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Tuesday 29 September 2009

In his new movie, Michael Moore calls capitalism evil and argues that it should be replaced by democracy, basically flipping the current arrangement so that the economy serves our political ends. A lot will be said, good and bad, about Capitalism: A Love Story, about Michael Moore and about the lives of the economic victims. Moore’s real question is, does it serve us or do we serve it? It’s supposed to serve us. It’s supposed to have a point. We don’t subject ourselves to the brutalities of a competitive economy because it’s fun. We do it because we have a collective mission: the elimination of poverty and scarcity for all humanity. Before the study of economics became mired in mathematical theory and its practitioners started to fancy themselves as scientists, economics was widely regarded as a branch of moral philosophy. Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes and Karl Marx all have this in common—they used the discipline of economic philosophy to try to create systems that would one day eliminate poverty and scarcity. That their ideas about how to do this diverge wildly doesn’t really matter. That they share a goal does. Capitalism emerged from all these moral arguments as a successful, self-perpetuating system that people generally seem to agree is humanity’s best shot at one day beating scarcity and poverty. The Whole Point Of Capitalism

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