Actually, economists, psychologists and a handful of good politicians know. The general population is largely clueless about it, of course.Originally Posted by kowalskil
Motivation is a tricky thing and the ridiculously dumbed-down, politicised concept of motivation that drives slogans and talking points is just that - ridiculous.
Here's an excerpt:
a) Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is difficult to exploit for leaders, but powerful and long-lasting. Extrinsic motivation (such as cash) is easily exploited by leaders, but its effect wears off over time. Ever greater extrinsic motivation inputs are required for the same motivation.
b) People don't care much about absolute wealth, but a lot about relative wealth. People don't want to be at the social pyramid bottom. The life of a rich trader in the middle age was more rewarding than the life of an unemployed person of today who has iPod, TV, warm water and climate control indoors.
c) There's furthermore a huge psychological difference between having some wealth taken away and having some wealth increase taken away. German post-WW2 economic policy acknowledged this and strived for 'wealth for everyone' by (allowing) redistribution of wealth growth rather than aiming at redistributing of what little survived the war. (This wisdom was lost to us during the weak growth of the 80's, though.)
d) Having 1-5% of the population earn less (net) may damage their motivation (doubtful, see later) but 80-95% earn more certainly does boost theirs, right? The focus on the feelings of the top 1% is a typical U.S. perspective, fostered by the media.
Finally, would the rich push less for national economic success if they earned less millions for the same effort?
Their absolute wealth is quasi-irrelevant, their relative wealth ain't. In fact, most of them might be MORE motivated to push for more personal income (and thus, supposedly, for more national income) if you take more away from them because that means they would lose relative social status and that's something they'll fight against.
It’s Occupy Wall Street; not Occupy Silicon Valley.
Bill Gates is one of the most influential people in the computer industry; his company’s innovations over that last thirty years have impacted the entire world -- arguably for the better.
Contrast this with a Lloyd Blankfein or Jamie Dimon -- who are parasites. The financial industry contributes little social value, and the only financial innovation they have brought in the last thirty years has been the ATM card.
“[S]omething in his tone now reminded her of his explanations of asymmetric warfare, a topic in which he had a keen and abiding interest. She remembered him telling her how terrorism was almost exclusively about branding, but only slightly less so about the psychology of lotteries…” - Zero History, William Gibson
Bill Gates and "innovations" in one line? I need to check whether I'm in the correct timeline, for in mine M$ is only good for absorbing others' innovations. That's being called technology dispersion. They are technology dispersers, not innovators.
Likewise, American hero Mr. Jobs was known for creating jobs in Taiwan...
Nevertheless, I get the point. The only halfway useful innovation of the financial industry is being said to be the ATM machine, but then again this was invented by a machine-builder company and THEN sold to the banks.
What Every Protester Should Know
One of the best explanations of the Money problem I have ever seen. Link to the video what every wall street protester should know.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...v=gV9A2IGShuk#!
Don't have the time to watch that.
I wonder if he thinks the Protestors are Reptilian Humanoids...
Financialization, an experts’ endeavor if ever there were one, is doing a better job of destroying capitalism than Marxism ever did.
If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed. – Mark Twain (attributed)
Until the plague came 'round, of course. I doubt that many of today's unemployed would want to trade places, if they had the chance, and if they did they'd regret it quickly.
The fallacy, of course, is that if the 1-5% earns less, the rest will therefore earn more.
In any event I don't see any real change coming out of the whole "Occupy Wall Street". The protesters seem to have only the vaguest notion of what they don't want, no idea at all of what they want, and nothing even resembling a practical program for change. It's somewhat like opening the window and shouting "I'm mad as hell...": cathartic and satisfying, but it doesn't change anything.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
H.L. Mencken
I don’t know. I kind of buy the comparison to the Tea Party. Neither is exactly clear as to how they want to change things and in any case few are experts. But I don’t think anyone would argue that the Tea Party has not helped() shape the discussion. But both are made up of Americans, and in America we are free to yell about the government or Wall Street if we so choose.
If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed. – Mark Twain (attributed)
I like the above statement. It reflects what a real economy is based on, which are either things that you (1) manufacture, (2) get out of the ground, or (3) grow on the ground.
