Occupy Movement

[Aggie]

I'm surprised we haven't discussed this yet.  What's your take on the Occupy movement?


I'm quite surprised this is actually happening now. I thought it would take people a little longer to wake up to things, but perhaps that's Alberta bias (the crude's still flowing here, and so are the petro-dollars, so there's little concern about the economy or corporate pay).

[Opsa]

I have mixed feelings about it, since the cynic in me sometimes can't figure out who's side they're on, but overall, I am happy that there's a protest movement that strong out there. It definitely lowers the complacency factor, and that's good.

[Griffin NoName]

I think they have the right idea. Sadly, it's been a bit of a fiasco here in London as there's been so much trouble with the Church (St Pauls) and also they seem to have been infiltrated by druggies, the homeless, and other fringes of society.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Nice, well intentioned, idealist, naive, there's not much pragmatism in them, therefore stuff happens, homeless people take the opportunity, and with reason. Hierarchical structures exist for a reason, and while it is understood how corruptible they are, it is practically impossible to effect change without some form of it.

A pragmatical approach is to organize each chapter and try to win elections, but given that anyone running for office is suspect by default they wouldn't do so, which makes them a nuisance, and one not too effective unless it is to call attention to themselves for a little while.

Sadly the only way to move ahead is to accept that you will have to deal with sociopaths, but ones willing to win a little less than the ones we currently have...

[Swatopluk]

One effect they have is to 'force' the elites to react, which in many cases mean that they come out from behind the curtain because they lose their nerves. From their perspective the wisest choice would be to simply ignore and let the winter do the rest. But instead they either let drop their mask (mow that mob down!) or they run around in panic (they're on to us!). And their attempted/discussed countermeasures work further to discredit them (e.g. the Luntz persentation or, the memos about agents provocateur).
Some might say (as is the favorite phrase of the Faux) that Occupy is like the terrorists. They can only win by making the other side destroy itself. There will be no new American revolution from the Left but the Right's counterproductive actions in fear of it may (best case scenario) achieve something similar. But of course it could also end with neofascism or the 'Chinese Solution'. The latter has more or less been endorsed by at least one GOP presidential candidate ('we should be more like China!' without a social safety net an no (legal) unions).

[Sibling DavidH]

Sadly, it's been a bit of a fiasco here in London as there's been so much trouble with the Church (St Pauls) and also they seem to have been infiltrated by druggies, the homeless, and other fringes of society.

Right!  You can't get the protesters these days, it's not like when I was a young lad....

[Swatopluk]

Wacht auf, Verdummte dieser Erde
Die stets man noch nach Ungarn zwingt

[Aggie]

I think they have the right idea. Sadly, it's been a bit of a fiasco here in London as there's been so much trouble with the Church (St Pauls) and also they seem to have been infiltrated by druggies, the homeless, and other fringes of society.

The druggies, homeless and other fringes of society are largely what this is about, IMHO.  Largely speaking, the Occupy discussion is about re-imagining society to bring it into a form that will enfranchise EVERYONE.  I'm not saying that the Occupy movement has any ability to achieve these kind of goals, but I think that's the spirit behind it.  

Free-market capitalist society is quite fine with letting the bottom 1% fall under the bus to keep the wheels rolling. Tearing down the top 20% to improve life for the middle 60% shouldn't be the goal here, IMHO*. The gap between the median income (in the US) of ~$50,000 and the bottom 1% (<$2500 per year) is starker and more appalling in many ways than the gap between the median and the top 1% (>$500,000 per year).

The whole point of civilization, in my opinion, is to provide an adequate standard of living and opportunity for personal development for all people within the civilization.  That's apparently not a common perspective in many places.  

_{*but can we tear down the top 20% anyways for the sheer hell of it?  I'm personally committed to the cause:  According to this little calculator I would have been in the top 20% in the US last year, and I'm now personally seeing to tearing down my income to follow my ideals.}

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Free-market capitalist society is quite fine with letting the bottom 1% fall under the bus to keep the wheels rolling.

