Student challenges Michael Moore on capitalism vs. corporatism

[JoshLowry]

YouTube - GWU student gets Michael Moore to admit that we do not have true capitalism (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwQ41Yo60og)

[Reason]

He named it capitalism because he is a good capitalist.

End of story.

[MRoCkEd]

Bright kid. Idiot Moore.

[TinCanToNA]

I liked his shirt.

[Yieu]

Nice video, until Moore starts grandstanding.

[Pennsylvania]

and the Iraq and everwhere like such as

[Austrian Econ Disciple]

Stopped watching 4 minutes through. Moore doesn't know jack fuck all about Economics. Neither do 90% of this country. Oh yes, workers controlling production....What does that sound like? Democracies aren't this great system, it's majority rule, fuck you to the minority. It doesn't prohibit, nor slow down Authoritarianism, it actually actively promotes it.

What would happen in his so called "Democratic workplace", would be individuals voting to give themselves pay raise after pay raise after pay raise, after all, they aren't the ones who have to balance the sheet. They aren't the one's who have to find capital. Secondly, workplace politics is absolutely atrocious. You would have people conspiring against each other to "Psst, hey I don't like so and so, let's vote to fire them!", even though they may be the most productive member.

Holy fuck. Secondly, I didn't watch the ending, but did this kid know anything about Austrian Economics? Did he challenge Moore's assertions and embarass him? Derisive class warfare bull-shit. Who cares if someone makes 400 times more than you? Did you take the risk to create the business? Is he for price and wage controls? Sounds like it. If this kid knew anything about Laissez-Faire, Austro Econ he would have totally embarassed Moore. Kid, you're on the right track, now just delve a little deeper!

[malkusm]

Excerpt from Atlas Shrugged:

"Well, there was something that happened at the plant where I worked for twenty years. It was when the old man died and his heirs took over. There were three of them, two sons and a daughter, and they brought a new plan to run the factory. They let us vote on it, too, and everybody--almost everybody--voted for it. We didn't know. We thought it was good. No, that's not true, either. We thought that we were supposed to think it was good. The plan was that everybody in the factory would work according to his ability, but would be paid according to his need. We--what's the matter, ma'am? Why do you look like that?"

"What was the name of the factory?" she asked, her voice barely audible.

"The Twentieth Century Motor Company, ma'am, or Starnsville, Wisconsin."

"Go on."

"We voted for that plan at a big meeting, with all of us present, six thousand of us, everybody that worked in the factory. The Starnes heirs made long speeches about it, and it wasn't too clear, but nobody asked any questions. None of us knew just how the plan would work, but every one of us thought that the next fellow knew it. And if anybody had any doubts, he felt guilty and kept his mouth shut--because they made it sound like anyone who'd oppose the plan was a child-killer at heart and less than a human being. They told us that this plan would achieve a noble ideal. Well, how were we to know otherwise? Hadn't we heard it all our lives--from our parents and our schoolteachers and our ministers, and in every newspaper we ever read and every movie and every public speech? Hadn't we always been told that this was righteous and just? Well, maybe there's some excuse for what we did at that meeting. Still, we voted for the plan--and what we got, we had it coming to us. You know, ma'am, we are marked men, in a way, those of us who lived through the four years of that plan in the Twentieth Century factory. What is it that hell is supposed to be? Evil--plain, naked, smirking evil, isn't it? Well, that's what we saw and helped to make--and I think we're damned, every one of us, and maybe we'll never be forgiven."

"Do you know how it worked, that plan, and what it did to people? Try pouring water into a tank where there's a pipe at the bottom draining it out faster than you pour it, and each bucket you bring breaks that pipe an inch wider, and the harder you work the more is demanded of you, and you stand slinging buckets forty hours a week, then forty-eight, then fifty-six--for your neighbor's supper--for his wife's operation--for his child's measles--for his mother's wheel chair--for his uncle's shirt--for his nephew's schooling--for the baby next door--for the baby to be born--for anyone anywhere around you--it's theirs to receive, from diapers to dentures--and yours to work, from sunup to sundown, month after month, year after year, with nothing to show for it but your sweat, with nothing in sight for you but their pleasure, for the whole of your life, without rest, without hope without end....From each according to his ability, to each according to his need...."

