Ayn Rand was once asked if she could explain her philosophy while standing on one foot. She did. Could you? Could you explain in everyday language the central idea of free market economics in one breath, between floors in an elevator, or with one foot letting the other do all the work?
Some years ago, I was at a restaurant celebrating my twin daughters’ birthday. It was very busy and loud, and our young waitress was challenged to keep our party of 20 happy. Before leaving I talked to her briefly and learned she was a junior at a local university majoring in economics. She wasn’t happy with her econ classes so far, she said, and thought maybe she had chosen the wrong major. Presented in the guise of knowledge, she was under fire from Keynesianism, statism, and the fogginess that goes with it. To me, she was crying for help.
We made a deal. I offered to send her a Kindle version of a book if she would agree to read it. I promised her it was an engaging read and would give her a new perspective on economics, especially the part about government’s central bank, which the author referred to as a Creature. She agreed to give it a shot. Was it a “one-foot” moment? No, but it was close. I would never see her again but she would have on her device a strong counterpoint to what she was hearing in class. I found that satisfying.
More recently, I found myself searching for a word or two that would lock in an idea for a patient who was leaving physical therapy for the day. I had overheard her tell her PT she was a psych major who had signed up for a class in macroeconomics this summer. From her progress in therapy, I thought it likely she was healed and wouldn’t be back. In this case I didn’t hear a cry for help. I saw her about to stumble into a lion’s den.
I stopped exercising and went over to her. “About your macro class, have you heard of the Federal Reserve?” She had but didn’t know anything about it. “You’ll hear a lot of things, most of them misleading or outright lies. I’ve read and written extensively about the Fed. It’s a cartel, a very quiet one. It conducts monetary policy. It determines how much your money will erode. Think of it as counterfeiting.” She didn’t seem shocked at hearing this, so maybe it made sense to her. Or maybe she saw me as certifiable.
In either case, if “counterfeiting” stays with her I’ll be happy, though again, I’ll never know. And maybe, as it did with me after reading Rothbard’s What Has Government Done to Our Money? years ago, it will lead her to an intellectual awakening. (For Mises articles dealing with macro, see this, this, and this).
I once thought that handing someone an engaging book on liberty, such as Ron Paul’s End the Fed or Thomas DiLorenzo’s How Capitalism Saved America, would lead to the recipient thinking about the world in a new and exciting way. Then I found out most people don’t read books, especially nonfiction books, especially books that involve history and that dismal science, economics. They preferred videos or social media posts, preferably in the form of memes. The shorter the read, the better. And with YouTube’s 2021 launch of Shorts in the US, limiting videos to vertical-format 60 seconds, they were offering an alternative to TikTok while cashing in on the demand of limited attention spans.
According to some, this anti-reading trend produces a decline in critical thinking or “brain rot,” the symptoms of which are “persistent brain fog, a diminished attention span, and a general sense of cognitive sluggishness.” Where is the evidence?
Twelve years ago, Mark Dice took to the streets with “Sound Money” emblazoned on his T-shirt and tried to trade a one-ounce Canadian gold coin for $25 to random passersby, the interviews videoed in front of a coin shop in case someone questioned the authenticity of the coin. He got so desperate he agreed to trade for a piece of gum. Though we don’t know what Dice left on the cutting-room floor, none of those in the video bothered to ask him why he was essentially giving away a coin worth $1,500. Such knowledge apparently exceeded the cognitive efforts of his test subjects.
Short catchy phrases have proven their worth throughout history, but only with an understanding behind them. Most of us have heard of “Know thy enemy,” “War is the health of the state,” and, “The first casualty of war is truth.” In science, we have “Nature abhors a vacuum,” “Do not multiply entities beyond necessity” (Occam’s Razor), and the one that guided me and other programmers for years, “Garbage in, garbage out.”
What about free market economics? The strongest statement I’ve heard that captures the essence of sound economic reasoning is one that’s been around in various forms for a long time—and also one most of us could recite on one foot: “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” Keeping that as a guide will keep you out of a lot of trouble. In second place would be Bastiat’s essay on opportunity cost, “That which is seen, and that which is unseen,” otherwise known as the Broken Window Fallacy.
Summary phrases are handy, but they’re no substitute for self-driven education.
