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Meta Econ Takeover Day 49
1356 sats \ 10 comments \ @Undisciplined 5 Dec 2023 meta
I recently rewatched "The Gang Exploits the Mortgage Crisis" an episode of Always Sunny. It got me thinking about great treatments of economic topics in fiction.
My favorite is another episode of Sunny "The Great Recession". It has the best portrayal of Keynesian stimulus that I've ever seen.
Another great one is "The Gang Solves the Gas Crisis", which really is a good portrayal of speculation and price formation.
What are your favorite fictional treatments of real economic issues?
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314 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 5 Dec 2023
Tuttle Twins' bitcoin episode was really well done! Lots of easter eggs making fun of the crypto space and a pretty good explanation of fiat vs. hard money that's understandable even for kids. The premise is that the twins find an old copy of a video game and two people are trying to buy it from them: one offers fiat and the other offers bitcoin, and they're trying to decide whose offer to accept.
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264 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby 5 Dec 2023
Agreed it was really good. Kids loved it but good for adults too.
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314 sats \ 3 replies \ @siggy47 5 Dec 2023
It's Christmas time. I always think of "It's A Wonderful Life" and its explanation of fractional reserve banking. Jimmy Stewart explains to the people of the town during a bank run that their money wasn't in the bank, but was lent out to build their neighbor's homes.
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664 sats \ 2 replies \ @Bitman 5 Dec 2023
I read Capra's autobiography years ago. Although Capra created US war propaganda he was targeted as a communist because of his movies that showed the little guy being beaten by the system and triumphing.
In the end, this forced him out of creating great movies full of fun to just teach others about movie making colleges instead.
šŸ”” šŸ§š
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264 sats \ 1 reply \ @siggy47 5 Dec 2023
I love his movies, but there have been times when the little libertarian sitting on my shoulder starts screaming "commie propaganda" in my ear. I ignore him.
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215 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 5 Dec 2023
That little guy is such a buzzkill sometimes.
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264 sats \ 3 replies \ @elvismercury 5 Dec 2023
Oooh, this is awesome, I'm going to check those out. Looking forward to hearing other people's suggestions.
This isn't a great answer to your question, but related: I'm very interested in how complex systems work, esp in non-intuitive ways, and the limits to what can be explicitly designed, and how to overcome those limitations in other ways. From a systems perspective, I think The Wire is fabulous.
The relation to economics should be clear, even if it's not just economics.
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 5 Dec 2023
Are you already familiar with Sunny?
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264 sats \ 1 reply \ @elvismercury 5 Dec 2023
Have only seen like two episodes, on random flights, so don't know much about it.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 5 Dec 2023
Good enough, as long as you aren't expecting a serious thesis defense
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