26-year-old currency broker, was even more sympathetic. "I went on marches as a student and I feel I've got more in common with these people than a lot of colleagues, but that's just the way my life has gone."

For some, the charm offensive was a bit too much. "I was just offered a hug," said a male investment banker on his way to work. "I thought about it, but he was a man and he'd spent a couple of nights in a tent, and I've just had a shower, so I decided maybe not."

(source)

 

[Anthony DeAngelis]

@ BBW - Sorry it took me forever to respond. I agree with you that business wants and even craves regulation, but only because it is a legal tool to eliminate competition. How many routine tasks could a Physician assistant or Nurse Practitioner do, but are prohibited because of regulation, supported largely by doctors?

Same thing with business. Regulation is a barrier to entry for many of these firms. So yes, they want it, but not for our benefit.

Regulation is necessary, of course, but the amount we have and the numerous instances where these good hearted intentions end up screwing the little guy are innumerable. Also, many of these laws and regulations are not even enforced. Why are we rolling out additional regulation when the simply following of current regulation would be good enough?

Frank Dodd was passed without a clue of the countless new regulations in the document. They are still working to try and interpret it. Don't tell me this is what regulation should be about.

My biggest issue with the protesters is that without an agenda or something they want, it is impossible to respond to them. The only message that is coming through is that banks should be punished and people want their bailout.

Unfortunately, this is an inarticulate demand. Punish bankers how? And who? You need laws to be broken. I fail to believe that their criminal misdeeds were swept under the rug. Giuliani made his career going after Wall Street. So did the former governor Spitzer. Going after Wall Street has ever incentive possible, yet nothing came from it.

So what else can you do? A tax on millionaires? Ok, fine. But what if that doesn't stimulate the economy. What is the next excuse? Increasing the tax on capital gains? Is that going to solve things or only cause less investment or investment elsewhere.

A bail out for people? Bailout what. A lot of kids are protesting, asking for student loan forgiveness, but should be forgive that or under water mortgages? Student loans were created so poor kids could have a chance to go to school. Now they are being demonized.

See my point. Without a clear demand we cannot help them. That is the difference between these protests and others.

I also take offense that these guys represent the 99%. The top 1% tax bracket are people making over $250,000 per year. Many of these are small business owners (who provide the majority of jobs in this country). These protesters are focusing on CEO's and Wall Street, but these are only a tiny segment of the 1%. By ignoring that the majority of the 1% are hard working Americans who employ people all across this country this OWS movement risks shooting themselves in the foot.

 

[bigbadwolf]

My biggest issue with the protesters is that without an agenda or something they want, it is impossible to respond to them. The only message that is coming through is that banks should be punished and people want their bailout.

Oh, I agree with you. You won't find me saying otherwise. That's why I call this "The Children's Crusade"-- analogous to the crusade that supposedly took place in the 13th century. They are not the people who make revolutions.

As one of my socialist friends wrote:

Far from being a quintessential representation of a discontented working class, a majority of the protestors appear to be part of the usual assemblage of middle class and upper class university students, hipsters, aging hippies, etc. In other words, the archetypal 'left-wing' scenesters and professional protesters. As many of us know, the subcultural character of this body is only capable of galvanizing those who already fall into the aforementioned demographics — which just so happen to be quantitatively and qualitatively inconsequential. Ordinary working people see this group and are instinctively repulsed by its superficial quality.

And this from another:

These pictures show what most working class Americans think of as symbolizing the "Left". They're not dumb. It's true! That is what much of today's fake "Left" really is. Notice the similarities between this and your outrageously flaming gay pride parades. Bunch of middle class attention whores! At best, they're looking to martyr themselves with a night in jail...not because they lifted a hostile hand to Wall Street, but because they pathetically sat on their asses in the way of ingress and egress for a few minutes before the police scooped them out of their "Left" scene photo-op.

