The Moral Authority of Occupy Wall Street
posted by Frank Pasquale
The Occupy Wall Street protests continue to grow, and to gain support from public intellectuals. Joe Stiglitz, Anne Marie Slaughter, and Paul Krugman are the latest luminaries to praise the cause. The movement has also provoked derision. Let’s consider the latest Norquist/Limbaugh memes as the protest nears the one-month mark:
1) “They’re just spoiled hippies who can’t get a job.” A quick glance at the “We are the 99%” tumblr could easily dispel this notion. The economic suffering in this country is deep and broad. As one news story put it, “one in three Americans would be unable to make their mortgage or rent payment beyond one month if they lost their job.” Even if the most down-and-out people are too poor or busy to get to Wall Street (or the hundreds of other actions now taking place), many of them think of the OWS crowd as speaking for them.
There is so much needless suffering going on now, and so much wealth accumulating at the very top. It is hard to understand how critics dismiss the protesters so cavalierly. I used to find the Biblical passage about God hardening Pharaoh’s heart one of the more mysterious parts of the Book of Exodus; now I feel like I’m witnessing it firsthand.
2) “They should be in Washington, not Wall Street.” Never fear, OccupyKStreet is here. More seriously, this criticism misses the entire point of the protest. Wall Street and Washington have fused. Both politicians and the Fed gave enormous subsidies to large Wall Street firms, while asking almost nothing in return. You can read Larry Lessig’s Republic, Lost, or Kwak & Johnson’s Thirteen Bankers for all the gritty details. For now, let’s just say that entities that borrow at close to zero percent, lend at 4.5 to 20+%, and pay top managers billions in salary and bonuses, are not exactly Steve Jobs-level entrepreneurs. Rather, they’re part of a corrupt revolving door system that sends a favored group back and forth between government and business. We’d do better simply to pay off this shadow elite directly than to subsidize the trillion dollar schemes that maintain the illusion that our banking system is independent.
This is not a partisan critique. Like the OWS protesters, I have focused on the role of the Democratic party in covertly supporting a system that is openly applauded by establishment GOP figures. As Matt Stoller observes, “Rubinites still dominate Democratic policymaking — Larry Summers, Jason Furman, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Gene Sperling are all Rubin acolytes. Jack Lew, the current Office of Management and Budget director, is from Citigroup; Peter Orzag, the former OMB director, went to Citigroup. White House chief of staff Bill Daley is a JP Morgan man.”
Principled libertarians have also offered Hayekian critiques of the “Government Sachs” nexus. Russ Roberts at the Mercatus Institute has perceptively recognized the close ties between the US state and Wall Street. Amar Bhide has offered a brilliant Hayekian critique of the concentration of power in large financial institutions. From the opposite end of the political spectrum, Michael Hudson pithily observes that “economic planning has passed from government to the financial sector.” Individuals with a wide range of political commitments want to break up megabanks, or engage in more fundamental reform than contemplated in Dodd-Frank. OWS is protesting a form of corporatism that privatizes gains and socializes losses. Anyone who opposes welfare for the poorest should be passionately committed to a program that would cut off the richest from the trough of implicit and explicit subsidy that is at the core of our financial system.
3) “They’re breaking the law.” Were we back in the 1960s, I could perhaps understand how a claque of law-and-order Archie Bunkers could fulminate against the Yippies trying to levitate the Pentagon. If order is your highest social goal, the spontaneous transformation of a soulless, stone-covered city block in Lower Manhattan into a festive site of music and education may spark a frisson. But what’s different today is that the targets of the protest are so clearly lawbreakers themselves. In a 1993 article, economists Akerlof and Romer proposed that “an economic underground can come to life if firms have an incentive to go broke for profit at society’s expense (to loot) instead of to go for broke (to gamble on success).” They called this “bankruptcy for profit,” and its main features have a depressingly familiar ring.
