Charles Martineau

I always won­dered what would Karl Pop­per say about the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) move­ment. Well that being said, the move­ment is almost dead now but there will be another move­ment sim­i­lar in the future. OWS has led me to think on var­i­ous occa­sions on whether or not this movement’s objec­tives are in line with Popper’s open soci­ety. Can we define the OWS as a move­ment in response to the cur­rent lack of “open­ness” and fair­ness in soci­ety (I will focus primely on the United States)? On my many grounds, we can def­i­nitely say so. On the other hand, this move­ment may also ask for future trou­ble. Trou­bles that may sup­press their free­dom if it gen­er­ates into a social class war. For the moment being, let’s focus on the fun­da­men­tal mes­sages the OWS move­ment. From watch­ing sev­eral inter­net videos and tele­vi­sion broad­casts, the recur­rent  themes are: the top one per cent of earn­ers are improv­ing their incomes at the expense of the remain­ing 99 per cent, with many mid­dle– and low-income earn­ers left behind; mov­ing the power from the states to peo­ple; jail cor­po­rate crim­i­nals; cap­i­tal­ism “got to go”; more eco­nomic and social free­dom; protest­ing against greed; end polit­i­cal dona­tions from cor­po­ra­tions; tax richer more to have more money for higher edu­ca­tions; eco­nomic jus­tice; greater bank regulations

. In other words, what the pro­tes­tors want is sim­ple: greater eco­nomic and social fair­ness and equal­ity. Pop­per would sup­port the OWS since this is a move­ment that can only take place in an open and demo­c­ra­tic soci­ety where the peo­ple can critic and protest in peace with­out any recourse of vio­lence. How­ever, OSW fun­da­men­tal mes­sages vague­ness is a major weak­ness to the move­ment. Fair­ness should be the pri­mary aim for the pro­tes­tors and not equal­ity Pop­per would say. Fair­ness is what allows the con­tin­uum of an open soci­ety whereas equal­ity sim­ply calls for the abo­li­tion of free­dom. What fol­lows is to under­stand why the OWS move­ment claim of greater fair­ness in the pol­i­tics and eco­nom­ics is the direct result of a down­ward trend of “open­ness” in the U.S. Next, with the help of the econ­o­mist Friedrich Von Hayek, one of Popper’s accom­plice, we will then look at why the cur­rent move­ment might lead to the oppo­site expec­ta­tion: the abo­li­tion of freedom.

Popper’s Inter­pre­ta­tion of Occupy Wall Street

“I want true democ­racy, for the 99% of us that don’t have any” A Occupy Wall Street Protestor

For always the United States has sold the idea that the coun­try stand on the top of the podium when it comes to democ­racy and open soci­ety. Has the U.S. about to fall down the podium? Many will claim so. If we take a close look at the some the asser­tion of the OWS move­ment, we have the impres­sion that the U.S. polit­i­cal sys­tem is either heav­ily cor­rupted or that it is sim­ply feel unde­mo­c­ra­tic for the U.S. cit­i­zen. Why is this the case? Karl Poppers’s notion of the open soci­ety will help us high­light some of the cur­rent weak­nesses in the U.S. polit­i­cal and demo­c­ra­tic sys­tem. The finan­cial cri­sis of 2008 sent a sig­nal to the U.S. pop­u­la­tion that the coun­try may be run by a social elite group: bankers. As said by Nas­sim Taleb in a recent inter­view on Bloomberg: “we still live in envi­ron­ment that is one man one vote but even­tu­ally banks has fewer votes”

. The bank bailout dur­ing the cri­sis by tax­pay­ers felt like finan­cial cor­po­ra­tions have car­ried a coup d’état. Con­se­quently, this elite group run­ning the coun­try are bankers. Karl Pop­per would def­i­nitely pro­claim that the cur­rent polit­i­cal sys­tem starts to be more and more sim­i­lar to a Pla­tonic state. Plato advo­cated for a gov­ern­ment / polit­i­cal sys­tem not elected by its cit­i­zen with the rul­ing class’ inter­est rul­ing the state. Many feel that despite vot­ing for a gov­ern­ment to rep­re­sent their inter­ests, the coun­try is indi­rectly gov­erned by bankers. For instance, the gov­ern­ment is often referred to “Gov­ern­ment Sachs” — ampli­fy­ing the rela­tion­ship that Gold­man Sachs has with Wall Street

