from Hacker News

Tim O'Reilly on OccupyWallStreet

by BrentRitterbeck on 9/19/11, 11:12 PM with 91 comments

  • by neilk on 9/20/11, 1:57 AM

    I don't know if these protests are going anywhere, but it's good to remember that movements can start very small.

    In Egypt, half a year before Tahrir Square January-February 2011, they had the "silent stand"[1] -- which consisted of just showing up in public places en masse and saying nothing, in memory of a young man who'd been tortured to death by security services. I'm pretty sure I heard Wael Ghonim say that even he thought it was a slightly daft idea until it actually happened, and then it seemed that they'd found a catalyst for average people to join in a protest.

    I too hope for some sort of movement that can bridge the artificial divide between Tea Partiers and scruffy leftist kids. Fundamentally, nobody is asking for particularly radical reforms here; so it should be possible to have widespread support.

    [1] http://www.demotix.com/news/394309/khaled-said-silent-stand-...

  • by chrismealy on 9/20/11, 2:47 AM

    Financial capital has always been at war with productive capital. Because it's more concentrated in power (and even geographically) it's easier for financial capital to be aware of its interests and work together towards them. Productive capital is dispersed and varied. Tim O'Reilly is the rare CEO who's smart enough to know what's going on and what side he's on. Good for him.

  • by chernevik on 9/20/11, 2:02 AM

    "Occupy Wall Street", and their buddies "We are the 99" and "Days of Rage", dislike Wall Street because they dislike wealth. The Tea Party dislikes Wall Street because the wealth comes from implied government guarantees and regulatory barriers to competition. They could agree on cutting the Washington / New York interconnections.

    But that's not actually in the interests the smart money actually funding the "Occupy Wall Street" types. The last Congress gave us "finance reform" that left us Too Big Too Fail and a bunch more regulatory levers. The pols got more scope for favors and campaign donations, the bankers got more regulatory barriers to competitive entry.

    The chief author of that "reform"? Progressive Barney Frank.

    The Tea Party is the GOP's reckoning for failing their principles. The Democrats has yet to come.

  • by OstiaAntica on 9/20/11, 12:56 AM

    O'Reilly is wrong about the Tea Party-- the entire movement got started during the crisis in 2008. The Tea Party and conservative Republicans initially defeated the TARP bailout in the U.S. House. And the Tea Party and Ron Paul are the main reason that the Federal Reserve -- the kingpin of America's corrupt banking regime -- is under political fire.

    The Tea Party doesn't have much presence in NYC and its leaders weren't involved in this particular protest, and "Occupying" is a sixties lefty word that's not going to turn out the Tea Party rank and file.

  • by tmsh on 9/20/11, 12:30 AM

    I don't know if anyone here watches Suits. But basically the reason the Harvey character wins is the reason Wall Street has not been held accountable. A lot of people pay a lot of money and there is enough ingenious strategizing to protect assets for large Wall Street firms (and enough tangential interests among any large American investor), that it makes complete sense that Wall Street has not and will probably not be held accountable.

    However, if you truly want to fix a problem like that, you have to out-strategize back. Which doesn't necessarily mean legal measures. E.g., no need to occupy Wall Street, as long as the lessons are learned and it's replaced by something better.

  • by wisty on 9/20/11, 9:48 AM

    Since 1967, real median household income in the USA has risen from ~$40k to ~$49k, a growth of about 0.5% a year. (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bd/US_...)

    Since 1967, real GDP of the USA rose from 4T to 13T, a 320% increase (2005 dollars), or a growth of about 2.8% a year. (http://www.data360.org/dataset.aspx?Data_Set_Id=354)

    This would be my sign:

    US household income growth: 0.5% a year since the 60s.

    US GDP growth: 2.8% a year since the 60s.

    Who is stealing our growth?

  • by nhangen on 9/20/11, 4:04 AM

    Why does every political argument resort to "tea party this" or "liberal that." Drives me nuts we can't have conversations without sweeping generalizations and broad attacks.

  • by ddw on 9/20/11, 4:09 AM

    Ironic isn't it that the people that are most effected by financial polices - the working class and poor - usually don't come out to these kind of things.

    But I wouldn't give up on it yet, a core seems to be prepared for long-term occupation and it could grow.

  • by pkaler on 9/20/11, 2:13 AM

    Silicon Valley should look itself in the mirror if it wants to throw stones at Wall Street.

    Tim O'Reilly is posting to the site of a corporation that funnels money to Bermuda so that it only has to pay a 2.4% tax rate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_Arrangement http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-21/google-2-4-rate-sho...

    And O'Reilly probably has Eric Schmidt and Larry Page's phone numbers.

  • by twoodfin on 9/20/11, 2:42 PM

    > There are a set of people who constructed a set of financial products with intent to defraud. They took our country to the brink of ruin, then got off scott free, even with multi-million dollar bonuses.

    I have a feeling this movement would be much more effective if it could actually name names and link to evidence. "Read Taibbi" isn't enough. I've read all of Taibbi's pieces, and it's hard to see a real criminal case succeeding out of what he presents. Some of it might seem outrageous, but investors were aware of the risks in CDOs well before the bubble burst and wanted them anyway. Claiming a little marketing spin from Goldman Sachs is a criminal attempt to defraud doesn't pass the laugh test for me.

  • by azulum on 9/20/11, 3:01 AM

    loved one of the posters about the student loan crisis being the next housing crisis. i have a bachelors with three majors. i graduated in 2008. my education has been worth (45000) plus (5 years) plus an ability to recognize bullshit. yep, 45k. i thought i'd get a decent job. now i realize that i have to manufacture my own job.

    edit: shame sallie mae loans can't be bankrupted anymore.

  • by mmphosis on 9/20/11, 1:10 AM

  • by S_A_P on 9/20/11, 3:07 AM

    The Tim O'Reilly Factor?

    In my only semi informed opinion, it seems that this sort of crime is so distributed and hard to prove that it likely is just too difficult to create a convincing case to a jury of folks who may or may not really grasp what really happened on wall street. I am not even sure that many of the fraudsters even knew the full consequence of their actions. I am by no means defending anyone here, I just think that the "crime" is too difficult to package up neatly.

  • by maxogden on 9/20/11, 12:38 AM

    ... in which the Radar rises to face the Factor

  • by AndrewMoffat on 9/20/11, 12:19 AM

    > The smirk on the face of the Fox News reporter who was interviewing various participants said it all. "These people are easy to dismiss."

    https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-X-DagzpHhDU/TnevQadAJeI/A... https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-Che5TfKQre8/TnevQT7sqZI/A...