The Future of the Occupy Movement
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-11-16/future-occupy-movement
Occupy Wall Street activists vow protests will persist. Yesterday New York City police in riot gear evicted hundreds and razed the city of tents where some in the group had been living for close to two months. The Occupy Wall Street movement seeks to highlight income inequality and has inspired hundreds of similar protests around the country and the world. Most have been small and some have been marred by violence, but participants claim, despite evictions in New York and elsewhere, it’s an idea that will continue to gather momentum: Join us for a conversation on what the Occupy movement has accomplished and its future.
Guests
Jim Tankersley
reporter, National Journal
Michael Premo
participant, Occupy Wall Street
Legba Carrefour
participant, Occupy DC
Lawrence Lessig
professor of law at Harvard Law School and director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University
author of “Republic,Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress — and a Plan to Stop It”
Tyler Cowen
general director, Mercatus Center
professor of economics, George Mason University.
Comments
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Why is it that there is not more of a focus on prosecutions
This is the clearest explanation of the Wall Street fiasco that I have ever heard. WILL YOU HAVE PROFESSOR WILLIAM BLACK ON? Professor William Black
link to law2.umkc.edu
Asking why no one has been prosecuted? Have heard this fellow before I believe on Democracy Now. Listen to the whole clip. This man should be at all the teach in’s. Clear and on target.
Occupy LA Teach In William K Black
link to youtube.com
“Ok I am coming with a message of hope actually. In the savings and loan crisis which was one seventieth the size of this crisis. Our agency made over 10,ooo criminal referrals and that resulted in the conviction on felony grounds of over 1000 elites in what were designated as major cases”
William Black “We can prosecute these frauds. The Federal Housing Finance Administration has just filed complaints saying 17 of the largest banks in America committed massive fraud. Endemic fraud.. And that there is a paper trail proving that they did so.”
“Where is the Justice Dept?”
BANKS IMMUNIZED FROM NOT ONLY BEING PROSECUTED BUT FROM BEING INVESTIGATED
Contact the Justice Dept? Ask them why no one on Wall Street has been arrested or prosecuted?
http://www.justice.gov/contact-us.htm
The link to Professor William Black's "Why no prosecutions" Teach in talk at Occupy LA. Worth listening to all 15 or so minutes
Occupy LA Teach In William K Black
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_AuvLTJNh0
@houblon. As a retired scientist with adult children - an engineering professor and a medical researcher - I agree with some of your comments about students’ choices. But to lay on their shoulders the blame for a corrupt corporate, financial and political system is quite bizarre.
OWS is outwardly a young people’s movement, if only because they are the ones most likely to camp out. But they are the tip of the iceberg. They have behind them the sympathy of millions of us old-timers, who have been around long enough to see the transformation of the economy from serving the common people to advancing the interests of an oligarchy.
“Did you also know that it is far harder for the graduates in these humanities fields to find jobs than for engineering graduates, among whom unemployment is around 4-5% (half the nation's average)?”
Yes, I did. Assuming your source for graduates in different fields is correct, let’s say that we did approach the international norm of 36% for technical graduates instead of the current 5%. Where would the extra demand come from? Do you really suppose their unemployment rate would stay at 4-5%? You can’t divorce this question from an overriding reality. Not only has corporate America closed plants wholesale and exported blue-collar jobs (which the rich and famous cared not a fig about), it has sent much of its R & D after them.
The Occupy movement has touched a nerve that was ripe for hitting - today’s economy works for an oligarchy while leaving behind the common people.
kathleen wrote:
Why is it that there is not more of a focus on prosecutions
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I think it is merely a sign of how skewed the system has gotten.
The audacity after the collapse was that the big banks immediately started doing bad things again and were not really in fear of any consequences.
They had a giant lobbying effort to insulate themselves and that was largely successful.
It really shows how badly things have gone for the actual interests of we the people. They can play with money which is not theirs and lose it and they get more money from the government to allegedly fix it which they then use to enrich themselves and buy up the competition. It is really distorted right now.
I think things are about to change though.... not quickly enough for most of us, but the battle for the citizens of the US vs global corporations has begun. The problem is there is an ideology alive in America which places the markets and corporations above all else... sort of like a savior of mankind. But nothing should be above our constitution and the people. Priorities are clearly messed up and indoctrination is very very strong to such a degree that global corporate entities are now given the same rights as an organic human.
