Occupy Wall Street has got to be about more than the right to camp out.

OWS struck a nerve nationwide, electrifying many who are just as alienated by current politics as the Tea Party, but are appalled with the Tea Party’s solutions. The spontaneous demonstrations presented an opportunity for the non-Tea Party to articulate a different vision of America, and develop a strategy to get there.

But the “movement” has stalled, and seems to be devolving into a messy and unproductive standoff between scrufty demonstrators and health departments. With OWS members refusing to identify leaders or coherent agendas, they’re losing their opportunity to become players.

And that would be a loss. America needs OWS voices to emerge as leaders, and as activists to galvanize people to do more than complain.

Polls show a huge proportion of people agree the country is headed in a seriously wrong direction, even as they disagree about solutions. Politicians in Washington, and often in state capitols, seem helpless at best and part of the problem at worst.

But when elections are held, it’s hard to get as much as a third of the electorate to turn out. If that proportion rises to two-thirds in a Presidential election, pundits are amazed.

That means the politicians stay in charge. The average person doesn’t vote to change the government. He preserves it from change by staying home. He makes elections cheaper to buy, for people he professes to despise, by giving away his vote for free.

Moreover, the average person may grouse and carp, but few of even those who vote take the time to understand what the problems are. Increasingly, in the wired world where we can filter out versions of reality we don’t like, we grab at slogans that conform to our preconceptions, and we look for Messiahs.

We want someone to come along and magically make it all the way we want – whatever that is. When the person elected turns out to be just a human being, the magic fades and we turn on him viciously. Being a Messiah is usually not a good career move.

That phenomenon has happened to Barack Obama, and now we see Republican voters going through the same Messiah-anointing process as they seek the miracle-maker of the right.

Unfortunately, humans with all their imperfections are the best we have to work with. And humans do not thrive as individuals, we thrive as groups. Our government is one of the ways we as a group organize and develop shared norms that enable us as individuals to go about our daily lives.

Casting “government” as an alien and hostile entity loses sight of the fact that government is us. Casting “Wall Street” as an enemy entity commits the same oversight – the financial and business community is made up of humans, and they follow incentives the same as anyone of the rest of us.

When the net result of government, Wall Street, or any other entities turns out to be poisonous to society – when increasing numbers see no way to participate in the economy, and the wealthiest prosper not because they create new wealth but because they siphon it from every one else – it’s our organization that needs changing. Throwing a few people in jail may be satisfying, but it doesn’t change the system’s incentives – it just distracts the mob and leaves everything in place for the next set of crooks.

Figuring out how to organize better, to shift incentives so that business produces both profits and positive social outcomes, to value people as a business asset – all are part of a debate with no “right” answer. Every generation tries out different approaches, and nothing has been perfect. The balance of power between government and private entities shifts back and forth.

Confronting our deep social issues and seeking resolutions is, in other words, daunting and unsatisfying. It really, really does take more than “common sense,” it really is the quest of a lifetime not a Congressional term, and as more people compete globally for resources and power, it’s not going to get any easier.

Rallies and occupations are fine as quick attention-getters. But unless they translate into longer-term approaches to grappling with thorny dilemmas and participating in the search for solutions, OWS will fade into a footnote about unsanitary squatters. It will lose the opportunity to birth a grassroots change movement that could make a long-term difference.

And that will be the country’s loss.