They're quite fine letting the bottom 60% fall under the bus, in smaller economies where ~50%+ of the population lives in poverty they couldn't care less, and when they care is because they think can squeeze even more out of that rock.

Right now, the percentage of people living under the poverty line is close to ~15% in the US and UK, and ~10 in Canada (as a point of comparison, Mexico has a ~35%, and Colombia ~45%), those numbers have been growing over the past 20 years in the first world so we can rule out compassion in laissez. faire economies.

My main hypothesis is that one of measures taken during and after the New Deal, not only in the States but in western Europe was the realization on part of the .1% that the only way to prevent the rise of communism was to assure some level of balance between the upper and the lower ends of the pyramid (some call that a social contract). Once the Soviet Union collapsed, and China moved towards a market economy, communism was discredited enough to allow the end of the social contract, given that a communist revolution is no longer possible, IOW there is no need to protect the median citizen of the western world. If things balance themselves out as expected, poverty in the first world should be closer to the average of the rest of the world, that is upwards 30%+.

And they are perfectly happy with that.

[Aggie]

If things balance themselves out as expected, poverty in the first world should be closer to the average of the rest of the world, that is upwards 30%+.

And they are perfectly happy with that.

Perhaps my plan to learn skills to live fairly comfortably with little income is not so short-sighted.  I'd encourage any potential future offspring to pursue formal education, but also think that learning to do with what you can scratch up on your own will be invaluable.  

If your balance of 30% below the poverty line is correct (seems reasonable to me), one has to determine whether they are comfortable with being in the top 70% of a society that allows the bottom 30% to live in poverty.  Thinking generationally, everyone would like their children and grandchildren to have an equivalent if not better standard of living than themselves, but this may not be possible for a significant slice of the population in this century.  

I've personally given up on any hope of trying to change the system, but I would prefer not to be complicit in it.  I'm preparing to be a very successful poor person rather than struggling to reach the top in a game I don't believe is beneficial to anyone involved.  I'm not expecting it to be easy, but it may or may not prove to be a pragmatic strategy.  The US in particular seems to be doing a good job of cranking more and more (unpaid/underpaid) effort out of those who are 'in' using the implicit threat that if you are not sacrificing more than the worker in the next cubicle, you'll soon find yourself out on your @$$. Making sure your family continues to have a home easily and naturally becomes a more acute concern than y'know, actually spending quality time with them.


It's a joke I make at the moment, but soon the social structure is going to have to figure out how to accommodate 3-parent families, because it'll take three incomes to raise one.    

[Griffin NoName]

Sadly, it's been a bit of a fiasco here in London as there's been so much trouble with the Church (St Pauls) and also they seem to have been infiltrated by druggies, the homeless, and other fringes of society.

Right!  You can't get the protesters these days, it's not like when I was a young lad....

   (agreed!)

The druggies, homeless and other fringes of society are largely what this is about, IMHO.

Yes, agreed, but it's just no good having them on demonstrations 

Perhaps my plan to learn skills to live fairly comfortably with little income is not so short-sighted.     

As long as your health is good enough to "do the work" involved. (speaking as someone who's sudden, long term ill health has had a drastic effect).

It's a joke I make at the moment, but soon the social structure is going to have to figure out how to accommodate 3-parent families, because it'll take three incomes to raise one.    

LOL !

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

It's a joke I make at the moment, but soon the social structure is going to have to figure out how to accommodate 3-parent families, because it'll take three incomes to raise one.    

Polyandry works that way as a way to increase the odds of survival of the offspring. Considering that female income is still 20% below and that childcare is often as expensive as the income mom would make, several fathers make perfect sense...  

[Griffin NoName]

It's a joke I make at the moment, but soon the social structure is going to have to figure out how to accommodate 3-parent families, because it'll take three incomes to raise one.    

