Occupy Wall Street
Will it work?
Who knows?
When the normal method of influencing policy is disrupted by its co-option by an interested minority, and when political leadership limits itself to serving the interests, primarily, of that minority, a new direction or channel must be found. It will, of necessity, be outside the norm. It will thus be criticized by those invested in the norm as unusual, threatening, or irrelevant.
New channels are a feature of nature. It is how even the largest of rivers is formed. Somehow, somewhere, an original trickle in a new channel began the path that later became the Amazon. What appears later as irresistible was first insignificant. This is simply the way of change. No one can predict what will happen since the past is not a perfect template for the future. Is it this trickle? Or that small stream that will become the Amazon? I do not know. Nor can I.
So Occupy Wall Street may be the beginning of something larger. Or it may evaporate and leave no trace.
My suspicion, though, is favor of it having an impact.
If so Wall Street deserves the damnation. Its hubris needs to be contradicted and tamed. Its influence over policy and its constant, pathetic, self referential aggrandizement disregarded.
We need banks. They serve a social function. They are integral to the successful operation of a complex economy. They help us bridge the gap between the present and the future. Building that bridge implies the existence of risk. Bankers accept that risk in return for a reward. But the bridge does not exist in and of itself. It is merely a bridge. Investment and savings flow across it in order to serve society’s larger needs. That is how we match opportunity in the future with availability of capital today. It is how we allow ourselves to postpone consumption in the present to construct a chance for greater consumption down the road.
The profound uncertainty that dominates the unfolding of our economic future demands that such bridges be built, and that we encourage rather than disparage those who dare build them.
But.
Problems arise when the builders forget that bridges connect things. Such forgetfulness leads them to build bridges for their own sake rather than to make such connections. When this happens the investment that is supposed to flow across is diverted towards embellishing the bridges themselves. Social opportunity is reduced and we end up with useless, but elegant, bridges.
Our banks fell into this trap.
They realized that they could earn more money for their shareholders by staunching the flow of capital into future projects that expanded the general opportunity of society as a whole, and by deploying that capital into games they invented for themselves.So the money stayed within the banking system rather than flowing into the enhancement of production goods or services we all benefit from.
These games went under many names. Each more obscure than the last. Each designed carefully to enrich bankers at the expense of others. Each another block slowing the flow of capital into other activities.
The end result was that our bridges were no longer effective access points into the future, but that they were traps – ever larger traps – blocking the way forward in order to profit the present.
Our banks became anti-social. They built elaborate, and as it turns out, highly unsafe bridges. They gloried in their architectural magnificence. They were astonished at their constant innovation in design. That the bridges went nowhere was not a consideration. Bridge building was now not about connections, but about suspension and engineering. Bridges were not a way point on a path into the future, but an end point here and now.
The banks became a social problem. A big problem.
The people who comprise Occupy Wall Street seem to understand this, although I am not so sure they understand our need for banks. The money that Wall Street hoarded has contributed to the corruption of American politics and our elite. Wall Street is not the sole reason our economy is stagnant, but its money has surely prevented open discourse about how to break free of that stagnation. Wall Street was certainly at the fore of the crisis that brought the economy to its knees, but much of the weakness that the crisis exposed was well established ahead of its onset.
If Occupy Wall Street can accomplish anything I would want it to be the highlighting of that corruption and the take over of our democracy by the few. Everything else flows from that.
The rallying cry on the right will always be the protection of rights for the individual. In every day action this translates into protection of privilege. The rallying cry on the left thus must be protection of rights for all. This means we must question privilege.
Wall Street carved out a privileged position. Instead of being socially useful it became anti-social and counter productive. It abused its privilege. It abused us all.
Perhaps Occupy Wall Street can point out that abuse sufficiently that its current small stream becomes a river to break the dam of complacency that prevents the reform required to restore our democracy. Only after that reform can we re-balance our economy so that both wages and profits are privileged, not just the latter.
Will it work?
Who knows?