As William K. Black explains in his theory of “control fraud,” the key to business success on Wall Street has been speculative ventures implicitly or explicitly backed by the government or the Fed. As Black has argued repeatedly, to make the scheme work, there must be some form of insurance—–such as public deposit insurance or private policies—–that promises to “make whole” those whose funds are lost in a speculative endeavor. Second, there must seem to be, on paper, some valuation that makes the entity’s investments seem worthwhile. Insurers are not stupid; they demand some evidence that the firm has an overall net worth sufficient to permit it to meet future obligations. These demands lead to the third element: a systematic subversion of the normal tools used to assess the stability and soundness of going concerns. Accountants and auditors are supposed to impose transparency on a firm’s accounts, but can easily be coopted into “aggressive” statements of positions. The looting leadership has a variety of mechanisms at its disposal. Accounting frauds can vastly overstate the value of current holdings. Opacity hides transfers of favors that justify contracts that are irrational on their face.
In a long series of posts, I have described the shady dealings—the special purpose entities, the accounting fraud, the daisy chain of favors leading to CDO sales, the fake insurance (aka AIG-underwritten CDS’s), the epidemic of foreclosure fraud—that generated countless Wall Street fortunes over the past decade. Wall Street’s winners are now trying to leverage those gains into permanent political victories, both to entrench the system of favors that helped them succeed and to cut the “entitlements” that generate rival claims to the public weal. OWS is trying to stop the illicit gains of the past decade from permanently deforming our economy.
As the protesters watch megabanks grab thousands of properties via foreclosures, often through processes that are utterly lawless, they think it equitable and just that they get to claim some small parcel of lower Manhattan as a center for their own deliberative processes. Giving them this space is the least that New York’s increasingly plutocratic and petulant Mayor Bloomberg can do.
4) “They should be thankful for what they have. Real poverty means living on $1 a day.” Rush Limbaugh recently praised a report by one of his advertisers, the Heritage Foundation, which details how good the US poor have it. A full 99% have refrigerators! But of course, selling that refrigerator would only buy about 8 days of food for most families.
The relative inequality point initially intrigued me. As Jared Diamond has noted, “The average rates at which people consume resources like oil and metals, and produce wastes like plastics and greenhouse gases, are about 32 times higher in North America, Western Europe, Japan and Australia than they are in the developing world.” But I no longer see a rational connection between the vast fortunes made by those at the top and a process of globalization that either balances consumption or creates rising living standards for all.
Yes, there are serious moral questions raised by global inequality that renders the average American better off than 90% of the population in poorer countries. As I noted earlier, a soi-disant Green Tory might advocate for more money circulating in the economy’s stratosphere: a luxury handbag costing $80,000 may have less of a carbon footprint than, say, 32 Tata Nanos.
But for anyone truly concerned about the environment, it would be far better to see the handbag consumption turned to sustainable energy investment, rather than continuing as a diversion of spending power away from the poor. Moreover, if domestic and international inequality continues at current levels, it will reinforce the US recession. Even for those who think the average US citizen is too rich anyway, the probable political consequences of perpetual stagnation are frightening. Money is being drained away from an ordinary economy into an economic stratosphere whose denizens appear increasingly out-of-touch with the workers who feed, defend, and otherwise serve them.
5) “They have no demands!” This is the most bizarre criticism of OWS as a social movement. As one organizer puts it, ‘We haven’t had a shortage of demands and solutions. We’ve had a shortage of mass movements.’ Moreover, it’s pretty predictable what will happen once demands get issued officially. If they’re too ambitious, the movement will be dismissed as socialism. If they’re moderate, it will be dismissed as stealth Obamaism, and the protesters will be condescendingly asked “why can’t you just participate in the political system as it is?”
The protesters’ deliberation about what demands to make (or goals to set) is laudable. It also reflects successful aspects of the pro-life movement. As Mike Konczal notes, “Beliefs about abortion are often underdeveloped, incoherent, and inconsistent until individuals become actively engaged with the movement. The process of conviction is the result of mobilization, not a necessary prerequisite for it.” Deciding how to exercise political power in a distributed and democratic way in the 21st century is a huge challenge. I am certain there will be divisions over what issues to prioritize, and how to balance global and local claims. Certainly that process is closer to a democratic ideal than a unified Jacobin cry to drown government in a bathtub.
The protesters realize that they, like much of the bottom 90% of society, are on an economic playing field that is tilted against them. They feel that normal channels of political change are blocked (especially given corporate influence over the Democratic party, the usual target of egalitarian reformist energy). Addressing these issues will take a lot of thought, reflection, and debate.
