9 ms·

The Occupy Economy

56 points by lambtron 15y ago

meatsock 15y ago
lets hope it scales well!
fleitz 15y ago
They're onto something here, they should add dust and dubstep and charge people $300 for a ticket. edit: s/sand/dust/
- tibbon 15y ago
  Dust, not sand. :) Now if they only carried out their own trash...
  - fleitz 15y ago
    moop, not trash :)
- SkyMarshal 15y ago
  Same thought occured to me. My first thought was it sounds like these people essentially set up Burning Man on Wall Street. I haven't been to the former, new to the Bay Area, but got real curious when it was held a few weeks ago and read up as much as I could about it. This article sounded very similar to the ones I read describing BM. Makes me wonder what cross section of OWS are also burners, especially among the OWS organizers. Is that where they learned how to pull off something like this massive temporary settlement?
  - fleitz 15y ago
    I just took a stroll up to Occupy Vancouver and it very much reminded me of BM. Really thinking about grabbing my tent and setting up shop. Probably gonna go hang out there some more after a couple more items done on my burndown list. My office is two blocks from the protest so it will be fun. I don't know how many have actually been to burning man, but they seem to have the burning man mindset.
  - da_dude4242 15y ago
    I think a big part of BM culture is bringing BM home with you. Building "local burns" and building local networks. I don't think this behavior is unique to BM though. Watching documentaries on hippies flooding California you see stands for free food, clothes, etc...
ddw 15y ago
Amazing how quickly the msm has flipped on OWS. This article contained information!
- palish 15y ago
  What's "msm"?
  - AdamTReineke 15y ago
    Mainstream media.
rsanchez1 15y ago
They definitely save money on cleaning.
zmitri 15y ago
And yet she packed a make-up kit. For someone who is "protesting" corporate greed it seems contradictory to wear cosmetics from a protestor's perspective-- they have a gigantic profit margin. As a male, I'll never understand how cosmetics are so entrenched in the lives of females.
- AndrewMoffat 15y ago
  > As a male, I'll never understand how cosmetics are so entrenched in the lives of females. really? same reason people like nice clothes. looking "better" is a competitive advantage to help you get the "best" mate. makeup is a means to that end.
  - zmitri 15y ago
    That's fair, but it's definitely not the most effective means. If a woman takes 5-10 minutes to apply make up each day, and if they decided to allocate that towards some other activity, the amount of time spent doing something more productive would add up very quickly. I personally find that it makes women less appealing as it's quite superficial, and a waste of time/money.
    - jonknee 15y ago
      This is why engineers aren't running fashion and beauty companies. It's not about efficiency. It may not make sense to you, but it very much does to a staggering number of people.
      - michaelchisari 15y ago
        And to tie it all in, this is why Steve Jobs was such a visionary, because he understood both engineering and aesthetics, function and form. A lot of people understand one or the other, it's the rare person who can empathize with the necessity of both.
        zmitri 15y ago
runn1ng 15y ago
It's not entirely news that if you live with shared resources, costs per one person goes down. Unfortunately, as 20th century showed us, it doesn't scale well. At all.
- johnny22 15y ago
  i don't think it did. Stuff like airbnb, freecycle, craigslist, zipcar and other resource sharing was just not feasible at the time. I think you're overgeneralizing, but certainly more correct if one were to apply it only to something we really can't make more of... like land. Building giant skyscrapers probably works, but tend not to be as desirable for most people.
- Raphael 15y ago
  Communism is the answer!
  - scq 15y ago
    If communism is the answer, you're asking the wrong question.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
willidiots 15y ago
"The whole operation runs on donations, of course." You're not really "living" on $10 / day if your necessities are donated and you're occupying a public space. The costs of supporting you are borne by the donators and the taxpayers, respectively. EDIT: Turns out the park is privately owned by Brookfield Properties, and was created by US Steel. An amazing spectacle, absolutely. Our generation's Woodstock, perhaps. But the title's misleading.
- stdbrouw 15y ago
  If you only spend $10 a day and manage to survive with that expenditure then you're living on $10 a day in a very straightforward sense of that word. As far as misleading headlines go, this one's rather mild :-)
peterwwillis 15y ago
First thing I thought: holy shit, if we did this kind of stuff for those living below the poverty line, they would have enough resources to pick themselves up and get new jobs (after showers, job interview supplies, counseling, etc etc). At the very least the 22% of American children living in poverty would have a meal and clean clothes. Second thought: if this was Orlando most of the donators would be arrested. Third thought: This is the perfect time to backpack up to New York and have a week-long vacation for super cheap. Swing a protest sign for long enough to get a free meal, then move on to sightseeing.
- jballanc 15y ago
  Actually, in New York you pretty much have to try to be homeless. I'm not going to say that being hard-on-your-luck is a breeze in New York, but with things like City Harvest (a truly brilliant concept -- http://www.cityharvest.org/ http://www.cityharvest.org/), the anual coat drive, and the city's homeless outreach programs, it's certainly a lot better than many places. There was a good story a while back on "This American Life" that talked about this subject (http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/358/social-engineering?act=1 http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/358/s...). Additionally, you have Geoffrey Canada doing his thing up in Harlem...one of the true innovators in social reform. If you haven't heard of him, go read everything about him that you can now! Honestly, the biggest gap in the city is caring for the mentally disabled. A large portion of the city's homeless population are schizophrenics, and they will effectively never be able to be productive members of society. For them, the only solution is long term care, but the city's mental facilities are really horrible. Unfortunately, the public's views on mental illness are still stuck in the 1890s...
  - lucasjung 15y ago
    The major cities of the Pacific Northwest actually have at least one serious problem that stems from making the homeless lifestyle too easy: too many runaway teens. One of my sisters lives in Portland, and for several years she worked as a social worker for teenage girls. The network of shelters, kitchens, and other services for the homeless is so extensive there that a lot of teens choose to leave home and just live on the streets. It is (or was, at least) so pervasive that there was actually some name for the phenomenon (can't remember what it was, off the top of my head), and it was a major concern to the organizations my sister worked with. Part of the problem is that there are policies in place that made it extremely difficult for parents to find their kids and bring them home. These policies exist for good reasons (e.g. abused children who shouldn't be found and brought home), but they are so one-sided that kids can just choose to run away because they feel like it, and their parents have no recourse if the kids are in the city's shelter system.
LogoBids 15y ago
completely mis-titled headline. These people are living on $10/day (with help), but their permanent living expenses are not $10/day. I can eat, Drive (pay for gas) and entertain myself for $10/day. But I can not shower, keep warm and shelter myself within good standards for $10/day....new title?
- maximusprime 15y ago
  Or just get rid of these type of stories. Personally I don't think they're something that should be on HN. But then HN is not what it used to be. It's more of a "Reddit Lite" now sadly :/
dtf 15y ago
The Occupied lifestyle, says Mr. Knowles, is a lot cheaper than real life: "I might go home with more money than I had." So they're actually all just doing it for the money. I'd got the impression they were protesting about the mechanics of the world's financial markets, but actually they're just all just opportunistic capitalists looking for a quick buck. Thanks for clearing that one up, WSJ.

