[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.

[CWuestefeld]

The root, to me, is corporate money and influence in Washington to such a degree that it effectively shuts out democracy.

I see another layer to the onion. Inside of your problem is a deeper one, which is that so much power is concentrated in such a small place.

While we might wish for our government officials to be better, at the end of the day they're people just like us. In giving them so much power, we're also expect them to exhibit a super-human degree of self control. When the possible rewards to them for "selling out" are so high; when any one act of selling out may not have much impact; and when in many cases, the morality is fuzzy and it's not clear that what they're doing is selling out at all; I think it's too much to expect that they'll keep to the straight-and-narrow.

It seems to me that these cries about "too much corporate money" contain an unspoken assumption of a need for greater governmental oversight. But if you see my point about the danger of the concentration of power in Washington, then it should be obvious that vesting the government with greater oversight powers is just adding fuel to the fire.

[philwelch]

The only reason campaign finance is an issue is because voters vote based on television advertising. So the real root cause is a lazy and easily manipulated electorate, which can further be pinned on things like useless public schools.

I don't think this is a good idea, but I think if you actually restricted the vote to the so-called "1%" you might even get better government. There's no conspiracy by rich people to ruin the country for everyone else.

[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)?