The tea party was started because of the global domination and influence peddling by the East India Corporation. Somehow the corporations have managed to convince people that corporations are their salvation. It is like a wolf in sheeps clothing.
First and foremost I support the movement.
I admit I initially thought this well-meaning "Occupy" movement
could not expand or be sustained for a variety of reasons.
I've been encouraged beyond words to see it has taken root
and not only survives but thrives.
My hat is off to those fellow countrywomen and countrymen who
"occupied" on our behalf while we were at home watching you on
tv.
How can I help you? How can I donate?
As an American living in Japan I would like to support the movement.
As winter sets in I can only imagine the movement will be forced
to abandoned the physical locations they "occupy" but I am sure
they movement has already come to occupy the the American
and international imagination.
Retreat indoors through the cold winter months.
Think. Plan. Organize. Spread your message.
Come Spring....
mancuroc,
"Do you really suppose their unemployment rate would stay at 4-5%?"
As a matter of fact, I do.
Reason 1: Engineering graduates create jobs by inventions that spawn whole new industries;
Reason 2: Majority of engineers hired in defense companies in the 60-70's are retiring and there is a huge void that is forming now in companies like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon;
Reason 3: The R&D centers opening abroad are in part due to local lack of engineering talent. Just read the interview by Craig Barrett, Intel's former CEO, in which he says that there is nothing short of a crisis forming in the US semiconductor industry because STEM graduation rates are so low here;
Reason 5: Engineers keep our technological edge sharp, so that we are able to export high-tech products and services abroad and conquer new markets;
Reason 6: Engineers contribute heavily to exploration of natural resources, so that our economy may keep growing.
"Where would the extra demand come from?"
From growth of the population, from inventing new products and services, and from expanding into global markets. Where else from?
kevinbear wrote:
As winter sets in I can only imagine the movement will be forced
to abandoned the physical locations they "occupy" but I am sure
they movement has already come to occupy the the American
and international imagination.
------------------
I think an American spring is coming. There will be vast protests which will rage across the country from spring until summer.
Winter is for organizing.
Something good is finally entering the conscience of the American citizenry. Power to the citizens may finally get restored. But it took decades to get the way it is now and it may be decades for the citizens to change how things are done in the power circles.
houblon,
You are correct about the rates of growth comparisons not giving you a full picture of economic development. I should've been more clear.
What I was referring to specifically, was the relative period of economic stability after the implementation of the Securities & Exchange Act and the Glass Steagall Act to regulate financial markets. Prior to that, market followed a relatively predictable period where you'd have a big bust every 15-20 years or so. After implementing those acts we experienced approx. 70 years with no banks going under and no egregious market shocks.
When we began to tinker with the SEC and the Glass Steagall Act, we began that period all over again....Savings and Loan, Enron and now the housing market meltdown all followed on the heels of periods of deregulation, which were brought about by the financial industry lobbying their representatives for more freedom and leniency to pursue profit, even if it was on the backs of tax payers and low level employees (as in the case of Enron).
Granted this is an oversimplification and anyone could argue that there were many factors that went into each of those meltdowns. However, it is hard to explain the lack of meltdowns in that period when regulation was stricter, since all those same factors continued to appear cyclically.
paikinator wrote:
"Every society basically has 2 choices is what you are saying from what I glean?"
I was paraphrasing houblon, but the view is essentially correct.
The "blended" systems that you speak of are on their way to socialism. In Greece it was poorly done. That is why they are imploding so quickly.
Consider the following:
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. "
That is the direction the United States has been heading since the 1930s. "Largesse from the public treasury" translates to state control in just the way houblon has described once the statist view has been accepted by large segments of the population.
"I know very few statists. What exactly is your definition of a statist?"
Not mine, but MW's: One who espouses "concentration of economic controls and planning in the hands of a highly centralized government often extending to government ownership of industry"
SS and GM are great examples.
Part 2
"In the minutia of day to day things may be apparently binary."
No. It pretty much applies to everything. Do you take the job or don't you. Do you marry the girl or don't you. These are absolutely binary choices when you get right down to it. It does not mean you can't CHANGE direction at some point. You can quit the job or you can divorce the spouse. Once a nation goes down the socialist road, however, changing direction is more problematic. Again, witness Greece.
"In the US ... the attitude of we can give everything to everyone has driven the costs so high that they are now an escalating medical cost path. Giving everyone everything even if they can't afford it is just shoveling excessive burdens on the job creators in this country. " (this is rationing)
"We need to get healthcare under control or it will sink our economy no matter how innovative we are or how technologically advanced we are." (this is the egalitarian view)
Thank you for supporting my view above. The left does not care about the state providing GOOD care. It just cares about everyone getting the SAME care.
