Socialist Yes Men Lies Defraud the World

[AL the Inconspicuous]

It was brought up on another thread, so I've finally found the bile to swallow the steaming pile of shit that is...  The Yes Men Fix the World...

The only parts that didn't make me puke were quotations from the (relatively speaking) pro-market think-tanks and from Milton Friedman, at least before they were clipped up and spun into socialist propaganda.  Pretty much every factual assertion the movie makes is a blatant lie:

• The Bhopal disaster is not the greatest industrial tragedy in history, not by a long shot!  It is dwarfed by numerous massive industrial accidents in socialist countries, many of which have been covered up pretty well during the Stalin, Hitler, and Mao eras, not to mention the gradual health damage done to tens of millions of chemical workers in socialist countries, where workers don't have a choice of where they work and what their compensation and safety demands ought to be.

• The Bhopal disaster is not an example of free market capitalism, it is an example of a socialist Indian government violating the property rights of "its citizens", as well as the socialist aspects of the American government limiting the liability of the persons responsible for this accident.  In a free society you simply cannot build something that presents a clear danger of exploding and damaging my property without my permission!  Only the all-mighty governments can do that, and much worse (world wars, the nuclear arms, etc)!

• The film focuses on the worst incident it could nitpick and uses it to condemn the free market system as a whole, without recognizing the benefits that this system (in spite of being as diluted as it is) has brought to billions of people all over the world!

• The film's "look at stupid capitalists cheer at our morally abhorrent presentations" sequences are as intellectually dishonest as the pretenses they used to set up those presentations in the first place, with many things edited together from completely different times and contexts.

• More "capitalism caused this financial crisis" bullshit that's debunked elsewhere.

• More Global Warming bullshit debunked elsewhere.

• More bullshit on how Mommy Government is responsible for people who choose to live below sea level in hurricane-prone areas and don't plan ahead.

• Mindless criticism of insurance and risk mitigation industries, which in reality help save millions of lives.

• Mindless criticism of a ridiculously expensive fantasy product that would help the super-rich survive a crisis situation, failing to realize that such a product would eventually come down in price and have massive trickle-down benefits for the poor as well.

• Some of the usual irony of socialists criticizing the socialist institutions that they themselves empower, and that of course inevitably backfire on their Utopian feel-good expectations.

I refuse to live in a world filled with idiots who will see this film (maybe even in a government-controlled classroom, which is how I saw my first couple of Michael Moore films) and be completely brainwashed by it without even beginning to comprehend how deceitful and factually inaccurate it is!  This is why I became a tax resister, and this is why I spend my time educating myself on these kinds of issues and trolling socialist forums to do my best to debunk those lies.  All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing!

[libertylover]

Can't say I agree or disagree with your statements because the movie is in such limited release.  I suppose you are in one of the areas that got the see the movie early.  It isn't expected to roll through NC until Feb 23 and then only in one theater at Duke University.   You could make the same movie gate crashing political events but most likely you would get arrested for making the government idiots look foolish.  

I do agree the India incident is no where near as bad as Chernobyl which was so horrible no one could cover it up.

I went to the website and it looks like movie critics are wetting themselves over this movie.  That means it probably feeds their socialist world view.  

Since I think you may have seen, "The Yes Men," I hope you can answer this question.   Do they make valid points but draw the wrong conclusion?  I see this is several of these sorts of documentaries.  They make a valid point but then fail to see that government caused the problem which they want more government to fix.

[AL the Inconspicuous]

See this movie in a theater?!  Oh hell no!  For the past decade I've only gone to movies for Star Wars, LotR, and exceptional movies like V for Vendetta or The Dark Knight (the last one I saw).  I don't even know where the nearest movie theater from me is.  I download everything I watch via BitTorrent (ex), and so should you!

Chernobyl was also overblown quite a bit.  (I was in Moscow at the time, and I've heard a lot of first-hand stories about people lying and cheating to get their share of the foreign aid.)   The worst industrial worker abuse happened during the 1920s-60s, when entire large industrial cities had the worker life expectancy of 40 or less - and that's not even considered to be a part of the Gulag system!

They make no valid points in that movie.  I honestly can't think of a single one... 

[Brooklyn Red Leg]

Chernobyl was also overblown quite a bit.

Yea, the late Michael Crichton touched on that in State of Fear IIRC. The fatalities were much lower (not that I'm excusing what happened) and cancer/leukemia rates didn't spike like people claimed.

[TimeLady Victorious]

So you're saying that Union Carbide bears no responsibility whatever for the disaster?

[AL the Inconspicuous]

So you're saying that Union Carbide bears no responsibility whatever for the disaster?

They had to bear some amount of responsibility in spite of the current fascistic system limiting their liability, and in a free market they'd of course have to pay a lot more restitution than they did (unless they got those adjacent property owners and/or their stakeholders to sign waivers, which they obviously won't do for free).

You can't blame a corporation for wanting to maximize its profits any more than you can blame water for running downhill.  You can and should blame people for violating other people's rights, but Union Carbide acted within the law - what violated people's rights is was the government which created the fascistic legal framework that disempowers the victims of that accident.

[TimeLady Victorious]

So you're saying that Union Carbide bears no responsibility whatever for the disaster?

They had to bear some amount of responsibility in spite of the current fascistic system limiting their liability, and in a free market they'd of course have to pay a lot more restitution than they did (unless they got those adjacent property owners and/or their stakeholders to sign waivers, which they obviously won't do for free).

You can't blame a corporation for wanting to maximize its profits any more than you can blame water for running downhill.  You can and should blame people for violating other people's rights, but Union Carbide acted within the law - what violated people's rights is was the government which created the fascistic legal framework that disempowers the victims of that accident.

It was Union Carbide's plant, they had the responsibility for maintaining the plant.

Also if the corporation maximizes its profits at the expense of other's lives then yes, I can blame it. Then again, it's Union Carbide we're talking about here, not a mom and pop grocery store or a small tool-and-die firm. Defense contractors are in bed with the government and are as to blame for anything as a government is.

[AL the Inconspicuous]

No one is denying that Union Carbide screwed up and needs to be held responsible.  What I am saying is that the victims of this accident would have received a lot more compensation in a more free-market capitalist society, and such a society would have created greater pressure on Union Carbide to do what it would have taken to prevent this accident in the first place.  The corrupt local / Indian and the U.S. governments have made it possible for Union Carbide to shield itself from responsibility as much as it has.

Imagine that you are driving on a private road and you hit a pedestrian.  It's your fault, but the road owner has a policy that everyone who comes onto his property agrees to abide by, and that policy states that all pedestrians must cap any and all injury restitution claims to $1000, so that's the maximum amount an arbitrator can make you pay, even if it would have been hundreds of times more without this clause.  The governments operate the same way, except that their claims to own the world are baseless and false.  You can choose not to come onto a piece of property whose rules you disagree with, but you are your government's subject from birth, and governments have spread themselves by the sword over every square inch of land and beyond!

[TimeLady Victorious]

So what? Union Carbide could have chosen to give more compensation if it had wanted to, it could have maintained its factories efficiently, it could have done a whole host of things that would have averted the disaster but it chose not to.