Does this change things? Compare this to recent uprisings that have taken place in the Arab region, in southern Europe, and in the UK. For all the faults and lackings of those uprisings from below, at least they were actually serious revolts FROM BELOW, and their mistakes are more understandable because of the great crisis of revolutionary proletarian leadership.

But then look at these fucking pathetic middle class Leftie-scenester weinies "protesting" in the richest imperialist countries. That is supposedly the "vanguard"! I wish I was kidding, but that shows just how bad the crisis of leadership really is, just how degenerate and alien the faux-left is.

Look at them crawling on their hands and knees, as if they were hoping the billionaires and their politicians and policemen would come down to do them doggie-style in public! What still-sane working class folks can respect this Leftie-scenester stuff?

And your next comment concerning the arbitrary figures of 99% and 1%:

The top 1% tax bracket are people making over $250,000 per year. Many of these are small business owners (who provide the majority of jobs in this country). These protesters are focusing on CEO's and Wall Street, but these are only a tiny segment of the 1%. By ignoring that the majority of the 1% are hard working Americans who employ people all across this country this OWS movement risks shooting themselves in the foot.

I think the threshold is $380,000. But it's true that the bottom half of the 1% have been complaining that they're only small businessmen, and successful physicians and lawyers. That it's the top 1/2 of 1% where people start living off their dividends and rentier income. The smaller the slice you take the more concentrated the wealth: the top 1/10 of 1%, the top hundredth of 1% and so on. At the very summit the amounts become dizzying. The penthouse at 1 Hyde Park Corner in London went for $210,000,000 last year. The yacht of Roman Abramovich cost $1,100,000,000. It's absurd to conflate these people with some affluent physician in NYC pulling down $400,000 a year.

 

[DominiConnor]

Sadly, I'm just about to leave for Florida so won't really have time to speak to the protestors.

Both BBW and Anthony make good points and one thing that has not come up is how much criticism has come from inside the industry. I go to a lot of conferences and talk to a good number of people in this line or work and get to hear criticism that is both vitriolic and informed.
A few years ago grotesque levels of corruption and incompetence caused a number of deaths on British railways and there was serious talk about the heads of the firms responsible facing serious criminal prosecution. The result was for a time an extreme avoidance of risk and hideous delays and cancellations because the word went down, which was both a threat from the rail companies and a rational response under agency theory by their management.
UK law has a shit piece of legistlation for "corporate manslaughter" which I think is something like the US involuntary homicide, and requires there to be a "controlling mind" (Yes, it's really called that), ie some specific person who does something that is specifically bad, in this case reckless.
It doesn't work because strategic decisions are hard to pin down on one person and under common law (anywhere ever ruled by the English) you have to have a specific person who did a specific illegal thing.
Of course if you're going after someone who has enough power to fuck things up on a large scale they also can afford the appropriate level of protection and if criminal culpability is enacted then you have to assume that "decisions" will be based upon committees and other bureuacracy.
That's why the regulators like insider trading so much, it has well defined rules, they can go after specific people and it looks good on TV. Imagine trying to prove that (say) the risk management protocols at a large firm were specifically designed by a named individual to do something bad. Could you do it at your firm ?

There exist adequate laws for fraudulent activities, but "risk" is trickier, especially when it goes wrong. Is investing in Greece reckless ?
Now perhaps but not very long ago it had a very good rating, and the test for "incompetence" is not "could you have possibly done it better?", but the more realistic one of whether in your profession that is what people generally do. So a doctor that picks an antibiotic that is common use for a particular infection is generally OK provided that that antiobiotic is used by other doctors for it. If it turns out that unexpectedly it is resistant he is not culpable, usually.

So do we hold bankers to a higher standard than doctors ?

Finally I shall repeat a question that no one has ever even attempted to answer for me.
Given that it is impossible to build a financial firm that cannot possibly go tits up and that a pathologically risk averse firm is of no use to the economy, what is an acceptable probability of failure in a given time scale ?

