The Secret To Playing Chicken

With the passing of the 15th of October comes the completion of the largest coordinated protests to-date as the Occupy Wall St. (#OWS) movement continues to spread.

There have been some unfortunate incidents, including the riots in Rome and the call by an Occupy LA spokesman for bloodshed and violence and the need to introduce socialism instead of capitalism.

There have been interesting comments from within the government ranks, with political leaders from municipal governments right up to the President, indicating support for the protestors.  What is interesting about this level of support is that many politicians originally were against the protest and now support it, even if they are on record for previously having supported the things that the protestors are fighting against.

There have been loud claims of police abuse and equally loud cries of denial.

But for the most part, the protests have been peaceful.

That being said, we have reached an important juncture with the OWS movement.

In their current implementation, with vague intentions that vary broadly from protests against corporate greed to calls for the US to admit that 9/11  was a home-grown conspiracy, continued protesting will probably not produce much in the way of hoped-for results.

After all, in their current state, they are not disrupting cities, economies or anything else in a significant way.  As they are right now, they may just become another event not considered worthy of reporting by the news media.  Perhaps they will fade from the media’s attention like the sad story of the people of Haiti who have still not recovered from the earthquake of 2010, a story that rarely gets a mention now.

Once “the big splash” of a news event has passed, the impact of the event has to be increased, either steadily or sharply, in order to keep the media’s attention.  If not, the media gets bored and moves on.

In addition, the protestors are not offering solutions for anything.  It is easy to complain but much more difficult to offer solutions.

As things stand right now, the entities that the protestors are protesting against can simply outwait them, waiting until the weather gets cold and miserable and the protestors just give up and go home.

Upping the Ante

So it’s clear that the protestors need to up the ante if they wish to continue driving their agenda and if they wish to keep the media engaged.  They in fact need the media to be engaged in order to be successful.  Without the media, their effort dies.

The media expects this and will only give them attention if they raise the stakes, thus encouraging them perhaps even beyond what they would do ordinarily.

Meanwhile, governments, with the backing of police (and potentially military support) will meet the protestors as they up the ante.

Corporations will probably stay quiet unless the government forces their hand.

So in this game of chicken, like all games, there will be winners and losers.

The secret to being victorious when playing chicken is knowing when to blink … or not.

It all comes down to how close to disaster each side is willing to go to win.

The interesting thing is this.

There are no innocent bystanders in this game of chicken.  We will all be affected by the game that is currently in play.

Hopefully the right people will blink early enough and the result will be something that will produce a positive future for everyone.

Because when people don’t blink early enough or choose not to blink at all, a lot of people get hurt.

And then no one wins at all.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Occupy Wall St.–Good Intention, Wrong Address

As a Wall St. guy for many years, I look at the current Occupy Wall St. movement with a mix of sadness and concern.

I am saddened by the fact that in the most enlightened country in the world where there is more than enough to go around, there is the need for such demonstrations.

As I have often mused, we don’t have a shortage of things in the western world.  We have a shortage of appropriate distribution of the things we have.

There’s a big difference, one not easily changed by yelling at the people who have those things.

But there is something I am concerned about beyond the need for demonstrations.  I am concerned about whom we are directing the demonstrations towards.

Most People Are Not Breaking Any Laws

Despite the existence of the Bernie Madoff’s in the world, most of the people working on Wall St. are not breaking any legal laws.

Yes, it is true that some of them may be guilty of breaches of appropriate moral or ethical behavior (depending on who defines the bar for such behavior).

However, most of them are doing what almost any human being would do.

Many human beings, including many who are protesting on Wall St., would leap at the chance to make obscene amounts of money if given the chance AND the opportunity were within the confines of legality.

So it’s not a question of people and corporations making too much money.

It’s more a case of “they are making the money and I am not”.

When we really examine the root causes of the perceived evil on Wall St., there is something else that is important to consider.

