I don't know that it matters at this point, because the narrative is that they're hippies who just like to protest and don't have any stated goals. Just like Republicans are fiscally responsible and Democrats are weak on terror. At least there haven't been many giant puppets.
I have nothing useful to suggest, but there are already groups of people with those goals. It seems like OWS, despite not stating concrete goals like that, has managed to shift things in such a way as to make those goals ever so slightly realistic. It's not clear that this would have happened if OWS had stated those as their goals from the beginning; it's not clear that OWS will help anyone actually achieve those goals without demanding them.
This complaint is sort of annoying. It's not like anyone is really confused about what's being protested (i.e., the generally fucked up economy with its skewed distributional setup), they're essentially just concern trolling the protesters over their lack of a universally adopted two-sentence slogan.
Or what Dahlia Lithwick said.
3: Dahlia Lithwick's piece (great analysis notwithstanding) doesn't solve or disprove the problem stated in the OP. It's a problem for the OWS movement.
Telling sympathetic people, "You just don't get it" isn't a productive strategy.
Not so much a "goal", but a succinct statement of the position is easily found at the OccuputWallStreet.org website:
"OWS is fighting back against the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that has caused the greatest recession in generations."
Works for me.
A goal would be the worst thing for the Occupy movement.
(What is the goal? The earthly paradise.)
The goal of Occupy Wall Street is to occupy Wall Street.
tbh, I've come to appreciate the no list of demands (coupled with a clear enough idea of what it's about overall) aspect of the movement. I'm just not sure it will be effective in the long run.
What is clear for now is that pretty much all of the familiar paths that go through interest groups or political parties have already proven themselves largely ineffective on these kinds of economic issues.
3: That Lithwick piece is great, and gets it exactly right.
Precisely. Here's a concrete effect: Occupy Wall Street has blasted the deficit out of the political discourse.
I'm not sure what the problem is for a sympathetic onlooker. OWS makes it easier for you to talk about your goals. What is it you want? Because of OWS, you're less kookynutty for wanting it.
Kotsko had my favorite comment on this: "It would be hilarious if the one demand was for Wall Street to go fuck itself."
Coincidentally, a local reporter spends the night with the Salt Lake chapter.
The 6 p.m. march starts a little late. Occupier Daniel McGuire wants to go to the Salt Lake City police station to have a vigil in honor of the Oakland, Calif., demonstrators who struggled with police Tuesday, and to thank SLCPD "for not shooting us."...l7:37 p.m. About two dozen people are marching to the police station. There is one dad with two children. A middle-aged couple. Several men and women in their 20s and 30s. A guy in a gorilla mask. A woman named Moonflower...After the Lord's Prayer and a Jewish blessing, an officer comes outside..."Thank you for not killing us or shooting us," McGuire says. "Right now there's nothing planned," she assures them. McGuire invites the officer to take off her badge and join the Occupiers if she is ever ordered to use force against peaceful protesters. She says she'll always represent the city and would ask only that the candles not be left burning next to the decorative planters because it's a fire hazard, and that doesn't look good in front of a public safety building. "We agree to that," McGuire says, as others approach the candles to collect them. But some of the demonstrators hesitate. "Don't agree to anything," one woman warns. "Don't talk to the cops," another calls out as she walks away. A few people offer to wait outside the station until the candles have burned out and collect them, as a compromise.
Thank god the candle thing got resolved before I got called out to spray live ammo into the crowd.
Sometime-Mineshafter Burke has a rejoinder to this I think is spot-on.
Meanwhile, here at occupysf, I think folks are pretty united around the "don't tear gas and beat us" demand. Twitter reports of six busloads of cops en route, but that was awhile ago. I rather doubt they'll pull an Oakland with two mayoral candidates and four supervisors here, but who knows. They were talking about organizing a rotation so that somebody important would always be here, which seems wise. And yeah, no reason to credit sincere support, but if electoral calculation will keep the cops away, that's still something.
Why not help suggest one via their pairwise comparison/analytic hierarchy process tool?
I think "Stick it to The Man" is a laudable goal.
Thank god the candle thing got resolved before I got called out to spray live ammo into the crowd.
live ammo? What, were the candle scented or something?
I think 5 is fine, but could be stated somewhat more clearly to emphasize: OWS isn't demanding some concrete action to fix some problem, they're raising awareness about problem, and to push that problem onto the political agenda. The goal is to raise awareness, and, presumably, to keep it elevated as long as necessary. Stated that way, they not only have a concrete goal, they're doing an admirable job achieving their goal so far.
I understand the instinct to reframe the issue as "what exactly can be done to get you people voluntarily to leave this park?", but that reframing should be resisted. Or, I suppose, the proper answer is: "suggest something else we could do instead of camping in this park that would more effectively raise awareness about the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that has caused the greatest recession in generations."
14: That Burke piece is excellent. Thanks.
I believe the goal is "Instead of cutting vital services for everyone in order to cut taxes for rich assholes, raise taxes on rich assholes".
18: Urple, that's an excellent summary. I'm sending it out to all my thick "but what is the goooooaaalll???" friends.
I think the OP has a point. I've had multiple conversations with people who were confused about OWS, and I don't think my answers particularly unconfused them.
I think OWS should pay more attention to MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.
OWS isn't demanding some concrete action to fix some problem, they're raising awareness about problem, and to push that problem onto the political agenda.
OWS = Overton Window Shifting.
The Onion also understands what's going on.
Revolution is about roles, not goals.
I continue to read everything online, and a little offline. Paul Rosenberg at al Jazeera is good, he has always been good. Lisa Simeone has been a regular at Ian Welsh's forever. Someone said the the real backbone of OWS is well aware that there are things that should not be said, this early. Hell, we they haven't even begun to touch the methods of Gene Sharp, and they will. I hope. I have disagreements with David Graeber, but he is good enough, and I am sure the OWS people have his work in hand.
Trust them? Respect OWS? Places like this, people like this, the peripheral conversations can tempt me into saying more than I want to. I want to listen and learn. And follow, when and if I feel welcome.
Follow. Follow.
We don't need no stinking reform. We're mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. Don't let your pessimism limit your ambitions. We can have it all if we occupy the streets.
"Occupy Wall Street" is just fine, since finance is our Mubarek.
I had mentioned previously my favorite sign in Zuccotti Park.
Dahlia Lithwick gets it exactly right.
The Lithwick piece is indeed, very good. One continues to wonder why Slate hasn't fired her.
I don't begrudge her a bit of optimism, but I think she takes an unduly sunny view of the impact of OWS on the media:
By refusing to take a ragtag, complicated, and leaderless movement seriously, the mainstream media has succeeded only in ensuring its own irrelevance.
In fact, my bet is still on the mainstream media to ultimately crush OWS. But outcomes only change when political entrepreneurs get out there and try things, and OWS is a thing.
I am serious about humility. The problem is huge, and I am stupid.
Do they want a million people in the streets now? Maybe not. Maybe 50 is better for now. Maybe not. Let the kids lead.
Like Newberry says, behind and within every peaceful demonstration is a riot, or a police riot. That is why they work.
Watching and waiting is just fine for most right now. Revolution is not something you do, it is not an action plan or ten point program. It is about emptying, creating a void.
It is a pre-occupation.
Which is where most of us are, we aren't parked in the park refusing to move. We are still tourists and students.
Tell your friends we want a revolution.
"Guillotines, burning shit down?"
"No, nothing like that"
"Then what?"
"Ahhh...revolution."
Because revolution is about roles not goals you can't tell anybody else what they should do. I believe you can't even tell yourself what you should do. Direct action is not mediated.
The Lithwick piece is good, but this part bothered me:
We are the most media-saturated 24-hour-cable-soaked culture in the world, and yet around the country, on Facebook and at protests, people are holding up cardboard signs, the way protesters in ancient Sumeria might have done when demonstrating against a rise in the price of figs.
People in ancient Sumeria did not have cardboard signs. According to wikipedia, cardboard only dates back to 1683.
I was bitching about precisely this (the goallessness) in comments at Crooked Timber a week or two ago, and have been convinced that I was wrong. The general direction of the movement is clear, and that's really all that's necessary.
32: And figs were invented in 1957.
I don't think OWS should have collective goals, for the various reasons above, but it would be useful for its participants and people like us (if not participants) to have things that we individually want, and can explain when we're discussing to outsiders. OWS is valuable as a broad worldview-pusher and framer; it will be up to other parties to place policies on the agenda that reflect that worldview.
Besides high progressive taxation, social services, unionization, and debt forgiveness/cramdown, I think critical items in this spirit are: all money out of politics; level the intra-company salary gap via the tax code; fire everyone at the Fed and put in people who will prioritize the full employment mandate (and probably get rid of the banks' governance role); and break up all oligopolies.
My elevator speech: "The 99%'s income has been flat for the past 30 years, because the 1% have gamed the system to divert all the gains into their pockets. We work harder and harder and we have nothing to show for it. We need to break up their political and economic power and make an economy that works for everyone again."
I want to have Dahlia Lithwick's web-babies. She's awesome.
twisty faster wrote something terrific about revolution, because that is always what she said when people asked her what she wanted. I should maybe go find it.
14: Yeah, Burke is also very good on this. I think he only went astray in making a sorta-half-kinda rhetorical concession to those who want a 10-point plan:
Maybe Occupy needs more of a boiled-down, two-sentence root-level philosophy or viewpoint (parity with something like "down with big government")
They've got it already. "We are the 99%" works just fine.
From Burke:
Occupy is not against wealth, is not against competition, is not against business, is not against banking. It's a very specific argument that the game as it stands is rigged, that the cheaters are being allowed to operate with impunity, that the safeguards against cheating are compromised, and that the cheats are running the risk of destroying the game itself.
Furthermore, the very response "They don't have a goal/message/list of demands" is itself part of this rigged game. There was never any possible protest that would have genuinely engaged the people lodging that complaint.
32: Because a wheat-laden diet hadn't yet weakened them into decrepitude, the Sumerians were able to hold their stone tablets aloft for hours.
Googling "twisty faster revolution" I came across this, I won't link it's mostly nasty about her feminism.
One of the things that has always angered me about revolution is that that virtually no revolutionary leader actually objects to the system. What they do is object to their place in the system.
Check yourselves out to see if your thinking is just "if I/we were in charge."
the very response "They don't have a goal/message/list of demands" is itself part of this rigged game.
Yes.
If I were in charge, I'd make public lamination stations for the homeless people to use to make a sign that lasts.
The news reports confuse me. Did Occupy Oakland re-occupy the same place for keeps again or did they just take it back for a bit?
