Tax Lawyer's Blog

This weekend my wife and I saw Michael Moore’s latest mockumentary, Capitalism: A Love Story.

She loved it and dutifully applauded at the end when Moore declares capitalism evil.

I, on the other hand, found it to be what all of Mr. Moore’s films are: One-sided propaganda pieces selectively constructed to validate his own preformed points of view.

As with all previous diatribes against capitalism, Moore fails to present a compelling case for a specific and preferable alternative.

Here are three of the more bizarre charges Moore wants the audience to accept, if not literally, at least figuratively:

• Capitalism caused hurricane Katrina
• Walmart wants its employees to die
• Corporations are evil because they close failing plants and layoff workers

There is about as much of a connection between capitalism and, say, the tragedy of Katrina as there was between Saddam Hussein and the 911 attacks.

Of course, that’s irrelevant to a snake oil salesman like Moore. Facts for him are obstacles to overcome rather than truths to embrace.

The only thing that matters to Michael Moore is that he invoke a visceral, emotional response in his viewers. Unfortunately, judging from the “oohs” and “ahhs” of the audience I viewed this movie with he has wildly succeeded.

But to take a page from the Democrats’ book it’s simply not enough to be against something. The critic must present along with his criticism a credible and superior alternative.

Moore doesn’t.

Sure, he makes a feeble and dishonest attempt to do so at the very end of the film when he says that “democracy” should replace capitalism. But democracy is not an economic system, but rather a political one and the American electorate has always been free to democratically vote to replace our capitalistic system with a Marxist one. It simply has chosen not to do so.

Newsflash for Mikey: It’s still a democracy even when you don’t like the result.

Moore cherry-picks the facts he wants his audience to hear about how capitalism is evil and fails to disclose the facts that undermine that position. If he were a lawyer and did this in a court of law, he’d be thrown in the hoosegow for contempt.

This is clearly a man who dislikes his own country. And, adding insult to injury, he uncritically gushes – with the erotic vigor of Chris Matthews covering an Obama stump speech – about the virtues of paradises like France while conveniently ignoring (or even worse not being troubled by) the fact that France’s non-capitalist system has given the French annual unemployment rates of upwards of 9%.

(I acknowledge that our unemployment rate is now approaching 10%, but that rate has skyrocked as a direct result of the Obama administration’s anti-free market, big government policies. Policies that Moore vigorously supports.)

Finally, as with all of Moore’s films, this one is more interesting for what it fails to say rather than what it says. For example, conspicuously absent from the film are these positive facts about capitalism:

• Millions of jobs have been created by U.S. corporations having a profit motive
• Capitalism with it’s emphasis on profits has been the driving force behind most of the worlds great medical and technological advances.
• Thousands of U.S. corporations with profit motives avoid firing employees simply because its the right thing to do
• Socialistic and marxist economic systems have resulted in much greater levels of human pain and suffering than have capitalist systems

Jonah Goldberg says it better than I ever could:

In large measure our wealth isn’t the product of capitalism, it is capitalism.

And yet we hate it. Leaving religion out of it, no idea has given more to humanity. The average working-class person today is richer, in real terms, than the average prince or potentate of 300 years ago. His food is better, his life longer, his health better, his menu of entertainments vastly more diverse, his toilette infinitely more civilized. And yet we constantly hear how cruel capitalism is while this collectivism or that is more loving because, unlike capitalism, collectivism is about the group, not the individual.

These complaints grow loudest at times like this: when the loom of capitalism momentarily stutters in spinning its gold. Suddenly, the people ask: What have you done for me lately? Politicians croon about how we need to give in to Causes Larger than Ourselves and peck about like hungry chickens for a New Way to replace dying capitalism.

This is the patient leaping to embrace the disease and reject the cure. Recessions are fewer and weaker thanks in part to trade, yet whenever recessions appear on the horizon, politicians dive into their protectionist bunkers.

This is the irony of capitalism. It is not zero-sum, but it feels like it is. Capitalism coordinates humanity toward peaceful, productive cooperation, but it feels alienating. Collectivism does the opposite, at least when dreamed up on paper. The communes and collectives imploded in inefficiency, drowned in blood. The kibbutz lives on only as a tourist attraction, a baseball fantasy camp for nostalgic socialists. Meanwhile, billions have ridden capitalism out of poverty.

And yet the children of capitalism still whine.

Michael Moore whines about capitalism. . . . all the way to the bank.

Related Post:

• Michael Moore Loves His Country Again
• 7 Techniques of Propaganda: “Glittering Generalities”
• Taxing the Rich Because You Can: The Beginning of Totalitarianism

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