Occupy Richmond held a rally and march of one hundred on Saturday to show solidarity with the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The marchers were well-behaved, with everyone toting a trash bag to "clean-up the streets" as they went. In addition to being a good metaphor for cleaning up the politics in Washington, the road clean-up defuses (a wee bit) the complaint that Occupiers have been takers of city services without giving anything back.
While Occupiers might deny it, I found a lot of similar ideas to those from the Tea Party—namely, that government has been corrupted by powerful interests, that subsidies should stop, that there should be an even economic playing field. Here's one chant that Tea Partiers might not object to:
Leader sings: Banks got bailed out!
Chorus sings: We got sold out!
Leader sings: Banks got bailed out!
Chorus sings: We got sold out!
Some signs displayed sentiments Tea Partiers might agree with: "My Grandkids Deserve a Future," "Business and State Must Separate," "Few have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.—George Washington".
The march was as much an educational "walk-a-thon" as it was a protest. The group stopped at city landmarks and a speaker discussed an issue. In front of the beautifully restored Carpenter Center for the Performing Arts a speaker noted that a special city tax had been used to raise money for the arts, but that city school budgets for the arts were shrinking so that tens of millions in tax money could be spent on "highbrow" operas and symphonies. In other words, tax monies were subsidizing the entertainment of those wealthy enough to pay the steep ticket prices at the Carpenter Center. (I confess to being a one-percenter who got in to hear Joan Baez at that venue several weeks ago. The acoustics were great—thank you, taxpayers!)
In front of the Bank of America building downtown a Virginia Commonwealth University undergraduate business student gave a concise history of banking since the Great Depression. He noted the moral hazards created by deregulation after the 1980s. A bank guard tried to shoo us away to no avail.
In front the new U.S. District Court, protestors noted a symptom of severe dysfunction in society: the U.S. has the world's highest incarceration rates. It has 25% of the world's incarceration with only 5% of the population. The state of Virginia spends over $30,000 per year per inmate.
In front of the statehouse (picture inset), protestors decried cuts to human capital development while special subsidies were given to friends of the government.
So, to summarize, Richmond Occupiers support human rights as exemplified by the U.S. Constitution; they do not like government subsidies to banks; they are concerned about politicians being corrupted; they care about costs and benefits of government incarceration compared to costs and benefits of human capital formation; and they favor stronger controls on financial markets to reduce moral hazards. As far as I can tell, these are all eminently sensible concerns.
And at least on this level, I would find these ideas compatible with ideas expressed by Adam Smith. Occupiers (at least the ones encountered here) were concerned with establishing fair rules by which the economic game is played.
Remember, Smith's sentiments lay not with the wealthy, but with the working poor. Smith wrote "But the rate of profit does not, like rent and wages, rise with the prosperity, and fall with the declension of the society. On the contrary, it is naturally low in rich, and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin" (The Wealth of Nations, Liberty Fund edition, 162).
Smith did not envision a capitalist system whose purpose was to make profits, rather he envisioned a system that could lift people out of poverty. When capitalism works best the rate of "economic" profit falls to zero – meaning that competition forces market prices down to the opportunity cost of resources – there are no excess profits. Of course, this is the opposite of what every business wants, so there is an inherent clash between the interests of particular businesses and those of the economic system at large. For this reason I cannot imagine Adam Smith thinking it desirable to give corporations the right of personhood, so that business profits could be used to ply the political system and alter the very rules of the game!
Smith definitely did not trust financial markets to self-police themselves, and he worried about those at the bottom suffering as a consequence of financial failures. Simple rules (like Glass-Steagall, which prohibited depository banks from speculating on the stock market) act as firewalls and would seem to be sensible. While there are many who tag on to Occupy Richmond who I am sure I would disagree with, the peaceful protestors cleaning the streets yesterday offered a lot of common sense.
"Remember, Smith's sentiments lay not with the wealthy, but with the working poor. " Indeed! I believe he went as far as to point out that the interests of the landlord are at the antipathy of everyone else in society.
Posted by: Kyle Pate | December 15, 2011 at 02:42 PM