In conclusion, I just want to quote from a comment of the always thoughtful Patrick S. O’Donnell:
The protesters are participating in a “social movement,” defined as “a summary expression for a variety of collective efforts by the relatively powerless to exercise historical power.” (Richard Flacks) In protesting, social movement actors “break with, step out of, stop complying with, the terms and conditions of their accustomed daily lives.” In doing so, they attempt to influence their life circumstances and the life circumstances of those similarly situated, and this often entails considerable risks and costs. In a sclerotic democracy, we should give thanks to those willing to assume such risks and costs. These protests are in part and for some democratic forms of resistance in dramatic and urgent response to grave threats to accustomed, shared patterns of everyday living (even if some of the preconditions and conditions of such living were, and are, as we saw above, disturbing). Existing ways of life and cherished values are being undermined or threatened such that protests by social movements are the only political means available for bringing the attention needed to appreciate the gravity of such threats.
In many chilling ways, old social contracts are being broken, with nothing provided in their place. Old models of cooperation between the state and the market are breaking down, as incidents ranging from prescription drug shortages to food safety failures show. The global financial system teeters on the brink of meltdown thanks to a potential “Lehman style event” that regulators still have not managed to adequately monitor, let alone circumvent. These are urgent problems that an entrenched business-government elite has addressed listlessly, if at all. (This is not meant to criticize many well-intentioned front-line personnel, just to note that revolving door dynamics for political appointees and woefully inadequate funding often render their work a mere pantomime of effective enforcement action.) Occupy Wall Street has moral authority because it is addressing these problems. Its critics ought to be joining that process.
PS: A final reflection on the system of justice OWS is commenting on:
Image Credit (top image): Waywuwei.
October 8, 2011 at 11:13 am
Posted in: Corruption, Current Events, Financial Institutions, Law and Inequality, Political Economy, Politics, Sociology of Law
Print This Post
Responses (23)
Daniel S. Goldberg - October 8, 2011 at 3:52 pm
Just brilliant, even by your high standards. One of the best single posts I’ve read on the OWS protests anywhere.
Seth Finkelstein - October 8, 2011 at 9:40 pm
Yes, that last contrast is particularly poignant, especially about remorse.
A.J. Sutter - October 8, 2011 at 11:33 pm
As for the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart: this was in the lead-up to a massive redistribution of wealth from the Egyptians to the Israelites (Shemot/Exodus 12:31-36). Before that, though, there was an escalating spiral of heart-hardening and plagues, culminating in the death of the first-born.
It takes a lot of faith to believe that such a redistribution will happen in the present case, however. Moreover, the analogue of marking the gateposts is not so easy to envision, i.e. how the “99%” might avoid the adverse consequences of the worst plague that putatively would be felt by the richest. Actually, we’ve had plenty of plagues so far, but so far it’s the rich who look like they are in the role of the Chosen People. And given the vagueness of the demonstrators’ demands, do they even have some dayenu criterion in mind (i.e., for what “would be enough,” as the Passover song says)? (Not that the most successful accumulators of wealth know from dayenu, either.)
Keep in mind, too, that the redistribution wasn’t the end of the drama of the exodus. After giving the Israelites whatever they wanted so they would get the heck out of Egypt, Pharaoh had second thoughts. He sent the army in pursuit. (Cf. Bruce Ackerman’s prophecy?) Some more miracles were needed. In the present case, something fancier even than being able to walk to Staten Island without a bridge might be required. And that’s just to get to the 40 years of wandering part of the story.
Vladimir - October 9, 2011 at 2:55 am
You insights are such a pleasure to read — the perfect blend of deeply-compelling logical analysis and emotional resonance. Your P.S. is priceless.
Shag from Brookline - October 9, 2011 at 11:54 am
Today’s (10/9/11) NYTimes Sunday Review section has a number of articles/editorial that relate to this post: David Leonhardt, “The Depression: If Only Things Were That Good;” David J. Rothkopf, “Redefining The Meaning Of No. 1;” Todd Gitlin, “The Left Declares Its Independence;” Seymour Chwast, “Every Movement Needs a Logo;” and the lead editorial, “Protesters Against Wall Street.” I plan to save this section with a copy of this post attached for future reference. Neither political party can ignore this movement.
