Occupy Wall Street Movement - Coursework Example

ANALYSIS OF THE OCCUPY WALL STREET MOVEMENT In September 17, Liberty Square in Manhattan’s Financial District saw an uprising, inspired by the movements that rose in Egypt and Tunisia. The movement was entitled “Occupy Wall Street” and aimed at fighting against the dominant richest of nearly one percent that drives the world their way even at the cost of future of millions of people across the board (Binh, 2012). The movement also intended to seriously question role of multinationals, corporate and banks in specific that have played significant role in causing the recession. (Occupy Wall Street, n.d.). The Occupy Wall Street movement spread across the 100 cities in the United States as well as 1500 cities globally (Occupy Wall Street, n.d.). The Occupy Wall Street movement that started with inspiration to the Tunisian and Egyptian people had more or less similar implication on social and economic fronts. Shock of Lehman Brothers, followed by recession bringing the bubble burst of economic boom, had leveraged wide social and economic implications. Recession and inability of the business to sustain the shock of recession also shook the confidence of people on the economy and millions of people were victimized in terms of job losses. More severe impact felt as the victims of job losses not only included the labor class but also large number of managerial posts were eliminated from hierarchies. The research accounted that two third of those involved in raising the voice against the whole scenario, were ones that had professional jobs and average annual income of around $100,000. Further, students that had incurred student loan in anticipation of the gaining the jobs upon graduations also strongly participated in the overall protest and movement. Apart from these economical implications, there were also social implications that convinced people to join the movement. The social implications included greed, rising inequality, increasing burden on the tax payer for contribution of bailout packages and deprived of public spending etc. Moreover, questioning the businesses gurus and leading corporation and specifically banks for misleading practices that ended world economic disaster; formed the social and economical implications that ended up as movement. The single motive behind the movement of Wall Street was to force businesses and to balance the power across the board. Ethical assessment of the movement gains significant support from each of the ethical theories. It is generally assumed that that any movement which is against the corruption and incremental exploitations is supported by all ethical theories. However, it is important to consider that at the same time each theory has some consequences associated. For instance, since utilitarian theory requires results to be best in number whereas the occupying Wall street movement could not manage any such enforcement on the presidential election campaign or also could not influence the policy making; therefore, movement does not fit to the result oriented yardstick of theory. Kantianism, on the other hand, supports the rules based mechanism than emotional connections. The occupying Wall Street Movement was raised and joined by individuals as the people in other country have stood against the injustice. However, this rationality does not suit to the need as it was against corruption and greed that increased the inequality in the society. Therefore, following the theory rules in case if everyone withdraws from the movement for any other reason that movement claimed than the Kantianism would require closing of the movement even when the objective is yet not achieved. Hence, leaving the movement without successfully gaining the objective is thereby not justified. Finally, the Virtue theory justifies the movement as a matter of character. For instance, supporting the movement, in order to force the business to maintain honesty, integrity and other such traits as a matter of characters, is ethically sound. However, virtue is a matter of judgment and therefore is critical. Virtue ethics varies from participant to participant and even single participant may require varying virtue characteristics over a period of time. Hence, it can be claimed that virtue ethics support the movement as the movement requires character building and is not dependent on other factors but at the same time the level of virtue is again a dilemma. Therefore, though every theory provides ethical support however none can be given best credits. The movement erupted against the rising inequality in the US. It can be confidently claimed that rising inequality in US has been resulted from the support of all including those who enjoyed the benefit of it as well as even those who have been victimized. The rationale for this notion remains in fact that corporate people enjoyed the benefit such as incremental annual salary with approval from all investors in Annual General Meeting. Similarly, those professional that have been participating in the movement had been earlier supporting the culture of exploiting either as finance professional or operations management that favored increased automations and cost savings and so on for every department. Even the labors that agreed to work in the in-human working conditions are responsible for such exploitation. Hence, blaming only those that enjoyed the fruits is unjustifiable. To resolve the whole issue, it is mandatory to set some rules in order to gain the benefit that is mutually agreeable for the business and society on the whole. For instance, more stringent rules and code of conduct are required to be set on the part of government. Audit of the firms’ financials are being paid heavily by business and so audit firms shall also be fined in case business is caught to be involved in such maligning activities. In addition, cross border outsourcing that takes off job from local countries shall be limited to particular extend. Hence, standards that ultimately affects the business in monetary terms are to be set as litmus test in order to curtail the growing greed and exploitation from businesses. Movements like OWS have all capacities to get the goals achieved, as other similar movements in some cases did. However this requires that the movement is well planned and led by goal oriented people. The movement of OWS, despite celebrated its anniversary recently, seems to fail. The failure of the movement has been defined as the gathering of the sleeping people around the goal whereas a successful movement requires wake up people and then setting actions. Watson (2012) claimed that OWS had three outcomes to be noted in history, with two to be in favor of the movement whereas one had significant negative impact on the movement. Watson (2012), for the two beneficial outcome, claimed it to be brand of 99% as it represented the view of almost 99% of the population as compared to one percent that are ruling and directing the world economy. The other beneficial aspect remained that movement was using the constitutional right of free speech and assembly. The third lesson from the movement that affected negatively was fact that it could not define the tangible requirement such as establishing any fund for the recession hit people to revive economic lives etc. Hence, though OWS is still being supported by some people, it may only leave mark in the history as being one among the movements that led world change but does not appear to sustain as single change driving movement. References Binh, P. (2012). Analysis | Year One of Occupy Wall Street: ‘If this is failure, we need more of it.’. Cease Fire Magazine, Retrieved May 1, 2013 from http://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/year-occupy-wall-street/ Occupy Wall Street. (n.d.). About. Retrieved May 1, 2013 from http://occupywallst.org/about/ Watson, T. (2012). Occupy Wall Streets Year: Three Outcomes for the History Books. Forbes, Retrieved May 1, 2013 from http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomwatson/2012/09/17/occupy-wall-streets-year/ Read More