Re: Understanding the Occupy Movementf
Posted by David Eric Smith on Jan 21, 2012; 2:16pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Understanding-the-Occupy-Movementf-tp7210588p7211082.html
Jochen, hi,
For a while I have shown the sense to stay quiet, but let me try to
address this one a little, because I can send a file that has some
technical papers which I think address some of these points.
It seems to me that the 99%/1% paradigm and Occupy are targeted at
slightly different things, though they have become natural traveling
companions, and the two are now generally associated (probably also
in the minds of the participants for the most part). It seems that
the 99/1 paradigm is targeted at social inequality, and addresses the
question of what kind of society we want to create. That seems to be
the main question you address in your post. If I understand
correctly, Occupy, with its particular focus on Wall Street at the
beginning, was targeted at the influence of corporate power in
corrupting the legal system, at all levels from law-making, to day-to-
day regulatory operations, to law enforcement. I think this is a
somewhat different question, in that it addresses the major de facto
difference between the society we claim to have committed to in the
political system, and the actual working of that system. I choose to
narrow the focus of Occupy in my own mind -- probably more than it is
actually narrowed in the minds of many who participate -- for the
sake of highlighting this distinction, because I think the two
questions are addressed to some extent differently. The distinction
I am making also follows an official position taken by Yaneer Bar-Yam
of NECSI, in the attached rtf (which hopefully the list curator will
permit to forward)
. I have looked at some of the articles referenced here, but it
would take a more careful analysis of method than I have made the
effort (or probably have the expertise) to perform, in order to know
how tight the conclusions are.
There are so many topics in Friam history that touch on this question
(how institutional frameworks function, what it really means to
aspire to a form of culture through our choice of formal
institutional commitments, and how close to the aspiration we ever
get with the ever-fragile machinery), from the importance of
incomplete markets to making much of microeconomic theory, and "micro-
foundations of macroeconomics" irrelevant, to the question of the
autonomy of thought from environment, that I see questions related to
this constantly on the list. It is also related to interests of my
own, which have to do with the relation of individuality (both
developmental and evolutionary) in relation to ecology, and to error-
correction in hierarchical complex systems, and the limits to what
kinds of function can actually be maintained robustly. It seems to
me that almost all the high-level abstractions about the intervention
of power in markets and politics can be nearly deconstructed, they
are so hard to think clearly about, but that these are excellent
questions to pursue.
Somebody several weeks ago (this time I'll have the sense not to use
the name I think I remember, in case I have it wrong again) commented
that Occupy seemed false because the participants wear clothes, eat
food, communicate with consumer electronics, and live in tents,
produced by the industrial economy, and therefore they lack the
consistency of Ghandi's followers who made their own salt and wore
khadi. That apparent distinction might be self-contained if the
claim were actually that corporate function is the enemy (and if one
could factor out differences in population, access to land and
coastline, the fact that you can go naked in most of India most of
the year without freezing, the huge differences across continent and
across time, making it much more difficult for all but a fraction of
people to find a space to survive outside the industrial economy and
the land and assets owned through it in the US today, etc.) but the
question becomes trickier if one takes the position that the
productive activities of corporations are not deemed bad per se, but
that their circumventing the regulatory apparatus that is supposed to
provide stability is regarded as the main problem. (Of course,
either of these could be the target, depending on which set of
problems we are discussing. The ecological economists, including
Herman Daly and followers, would indeed say that many forms of
production are themselves the problem, but I think that is a
different thread from the one you have raised, at least on a first
pass.) My sense, that the timing of the financial collapses, and the
many demonstrations of corruption by banks and bankers, which were
not really pursued to the extent that they could have been, and
suggested the tip of a much larger iceberg, as the trigger for the
start of Occupy, would support the distinction I draw here.
I hope that Bar-Yam et al.'s quantitative analysis, if not my own
post-processing of them, are useful in some way.
