Movie Review: Alongside Night

  Alright folks, first things first, I am not a Agorist nor do I have a copy of Alongside Night the book.  For those who don't know, the movie is not yet aired and I watched it as part of a pre-screening.  Now Agorism is the main economic (and ideological) basis of the movie and there is no escaping the message of the movie. The characters were in a world in which the United States was falling apart based on a massive war debt owed to oil producing nations, and hyperinflation had destroyed the dollar.  In cities there was rioting and open warfare as people were demanding basic services and probably fighting over resources and looting.  The government, under FEMA, went after dissenters and either took them to a prison camp or killed them.  In this set up, the main character Elliot Vreeland, goes looking for his father Dr. Martin Vreeland, a economist who challenged the government's economic policies.

Why this movie doesn't make sense? 

1. There is a debt crisis in which the military is not being paid, but the government can find a way to have loyal FEMA agents who are being paid.  Okay folks, last I checked, the government hires people and people have needs and wants.  In a society where the currency is worthless, what exactly are the government agents being paid with?  If your military is off joining a domestic insurgency (a peaceful one at that) or becoming mercenaries, what stops the FEMA agents from doing the same?  They're not Storm Troopers cloned and indoctrinated to follow the government, they're people with needs and wants and are no different from anyone else.  So what stops the FEMA agents from going rouge when the money they're being payed with is worthless? 

2.  There's a nationwide war going on between the Agorist cadre and the government, and massive fighting between people in the cities.  Looting, violence, breakdown of civil society in some cities, and entire States breaking away including Texas.  You think it would be like Yugoslavia after the fall of the Soviet Union, or a chaotic mess right out of Judge Dredd (1995) with the block wars.  Yet the main characters seemed to find nice and orderly suburbs and cities, removed from the fighting.  At most, there's protests that are peaceful and organized.  In other words, you would never know there was a break down of the United States without turning on the news.  Hell even Las Vegas was nice and orderly, while the rest of the nation was embroiled in a collapse.  Unrealistic to say the least, especially when you consider that organized crime would move in and start fighting for turf, like the drug cartels in Mexico.

3. The value of gold as a currency, when the rest of the United States is collapsing.  Sure the main character understands that gold is only as valuable as people are willing to pay for it.  Yet in a society that is falling apart, one would think water, food, ammo, and medicine would be more valuable than gold since the very basics people need to survive on are what people would be rioting over and fighting each other for possession of, and in most cases would require advanced tech to produce or maintain.  Since gold is not necessary for survival and subject to flux in prices (based on amount of actual gold in supply) it's unlikely in a collapsing society that people would really want gold as opposed to water.  Again, gold seems to be valuable only in the areas the main character ends up in, removed from the chaos in the other cities.

4.  The preaching about Agorism as the solution by the characters also was annoying.  It detracted from the story itself and made the movie at times dull.  I could understand the jargon and the theories, but I was annoyed that the characters would dwell on such themes, while being chased by government agents in a collapsing country.  People without the backgrounds in political and economic theory might be stumped by the terms, yet you don't need to know about the theories when the characters rant about the importance of Agorism almost every ten minutes.  Of course such things also might bore the audience just when they were getting into the actual story.  It's like watching a propaganda film about the evils of Capitalism or Socialism- the message matters, the story is just filler.

  The last message in the film, when one of the cadre has a copy of the Constitution and is setting about editing it with a sharpie, he puts a period at the end of "Congress shall make no law".  So if Congress doesn't make the laws, then the laws they already passed from 1776 onward are null in the new "United States", effectively taking out one of the branches of government and nullifying the other two in their purpose.  This destroys the checks and balances that the Founding Fathers set up to avoid a dictatorship.  If there is no law making power in Congress, who makes the laws?  The Constitution allows for the people, through their representatives in Congress, to make the laws.  Take that out and you have no Constitutionally sound body to make laws.  This also means the Judiciary can't interpret laws, whether it's the ban on slavery in the 14th Amendment or the Bill of Rights in the 10th Amendment.  Also, the Executive branch can't enforce any laws since there are no laws being made by Congress.  So in such a set up, slavery can be legal, as would genocide and violation of contracts, absent of a nationwide governmental structure to create laws, interpreting the laws, and enforcing them.

The solution in the movie?  Arbitration.  Sure, have a dispute and go to arbitration.  Let's ask the Serbs about it after Yugoslavia fell apart, or the various people who went to arbitration with multinationals out of court.  Some goals are not supposed to be arbitrated, like genocide or slavery.  Trying to arbitrate such is like asking the person who wants to kill you to come to the table and discuss solutions that allow both parties to get what they want.  In the movie, both parties have to submit to arbitration, meaning they give up their sovereignty as individuals to some arbitrator.  Yeah, that's going to work well, except when they don't submit to such and wish to settle their problems differently, like in trial by combat or persecution in a court of law. 