The left does not care about the state providing GOOD care
------
Well with such a gross generalization I find your logic is a bit flawed.
Left= don't care
Left=state care.
Neither of these statements are accurate, but rather are blanket statements reflecting your own bias.
I haven't heard anyone left right or center saying they don't think people should get good care. That is what they are not getting now. Good care.
Everyone involved want better care.
ecgberht wrote:
"In the US ... the attitude of we can give everything to everyone has driven the costs so high that they are now an escalating medical cost path. Giving everyone everything even if they can't afford it is just shoveling excessive burdens on the job creators in this country. " (this is rationing)
-----------------
Are you suggesting that everyone can have everything they want for healthcare?
How is a business to survive if they keep getting hit with escalating costs because of a consumer base and a provider base completely alienated from the forces of the market system? That is what we have now.
Life is rationing. It is just a matter of who is doing it.
Right now we have a system where patients demand all they can get and hospitals provide more than they should. For example a friend of mine is dying in the hospital and a doctor wanted to send her down to a big tertiary health center for a bunch of new testing and some more scans. Would it change the outcome? No. but it would make a bunch of money for somebody.
The system is going to collapse under its own weight at some point. It will take our economy down with it. In the 80's it cost 3-4k a year to insure a family of four as a small business person. Now it is somewhere north of 14k. Give it another 20 years and most businesses will not be able to provide any health care as most are finding they can't now.
Rationing is a fact of life. We can't have everything we want all the time. Just facts.
ecgberht wrote:
No. It pretty much applies to everything. Do you take the job or don't you. Do you marry the girl or don't you. These are absolutely binary choices when you get right down to it. It does not mean you can't CHANGE direction at some point. You can quit the job or you can divorce the spouse. Once a nation goes down the socialist road, however, changing direction is more problematic. Again, witness Greece.
------------
Well if you take things down to a fundamental fundamental level things could appear binary.
Positive and negative particles. Positive and negative charges.
We are so far distanced from this.
It is like neural networks vs computer systems which exist today. Our neurons are not binary. Organic life is not binary.
There is not merely a take this path or take that path. There is a gradation to everything which modifies a simple on off analogy.
You can divorce your wife or you can't divorce your wife is not simply that. There is a whole level and many layers of complexity to the decision what it will mean how it will turn out. What the future may or may not become.
My point is it is a seemingly binary decision, but the results are not the same for everyone as evidenced by the same result not happening for everyone.
Binary is the same result happening each and every time. We live in an organic world not a simple binary world.
Our neurons reflect this as well. There are gradations of response to input.... not simply an on or off.
houblon, engineers do, or would like to do, all the good things that you say. But I’ll repeat – where is the demand side? Companies are sitting on pots of money and if they are bemoaning the shortage of engineers and scientists, let them put their money where their mouth is and pay them what they pay MBAs and corporate lawyers – but no, they know cheap labor when they see it and are quite content to offshore their R & D.
Speaking of cheap labor, there’s a trend below the radar in academia towards casualization of university teaching. Full-time faculty are being dispensed with in favor of employing adjuncts who have to float from one college to another to make a bare living without benefits – the academic equivalent of sweatshop labor. Face-time with the students becomes more difficult, and it does justice neither to them, nor the teachers, nor the university as an institution. I hope for your sake you are one of the increasingly rare professors with tenure. If universities really plead poverty, let them go to companies that benefit from their future graduates to kick more into the science and engineering pot instead of to the business schools which arguably contributed to the amoral laissez-faire thought that got us into trouble in the first place.
ecgberht wrote:
Once a nation goes down the socialist road, however, changing direction is more problematic. Again, witness Greece.
---------------
Greeces economic woes are not simplifiable to being socialist. Socialist and Capitalist.... neither matters because there is a greater group of operators which apply to both.
The greek tragedy reflects on my point. Not everyone can have everything since there is a scarcity of resources. There always will be a scarcity of resources. It is the natural order of things on our planet.
What the greek tragedy like the American economic collapse of 2008 reflect are bad management and really poor choices.
Good management trumps bad management every time.
For example. Germany chose to hold onto its manufacturing and industrial base when most everyone else, the US included chose to outsource rather than to work at efficiency and quality.