Polyandry works that way as a way to increase the odds of survival of the offspring. Considering that female income is still 20% below and that childcare is often as expensive as the income mom would make, several fathers make perfect sense...  

Surely what makes sense is to have no children? Capitalism as the end of the human race?

[Swatopluk]

At least as the start of a human race reduced in numbers significantly (which would be good).
I guess 1-1.5 billion would be enough. The problem is how to get there without massive misery, brutal bloodshed, and cruel carnage.

[pieces o nine]

Surely what makes sense is to have no children? Capitalism as the end of the human race?

Considering the real-world application of personal- and family-related policies in many US corporations, that would seem to be the end game...

[Opsa]

What a subtle ending that would be.

Okay, maybe I don't get the Occupy idea, because I thought it was more about getting the 1% to pull their load by paying their taxes without loopholes, not for the 99% to take their riches.

When the Occupy DC people took over the bridge here, an observer was interviewed who stated adamantly that his father came to this country without a penny and became rich by hard work. He was annoyed with the Occupy people's demands for more than their share, in his opinion. I didn't think that they were asking for that. The guy's father came and worked hard for a living, and made his way- that's the American Dream. I wondered though- if his father had arrived today, would he have been able to reach that dream under these circumstances?

[pieces o nine]

I support the Occupy movement, to the best of my ability to interpret it correctly.
Someone  (from the monastery?)  posted a link which expresses my reaction to the "1%" and its "53%" supporters more eloquently than I can.

Do you really want the bar set this high?  Do you really want to live in a society where just getting by requires a person to hold down two jobs and work 60 to 70 hours a week?  Is that your idea of the American Dream?

Do you really want to spend the rest of your life working two jobs and 60 to 70 hours a week?  Do you think you can?  Because, let me tell you, kid, that's not going to be as easy when you're 50 as it was when you were 20.

And what happens if you get sick?  You say you don't have health insurance, but since you're a veteran I assume you have some government-provided health care through the VA system.  I know my father, a Vietnam-era veteran of the Air Force, still gets most of his medical needs met through the VA, but I don't know what your situation is.  But even if you have access to health care, it doesn't mean disease or injury might not interfere with your ability to put in those 60- to 70-hour work weeks.

Do you plan to get married, have kids?  Do you think your wife is going to be happy with you working those long hours year after year without a vacation?  Is it going to be fair to her?  Is it going to be fair to your kids?  Is it going to be fair to you?

...

And, believe it or not, there are people out there even tougher than you.  Why don't we let them set the bar, instead of you?  Are you ready to work 80 hours a week?  100 hours?  Can you hold down four jobs?  Can you do it when you're 40?  When you're 50?  When you're 60?  Can you do it with arthritis?  Can you do it with one arm?  Can you do it when you're being treated for prostate cancer?

And is this really your idea of what life should be like in the greatest country on Earth?

No, I have no objection to people who find success. I have no objection to people making a healthy profit from their skill sets, determination, and hard work. I have no objection to people who are able to make good lives for themselves and their families.

But I do have objections to people who use money as a lethal weapon against everyone else. I do have objections to people who do not, in fact, do anything remotely recognizable as work, yet who are reaping staggering rewards which increase obscenely as those around them are destroyed. I do have objections to those who are not happy to have the most, who believe that they only "win" if they have -- literally -- it all. And I do have objections to the malicious, gloating glee with which they survey the damage they have knowingly wrought, and the smug, smirking promises to do more.

And I am completely bewildered by the rank and file republicans around me who defiantly parrot the talking points of the tiny minority marching over them with gilded boots as well.


-edited to fix a sentence-

[Aggie]

That's a good link, Pieces.  More from it:

If a family could live a good life with one wage-earner working a 40-hour job, then the American Dream was realized.  If the income from that job could pay the bills, buy a car, pay for the kids' braces, allow the family to save enough money for a down payment on a house and still leave some money for retirement and maybe for a college fund for the kids, then we were living the American Dream.  The workers were sharing in the prosperity they helped create, and they still had time to take their kids to a ball game, take their spouses to a movie, and play a little golf on the weekends.

