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Capitalism: Not Just for the Rich Anymore
Michael Moore’s latest movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, tries to link foreclosed homes, underpaid pilots, judges sending kids to juvie hall in exchange for payoffs, and dead workers whose employers collected on life insurance. It’s a package meant to indict private property and free markets as, in the words of a priest interviewed in the film, “contrary to all that’s good.”
Moore doesn’t notice that two of his framing anecdotes—man doesn’t pay debt on house and has it occupied by bank, business doesn’t pay wages it owes and has factory occupied by workers—are the same in justice and logic. His real point is that people richer than you (not than him, necessarily) must be punished, somehow.
He loses his whole game when he asks a woman from the factory why the workers don’t form a co-op and run it themselves. They don’t have money, she explains; they aren’t capitalists. That’s a benefit the wealthy provide to the working man that Moore won’t acknowledge.
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Capitalism: Not Just for the Rich Anymore - Reason Magazine, on PunditKix, links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
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My only point is that if you take the Bible straight, as I'm sure many of Reasons readers do, you will see a lot of the Old Testament stuff as absolutely insane. Even some cursory knowledge of Hebrew and doing some mathematics and logic will tell you that you really won't get the full deal by just doing regular skill english reading for those books. In other words, there's more to the books of the Bible than most will ever grasp. I'm not concerned that Mr. Crumb will go to hell or anything crazy like that! It's just that he, like many types of religionists, seems to take it literally, take it straight...the Bible's books were not written by straight laced divinity students in 3 piece suits who white wash religious beliefs as if God made them with clothes on...the Bible's books were written by people with very different mindsets...in order to really get the Books of the Bible, you have to cultivate such a mindset, it's literally a labyrinth, that's no joke
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