The Occupy Economy

56 points by lambtron 15y ago

meatsock 15y ago

lets hope it scales well!

fleitz 15y ago

They're onto something here, they should add dust and dubstep and charge people $300 for a ticket. edit: s/sand/dust/

tibbon 15y ago
Dust, not sand. :) Now if they only carried out their own trash...
- fleitz 15y ago
  moop, not trash :)
SkyMarshal 15y ago
Same thought occured to me. My first thought was it sounds like these people essentially set up Burning Man on Wall Street. I haven't been to the former, new to the Bay Area, but got real curious when it was held a few weeks ago and read up as much as I could about it. This article sounded very similar to the ones I read describing BM. Makes me wonder what cross section of OWS are also burners, especially among the OWS organizers. Is that where they learned how to pull off something like this massive temporary settlement?
- fleitz 15y ago
  I just took a stroll up to Occupy Vancouver and it very much reminded me of BM. Really thinking about grabbing my tent and setting up shop. Probably gonna go hang out there some more after a couple more items done on my burndown list. My office is two blocks from the protest so it will be fun. I don't know how many have actually been to burning man, but they seem to have the burning man mindset.
- da_dude4242 15y ago
  I think a big part of BM culture is bringing BM home with you. Building "local burns" and building local networks. I don't think this behavior is unique to BM though. Watching documentaries on hippies flooding California you see stands for free food, clothes, etc...

ddw 15y ago

Amazing how quickly the msm has flipped on OWS. This article contained information!

palish 15y ago
What's "msm"?
- AdamTReineke 15y ago
  Mainstream media.

rsanchez1 15y ago

They definitely save money on cleaning.

zmitri 15y ago

And yet she packed a make-up kit. For someone who is "protesting" corporate greed it seems contradictory to wear cosmetics from a protestor's perspective-- they have a gigantic profit margin. As a male, I'll never understand how cosmetics are so entrenched in the lives of females.