From here, it seems to me that the "goallessness" of the movement is a good thing for now, but it won't always be. At this stage it sends a very frightening message to the powers that be: "You think you can set the agenda. Very well, we are here, we are a problem to you, and we will continue to be a problem to you until you propose an agenda we feel like accepting." This lack of definition is actually quite scary for the elite because they don't know exactly what they're trying to head off. The fact that the protesters don't either doesn't matter: it means that there will be a debate about it, which may hopefully re-balance the political dialogue away from the Poujadist fantasies that have dominated it since Obama was elected.
But, and it's a big but, that's all it will do. Actually getting anything changed will require pursuing very specific demands in broken record mode. If those demands can be framed as versions of the elite response to OWS, well and good, but I doubt it. Someone will have to intervene in the moving debate and place those demands and organise around them. It's not hard - we all know what they are, but liberals who don't like being rude to politicians will eventually have to bite the bullet or find themselves outside looking in (again).
This is my favorite explanation of OWS's role in the public discourse.
Huh, and Burke's explanation is eerily similar.
40, 34, 32: Also, there never was a Sumeria anymore than there is a Canadia. There was a Sumer.
It was the Sumer of '69.
Without getting all more-anarchist-than-thou, I think that the focus on goals/demands is something that can only hurt this movement.
First of all, if a demand is made, it's a very simple matter for the ruling class to partially acquiesce to it, or say that they will, and thus bleed off a lot of the support. Even if it's a really big demand. Look at how the whole Elizabeth Warren/CFPB thing has played out: it's very easy to create the conditions under which people stop resisting, and then undermine them later.
Second, what if there isn't one demand that everyone can agree to? Does that mean that everyone should just go home? Personally, while I find myself empathetic to what many of the Occupiers are saying & writing, I have fundamental political disagreements with them. I don't think a strategy of reform -- even promoting extremely radical reforms -- is going to alter the status quo in a way that would make it acceptable to me. Does that mean I can't express solidarity with people? Of course not. In my ideal post-revolutionary society, there'd probably be a very diverse range of solutions to any given problem of political economy. That's what I want to work towards, not one-size-fits-most.
Third, and this is where perhaps I'm getting a little woo-woo for this audience, I distrust a politics that can be neatly encapsulated in a laundry list of demands. As a student of revolutionary history, it seems like someone always gets left out of that. Especially if that someone is yet unborn. I don't think revolution, or even reform, is something you want to get codified and reified and set in stone. Quite the contrary. I want a tool kit of actions, one that can be added to or subtracted from as the situation warrants, by the people who are actually there on the ground. Not just a new constitution that we keep in a fancy glass box. Graven images and all that.
The beauty of the General Strike is that it puts the power to decide the question of how everyday life will be lived by each person back into each person's hands. Making those micro-decisions, abandoning the comforting bulk of bureaucracy, putting your trust & your voice in the process of working with other people to create new ways of doing things -- that's what I'm fighting for.
The problem with making your placards out of incised clay is that if they're big enough for your cuneiform to be readable on television, they weigh a ton.
50: But doesn't it strike you that anarchists haven't actually achieved much? I thought this comment at Slack Wire was a good counterpoint about the illusion of "ecstatic direct democracy".
I was at the Seattle WTO protests, and I thought the lack of focus hurt the effectiveness of the protest. And they had the advantage of an overarching "anti-globalization" theme.
I think in the short run it's okay if OWS doesn't have demands, since there's a large mass of people who know something is wrong, but they don't know what. OWS is a mechanism by which people can work it out. But if in the long-run there are no demands, then the whole thing is doomed.
Lithwick is right, but her piece doesn't really seem like answer specifically to the concern trolling about OWS. Urple's 18 here looks like a more direct response to it. Any one "main" policy goal could be adopted and promptly hollowed out and/or lost in committee. An attempt to make a full list of policy goals would be endless, would quickly spill over into pet issues, and would make it easy to write off the protesters as utopian.
It's striking how little the protesters are asking for as a matter of concrete demands. (Most of them.) (So it seems.) (At the moment.) I'm sure that somewhere or other, someone is calling for guillotines and communism and violent revolution, but those people seem to be greatly outnumbered by protesters who just want decent jobs, a tax code that's no worse than the Reagan era, and maybe some debt restructuring if it wouldn't be too much trouble. The protests are important, though, because of just how far out of reach all that stuff is at the moment, and how little most people seem to notice or care about that.
It's funny, because as annoying as I generally find everything about hippie-bashing, including but not primarily and definitely not limited to the hippies themselves, here am I supporting consciousness-raising, which sounds pretty hippie-ish.
46: Can you summarize or something, for those of us who can't see YouTube at work?
RoV, Ch IV, section I, "The Proletarian Strike"
They struggle against the conception of the general strike, because they recognise, in the course of their propagandist rounds, that this conception is so admirably adapted to the working-class mind that there is a possibility of it dominating the latter in the most absolute manner, thus leaving no place for the desires which the Parliamentarians are able to satisfy. They perceive that this idea is so effective as a motive force that once it has entered the minds of the people they can no longer be controlled by leaders, and that thus the power of the deputies would be reduced to nothing. In short, they feel in a vague way that the whole Socialist movement might easily be absorbed by the general strike, which would render useless all those compromises between political groups in view of which the Parliamentary régime has been built up.
To the extent that OWS should have demands, they should be demands of *outcomes*, not demands for *policy*. Once you think about it that way, I think it's pretty clear what their demands are: economic growth for the 99% rather than rapid growth for the 1% and stagnation for everyone else and bringing unemployment back to what it was before the 1% fucked us.
Figuring out how to get from here to there is a problem for the 1% to figure out. It doesn't really matter too much how we get there. Specific policy demands are pointless, as the 1% can continue to game the system after that. Just keep on the pressure until we have a functioning economy again.
...but those people seem to be greatly outnumbered by protesters who just want decent jobs, a tax code that's no worse than the Reagan era, and maybe some debt restructuring if it wouldn't be too much trouble.
And some of us, not leaders, not a vanguard, should be clear in our own minds that it isn't gonna work, that we have a fucking system with finance at 40+ percent of the economy, and we will not be able to reform it.
We don't necessarily have to get in front and preach at the hopeful who want just a little, a minor change. We just need to fucking tackle the hopey-change assholes in front of us who are promising to fix their problems...so the masses can run over us both.
54 is very good.
I was at the Seattle WTO protests, and I thought the lack of focus hurt the effectiveness of the protest.
They actually shut down an international ministerial round, so I'd give them high marks on protest effectiveness. There was lots of micro-agenda jostling going on, but by the end of the week (and after a few more rounds) it was very clear that people objected to an international system of debt that was strangling poor people across the earth while raping it for good measure.
And by the end of an era, Latin American politics were significantly reconstituted against the Washington Consensus. 9/11 may have fizzled that protest movement in the U.S., but globally, it has a profound legacy. The message sorted itself out.
I was bopping around the DNC the following year...
Apropos of 50.last, the OO GA called for a general strike last night.
Figuring out how to get from here to there is a problem for the 1% to figure out.
More like, for the intellectuals and legislators to figure out now that OWS has momentarily drowned out the bleating of the 1%.
I think it's pretty important to leave the 1% out of it. Even you, Warren Buffett.
44: I think they're assembling in a paved area at the side of the plaza, not the main area which is still fenced off.
I think a general platform of "Economic Justice" is plenty good for now. Besides that, there are so many ways that hoarding forty percent of the country's wealth has hurt people that you couldn't state demands that would capture them all. I'm bummed about stagnant wages because it makes people unwilling to pay taxes to do maintenance on water systems. Not exactly a broad rallying cry. If the problem were smaller than "The rich have all the country's fucking money." I could get more specific about the effects of that I'd like to see corrected. As it stands, all I can say is "Shake that wealth loose."
Nevertheless, I continue to think that the Occupy movement is the response to an oversupply of bored, connected, college-trained people with nothing to do. You want them off the streets? Give them jobs and houses and they will have other ways to spend their days. You make those things impossible, and once they've played through WOW, they have nothing else to do but be in social movements. Literally.
62 conjures up the Monopoly man shouting over the phone at his minions inside WOW HQ. "Can't you make more monsters? Or levels? Or whatever it is you do?"
the very response "They don't have a goal/message/list of demands" is itself part of this rigged game. There was never any possible protest that would have genuinely engaged the people lodging that complaint.
I don't agree with this. I had that response initially, but Lithwick, urple's 18, and Burke all having something sensible to say that made me see things in a different light. I still have worries (basically that this will fizzle out as the Tea party is doing), but now think that the outcome may well be more than a good slogan.
America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy since we can just code new ones.
57: Seattle was successful in the short-term of disrupting those meetings, but it didn't lead to a sustained movement. Within the US, politics have moved steadily to the right since '99.
The Washington Consensus was broken because it was overtaken by events -- both economic (the rise of a non-neoliberal China) and non-economic (9/11 and the War on Terror).
46: Can you summarize or something, for those of us who can't see YouTube at work?
I can't watch it again to get an exact summary--because I'm at work--but it draws out an analogy about calling out a warning about a three-card monte game on the street. That's when you figure out who the ringers are--the ringers in the media who are working for the fixed game. There's more good stuff, but that's one of the insights.
62.2: Would suitable modification characterize the Tea party as well? My stereotype there is early retirees unhappy with their reduced opportunities in small towns.
That's a super interesting thought, lw. I hadn't considered it yet.
My view of this is basically that the message of Occupy is "We are the economic majority, the 99%. We are a thing*, we cannot be ignored." Just like 'baggers were basically "We are the extremist Right. We aren't giving up just because Obama beat us like the proverbial black-dog-on-a-chain. We're doubling down and we're going to insist that anyone who runs for office as a Republican kowtows."
*Amusingly, Occupy asserts this by holding a thing in the Old Norse sense.
I've said this before, but if there is a 99% Caucus in the House in a couple of years' time and people who want to run for office have to subscribe to the OWS creed first and announce their 99%-ship, the world will unquestionably be a better place. Look how much worse the opposite process made it!
I didn't realize the Old Norse held their thing differently.
71: In the meantime, we can always hire this guy.
re: 72
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Althing
Yes, basically a GM, but with Vikings! Perhaps Occupy needs more Vikings?
I was trying to make a penis joke here.
re: 75
Elect a few gothar and rock off to pillage Wall Street? Sounds good.
re: 76
I know. I was preferring to be literal.
Come to think of it, the Pirate Party holds a number of seats in the Berlin city council...
People who can't watch the Jay Smooth video in 46 can read this partial transcript.
Also of interestL We are the 99%: Chinese American Youth Edition.
This thread is moving fast enough (with enough links of interest), that I'm not up to speed yet, but 60 gets it importantly right.
