 | DrEntropy (40)
02/21/2006 |  Michael Moore's least interesting movie. MM sits around in the lobbies of Fortune 500 corporations and tries, unsuccessfully, to get past secretaries, PR snakepeople, and security goons to speak to people in authority. Also, talks with low-level drudge workers about how lousy their jobs are. Good social work, maybe, but not terribly interesting cinema. Redeemed only by the ending: a conversation with Phil Knight (CEO of Nike), where Moore finds out that Knight has never even been to Indonesia, where the factories that produce most Nike shoes are located! This illustrates that general problem with large corporations; the occasional Enron aside, the top people are not Evil-Robber-Baron-Crooks; they are just highly paid, flattered, pampered figureheads who don't have a clue what's going on. Meanwhile, the higher mid-level people who actually run the place find that the best way to make the balance sheet look good and get ahead is to screw the low-level worker-drones and generally maximize short-term benefit at the expense of long-term health, not to mention social and environmental costs, which are left for the government, or future generations, to deal with. For all his quirks and prejudices, Moore still sheds more light on the actual, real-life workings of modern corporations than any economist.
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