Socialism: The Morning After

Filmmaker, Michael Moore, has recently squatted down and dropped another steamy pile of “documentary” into the can. His new film is an attack on Capitalism which I have not seen, and don’t plan to see. Because I have not seen it, this article will not be an attack on the content of the movie. I will give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that Moore has abandoned his previous techniques - sensational and sophomoric attacks - and has decided to finally become a true seeker of the truth.

I assume he went to the Mises Institute to interview Lew Rockwell, Jr. and discuss the economic theories of Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, and Murray Rothbard. I’m sure Moore provided an in depth argument explaining why prices should be determined by the Labor Theory of Value and not by supply and demand in a laissez faire system. Moore no doubt backed up his arguments with Rockwell with volumes of evidence to show how planned economies have out performed free economies.

While at the Mises Institute, Moore probably sat down with Thomas Woods, author of Meltdown, since Moore’s movie is supposed to be a look at Capitalism’s role in the financial collapse. They surely discussed the Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle and the role of interest rates in the market. They probably also discussed the role of the Federal Reserve in inflating the money supply and artificially setting interest rates and how that caused the housing bubble. Moore no doubt was able to show how it was capitalism that caused these problems and not the manipulation of the market by the Federal Reserve, government-owned enterprises like Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and government action such as the Community Reinvestment Act. Moore also probably pointed out how the Stimulus and all of the Bailouts have saved capitalism just like the New Deal “saved” it in the 1930’s.

After Moore’s intellectual economic debates with Rockwell and Woods, he probably hopped aboard the Amtrak and rode with the “common people” down to California to meet with Yaron Brook from the Ayn Rand Institute to discuss the moral and philosophical implications of capitalism as explained by Ayn Rand’s Objectivism vs. Marxist and Rousseauian Socialism. Moore obviously made reasoned and logical arguments for why the ideas that people should be “forced to be free” and goods should be distributed “to each according to his need, from each according to his ability” are morally and philosophically superior to ideas like voluntary cooperation and working in one’s self-interest.

I’m sure that he didn’t resort to his usual tactics and stand in front of AIG with a megaphone shouting that he “is making a citizens arrest of the board of directors…” Oh wait, he did that in the trailer?!? I’m sure that was just to attract an audience, but the rest of the movie will be full of facts, logic, and deeply thought-provoking arguments.

Anyway, what I really want to know is, how is he going to handle ticket sales and paying his employees? As we know from Michael Moore, profit is bad and he is the defender of the “common man” (i.e. the proletariat.) Therefore, is he going to be using Marx’s Labor Theory of Value when deciding how much the movie should cost and everyone should be paid? How will he determine the cost of the labor applied to making the movie by his cameraman, writers, producers (wait, is that like an evil CEO? Screw that guy then!) grips, editors, etc.? How much is he going to pay himself? Is he making the same amount as the cameraman?

Then next question is how will he decide what people should pay to watch the movie? Will people have to bring a pay stub and their recent tax return to determine their ability to pay? Will they also need to bring proof of their political and economic affiliations to show their “need”? Obviously libertarians and objectivists are the most in “need” of watching this movie since we are the ignorant masses that still believe that capitalism is the only way to ensure individual rights and liberty. Conservatives will have to pay slightly more, and progressives and socialists will pay the most (unless they are poor) since they don’t even “need” to watch this movie. How will we determine “need” vs. “ability”? How much would a rich conservative pay? Would a poor libertarian actually make money if they go? A rich progressive would have to sign over the lease on his Prius for a ticket.

Or does this movie belong to the people (read: State)? How can Michael Moore claim any ownership of this film? Film is art and art belongs to the people right? How very greedy of Mr. Moore to try to keep this movie to himself AND to make money on it! He should sign ownership of this movie over to people of the world, and give all the money he has made from this movie and any of his other films to the government. Once he has signed over all of his property, he should work in whatever job the collective decides would most help the collective (the show Dirty Jobs has some great ideas), send all of that money to the government and sign up for welfare and Medicaid, so the government can take care of him just like in his favorite country, Cuba.

This Article also appears on DC Write Up

Is Greed Good?

“Greed is Good.” I heard that three times last summer from three different types of people. First from a socialist professor who said that capitalism is based on greed and when I challenged him, he said that greed doesn’t have to be bad. Really? The next day my marketing professor told an anecdote about her professor who wrote “Greed is Good” on the board on the first day of class and then told all of the students to watch the movie“Wall Street.” I told that story to some people at a free market think tank where I interned, and was surprised when two of them agreed and mentioned that a speaker who would be attending an event we were hosting wrote the book Greed is Good: The Capitalist Pig Guide to Investing. I don’t want to discuss the book or why he chose that title, but rather the idea that greed can be good. Is there a definition of which I am not aware? The definition of greed on Merriam-Webster.com is “a selfish and excessive desire for more of something (as money) than is needed.” This is a poor and vague definition, because who decides how much is needed? A better definition of greed is a desire to take all you can. I cannot see how taking all that you can get can be good and it explains why I have never heard greed used to describe anything virtuous.


