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I feel like the traders on Wall Street would be the first people to want an economic bounce back. Hence your failure to understand OWS. Wall Street's job is to

by jamieb 15y ago

I feel like the traders on Wall Street would be the first people to want an economic bounce back. Hence your failure to understand OWS. Wall Street's job is to make money. Period. If it happens that it is effective to make money by repeatedly crashing and booming the stock market, then that is exactly what they will do. Well, it turns out that it is extremely effective to make money by repeatedly crashing and booming the stock market. If it happens that it is legal to pay government officials to pass laws covering your losses, and if it can be done for a reasonable cost, then they will do that too. Well, it turns out that yes, this can be done for a very reasonable cost! I find it amazing that any person on HN - HACKER news - is unable to imagine of hundreds of different ways to hack the government-economic system for fun and profit, or once having imagined them, to imagine that people with the necessary money would then not do so. Our economy has been rooted.

mappu 15y ago
I find the most interesting part of this 'hack' is how it's next to impossible to pull off a successful protest in civilised society: The greatest trick the upper echelon have pulled, is convincing the masses that using violence to achieve your ends is uncivilised. As a non-US-er, we sometimes look down on the US for having a gun obsession, but there's no way anything OWS does would escalate to the point of seriously grabbing everyone's attention like, say, building an army, storming a building and forcibly arresting a CEO. They say OWS is inspired by the Arab Spring[1][2], but that would be a pretty tame example compared to the revolutions in Egypt and Libya. The people in OWS are upset, but not desperate, and I'm not sure this can lead to any sort of radical change unless the 1% agree voluntarily, which is obviously unlikely. It's very hard to think of a non-violent way to actually incite some change. "The USA should invade the USA and win the hearts and minds of the population by building roads, bridges and putting locals to work." - Paul Myers As a postscript, the amount of copycat protests are also slightly embarrassing. It's great to show solidarity, but for instance I don't think there needs to be one for my town. It's just awkward and trivialises the situation, since our economic problems are negligible compared to the US. ________ 1. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Arab_Spring https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Arab_Spring 2. http://occupywallst.org/about/ http://occupywallst.org/about/
- JoshTriplett 15y ago
  That sounds like a good way for the people calling themselves the "99%" to lose what little support they might have from the 98.999%.
- antihero 15y ago
  "The greatest trick the upper echelon have pulled, is convincing the masses that using violence to achieve your ends is uncivilised." Bam. I amazes me that when 500,000 people marched in London on the 26th of March, people were dumb enough to ignore the messages being sent, and instead focus on some superficial property damage.
  - forensic 15y ago
    Next time, the 500,000 should forcibly take over the media outlets ala V for Vendetta.
mseebach 15y ago
> If it happens that it is effective to make money by repeatedly crashing and booming the stock market, then that is exactly what they will do. The two crashes of the past decade were painful exactly because "they" expressly failed to make money. They caused a lot of pain to a lot of 1%ers. If you think the financial sector likes, and purposefully causes, crashes, well, you're wrong. > Our economy has been rooted. Thing is, the box was left with numerous unpatched known vulnerabilities for the better part of half a century. Whenever it got sluggish, the sys admins eagerly added memory and processors, not bothering to consider what might be wrong. And when the box finally collapsed the sysadmins are more than happy that all the anger is directed at the hackers.
- jamieb 15y ago
  Whenever it got sluggish, the sys admins eagerly added memory and processors, not bothering to consider what might be wrong. And when the box finally collapsed the sysadmins are more than happy that all the anger is directed at the hackers. This would be a reasonable analogy if the hackers (bankers) hadn't spent the last decade paying the sysadmins (congress) to remove the safeties and add vulnerabilities. Indeed you say this as if in the computer world, the idea of hackers just paying a sysadmin for access would be unimaginable. Certainly it appears that you haven't thought of it.
  - mseebach 15y ago
    And of course the analogy is flawed, as analogies tend to be. Yes, what has happened essentially amounts to corruption. How do you usually approach corruption, by going after the corrupted officials or the people paying the bribes? Both, especially at this scale, but no-one expects corruption to go away while there are corruptible officials. > Certainly it appears that you haven't thought of it. It might appear so, but appearances can be deceptive. By all means, lets have a debate based on what the other side appears to think.
    - jamieb 15y ago
      I stated explicitly that the bankers had bribed the politicians. You responded with a statement that the bankers did not do so, and that in fact the politicians had caused the damage, and then blamed the bankers. A direct contradiction of my assertion. You are now claiming that "of course the analogy is flawed". No sir. The analogy was effective. It was the logical conclusion that you made using the analogy that was wrong, and you now admit so. I stand by my analogy. Our economic system has been rooted. How to fix it? How can we do that, when the people writing the laws are the ones who would be jailed by them?
bdunbar 15y ago
Well, it turns out that it is extremely effective to make money by repeatedly crashing and booming the stock market. I am not an economist[1]. Boom and bust cycles - I have read - happen as a natural result of millions of people making informed choices in their own self interest. Simplistically: Cost of X perks up a bit. People buy in, seeing a trend. Price perks up a bit more. And so on. Rational actors see a bubble - X is valued now way above what it is actually worth. These guys are also paid to make money for their investors - fail to get in the market for X and you'll simply be fired and replaced with a guy who will. Multiply that by millions and you get booms and busts. How does one cause a boom and bust cycle, absent a grand cabal of Rich Guys and their cronies? How would _they_ do it? [1] Would it be lame to say IANAE or has that kind of thing cycled back to cool, yet?