Rothkopf’s article brought to mind George W. Bush’s National Security Strategy (October, 2002), which said in effect “We (America) are #1 economically, #1 militarily and #1 politically, and we (America) will do whatever it takes to maintain these positions.” And Mitt Romney in a recent speech stressed the need for more defense spending, to support America’s God provided exceptionalism. Rothkopf addresses well the meaning of being #1. But the world has changed since John Winthrop’s “City Upon A Hill” of the 1630s. The world is different. Maybe OWS protesters will get more of the 99% to think through the problems. And maybe the 1% will as well.
I should add that with respect to national security and defense, The Sunday Review section includes Scott Shane’s “Coming Soon: The Drone Arms Race” which brings to mind the physics principle that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Of course, to a person subjected to the drone, equality is not very reassuring.
Excellent post, Frank.
Tommy Crocker - October 9, 2011 at 3:15 pm
Brilliant. Your invocation of Exodus combined with the final juxtaposition of sentences put me in mind of a phrase Arendt used in a different context: “the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying” nature of the injustice. Thanks for another outstanding post!
Frank Pasquale - October 9, 2011 at 10:57 pm
Thank you for all the great comments. I really appreciate them.
AJ, I will be looking for some exegeses of the dayenu concept. David Graeber’s book on debt has influenced much of the OWS movement, and pays a lot of attention to the role of debt in ancient social relations.
Shag, that’s a great rdg list. I think Rothkopf’s Superclass is an effective internationalization of C. Wright Mill’s Power Elite theory.
I think the most trenchant critique of that Bush national security strategy is in Sheldon Wolin’s Democracy Incorporated. Why can’t we aim to bring a social minimum to the world, rather than being #1 forever? Certainly smart power would at least mask its intent with a veneer of humanitarian aspiration.
Shag from Brookline - October 10, 2011 at 11:06 am
Today’s (10/10/11) NYTimes includes: (1) Paul Krugman’s column “Panic Of the Plutocrats” and (2) David Carr’s Media Question feature “A Protest’s Ink-Stained Fingers.” Carr focuses upon the “Occupied Wall Street Journal,” a four-pager being printed and distributed in the OWS protest areas. Carr adds: “(A spokeswoman at The Wall Street Journal declined to comment on the appropriation of the newspaper’s name.)” Is an infringement action being considered? Perhaps the First Amendment (+ the 14th) would serve as an obstacle:
“Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Those at the lower margins of the 1% should realize that the OWS protests can serve as a safety net for them if those in the higher margins tighten the screws.
PrometheeFeu - October 10, 2011 at 2:27 pm
At the risk of making an unpopular statement, I would like to remind readers that the man who stole $100 did so by threatening violence which is a very serious crime. Are the sentences justified? I don’t think so, but things are a little more nuanced than 1 guy steals $3 billion and gets 3.5 years while another steals $100 and gets 15 years.
Keep It Up - October 10, 2011 at 4:22 pm
I think you should give up the law gig and become an opinion writer, Frank. I enjoy your posts 100 times as much as any journalist’s.
Orin Kerr - October 10, 2011 at 7:30 pm
PromtheeFeu,
If you really want the details, it seems that the guy didn’t steal $3 billion. Rather, a quick google search suggests that he was a big name in the industry who agreed to join a company as CEO even though he wasn’t particularly involved in the company; it turned out that the company was permeated with fraud, and when he learned that, he didn’t stop it.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/22/mortgage-fraud-ceo-prison-paul-allen_n_881946.html
Bruinrefugee - October 10, 2011 at 8:02 pm
On the contrarian side, as someone dealing with the hassle of these ingrates trying to invade an office building in the middle of the day, I’d posit the criticisms of them are fair and that this “movement” is part of the problem, not the solution, esp. to the extent it’s supported by public union workers.
The wealth necessary to put food on tables in the U.S. and the world, not to mention the roofs over our heads and the iphones on the street are created through private enterprise. It also creates the wealth that pays for government services.
Fiat money is merely a projection, but the relative value of goods measured in it is a substantive measure, particularly to the extent that money is in wide circulation. It facilitates transactions that essentially require private orderings to be consummated.
And in a world in which people are on the left and the right, living on the oceans and in the plains, with a diversity of wants and opinions, the ordering of the free market is the single best measure and accomodation for allowing individuals to acquire their physical (and often their intellectual/emotional) desires as well.