While "We are the 99%" is a clever and compelling self-identification, the fact is that we should really be talking about the 90% (or even the 80%); in any event, it's not the relatively small-in-number 1% to whom OWS is speaking.
Come to think of it, the Pirate Party holds a number of seats in the Berlin city council...
If it was in Pittsburgh, the Pirate Party would have lost consistently for the past 19 years but, with promising young personnel, could be improving in 2012.
82: it's not the relatively small-in-number 1% to whom OWS is speaking.
But OWS can at least use the Willie Sutton answer to , "Why are you speaking to the 1%"
I think 70 is the most unsympathetic possible reading of the teabag sympathisers; that movement is more than just well-funded ads for far-right positions.
Elderly people in the US (old in mindset, not just in years) are many of them confused and disappointed that things have visibly started getting worse. The tea response is not constructive, either for policy or for personal engagement, but I think that there's something underneath it, not just a top-down co-opting. Phil Gramm and Ted Stevens for example would not fit.
IMO a huge problem with politics in the US is widespread disengagement and cynicism in a functioning and relatively clean democracy. Popular movements are a sign of life, even if they're incoherent. Bland technocrats are nothing to hate or fear, someone has to keep the water clean.
Perhaps Occupy needs more Vikings?
The Vikings are in league with the 1%.
I disagree with 82.2. The problem isn't the fairly well-off professional class that is in the low 90s, percentile-wise. Those people have nice things - and should pay more taxes - but they don't actually control the levers of society. The problem is the super stinking rich oligarchs at the very top. If anything, we should be talking about the 99.9%.
the fact is that we should really be talking about the 90%
No. If you look at the famous Piketty-Saez chart, it's very clear that it is, indeed, about the 99%. And this is very important indeed. If you frame it as being about the poor, it will get either ignored or sidelined as an opportunity for pity and charity. Further, it doesn't challenge the people in the 90th to 98th percentiles who believe themselves to be in the 99th - a nontrivial and politically important phenomenon, and one I think Occupy is doing a lot to fight.
This is exactly Dean Baker's point with his "loser liberalism" concept.
53.2: The protests are important, though, because of just how far out of reach all that stuff is at the moment, and how little most people seem to notice or care about that.
This continues to strike me somewhat tangentially about all this. As many have noted, politicians and pundits seem truly puzzled by OWS: I keep thinking that they must truly have thought that the people weren't noticing, or understanding, or caring much about the direction this country has taken in the last 30 years. A bunch of people showing up bodily to say, "Oh, yes, we've noticed, assholes, we're not stupid, you see, and we've had about enough" seems to have honestly surprised them.
82 is a terrible idea. We want to get people to identify down. There's already enough pressure to identify up. Splitting at the top 20% or top 10% would only make things worse.
41: One of the things that has always angered me about revolution is that that virtually no revolutionary leader actually objects to the system. What they do is object to their place in the system.
This is utter rot from Twisty. Lenin didn't want to be Tsar. Cromwell didn't want to be King. The Levellers didn't want seats in the House of Lords. That's how you differentiate a revolutionary from a usurper.
91: I think the politicians themselves were unaware of the problems. They are in a poor position to experience them personally since they are, and mingle mostly with, the 1% or close to it. They don't track trends like the remarkable divergence between productivity and wages, or the fact that nearly all the growth over the past 30 years has gone to the elite. They get their news and information mostly from the same crappy sources as everyone else.
91: People, apparently including politicians and pundits, are often taken by surprise when a frame shifts because it is too easy to assume that whatever process you have been looking at is linear. In other words, things get maybe 10% worse so the politicians expect maybe 10% more trouble. Instead, many processes are nonlinear and the amount of change you see if very small until all of a sudden a threshold is reached and the fan gets hit with shit.
(I have no idea if this is actually what is happening. It seems too soon to tell.)
I bet it did honestly surprise them. I wasn't paying too much attention, smug in my civil service sinecure, until I started thinking about my little sister and brother, now starting college. What the fuck are they going to do? That's what got me thinking about the problem a lot more.
Also disagreeing with 82.2. We've talked about this before: I'm in the 90%, and while I'm doing fine, my economic welfare shouldn't be anyone's concern and redistributive policies should be changed to redistribute more away from me and less to me, the Wall Street shenanigans that set off our current economic troubles were not to my benefit. I want those goniffs shut down not because I'm selflessly willing to forgo the advantages their thievery brings me, but because they're hurting me too. 99%, or thereabouts, is the right line, not 90%.
I'm with Spike in 89: My relative in the mid-90% class doesn't control the universe, he just advises those who do, and sometimes fills in the potholes if their road gets bumpy.
90: If you frame it as being about the poor
The 90% aren't the poor.
89: The problem isn't the fairly well-off professional class that is in the low 90s, percentile-wise. Those people have nice things - and should pay more taxes - but they don't actually control the levers of society.
They influence public policy; policymakers cater disproportionately to their needs. They influence public opinion (they tend to be 'opinion makers'), contribute to political campaigns, and so on. They do control, if indirectly, the levers of power.
Certainly the 9% have some power, which is why it's all the more important to add their clout to the 90% and not to the 1%. The 99% actually has a chance of doing something. And as LB says, in the current situation the 9% has more in common with the 90% than the 1%.
Perhaps Occupy needs more Vikings?
Sounds good to me!
I don't have much to add, except that I agree with Urple's 18 and all of the supporting commentary. Personally, I view OWS as, at bottom, a debtors' revolt, similar to those that have been around for basically all recorded history. The fundamental message is "forgive us our debts, and soak the rich guys, not us, now that there's a credit crunch." I don't think it needs to be more specific than that. Of course, somebody will have to set policy, but the point of OWS is to make sure that policy is set in the context of a debtor's revolt.
The foregoing paragraph was brought to you by my reading of Debt: The First 5000 Years. I'll also admit that a combination of that book and OWS has made me much more sympathetic towards anarchist ideas generally, about which I've been basically dismissive my entire life.
92: Oh. No, I should be clear: I wasn't suggesting that the phrase should become "We are the 90%". I agree with what you say about identifying down.
My 82 was endorsing 60, which was a specific response to 55's thought that correcting what's wrong is a matter for the 1% to figure out.
100: Right. The big distinction I see between drawing the line at 99% and at 90% is that the people in that gap (e.g., me) are still essentially living paycheck to paycheck. Not, mostly, in a scared or on-the-edge kind of way; these are people who have a couple of months cushion in savings, but they're living off wages rather than off capital gains income.
What that means, is that they're not benefiting from policies that benefit the wealthy. Mostly, they're not looking at inheritances that are affected by the estate tax. Mostly, bumping the capital gains tax up to match regular income wouldn't make any difference to them. Mostly, they're not investing money in credit default swaps. All that kind of stuff only becomes significant in a much higher economic bracket.
I put Debt in my library queue on your recommendation.
93:Well, it wasn't from twisty, but an accusation against twisty.
And I tend to disagree. Not wanting to be the actual boss doesn't mean you are a revolutionary, that would make Obamabots revolutionaries.
But as I make clear above, wanting "a ten percent surcharge on incomes over 1 million dollars" is very close to 1) wanting to be boss, and b) is anti-revolutionary and reactionary.
Revolutionaries don't do policy. They don't even do process. They create an empty space for democracy to work in.
Difference between Lenin and Luxemberg. Lenin, to a degree, at least for a beginning, had a structure in mind where the Party ruled. Rosa wanted the councils to do what they wilt.
The big distinction I see between drawing the line at 99% and at 90% is that the people in that gap (e.g., me) are still essentially living paycheck to paycheck.... they're living off wages rather than off capital gains income.
But this would remain true very deep into the top 1%. Now, they're living more lavishly than you are, but shit would still get real if the paychecks stopped tomorrow.
"Let the people rule!"
"Unless, except, I don't mean, no, not that far, as long as, in order to, with these reservations"
A lot of authoritarians, Vanguardists, and elitists around.
You aren't the boss, and don't even get to decide if shit gets burned down. Not your call. Nobody is asking you to light the torch.
very deep into the top 1%
Where would you draw that line?
This seems an unproductive conversation. 99% is a slogan, not a market research finding.
94 gets it exactly right, and I suspect 95 is pretty accurate too.
I met last year with a chipper young person from Senator Toomey's office. She wasn't anywhere near the levers of power, but she could sure spit out the talking points. It was another affirmation for me of how important it is to humans' self-concept that we have some sense of efficacy and control over our lives.
If you think that everybody who works hard gets rich, and everybody who is poor just didn't work hard enough -- well, then, your entire daily worldview is just radically at odds with reality. And it takes something as perpendicular as OWS to shake that conviction even a little bit.
108: What line? The line where people switch from living off wages rather than off capital gains income? Or the line around which it makes sense to build a slogan for your popular movement? On the second question, I think it's fine where it is. On the first question, I'd need to look at data, but it's definitely (generally) well above the top 1%.
I think sustaining large, public, non-violent demonstrations would be accomplishment enough in fat, drunk and stupid thwarted, disappointed, apathetic 21st century America, but I may be saying that only because the muscles that roll my eyes start twitching when people mention "consensus decision making" and "confounding the tools of the media" or whatnot (even from Dahlia Lithwick).
The fundamental message is "forgive us our debts, and soak the rich guys, not us, now that there's a credit crunch."
This gets complicated as the rich guys (in the sense of relatively well-to-do) are often the most indebted. I think it is more fundamentally an income issue. The income earned from wages has not kept pace with the income earned from capital.
If you think that everybody who works hard gets rich, and everybody who is poor just didn't work hard enough, ... it takes something as perpendicular as OWS to shake that conviction even a little bit.
And of course, for lots of people OWS hasn't even shaken that conviction. They see OWS as just a bunch of lazy unemployed people hanging around the park begging the government for handouts.
103: I completely agree with this. As part of the 90% I spent the first few years after law school absolutely terrified that I might lose my job and would then be screwed because the minimum payment on my loans was $1,000/month and student loans aren't dischargeable in bankruptcy so what could I even do in that situation?
109: Well, yes. But it's important to focus on the fact that the problem is primarily that government is catering to the owners of capital, which is a numerically tiny group, rather than that some wage earners are temporarily more comfortable than others. Redistribution should be happening within income classes among the wage earners too, but focusing on higher-income or more secure wage earners is the sort of mental process that makes Tea Partiers fulminate about public sector pensions.
Yeah, 109 gets it right. I mean, in short term macroeconomic terms, it's pretty likely that some of the policy results that might plausibly come from OWS -- more stimulus, a grand bargain on housing debt -- would actually benefit the 1% substantially.