  The problems with arbitration is that it favors those with more experience in arbitration, requires both parties to abide by the ruling made by the arbitrator, and needs coercion to enforce decisions on parties that dissent.  What if the party doesn't want to submit to arbitration?  The legal recourses they have narrow, and often times there are unofficial/illegal ways to get justice or vengeance.  Such as assassination, vendetta, or simply litigating.  Also, what happens if the Agro Cadre had a member who committed a crime or wronged someone from another culture and political area that didn't have arbitration?  I doubt that they would simply submit to arbitration if they had the means to fight a war and had a honor based culture, in which they could simply take the offender. 

  Multinationals also love arbitration since they're better at it than the people they bring to arbitration.  They also like arbitration since they don't have to admit any wrong doing in arbitration and can pay people to represent them who do it for a living while the other party might be stuck with only their wits.  They can also drag on arbitration proceedings for years at a greater cost to the other party.  Hence the pains of a lawsuit for the one filing, as it can take years and thousands of dollars before the multinational will even concede to a settlement.

  Individuals arbitrating also have an imbalance of experience and power, as some have done it more than others and can use their strengths in arbitration protocols to get more out of the other party.  This makes arbitration dangerous for those with a naive view of it as a cure all, and it assumes that both parties will agree to the legitimacy of the others' wants.

  Now my assessment of the movie is that the society it represents would fall apart, both the hyper inflated United States and the Agro Cadre.  One wants tyrannical rule over the citizens and the other is stuck in a utopic view of the world while unwittingly destroying the Constitution as both a document and as a legitimate source of law.  When you make sure that Congress can make no laws, who makes the laws then?  The people.  Yet the Congress is made of the people, or at least the people who bother being involved in the civic life of the nation by running for office and representing segments of the people via districts, countries, and states.  Making sure that Congress can make no laws means that the people are denied a way to make laws and that any group of people making laws would in effect be the Congress.  The lack of a law making entity would mean anyone could make their own laws since there is no recognized law making body.  The lack of a law making entity would also mean that everything could be legal, like in The Purge could be legal since the Judiciary can't interpret the constitutionality of it.

  The other thing I found disturbing was the trust of private actors to be working in the best interests of others.  If you can sell a nuclear device like reactors (as was in the Mall scene) to private individuals, there is something wrong with your society.  While they have a wait period in the movie to do a background check (the very thing many anti regulation gun nuts deplore at gun shows), it's still a nuclear device and even if you're not selling it to a terrorist, it requires education and training to keep a nuclear device from harming others.  Fukishima happened not because of terrorists but from design flaws and natural disaster. 

  In history there are plenty of examples of the private sector acting terribly and doing horrible things.  Unicol worked with the Burmese junta to employ slave labor to build a oil pipeline.  IGFarbin worked with the Nazis to create the gas the Nazis used to kill millions, and they helped design the concentration camp programs to utilize the prisoners as slaves.  Blackwater was responsible for murders and rapes in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Like the government, the private sector is made of people and these people can become a threat to liberty just as a government can.

  Last, a society made up of the principles of volunteerism and arbitration will not work in large groups.  Agorism is like Communism or Socialism, it works in small groups with people who consent and believe in the principles of the system and work towards preserving it.  For a diverse society with many different cultures and beliefs, it would fail.  The reasoning behind Agorism itself is flawed since it's subjective, as it assumes that everyone will be headed for Agorism as a society and as a sound economic practice.  This is not the case, and the survival of the State is because alternatives to the State have not yielded any means to collectively organize for large scale activities that not everyone of the organized consents to, such as construction work or maintaining a nation state's infrastructure.  The State exists because of long term interests of a larger group than the Private Sector can provide.  In fact, the Private Sector only exists because of the State, as it's the State that provides the environment for the Private Sector to survive.  Otherwise people would likely revert to tribal structures and base their loyalties to family and friends as opposed to a nation or even a company.

  If you need proof, simply look at history and how people organized and identified themselves in the absence of a government.  Or the Superdome during Hurricane Katrina.

  After watching the movie I am more convinced than ever that Agorism won't work and that economic ideologies should not be what a movie or story is about.  More to the point, the arguments made in the movie don't hold water and rely on a scenario that won't happen in the United States due to many factors the director overlooked or ignored.  As such, I would not worry about the coming of an Agorist Cadre anymore than the return of dragons or other such mythical beasts.