My Critique of Capitalism in a Nutshell
In the awesome KEY LARGO (1948), Humphrey Bogart’s broken war hero, Frank McCloud, taunts Edward G. Robinson’s charismatic and brutal gangster, Johnny Rocco.
Johnny Rocco: There’s only one Johnny Rocco.
Frank McCloud: He knows what he wants. Don’t you, Rocco?
Johnny Rocco: Sure.
James Temple: What’s that?
Frank McCloud: Tell him, Rocco.
Johnny Rocco: Well, I want uh …
Frank McCloud: He wants more, don’t you, Rocco?
Johnny Rocco: Yeah. That’s it. More. That’s right! I want more!
Frank McCloud: Will you ever get enough?
Johnny Rocco: Well, I never have. No, I guess I won’t.
Frank McCloud: He knows what he wants. Don’t you, Rocco?
Johnny Rocco: Sure.
James Temple: What’s that?
Frank McCloud: Tell him, Rocco.
Johnny Rocco: Well, I want uh …
Frank McCloud: He wants more, don’t you, Rocco?
Johnny Rocco: Yeah. That’s it. More. That’s right! I want more!
Frank McCloud: Will you ever get enough?
Johnny Rocco: Well, I never have. No, I guess I won’t.
posted by JAB at 9:45 AM
2 Comments:
I knew a manager who, at a corporate exercise was asked what his mission statement would be for the organization.
"More," he said.
And, for most professional managers, that's the nature of the beast. You make quota, and next year they raise it. You beat their stretch goal, they give you a new one. Andy Grove used to call it "raising the bar."
It's ok so long as there are mechanisms to prevent or contain the damage cause by all that unfettered ambition. And throughout history there are examples of societies that get the balance right and reasonably balance the dynamism of business with appropriate oversight.
Not ours, however. "Conservative" economist John Taylor talks here about what happens when corporations get control of the entities that are supposed to be regulating them.
It's not pretty, and no invisible hand it going to fix it for you.
Eloquently put.
The isolated desire for More, that serves no social or moral end, is criminality. In that short bit of dialogue, you feel sorry for this bully, who has enough awareness to recognize his own hollowness, and how he destroys people and the things he really loves around him. (Now that I think about it, he's a proto-Tony Soprano.)
I've been realizing recently that this is one of those movies - a morality play, broad, but poetic - that resonates about the American character, Bogart's character Rocco dueling for the American soul. (And it's a typically amazing performance by the brilliant Robinson.)
Something from the movie lost on the modern view: Nazis were often equated with men like Rocco - pirates in matching outfits- in their hollow desire for accumulation and domination. (there's a speech specifically about this,) rather than regarded as ideologues (which strikes me as a major difference between communist and American liberal critiques)
A drive necessary to live, to have the will to gather and make, the desire for more, must serve a higher master, or it sours into sociopathy.
From long ago, I recall my econ readings often heaping scorn on what they called the "medieval concept" of the "moral economy." But with the earth dying in the status quo, dying not of robots and nuclear weapons but lightbulbs, population and fossil fuel engines, I don't see how survival of the richness of human and animal life we revel in now can happen. I don't see how we can survive "More."
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