To the extent it's anything more than a slogan, I see it basically as just a call for redistribution of wealth and debt forgiveness, not a statement about the difference between wage labor and capital. I believe that the message is that the 1% holds a massively greater share of the pie, and we can take more of their money redistribution without hurting 99% of the population.
As part of the 90%
I assume by this you mean part of the top 10%, not part of the bottom 90%, right?
118: Oh, yes, sorry. As part of the 10%.
119: I was confused, because LB used the same phrase in 97.
The 1% = top 1%
The 9% = next 9%
The 90% = bottom 90%
The 99% = 90%+9% = bottom 99%
The 10% = 1%+9% = top 10%
So 115 really means "As part of the 9%."
But it's important to focus on the fact that the problem is primarily that government is catering to the owners of capital, which is a numerically tiny group...
It's even worse than that. They're catering to the owners of relatively obscure, high risk forms of capital. If you ran a paving company and somebody developing a housing plan went under because of the housing bust, you took the loss. If you went to AID and bought default insurance on CDOs nobody knew existed, all of the sudden it was vital you got paid even if the government had to do it.
188-120: Right, sorry about creating confusion.
To 115, the combination of expensive tuition and making student loans nondischargeable in bankruptcy may have been one of the stupider things that the capitalists did, since it helps to align the professional classes with the immiserated.
To the extent it's anything more than a slogan, I see it basically as just a call for redistribution of wealth and debt forgiveness, not a statement about the difference between wage labor and capital. I believe that the message is that the 1% holds a massively greater share of the pie, and we can take more of their money redistribution without hurting 99% of the population.
Exactly. The goal is to reverse the concentration of wealth at the top. Like I said above: "Instead of cutting vital services for everyone in order to cut taxes for rich assholes, raise taxes on rich assholes".
The strategy here is to use information to convince people that the 1% really are that much richer than everyone else, and to use the demonstrations and conflicts with bankers and Wharton students' derisive laughter to demonstrate that the 1% really are assholes.
113 is a very good point, Hammer, but I think the overall message is "release us from the crushing hand of capital and look after our interests" not a call for greater equality of income per se (which has been a loser in the USA for so very long).
I agree with 109, and the only reason I was pushing back a bit on 103 is basically because I agree with 117.2. Capital/labor doesn't really get to the heart of it. After all, most Americans own stock. (Almost 2/3 pre-crisis, but it's down quite a bit now.) But they're pissed, because their retirement portfolios have been treading water for a decade. While the CEOs of those companies grow ever-wealthier.
126: I guess I'm thinking of what the message should be since without income growth the debt issue will return in a very short time.
122:It is important to ask "why?" without going into tautologies and circles.
Why do CDOs get bailed out? Because the have power. Why do they have power? Because they have money? Why do they have money? Because they have power.
Fail.
They sustain the entire system, your salary and mine, your savings and mine, your future and mine. They wouldn't exist and prosper otherwise. It is an equilibrium. A system.
But y'all and Yggles can work on finding the area under the integral of equality or something.
127 is, I think, maybe getting at the same thing I'm trying to get at in 122.
127: After all, most Americans own stock. (Almost 2/3 pre-crisis
Really? I am completely surprised by this.
Presumably for most of them they're owning them via mutual funds. Which really is quite different from actually owning stock, because mutual funds are yet another way that the financial industry steals people's money.
More people own stock than are college graduates?
124: I'm currently reading Outliers and one interesting anecdote is about Ted Friedman who in the 19030's had to make a decision between attending City College in NY for free or the University of Michigan for $450 in the for the first year and then if you did well, you could get a full ride for the remaining years. Friedman went to the University of Michigan and paid for his tuition by working as a waiter and at a manufacturing plant.
It's amazing to imagine a country where you could get a college degree that doesn't leave you crippled with student loan debt. I was extremely lucky because I only had to pay for law school and I still came out with 130k in debt. I know other people who had over 200k because they had to pay for undergrad as well.
But it's important to focus on the fact that the problem is primarily that government is catering to the owners of capital, which is a numerically tiny group, rather than that some wage earners are temporarily more comfortable than others.
That strongly implies a stance that salaries are not the problem, which I strongly disagree with. Yes, there is a lot of wealth (accumulated, inherited, etc.), but per a NYT article some months back that I can't find, quite a lot of the 1% are C-level executives making high six or seven figures, and put together they are just as much part of the ruling class (I would say) as the Walton heirs. Excessive salaries lead to excessive wealth and influence, and are equally unjust.
I also continue to find it odd that you describe yourself as a wage-earner and as living paycheck to paycheck. Surely That's at least partly because you've internalized and locked yourself into a decent standard of living in Manhattan (lease/mortgage, etc.). And while wages and salaries are both labor income, the words refer to a clear class differentiation (is your pay docked for coming in late?) that you should acknowledge.
Finally, unemployment among high-paid professionals is at much lower rate than other groups, and (I would imagine) much more temporary. You are not equally vulnerable, which you imply with "temporarily more comfortable than others".
122 is a little too narrow. There are many more ways the economy is being looted by the guys in charge of the money.
It's amazing to imagine a country where you could get a college degree that doesn't leave you crippled with student loan debt. I was extremely lucky because I only had to pay for law school and I still came out with 130k in debt. I know other people who had over 200k because they had to pay for undergrad as well.
While not disagreeing with your broader point, to be fair it sounds like you actually did get a college degree that didn't leave you crippled with student loan debt. But then after that you went to law school.
To curl back to my point about 90-99%ers who think they're 1%ers, these people - the Shearer tendency - are a real problem because they exist in substantial numbers, you can't really demonise them like you can Jamie Dimon or Fred Goodwin, they have substantial resources, they're usually fairly competent at something or other, and they are wrong. One of the good things about 99% is that it's an exit strategy. It doesn't require them to self identify as Democrats or socialists or anything else that would frighten the horses. It does permit them to stop being wrong.
66.2: obvs we've moved on, but I think this article by Mark Engler, whose Democracy Uprising page on FB some of you follow, is instructive on the legacy of the anti-globalization protests.
138: Yes, in this point I'm sympathizing with people who lack my privilege. I'm extremely lucky to have only had to pay for law school. I might not have even gone to law school if I was already saddled with debt from law school.
I might not have even gone to law school if I was already saddled with debt from law school.
Stop horning in on my racket.
It's amazing to imagine a country where you could get a college degree that doesn't leave you crippled with student loan debt.
My Mom and Dad both got free tuition and livable stipends in psychology grad school in the 1960's. Mom saved enough of her stipend to buy herself a cute Corvair when she graduated.
(Neither of them are "by their own bootstraps" people, btw. They gratefully acknowledge the fantastic deal they got, and wish it for everybody. And worked very hard afterwards.)
That strongly implies a stance that salaries are not the problem, which I strongly disagree with. Yes, there is a lot of wealth (accumulated, inherited, etc.), but per a NYT article some months back that I can't find, quite a lot of the 1% are C-level executives making high six or seven figures, and put together they are just as much part of the ruling class (I would say) as the Walton heirs.
My thinking here, which certainly wasn't completely spelled out or anything so there's no reason you should have guessed it, is that someone in that category is strongly affected by laws that apply to accumulated capital, even if the original source of that capital was salary. These are people who are, e.g., expecting that their estates will be subject to inheritance tax, or are importantly affected by the capital gains rate. It's not that salary isn't important to them, but that their capital holdings are important as well.
I also continue to find it odd that you describe yourself as a wage-earner and as living paycheck to paycheck. Surely That's at least partly because you've internalized and locked yourself into a decent standard of living in Manhattan (lease/mortgage, etc.). And while wages and salaries are both labor income, the words refer to a clear class differentiation (is your pay docked for coming in late?) that you should acknowledge.
Well, literally I do submit a timesheet that says I was in the office for 35 hours each week (time I work over that amount is unaccounted for), and if I spend an afternoon out of the office for a dentist's appointment or something, I'm required to take the 3.5 hours out of my sick leave or vacation time.
But yes, I'm not trying to deny that there are class distinctions between me and someone making minimum wage. I thought I was pretty clear about what I meant by 'paycheck to paycheck' -- someone who might have several months worth of savings to cushion a lost job, but fundamentally didn't have any source of funds other than a paycheck.
I agree with 136. Since I fear it will start a fight, I'll try to add something more nuanced about it in a bit. I may fail.
From an OWS perspective, dividing the 90% from the 9% is a serious mistake, so let's keep that in mind. In numerous cases, the 9% serve the 1%, so they're necessarily sensitive, they influence power, and OWS needs them on its side. To be blunt.
My thinking here, which certainly wasn't completely spelled out or anything so there's no reason you should have guessed it, is that someone in that category is strongly affected by laws that apply to accumulated capital, even if the original source of that capital was salary. These are people who are, e.g., expecting that their estates will be subject to inheritance tax, or are importantly affected by the capital gains rate. It's not that salary isn't important to them, but that their capital holdings are important as well.
Capital being important "as well" I'll accept, but it's very different from "the problem is primarily that government is catering to the owners of capital". Lots of other inequality-enhancing policies manifest mostly through salaries (marginal rates) or equally through salaries and capital (deunionization, insufficient inflation, nonenforcement of the FLSA, etc.). They work hand in hand; your distinction is unnecessary.
145.last I thought described "golden handcuffs" or "wage slavery." Paycheck to paycheck I thought meant no buffer of savings and not much wiggle room in the monthly budget, so a fender bender means mac and cheese for a while or used clothes rather than new.
The point about getting people to identify down rather than identify up is excellent. I suspect that part of the reason many are reluctant to think about systematic bias is that it is easy for "it's the system, man!" to become an excuse for not trying hard. I certainly avoid dwelling on systematic problems I can't change in my work life for this reason.
The cardboard posters summarizing personal circumstances are a great way to address this reluctance.
Oh, and I really liked Lithwick's point about cardboard posters being the medium of communication rather than some web thing.
52: I think in the short run it's okay if OWS doesn't have demands, since there's a large mass of people who know something is wrong, but they don't know what. OWS is a mechanism by which people can work it out. But if in the long-run there are no demands, then the whole thing is doomed.
As others have said, it really isn't up to OWS to propose a fix, and their humility and genuine desire for (near-) universality have served their goal of changing the public agenda.
The Tea Party was very similar in this - though their lack of specific goals is more the result of incoherence than humility ("Keep The Government's Hands Off My Medicare"). The Republicans are falling all over themselves to try to figure out what will make the Tea Party happy, and they are listening to OWS, too.
At some point, sure, the goal has to be to have an impact on policy, but that can only happen once there's some reasonable proposal on the table to haggle over. That hasn't happened, there's no sign it's going to happen, and this won't happen unless OWS (or something else) changes the framework of the conversation.
