Liberty Park

This evening I dropped by lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park, which has been commandeered by the Occupy Wall Street protesters and rebranded Liberty Park. There I found a peaceful and spirited community hoisting slogan-bedecked pizza boxes, the air charged with optimism and patchouli. The enclave included a food line, a makeshift library, drum circles, protective tarps, and at least one humble soul weaving through the crowds picking up litter. Another went around making sure no one lacked warm and dry clothing. All manner of lively political discussion abounded within earshot, from the sensibly informed to the manically crackpot. Blue-shirted police casually stood on the periphery with what, despite recent mass arrests, seemed to be little interest in interfering.

While troubled by the movement's lack of coherent demands, I've heard a few opinions that give me food for thought, such as these insightful words from a user named Thoreau away Account which I found in the comments section of a recent Reddit post:

I can forgive the lack of a call for specific reform. People who "work on Wall Street" fill several different positions, and all justify their large salaries with the claim that their jobs require very specialized knowledge and skills. You cannot at one and the same time ask to be rewarded because your skills and education are so unique and also complain that said knowledge and skills are not common to every person you bump into. It is sidestepping the issue of their wrongdoing.

As an analogy, imagine that, during surgery, your doctor forgets a clamp and leaves it bobbing about in your abdomen after suturing you up. You recognize from your own feelings that something is wrong. An x-ray technician is able to point out that the nature of the problem is a metal foreign object, and to show you its blurry outline on the film.

The surgeon is the Wall Street guru: his or her skills are rare and delicate, but possessing those skills does not make him or her incapable of error. The x-ray technician? The attorneys general of every state in the union have been investigating actions taken by major banks and hedge fund managers that contributed to the housing crisis, on charges ranging from niggling technicalities to ethical violations to outright fraud; though even after their explanations we, people unfamiliar with finance, with law, and with the shady regions where the two overlap, can only see the dim outlines of the problem, we can still see the traces, and can place some trust in their ability to recognize specifics. As the patient, you do not need to be a doctor to see that something is in fact wrong and that something needs to be done to rectify it, even if you are not able to talk another surgeon, anesthesiologist, and nursing staff through the exact procedures needed to clear things up. You are right to demand action, and everyone would immediately see an attempt to dismiss your concerns "because you're not a doctor" as the smokescreen that it is.