However, things like Wall Street, banking, insurance, etc., are merely transfer payment industries. They are secondary to the real economy. These folks really don't do anything but find ways to skim money off of what they transfer around. There needs to be a recalibration and many heads need to roll. Nevertheless, the idiot protesters "occupying" Wall Street don't have a clue about reality. They are just another manifestation of the same iconoclastic psychosis that invents Global Warming, Global Cooling, Peak Oil, Malthusian food shortages, over-population, ozone depletion, ad nauseum infinitum
To a large extent true, but many people fail to appreciate how necessary those money-moving industries are, and how central the ability of money to seek return without government trying to tell it where to go has been to the economic success the US has achieved in the past. Not saying those industries couldn't use some changes - though again they have to share responsibility and the need for change with Main Street and Pennsylvania Ave - but talking about eliminating them or putting them under government control is beyond naive.
It's worth noting that nobody complains about the money-movers when bubbles are in their up phase.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
H.L. Mencken
Banking at its core is a middleman function comparable to trade in necessity and utility. We need saving & loan institutions for an efficient allocation of resources into investments.
It all goes wrong if
a) banks do too many other things
b) banks become incompetent at allocation (getting the risk premiums wrong, for example)
c) credit is being used too often for consumption, not investment
d9) banks begin to exploit their power instead of serving the community for a normal "profit/equity capital" ratio
Bill Black On What we should Demand Of The Fed
I wonder if he thinks the Protestors are Reptilian Humanoids...
Ken,no but there is a bug in my margarita
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omqe2gWZgGg
I told you and I told you
Don't totally drain the Tequila bottle...
Some quick responses to the OP: I don't think that the goal of OWS is to stop rich people from becoming richer; I think the goal is to limit their ability to become richer at the expense of the middle and lower classes.
Similarly, I don't think the goal of OWS is to destroy capitalism; I think it's to reform capitalism such that it is once again merely the engine of the state rather than the driver.
A breakdown of responses to the open ended survey question “What would you like to see the Occupy Wall Street movement achieve?” [LINK]
35% Influence the Democratic Party the way the Tea Party has influenced the GOP
4% Radical redistribution of wealth
5% Overhaul of tax system: replace income tax with flat tax
7% Direct Democracy
9% Engage & mobilize Progressives
9% Promote a national conversation
11% Break the two-party duopoly
4% Dissolution of our representative democracy/capitalist system
4% Single payer health care
4% Pull out of Afghanistan immediately
8% Not sure
If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed. – Mark Twain (attributed)
In other words, no clue.35% Influence the Democratic Party the way the Tea Party has influenced the GOP
4% Radical redistribution of wealth
5% Overhaul of tax system: replace income tax with flat tax
7% Direct Democracy
9% Engage & mobilize Progressives
9% Promote a national conversation
11% Break the two-party duopoly
4% Dissolution of our representative democracy/capitalist system
4% Single payer health care
4% Pull out of Afghanistan immediately
8% Not sure
"Influence the Democratic Party the way the Tea Party has influenced the GOP" sounds quite horrible to me. Last thing we need is more polarization and both parties moving away from the center and into extremist lunacy.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
H.L. Mencken
I would argue that the way it works in America is that we have this idea that everyone’s point of view is valid and has to be factored in.* There’s a further to the right wing of the Republican Party which has been dragging the American modal political narrative and policy to the right. So if you want more centrism you should consider supporting lefty loons. (I use the term ‘loon’ with my tongue firmly in cheek. To say that everyone at OWS is a loon is like saying that everyone affiliated with the Tea Party is Michele Bachmann-esque. Neither is monolithic, as the numbers above suggest for OWS. Outside of the DPRK I don’t know of a political system that celebrates a monolithic citizenry.)
*I’m not arguing that that is a good thing. I would argue that it isn’t. But that doesn’t change the basic tendency.
If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed. – Mark Twain (attributed)
Agree very much with both of the above.
It seems to me that a more accurate picture of what they're trying to achieve might be the statement they collectively voted on, as opposed to a sampling that a writer for the Wall Street Journal claims is random. Worth giving at least equal consideration, at any rate.
I would agree with a slight rephrasing of the 35%, though. I would like to see OWS influence the Democratic Party to the degree that the Tea Party has influenced the GOP. I want OWS to succeed where the Tea Party failed: staying on-message, rather than haring off on issues like immigration and getting co-opted by their parent party. The really funny thing is how similar OWS's statement is to the things the Tea Party started out saying. To wit, "Holy christ, why is all the money going into the coffers of the guys that screwed us over?"
Last edited by motorfirebox; 10-27-2011 at 07:39 PM.
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