[OpieCunningham]

The Civil Rights movement was monumental but it didn't eradicate racism

No. But it did lead to the government creating laws and regulations called the Civil Rights Act, which enforced desegregation and more. A dramatically major step towards adjusting society to address the existing problem.

Considering effectively zero laws and regulations of merit have been implemented since 2008 in regards to the out of control behavior on Wall St, a comparative measure to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 seems to be in order. You're not going to get one by canceling you AT&T wireless plan and growing vegetables in your back yard.

Of course, I don't mean to imply that the things you're doing aren't positive. Certainly they are. My point is simply that OWS is significantly more powerful in nature.

[gatlin]

You have been very respectful, and I appreciate that, but on one hand you build up OWS and on the other reduce my solution to "cancel AT&T and grow vegetables." I believe that you could have more charitably summarized it as "stop giving money to these companies." One way to do it is to patronize locally owned alternatives and starve them. There are others, as well.

I could cut down OWS pretty harshly, too, but I do see its merit. It's one side of the Protest & Act coin. I would prefer people do both, not just complain loudly.

The Civil Rights act, fwiw, didn't solve any of the race-related problems I identified either. It was the perspective shift that protesting brought, and it opened doors. OWS might result in tighter regulations and laws which formally denigrate or outright restrict the kind of business which led to these problems in the first place but that only stops those who care about the law or are careless in their chicanery.

It does not resolve more fundamental issues: how did these people get this much power? How do we disrupt the cycle of people getting rich and using their wealth to keep others down? How do we keep people informed about complex financial risks? How do we bolster local economies? How do we get control of the institutions which have so much control over our lives?

OWS will not solve any of those things. It has successfully raised awareness but now we have to put our money where our mouths are.

[OpieCunningham]

OWS will not solve any of those things.

I'd loosely categorize "those things" as greed. Nothing will solve greed just as nothing will solve racism. Government regulation is uniquely able to diminish the negative consequences of both greed and racism. The fact that government regulation is not able to eliminate greed and regulation is in no way a knock against government regulation. OWS is the most powerful method available to instigate government regulation.

BTW, I'm using examples of your philosophy to demonstrate the inherent limitations of it, in comparison to mass protestation. Boycotts are primarily effective on a local scale, not a national scale. If your intent is to stop a mom & pop from some ill behavior, a boycott is more effective than staging a sit-in outside their place of business. I can think of no national boycott that has instigated as much change as the civil rights protests of the 60's or the suffrage movement in the late 19th/early 20th centuries.