We Could Have Fixed This A Long Time Ago

Many of the things that Wall St. is doing now were being done by the same individuals before the massive bailouts that saved them.  We knew about it then and bailed them out anyway without demanding significant change in how the organizations executed.  It seemed that at best, the changes we asked for in corporate execution were more around managing public perception than controlling human greed.

The bailouts therefore didn’t correct a behavior but in fact rewarded one.  It sent a message that “what you are doing and how you are doing it is fine.  You just got a little unlucky and so we’ll help you.  Carry one with business as usual”.  So when I see a President who helped architect the bailouts now siding with people who are against the bailouts and big company in general, the word hypocrite sadly comes to mind, with all respect due the Office of the President.

Business, like nature, is self-correcting.  In the grand scheme of things, when a company executes poorly or immorally, it goes out of business and others learn from the mistakes.

However, when we bail out companies, we are condoning and reinforcing a behavior.  The notion of “we needed to do this to avoid a larger catastrophe” doesn’t fly with me.  The average American is struggling anyway and the threat of a larger catastrophe hangs over us despite the money invested in the bailouts.  The bailouts didn’t prevent the inevitable – it postponed them so that they could eventually manifest on an even larger scale later.

Meanwhile the corporate behavior of the bailed out companies continues larger and more aggressively than ever.

So Who Should We Be Protesting Against?

Think of this.

Some of the protestors are protesting corporate greed, some are protesting our involvement in wars, some are fighting for better living allowances, etc.  The ones fighting the very existence of corporations don’t get my sympathy when I see them using their iPhones and iPads to get the word out.  How would they get the word out if Apple, one of the most influential corporations in the world, ceased to exist or had never existed?

However, when it comes to corporate greed, the corporate greed was rewarded, condoned and reinforced by government bailouts.

Wars, whether rightly or wrongly, are a government concern.

Living wages, whether realistic or not, are a government issue.

And with that, I would conjecture that the right place to be having a demonstration is not on Wall St. but in front of the Capitol Building, the White House and equivalent buildings across America.

It’s like having a protest on the front lawn of a lottery winner because you think lotteries are immoral.  You’re barking up the wrong tree – you need to go to the people who authorize and control the lotteries in the first place.  After all, anyone offered millions of dollars would happily accept it.

Demonstrators – A Gift From Heaven

But moving the demonstrations won’t happen as long as the President and other leaders now side with the demonstrators, fueling and encouraging their misdirected anger.

After all, if I wanted to distract people from my contribution to a problem (with the bailouts and such) or my inability to solve the current problems in the country, demonstrations against a scapegoat such as Corporate America are a gift from heaven.

In fact, if I was the President right now, I’d be issuing a sigh of relief.

I believe the President does care about solving the country’s challenges.

But if the attention of the protestors can be redirected elsewhere, at least for the time being, that’s one less thing the President needs to worry about …. especially with an election on the horizon.

If you want real change in America, you need to get to the root causes of how we got here.

And that includes holding the right people accountable, even if that means moving your protest from Wall St. to Pennsylvania Avenue.

When the true parties responsible are not held accountable, our dream of solving the difficult problems we face today are just that … dreams.

Dreams that can turn into real nightmares if we don’t solve them quickly and appropriately.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

PS I was reading the Declaration of the Occupation of New York and saw some things in there that reinforce my concern.

Looking at a few items in the declaration (quotes in italics) with my comment following each.

“They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give executives exorbitant bonuses.”.

Why would you be angry with the company that accepted the bailouts and not be angry with the group that issued them?

“They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.”

This is more of a matter for governments and educational institutions to solve, not big corporations.

They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.

I admit that the press can be biased one way or the other but I am not aware that the military is preventing freedom of the press.

“They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.”

Uh … what corporations are murdering prisoners?  I missed that headline.

Now to be fair, there are some valid points in there as well.  But one needs to keep everything factual and focused, otherwise people will focus on the stuff that is not, thus discrediting the movement in its entirety and negating the opportunity to fix the stuff that needs to be fixed.

Occupy Wall Street–The Wrong Approach

I have been watching with some concern about the growing number of “Occupy __Insert Name Here___” organizations that have sprung up in recent days in the US, whether it’s “Occupy Wall Street” in my old stomping grounds, Occupy Chicago or any of the other groups.

