Occupy Wall Street
Title of Paper Discuss the moral and economic implications involved in the movement. The Occupy Wall Street Movement began September 17, 2011, in the Liberty Square of Zuccotti Park located in New York City. The protest is against corporations that take advantage of the economic poor and social inequalities, corruption, greed, and the excessive power of corporations on government over the democratic process.
The group Occupy Wall Street has spread globally to over 1500 cities, they are demonstrating against the destructive powers of major banks and multinational corporations. These powers have influenced the government to bail them out, then turn around and make multimillion dollar profits which has created an economic collapse. The protest is against the 1% group, which refers to banks, the mortgage industry, the insurance industry, which leaves the 99% that aren’t in the multimillion dollar profit groups we are the made of the everyday people, the little guy.
Occupy Wall Street protestors viewed the dominant rich as those who exploited their way to the top. OWS suggested that it was the taxpayers who had to bail the large companies out after they caused the collapse of the economy (Haidt, 2012). Analyze each of the implications identified above against the utilitarian, Kantian, and virtue ethics to determine which theory best applies to the movement. Support your position with examples and evidence. Utilitarian is the moral doctrine that we should always act to produce the greatest possible balance of good over bad for everyone affected by our actions.
The greatest happiness of all constitutes the standard that determines whether an action is right or wrong. Our belief that we are individuals and society is the net result of our choices. For example, the practice of blowing up rocks to release underground natural gas would not be permitted near residential areas if energy complaints did not make large campaign contributions (Cohan, 2011). Determine who is responsible for income inequality and wealth distribution in the U. S. in your analysis, make sure to include if this is something that happened suddenly or if it built up over time.
Explain you rationale. Suggest an equitable outcome from the movement that would be appropriate for our capitalistic society. It has been said that the OWS movement is a big hypocrisy. That it is a large number of Americans that are rich by the world’s standards that we are not satisfied being paid what we value our work is worth on the global market. That now we are complainers, unable to care for ourselves, since we no longer have our parent to cry to, so now we are groveling to government and the successful businesses (Erich, 2012).
Predict whether the movement will continue, fade away, or turn into something else. Provide a rationale with your response. Within the months since the movement began, they have lost their momentum and are drifting farther away. The movement has been driven off the streets by law enforcement; protestors are being arrested and evicted by the thousands, a very visible steep decline. This has left OWS without any operations in many cities and forced the thousands of protestors to defend themselves in courts, which in turn has kept many from returning to the streets.
OWS does not have the leadership structure which makes it difficult to interact in conventional political organizing to support their legislators and Congress like the Tea Party. Most of the activists are upset with politicians; they do not see the electoral politics as the best direction for OWS, therefore complicating matters for the movement’s efforts even more (Haidt, 2012) .
References
- Haidt, J. (2012, April 10). The moral foundations of occupy wall street. Retrieved from http://reason. com/archives/2011/10/20/the-moral-foundations-of-occup Stolarik, R. 2012, September 17).
- Occupy movement (occupy wall street). Retrieved Nov. 3, 2012 http://topics. nytimes. com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/o/occupy_wa ll_street/index. html Erich, R. (2012, May 09).
- The occupy wall street movement: How they could do it the right way. Retrieved November 3, 2012 http://roberterich. hubpages. com/hub/The-Occupy-Wall-Street-Movement-How-They-Could-Do-It-the-Right-Way Cohan, P. (2011, October 10).
- What is occupy wall street?. Retrieved from www. forbes. com/sites/petecohan/2011/10/10/what-is-occupy-wall-street-print