Greed is one of the seven deadly sins, and while I am not religious, I agree that things like sloth and gluttony are bad. At the same time though, pride and lust are also deadly sins. Pride can be either good or bad depending on the level to which you are prideful. You should take pride in your work and be proud of your accomplishments, but when you become too prideful you become arrogant and pompous. Lust is not necessarily ever a good thing, but it is natural and can range from neutral to very bad depending on the level of lust. Is this the case with greed? Can greed be good or bad depending on how it is used or to what level? I have never heard it used to describe anything good. Being “greedy as a pig” comes from the pig’s voracious and disgusting eating habits. When you push your luck gambling and lose everything, people will say that you lost because you got greedy. Greed is the reason why Enron executives swindled their employees and stockholders. It is also why businesses lobby elected officials for special treatment and corporate welfare. Bernie Madoff was greedy when he ran a ponzi scheme and stole $50 billion. Greed doesn’t drive people to take more than they need, it drives them to take more than they earn.


In the discussion with my co-workers, they made the argument that greed is what drives people to be the best. To start the best company and to make the most money you can by providing the best service to your customers. They used it to express the rational self interest that drives all of us. They said that we are all greedy to do what is in our best interest and to make the most of ourselves. I argued that a better term for what they described would be ambition. While I believe that greed is the desire to take as much as you can and ambition is the desire to earn as much as you can. It is only one different word, but that one word makes all the difference. To take whatever you want, means that you would be willing to lie, cheat, and steal to achieve your goals. This makes a zero sum game in which one party wins only when the other loses. When you are ambitious, however, you work for what you get and you win only when you provide value to another. Both partied benefit. This is how they described greed to be good. Basically we were talking about the same thing, but they used the word greed where I used the word ambition. Rather than use a different word to fit their argument, they changed the meaning of the word. In the end, I knew what they were trying to say and it made sense. The problem with using a negative word to mean something positive is that every time you use the word you have to make sure that everyone understands the definition you are using.


My first thought is that the liberty movement is trying to do is what they always do when challenged by leftists, accept their premise and fight from behind. It has become the go-to argument for those on the left to call capitalists greedy. Rather than dispute the claim that we are greedy and say that we are ambitious (a term that most consider positive) we try to change the definition of greed from being a negative term to one that is positive. This seems to be a terrible way to market liberty and capitalism to a country that is becoming increasingly socialist due to its ignorance and apathy. Why would you take a negative word and intentionally attach it to yourself in the hope that you can make it positive?


After I considered it for awhile, I thought of another way that changing the definition could be beneficial. It is very difficult to change a word’s meaning, but once you do, you can control the word and destroy it if necessary. The leftists call capitalists greedy, so if we can make it meaningless, it would take the word from them. This is what has happened to the word fascist. It has been used in so many different, incorrect ways that it has become meaningless. Fascism is typically referred to as “right-wing.” Fascism is a leftist movement that is a slight variation on socialism. The simplified difference between socialism and fascism is that under socialism the government controls the means of production and redistributes wealth and property. Under fascism, there is private ownership of the means of production, but the government controls how it is used through regulations, laws, taxes, and intimidation. In the sense that there is still private ownership of the means of production it is right of socialism, but just barely and it is far from being “right-wing.” It would be like calling conservatism left-wing because it is slightly left of libertarianism. However, it became a term used to refer to conservatives and now is pretty much a term for general dislike of anyone in a position of power. The word is completely useless now in any argument, because it is overused and if you try to use it correctly to describe a person or policy, you have to spend the next seven years of your life explaining what fascism means and eventually you just give up. The left has also effectively changed the meaning of the word liberal to get away from calling themselves “progressive” and now that liberal is no longer en vogue they are going back to calling themselves progressives, all of this, of course, to hide that they are socialists and fascists.


If the left can destroy words that are harmful to them, why can’t we? If we can change the meaning of greed to something positive, or at least caste doubt in the meaning of the word, we could render it useless. It would reach a point where you would call someone greedy and they wouldn’t know whether to thank you or punch you. The problem is that while the left has slowly changed the meaning of fascist, they didn’t make it positive. They passed the negative term to the right and then over used it to make it meaningless.


Could embracing the word greed be helpful for capitalists or would it perpetuate the myths about capitalism already spread by the left? Could we successfully convince people that there is virtue in greed, or is this just another way to play into the hands of the left by adopting their terminology? Is this movement to make greed good a way to help spread capitalism or a way to justify greed by the truly greedy?