Martians Learn about the Free Market from the Oil Industry
Douglas Rushkoff - author of the book Life Inc: How the world became a corporation and how to take it back - is a guest blogger.
In spite of its unfaltering market bias (or maybe because of it) the film is still quite an entertainingly assembled piece of work.
For more on the movie, check out the background info at archive.org
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I guess we can forgive them for seeing the 'good 'ol US of A' as the world, they have to take into consideration their audience ... but I take some slight umbridge at seeing Canada as included in America in the map.
That was bald and outright propaganda .... but the American Petroleum Institute does some useful work, escpecially (and naturally) in the oil industry. They set standards for the industry - so when a refinery produces gasoline of a certain octane, you can be sure that the indicator of one company is the same as that of the other. They also have a system of indicating specific gravity that is industry wide .... an API gravity of 12 (or whatever) can be recognized in all companies.
A shame they feel they have to become apologists for capitalism - but indicative of something that is needs apologists.
The market bias and the assumption of oil's indefinite sustainability are pretty much the main content.
Destination unlimited? These days we know the wheels fall off this way too. The triumphant optimism is sadly amusing...
Seems to me the lesson of the technological revolution is that you have to look damn hard for a free lunch before you can pat yourself on the back with any justification.
I don't know how it isn't bleeding obvious that our stuff needs to be as elegant as the pushbike, or it's just shit.
So... if we don't put all our resources in the hands of private cabals, then we will have to be communists?
Am I to understand that Oggville is a better economic model than using the available technology to produce energy to create the things people want?
oh, if ever there were a prime example of anti-Soviet propaganda, it would have to be this.
They even gave Ogg a nice big moustache to make the point. Well done.
Well, if that martian says it, it must be true.
Four words: Bill Hicks on marketing.
We've got movie sign! Aaaahhh!
OIL = Good
Martian Stalin = BAD
All hail OGG!
To put this in context:
In the 1950's, GB and the United States were busy tipping over governments who opted for a state-owned oil infrastructure. The "competition" bit is apologetics, as some people were becoming uncomfortable with the covert military operations against states with natural resources that our corporations wanted to exploit.
See also: Iran (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran#Recent_history_.281921.E2.80.93present.29).
Interesting that Martian society bears such a resemblance to Stalin's USSR with the Ogg personality cult, stormtroopers with guns, and forced conformity. Senator McCarthy would have approved.
What Kimmo said @4.
well the whole point was to have Mars and Ogg resemble the USSR and Stalin, so they could introduce (at the last minute) the "competition" element, to make sure the USA never tries to allow the people to share the profit from their natural resources. That would be downright Communist!
More propaganda from the MPEG Working Group! The real Martian city of Vorbis is nothing like depicted.
invisibility tech before lubrication! this is just made up!
Funny. How back then there were so many oil companies the market and competition would work. For a while, until consolidation and failures dwindle the players down to a few big players. Then they dump the idea of a weak state and co-opt it to ensure their position as top dog.
Also note how it's Americans doing the work, the work is not outsourced. All my industrial design books from before the 1970's always start out by stating what made America a great industrial power was the concept if paying the workers enough money so they could purchase what they made. And that a skilled workforce was essential to the well being of the enterprise.
Then finance took over.
The film is so America centric because in the 1950's it was only the US that suppored this level of activity. We of course have become a corporate state and operate much more along the lines of the all powerful "OGG". Funny how they were making fun of the USSR in constantly heaping the term Commander In Chief on OGG, yet we now say the same thing in all branches of the press, including NPR, of the U.S. President.
What I also find funny is how you other commenters make fun of the basic premise of the film and saying that you favor a centralized OGG style economy. And are you all just going to pick up your guitars and play, just like yesterday and then get on your knees and pray, you're not going to wake up in the middle of an old "Who" song? After you've created centers of authority powerful enough to overcome powerful corporations what do you think will become of those centers of power after the corporations are gone? I can tell you this, they won't go away.
Be careful what you wish for.
I like how Ogg had a mustache to look like a certain someone who opposed market competition.
Gosh, what a silly movie. Hubbert's peak is well behind us, and we've replaced market competition with political patronage in the banking and automotive sectors, and everything is just fine. Fine, I tell you.
This was made in 1956. Needless to say the oil industry has changed with only a handful of large companies and countries controlling oil output. Probably shown in classrooms It would be interesting to revisit the topic with the notion of corporate handouts and ceo bonuses.
I love these. Please keep posting them. There is enough great material for a whole Boing Boing channel.
"unfaltering market bias??"
You say that like it's a bad thang...
OGGMart. OGG = Sam Walton?
Isn't science wonderful! Using the magic of research those selfless industrialists give us all we could ever desire. Don't trouble yer purty lil head about where it all comes from citizen. Or what we had to do to bring it to you. Leave all that business to us. What could possibly go wrong?
This is a very snazzy little movie. Great example of an educational film that teaches a concept.
