Capitalism: A Love Story - a Michael Moore movie

Here are three comments by a reviewer you may agree with, and three you will ignore. It depends on what you want to believe as to which you will ignore - that's just being human. These are selected from one reviewer of many (Michael Covel, San Diego, California) - whose opinion you will be sure to guess. All the movie critics I found had strong opinions. Michael Covel's were better thought out than most, and may help focus your own thinking about the film.

"We listen to heartbreaking stories of foreclosed families across America, but we don't learn why the foreclosures happened. Did these people treat their homes as piggy banks? Were there refis on top of refis just to keep buying mall trinkets and other goodies with no respect to risk or logic? We don't find out.

We learn that Wal-Mart bought life insurance policies on many workers. We are then told to feel outrage when Wal-Mart receives a large payout from an employee death while the families still struggle with bills. I saw where Moore was heading here, but this was a reason to end capitalism?

We hear a story from a commercial pilot so low on money that he has to use food stamps. Moore points out that many pilots are making less than Taco Bell managers and then attributes a recent plane crash in Buffalo to underpaid pilots. This one crash is extrapolated out as yet another reason to end capitalism.

I was pleasantly surprised at Moore's attempt at balance. For example, he included:

A carpenter, while ply-wooding up a foreclosed home, says, "If people pay their bills, they don't get thrown out."

A dressing down of Senator Chris Dodd (D) by name. Moore calling out a top Democrat? He sure did. He nailed him.

A lengthy dissertation on the evils of Goldman Sachs. He rips Robert Rubin and Hank Paulson big time and I agree with him. In fact, I said to myself, "Moore you should have done your whole film on Goldman Sachs!"

Michael Moore shows how the amoeba of society works, it stretches out extremities. If the extreme gets hurt it pulls back, if it finds sustenance all of society moves a bit in that direction.

This is a good thing, exploring and expanding beyond society's limits is part of progress.

Michael Moore has moved further out as he has found popular support for his films. The support coming mostly from those that already endorse his conclusions. "Preaching to the choir" is nothing new in two party democracies. Victories, if any, come at the margins.

Perhaps you should extend the amoeba of society yourself - stretch beyond your comfort zone.

THINK

don't follow

According to reviews of Capitalism: A Love Story, Moore now condemns capitalism to the death sentence. "Capitalism Is Evil" is how one reviewer summarized the film. Capitalism in Michael Moore's screed is to be replaced by something that has deep emotional ties, but little justice, democracy.

For the last century or more an economic system, capitalism, has been forced into becoming a crooked political system favoring corporations and bankers - it doesn't work. Turning a political system, democracy, into an economic system is not a workable solution.

Democracy: A Love Story might better fit the objective of the film. But the Michael Moore style is more suited to attack than creation. A full length positive mention of democracy, as a replacement for capitalism, might not be as well presented.

As I recall, it's the same democracy Michael Moore hated when it elected George W. Bush.

Perhaps this film project started when Barack H. Obama was winning the presidency, and a one party state seemed inevitable. Moore is right though, there are problems with modern capitalism. Problems deeper than which nearly identical party wins what election.

I agree with his basic premise, sure to be supported by individual cameos that have no statistical value but make great theater. Capitalism, as an ugly brute combining the worst of government with the worst of Machiavellianism deserves to be tossed. Where we are likely to differ is in the solution, Michael Moore is said to suggest even more power be given to democratic governments.

But democracy is not about economics, it is about who best incites discontent within the mob. Next time the mob may be bought or incited against you.

Most people realize get rich quick schemes don't work, even as they throw money at them. Democracy is a similar scheme, except it is vote yourself rich. By similar proofs, you can not add an expensive middleman, and expect to be quickly wealthier for it. Get a bureaucrat to steal from those richer than you, and those poorer than you will buy their own bureaucrats to steal from you -- eventually every citizen is dirt poor or dead.