All best,
Eric
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Understanding-the-Occupy-Movementf-tp7210588p7211082.html
Jochen, hi,
For a while I have shown the sense to stay quiet, but let me try to
address this one a little, because I can send a file that has some
technical papers which I think address some of these points.
It seems to me that the 99%/1% paradigm and Occupy are targeted at
slightly different things, though they have become natural traveling
companions, and the two are now generally associated (probably also
in the minds of the participants for the most part). It seems that
the 99/1 paradigm is targeted at social inequality, and addresses the
question of what kind of society we want to create. That seems to be
the main question you address in your post. If I understand
correctly, Occupy, with its particular focus on Wall Street at the
beginning, was targeted at the influence of corporate power in
corrupting the legal system, at all levels from law-making, to day-to-
day regulatory operations, to law enforcement. I think this is a
somewhat different question, in that it addresses the major de facto
difference between the society we claim to have committed to in the
political system, and the actual working of that system. I choose to
narrow the focus of Occupy in my own mind -- probably more than it is
actually narrowed in the minds of many who participate -- for the
sake of highlighting this distinction, because I think the two
questions are addressed to some extent differently. The distinction
I am making also follows an official position taken by Yaneer Bar-Yam
of NECSI, in the attached rtf (which hopefully the list curator will
permit to forward)
. I have looked at some of the articles referenced here, but it
would take a more careful analysis of method than I have made the
effort (or probably have the expertise) to perform, in order to know
how tight the conclusions are.
There are so many topics in Friam history that touch on this question
(how institutional frameworks function, what it really means to
aspire to a form of culture through our choice of formal
institutional commitments, and how close to the aspiration we ever
get with the ever-fragile machinery), from the importance of
incomplete markets to making much of microeconomic theory, and "micro-
foundations of macroeconomics" irrelevant, to the question of the
autonomy of thought from environment, that I see questions related to
this constantly on the list. It is also related to interests of my
own, which have to do with the relation of individuality (both
developmental and evolutionary) in relation to ecology, and to error-
correction in hierarchical complex systems, and the limits to what
kinds of function can actually be maintained robustly. It seems to
me that almost all the high-level abstractions about the intervention
of power in markets and politics can be nearly deconstructed, they
are so hard to think clearly about, but that these are excellent
questions to pursue.
Somebody several weeks ago (this time I'll have the sense not to use
the name I think I remember, in case I have it wrong again) commented
that Occupy seemed false because the participants wear clothes, eat
food, communicate with consumer electronics, and live in tents,
produced by the industrial economy, and therefore they lack the
consistency of Ghandi's followers who made their own salt and wore
khadi. That apparent distinction might be self-contained if the
claim were actually that corporate function is the enemy (and if one
could factor out differences in population, access to land and
coastline, the fact that you can go naked in most of India most of
the year without freezing, the huge differences across continent and
across time, making it much more difficult for all but a fraction of
people to find a space to survive outside the industrial economy and
the land and assets owned through it in the US today, etc.) but the
question becomes trickier if one takes the position that the
productive activities of corporations are not deemed bad per se, but
that their circumventing the regulatory apparatus that is supposed to
provide stability is regarded as the main problem. (Of course,
either of these could be the target, depending on which set of
problems we are discussing. The ecological economists, including
Herman Daly and followers, would indeed say that many forms of
production are themselves the problem, but I think that is a
different thread from the one you have raised, at least on a first
pass.) My sense, that the timing of the financial collapses, and the
many demonstrations of corruption by banks and bankers, which were
not really pursued to the extent that they could have been, and
suggested the tip of a much larger iceberg, as the trigger for the
start of Occupy, would support the distinction I draw here.
I hope that Bar-Yam et al.'s quantitative analysis, if not my own
post-processing of them, are useful in some way.
All best,
Eric
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Bar-Yam annotated bibliography.rtf (19K) | Free forum by Nabble | Edit this page |