It makes capitalism sound very appealing, but for the choice of product, oil. Anytime you're talking about raping the earth of its finite resources, I'm inclined to say that it is a bad product.
Debt is a bad product, too, by the way.
I was wondering why we couldn't transform the banking industry into a sort of public utility that provides a needed service. Providing (not pushing) reasonable loans to businesses and people who need them is fine and good. But I don't see what is good about banks constantly buy one another and sell each other's debts and things. Why can't we create a national bank that provides stable fixed rate government backed low interest loans so people can buy houses. National bank gives you money for school if you need it. Do national service for a couple years after college and have the loans paid off. Loans for businesses are available for businesses that plan to offer something to the community, like a start-up medical clinic...
It makes sense to me, but I'm sure there must be many important reasons why it could never work.
The amazing thing about this is that all modern warfare, as well as a good chunk of 19th and 20th-century warfare, is about mineral rights (mostly oil) Politically divided states are allowed to buy weapons from the west, but the only time they get help from the American military is in exchange for local resources.
Arabian Gulf states are an obvious oil example, in Africa it's diamonds and gold and even water.
Of course, none of this is new, as the Opium Wars prove. What we call capitalism, and Rushkoff calls corporatism, is merely exploitation of something or someone else to serve the capitalist. It really is mostly a zero-sum game, regardless of the added-value bullshit currently taught in economics classes.
Corporations aren't "private cabals". You can own a chunk of a corporation. Ever heard of the stock market?
Isn't that what they call the numbers racket over there in New York? Or is it a casino in Vegas?
The problem with modern American capitalism is it found out that you can make more money if you rush to build as much value as you can, then sell all the capital assets as fast as you can. Then do it again and again and again. Then it instituted the fiction that value lies in faith in money not based on industrial means of extracting goods from nature. So instead of having an economy based on resources, people, industrial means, and faith based on the other 3 axies we hyper-focused on faith and turned the other 3 legs of our economy into a object for arbitrage on a market metered on faith and nothing else. The sweet song of the quarterly profit report and the need to drive stock prices have totally ruined the model of American business.
Unless limits are placed on debt and real accounting practice re-established that places value in industrial production and the people to run the machines, the American economy is going to continue to sink. Unless you can think of a market driven way to force corporate boards to stop raping the companies they control, and encourage stock holders to elect board members who will look out for the long term interests of the enterprise, this is going to have to come from the state.
Wolfiesma, you are obviously a communist and islamofascist come to force sharia law on our wimmin. Don't you know Jeebus blessed the free market hisself? I will pray for you.
"I was wondering why we couldn't transform the banking industry into a sort of public utility that provides a needed service."
That's a nice construction. Money as a utility, too.
There are some banks that see themselves that way, and take the long-term view of their own relationship with a community. The trick is (and this opens another can of worms) money costs some banks more than others. It can be as hard for a local bank to stay in business against the conglomerates as it is for the local druggist to stay in business against Wal-Mart.
Since no one else picked up the obvious response to #3 and others: "Of course the Martians are Communists... They're from the Red Planet!"
Please, only throw fresh vegetables at me.
In Soviet Mars, probes probe you!
Noen, that's awesome. Thanks.
It's funny about Wal-Mart. I think they should have to adhere to a lot more regulation, but, you know, if they can deliver health care and prescriptions that people can actually afford, I think that's a good thing.
Whatever we do, we need to set the labels aside and invest in systems that work for the greatest good, not the highest profit of a few. I'm pretty sure that there are enough of us that want a system that is sustainable, equitable, compassionate, and functional, that if we put our minds to it we could make it happen.
"The sweet song of the quarterly profit report and the need to drive stock prices have totally ruined the model of American business."
This just says it all, doesn't it? And why don't people use their names anymore? So many anonymouses all of a sudden.
It's funny, my girlfriend and I used the same video as the source material for a music video a couple months ago.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-it1wmTFj8&feature=channel_page
Wait a minute...I can get Pesticides and Weed Killers from petroleum? Awesome! Sign me up for 1 toothbrush please.
anyone recognize the voice of the Colonel? I feel like I should know who that is.
Ha! I showed this (and the 1939 animated explanation of capitalism Round and Round, http://www.archive.org/details/Roundand1939 ) to my history class a few years ago. Great stuff.
To put it in context a bit: in 1953 Truman almost launched a huge antitrust case against the big US oil companies following the nationalization of Iran's oil industry--Ike backed off, turning a criminal case into a civil case that they soft-pedalled. Also, big business (Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers, API, etc.) was in the middle of a massive "education program" intended to blunt the effectiveness of labor organizing and political mobilization. (See Elizabeth Fones-Wolf's "Selling Free Enterprise" for more). These films were often screened to workers while on the clock, in classic propaganda-style.
I like that they are drilling for oil on Mars. I hope they find dinosaur bones, too! That will be some kind of special Part II...