The protestors camping out permanently add nothing to the net material wealth. Not for themselves, nor for anyone else. Steve Jobs had an idea, found investors and revolutionized our lives while employing tens of thousands in the US and around the world. The protestors, well, they have a chant. They don’t employ the unemployed, they don’t put food on tables. They don’t risk going into business for themselves. Maybe that’s through no fault of their own, but maybe–just maybe it is.
Instead, many of the protestors are getting in the way of people who ARE trying to create more — for society, for themselves, for their families, for the companies that they work for. If those that are working stick at it and succeed, their companies will pay them more, they will hire, and the virtuous circle begins again. But as the companies fail — the Circuit Cities, the Borders, the Mervyns, whatever — if no new businesses are there to take their place, we all become materially poorer.
I have a hard time seeing how any of this makes us better off when the single largest drag on the economy (particularly in states like California) is the collapse of the overvalued real estate market. I don’t see ANY of the protestors seeking the indictments of anyone at Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac or those in Congress who shot down the attempts in 2004/2005 to reform the two. I don’t see anyone trying to hunt down the regulatory geniuses that gave legal sanction to low-documentation home loans. And I certainly don’t see how getting p.o.’ed at the banks shifting away from the model they’ve long used to make credit card markets run (charging retailers for their use) after we passed a law telling them they can’t do that anymore is particularly efficient or wise.
Not that banks or Wall St. individuals are any better than the rest of us; but are they really any worse? I mean, our President is seeking to build a $1 BILLION campaign chest after destroying the public financing model for presidential campaigns while Solyndra was throwing away $535 million of public money. Is it going to be paid back? How many CDO’s were constructed on the back of paper stamped by the GSOs? Has ANYONE addressed an actual solution to the housing crisis four years in? I just feel for that coffee shop owner whose bathroom is being overrun by protestors who don’t buy coffee while keeping out the usual patrons. It just makes us all poorer.
A.J. Sutter - October 10, 2011 at 11:50 pm
Apropos of Bruinrefugee’s comment, “The protestors camping out permanently add nothing to the net material wealth”: Allowing a bit of hyperbolic license for “permanently,” that’s a fair point. Though, e.g., stay-at-home moms don’t add anything either, since their services to their families aren’t included in GDP. Ditto for most clergy, volunteers, and others who provide services at no charge.
What services do the protesters provide? One could argue they’re calling our attention to the serious problem of income inequality and other inequities in the US system; they’re stimulating us to debate matters of public importance. Not to put the two groups in the same league, but most Biblical prophets were aiming for the same sort of impact. And a lot of those folks were probably smelly, irascible, cave-dwelling, locust-eating people who were no more fun to be around than the protesters; probably a whole lot less so, in fact.
Sure, that service is a far cry from what Steve Jobs provided. But if you’re going to compare the protestors to Steve Jobs, you might hold yourself to the same standard: my guess is that Steve would have won that comparison, too. In any case, the comparison is inapt. The protestors aren’t protesting the the Steve Jobses, the Circuit Cities, the Borders, the Mervyns, [the] whatever — they’re protesting the financial services industry, or certain segments of it.
So what about the contribution of the financial services industries to the net material wealth? It’s not so hot, either. According to the World Federation of Exchanges, only between 1%-2% of the trading volume on US stock exchanges in any given year are actually funds raised by companies. That is, 98% of the volume is the proceeds of speculation. Proceeds that don’t directly increase “net material wealth,” by the way, because that’s measured by per capita GDP, and capital gains are excluded from GDP. Which explains how the inflation-corrected combined annual volume on the NYSE and NASDAQ alone has exceeded US GDP every year since 1997. Even despite the recent recession, it was more than 2x US GDP in 2009 and 2010. And that doesn’t count the money made from options, swaps and other instruments, capital gains on real estate and commodities, etc. etc. None of which increases the “net material wealth,” either.
Of course, I’ve been focusing on the production side of GDP — what about the consumption side? The great financial sage Alan Greenspan once referred to the “wealth effect,” i.e. the benefits of rich people spending their money in the general economy. A couple of points about that –
To begin with, when you compare the performance of US stock indices to GDP, you find that there isn’t any such effect. Between 1990 and 2007, the NASDAQ and DJIA averages more than tripled, while US GDP barely doubled (all stats corrected for inflation). In fact, during the dot-com boom the NASDAQ tripled (i.e., experienced 200% real growth) from 1996 to 1999, but the US per capita GDP growth rate increased only from 2.5% to 3.25% (and has never been so high again since). Even after the Lehman Shock, the stock indices are performing at higher multiples than GDP.