148: The line at which capital ownership becomes economically important to the owner is a qualitatively significant line for policy and class reasons. It's not the only qualitatively significant line, but it's one such line, and I think the one that's the most useful for conceptualizing the OWS movement.
I fully agree with you, as noted in 97 and 116, that redistribution within the class of people living off payroll income is also important and necessary; policies affecting the holders of capital aren't the only policies that need to be changed, just, in my opinion, the most important ones.
("Keep The Government's Hands Off My Medicare")
That wasn't ignorance in most cases. The Tea Party very quickly turned into the usual kind of interest group.
My coworker is trying to section a guy who is at Occupy Boston. He's homeless, and I guess that they are paying people to sleep there when they don't want to be out in the cold and the rain. (They want to get him away, because they're trying to avoid sending the cops in.)
She was not super sympathetic. She was laid off and makes less here than she did on unemployment and sort of pooh poos their concern about getting the laptops wet. She's only sympathetic if they're busting their butts trying to get a job.
I know a guy who is of the 9%, and who changed political orientation several years ago in large measure out of dismay over how poorly served he was by Republicans - how much wealth was being directed toward the 1% at the expense of even people like him. (He and I literally had this conversation, complete with percentages.)
Now if wealth issues become somewhat less extreme, he'll no doubt be back in the Republican camp. But in the meantime, there is a genuine class divide between the 9% and the 1%.
There's even a significant divide within the 1%! It's kind of shocking how much policy is geared toward the top .1%.
OWS is wisely exploiting those fault lines.
He's homeless, and I guess that they are paying people to sleep there when they don't want to be out in the cold and the rain.
I'm not willing to camp out over night, so I don't want to sound too harsh, but paying people with psychosis to fill places seems like a very bad idea.
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Halford, what's the name of that book on Detroit that you liked?
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Rather than proposing a goal, OWS keeps a simple question front and center: Cui bono? And it's reframing the possible answers. In an austerity context, it's easy to frame political problems in divide-and-conquer terms.
Pre-OWS: More pie for the 47% means less pie for the 53%. Post-OWS: put the brakes on the 1% in order to make the pie higher.
151: At some point, sure, the goal has to be to have an impact on policy, but that can only happen once there's some reasonable proposal on the table to haggle over. That hasn't happened, there's no sign it's going to happen, and this won't happen unless OWS (or something else) changes the framework of the conversation.
Right, OWS is seeking to changing the framework. If this works the way many bottom-up movements have tended to work, others will emerge, buoyed by OWS feet on the ground, with concrete policy proposals. Or with alternative political candidates. Or with broad narratives about what's wrong with the corporate-government hybrid under which we now operate. There have been people offering such things already, but they didn't have the requisite street presence to shoulder in to the public debate.
Or with broad narratives about what's wrong with the corporate-government hybrid under which we now operate.
How about this?
Financial capital can move freely. Other forms of capital are relatively fixed as is labor. Ergo, capital controls are required before you can try to control the influence of financial capital on political actors.
158:
Thomas Sugrue, Origins of the Urban Crisis
Definitely changed the way I think about the 1950s.
It was adapted for the silver screen under the title Hardbodies 2.
161: Um, sounded gobbledygooky on a first read, but okay, if you think that moves people.
Is this the right space to note that a moral argument is in play?
62.2 continues to irritate me, unfortunately:Nevertheless, I continue to think that the Occupy movement is the response to an oversupply of bored, connected, college-trained people with nothing to do. You want them off the streets? Give them jobs and houses and they will have other ways to spend their days. You make those things impossible, and once they've played through WOW, they have nothing else to do but be in social movements. Literally.
165: I don't think it moves people. I think it might be right.
What moves people is a screening of Hardbodies 2.
Hardbodies, the original, had too much not exploitation stuff.
Hardbodies 2: The Hardening
170: Hardbodies III: Triangle of Impossibility.
166: It may be right. I'm stupid enough about such terminology to need it spelled out:
capital controls are required before you can try to control the influence of financial capital on political actors.
Capital controls = financial regulation?
Bear with me. I'm thinking that the influence of financial capital on political actors is a function of campaign finance regulation, and e.g. Citizens United (these days), and just plain old lobbyists and the sheer cost of launching a public political campaign.
Right, so what are the capital controls that will take away from interested parties their vast amounts of money? (Wouldn't it be equally helpful to neutralize their monetary contributions?)
173: By capital controls, I am thinking of free movement of capital between nations. Creating this kind of frictionless international economic environment was a deliberate attempt to tie the world together in harmony, peace, prosperity, and not letting the Germans fuck-over the Low Countries every couple of decades. It worked O.K. but I think the volumes and inter-linkages just got too high for governments to control.
I think campaign finance regulations are a sideshow for this type of deal since other big rich industries still have way more than enough money to fund those campaigns.
167:Note that Fabiana Udenio, who people might remember better from Summer School is still steadily working in Hollywood, 25 years after HB II. I predicted this.
173:so what are the capital controls that will take away from interested parties their vast amounts of money
Capital controls are about keeping people and corporations from moving their money out of the country. As in Greeks are currently the number one buyers of London high end real estate. Which is partly why a heavy tax on the rich was not available to the Greek gov't. And why a financial transactions tax is very iffy.
She was not super sympathetic. She was laid off and makes less here than she did on unemployment and sort of pooh poos their concern about getting the laptops wet. She's only sympathetic if they're busting their butts trying to get a job.
She sounds like she has things she could protest about too. She could be one of those people on the 53% tumblr.
174, appendix: When I mention the volumes being too high to control, I mean that if capital gets spooked, it can move out so quickly that the economy is going to tank regardless of policy. Thus, capital gets a kind of veto. The U.S. is in a strange place as far as international capital flows go, but I don't expect it to last.
174.2: I think campaign finance regulations are a sideshow for this type of deal since other big rich industries still have way more than enough money to fund those campaigns.
Hm. A lot of the attention these days has been paid to so-called super-PACs.
I realize many people are very concerned. I'm not one of them. Campaign finance regulations didn't really exist before Watergate and economic inequality seemed to be less of an issue back then.
There are too many ways to bribe an elected official for campaign finance regulations to have a direct effect.
Oh for fucks sake. Campaign finance is the elephant's graveyard of well intentioned, meaningless reform that will accomplish nothing. If you want change, join a union or sign up for a protest or join an advocacy group or something, and stop worrying about SuperPACs. One nice thing about OWS is that it seems to get this.
As of July 29, Apple had 76 billion dollars in "cash"
What, greenbacks, diamonds, Van Goghs? Treasury bills? Do we know what this cash is, where it is, what it's doing? Maybe Greek bonds?
The average stock is held for three months.
Capital moves. This movement is the life of capital, it accumulates and reproduces only in movement. The more capital, the more advanced the technological level of society, the faster it must move. Must move. Slow it down, at all, and you will hit stall speed and crash.
Campaign finance is the elephant's graveyard of well intentioned, meaningless reform that will accomplish nothing
This sounds so much like McMegan the other day on CSPAN Radio that you don't even want to know.
But okay, I take it under advisement. Must think.
He's just upset that he lost his nice watch.
The fucking key to the world right now is how much liquidity we have while in disinflation.
I know! Now I have to wear a urine-soaked sweatband around my wrist. Anyhow, sorry Parsi, it wasn't you; it's just a longstanding pet peeve of mine.
If anyone hasn't yet read the Dahlia Lithwick piece linked in 3, do.
Nevertheless, I continue to think that the Occupy movement is the response to an oversupply of bored, connected, college-trained people with nothing to do. You want them off the streets? Give them jobs and houses and they will have other ways to spend their days. You make those things impossible, and once they've played through WOW, they have nothing else to do but be in social movements. Literally.
Luckily for the %1, Blizzard has just unveiled a new panda-focused WoW expansion.
Some numbers. To summarize, in May 2011 the 90th percentile of income for "all tax units" (that is, some kind of average or agglomeration of single people, married filing jointly, etc.) was $154,131, the 99th percentile was $506,553, and the 99.9th percentile was $2,070,574. A graph of the percentiles looks remarkably steady until you get past the 90th percentile when it starts shooting up. And yet even though the slope of the line is really steep after the 90th percentile, the numbers are not Tony Stark-level rich. My parents were over the 90th percentile until one of them retired (and maybe they still would be now, I'm not sure if a pension counts), and they were just at or near the end of long careers. A lawyer or doctor would be over it... while working 12-hour days and still having a ton of student loans to pay off. A lot of people who got screwed in the housing bubble are people who had enough money to think of a house as an investment. While the 90-99th percentile people are definitely well off and don't need pity or breaks or anything, the policies that are OWS is complaining about definitely hurt 90-99th people too.
And I agree with 181 about campaign finance reform. In magical genie or Washington-as-a-unitary-actor territory, CFR would actually be a great thing. But it's like gun control (sorry for bringing in another topic): after decades of playing games with campaign financing, including lots of judicial rulings of varying quality, it would be very, very hard to make any substantial improvements. That battle's been fought and the borders probably aren't going to change much, at least not in a direction we'd like.
191.2: That's about where I am on campaign finance. I hate it, because I think meaningful reform would make a huge difference (not merely in who won elections, but in how they all behaved in office) but given the current supreme court jurisprudence, I think anything that's at all likely to happen isn't going to do any good at all.
The line at which capital ownership becomes economically important to the owner is a qualitatively significant line for policy and class reasons. It's not the only qualitatively significant line, but it's one such line, and I think the one that's the most useful for conceptualizing the OWS movement.
Comity, more or less.
The line at which capital ownership becomes economically important to the owner is a qualitatively significant line for policy and class reasons
"Economically significant"? I'm not trying to be obtuse, but I don't know what you mean by this. Home equity is very important to a lot of people. As are policies that affect home equity, for better or worse. 401(k)s are very important to a lot of people. As are policies that affect 401(k)s. Etc.
What do you make of some OWS protesters' complaints about the viewing of corporations as persons?
I don't really know where to go with that. The original legal decisions and precedents to that effect go back quite a while (and I have to refresh my memory every time, unfortunately). How would you go about trying to challenge it, legally?
"'Economically significant'?" s/b "'Economically important'?" I blurred "economically important" and "qualitatively significant" together in my head, I think.
195 was to 192 and previous, as I think was obvious.
194: Yeah, if you ask me to draw a bright line based on first principles, I'm going to collapse here. (And I fully expect that you will respond to the following vague set of gestures at such a line, dim and fuzzy though they may be, by picking at it until I agree that I have said nothing that could reasonably be said to convey any idea of any kind to anyone. So let's take that bit as given.)
