But What The Hell Do I Know...

I was interviewed yesterday live on an Australian morning radio show (via phone while sitting at my desk) called Radio Australia Today. The host, Phil Kafcaloudes, was gracious as well as challenging and sharp. Phil blogged about the video on their site. I’ll quote it here in its entirety because their blog doesn’t have permanent links:

Keynes versus Hayek, the YouTube sensation

I’ve got a case here of where the internet and hip-hop have combined to produce one of the world’s most effective and capable teaching tools. U.S. filmmaker John Papola teamed up with economist Russ Roberts to do a rap/hip-hop video called Fear The Boom and Bust, that has become a smash hit, and has the world learning about economics. It scored more than 450,000 [now over 530,000 combined] views in less than a week. By its second day it been shown in classrooms.

The video shows a rap between two of the world’s most diametrically opposed economists, John Maynard Keynes, the man whose views led so many countries in this economic crisis to make their big stimulus spends, and Austrian school Nobel Prize winner F.A. Hayek, who was against central government action to fix the economy. Two actors, dressed as Keynes and Hayek take to the night-time streets of Wall Street to do their rap hip-hop thing.

The video is smart. It starts with a dark-suited Keynes giving a spirited defence of his spend-to-save-yourself attitude, which is pretty cool and convincing (and when you consider that many countries have become letter day converts to him after placing him in the wilderness for decades). Then we have Hayek taking on some verses, and punching holes in the Keynes argument. It is sassy, bright, deep and thoughtful, and all to a rap tune that is pretty compelling.

Check it out. It’s at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk

Who knows? It might make an economist out of you yet.

- Phil Kafcaloudes

What an amazing review. Thanks, Phil! I especially like that he finds our version of Keynes compelling. That’s a testament to our effort at being fair to both men’s theories (while believing that Keynes is mostly nonsense).

You can listen to my 10 minutes via their podcast here.

I’m still learning this whole pithy answer thing, so bear with me. I also forgot to mention our website, econstories.tv. I think I did a decent job of not sounding like a complete ignoramus…

…but what the hell do I know?