AndrewMoffat 15y ago
> As a male, I'll never understand how cosmetics are so entrenched in the lives of females. really? same reason people like nice clothes. looking "better" is a competitive advantage to help you get the "best" mate. makeup is a means to that end.
- zmitri 15y ago
  That's fair, but it's definitely not the most effective means. If a woman takes 5-10 minutes to apply make up each day, and if they decided to allocate that towards some other activity, the amount of time spent doing something more productive would add up very quickly. I personally find that it makes women less appealing as it's quite superficial, and a waste of time/money.
  - jonknee 15y ago
    This is why engineers aren't running fashion and beauty companies. It's not about efficiency. It may not make sense to you, but it very much does to a staggering number of people.
    - michaelchisari 15y ago
      And to tie it all in, this is why Steve Jobs was such a visionary, because he understood both engineering and aesthetics, function and form. A lot of people understand one or the other, it's the rare person who can empathize with the necessity of both.
      - zmitri 15y ago

runn1ng 15y ago

It's not entirely news that if you live with shared resources, costs per one person goes down. Unfortunately, as 20th century showed us, it doesn't scale well. At all.

johnny22 15y ago
i don't think it did. Stuff like airbnb, freecycle, craigslist, zipcar and other resource sharing was just not feasible at the time. I think you're overgeneralizing, but certainly more correct if one were to apply it only to something we really can't make more of... like land. Building giant skyscrapers probably works, but tend not to be as desirable for most people.
Raphael 15y ago
Communism is the answer!
- scq 15y ago
  If communism is the answer, you're asking the wrong question.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

willidiots 15y ago

"The whole operation runs on donations, of course." You're not really "living" on $10 / day if your necessities are donated and you're occupying a public space. The costs of supporting you are borne by the donators and the taxpayers, respectively. EDIT: Turns out the park is privately owned by Brookfield Properties, and was created by US Steel. An amazing spectacle, absolutely. Our generation's Woodstock, perhaps. But the title's misleading.

stdbrouw 15y ago
If you only spend $10 a day and manage to survive with that expenditure then you're living on $10 a day in a very straightforward sense of that word. As far as misleading headlines go, this one's rather mild :-)

peterwwillis 15y ago

First thing I thought: holy shit, if we did this kind of stuff for those living below the poverty line, they would have enough resources to pick themselves up and get new jobs (after showers, job interview supplies, counseling, etc etc). At the very least the 22% of American children living in poverty would have a meal and clean clothes. Second thought: if this was Orlando most of the donators would be arrested. Third thought: This is the perfect time to backpack up to New York and have a week-long vacation for super cheap. Swing a protest sign for long enough to get a free meal, then move on to sightseeing.

jballanc 15y ago
Actually, in New York you pretty much have to try to be homeless. I'm not going to say that being hard-on-your-luck is a breeze in New York, but with things like City Harvest (a truly brilliant concept -- http://www.cityharvest.org/ http://www.cityharvest.org/), the anual coat drive, and the city's homeless outreach programs, it's certainly a lot better than many places. There was a good story a while back on "This American Life" that talked about this subject (http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/358/social-engineering?act=1 http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/358/s...). Additionally, you have Geoffrey Canada doing his thing up in Harlem...one of the true innovators in social reform. If you haven't heard of him, go read everything about him that you can now! Honestly, the biggest gap in the city is caring for the mentally disabled. A large portion of the city's homeless population are schizophrenics, and they will effectively never be able to be productive members of society. For them, the only solution is long term care, but the city's mental facilities are really horrible. Unfortunately, the public's views on mental illness are still stuck in the 1890s...
- lucasjung 15y ago
  The major cities of the Pacific Northwest actually have at least one serious problem that stems from making the homeless lifestyle too easy: too many runaway teens. One of my sisters lives in Portland, and for several years she worked as a social worker for teenage girls. The network of shelters, kitchens, and other services for the homeless is so extensive there that a lot of teens choose to leave home and just live on the streets. It is (or was, at least) so pervasive that there was actually some name for the phenomenon (can't remember what it was, off the top of my head), and it was a major concern to the organizations my sister worked with. Part of the problem is that there are policies in place that made it extremely difficult for parents to find their kids and bring them home. These policies exist for good reasons (e.g. abused children who shouldn't be found and brought home), but they are so one-sided that kids can just choose to run away because they feel like it, and their parents have no recourse if the kids are in the city's shelter system.

LogoBids 15y ago

completely mis-titled headline. These people are living on $10/day (with help), but their permanent living expenses are not $10/day. I can eat, Drive (pay for gas) and entertain myself for $10/day. But I can not shower, keep warm and shelter myself within good standards for $10/day....new title?

maximusprime 15y ago
Or just get rid of these type of stories. Personally I don't think they're something that should be on HN. But then HN is not what it used to be. It's more of a "Reddit Lite" now sadly :/

dtf 15y ago

The Occupied lifestyle, says Mr. Knowles, is a lot cheaper than real life: "I might go home with more money than I had." So they're actually all just doing it for the money. I'd got the impression they were protesting about the mechanics of the world's financial markets, but actually they're just all just opportunistic capitalists looking for a quick buck. Thanks for clearing that one up, WSJ.