Occupy Wallstreet

[auroraglacialis]

I dont really want to participate in another science-debate, so I will not say too much about that whole arts versus science debate here - just that I think that both go together. Just as what we call natural sciences now was called nature philosophy in the beginning, so also mathematics and science was an "art". It is only in the past 500 years or so that there has been a diminishing in the recognition of some form of art compared to the other.

Also I think in respect to the original topic - the problem here is not between science and arts - both are usually underpaid and/or overworked. Engineers are a bit better paid, but still compare this to economists and you see where the problem is.

Originally Posted by Human No More

The value is that anyone can do what they want - but nobody should see that as a license to be subsidised more than any other.

I see a problem in that occupations or their value - or in general the life and life choices of people are quantified in money. Monetary/economic value is only one aspect and this society and I think it is limiting itself by focussing on economic success as a measue of what is valuable and what not. Many of the incredibly influential and highly valued artists never had economic success in their lifetime despite their genius.
The flaw is that we think the monetary value assigned to occupations and objects does reflect in any way its true value - this is not so. The monetary value is determined by economics and this includes speculation, gambling and the lot...

Originally Posted by Aquaplant

To put it simply, we can survive without art, but not without resources that are available to us via technological logistics. There are things that we need, and there are things we want, and art is in the latter.

While I think this is not entirely true (the majority of technological applications do serve non-essential functions), even if it would be true, it would prove an interesting point - namely that our modern society is in a way very poor. How else can we explain that we as a society can obviously only affort to give money to the necessities and nothing to the things that our civilization claimed much of its superiority compared to "primitive" peoples - arts, music, literature,...

And again - the problem is not artists versus engineers, in the OWS movement a lot is about economics and certainly economists have an occupation that serves a purpose in this system, but what would justify their immense payments - is really the service of market and price regulation and organisation of the flow of products (which would be a benevolent description of the econimics industry) worth much much more than the work of the ones producing these goods?
Or do they take the advantage that they are in a position of power?

[Pa'li Makto]

This thread has veered way off topic.
While the numbers of occupiers do dwindle down, that isn't a mark of the movement failing..The Occupy movement has been rightly noted as being symbolic rather then being a traditional protest.
Here's an interesting sum up of the events over the weekend:

Busy "Occupy" protesters fail to maintain the rage | News.com.au

TENS of thousands of people hit the streets to protest about capitalism and financial inequality on Saturday. Today, most of the protesters have gone back to work.

In Sydney, the home of the Reserve Bank, 800 people attended Saturday’s rally. Protesters planned to camp indefinitely "to organise, discuss and build a movement for a different world, not run by the super-rich 1%," according to a statement on the Occupy Sydney website.

But only 200 stayed the night. Lat night numbers were down to 70 and more are expected to leave this morning as work commitments bite, The Australian reports.

"Our numbers are a lot less than yesterday and that has an effect on people," protest spokesman Mark Goudkamp said in Sydney, admitting many had work, study or family commitments.

"I'm one case in point of that and many others are in the same boat," he said.

"I think we have to be realistic - it's going to become largely a symbolic kind of presence rather than a mass presence. And those of us who are working or have family commitments ... we'll be coming down when we can."

About 800 people attended Saturday’s protest in Melbourne. Two hundred stayed the night.

Occupy Sydney
Occupy Sydney organisers say many demonstrators have left the protest in Martin Place outside the Reserve Bank of Australia due to work or family commitments. Picture: Cameron Richardson

A global protest

Rallies swept cities in 80 countries around the globe on Saturday, inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Indignants campaign launched six months ago in Spain.

Tens of thousands turned out at the biggest rallies in Lisbon, Madrid and Rome. In Lisbon alone, 50,000 turned out.

The Occupy London demonstration began with around two-to-three-thousand had dwindled to around 200 by Sunday.

The anti-capitalist demonstrators camped in front of St Paul's Cathedral in London's financial district, setting up about 70 tents in a movement mirroring the Manhattan protest launched last month.