. In the past years  there have been more and more banker from Wall Street land­ing a posi­tion in the Trea­sury depart­ment in Wash­ing­ton. When bankers received a bailout, they def­i­nitely act as an elite rep­re­sent­ing their inter­est in the first place when they pay them­selves bonuses. One issue that can be rise from this state of affair in U.S. pol­i­tics is that the cur­rent Pla­tonic elite wish to abol­ish in any form of change (In Plato’s blue­print of the per­fect soci­ety, change should be abol­ish since it is the greater evil to peace). In fact, U.S. cit­i­zen has seen lit­tle change in the U.S. con­cern­ing bankers. Banks were once bailed out by tax­pay­ers in the sav­ing and loans cri­sis in the early 1980s. The soci­ety was near to another bank­ing cri­sis in the 1998 when Long-Term Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment was saved by the pri­vate sec­tor. Lit­tle seem to have change since then. The pop­u­la­tion always feel at the mercy of Wall Street Bankers. Bankers have achieved an “unfal­si­fi­able” busi­ness envi­ron­ment. Despite being wrong on their cur­rent prac­tices (e.g. com­pen­sa­tion, risk tak­ing, etc.), they have an author­ity over cap­i­tal­ism. The cap­i­tal­ism sys­tem works under the con­cept of the sur­vival of the fittest. This is one of the pri­mary rea­son why the OWS move­ment is protest­ing. It falls in line with Popper’s belief of the open soci­ety and falsification.

It is now impor­tant to ques­tion what would a piece­meal engi­neer do when face with such anger towards bankers. With­out hav­ing any opti­mal plan for a per­fect bank­ing sys­tem, small but impor­tant change can be brought by the piece­meal engi­neer. First, imple­ment one of the fun­da­men­tal rules of cap­i­tal­ism: upside and the down­side of risk. Bankers com­pen­sa­tion must be based not only on the upside but the down­side. Bankers cur­rent asym­met­ric nature of the bonuses and com­pen­sa­tion cre­ates only an incen­tive for suc­cess and risk-taking with­out a cor­re­spond­ing dis­in­cen­tive for fail­ure says Taleb (2011). The down­side for bankers is that if the bank falls apart, they must must also fail with the bank. Or sim­ply abol­ish bonuses. Extreme risk tak­ing shall be reduced. Make bank­ing bland again and bonus and bailouts should never mix. These small steps will assure not per­fec­tion in the bank­ing indus­try but at least pro­vide a response to a sys­tem that was fal­si­fied more than once with­out under­tak­ing any reforms of a complexity.

Is Occupy Wall Street Beg­ging for Authority?

As pre­vi­ously stated, Pop­per would sup­port the OSW ini­tia­tives con­cern­ing their dis­con­tent with the ties between politi­cians and big financiers. Despite the fact that the OWS move­ment was born on this par­tic­u­lar issue, Pop­per (and oth­ers such as pro­claimed by Nas­sim Taleb on Bloomberg (2011)) would fear a class strug­gle war­fare. This could be the result of the OWS hav­ing such a vague objec­tive. As pre­vi­ously shown before, the pro­tes­tors’ mes­sages vary from abol­ish­ing cap­i­tal­ism to an equal eco­nomic sys­tem to return to the roots of democ­racy. First and fore­most, Pop­per fears peo­ple those who wish to have an eco­nomic sys­tem based on equal­ity (e.g. cen­tral plan­ning). Bring­ing to power a group of politi­cians to restore greater equal­ity among classes can only occur when free­dom has been abol­ished. Is the OWS beg­ging for author­ity? Yes and no.  As one of Popper’s accom­plice, Friedrich Von Hayek once said in the Con­sti­tu­tion of Lib­erty (1960) “From the fact that peo­ple are very dif­fer­ent it fol­lows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequal­ity in their actual posi­tion, and that the only way to place them in an equal posi­tion would be to treat them dif­fer­ently. Equal­ity before the law and mate­r­ial equal­ity are there­fore not only dif­fer­ent but are in con­flict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time” (p.150). The OSW mes­sage may be too vague, some would say, which makes the move­ment irrefutable. Irrefutable in the sense that they can’t be proven wrong, hence that they hold the truth. As much as politi­cians and bankers do not hold the truth so does the vox pop­uli vox dei, “which attrib­utes to the voice of the peo­ple a kind of final author­ity and unlim­ited wis­dom” (Pop­per, 1963, p.467). Pop­pers does not neglect the idea that in any pub­lic opin­ion there is a ker­nel of truth. Many sim­ple men are ofter wiser than their gov­ern­ments but there is a lot of dan­ger in pub­lic opin­ions warns Pop­per in Con­jec­tures and Refu­ta­tions. Pub­lic opin­ions is an irre­spon­si­ble form of power. Pub­lic opin­ion can impose direct pres­sure on an individual’s behav­ior and develop a doc­trine of the author­ity and unique­ness of the pop­u­lar will. There is a lot of irra­tional grasp of truth in social move­ments (like OWS) which can cumu­lates in a Hegelian doc­trine says Pop­per (1963) where peo­ple can­not be proven wrong espe­cially if they fol­low their pas­sion rather than their log­i­cal rea­son. Pop­per would sug­gest that the OWS opin­ions and mes­sages, to have a ben­e­fi­cial influ­ence, will be greater if the group is hon­est (not ask­ing for author­ity) and have a sim­ple and clear mes­sage which is not the case now.