Occupy Wall Street

To be honest, I’m having a bit of a difficult time deciphering what these people are actually upset about.  Lots of sound bites, but I don’t think it thus far is a really cohesive message.  What I gather is its anti-corporate, anti-capitalist, and about “fairness and equality” which apparently means generally the opposite of capitalism in their view, but not something like communism.  Maybe just more tax.

I get it that they don’t think rich people are treating the world fairly because they hoard all the wealth.  I suppose that’s true.  Once “they” amass it, they don’t just go about making it rain like confetti from every limo they’re travelling in.  Interestingly enough though, there’s enough rich people that have made their fortunes this generation that I think protecting opportunity is more important.  I scanned the Forbes billionaires list.  All the tech guys such as Ellison, Gates and Allen, Ballmer, Jobs and Wosniak, Page and Brin, etc. are all single generation wealthy.  Ikea and Wal-Mart fit this in that the old guys are still around and the kids seem to be half engaged in charity giving the money away in between living the high life.  Buffett and Carlos Slim fits the one career/generation accumulation of wealth.  Jack Simplot fit this.  Lakshmi Mittal fits this, as I believe does Eike Batista.  Scores of finance guys – Bloombergs to hedge fund guys to Schwab types etc. do too.  I’m not a knowledgeable historian on all these guys.  But the ability to create wealth in a career or generation to me actually seems pretty fair.  Now I’m guessing these guys all had some luck, survivor bias in my list here, but I’d also bet they weren’t occupying parks for weeks when they could have been just observing what the market needed and figuring out how they were going to create that, thereby laying the foundations for their empires.

I look around the office I work in, and the industry I work in, and I note actually a surprisingly small number of rich by inheritance types.  I’d note this is also survivor bias as I’m observing from “an office, in an industry” whereas I’d suspect most inheritance types would be not office bound, although they may be ongoing industry affiliated in certain ways.  But again it strikes me that there’s a lot out there available if one just puts nose to the grindstone and makes it happen.  Whatever the field is, some strive and some whiter.  I’ve been on both sides of the fence.

Since my mind thinks well with biking analogies – it’s sort of like a long stage race, say La Ruta.  You can be hot, baking, tired, dehydrated, etc. and look around you at all the others who are too.  You can throw down your bike, start chanting, and have all the riders sit in and protest the unfair treatment of having to ride that far in such awful conditions.  Or you can pedal through to the end, put your feet up, scrape your local currency together and have a beer and a shower whilst the others complain that it’s unfair that you rest with a beer and shower, and that they should have them too.  Right.  I’ve withered and I’ve survived.  It’s not easy to survive.

Let’s not forget that nothing in the world will ever be fair and equal.  It’s not about “that guy has more, so give me some so we’re equal”.  It’s about ground rules that allow/facilitate/encourage one to have the motivation and opportunity to create or receive “it” given your efforts. This opportunity is what needs protection in my view.  America (and others) are still leaders in providing that playing field.  I endorse a system that provides that playing field.  Not everyone will accumulate a similar amount of wealth in a generation.  Not everyone on a field kicks a soccer ball equivalently.  Asserting that it should be a non-distributed outcome, or less distributed outcome, is just not accurate or logical in my view.  Such is life.  Show some hustle at whatever you do.

The right to "pursue happiness" is not necessarily the right for everyone to get what is determined as a fair and equal amount of happiness, and definitely not get it as an entitlement.

These protests appear popular – weather in NY is good and the free breakfast is still apparently on site at the protest zone.

From my side, I wish these protests were directed at the right problems within finance/corporation and [especially?] government.  But by reading random samplings of quotes from protesters, I’m not entirely sure that’ll be forthcoming.