WORLD-POLITICS-ECONOMY-PROTEST-BRITAIN
A banner reading 'Capitalism is Crisis' is displayed in front of St Paul's Cathedral, London. Picture: Ben Stansall / AFP

"We will stay as long as we need to," said graphic designer Justin, 27, who declined to give his surname, adding that he was protesting due to "disillusion with our current economic system".

In Amsterdam, about 300 people were camped out in the square in front of the stock exchange on Sunday, said one of the organisers, Seth Lievense.

"At the moment, there are people who are very motivated to stay for a long time in the square," he said.

"Days, nights, weeks - their desire for change is enormous."

In Frankfurt, about 200 people were camped in front of the European Central Bank, which has been in the eye of the storm over the euro, under threat by Europe's ongoing debt crisis.

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/business/busy...#ixzz1azPrqcgH

[Moco Loco]

lol just because people have jobs and lives doesn't mean they still don't feel the same as they did I'd consider it a success overall since it really got a lot of attention.

[Pa'li Makto]

Originally Posted by Moco Loco

lol just because people have jobs and lives doesn't mean they still don't feel the same as they did I'd consider it a success overall since it really got a lot of attention.

Definitely. It got people listening and motivated more people to get out there and voice their indignation at the current social, economic and political situation both as individuals and collectively as large groups worldwide. I think the article I found was quite conservative and would naturally play down the movement as it listed the article in the financial news section and largely appears to be a more conservative news source in general..

[Clarke]

Originally Posted by auroraglacialis

I see a problem in that occupations or their value - or in general the life and life choices of people are quantified in money.

Sorry, this is third-order economics. (First-order is directly bartering for things, second-order is plain money, third-order is treading things like your own takings, futures, and other such weird things) Everything tradeable has a value.

The flaw is that we think the monetary value assigned to occupations and objects does reflect in any way its true value - this is not so. The monetary value is determined by economics and this includes speculation, gambling and the lot...

There isn't such a thing as "true value" in the majority of cases; value depends on the very much recursive factor of how much people will pay for it, as well as changing depending on context, scarcity, how much of other, completely different things are avaliable, and so on so forth.

How else can we explain that we as a society can obviously only affort to give money to the necessities and nothing to the things that our civilization claimed much of its superiority compared to "primitive" peoples - arts, music, literature,...

Has anyone claimed we are superior because of our art or our literature? Anyway, you know what you can buy with $300m, right? How about an entire country? Our culture spends more, in absolute terms, on financing art, literature, etc, than some countries spend in total.

is really the service of market and price regulation and organisation of the flow of products (which would be a benevolent description of the econimics industry) worth much much more than the work of the ones producing these goods?

As we move into globalisation, high-frequency trading, etc, the answer to that might indeed be "yes."

[Pa'li Makto]

Hey Clarke..Shouldn't we stay more on topic?

[Clarke]

Originally Posted by Pa'li Makto

Hey Clarke..Shouldn't we stay more on topic?

Isn't a post about economics ontopic in a discussion of people protesting about economics?

[Pa'li Makto]

Originally Posted by Clarke

Isn't a post about economics ontopic in a discussion of people protesting about economics?

Not when you are referring to debates talking about arts and sciences.
We need to keep this debate about the Occupy movement and economic, political and social context and reaction to the movement instead of talking about the value of science and art and arguing about which one is move valuable.

To keep on topic, I'm posting an article about the Occupy movement in the US from the Oct 15 demonstration. Mind you this source is The Wall Street journal..

Occupy Wall Street Movement Grows to Dozens of Cities - WSJ.com

[Tsyal Makto]

Economics is on topic, however, the debate should be about whether the economic status quo (or where it is going) is just or not (what we were discussing near the front of this thread). According to OWS, Occupy America (who I agree with, Occupy Chicago FTW! ), and the Global Occupation, it isn't.

Anyway, here's something interesting from HuffPo on Occupy Times Square.

NEW YORK, Oct 15 (Reuters) - Thousands of anti-Wall Street protesters rallied in New York's Times Square on Saturday, buoyed by a global day of demonstrations in support of their monthlong campaign against corporate greed.

Inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement, protests on Saturday started in Asia and rippled through Europe back to the United States and Canada. Protesters fed up with economic inequality took to the streets in cities from Washington, Boston and Chicago to Los Angeles, Miami and Toronto.

(SCROLL DOWN FOR PHOTOS AND LATEST UPDATES)

After weeks of intense media coverage, the size of the U.S. protests on Saturday have been smaller than G20 meetings or political conventions yielded in recent years. Such events often draw tens of thousands of demonstrators.

In New York, where the movement began when protesters set up camp in a Lower Manhattan park on Sept. 17, organizers said the protest grew to at least 5,000 people as they marched to Times Square from their makeshift outdoor headquarters.

"These protests are already making a difference," said Jordan Smith, 25, a former substance abuse counselor from San Francisco, who joined the New York protest. "The dialogue is now happening all over the world."

The protesters chanted, "We got sold out, banks got bailed out" and "All day, all week, occupy Wall Street." They arrived in Times Square at a time when the area is already crowded with tourists and Broadway theatergoers.

"This is disgusting" said Anatoly Lapushner, who was shopping with his family at Toys R Us in Times Square. "Why aren't they marching on Washington and the politicians? Instead they go after the economic lifeblood of the city."

PARTY MOOD IN NEW YORK

American protesters are angry that U.S. banks are enjoying booming profits after getting bailouts in 2008, while many people are struggling in a difficult economy with more than 9 percent unemployment and little help from Washington.

Some were disappointed the New York crowd was not larger.

"People don't want to get involved. They'd rather watch on TV," said Troy Simmons, 47, who joined demonstrators as he left work. "The protesters could have done better today ... people from the whole region should be here and it didn't happen."

The Times Square mood was akin to New Year's Eve, when the famed "ball drop" occurs. In a festive mood, protesters were joined by throngs of tourists snapping pictures, together counting back from 10 and shouting, "Happy New Year."

Police said three people were arrested in Times Square after pushing down police barriers and five men were arrested earlier for wearing masks. Police also arrested 24 people at a Citibank branch in Manhattan, mostly for trespassing.

Citibank was not immediately available for comment.

At about 8 p.m., police arrested 42 people for blocking the sidewalk. Protesters complained they had no place to go with a wall of police in riot gear in front of them and thousands of demonstrators behind them leaving Times Square.

Five thousand people marched through the streets of Los Angeles and gathered peacefully outside City Hall.

The Occupy Wall Street movement has been gathering steam over the past month, culminating with Saturday's action. The protests worldwide were mostly peaceful apart from Rome, where the demonstration sparked riots.

But it was unclear if the movement, which has been driven using social media, would sustain momentum beyond Saturday. Critics have accused the group of not having clear goals.

In Toronto, a couple of thousand people gathered peacefully and started to set up a camp in one of the city's parks. Protesters in Washington marched through the streets.

"I am going to start my life as an adult in debt and that's not fair," student Nathaniel Brown told Reuters Television. "Millions of teenagers across the country are going to start their futures in debt, while all of these corporations are getting money fed all the time and none of us can get any."

Occupy Times Square: Occupy Wall Street Protesters Swarm Midtown (PHOTOS)

Another interesting Tumblr group emerged, called "We are the 1 percent, We stand with the 99 percent" of wealthy people who stand in solidarity with OWS and other protests.

We are the 1 percent

[auroraglacialis]

Originally Posted by Clarke

Everything tradeable has a value. ...There isn't such a thing as "true value" in the majority of cases; value depends on the very much recursive factor of how much people will pay for it

I still think that money does not represent the true value - true value in this case meaning the value of something even in respect to the present situation. There is something that cannot be captured in numbers and that is lost when the numbers become the defining characteristic. What is the value of one hour of human life - one can reduce this to the wage he can get when working something - then he can get 50ct or 1000$ for that depending on where and when he happens to be. But is that the value of one hour of a human life? Not really.

As we move into globalisation, high-frequency trading, etc, the answer to that might indeed be "yes."

