Cafe Hayek

Foolishness on Film (Or, Wiping the Sheen Off of Silliness)

Tyler Cowen hits a home run with his review of Phillipe Diaz's movie The End of Poverty.  Here's one especially nice selection:

I can only report that The End of Poverty, narrated throughout by Martin Sheen, puts Ayn Rand back on the map as an accurate and indeed insightful cultural commentator. If you were to take the most overdone and most caricatured cocktail-party scenes from Atlas Shrugged, if you were to put the content of Rand’s “whiners” on the screen, mixed in with at least halfway competent production values, you would get something resembling The End of Poverty. If you ever thought that Rand’s nemeses were pure caricature, this film will show you that they are not (if the stalking presence of Naomi Klein has not already done so). If you are looking to benchmark this judgment, consider this: I would not say anything similar even about the movies of Michael Moore.

In this movie, the causes of poverty are oppression and oppression alone. There is no recognition that poverty is the natural or default state of mankind and that a special set of conditions must come together for wealth to be produced. There is no discussion of what this formula for wealth might be. There is no recognition that the wealth of the West lies upon any foundations other than those of theft, exploitation and the oppression of literal or virtual colonies.

Or as I recall Peter Bauer's way of putting the matter: "poverty has no causes; wealth has causes."

Rocky's License

Rocky Balboa can't figure out why he needs a license to fight. Neither can I.

Keep Mining Your Own Business

In today's Wall Street Journal, John Fund defends poor people from the self-righteous environmentalists who would deny these people the fruits of economic growth.  Specifically, John has good things to say about the movie "Mine Your Own Business" -- discussed earlier at the Cafe -- about a small Romanian village whose residents want a new mine built but whose non-resident environmentalist 'champions' object to the mine.

Here's the penultimate paragraph of John's essay:

"Mine Your Own Business" also contains interviews with leading environmentalists opposing other mining projects who display smug indifference to bettering the lives of poor people. In Madagascar, Mr. McAleer [the movie's host and narrator] finds Mark Fenn, country director for the World Wide Fund for Nature, who argues that the poor are just as happy as the rich because they smile more and that if Madagascar locals (who now earn $100 a month) get more money "they'll buy cases of beer, invite their friends, they'll throw a party . . . three, four days the money's gone." He then shows off his new $35,000 catamaran.

I close with the words of a song written and recorded by the late and truly great Hank Williams, Sr.: "Mindin' other people's business seems to be high-tone/I got all that I can do just to mine my own/So why don't you mind your own business......"

Mine Your Own Business

Yesterday, Karol and I attended a screening of the new movie "Mine Your Own Business" -- an entertaining documentary exposing the arrogance, greed, cruelty, and irrationality of many environmental activists.

One of these activists insisted that poor people really don't want better housing, better nutrition, and better education.  Instead, says the well-housed, well-fed, highly educated "environmentalist," poor people really prefer their quaint, traditional ways of life.

Martin Wolf and Deepak Lal are among the prominent, sound scholars whose comments enrich this film.

You'll find the trailer here.

Milton on PBS tonight

Check your local listings—Milton Friedman bio will be on PBS tonight.

Movie Economics

I've been browsing over at Art De Vany's blog. He has very provocative things to say about fitness, diet, sports and the movie business. He notes, for example, the parallels between movie making and pharmaceutical research--a few blockbusters generate an overwhelming proportion of the profits.

Here's an excerpt from an Orley Ashenfelter review of De Vany's book, Holywood Economics:

This is a remarkable assembly of two decades of Arthur De Vany's efforts to study the movie industry using the tools of modern economics. Okay, movie lover, if that sounds dry, what about a hard-headed, dollars-and-cents answer to film critic Michael Medved's question: "Does Hollywood make too many R-rated movies?" De Vany's answer: a resounding "yes."

His answer isn't based on a red state versus blue state discussion, but on careful analysis showing that, at the production rates in the period he examined, G-rated movies had lower risk at each rate of return than did R-rated movies. From 1985 to 1996, De Vany found, Hollywood churned out more than 1,000 R-rated movies. If it had made more than a mere 60 (you read that number right) G-rated movies in that stretch, De Vany asserts, the industry would have been far better off economically.

Hollywood Economics brings to the movies what some call the New Economics of Art and Culture. A key ingredient in his approach is what he considers the industry's key characteristic, what screenwriter William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, A Bridge Too Far) calls the "Nobody Knows Anything" principle. The basic idea: In Hollywood, a movie's revenues, costs-and thus returns-are extremely uncertain.

BTW, if you like movies, William Goldman's books on his career as a screenwriter are fascinating.