Germany has preserved its production base and its peoples lifestyle better I would argue. They have secured a more lucrative future for their citizens than what we have done. They have done it by great management, longitudinal thinking, increasing research to such a degree that last year they eclipsed the US which has a much larger economy. Germany is a quasi-socialist country.
My argument things aren't all one way or the other. They are always nuanced. Those who would distill thing to simple black/white yes/no right/wrong good/evil seem to not be able to see subtlety and miss the fact that their thinking is relatively insular and inexperienced. People just need to get out in the real world more.
"Life is rationing. It is just a matter of who is doing it."
And I want ME making the decision, with my doctor. Not a bureaucrat at the state level. And don't give me "Insurance companies are nothing but bureaucrats". That's true. But I have the choice to CHANGE insurance if I want. When the state runs healthcare, I have no recourse.
"Give it another 20 years and most businesses will not be able to provide any health care as most are finding they can't now."
Good start. Insurance should never have been tied to a job in the first place.
"What the greek tragedy like the American economic collapse of 2008 reflect are bad management and really poor choices."
You bet. Whose bad management? Mine? Yours?
No. In both cases the bad management took place at the STATE level (and I don't mean "state" as in IL or MA). I want to manage my own stuff at MY level.
As for nuance, it sounds to me like you think socialism is ok, it just hasn't been done RIGHT yet!
"Good management trumps bad management every time."
That is an attractive view for many. But it's false. It CAN'T be done right for all the reasons I've shown in previous posts.
For a historical context on Germany, I recommend you read the following, particularly sections 7 and 8
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_Republic
Part Deux:
"Our neurons are not binary."
Actually, they are.
"The conduction of nerve impulses is an example of an all-or-none response. In other words, if a neuron responds at all, then it must respond completely. Greater intensity of stimulation does not produce a stronger signal but can produce more impulses per second. There are different types of receptor response to stimulus, slowly adapting or tonic receptors respond to steady stimulus and produce a steady rate of firing. These tonic receptors most often respond to increased intensity of stimulus by increasing their firing frequency, usually as a power function of stimulus plotted against impulses per second. This can be likened to an intrinsic property of light where to get greater intensity of a specific frequency (color) there have to be more photons, as the photons can't become "stronger" for a specific frequency."
End points are reached by hundreds, sometimes thousands of binary decisions.
"Those who would distill thing to simple black/white yes/no right/wrong good/evil seem to not be able to see subtlety and miss the fact that their thinking is relatively insular and inexperienced."
The logical conclusion to your argument is that "principles don't mean anything". Because everything is nuanced, nothing can be absolute. This was the basis of the "situational ethics" movement that was popular in the 60's and 70's. Let's take topics from the news to illustrate this. In the Sandusky case, would you argue that there is subtlety to the question of child abuse? That it might be right in some instances? That is why we are a nation of laws. Because as a society, we know that some issues are right or wrong, good or evil.
mancuroc,
"But I’ll repeat – where is the demand side? "
In my tenure as a professor I have yet to see a single above-C student who graduated from our program who is unemployed. Just recently a major company came to our campus and offered our School a quarter million dollars a year to establish and run a program that will essentially given them access to our top graduates. And just today I learned of an Air Force program that will pay an engineering undergraduate student $33K a year for the last two years of their studies in exchange for an agreement to work for the Air Force (in a civilian R&D job) for 4 years after graduation. Think about it - a $33K/year stipend AND a job security for next 4 years! And it is NOT a competition-based program. They will take EVERYONE who applies.
So, the demand is not just there, it is, indeed, quite significant.
houblon, a guy in academia with your views? You have GOT to feel like the Lone Ranger!
ecgberht,
You'll be surprised, perhaps, but it's different in engineering. Still pretty left-leaning, but not nearly as much as in social sciences or humanities, for example.
Maybe it has to do with the habit of thinking rationally, rather than emotionally.
double posted somehow... hnmmmmm
ecgberht wrote:
As for nuance, it sounds to me like you think socialism is ok, it just hasn't been done RIGHT yet!
-------
hmmmm. nope there are lots of examples of socialism gone right.
Our constitution is a sort of social contract defining government and its relationship to us as humans.
The military is another prime social organization done right.
Government owning industry and all of the land is not good socialism... that is authoritarianism.
What we have currently is a socialist government by and large. All major industrial powers have some sort of a social democracy. That is what we as a people have decided to have and that is what we should do.
ecgberht wrote:
No. In both cases the bad management took place at the STATE level.