But even if we allow, for the sake of argument, that the “wealth effect” might exist, then to invoke it in this context would be to say that a person’s contribution to “net material wealth” is determined by how much he or she spends. Once again, I’d bet that a comparison to a billionaire like Steve Jobs would turn most readers of this blog into insignificant worms on this score. While I share your view that courtesy should move them to buy a cup of coffee or a muffin once in a while, the protesters nonetheless do contribute something to GDP as consumers: they buy pizzas, toilet paper, bottled water, etc., as much as their disposable income allows. Is the fundamental problem, then, that their disposable income is too low? If you think so, then you’ve got a point of agreement with them, after all.
AYY - October 11, 2011 at 1:56 am
AJ,
They’re stimulating a debate about wealth inequality? We’ve been there and done that. Remember John Edwards? Or better yet look at what a tenured law prof makes and what a liberal arts adjunct makes. That stuff gets debated all the time.
According to today’s Legal Insurrection what you can see at the protests isn’t a stimulating debate about wealth inequality, but rather:
“drug dealing, public urination and defecation (including on police cars), criminals and drug addicts, talk of bestiality, lessons on escaping police custody, obscene signs, and anti-semites,”
ttp://legalinsurrection.com/2011/10/mars-aint-the-kind-of-place-to-rais
Frank, I’m sure that’s not the moral authority you hoped to see, but that’s apparently what’s there.
And then there’s this:
Wall Street “Protester” Says He’s Getting Paid $22 An Hour (Plus Overtime) To “Protest”
http://www.businessinsider.com/wall-street-protester-getting-paid-to-prote
I don’t know what other protesters get, but if that’s the going rate, the wealth gap is going to close pretty fast. And in terms of spending on pizzas etc., it’s not clear if the unions and the leftie foundations are providing those things for them, but if the protesters bought them as part of a protest, they’d have bought those things anyway.
Shag from Brookline - October 11, 2011 at 5:03 am
Speaking of bestiality, Bruinrefugee and AYY seem to rely upon Fox News for their anecdotal comments. (I assume they are wan-na-be 1%-ers.)
Shag from Brookline - October 11, 2011 at 6:07 am
The Legal History Blog has a 10/10/11 post by Tomiko Brown-Nagin “Historians on Wall Street Protests and ‘Class Warfare’ in U.S. Politics: A Comment.”
On the pundit side today, David Brooks’ NYTimes column contrasts with Eugene Robininson” WaPo column on the OWS protests. (Robinson clearly tops Brooks in the sense of humor department.)
bruinrefugee - October 11, 2011 at 9:05 am
As an aside, with the exception of the coffee shop tale pulled from the Daily Show my “anecdotes” are from personal experience. I’ve had the good fortune to see these folks up close last week in LA as they forced buildings to close their doors for security reasons, etc. To say I’m no fan is to put it too mildly.
But let’s look at the financial industry. I use their loans to leverage above my income status to go to college. To get our family’s cars, to purchase a house that will never again be in the black. There are tens of millions more doing each one of those things. Of those three transactions, it’s the first that’s probably most problematic given the endemic fraud and lack of disclosure from colleges and grad schools about the value of their end product. Compare that to Enron, which actually publicly-disclosed the facts that led to its demise (most people just didn’t pay close attention to its SEC filings).
I may not “like” my bank, but I certainly have used its products. I may not be a big fan of the way the IPO process is structured, but my 401k gives me a stake in the system. One that I don’t see as “speculation” and more than I did the decision to go into hoc for school. I’m just one guy, but there are tens/hundreds millions more in circumstances that differ in degree, not kind.
While I understand the point made above about what GDP measures, I go back to that Clinton-era study that found, IIRC, that a home where a kid graduates from high school and starts college without getting knocked up (or doing it) or doing drugs, has something like a 2% chance of being below the poverty line at some point in their life [I think there was something in there about two-parent homes as well). It may not be fashionable, but traditionally, plugging away can get you a long way in our economy. And if enough people do it, surprisingly, our overall material (and other) wealth rises significantly.
