[potatolicious]

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 runs at an all-time high, and the gap between rich and poor continues to widen unabated.

Some people have chosen to blame corporations, some people pin it on banks, some are angry at the government. In the end though, the theme is the same. OWS protesters clearly have no clue how to fix it, but they are correct that something is fundamentally broken, and it would be a mistake to sweep this all away because the protesters can't put together a solid fix.

There are, of course, also the piggy-back causes. Environmentalists, educational reformers, health care reformers, and all manners of all side-issue protesters are out in force at the #occupy protests, and that really does hurt the main message.

[JoshTriplett]

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.

[potatolicious]

I'd venture to say that the downvotes are coming from the very broad brush with which you're painting tens of thousands of people, few of which you personally know.

I'd argue that the unprecedented unemployment rate represents a clear systemic dysfunction. These aren't temporary job losses due to the natural boom-bust cycle, a very large portion of these jobs are simply never coming back. Whose fault that is is hard to say, but I don't think it's at all cynical to doubt that the unemployment rates will abate on their own.

It's also no secret that wages have been stagnant (if not outright dropping) for the past two decades. None of the trends indicate a cyclical nature, so it's not hard to suggest that these are systemic issues that won't correct themselves.

The quality of life of the average American is dropping precipitously. In a singular case we can point to any number of causes - lack of education, lack of self-discipline, substance abuse, etc etc. When multiplied a couple hundred million times over, it suggests systemic failure.

In other words, "broken", though of course we can argue about the meaning of "brokenness" till the cows come home.

FWIW, I'm the "4%". I'm definitely not doing badly at all for myself, even in this economy. In fact, my quality of life has never been higher. Despite this, it would be a mistake for me to dismiss the problems this country faces, or to jump to conclusions about those affected. It is perpetually disappointing to me how judgmental the wealthy and successful can be, using their singular case of triumph over the system as a wide brush with which to paint all those who have failed to beat it.

[JoshTriplett]

Funny, I'd actually intended my comment as a complaint about the very broad brush with which the protesters paint all the world's problems, or at least the ones they personally see. I'd argue that we don't have a "fundamentally broken" system which we could simply fix and solve all the problems at once. A large number of people have a large number of individual problems, and some of those problems look superficially similar. I'm pointedly trying to not paint a huge number of people with a broad brush. :)

[davidw]

I think taking issue with 'fundamentally broken' is fair though.

The current recession is not as bad as the great depression, and I'm very, very glad that in the US, we pursued incremental, evolutionary fixes to the breakage then, than much of the radical transformation that happened elsewhere, and turned out to be far, far worse than the 'broken' in the US.

I mean, if something is genuinely fundamentally broken, you should throw it out and completely remake it, no? Terrible idea, as far as I'm concerned, with regards to the US economy.

Other than that, I think your original comment was as good, although I still think the whole thing ought to be flagged as a political discussion that doesn't belong here.

[philwelch]

Something can't be a "systemic dysfunction" while being the sole fault of 1% of the population, either.

[Jgrubb]

Maybe I'm getting crazier and more radical in my old age, but I'd say that if the 1% can afford to buy/bend the system to their ends, then it most certainly can be systemic.

The fact that I hear Obama's "$1B war chest" being trumpeted and that Tim Pawlenty drops out of the Republican race solely for lack of funding reinforces what I've felt for a very long time - that campaign finance is the elephant in the room in terms of the issues that are bringing this country down.

[philwelch]

In this particular case, the housing and higher education bubbles required significant proportions of the population to buy into them. Bubbles that do little but draw poor investment from the already wealthy aren't as problematic.

[Jgrubb]

I see what you're saying, and I agree. Those bubbles were not the systemic issue I'm specifically fired up about, though. Those are more like branches of the tree rather than the root.

The root, to me, is corporate money and influence in Washington to such a degree that it effectively shuts out democracy. I lay fault for that systemic problem at the door of "the 1%" and the politicians they influence.

[euccastro]

It can, if that 1% effectively control the system.

[nknight]

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"?

[JoshTriplett]

1) No. I also don't consider said bailouts the root cause of anything except one more instance of wasteful spending.

2) "Too busy fighting over local minima/maxima to ever escape them and make core changes, but as a result at least mostly harmless except as a drag force on productivity." We could argue all day about core changes that might fix the system, but we'll never agree on precisely which core changes to make, so they'll never happen. And that still probably works better than the case where the wrong core changes occur.

(And a meta-level comment about search heuristics comes about as close to a political comment as I'd like to get.)

[Jgrubb]

I'll throw two out there -

1. Campaign finance reform. Debate the details, but you can't debate that there should be some.

2. Vastly greater oversight/transparency, if not an outright ban of the current lobbying system.

[mike_organon]

Both of your answers ask for more government control. Consider the government is a huge concentration of power, so many will want to corrupt it. Our goal should be to reduce the power of government, thereby reducing corruption.

[nknight]

The bailouts are a result of brokenness, I never said they were a property. But I think we have rather different ideas of what "fundamental" means, if you're arguing that it's not fundamentally broken, but that "core changes are necessary".

I guess I'll leave it at that.

[mseebach]

1) No

2) Because bail-outs aren't a fundamental property of "the system".

[euccastro]

Bail-outs are a symptom of plutocracy, which is very much the fundamental nature of the American system (amongst many others).

[nknight]

They are a result of the system. I find it hard to believe that a not-fundamentally-broken system would produce that result.

What non-fundamental properties of the system do you think should change to halt now, and prevent in the future, bailouts and related actions (e.g. corporate subsidies)?

[greyman]

Why is something fundamentally broken?

[forensic]

Because democracy and equality is fundamentally superior to feudalism, therefore any system that is on an unstoppable slide toward feudalism is fundamentally broken.

[akg0]

How is the system in an unstoppable slide towards feudalism? Is this the same feudalism I studied in European History, with the land-holders and vassals and all? If not, why are you using that word?

[forensic]

More precisely it is "corporate feudalism" or "neofeudalism"