------
That is a simplistic view. Most of the serious misdeeds were due to a system setup as a collusion between our government and the private sector and them being allowed to bet on a 30-100:1 margin on money they didn't own.
When you have the financial sector betting 30 or more dollars for every real dollar the entire system is doomed to fail because it is predicated on the idea that there will never be a slump in the market. Once there is a slump people are on the hook for 29 bucks more per dollar they are betting. That leads to panic.
Did the government play a role. Yep a big role, but you can't seriously say that government was THE source of the problem or even the largest source of the problem without showing more than a tad of the ideologic problem we are having with reality in this country.
"What we have currently is a socialist government by and large."
Um, by an large, no, we don't.
Words matter. And their definitions matter.
socialism: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
That's not what we've got ... yet. But we creep ever closer each day.
social contract: an actual or hypothetical agreement among the members of an organized society or between a community and its ruler that defines and limits the rights and duties of each
Our Constitution is a social contract, yes. That does not make us a "socialist" society.
"but you can't seriously say that government was THE source of the problem or even the largest source of the problem without showing more than a tad of the ideologic problem we are having with reality in this country."
Who makes law? Congress or the banks?
ecgberht wrote:
"What we have currently is a socialist government by and large."
Um, by an large, no, we don't.
Words matter. And their definitions matter.
---------
When I typed we have a socialist government. That is wrong. We have a socialist country.
Ok by definition we are a social democracy.
The entire socialist platform from 1912 has already been put in place in this country.
Marxist socialism is owning the entire means of production and of all property by the government. That is one form of socialism, but there are plentiful other examples of other forms of socialist societies around the world which function well. Our own included.
Fearing a path to Marxist socialism seems silly since it doesn't work and could never happen in this country. Frankly it can't really work as idealized anywhere. It has never worked and is a completely hypothetical system that in reality misses in its entirety the human factor in human affairs. It isn't something we need to worry about so I don't worry about it at all.
How exactly are you seeing a creep towards marxism in this country?
Has the constitution been eradicated somehow and I missed the memo? Can't have creep at least not until the constitution is gone and I don't see any standing armies in opposition to our constitution. I don't even see anyone advocating it be abolished.
By creep I am assuming you see the government taking over all means of production and taking everyone's land. I fail to see this happening.
Where is this creep of yours?
ecgberht wrote:
Who makes law? Congress or the banks?
----------------
In this case. The bank lobbyists wrote the law. Congress passed it.
Who is at fault.... everyone involved in a corrupt system.
Congress does little for the citizens anymore. They have become an arm of corporate interests.
Who is to blame... we the people for not caring enough to vote or be informed.
You get what you vote for .... and you get what you don't vote for.
But who is directly to blame for mortgage backed securities? The banking industry and financial interests. Greed greed and more greed.
Right now I don't even think we get what we vote for. The system is so far removed from "We the people" it has been corrupted by greed and favoritism and monied interests which have no interest in the US or its citizens.
ecgberht wrote:
"What we have currently is a socialist government by and large."
Um, by an large, no, we don't.
Words matter. And their definitions matter.
---------------------------
Thinking about it more.... maybe we actually do have a socialist government.
The government is in charge of an ever increasingly large amount of our economic system.
Isn't that what those from the tea party argue.
Maybe this is the creep you see.
I just don't see any creep toward a completely non-functional marxist authoritarianism like the USSR or something. Even the USSR couldn't sustain it and it gave out under its own useless weight. Socialism as an economic system has shown to be vastly non-functional.
Free markets have been the greatest engine of prosperity the world has seen, but they to have to be tempered or you get a counter-productive status.
Great and wide ranging discussion. I think there is a lot we can actually agree on. This is fun.
Politics is the bomb.
ecgberht wrote:
Our Constitution is a social contract, yes. That does not make us a "socialist" society.
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True.
What makes us most specifically a social democracy are all of the socialist institutions we have established in our country.
Public Education established by Washington as on of the 3 legs the republic stands on.
The public road system which also got its start with Washington is a redistributive system.
Medicare/Medicaid
Social Security
Childhood healthcare
The New National banking system
The VA Hospital
The Post Office
Jails
Unemployment
Parks (national and city)
Beaches (national and city) Privet beaches are nuke beaches
Libraries
Street lamps and or any lighting paid by the Gov't (city included)
The U.S Military (Paid by the Government using tax dollars)
FDA
EPA
The list can just go on and on because anything which is redistributive can be considered socialist. And that has been happening since the first days of the republic.