The upward progress of mankind has been marked by unleashing productive energies to incentivize and to create more. With some of the greatest advances more the result of lots of people looking for things and some plopping upon good answers at a time when they could get the resources to spread the news/products. Billions more have food because of the green revolution; I have yet to see a bearded, unwashed dude arguing Foucault or Rousseau move the dial forward. Similarly, I fail to see how the protestors help that process; instead, they seem antithetical to it. And they’re freakin’ annoying to boot.
john chung - October 11, 2011 at 9:11 am
I love the last comparison between the two sentences. That says it all.
john chung - October 11, 2011 at 9:18 am
Here’s a more humorous depiction of the comparison of prison sentences.
http://www.jsmineset.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/clip_image0024.jpg
Shag from Brookline - October 12, 2011 at 7:39 am
Larry Lessig’s Huffington Post article (10/5/11) suggests expanding OWS: “#OccupyWallSt, Then #OccupyKSt, Then #OccupyMainSt” focusing upon public corruption detailed in his new book “Republic Lost.” Lessig calls for a constitutional convention. (Marvin Ammori has an interesting post today (10/11/11) at Balkinization on “Lessig’s Republic Lost.”)
Bruinrefugee - October 12, 2011 at 2:15 pm
One more aside, about the one who actually led the fraud (and wasn’t a cooperating witness like Paul Allen). He received a 30-year sentence.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-30/ex-taylor-bean-chairman-farkas-sentenced-to-30-years-in-prison.html
Citizen Jeff - October 18, 2011 at 3:52 pm
It’s inherently interesting when a law professor endorses lawlessness as Frank has. I’m very open to civil disobedience, but I think the argument needs to be articulated more clearly. For one thing, many protesters and their supporters are asserting a First Amendment right to indefinitely monopolize Zuccotti Park, subject to no restrictions whatsoever. To so interpret the Constitution is not to engage in civil disobedience.
Moreover, flouting the law as he recommends, might elicit a police response, yet Frank hasn’t said how Zuccotti Park protesters should handle such a situation if it occurs. Submit to arrest? Physically resist? Argue that the occupation is morally justified?
What exactly is the professor advocating? What exactly is the position of protesters regarding their entitlement to use of the park (or any space)?
I think moral authority is diminished to the extent that clarity is lacking.
When it comes to fighting the police, it seems necessary to present some sort of an argument. A bloodbath was barely avoided on Friday after thousands of people showed up to resist the police. It worked, but the moral/legal justification for occupying the park strikes me as fuzzy.
I’m questioning only the protesters’ land use policy and beliefs about it, not the movement’s overall legitimacy.
Jens - October 21, 2011 at 3:26 am
I found this via the Baseline scenario blog and find both the post and discussion very interesting. Regarding the comparison of the Paul Allen and Roy Brown, it is not just the nature of the sentence. It is also the desperation of Mr. Brown that is striking. As he portrays his case, it is the complete lack of health care, including mental health care, shelter, and food that drove him to his crime.
To say that poor people in the United States are in a better situation than poor people in China for example, is likely (Point 4). This is a strange argument: Ordinary people shouldn’t fight for better conditions because there are some people who have even worse conditions. American women shouldn’t have fought for equal rights in the last century because there are nations where women lived in abysmal conditions, with no rights or property. Your union shouldn’t fight pay-cuts, as in the Mott case linked to in the article, because other workers are paid even lower salaries. Don’t try to improve your condition, or you could end up in an even worse plight? Is this a valid argument?
It isn’t just about economic inequality in any case, it is also about political inequality.
Regarding Bruinrefugee, I think your and others’ frustration is understandable: There are many corporations that do amazing things. Some find new vaccines, better ways of analyzing data, develop more energy efficient products. However, in contrast, the large financial institutions have actually taken money and talent out of the economy that could have been used to spur more productive innovation and create jobs. They have had so much influence, they have found it easy to manipulate regulators and politicians. And doesn’t some public expenditure create wealth? Education and infrastructure expenditures being examples, and the efficiencies created by countries with working health care systems.
Also, if you aren’t happy with your bank, you should check out your local credit union. I love mine. Lower fees than the national banks, too, and more local jobs. Sometimes smaller is better.
Leave a Reply