I saw Avatar shortly after it came out. Since then I’ve avoided weighing in on the variety of reactions to it. Overall, I had no disagreement that it was Dances With Wolves meets Fern Gully with aliens.
But I also saw another angle, one much more in line with my libertarian views. However, since no one else seemed to think so I figured I was simply stretching the limits of interpretation too far. A recent post by Donald Boudreaux has convinced me that it might not be such a stretch.
But here’s another, much-less-trumpeted piece of news that is cause for optimism about the future of freedom in China: In a report on how the movie ‘Avatar’ is perceived by the Chinese people, yesterday’s Wall Street Journal reports that “China’s moviegoers see a story about private property, not race.”
It’s a very interesting perspective and I highly recommend reading it. However my own libertarian take took a slightly different angle.
It takes 6 years to get from Earth to Pandora. Additionally, the movie suggests the corporation (or rather Pandora and the Na’vi) run through soldiers at a pretty breakneck pace, hence the high pay they’re offered. And then on top of that they’ve been there for a long time (Jake’s statement at the beginning suggests mankind has been going there since at least his childhood), long enough for them to build the Avatar program from the ground up. All of this for a mineral that sells at $20 million a kilo.
Now, I’m neither an economist nor an accountant, but it seemed a bit improbable to me that even at that going rate the company could really be making very much money with all of the costs and the strong implication that they haven’t been very successful mining the unobtanium due to the dangers of both the planet and the populace. And if they could be making that much money doing it, why are there no other companies competing with them there.
The only answer I can come up with is that the corporation operating on Pandora enjoyed the benefit of a government monopoly. That would allow them to both absorb far greater costs than they could otherwise and operate without competition.
I’m sure James Cameron never thought about this, but that it’s such a commonplace reality these days is probably an even bigger indictment of our current union of governmental and corporate power.
What are your thoughts? Does my view hold up, or is it complete crap?
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What’s complete crap, in my opinion, is Avatar itself. It’s incredible what a little bit of hype can do. I’m amazed that a film whose sole strength is special effects is probably going to become the highest grossing movie of all time.
With such a valuable resource, I agree, it seems unlikely that only one firm would attempt to extract it. I think this just exposes Cameron’s simplistic. anti-capitalist imagination. I wonder, though whether $20m is still a great sum of money when Avatar takes place. Perhaps another libertarian message in the movie is directed at central bank inflation policy: in the future, a million bucks might be spare change. Otherwise, if 20 million were still a fortune, then surely on the vast planet/satellite of Pandora there would have been sufficient deposits of unobtainium which weren’t lying directly beneath population centers to satisfy Earth’s energy needs.
I think you are inferring too much about the background. I see your point and think you are correct that any such company would most likely have to exist as a government supported monopoly (maybe “unobtanianium” is used in nuclear weapons/devices [joking]). But I don’t see that as really relevant to the story because it requires too much background knowledge that just isn’t available. (Also, considering most people don’t know jack about monopolies, I doubt the movie has any intention of providing such a critique.)
I saw the movie as libertarian in its message of tolerance and anarchistic in its anti-imperialism and implicit support of a plurality of property and social arrangements. Maybe I’ll write about the topic on my own blog.
My first thought when I heard them say $20 million per kilo was…what year is this? Apparently, the movie takes place in the year 2154 (145 years in the future from the movie’s release date). If we go back 145 years from 2009, what is worth $20 million in 2009 was worth $973,000 145 years ago.
If inflation increases at a similar rate, the brilliant corporate leaders were engaging in this ridiculously expensive mission for a mineral that sells at the equivalent of $973,000 per kilo in 2009.
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