Ah, the halcyon days of the 1950s!  Yeah, ok, it wasn't quite that perfect.  The prosperity wasn't spread as evenly and ubiquitously as we might want to pretend, but if you were a middle-class white man, things were probably pretty good from an economic perspective.  The American middle class was reaching its zenith.

And the top marginal federal income tax rate was more than 90%.  Throughout the whole of the 1950s and into the early 60s.

That's kind of my dream - that a single full-time income or two part-time incomes would be enough to raise a family.  This would allow parents to...   actually parent.

[Opsa]

I hear ya, Po'9. There are some rich people that do care and would not have a problem with paying their taxes like the rest of us poor stiffs, and I applaud them. The problem is the rest of the 1% who feel that they shouldn't have to let loose any of their income (even thought they couldn't possibly spend it all themselves if they tried) because they feel like they are entitled.

I have heard wealthy people complain that they shouldn't have to support public education because they sent their children to expensive private schools. Why do they assume that it's all about them? Do they not want to support the public transportation system because they have Lear jets? I mean, it's quite stupid. The cost of living in a free country is paying taxes so we can be free. It's not about keeping everything for themselves. They have their heads up their posteriors, and apparently those too are lined with gold.

I'd love to have some of those spoiled rotters wake up with their mansions plopped squarely in a third world country and see how long it'd take them to come shrieking home.

I'm disappointed that so many of those people feel they have covered their arses by kissing those of the politicians. It's more than just a shame. It seems obvious who is working for whom, and yet the game goes on and everyone loses but them. I am glad that the Occupy people have pointed a public finger, even with all the troubles.

And I hear ya, Aggie. It doesn't seem like it should be too much to ask to just live like human beings.

[Aggie]

And I hear ya, Aggie. It doesn't seem like it should be too much to ask to just live like human beings.

Scale back your way of life until you can live like a human being, says I.

[Swatopluk]

I'd love to have some of those spoiled rotters wake up with their mansions plopped squarely in a third world country and see how long it'd take them to come shrieking home.

They'll just hire guards with AK-47 etc. as do the native oligarchies. If there is a slum round their mansion, it will be torched.

[Opsa]

I'd love to have some of those spoiled rotters wake up with their mansions plopped squarely in a third world country and see how long it'd take them to come shrieking home.

They'll just hire guards with AK-47 etc. as do the native oligarchies. If there is a slum round their mansion, it will be torched.

If that be so, then the rich aint living like human beings.

Scale back your way of life until you can live like a human being, says I.

Challenging, but not impossible, and the end result would be the freedom of living in the now.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

I'd love to have some of those spoiled rotters wake up with their mansions plopped squarely in a third world country and see how long it'd take them to come shrieking home.

They'll just hire guards with AK-47 etc. as do the native oligarchies. If there is a slum round their mansion, it will be torched.

Security measures can go so far when society has crumbled around you, ever heard of kidnappings? Those are particularly popular in places where there is high poverty and high inequality, like Mexico, Colombia or Brazil. The very rich from those places don't live there any more, so they and their families are in the US or the EU, but as things go worse they won't be able to enjoy their money in the open, sooner or later, London, Paris and New York will as unsafe for the rich as Mexico City, Bogota or Sao Paulo. There is a reason to have a safety net, and the greedy b@$tards still don't get that you get what you pay for, like a working society, or one that doesn't work because they aren't willing to pay* for it.

[Opsa]

Really good points, Zone. How can we get them to realize this (especially without it sounding like a personal threat)?

I had a good friend from Chile (he died this past year) who came from an upper-class family and had to flee during all the trouble in the 70's. (Friends winding up in mass graves, not pretty.) He and the family he started here in the U.S. tried to move back there in the 90's after he put himself through college driving taxis here. Chile had been his home growing up and he said it was beautiful, but they found it sadly hostile and had to come back to the states.