by jamieb 15y ago

mappu 15y ago

I find the most interesting part of this 'hack' is how it's next to impossible to pull off a successful protest in civilised society: The greatest trick the upper echelon have pulled, is convincing the masses that using violence to achieve your ends is uncivilised. As a non-US-er, we sometimes look down on the US for having a gun obsession, but there's no way anything OWS does would escalate to the point of seriously grabbing everyone's attention like, say, building an army, storming a building and forcibly arresting a CEO. They say OWS is inspired by the Arab Spring[1][2], but that would be a pretty tame example compared to the revolutions in Egypt and Libya. The people in OWS are upset, but not desperate, and I'm not sure this can lead to any sort of radical change unless the 1% agree voluntarily, which is obviously unlikely. It's very hard to think of a non-violent way to actually incite some change. "The USA should invade the USA and win the hearts and minds of the population by building roads, bridges and putting locals to work." - Paul Myers As a postscript, the amount of copycat protests are also slightly embarrassing. It's great to show solidarity, but for instance I don't think there needs to be one for my town. It's just awkward and trivialises the situation, since our economic problems are negligible compared to the US. ________ 1. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Arab_Spring https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Arab_Spring 2. http://occupywallst.org/about/ http://occupywallst.org/about/

JoshTriplett 15y ago
That sounds like a good way for the people calling themselves the "99%" to lose what little support they might have from the 98.999%.
antihero 15y ago
"The greatest trick the upper echelon have pulled, is convincing the masses that using violence to achieve your ends is uncivilised." Bam. I amazes me that when 500,000 people marched in London on the 26th of March, people were dumb enough to ignore the messages being sent, and instead focus on some superficial property damage.
- forensic 15y ago
  Next time, the 500,000 should forcibly take over the media outlets ala V for Vendetta.

mseebach 15y ago

> If it happens that it is effective to make money by repeatedly crashing and booming the stock market, then that is exactly what they will do. The two crashes of the past decade were painful exactly because "they" expressly failed to make money. They caused a lot of pain to a lot of 1%ers. If you think the financial sector likes, and purposefully causes, crashes, well, you're wrong. > Our economy has been rooted. Thing is, the box was left with numerous unpatched known vulnerabilities for the better part of half a century. Whenever it got sluggish, the sys admins eagerly added memory and processors, not bothering to consider what might be wrong. And when the box finally collapsed the sysadmins are more than happy that all the anger is directed at the hackers.

jamieb 15y ago
Whenever it got sluggish, the sys admins eagerly added memory and processors, not bothering to consider what might be wrong. And when the box finally collapsed the sysadmins are more than happy that all the anger is directed at the hackers. This would be a reasonable analogy if the hackers (bankers) hadn't spent the last decade paying the sysadmins (congress) to remove the safeties and add vulnerabilities. Indeed you say this as if in the computer world, the idea of hackers just paying a sysadmin for access would be unimaginable. Certainly it appears that you haven't thought of it.
- mseebach 15y ago
  And of course the analogy is flawed, as analogies tend to be. Yes, what has happened essentially amounts to corruption. How do you usually approach corruption, by going after the corrupted officials or the people paying the bribes? Both, especially at this scale, but no-one expects corruption to go away while there are corruptible officials. > Certainly it appears that you haven't thought of it. It might appear so, but appearances can be deceptive. By all means, lets have a debate based on what the other side appears to think.
  - jamieb 15y ago
    I stated explicitly that the bankers had bribed the politicians. You responded with a statement that the bankers did not do so, and that in fact the politicians had caused the damage, and then blamed the bankers. A direct contradiction of my assertion. You are now claiming that "of course the analogy is flawed". No sir. The analogy was effective. It was the logical conclusion that you made using the analogy that was wrong, and you now admit so. I stand by my analogy. Our economic system has been rooted. How to fix it? How can we do that, when the people writing the laws are the ones who would be jailed by them?

bdunbar 15y ago

Well, it turns out that it is extremely effective to make money by repeatedly crashing and booming the stock market. I am not an economist[1]. Boom and bust cycles - I have read - happen as a natural result of millions of people making informed choices in their own self interest. Simplistically: Cost of X perks up a bit. People buy in, seeing a trend. Price perks up a bit more. And so on. Rational actors see a bubble - X is valued now way above what it is actually worth. These guys are also paid to make money for their investors - fail to get in the market for X and you'll simply be fired and replaced with a guy who will. Multiply that by millions and you get booms and busts. How does one cause a boom and bust cycle, absent a grand cabal of Rich Guys and their cronies? How would _they_ do it? [1] Would it be lame to say IANAE or has that kind of thing cycled back to cool, yet?