Natural free enterprise allows abundance, democracy allows voting of largess for yourself at other's expense. Soon your peers are the "other's" -- thus depleting the slowly earned wealth of a society.

The troubles we are now experiencing are due to the leadership that our democracy has given us; and the evil laws and agencies they have layered, stinking pile on top of stinking pile, over the last century and a half. As Martin Luther King Jr. pointed out, "Hitler was an elected official, everything he did was legal."

If he was elected by your party, would you have the courage to denounce and resist him? What of the evils your current party is perpetrating, are those okay to ignore? I know, I've gone from preachin' to meddlin'.

Your decision.

"Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." - George Washington

When we abandoned the balanced republic that was America, for the mob rule of democracy that is the United States, we guaranteed that corruption would eventually devour the country. You will not find the word democracy in the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, or Bill of Rights. The founders had no intention of inflicting such a mortal wound on the unalienable rights of freshly re-won liberties.

Simple solutions and emotional words won't work. But I will state a single phrase that is emotional, logical, economic -- and where due to technology, the world may be headed:

Return To Liberty: A Love Story.

This may be wishful thinking. Even if accurate, the hardest part about predicting the future is timing. Big events take longer to happen than we can foresee, and then happen so suddenly we can not easily adjust. At best we can prepare, and then act on whatever happens as it happens.

What We Know

Bureaucracies are imploding.

Knowledge is exploding.

Wisdom and understanding are still rare.

The industrial, bureaucratic era is soon to be history, technology is empowering individuals in ways we are just beginning to appreciate. We have few images of the shape technology will display in a decade. Our current science is akin to nomads returning to their spring encampment, and finding grains growing where last year they had stored their gatherings.

It portends change, but how immense is still hidden.

let me take a guess In fact I would like to believe this, but I'm certainly not counting on it.

many hackers don't use caps when they write, upper case letters can mess up code. this is a good analogy to the coming age; position won't matter, arbitrary rules won't matter, elegance of code already matters.

That cool word for the elimination of the middle man, dis-intermediation, skips another compelling aspect of individuals empowered by technology; the elimination of bosses. Performance, reputation, and networking; all are becoming personal attributes rather than sacrifices to bureaucratic hierarchies.

Seemingly every country in the world is creating hoards of college graduates, just as bureaucracies are shrinking. The machines have too many spare cogs. Supply exceeds demand, already the value of a degree is often less than the foregone earnings and costs of higher education.

It is not where you went to school, what your major was, or if you headed a school club. What do you know, are you still learning, are you willing to work hard -- these are the questions that pertain to your future employment.

It is the individual that will set the standards for their own future.

You are that individual, it is your future.

Now the Weinsteins will have their Hollywood pitbull litigator Bert Fields defend them against Moore. "He made $19.8 million in backend profit on a 9/11 movie. And now he wants to beat up the Weinsteins for another couple of million dollars," an insider complains to me tonight. "He redefines the term greedy for someone in this business who claims to be a Mr. Poverty indie documentary filmmaker."

But Moore's attorney Larry Stein's statement noted this is the first time Michael has ever sued anyone in his 20-year career as a filmmaker. "That should be some indication about how serious this is," Stein said. "An independent auditor came in and discovered that the Weinsteins had re-routed at least $2.7 million dollars that belonged to Michael Moore from Fahrenheit 9/11... It's very sad it had to come to this. Michael believes the Weinsteins have been a force for good when it comes to championing independent film -- but that does not give them the right to violate a contract and take money that isn't theirs."

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"There comes a time when a moral man can't obey a law which his conscience tells him is unjust." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

We are not yet sure what holes dying bureaucracies will rend in the nets of our lives. We do not see the shape technologies will hold. The future belongs to adaptable and prepared minds.



"Away with the whims of governmental administrators, their socialized projects, their centralization, their tariffs, their government schools, their state religions, their free credit, their bank monopolies, their regulations, their restrictions, their equalization by taxation, and their pious moralizations! And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works." - economist Claude Frédéric Bastiat 1801-1850