I'm thinking of capital as income-producing capital, for current consumption rather than retirement. Houses are certainly a store of equity, but a house you're living in doesn't produce income. Tax sheltered retirement accounts are huge in the aggregate, but regulated differently than non-retirement accounts in a way that makes it reasonable to think about them differently than someone with investment capital they can move around freely.
(I do think the privatization of retirement -- 401ks rather than pensions -- has the possibly intended effect of making people with retirement accounts overidentify with big investors, but I think this identification is mostly bullshit.)
52: But doesn't it strike you that anarchists haven't actually achieved much?
Maybe not as much as we'd have liked, but we don't have a couple hundred million skeletons in our closet like the rest of the big 19th and 20th century ideologies do, either.
Was Seattle a victory? In the very short term, yes. The talks were shut down, and that was a win. In the intermediate-short term, probably not, as it caused this huge militarization of regular police forces which has been miserable for a lot of people. In the longer-intermediate term, there are definitely more people talking about anarchism now than there were 12 years ago. As I've said before here, when I started out as an anarchist activist, you couldn't get the corporate media to even admit that such a thing as anarchism existed, now we're part of the discourse. In the early-long term, it sure looks like the anti-globalization movement, its individual members and groups, and the toolkit of activist resources it popularized are having some pretty far-ranging effects. Will those effects be lasting? I hope so, but of course I've been pretty cynical about all of this since I was 17, so I'm not holding my breath.
I've spoken against 'summit-hopping' before, and I would again. And when I spoke against it, the Occupy movement was exactly the sort of thing I had in mind as a better alternative. Yes, maybe people aren't exactly picking up the gun yet, but they sure seem to have lost faith in electoral politics, which is what we've been on about for 160+ years now.
I think there are some serious, serious problems with how the Occupy movement has taken shape. There are aspects of it that really worry me, as it seems that there are a lot of politically naive people who might very easily be turned to some boring electoral status-quo purpose. But it does seem to be the best thing going at this point. We'll see, I guess.
(I do think the privatization of retirement -- 401ks rather than pensions -- has the possibly intended effect of making people with retirement accounts overidentify with big investors, but I think this identification is mostly bullshit.)
I agree that was an intended effect, but I wonder if it won't backfire now that the market is so unstable and so far off peak for so long.
195: I don't understand corporate law very well, but I think that complaining about corporate personhood as a concept is pointless. If they are complaining about certain aspects of modern corporate law, they probably have a good point or two.
200: It makes me hate and fear the markets, mostly. I have a fair amount of retirement savings in equities that I have very little control over -- choice between a limited number of funds -- and no deep understanding of what my best options are. I'd really rather not be forced to gamble like that; I fully expect that money to disappear somehow before I need it.
I'm thinking of capital as income-producing capital, for current consumption rather than retirement.
So it seems that you are. Which would only make me repeat that I think you're drawing the wrong lines because those people are only a very small fraction of the top 1% and also only a very small fraction of the problem.
202: I know that feeling. The retirement match (which I'm happy to have) is no small part of my compensation.
201: Well, they (and I) do complain about corporate personhood as a concept.
These "it's pointless, don't waste your breath" remarks are contrary to the purpose of OWS.
I've complained about corporate 'personhood' here myself, but it is slippery. The whole point of a corporation is to act as a legal person. If it couldn't do that, it wouldn't exist in any meaningful sense.
What gets problematic, in some limited contexts, is the idea that corporations are, as persons, entitled to the same civil rights as natural persons. In the campaign finance context, this seems stupid and pernicious to me. I can't think offhand of other contexts where it really comes up.
There are aspects of it that really worry me, as it seems that there are a lot of politically naive people who might very easily be turned to some boring electoral status-quo purpose.
What, from the anarchist point of view, is the upside here? How would you like to see OWS develop?
198: "mostly" should just about be "comprehensively"
As a tangent, of sorts, Felix Salmon quoted the following argument today, and I'm curious if it rings true to people?
If you believe - whatever your political take on it - that in the early 1980s the U.S. shifted from a tradition-driven economy where the working rich managed their firms for plodding stability (and were paid with a fixed and comfortable salary) and the idle rich invested in Treasuries, to a shareholder-value-driven economy where the working rich managed their firms for quarterly earnings target (and were paid with options and incentive comp) and the idle rich invested in hedge funds, then that would explain the rise in volatility: the rich went from being basically creditors on the economy to being shareholders.
I don't have much sense of how the rules of the game for capital changed from 1975-85 (beyond knowing that Hacker/Pierson identify that as the period of time in which big/corporate money figured out how to work together to lobby the political system).
So, does that describe an identifiable shift that took place?
206: I'd go beyond that as I don't see how you'd organize economic activity without some kind of legal entity with rights to act as a collective body. Even if you leave aside capitalism, you still need to have an enterprise that can hire and buy and sell and what not.
The whole point of a corporation is to act as a legal person entity.
It's the slide between legal entity and person that's led to any notion of corporate civil rights. No? One would like to return to the legal entity notion, and ditch the legal person aspect.
Corporate personhood is IMO a total dead end of a subject for people to worry about. It would take a long time to explain why in detail, but the bottom line is that "corporate personhood" is a legal fiction that allows corporations to sue and be sued, and, in some cases, to enjoy certain constitutional rights. I don't personally agree with every case on this issue, but there's not really much bad or significant work being done by the concept of personhood in corporation law -- it's not seriously preventing tighter regulation of corporate action, preventing redistribution of wealth, or even doing much to prop up capitalism. Any socialist or anarchist society would probably need something like a definition of corporate personhood.
AFAICT, and not to be too dismissive, most of the action around this issue is by people who don't understand corporate law going ZOMG! Corporations are not people! without understanding what's actually at stake.
210: I'm not saying it's a practical transition, or that it would be a good idea, (it isn't and it almost certainly wouldn't be), but a world of sole proprietorships and partnerships isn't impossible. Law firms, for example, managed to function at fairly large sizes as simple partnerships -- they're all some kind of limited liability hooha now, but weren't always.
200: Had GWB managed to get his social security privatization scheme passed it would have pumped a bunch of naive investors into the market and probably delayed the implosion a few years, making it all the worse when it did happen. Depending on who was president in this counterfactual we might have ended up with Bob's longed-for bloody revolution.
211: The idea of a corporation as a fictitious person is far older than the any widespread notion that all human persons should have civil rights. It seems to me if that is really what upsets OWS, they're quibbling over terminology in an unproductive way. In other words, I'm not going to throw stones into that glass house but I don't think much will come of it.
202. Lifecycle funds, where you specify your retirement date and the fund gradually shifts out of volatile equities into less volatile bonds, are popular for people who just don't want to think about it.
213. would be terrible IMO. The disadvantage of of a partnership is that you're liable for more than you've put in. If your business fails its creditors come after your house. Limited liability carries a tax penalty, originally evolved as a way for Dutch investors to pool money and buy a ship. Nobody would put up money to build a car or put a compound through clinical trials in a partnership.
213: sole proprietorships and partnerships are also legal persons, every bit as much as corporations. They just don't offer limited liability.
217.2: Oh, I totally get why anyone who has the option of running a business as a corporation does. But if no one had ever come up with the idea of limited liability legal entities, we'd still have an industrial civilization. Probably not the same one, but the world wouldn't end.
218: sole proprietorships and partnerships are also legal persons, every bit as much as corporations.
Sole proprietorships? I mean, there's a legal person there, but it's the natural person. Calling a partnership 'a' legal person, rather than an grouping of legal persons, also sounds weird to me, but you're the transactional lawyer so maybe I'm confused.
I thought "sole proprietorship" was a fancy word for "the owner owns everything personally."
That is what it means, as far as I know.
I'm pretty sure corporate personhood was just a curiosity until some Supreme Court ruling held that personhood meant full First Amendment protection meant (effectively) (nearly) unlimited campaign contributions, right? I mean, the idea "Citibank is a person" would always be funny and illogical and have some worrisome implications, but doesn't, by itself, doom us to a cyberpunk future. When it is used as the main basis for a sweeping rollback of years' worth of attempted reforms, though, and could apply to even more such rollbacks just as well, worrying seems a bit more justified.
221: I thought it meant Don Cornelius owned everything.
Yeah, no actually you're right, I guess a true sole proprietorship with no entity technically wouldn't have any separate legal person, even with a separate legal business name formally registered, etc. But a partnership is always a distinct legal entity, even if there's zero paperwork.
Thanks, Cyrus. I was beginning to worry that I was just nuts for having concerns.
209:So, does that describe an identifiable shift that took place?
The rentier class demands the managerial class create asset inflation.
Yes. The theory goes back to Veblen or before.
Rentiers, managers, workers. The questions are whether managers are capitalists, and how deep the "managerial class" goes, if it includes all pink collar workers. Dumenil and Levy like the "deep" and claim that the managerial is the swing class, going to labor 1933-1975, and to rentiers after 1980.
This is a comment at CT today by john halasz near the topic
"...So such corporations follow investment strategies aimed at locking-in such long-term rents rather than just short-run optimization or maximalization of profits and production...."
Denying free speech rights to corporate entities is a real problem, even if you disagree with Citizens United. For example, if the First Amendment categorically did not apply to corporations, the government could ban political speech produced by, say, the Sierra Club (a nonprofit corporation) or from your local co-op or small business, or from CBS News on the basis of viewpoint. It is totally unclear to me why that should be OK but banning speech from the individual members of those organizations would not be.
Now, that is different than saying that the First Amendment bars limits on corporate contributions to political candidates (sort of, but not really, what Citizens United says) but it's the weird overinterpretation of the first amendment in the campaign finance context that's causing the problem there, not the general idea that corporations have constitutional rights.
223 is hard for me to understand. Corporate personhood has been a major part of social and economic organization for centuries. It is hardly limited to what OWS people are worried about when it complains about "corporations."
SEIU is a corporate person just as much as CITI. The issue of size, wealth, power, and screwing the 99% are a problem caused by a very small number of corporations. Trying to attack those specific actors by blaming their problems on a trait they share with the Girl Scouts seems stupid.
223 gets it right. Corporate personhood is what makes "money equals speech" go from a ridiculous idea to a horrifying idea doomed to destroy us all.
I was pwned by a corporate lawyer.
I don't really agree with 228.1, but I do think 228.2 is right. (That is,
230: "Money equals speech" applied only to individuals is better?
Ignore the 'That is.' Editing error.
229: SEIU is a corporate person just as much as CITI.
I believe this is literally false -- unions aren't corporations. But throw in any dogooder nonprofit and the argument's the same, I'm just nitpicking.