 

[APalley]

An insightful article:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/christo...ips-for-the-simpletons-of-occupy-wall-street/

 

[bigbadwolf]

An insightful article:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/christo...ips-for-the-simpletons-of-occupy-wall-street/

The Occupy-ers have about the same average IQ as the Tea Partiers -- around 85.

 

[sjain]

The Occupy-ers have about the same average IQ as the Tea Partiers -- around 85.

Well that is not nice to say. There are a lot of people protesting so they do have a point to make, whether you agree with them or not.

 

[Anthony DeAngelis]

I really wish this protest was a little less cliche. Blaming the rich and banks for the financial crisis is very populous, but where are the protests for GM that got a very large bailout. How about Freddie and Fannie which continue to use taxpayer funds. I wonder if people would even care if unemployment was below 5%?

Is this just rage or is this a principals stance? Banks were everyone's hero when home ownership spiked, when credit was free and accessible. Student loans used to be wonderful, alloying the poor to attend school for the first time ever. Remember when college used to be the bastion of the rich? Now the complaint is it is too expensive.

At what point does a society expect people to own up. Look at the UK, which is far more helpful to the lower classes. Free university, lush social programs, etc. Maybe they could do more, but we can all agree they do much more than the US. Look at the riots over there. Look at the riots in Europe all over. I cannot understand how poor Europeans can complain about the financial sector when they have high taxes on the rich, strong safety nets, social programs, etc.

If we were to institute European level programs, would that appease these people and if so, for how long?

 

[Anthony DeAngelis]

Well that is not nice to say. There are a lot of people protesting so they do have a point to make, whether you agree with them or not.

I think what BBW is saying is that much like the Tea Party, these are normal people using simplified and sweeping justifications for their protesting. While my political leanings causes me to identify with the Tea Party over the OWS crowd, I realize that there are multiple dimensions to things and that simple is more likely than not to ignore many factual elements.

Both OWS and the Tea Party don't realize all the moving parts associated with the things they profess to want.

 

[bigbadwolf]

Well that is not nice to say. There are a lot of people protesting so they do have a point to make, whether you agree with them or not.

If they had a point to make, I might join them. As it is, none of the ones I've spoken to has a coherent picture of the world. So as Anthony indicates, they use a truckload of cliches and slogans (End the Fed!). No program, no detailed list of realisable political objectives, and of course no way of getting to where they want to go (which destination they don't know in the first place). We can't even say whether the "movement" is a failure or success -- since these terms would only be meaningful when describing whether specific objectives had been met. It's like a chess game where the pawns, bishops, knights, and rooks of one side are each doing "their own thing" -- there's no coordinating will to transform this into an effective fighting force for economic and political change.

As I was saying elsewhere, radicals who are not immersed in books and ideas are not really radicals. At the beginning of WW1, Lenin didn't rush into meaningless and overexcited action -- he began a careful study of Hegel. These "radicals" of today are the flip side of the Tea Partiers.

 

[bigbadwolf]

To give one specific example of how theoretically impoverished they are, the oversimplified idea that is ubiquitously circulating is that the 1% has become rich because of the 99% that has become poor. Why? Because (supposedly) the 1% are avaricious. Well, were they not avaricious fifty years ago, when today's disparities in income and wealth didn't exist? So why have things changed, then? Perhaps because the game of capitalism (which most can't define) has been played by different rules for the last 30 years? But to see this would require a bit of reading, thinking, and discussion -- books like Harvey's "A Brief History of Neoliberalism," Arrighi's "The Long Twentieth Century," Mandel's "Late Capitalism," off the top of my head.

 

[bigbadwolf]

Hot chicks of OWS: a sound reason to join the movement.

 

[euroazn]

Hot chicks of OWS: a sound reason to join the movement.

Have you actually looked at the blog? As one WSO member put it, "Looks like logic isn't the only thing not going for them..."

 

[bigbadwolf]

Have you actually looked at the blog? As one WSO member put it, "Looks like logic isn't the only thing not going for them..."

Nope, only the video footage: I don't understand French.