Sunday, September 22, 2013

The Greatest Econ Story Ever Told

At least in a movie;

We cannot accept the principle that incompetence justifies dismissal. That is victimization.
From 1959. If you ever wondered why England turned to Margaret Thatcher twenty years later, this museum piece is a succinct explanation--near the end, Peter Sellers rummaging around the disaster that is his home's kitchen is the perfect metaphor for Britain before the Iron Lady upset the apple carts of the trade unions.

Sellers' portrayal of a Communist shop steward in a factory, is pitch perfect, and maybe the best thing he ever did. Also covered in the course of the film, in addition to the peculiar labour relations of the time; the English class system, discriminatory pricing, mercantilism, principal-agent problems, Public Choice Theory (well-focused special interests trumping the broader concerns of the average English housewife).

A film festival of rent-seeking, that if the writers weren't economists already, they should have been awarded Phds in the discipline (the Nobel prize for economic science not yet having been established).

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