The Road

Our budding proto-corporations at work, hawking and scrounging for resources

Walking out of the theater, I was left totally speechless for a good sixty seconds (which is when my Blackberry went off). But those sixty seconds at the end of my six-hour lunch break, standing there with one of my mistresses on the way back to my uncle's hedge fund office, I felt like I had a true moment of free-market transcendence.

You see, I have never seen such a stunning metaphor for the perfect libertarian utopia. If you haven't read the book by Cormac McCarthy--which I haven't, of course, though I suspect this fellow might be related to my hero Senator Joe McCarthy (RIP)--this is an excellent story about the cut-throated nature of the Free Market.

In this dark vision of the future, a man and his son travel through a post-apocalyptic America in a quest for capital and resources. Jockeying for survival among other humans (allegories for businessowners), these decrepit warriors compete (kill each other), merge (join forces), and commit hostile takeovers (eat each other) in a quest for dominance.

This nameless family, the man and the son, a clear metaphor for a joint biz partnership—or possibly the American family unit, I'm not sure—essentially wander through the country scouting for (metaphorical) investment opportunity, enjoying some (direct quote) "delicious" Coca-Cola (KO 57.42 buy) and Del Monte peaches (DLM 10.94 a steal at that!). What I'm getting at is that product placement was fantastic, even in this grim post-apocalyptic world.

The strange thing was, the whole post-apocalyptic every-man-for-himself thing was very emotionally resonant. (I know what you're thinking: MacDougal, you old bastard, don't get soft on me now! But bear with me for a moment.) I was fondly reminded of my days at Harvard in the MBA program, where game theory was always at play and "friendship" was merely way of taking advantage of your enemies in order to steal their contacts and fuck their fiancees.

There's also this thing about the world being destroyed, poverty, some bullshit like that, but that was really only secondary to the main story about the virtues of the free, free market.

Rating: $$$$$ (5 USD / 5 USD)
BUY : Coca-Cola (KO), Del Monte (DLM), other post-apocalyptic resources