Week 8, Fadhil's Blog #5 - Factual Movies, Capitalism A Love Story.

In this week blog, as I am told to do a reflection on one of financial movies from blackboard, I'm going to give a reflection on specific one which called "Capitalism A Love Story" which was created by legendary filmmaker Michael Moore. The movie is basically shows how capitalism is not working most of American individuals who actively working and goes on to say all the problems with it. I first surprised by the result of his research of how it shows 1% of the richest have more than the bottom 95% combined, a system which claims to reward free enterprise but in fact rewards greed. Amazing isn't it. I feel like these 1% of people can do anything with its power to control the 95%. In the documentary, Moore tries to examine of how the impact of corporate dominance on the everyday American lives under capitalism which somehow also reflect the rest of the world populations that are also under capitalists. So what is capitalism exactly? from research I found out that it is a system of the production and distribution of preferred goods and services in return for what consumers are willing to pay for them, and that this system is the foundation on which the U.S. country is built and how it should function. The documentary location is moving from central U.S., to the halls of power in Washington, to the global financial central in Manhattan as Moore wanted to get as much answers as he can. 

Capitalism is a good system in my opinion, however, I think the system is obsolete as what I can see from the movie U.S. nowadays turning into more of a company than a traditional democracy country as many unfair happened. So my question is, since America loves capitalism so much, what do they need to sacrifice in order to apply the system? Well, all I can see from the film is that families pay the price with their jobs, their houses and their savings order for capitalism to work perfectly fit into the society. Moore goes into the family houses of average people which their lives have turned into disaster, with Moore tries to find the explanation for that.  Why does the movie title said that it is a love story? It's because what Moore finds in the documentary are the all-too-familiar symptoms of a love affair gone astray such as lies, abuse, betrayal. In this case of the documentary, he also found that 14,000 jobs being lost every day.

However capitalism as seen in the U.S. today, is more about the want of the wealthy to get wealthier at the expense of everyone below them.  This system may have functioned well in the U.S. especially after the World War II era when there was little global competition and which truly established the middle class like I said earlier, it been going for too long and may not work as good as it used to be. As most of U.S. population is christian, capitalism system is often connected to the religion and the ideal democracy, which in the real case it is not as not everyone have the same power. As democracy political system is where in a one person/one vote system, a wealthy person has as much power as a poor person, corporate is having a fear of cannot overpowered them. Furthermore, with the poor increasingly outnumbering the wealthy, the poor banding together may show capitalism for what it is, at least in today's global system. Some say, in order capitalism works, there is sacrifice in social costs for the corporate in order for them to pursuit/obtained large amount of profits with public good as an expense. 

In conclusion, after watching the documentary, I can now understand more about how capitalism works and why is it good/bad for the country that applies the system which in this case is U.S. Moore shows that it is a good system at the beginning and why it works so well with the government in the past especially post WW II. However, as the time goes by, capitalism affects the country badly as it is making it more into a business company rather than traditional democracy government of a country that should be more important due to the fact that it helps everyone including the poorest one. I can now understand why many people says that capitalism is evil and bad, it's because the system works with the sacrifice of poor and average people with no money and power for greater good such as huge amount of profits for certain people in the system. The rich is getting richer, the poor is getting poorer. 

Moreover, in my opinion, I think the U.S. government should change its system or re-new it since old capitalism is not working as it used to be. Although it can be tough to do because powerful people and corporations like this way due to the fact that they only getting richer and more powerful from year to year.