Logical Fallacies and Occupy Wall Street

You've seen the picture: Protesters of Occupy Wall Street, with call-outs to each mass-produced (corporation) item they are carrying: Their cell-phones, their cameras, their music devices, their clothing, etc. The obvious point is that the protesters are somehow hypocrites for protesting the institutions that have produced so much that they carry and use.

The more insidious point is that it is somehow wrong to criticize anything that has any beneficial aspects. Ironically, however, adopting that point of view is just has destructive: If we must be silent about anything that has a benefit, no matter how egregious the violations committed on its behalf, we have lost our ability to challenge anything in our society, lost our ability to move society forward.

True, the creation of the corporation has allowed for the allocation of money to advance our manufacturing of the items that bring greater leisure, greater connectivity, and greater productivity to our society. But that's not what Occupy Wall Street is about. They are protesting the outsized influence corporations have on our political lives, and the resulting outsized influence they have on our daily lives; by their ability to constrain the uses to which we put our money (preventing taxation to support beneficial government services), our ideas (through the support of strong forms of patent and copyright law), and our land and water (through pollution).

Corporations have also become anti-democratic forces - rigid hierarchies that exploit many to move money to the few in outsized compensation for their 'work'. As such, there is a strong tension between those who view autonomy and participation as a right (democracy) versus those who believe that submission to the will of the 'elite' is not only better, but proper (oligarchy).

So, the protesters' position is that there are aspects of corporations that don't fit with our conception of freedom and equality, and that society would become better if those aspects were changed or eliminated.

The job for corporate supporters is to address the issues head on: to contend and offer proof that corporations don't pollute more per-capita or leave behind their private messes for social clean-up; that strong, 99-year copyright laws don't constrain innovation and advancement; that immense rewards to the few don't undermine our ability as a society to advance and prosper as a whole.

And so we see the logical fallacy committed by supporters of the picture: That somehow the fact that the protesters have also benefited refutes that there is anything to protest. It's a cop-out by corporate apologists and their tools. (I saw Elisabeth Hasselback on the View talking about this picture like she was making some great point; the only point she was cementing is that she is a doofus, incapable of logical thought, a perfect tool of the corporation that employs her.)

Criticizing the bad in an institution or an individual is not logically inconsistent with recognizing the good brought about by the institution or individual - the two are mutually supportive: For without criticizing the bad (and working to overcome or improve), we can't increase the good that is possible or that we can realize.