To answer this question, Lapham devises a fictional scenario following the post-graduation paths of two young Yale graduates, themselves from opposite economic beginnings.

He chooses the job after coming to the conclusion that the banking industry controls the world and that it would be easier and more effective to become a part of the system in order to change it from within.

As his student-loan bills start piling up, however, Mike begins to resent his lack of money and low-paying job, as well as the inability of his writing to enact change.

A short time after the party, Lapham invites Mike to take a trip to a "space that used to be called, in another age of man, Mexico."

In Texas, Lapham shows Mike how the powerful control the government, and how money, in the end, trumps any effort by the non-wealthy to alter society.

Mike lectures his girlfriend on his new worldview: that money is all that matters, and that, as society goes to hell, wealth is one's only defense against the routine abuses and corruption of the ruling class.

The following people are interviewed: Kurt Vonnegut and Robert Altman both died before the final cut of the film was aired on Sundance Channel.