Too late to add much to this, but count me on the side of moving the conversation as the primary usefulness of OWS, no specific demands required. I read somewhere -- an Unfogged comment thread, for all I know -- that instrumental to FDR's success in passing the New Deal reforms was a genuine fear among the upper class of serious, general civil unrest. I think OWS protesters can contribute whatever variants of an "I hear rich people are delicious" message they prefer and still promote the mysterious secret goals of the movement.
Jed Rakoff asks some very good questions of Citigroup and the SEC.
238 -- Good for him. Very good. The SEC and DOJ have been such a bunch of pussies, and the Obama administration has really been terrible on enforcement.
I don't have time to comment, but I'll just throw in that corporate personhood + free speech + campaign finance is a later 20th century formula. The potential was there in the early 20th century, but the objections to the first campaign finance laws generally didn't use the free speech argument. I think a few people may have brought it up, but it was not the dominant opposition argument. This may have had to do with those laws being pathetically weak. Anyway, free speech becomes a bigger issue as the century goes on, becoming huge when you get real regulation (that is, the FEC, crappy as it is, was better than what they had) beginning in the 1970s. So it's not something that automatically attaches to corporate personhood.
241 is generally right, but the legal history is complicated and definitely does not stand for the proposition that corporations weren't seen as having constitutional rights until the late 20th century. That is very much not the case.
The extension of the First Amendment to campaign finance laws (for both individuals and corporations) is extremely recent, however.
238: Oooh. I like those questions.
227:"Dealbreaker" wildly underestimates the importance of bonds vs equities. Amateurs study equities, and I don't care about the Dow. And Jobs wasn't rich.
Bonds rule. A commenter talks about "institutions"
Yeah, like Apple's 76 billion and China's 2 trillion in treasuries. Sovereign wealth funds, pensions, insurance, social security trust fund...what I think happened was that rentiers captured gov'ts and gov'ts became rentiers.
This is related to the gov'ts loss of ability ca 1982 to tax and spend, to use fiscal policy to manage aggregate demand and increase national income. They became dependent on fixed income instruments and demanded security and stability and became markedly less entrepeneurial. No more highway projects or moonshots.
237: "... genuine fear among the upper class of serious, general civil unrest."
That also worked for Teddy too, didn't it? And as I remember it, people took MLK more seriously with the advent of the Panthers. Overton sure gets around in that Tardis thingy.
There is absolutely nothing to prevent the government from passing laws that give certain organizations some of the rights that human beings enjoy, and if that's what the electorate wants done then bless their hearts. From a procedural perspective that is the way it should be done, not by assigning rights based on a fucking weird interpretation of the constitutional definition of "person." The fact that the truly pernicious effects of doing this are only just beginning to show up is irrelevant - the process matters. Thanks to a bizarre interpretation of the constitution we now get unlimited spending by entities that have literally billions of dollars riding on the outcome of elections.
If we want unions and nonprofits to be able to participate in the political process lets pass laws to that effect. If we want big banks and other megacorporations to be able to drown out the contributions of ordinary citizens lets pass a law to that effect. Elimination of corporate personhood doesn't mean giving up all the positive impacts of it, just moving them into explicit laws designed to have the appropriate effects. What it does do is move key decisions regarding what corporation can and cannot do from the Supreme Court into the legislature where they belong.
Right, the peculiar thing to me about the corporate personhood idea comes when we forget about the legal fiction aspect of it. To be simpleminded about it, as parents, we get to make pretty significant decisions about how the *actual* people we make are going to behave, so as voters, isn't it legit that we make decisions about the pretend legal people we make? Corporations can be people, sure, but they don't have to be psychopathic rich people with tax breaks and superpowers, and we ought to be allowed to tinker with the model to prevent that.
246 seems to misunderstand the nature of a "right." As I say above, if organizations are categorically denied speech rights, you are making the electorate responsible for deciding whether SEIU or your hardware store or a news organization or an anarchist co-op or any other corporate speaker has a voice. And allowing simple viewpoint discrimination against those entities. If you value free speech, or democracy, the effect of that rule would be far worse than whatever campaign finance benefit you are trying to achieve.
Now, it should be (in fact, it currently is) the case that corporations have different speech rights than individuals. And that campaign finance is different than speech. I agree with both of those propositions. Interpreting constitutional rights is hard. But a general rule that collective entities don't have speech rights, but individual entities do, is really a genuine civil liberties problem, and a big one.
Corporations can be people, sure, but they don't have to be psychopathic rich people with tax breaks and superpowers, and we ought to be allowed to tinker with the model to prevent that.
Sure, I agree, but it's absolutely legal to do this, and "corporate personhood" is not in any way preventing that from happening.
I find it hard to conceive of viewpoint discrimination against the speech of a collective entity that couldn't be countered by the assertion of the individual right to free-speech of the natural-person spokesman, but maybe I'm not thinking about this straight.
corporations weren't seen as having constitutional rights until the late 20th century. That is very much not the case.
Huh? I wasn't claiming that. I was saying that the three things I listed didn't come together the way they are treated now until fairly recently. Of course corporations had constitutional rights dating back further. I mean, duh.
This is why I shouldn't have commented at all. Waste of time.
249: agreed, I don't think it is either, or can, in any legal sense. I just have the impression, particularly when talking to corporate defenders, that corporate personhood and actual personhood are easily confused when we try to work out how corporations should be treated and makes the argument a harder one to have.
"this makes," to make that sentence slightly more, yet still un-, coherent.
I think Halford and to a lesser extent LB may be a little too well educated in re corporate personhood. To the laity, "corporate personhood" is a great encapsulation of the idea that these legal fictions have become monstrous entities with greater rights than ordinary people.
Elimination of corporate personhood doesn't mean giving up all the positive impacts of it, just moving them into explicit laws designed to have the appropriate effects.
This, from togolosh, may not quite work technically, but it has an emotional connection to the place of "people" in a democracy, e.g. We the People, and it's useful to organize around.
Ralph Nader has been arguing for a while that a corporate death penalty would make a lot of sense.
I'm not a lawyer and I don't think it is a legal thing. The worries about "corporate personhood" seem to stem from a very narrow use of the words "corporate" and "personhood."
250 --
"No corporation, partnership, nonprofit, or similar business organization chartered under the laws of the several states shall produce, fund, or distribute any film, writing, sound recording, or other audiovisual expression expressing disapproval of military operations of the United States in Afghanistan."
I mean, that's an unrealistic example, but I think it makes the point.
To 255, I'm not at all against "The People, not the Powerful" or even "People, Not Corporations" as a slogan. I'm just pushing against the idea that corporate personhood as defined in the law is in fact a big problem to get worked up about, or that it's much related to the underlying principles expressed in those slogans.
Wow, my imaginary statute was sure badly written!
248: As I say above, if organizations are categorically denied speech rights, you are making the electorate responsible for deciding whether SEIU or your hardware store or a news organization or an anarchist co-op or any other corporate speaker has a voice.
If the alternative is unlimited money spent by the likes of Goldman-Sachs to influence elections, I say bring it on. If people want to chip in to buy a political ad as a group they still can. They just can't delegate to the point of having no need (or, in the case of people being spoken for via their ownership of mutual funds that own companies supporting PACs, meaningful ability) to engage with the particulars of what is being done in their name. This is not a bad thing. There have already been instances where the ad is made and then money raised to get it on TV by having people watch it on the web and decide if they support it. Collective voice is still possible. What's harder is the erosion of personal responsibility for what is said in one's name that comes with successive levels of distancing between the individual and the organization.
I really think 259 is just totally wrong and crazy for about 59,000 reasons. One of the biggest is that if you think that restoring campaign finance limits (and particularly McCain Feingold) is worth the possibility of silencing, say, a union, or other collective organization, you are nuts. More broadly, consider the imaginary statute in 257 and think about how that would apply in the real world. Collective entities are how people need to organize themselves in politics and modern life, and they need speech rights. But I feel like I've said my peace on this.
I'm being trolled by a five-year old.
What's so funny 'bout pieces of Mr. Blandings?
{clears throat}
Since I guess I'm the one who introduced the topic of corporate personhood in 195, and we've had a round of gesticulating over the topic, with due cautions, can we at least achieve comity over these propositions: control of the levers of power is at least partially a function of control over the politicians we put in office, and that is to some not insignificant degree a function of the moneys available to back said politicians' campaigns, and corporate free speech conceived as unlimited campaign contributions seriously tilts the playing field ... so that corporate personhood so understood is a problem. ?
But all of that supposes that government/laws/regulations are or should be an answer to the grievous situation we find ourselves in. I take the grievous situation, from an OWS perspective, to be unsustainable income inequality. Do we agree on that?
264 was in reference to an actual five year old and has nothing to do with corporate personhood.
266.2 cont'd: A person could also think that OWS seeks some things aside from just more better politicians or governmental regulations.
One of the more interesting proposals I've heard floated is a requirement that corporate boards include a labor representative. Something like this is in place in Germany, I understand, to very positive effect. I confess I read something lengthy about this a couple of years ago now, so remember it only vaguely now.
I can't really figure out what happened in this thread. Did Halford present the corporate personhood scenario as all or nothing? Is that it? But his 228 denied that.
I guess I'll move on.
I'm not sure, but 259 made no sense at all and 260 did.
97
... the Wall Street shenanigans that set off our current economic troubles were not to my benefit. I want those goniffs shut down not because I'm selflessly willing to forgo the advantages their thievery brings me, but because they're hurting me too. ...
You sure about that? Cut finance down to size and NYC might start looking a lot like Newark and NYS a lot like Michigan. There is reason Senator Schumer always has Wall Street's back you know.
176: Well, her old job was as an admin at a bank and trust company. I didn't get that far, but I completely agree with you!
116
Well, yes. But it's important to focus on the fact that the problem is primarily that government is catering to the owners of capital, which is a numerically tiny group, rather than that some wage earners are temporarily more comfortable than others. Redistribution should be happening within income classes among the wage earners too, but focusing on higher-income or more secure wage earners is the sort of mental process that makes Tea Partiers fulminate about public sector pensions.
I think this is fundamentally wrong. The Goldman Sachs bigshots everyone loves to hate are wage earners. And they are probably doing better than Goldman Sachs shareholders. Certainly my Citigroup stock hasn't done well over the last few years.
139
To curl back to my point about 90-99%ers who think they're 1%ers, these people - the Shearer tendency - are a real problem because they exist in substantial numbers, you can't really demonise them like you can Jamie Dimon or Fred Goodwin, they have substantial resources, they're usually fairly competent at something or other, and they are wrong. One of the good things about 99% is that it's an exit strategy. It doesn't require them to self identify as Democrats or socialists or anything else that would frighten the horses. It does permit them to stop being wrong.
