Operation Occupy Wall Street

Politics and religion
21

The real driving force seems to be youth unemployment. Last I saw, the overall rate in the US was 18.5%:

Now throw in a 15% poverty rate, and you have millions of scared people in bad conditions. Something is going to happen, it is just a matter of what happens and at what scale.

The south, which I (incorrectly?) think of as a Tea Party stronghold has taken some big economic lumps, which makes me wonder if it will start to see some unrest:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2016328463_jobless27.html

Bloomberg’s scared or panicky, based on these statements made the day Occupy Wall Street started:

22

That’s neat. Under what rational choice framework do the people losing their jobs embrace that as a positive outcome?

23

Heee… I think this:

More import taxes, more direct democracy, more power to minorities trought a different balance of power, … mostly the things the system need to urgent “Patch” to make middle class viable.

I don’t understand, exactly. I thought that globalization was good in that it was lifting crushingly poor people out of poverty. Many people posit that this has the side effect of moving some people in the wealthy nations somewhat lower on the economic scale (note that not all economists agree with this theory … at all). Even if that is true is it not a worthwhile cost to pay?

Like all other capitalism things that are supposed to magically work, don’t work as well as intended.

Rob barons, dictators, corporations, these people are turning rich, while the poor suffer.

Anyway, thats not the real point. What to do with the unemployed people on developed countries? its expensive, and the govern will collect less taxes. Unemployed people cost money and don’t pay enough taxes.

Soon, computers are going to destroy service roles, with complete structures replaced by better and optimized work pipelines.

ASUSTeK started out making the simple circuit boards within a Dell computer. Then ASUSTeK came to Dell with an interesting value proposition: ‘We’ve been doing a good job making these little boards. Why don’t you let us make the motherboard for you? Circuit manufacturing isn’t your core competence anyway and we could do it for 20% less.’

Dell accepted the proposal because from a perspective of making money, it made sense: Dell’s revenues were unaffected and its profits improved significantly. On successive occasions, ASUSTeK came back and took over the motherboard, the assembly of the computer, the management of the supply chain and the design of the computer. In each case Dell accepted the proposal because from a perspective of making money, it made sense: Dell’s revenues were unaffected and its profits improved significantly. However the next time, ASUSTeK came back, it wasn’t to talk to Dell. It was to talk to Best Buy and other retailers to tell them that they could offer them their own brand or any brand PC for 20% lower cost.

24

So protectionism. Ok.

That does seem to run counter to the idea that lifting the world out of poverty is a good thing. Hey, what do I know?

No doubt. I do think that is about the level of analysis going on.

25

I’m not sure whether you’re trolling or what, but any reasonable person should be able to see that someone who just lost their job isn’t going to suddenly be happy because you tell them that while their situation sucks now, someone in china now is a little better off.

I think most people support lifting the world out of poverty, they just don’t support it at the cost of bringing themselves to poverty.

“DEY DOOK ER JERBS” is a south park reference.

26

I don’t agree with that position, but that’s a pretty unfair characterization of it. Generally speaking, these people are arguing that it’s fundamentally disingenuous to demand that the working classes and poor of the world slug it out in a zero sum scrabble for crumbs in the face of occasionally staggering profits and concomitant rewards for upper tier white collar jobs and people who shift capital around as an occupation in itself. This is related to the criticism that informed observers have made of Wall Street’s transition from a means of allocating money to industry efficiently in a mutually beneficial cycle to a parasitic, increasingly toxic casino with a taxpayer funded safety net.

Your whole “lifting the world out of poverty” line seems like a bullshit smear on its face, though. There are plenty of relatively credible critiques of protectionism and/or regulation without essentially arguing trickle-down economics writ large.

27

The UK, France, US, and Japan all industrialized behind high tariff walls.

28

My sister says they were around a bit on Friday, but the rain chased em off. Nobody there on Monday, no idea how many today but probably none.

She’s working down there and said they were almost entirely unnoticed.

29

Looks like there’s one starting in Los Angeles. I was going to attend the General Assembly meeting tomorrow night and see how it’s progressing, and maybe see if I can help it be more effective.

You can check out the site here for previous meeting minutes http://occupylosangeles.org/

30

Yeah, probably none. It’s too bad we have no way to verify these things other than playing Chinese whispers with relatives.

31

Never. Its always the excuse of the guys who moved the jobs. They’re humanitarians!

32

I work downtown and wandered over to the area at lunch a couple of days ago to rubberneck. There’s naturally thousands of people in the area on a regular day, so the only real difference was a few more scruffy people wandering around and the protest chants from the crazies being slightly louder than usual.

A woman I work with lives on the street, and said that at the peak there were about 300 extra bums on the street at night, but poor weather soon drove them off. They had been told by police to expect 5-10k…

The protesters we did see were mostly young, and had the ‘Williamsburg’ look (trust fund bums, not hipsters). There were a couple of stereotypical anarchist types hanging out, but there was no core group that looked well organized. It didn’t seem to have much impetus, more of a loud complaint than a protest.

33

Maybe I’m missing something, but I thought he was talking about the industralized countries raising tariffs …

34

Well if so, the major trading partners of that list also had high tariffs while they were industrializing.

35

The street eye:

36

I could go down to check, it’s like 3-4 stops on the J. But that area is a bleak fucking wasteland at night and I’d rather not waste the time to see a big fat nothing in progress.

But I got confirmation off a few more friends who work down there. Half didn’t know something was supposed to be happening until I asked. Perhaps these protestors should have picked someplace not full of busy, cynical types to hang out and be all emo about economy.

37

My point (via the links) is that you don’t need to rely on secondhand information from random people you know. On account of straightforward access to the relevant data via a simple google search on the topic. You know what, nevermind.

38

I would say that eyewitness accounts from people you know are a lot more reliable than cherrypicked photos that were put up on the internet in a vain attempt to make this laughable joke of a “protest” into something other than an utter failure.

39

Again, if you’d clicked on the links I posted, it’s a live video feed of the protest, such as it is. It does a pretty good job of demonstrating just how limited (and tragicomic to the point of bordering on self-parody) the success of the event is regardless of what angle it’s shot at, although I guess it’s more fun to call up friends and have a circle jerk about things you’ve already made up your mind about.

At any rate, I would rank this as somewhere below the average German tree debacle, since in this case there is obviously no event large enough to trigger popular momentum as evidenced by the last crash motivating shit-all in terms of reform pressure thanks to the inherent stability of our legitimization of bribery through lobbying on a grand scale. Probably the only notable thing about it is the the overreaction by the NYPD and the how the futility of a protest is correlated with people actively opposing it regardless of their personal views on the topic.

40

But but but social network. Also I don’t like video content that doesn’t come from HBO or AMC.

Sidenote, just got through like everything on HBO, saved Generation Kill for last because i herd it was gud. Is this gonna be like that Band of Brothers thing where I needed to diagram out the characters to keep everyone straight, or is it simpler on that front?