MichaelMoore.com

Your choice - the film or the fundraiser?

Michael Moore and Mike Moore.

By John Minto / New Zealand Stuff

I saw Michael Moore's new film Capitalism - A Love Story last week and readers of this blog won't be surprised I'm giving it a five-star rating.

It's in the same style as his previous films Bowling for Columbine and Sicko as he picks apart the economic crisis and the greatest theft by the rich from the poor in the history of human life on planet earth. Forget the Sheriff of Nottingham and the medieval crusades, the Viking plundering and the Spanish conquests, forget even the more recent multibillion-dollar tax cuts for the wealthy.

The financial sector around the world has plundered trillions in the last year as their rotten, immoral edifice of greed and corruption began to come apart. Using well orchestrated fear, the imminent US election and their enormous political influence (they funded Obama heavily), they made the biggest killing in human history.

Unembarrassed, within a few short months they were back to their same old profligate ways, paying billions in bonuses while the US taxpayers who bailed them out were being thrown out of their houses - one foreclosure in the US every 7.5 seconds. The only thing these corporates have learnt is that when it comes to the super-wealthy, economic risk always remains with the taxpayer.

The film is a well-justified, savage attack on capitalism - not just the excesses of deregulated markets and the extreme inequality which results but on the beast itself.

The real strength of the film is its description of alternatives to capitalism such as work co-operatives where managers and staff run businesses together for the benefit of all. This needs much wider discussion and debate and there are plenty of examples and good models around the world. And what's more, when businesses are run this way they are more productive, happier environments with better outcomes for all.

As a union official, every day I see companies which would be run much better as co-operatives where workers are treated with dignity and respect rather than as mere chattels to work at the disposal of shareholders.

The most interesting thing about such businesses is that if they are either run democratically by workers or owned by workers then the gains in productivity and wealth creation are modest. However, when the two are combined there are big gains to be had. Those of us concerned for the parlous state of this country should be working to this end.

The other Mike Moore in the news last week was our very own former prime minister and ex-head of the World Trade Organisation. He's holding a corporate-sponsored fundraiser on December 16 at a flash Auckland hotel for a personal project to raise funds for school students to manage as investments to maximise profits. He's enlisted Robert Kennedy Jr as guest speaker and a charity auction includes a lunch hosted by Michael Fay. If you're still holding down your last meal after that revelation you might like to bid for a flight on Barry Colman's private jet or a luxury two-week holiday in South Africa including lunch with Nobel Prize winner and former President FW de Klerk.

It's clear our own Mike Moore has pulled out all the stops in his quest to teach young New Zealanders the values of capitalism where the wealth created by others is speculated and traded and where a few get a free lunch at the expense of the majority. In a sly public-relations touch Moore says the profits from these investments will go to help kids in poorer countries. He won't be taking the same message to his audience.

So why would New Zealand's Mike Moore be doing this? If capitalism wasn't such a crapped-out system he wouldn't need to try. It seems to be part of a crusade to win the hearts and minds of young people - to try and convince them capitalism is the only way to get ahead, make money and benefit humanity despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary here in New Zealand and around the world. Our Mike Moore has his own frenetic mantra of half-truths and historic distortions to justify his faith in capitalism. The only other option means admitting he's spent most of his life on the side of the devil.

So we have a tale of two Mike Moores and a choice to make before Xmas. Will it be the Mike Moore film or the Mike Moore fundraiser?

My advice is to see the film and don't lose any sleep if someone chucks a brick through the window of the corporate sideshow.