I don't know why you are dragging me into this, I am well aware I am not in the 1% (in terms of income) and I am hardly a down the line defender of the rich.
I think that James is right about this when it comes to investment banking. There's a serious principal agent problem in investment banking. It was a better business when the companies were private partnerships without removed shareholders.
I would be less concerned with corporate personhood if we had real campaign finance restrictions and careful oversight of lobbying groups. AFAICT, "corporate personhood" seems to mean that the people at the top of the corporation can funnel all kinds of money towards elected officials and bias them in favor of their corporation.
Corporate personhood is not "all or nothing.". It is a legal fiction that is necessary for having corporate organizations -- or, really, any kind of collective entity -- in society. A "legal person" is not the same thing as a citizen or natural person. The term "person" in this sense is a technical one.
As to 276, sigh. "Corporate personhood" has almost nothing to do with the issues you're talking about.
In general, this is a gigantic dead end driven by simple ignorance. If you want to reduce the power of large corporations or the very rich (by the way, that's not at all the same thing) think about things that will actually reduce their power in meaningful ways.
Ah, that sounded more dickish than I meant. But seriously, if you're worried about corporations, support unions, support environmental groups, tax the shit out of them, regulate them up the butt. That all has essentially nothing to do with "corporate personhood."
I've never really grasped what makes corporate personhood a thing, and I suspect that it's the use of the word "person" that does the work. (Just saying they have legal personality, as in Europe, doesn't seem to rile people up in the same way.) There are important ways in which corporations are real kickable entities. There is more to Apple than Steve Jobs, or indeed to any one of its employees.
Halford makes a very good point that it's important that you can sue a corporation as such, not just against its executives as individuals. It's surely too easy to avoid complying with, say, an injunction to stop polluting a river, if you can simply swap injuncted exec Mr. A for non-injuncted Mr. B. What you want is an injunction that binds the collective entity that employs A and B...so, the, ah, corporation.
Shorter me: making things personal is good propaganda, but action must change institutions.
should I sell all my super old stocks that I owe massive capital gains tax on, on the assumption rates will never be this low again? I wonder sometimes. I am aware that some people have real problems. my only real problem is that my doctor said today she was considering involuntarily putting me in the psych ward because she's worried I might off myself impulsively, but she thought it would just be a further blow to my self-esteem. I was like, uh, is that a good enough reason? I think I'm OK on that front really; husband x said the other night it would be the end of girl y's sunny smile (she is a very happy girl). it would really be too horrible a thing to do to my children. I wouldn't hurt them like that. seriously, not going to kill myself AT ALL, PINKY PROMISE. everybody knows you can't break a pinky promise. but why is my doctor as worried as all that? I confess it makes me nervous.
Capital Gains: long, long term ones can be a bitch. Especially when the stuff predates the 70's.
alameida, when I first read that comment, I thought that you were saying that going onto a psych ward would destroy your children. I read it properly and realized that that's not what you meant, but I still kind of wonder whether you thought that deep down. I'm sure that she'd be able to handle that one fine.
Can you negotiate with your shrink to see her 2-3 times a week for a few weeks instead of going inpatient? That could be unhelpful, I don't know. Surely it's expensive.
277: It is a legal fiction that is necessary for having corporate organizations
There is not one aspect of what you are saying that requires the concept of personhood. K-sky gets it right in 255.1. It may be a legal fiction, but it has become the The Da Vinci Code of legal fictions. And see fake accent's 241 on why that description of the fiction has soured for people (admittedly ignorant non-corporate lawyers) over the last few decades.
You guys seemingly want to have your plain meaning and abuse it too.
Hey, Al. Whatever you and the shrink decide, we're pulling for you.
It feels weird to find myself on the ignorant-and-proud-of-it side of things for once (I'm ignorant all the time, I'm just rarely aware of it!), but if there's any good argument for the status quo on civil rights for corporations, then Halford isn't making it.
206
What gets problematic, in some limited contexts, is the idea that corporations are, as persons, entitled to the same civil rights as natural persons. In the campaign finance context, this seems stupid and pernicious to me. I can't think offhand of other contexts where it really comes up.
In general, this is a gigantic dead end driven by simple ignorance. If you want to reduce the power of large corporations or the very rich (by the way, that's not at all the same thing) think about things that will actually reduce their power in meaningful ways.
How about reducing their "free speech" power?
Once you start talking about a company that can credibly threaten to tank the U.S. economy if it doesn't get bailed out, the problem won't be solved with campaign finance.
But the New York Times, and various magazines, publishing companies, web sites, movie studios, etc. are corporations too. Are you really okay with the government regulating their speech?
It's important to think of corporations as people, because most people know that most people are assholes sometimes.
287: I'm assuming this was Halford, since he's made similar comments a few other times in this thread. This argument is crazy. I would think a sane jurisprudence could easily distinguish between the freedom of the press (separately guaranteed in the first amendment) and the idea that the free speech rights otherwise guaranteed by the first amendment must necesarily apply to fictional legal entities (who happen not to be citizens of the republic but explicitly amoral self-interested actors in control of billions and billions of dollars).
Because buying a newspaper (or starting one) is so hard for a multi-billion dollar company?
I feel OK, I'm going to make it; I just didn't like having my shrink say that, in part because I wasn't actually aware she could involuntarily commit me. though it makes sense. particularly in a polis run by benevolent technocrats. the new subway lines they have built/are just opening are so great! until your philosopher kings start overreaching themselves they can be kind of fabulous.
287 wasn't me. I agree that commercial speech needs to be regulated separately, and that the campaign finance=speech is crazy when put that simply. OTOH denying corporations any speech rights would be crazy -- you'd either need a "press" exception that would be so large as to cover almost anything that a corporation would want to do as speech (e.g., advertising about social issues that affect the company) or you will run into some very nasty civil liberties problems very very quickly.
282, 289: Whatever you call things, my more substantive concern is how to establish that when people are speaking on behalf of a corporation (or other group or whatever) that it is clearly identified and made obvious that the person is literally acting/playing a role* and that positions taken and opinions expressed are not necessarily those of any single human being**, but rather the result of discharging fiduciary (or other categories for entities other than for-profit corporations) duties as specified in a charter. This needs to be made manifest and explicit every time (something like the Surgeon Generals warnings on cigarette packs/commercials). "This message should be interpreted in the context that this paid actor is saying these things because it is believed that it discharges the fiduciary responsibilities as described in organizational charter X." Groups/corporations should certainly be able to speak--but let it be clear what it is that is speaking, and it ain't human.
*I am more and more coming to believe that Disney got it right when it labelled the supply closet in my hotel at Disneyworld as "Cast Members Only" (confused me a bit at first, as there were no "shows" at that location); not just spokespeople but everything anyone does while working for someone else should be explicitly viewed as them being a cast member in a production.
**Even for the shareholders on whose behalf folks are acting, it is but a slice (possibly a significant share in some cases) of their overall personal interest.
289: Actually, it was me. But a lot of (currently) corporate speech would not fit into "the press." Like, museums, theaters, stores that sell books and music, movie studios, cable channels. Strip clubs!
As to 276, sigh. "Corporate personhood" has almost nothing to do with the issues you're talking about....Ah, that sounded more dickish than I meant. But seriously, if you're worried about corporations, support unions, support environmental groups, tax the shit out of them, regulate them up the butt. That all has essentially nothing to do with "corporate personhood."
No, I know that (you dick). I'm saying that "corporate personhood" seems to be invoked in situations where the problem is actually that corporations have their hands up all the politicians' puppet-holes.
Shorter 293: "It's just business", is a phrase rightly associated with the mob and lack of scruples--when that is the context of speech it should be made explicit.
Once you start talking about a company that can credibly threaten to tank the U.S. economy if it doesn't get bailed out, the problem won't be solved with campaign finance.
I find this argument, which is also part of Halford's argument, unpersuasive. Just because campaign finance reform doesn't solve every problem, that doesn't mean it isn't a step in the right direction.
I haven't quite worked out how I feel about the remainder of Halford's argument about corporations and speech. I can see, for instance, holding corporations to stricter standards of disclosure than natural persons.
295 -- I think you're thinking of one specific problem, which is a specific Supreme Court decision having to donwith campaign finance regulation. The problem there is that campaign finance is not plausibly protected speech in same sense as traditional political speech, not corporate personhood per se.
I absolutely am cool with disclosure requirements.
but let it be clear what it is that is speaking, and it ain't human
And of course billions are spent to convince you of exactly the opposite.
I suppose the other problem I have with corporate personhood is: what do you do when the corporation needs to go to jail?
(I haven't really read the thread.)
I'm more bloodthirsty than that.
303: k-sky in 255 mentions Nader advocating for a death penalty for corporations.
303:
255.last has your answer, heebie.
Dammit Stanley. I try to be helpful, and you ruin it.
Hello,
StanleyCo sincerely regrets that you feel that way, PF; however, StanleyCo cannot be held liable for your pain and suffering.
Cheers!
StanleyCo
I don't see how a death penalty is anything other than a fine sufficient to drive the company out of business. Which is, of course, impossible to implement or maintain.
If you have to apply to become a legal corporation, then you can remove that status, legally, and that would kill it.
Yes, being sentenced to unlimited personal liability would concentrate shareholders' minds a little, I'd think.
According to the blistering conversation I had with Halford whenever ago, shareholders are just side-gambling and corporations do not pander to them because the stock value is completely divorced from how well a corporation is doing.
Director and Officer liability focuses the mind even faster, and generally on the right people.
307: Down with personal corporatehood!
Does anyone else experience a weird mixture of emotions when the read stories like this? Chills at the expression of solidarity despite our national belligerence, and a feeling of inauthenticity and guilt that they've had it so much worse.
and a feeling of inauthenticity and guilt that they've had it so much worse.
I don't connect with this, because I feel like the whole world stands to gain if we reign in our corruption.
The rest of the world's complaints are usually directed precisely at the reigning and the corruption.
Maybe I'd feel better if we had a few more police beatings and kidnappings.
Yes, being sentenced to unlimited personal liability would concentrate shareholders' minds a little, I'd think.
I think that limited liability is actually fairly new in the history of the corporation. Some people have advocated getting rid of it and requiring corporations to insure themselves.
308
I don't see how a death penalty is anything other than a fine sufficient to drive the company out of business. Which is, of course, impossible to implement or maintain.
Arthur Anderson was driven out business (albeit by a felony conviction (later overturned) rather than a fine). There was of course a lot of collateral damage. Which is why people are reluctant to support corporate death sentences in practice.
Anyway lesser sanctions consistently applied seem more sensible in general. The real problem is there is little consensus on what the rules (for the financial industry) should be making enforcement seem arbitrary and political.