Occupy Movement

    The Occupy movement that is sweeping across the nation has electrified the populace behind a common cause. The primary impetus for this movement is income inequality. The most prominent fact that is used in the protests is that the top 1% of the United States population controls over 20% of the wealth. In order to emphasize this fact, protesters use the gathering phrase “We are the 99%”. It makes sense that there has been an uprising in response to this inequality. However, instead of just a difference of income, I think that the main problem that gave rise to this nationwide response is the inequality of the governments dealings between big and small businesses. One of the greatest forces of capitalism is the competition it provides between businesses for customers and profit. Wealth is not bad in and of itself. However, The bailouts of the big banks after their unintelligent and unethical practices lead them to the brink of collapse served as a precedent for other big businesses. Though a smaller business wouldn’t get such preferential treatment and would have failed, the big banks did not and were likely to maintain that position of protection.
    This blatant difference in the way the United States government treats different levels of businesses is troubling and doesn’t bode well for the economy. It decreases the real competition that can exist in a capitalistic society. Even if the smaller business produces a better product, there is still a good chance that their advantage will be diminished by government provided financial support. This type of bailout system promotes unintelligent decision making in big business because it means that they can get more funding, at the expense of tax money that could be sent to other causes to better society.
    Though I agree that the government should not show preferential treatment, the occupy movement needs more leadership to be truly productive or meaningful. Currently, there are not any commonly accepted goals for the movement. There are organizers but no leaders. Without official direction, a large group of people is more likely to become uncontrollable. Even if the majority of the members have a commonly held purpose and support peaceful demonstration, a small number of angry, aggressive or opportunistic individuals can influence the group and, by mob mentality, cast an entire demonstration into violence and chaos. Also, there is no way to tell, conclusively, when the goals of the demonstrations have been achieved without a defined purpose behind the movement. If the participants in the Occupy Movement has the potential of bringing a large amount of beneficial change, but that is dependent on how they proceed from here.