"We're all one big family, they told us, we're all in this together. But you don't stand, working an acetylene torch ten hours a day--together, and you don't all get a bellyache--together. What's whose ability and which of whose needs comes first? When it's all one pot, you can't let any man decide what his own needs are, can you? If you did, he might claim that he needs a yacht--and if his feelings is all you have to go by, he might prove it, too. Why not? If it's not right for me to own a car until I've worked myself into a hospital ward, earning a car for every loafer and every naked savage on earth--why can't he demand a yacht from me, too, if I still have the ability not to have collapsed? No? He can't? Then why can he demand that I go without cream for my coffee until he's replastered his living room?....Oh well....Well, anyway, it was decided that nobody had the right to judge his own need or ability. We voted on it. Yes, ma'am, we voted on it in a public meeting twice a year. How else could it be done? Do you care to think what would happen at such a meeting? It took us just one meeting to discover that we had become beggars--rotten, whining, sniveling beggars all of us, because no man could claim his pay as his rightful earning, he had no rights and no earnings, his work didn't belong to him, it belonged to 'the family,' and they owed him nothing in return, and the only claim he had on them was his 'need'--so he had to beg in public for relief from his needs, like any lousy moocher, listing all his troubles and miseries, down to his patched drawers and his wife's head colds, hoping that 'the family' would throw him the alms. He had to claim miseries, because it's miseries, not work, that had become the coin of the realm--so it turned into a contest among six thousand panhandlers, each claiming that his need was worse than his brother's. How else could it be done? Do you care to guess what happened, what sort of men kept quiet, feeling shame, and what sort got away with the jackpot?"

[Mitt Romneys sideburns]

What the hell is a "democratic economy"?

[akforme]

DraqonXXX comments are disturbing


Political rule would be a very small price to pay for democracy in the workplace. America has always been a minimalist state. But that leads to corporations becoming too strong and using their power not to compete, but to eventually eliminate competition by corrupting the state.

[BenIsForRon]

Good thing you guys didn't watch the end of the video, I almost blew a fuse. Paraphrasing: "Europeans love taxation, we should pay more taxes!"

[angelatc]

Stopped watching 4 minutes through. Moore doesn't know jack fuck all about Economics. Neither do 90% of this country. Oh yes, workers controlling production....What does that sound like? Democracies aren't this great system, it's majority rule, fuck you to the minority. It doesn't prohibit, nor slow down Authoritarianism, it actually actively promotes it.

I'm batting that Michael Moore doesn't make his movies using a democratic process.

[JeNNiF00F00]

What the hell is a "democratic economy"?

I think he means Socialist economy.

[Epic]

Democratic workplaces aren't illegal.... those who want them can also do them.

It's a terrible economic structure though. It doesn't optimize production and profits and hence it sucks and will lose out.

A society with only democratic workplaces wouldn't have innovation or much production and would suffer from a horrible misallocation of resources.

[Andrew-Austin]

What the hell is a "democratic economy"?

Its when people vote on most major economic activity, when mankind rapidly starts dying out.

[angelatc]

The comments section is worth a visit.

[purplechoe]

http://barry.freedomblogging.com/files/2007/06/michaelm.jpg

pot meet kettle...

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_HliWiZ0TUx0/SfR5wOPBfVI/AAAAAAAAERs/tWAZZsueMUI/s320/idiot.jpg

[Revolution0918]

he hurts my head.....i literally sat there watching this like ..."ow"....he has no idea what the fuck he is talking about, then he actually sounded like us, then he just started rambling and im back to "ow"

[tangent4ronpaul]

At times it sounded like he almost got it... like when he started talking about how financial aid used to be.

Anyone up for a chip-in? We could hire a deprogrammer... :D

-t

[akforme]

He's so close yet so far away.

He wants us to decide but he wants us to vote on somebody to give it to us. It's the free market in bizzarro world.