I wonder if many of the 1% have any idea about this sort of circumstance. They need to understand how they benefit from helping their country.

[Swatopluk]

What they learn instead is why their spiritual forefathers had castles and strict oversight of the peasants.
An important step will be to restrict their movement again, so they have no choice but to serve.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Ah, but things were a bit different then, you needed lots of farmers and soldiers none needing to know how to read and write, now they need far less simple jobs and even those require reading, writing and basic math, besides they need qualified techies to run things for them, and those need lots of education. They may not want to pay for anything, but we are still far off the point when they can automate all work and leave the tech jobs to their children.

[Swatopluk]

Restriction of movement is easy. Abolish public transport (if it exists in the first place) and make petrol/gas so expensive (you may have to monopolize it) that only other rich people can afford it. And do not forget to make walking along the highway (or bicycling on it) illegal (with hefty fines). Control of schools is already in your hands of course. Control of information is not difficult either. The only broadcasting that can be received in your parts is produced by your buddies (same with newspapers) and the inevitable reforms of the internet will make anything you do not like so slow that the mob will cease to bother trying to get any of it.
Parts of the country already come close. And what is best, your low-information subjects will deal with troublemakers all by themselves, so you will rarely have to accident them personally.

[Aggie]

Ah, but things were a bit different then, you needed lots of farmers and soldiers none needing to know how to read and write, now they need far less simple jobs and even those require reading, writing and basic math, besides they need qualified techies to run things for them, and those need lots of education. They may not want to pay for anything, but we are still far off the point when they can automate all work and leave the tech jobs to their children.

Perhaps you've noticed that much of Amrika is making the Service Job the new standard of employment.  Much of this workforce can be educated only to the point where they have basic literacy and math skills (and the latter can be crutched along by automatic change dispensers and/or pictogram-based systems for giving change).  I know there's much more that needs to go into a good service worker, but those are often drastically undervalued as employees (and may be prone to undesirable habits like thinking).

Technical and skilled jobs can be kept for those who have made the slog through an overly expensive post-secondary education system, which will make sure they are subservient and willing to be overworked and underpaid at least as long as their student loans last.  The threat of non-employment is a big stick for this lot. 

Cynically speaking, the 'solution' to having too many underemployed college-educated folks is to crank up tuition to the point that the supply matches demand.    If you overshoot, there are plenty of rich foreigners that will pay even more to send their children to Amrika for school, and underpaying foreign graduates is a well-established and sometimes consciously practised strategy for keeping down payrolls.   I know entire companies that hire foreign students coming out of Canadian schools almost exclusively for entry-level positions; when you have 8 weeks to find a job before your student visa expires, you are in no position to haggle about salary.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

I don't disagree with you but I'm not in complete agreement either.

We tend to see situations on simplistic terms ( A ^ B => C ), but societies are very complicated ecosystems, I don't think there is an explicit conspiracy on part of employers to deprive of jobs/salaries a market, but hundreds of individual efforts to lower costs wherever and however possible, without understanding the consequences. Consumers make equivalent choices, for instance, do diamond buyers think they are financing blood wars in Africa? Likely not, they just want the shiny thing and hope for the best.

Manufacturing (to put an example) happens in SE Asia because that is an overpopulated part of the world where many countries have 50%+ of their populations living on subsistence farming and/or with a very meager income. They are willing to work for cents an hour because cents are more than nothing. Until that balances out (that is, average incomes go up) there will be a strong economic pressure to manufacture there. Same happens with foreign employees, outsourcing, etc.

What made the New Deal an interesting case is that under the pressure from a social movement the 0.1% of the population that owns most of the wealth realized that unless the population is happier they would lose that wealth, and in a truly corporatist* way, reached an agreement with the government to improve the conditions of living of the majority. At that point, the regularly greedy, selfish and self centered top restrained from outright exploitation of the population. The change was needed quickly because they could see toppled countries on the news and wonder if that could happen to them.