I do not understand why. But I do not understand anyways why some jobs that require the same investment in time and education should be paid differently. This free market stuff based on dog-eat-dog bullsh1t is something that will never understand - I understand its mechanics all to well, but I do not understand why anyone except those who make the most profit of it would support it.

Reagrding this whole topic about bankers and the top 1% - here is an interesting article about a study done this year. It says basically that at least some of these 1% (the investment traders) have quite a few things in common with psychopaths:
Going Rogue: Share Traders*More Reckless Than Psychopaths, Study Shows - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

I am pretty sure that similar tests done with the rest of the 1% - bankers, investment managers, CEOs, managers,... would show results not that different. We are putting the psychopaths of our society in positions of power and wealth instead of shunning or treating them, like a sane culture would do

[Clarke]

Originally Posted by auroraglacialis

I still think that money does not represent the true value - true value in this case meaning the value of something even in respect to the present situation.

Of course not; the value is represented by what people will pay for it, which isn't quite the same thing as money. It is, for instance, possible to make a profit simply by taking advnatage in a discrepancy between exchange rates.

There is something that cannot be captured in numbers and that is lost when the numbers become the defining characteristic. What is the value of one hour of human life - one can reduce this to the wage he can get when working something - then he can get 50ct or 1000$ for that depending on where and when he happens to be. But is that the value of one hour of a human life? Not really.

You're going to have to have a really good idea to get holinism to work in the context of economics. Absolutely everything is quantized in economics because it's impossible to make a "rational" (or the facade of rational, anway) decision with non-quantified information. If you can't make decisions, you can't trade.

I do not understand why. But I do not understand anyways why some jobs that require the same investment in time and education should be paid differently.

They are more or less efficient at generating wealth.

This free market stuff based on dog-eat-dog bullsh1t is something that will never understand - I understand its mechanics all to well, but I do not understand why anyone except those who make the most profit of it would support it.

What's the alternative? Communism?

I am pretty sure that similar tests done with the rest of the 1% - bankers, investment managers, CEOs, managers,... would show results not that different. We are putting the psychopaths of our society in positions of power and wealth instead of shunning or treating them, like a sane culture would do

No, we're not; we're putting excessively reckless people in charge. Unintentionally, because no government planned economics this far ahead. Unlike with Communism, nobody sat down and decided how capatalist economcics should work, it just evolved out of neccesity. Nobody is putting anyone anywhere in any sort organised capacity; they're just ending up there because they're being filtered through a set of processes no single human can possibly comprehend together.


The wealth disparity involved here is horrible, but because our economics are a hodgepodge of hotfixes to defeat the most obvious exploits, there is no easy fix. There is no magic bullet-type law that people could implement to solve everything.

[Fosus]

**** Communists.
**** Facists.

Hunter Gatherers got it right.
How Hunter-Gatherers Maintained Their Egalitarian Ways: Three Complementary Theories | Psychology Today

[Advent]

Originally Posted by Fosus

**** Communists.
**** Facists.

Hunter Gatherers got it right.
How Hunter-Gatherers Maintained Their Egalitarian Ways: Three Complementary Theories | Psychology Today

I have conflicting views. Sometimes fascists can be useful, sometimes communists can be useful. Hunter Gatherers can't exactly compete in our current economy. Sad, but true. I'm a realist.

[Clarke]

Originally Posted by Fosus

**** Communists.
**** Facists.

Hunter Gatherers got it right.
How Hunter-Gatherers Maintained Their Egalitarian Ways: Three Complementary Theories | Psychology Today

Not efficient enough.

[Tsyal Makto]

This raises an interesting question (or series or questions).

Why has egalitarian collapsed in the post-Agricultural Revolution civilizations? (Inversely, was a collapse in egalitarianism what brought about the AR, as libertarians might argue?) Why have attempts to regain egalitarianism (in modern terms/economies, communism) failed? Does technology and the surpluses it creates simply bring out the worst of our instincts (greed), while the scarcity of HGing forced us to work together? If we were somehow able to form "techno-tribes," as I theorized in the past, could we create a successful modern egalitarian society? Could we maintain our means of production if we became "techno-tribes?"