I am not surprised that people are protesting.  With the growing gap between the haves and the have-nots in America, a lot of people are becoming angry at certain establishments, whether it be large corporations or governments.  They are also becoming afraid of their inability to provide long-term sustenance for themselves and their families.

What worries me is the lack of understanding of how we came to be in this mess and how we will get out of it.

It is true that a number of people in the upper echelons of organizations had greed as their primary motivator as they manipulated a system for their own advantage.  Some, like the Bernie Madoffs in the world, did make their wealth illegally. 

However, many play completely within the rules to build their wealth and so if you want to protest against someone, you need to protest against the people who make the rules and not against the ones who benefit from the rules. 

In addition, there are many wealthy people out there who earned their wealth.  They didn’t step back and wait for a hand-out.  Many put everything on the line to get what they have, all the while playing within the rules.

So people can’t protest based on some “moral” grounds.  Morals are as much open to interpretation today as someone describing to a blind person what the color blue looks like.  There are many protestors who, if handed a million dollars, would suddenly “understand” and would stop protesting.  It is an interesting side of human nature that very few who benefit from the rules have an issue with the rules.

The other concern I have is that there are no actual leaders of these protests.  There are no real stated intentions outside of protesting against “the man” for the reasons of fighting their greed or their alleged intentional oppression of certain classes.

There is no strategy outside of “let’s try to tear the whole system down and see what we can come up with”.

The problem with this lack of a coordinated plan is that it is very similar to the strategy currently in place by many government officials as we wrestle with the current economic crisis.

The current random strategies being deployed, whether it’s the latest flavor of quantitative easing that didn’t work, a hastily concocted round of spending cuts and tax increases that will magically create a bazillion jobs or something else all show that hurried execution without long term strategic planning and smart tactical execution produces a big, complicated mess.

Such a big complicated mess requires careful correction and not additional hasty, random measures, otherwise it produces a larger mess that will continue to grow until it’s too large to fix.

But economics, like nature, is self correcting.  It will eventually correct itself, whether by our hand or by natural evolution.  This correction, which I have often referred to as the Great Correction, will be the great equalizer and will sharply narrow the gap between the haves and the have-nots.  I wouldn’t be surprised if this occurs within the next 9-12 months, with a few worrisome warnings along the way.

So when I look at the “Occupy XYZ” groups springing up, I have one observation for them.

If you want to be the change you wish to see, then do it intelligently, strategically and tactically.

Otherwise your non-strategic, leaderless, random execution is no better than the system you are protesting against and is not going to produce much of any substance.

In fact, if you get too disruptive, you will probably draw the military in to establish law and order and by then, your claims regarding the lack of freedoms or excessive amounts of chaos in one of the greatest nations on earth will actually manifest.

The only difference is that you will have created it.

And by then, your opportunity to influence change will really be diminished.

So I respect the passion and intention of the Occupy Wall Street group.  Once the passion is focused strategically, tactically and collaboratively with an eye towards real solutions, only then are real solutions possible.

Otherwise, we slip deeper into the mess we are in.

And that doesn’t help anyone.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

PS - A Conspiracy Spin

For those that like a good conspiracy theory (and the Occupy Wall Street group probably has people who embrace conspiracy theories), think of this.  Mayor Bloomberg predicted a couple of weeks back that if we weren’t careful, we would start to have demonstrations and / or riots in the streets.

Did Mayor Bloomberg or a colleague:

a. Predict the current situation using his years of political and business experience?

b. Accidentally inspire someone to actually start the demonstrations?

c. Plant some organizers amongst the rioters in order to start the demonstrations, with intention to create trouble for some reason?  (See my blog “Reading the Fine Print” for one suggestion).

Only hindsight will tell us for sure. :-)

PPS – CNN Speaks to Protestors

This was an interesting bit on CNN.  Yes, I know the conspiracy people will say that the media is part of this …. but this is an interesting piece worth watching.