Right now that same 0.1% can't see the risk of alienating populations because there isn't a credible alternative, and it may take years or even decades for a new threatening movement to arise. If they had a bit more common sense they would uphold the new deal ethos to maintain stability for a long future, but as things stand that stability is in jeopardy and they don't seem to care. That is where some re-education should take place, but for now, it seems that the bad education, the one championed by the likes of Ayn Rand, is the one on top, and sooner of later the ugly consequences will show up.

* check the wiki article, it may be rightfully associated with fascism but it doesn't have to be.

[Swatopluk]

But there is also a nasty strain of 'I can only be happy when the ones below me are not. Otherwise I lack the contrast'. Many of the superrich want to have not 'more' but 'more than'. They would be happy with less, if the distance to the others could be increased ('I'd give half of my wealth, if you'd lose 90% at the same time').
Additionally power is a drug. Just having it is not enough, it has to be consumed. And one way to consume it is to have underlings to mistreat. A less extreme version is the hierarchy of office furniture that can be seen as a bastardized version of the system under absolutism (King=chair with back and armrests, high nobility = chair with back but without armrests, lower nobility = stool without back, anyone else = no seat at all). I hear some companies have a specific seat and desk for each level of hierarchy leading to the absurd situation that in case of damage the storage department may tell you that at the moment they have only office chairs for people above and below you and that they cannot give you any of either because it would undermine the hierarchy.
On top of that comes the cubicle/office hierarchy. I read of cases where due to space problems a cubicle-grade employee got an actual office but the windows got walled up, the office door removed and a cubicle installed in the center of the room, so this lower lifeform (or the coworkers) would not get any ideas about his status.

[Griffin NoName]

Yes, the civil service here was rumoured on the windows - employees could get half a window where the room was walled up to divide it. Similar stuff with crapets/rugs. I myself have experienced this - had an office with a door to shut, where other employees were just in the general pool. I think this is commonplace. How would an office environment avoid it? Seems to me it is always going to be subject to executive privelege.

[pieces o nine]

A less extreme version is the hierarchy of office furniture that can be seen as a bastardized version of the system under absolutism (King=chair with back and armrests, high nobility = chair with back but without armrests, lower nobility = stool without back, anyone else = no seat at all). I hear some companies have a specific seat and desk for each level of hierarchy leading to the absurd situation that in case of damage the storage department may tell you that at the moment they have only office chairs for people above and below you and that they cannot give you any of either because it would undermine the hierarchy.
On top of that comes the cubicle/office hierarchy. I read of cases where due to space problems a cubicle-grade employee got an actual office but the windows got walled up, the office door removed and a cubicle installed in the center of the room, so this lower lifeform (or the coworkers) would not get any ideas about his status.

I worked for a corporation with this *exact* mentality! A co-worker received a chair with arms while a suitable peasant seat was on speed-order. A steady parade of overlings marched past, muttering with darkness upon their faces, until maintenance showed up with tools to wrench the arms from the chair.

I will always remember the spiral-shaped cube walls raised to reduce a remaining corner(!!!) spot to my lowly status, after our normal area was annexed for an executive's new, upsized office suite -- for what they did not yet know was the short time I was waiting to start a better job I had accepted elsewhere. I was next to the Time & Motion Experts, who brokered this deal, and I giggled -- loudly -- every day as I spiralled into my cubette with a 'moat'.

It was an interesting work environment, to say the least. Also, to the surprise of no-one beneath the thin-aired executive level, a third-generation company was eventually purchased by a competitor not quite so attached to such shenanigans. Although anecdotal, a ream of similar experiences (my own, and those close to me) fuels my disdain for Big Business As Usual (and its addiction to what amounts to executive welfare), and the completely unnecessary disruption, waste, and devastation it causes/continues.