September 25th, 2009 by Alex

I probably won’t go see Michael Moore’s new movie Capitalism: A Love Story, because there are a lot of things, including other documentaries, like The Secret of Oz, that I’d rather spend my money on. Michael Moore says that capitalism is evil and you can’t regulate evil. And I’d agree that what he calls capitalism is indeed evil — although I wouldn’t use the word “evil” since it is sort of a corny and overly judgmental word. When a product being sold in the marketplace is backed by nothing but hype, delusion, and lack of choice, instead of real substance and quality — which is something that can usually only happen if the game is fixed (legalized fraud) — that is not a benevolent system. Products that are often backed by nothing but hype, delusion, and lack of choice include everything from bank loans, to insurance policies, to legal and accounting services (necessary to comply with government rules), to prescription drugs, to movies, to government programs, to national defense products, and on and on — including the very means of exchange in our economy known as dollars. From what I’ve read in summaries of Capitalism: A Love Story, Moore doesn’t suggests replacing our current system with socialism, but instead with true democracy whereby the masses vote out government officials who are in the pocket of the powerful and wealthy elite. That sounds great to me. But if that is what Moore really wants then I’m pretty sure he should have titled the movie Corporatism: A Love Story instead of Capitalism: A Love Story. From what I gather, in the film, Moore discusses an internal Citibank report happily declaring the United States a plutonomy with the top 1 percent of the population controlling more financial wealth than the bottom 95 percent. I’m sorry, a plutonomy or plutocracy is not capitalism, it is corporatism. And as I mention on page 102 of my book (2nd edition), “corporatism gives both capitalism and government a bad name because it disguise itself as capitalism and government while working on behalf of its own interests.” Unfortunately, I doubt Moore mentions in his film that, “There is hardly a more lucrative scheme than to make money out of debt; it means that the more wealth a nation creates the more debt it creates. Thus, banks get paid for wealth creation by taking wealth from the people who actually created the wealth.” Because if Moore was informed enough to make that statement, then he would have made a monetary reform documentary.

Get the book Dissolving Dollars to get the part of the story Micheal Moore failed to tell.