What else ya got?

Walt likes Michael Moore. Apart from being an American who recognizes the superiority of Canadian civilization (not an oxymoron? ed.), he's a genuine, grade-A, certified, bona fide shit-disturber, thus an honorary citizen of Walt Whiteman's World.

Mind you, MM's politics are just a teensy bit leftish for this small-c conservative. Had I been eligible to vote in the USA, I certainly wouldn't have cast my ballot for "the hope machine" (although the alternative didn't exactly inspire confidence either). And I cherish no illusion that America is going to adopt Canadian-style universal health care or regulation of the financial sector until there are reliable reports of ground frost in Hades.

Moore's latest film, Capitalism: A Love Story, is, as you would expect, a polemic against the capitalist system that has made America what it is today. (Pause and let the full import of that last clause sink in.) It's not hard to satirize capitalism and capitalists. It's been done very well by others, for instance SCTV's Martin Short in the guise of industrialist and art patron Bradley P. Allen.

But Moore does a skillful job of hoisting the captialists on their own petard. One of the best scenes in the movie is a sequence in which "experts" make a hash of attempting to explain derivatives. And there are trademark Moore stunts, like wrapping yellow police tape around the headquarters of bailed-out Wall Street firms.

It's all very entertaining, as usual, but there is a fundamental problem of philosophy. Moore points the finger of fun at the excesses and nonsenses of capitalism, but he fails to make the case for any other economic system. In fact he doesn't even suggest any alternative.

He speaks of "more democracy" but what does that mean in the world of business and finance? Should we let Joe Sixpack vote on every economic issue that arises? The great unwashed don't know a debit from a credit! (Neither does the finance minister, it seems, but that's another matter.)

Democracy and capitalism have this in common. To paraphrase Churchill, they both look pretty awful -- sometimes spectacularly so -- until one compares them with the alternatives.