[javert]

People tend to assume that in today's era, progress is inevitable. The is a dramatic illustration to the contrary. Progress depends on a stable, pro-business system of government. Which, in turn, depends on a certain kind of underlying culture. (This is why I find Occupy Wall Street threatening.)

[martythemaniak]

OWS is a protest movement, the core of which is against corporations buying laws. The corporations do this because they want to protect their inefficient business models by enshrining their way of doing things into law. For example, content owners wish to censor the internet so they can keep selling consumers crap, while banks wish to tax everybody when they make a loss on their trades.

OWS is not anti-business, it is anti-corruption, and there's few things more damaging to progress than corruption.

[AJ007]

You would never know that based on the signs being waved and the t-shirts being worn.

[jacoblyles]

Yeah, I thought it was about "End Capitalism Now!" and "Bail out students", or something like that.

[gee_totes]

There wouldn't be the protests and signs being waved if corporations couldn't buy laws.

[brc]

I think I can agree with your points, however, the images of OWS protestors have failed to get this across. In the worldwide spread of the OWS theme, the further you get from Manhattan, the muddier the statements. My local occupy demonstration is a rag-tag collection of the usual suspects with signs calling for socialism.

I guess this is the problem with any protest movement - you have no top-down control, and so any good messages can get lost in the noise. I think the occupy 'brand' is pretty much damaged beyond repair for now, but if the core of the people believes what you say, then it's possible to create a new organisation and leverage from occupy before it's forgotten. But a new organisation would have to be top-down and control the message to get the point across.

For my part, I agree with the points about regulatory capture and corporatism. Large businesses pretend to like capitalism, but in reality, they get terrified of smaller startup companies stealing their lunch money and rendering them irrelevant in a decade or less.

Too big to fail is indeed too big to exist. The role of governments must be to prevent monopolies from forming, not to legislate them into existence.

[sp332]

Even the statements in Manhattan are extremely muddy. That's because the "Wall Street" types have pissed off a huge swath of the populace. It's not just one coherent group that's angry. Lots of unrelated people have come together against a common enemy.

[jseliger]

(This is why I find Occupy Wall Street threatening.)

I do not think OWS, to the extent it has a coherent set or ideas or ideologies, is anti-business per se; I think it is opposed to the zero-sum thinking that characterizes much of Wall Street and political life right now. See, e.g.: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_reckoning/2011/11/21/it_s_the... :

<blockquote>In fact, blame for the failure of the congressional super committee belongs with every American who failed to vote in the 2010 midterm election. Nothing encapsulates the dysfunction of American democracy better than the fact that we abdicate responsibility for governing our country (and running our economy) to a radical minority every four years out of laziness and, to a smaller extent, deliberate efforts by both parties to depress turnout they know will favor their rivals.</blockquote>

Or, from HN, http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/11/18/clayton-... (Clayton Christensen: "How Pursuit of Profits Kills Innovation and the U.S. Economy.")

Notice how people are not saying "Occupy tech firms in Silicon Valley," and I think they aren't because it's pretty clear that Apple, Google, etc. are generating real value that improves lives; it's not at all clear finance and many parts of government are doing so at the moment and it may be that they're actually destroying value while taking advantage of an insider's feedback loop that prevents market forces from actually acting on them in any serious way. If anything, I suspect OWS, to the extent it has a coherent ideology, would be pro-business, as long as that business isn't doing things to hurt people, institutions, or government.

[natrius]

"I think it is opposed to the zero-sum thinking that characterizes much of Wall Street and political life right now."

No, I think OWS is very pro-zero-sum thinking. Its core messaging pits "the 99%" against "the 1%". It's class warfare in its purest form.

There are many smart people who are painting more reasoned critiques of our society onto OWS than the movement is actually articulating. Perhaps that's inherent to mass movements in general, but I judge OWS by its most common messages, which are far from what you've described.

There are two OWS-related messages that would have broad appeal, and I'd suggest they focus on those: "Our Laws Are Not For Sale" and "Too Big To Fail Is Too Big To Exist".

[jberryman]

Historically invoking the term "class warfare" has been a way to scare liberals out of broaching issues of class and wealth disparity in America. Using it here makes you look like a shill.

The Occupy movement is about finally having a discussion about these issues.

[natrius]

Allow me to restate my claim without the words of which you disapprove. The most common message of OWS reduces to "households that make more than $500,000 a year are against everyone else." This is problematic.

[olefoo]

It is problematic; more so because it is true.

Households that make more than $500,000 a year pay less in taxes as a percentage of their earnings than households that make $50,000 a year. They also benefit disproportionately from the protections our society offers and suffer less from the economic uncertainty that has become the bane of middle-class existence in the last two decades.

Now I am certain you can find more than a few members of that group who are sympathetic to the plight of the middle class but how many can you find that would be in favor of rescinding the Bush tax cuts?

[mangodrunk]

They are still paying more for the same services. What if I went into a restaurant with you and the charge 10% of the amount of money you have in your wallet if it's less than $1,000 and 1% if it's more or equal. You have $50 so you pay $5 but I have $1,000 so I pay $10. How is that fair to me? We got the exact same meal. If anything it's unfair to the person who pays the most regardless of the percentage.

We all benefit from a stable government and economy. I don't see how one using it more efficiently should be punished.

[natrius]

Many. This is the exact problem with class warfare. Without evidence, it assumes that an overwhelming portion of a certain class is out to maximize their gains at the expense of everyone else. If you don't have a citation, your argument is invalid.

My responses to this will be minimal, as we're considerably off-topic.

[_delirium]

I read it to be something like: the American economy is structurally set up in a way that disproportionately benefits households making more than $500,000. Empirically, given how real wages have trended over the past 50 years (flat, with decreasing job security, for everyone except the top), that's at least close to true. People seem to disagree much more why that is, though I do agree that a substantial number of people have implausible theories on that point.

[peterb]

OWS is not against capitalism, it is against corporatism. It wants the same laws enforced weather you are rich, poor, an individual or a corporation.

[noahc]

Perhaps I'm nitpicking here, but I believe they don't actually want the same laws for individuals and corporations. They don't want corporations to have the same rights as individuals.

[wnight]

Sort of. But if you played a small form of the recent mortgage scam a police officer would put cuffs on you and take you away for running a Ponzi scheme.

Run a large enough one and they bail you out and let you keep profiting on it. I haven't seen a single person charged in the mortgage meltdown despite that almost everyone at every bank was in a better position to see the problems than I was, as a borrower, did.

If our laws were applied without regard for the wealth of the guilty almost every bank employee in the majority of the world would be charged with conspiracy to defraud their customers and at least permanently banned from ever professionally handling money. (They did worse than Kevin Mitnick, they deserve worse punishments.)

As for corporations having rights, it's ridiculous. My cycling group doesn't have rights, the individuals in it have rights. Corporations are groups of individuals and thus, indirectly, have all the rights they need. Anything beyond that is corruption.

[lolcraft]

There is no such pernicious myth today as the "right-wing pro-business" government.

An example: progress requires, above anything, a rentier class not hell bent on furthering their greed at the expense of everyone else, via shadow banking, obscure contracts and general, short-sighted stupidity. Regulated, if you will.

I don't see many "pro-business" governments doing anything to solve that. I see many of them giving their corporate friends cool, undeserved subsidies under the pretense of "industry being of national interest".

[adolph]

No, you just have to avoid bad luck.