French libertarian, François-René Rideau (who apparently runs Bastiat.org) offers advice on his blog for communicating monetary economics to cute young actresses:
In a bus to NYC early in January 2005, I meet this gorgeous girl who is reading a course in Economics. The textbook is open on a praise of the Fed and its role in regulating the National Economy, with an opposing page in a special color denoting higher science, that justifies this role based on one macroeconomic equation by Keynes. It’s too tempting, so I start a conversation.
It so happens this girl is not at all an economics major or minor. She’s just a high-schooler studying acting, and has this compulsory course in economics so as to pursue her studies. Of course she’s never heard of a dissident point of view in economics. Textbooks wouldn’t present as well-established science what is but a questionable opinion, or worse, an intellectual fraud, would they? She looks like she’s not bright enough to grasp the nature of the evil she’s facing, or to care about it, but she is not stupid enough to believe that this stuff is any good for her personally. It’s just a chore she has to go through, and she doesn’t really care for it. Still, the propaganda will leave scars, and in due time, she will believe enough of it to vote with the crowd. And who cares if she doesn’t? Whichever actress will spend all her time at becoming the next superstar will have learnt all this fake economics as the One Obvious Truth, and will propagate it in her work. Whatever the public sees will be molded by these compulsory beliefs.
Afterism of the day. As for me, I wasn’t bright enough to hit on her successfully. Here’s what I should have asked her: Can you discuss this course with me like you’re fully convinced of the truth, relevance and utter obviousness of these economic theories? And then: Now can you discuss it with me like you cannot figure out what it really means, but it smells to you like it’s a huge intellectual fraud? And finally: Which was the more natural stance to you? Getting her to play, and to play with me. Letting her express herself, and at the same time set her in the right direction. I’ll have to remember that next time.
(Alternate title for this post: Human Acting.)
