Friday Movie Night - The Trap Edition

 It's Friday Night! Party Time!   Time to relax, put your feet up on the couch, lay back, and watch some detailed videos on economic policy!

 

Every once in a while one finds a gem documentary online. Tonight, you behavioral economics folks are going to have a field day with this one!

The video is a 2007 BBC documentary series, The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom. The series analyzes the concept of freedom in the 20th and 21st centuries. Contained within are many references to economic theory, economic thought, economic systems, scientific models and discoveries influencing the human social condition. Included are Hayek, Nash, Robert Rubin and the Rand Corporation.

I am not making up these episode titles.

F**K You Buddy

 

The Lonely Robot

 

We Will Force You To Be Free

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Goes to Show You

by putting our future in the hands of Economists, we impose many limits. Numbers do not reveal all the secrets to success. Numbers are only one way to measure.

To quote a different sitcom

As the farmhand said to Jean and Lionel Hardcastle on the only political/economic episode of As Time Goes By:

"Look around the village. There's not much wrong with it. So let them build their bypass and go around us, leave us in peace."

That's what those who value freedom enough to force it on others forget: Not everybody has their level of ambition. And for the rest of us, knowing our place and staying in our place, has a zen like freedom all of it's own- if you are able to make a living doing what your father did, and what your father's father did, and what your father's father's father did, that's a security that money can't buy.
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Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.

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Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.

This series, 'the Trap' was

This series, 'the Trap' was one of the most bizarre concoctions ever to be green lighted by the BBC. I understand that despite the drastic global increase in government spending over the last 100 years, 'the Trap' wants to make the 'market' out to be the bad guy. Ok fine, have at it, provoke away with the narrow, single viewpoint diatribe. The problem is not that the assertions in The Trap weren't right, it's that they weren't even wrong. Words like 'freedom' and 'economics' and 'the market' have to be completely redefined for the series to even be coherent. Never mind the sensationalist MTV style wreck of a production.

it is flawed

I'll give you that, but from almost a philosophical viewpoint, a sociological viewpoint, it really made my brain whirl. But yes, it's not a real documentary but it is some serious food for the brain, especially if one has read R.D. Laing, knows some of game theory, familiar with Hayek, etc.

At least for me, the "me first, fuck you" society has become dominant and it used to not be that way overall.

Most of that increase in government spending

Was giveaways to corporations, not entitlements for individual citizens.

So in that view, they're right.
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Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.

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Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.