Richards, Jay. "Greed Is Not Good, and It's Not Capitalism." The American. n.p. 15 October 2009. Web. 8 March 2014.
This article is vastly different then my nine other articles as this one deals with the topic of capitalism, and whether or not it is good. I felt that I need to find a source that did not deal with social media or the film, because the film truly is not about Facebook and technology. One of the major themes, that many of my other sources touch upon is capitalism and greed. I wanted to find an article that discussed various views at that given point in time about these issues (written and published in 2009). This article discusses capitalism in the overall economic standpoint. I found that this applied immensely to the film. For instance, the article stated "Smith [Adam Smith] argued in a rightly-ordered market economy, you’re usually better off appealing to someone’s self-love than to their kindness." This reigned true in the creation of Facebook, from the start, people saw it as a way to show themselves off and to make themselves part of an exclusive group and reap the benefits of that. Only recently has Mark Zuckerberg discussed how his actual hope for Facebook is to connect people together (which is more on the kindness side). Another excellent point made in the article is that "Capitalism doesn’t need greed. What capitalism does need is human creativity and initiative." This is fascinating to think about because Zuckerberg did not care about the money at all in regards to Facebook, he just wanted it to get out there. During the early creation months and years of Facebook he was extremely against advertisements, and now he still works to make Facebook has as little ads as possible. He created Facebook because of his internal drive and curiosity to see what he was capable of and how far he could go with it. This article shows that 2009 was a time where people were beginning to value creativity and initiative and seeing capitalism in a new way in those respects. As a result, the film was widely received because it was about a young, college student doing just that, possessing initiative, being creative and thinking big. Another point is the Fincher already has success and fame, but he director the movie because he wanted to tell a story.
This article is vastly different then my nine other articles as this one deals with the topic of capitalism, and whether or not it is good. I felt that I need to find a source that did not deal with social media or the film, because the film truly is not about Facebook and technology. One of the major themes, that many of my other sources touch upon is capitalism and greed. I wanted to find an article that discussed various views at that given point in time about these issues (written and published in 2009). This article discusses capitalism in the overall economic standpoint. I found that this applied immensely to the film. For instance, the article stated "Smith [Adam Smith] argued in a rightly-ordered market economy, you’re usually better off appealing to someone’s self-love than to their kindness." This reigned true in the creation of Facebook, from the start, people saw it as a way to show themselves off and to make themselves part of an exclusive group and reap the benefits of that. Only recently has Mark Zuckerberg discussed how his actual hope for Facebook is to connect people together (which is more on the kindness side). Another excellent point made in the article is that "Capitalism doesn’t need greed. What capitalism does need is human creativity and initiative." This is fascinating to think about because Zuckerberg did not care about the money at all in regards to Facebook, he just wanted it to get out there. During the early creation months and years of Facebook he was extremely against advertisements, and now he still works to make Facebook has as little ads as possible. He created Facebook because of his internal drive and curiosity to see what he was capable of and how far he could go with it. This article shows that 2009 was a time where people were beginning to value creativity and initiative and seeing capitalism in a new way in those respects. As a result, the film was widely received because it was about a young, college student doing just that, possessing initiative, being creative and thinking big. Another point is the Fincher already has success and fame, but he director the movie because he wanted to tell a story.