Occupy Wall Street

Strayer University

Occupy Wall Street Movement

By

Tiffany Lambert

Professor Keil Bus 309

Discuss the moral and economic implications involved in the movement. Occupy Wall Street is a protest powered by the people that began on September 17, 2011 in Liberty Square in Manhattan’s Financial District. The main issues surrounding the movement are social and economic greed, inequality and fundamental unfairness. The Occupy Wall street movement stands on the moral and principals grounds of fairness, care and liberty. Occupy Wall Street is fighting back against the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that has caused the greatest recession in generations. (OccupyWallSt.org) They believe that the wealthy or rich take without giving enough and that they are the reason the economy crashed, since taxpayers had to bail them out.

Analyze each of the implications identified above against the utilitarian, Kantian and virtue ethics to determine which theory best applies to the movement.

Utilitarianism ethic is based on the greatest happiest principal. This basically means that a society should conduct itself based on maximizing the greatest level of happiness; for the largest number of people. However it doesn’t protect individual rights, which is what America was built on. So morally this ethic wouldn’t work for the movement. On an economic level utilitarian would make sure that goods, services and resources be available to most people or maybe even all. It mainly focuses on the intent of total satisfaction and not complete fairness; it fails to incorporate the role of principals and decision making. This would also not work in the movement.

Kantian ethics is based on if an act or a set of actions is morally right. Its central motivation is when possible and within our power we should do the right thing. Kant believed that there was a supreme...