Russ Roberts over at Cafe Hayek, where orders emerge, posts this comment on the TV show Lost. The near cult following of the show has inspired lots of website discussion and analysis. Roberts comments on one follower who writes about the economics of Lost. In this viewer’s mind, Jack represents socialism and Sawyer capitalism. Roberts concludes:
One of the most depressing things about capitalism’s reputation is that many people believe that selfishness and greed are the essence of capitalism. I write about this at length in The Price of Everything (and The Invisible Heart.) Entrepreneurs are motivated by many things. Profit is one of their motivations–without profit it is difficult to sustain an organization. But surely you can make a profit and be a nice person. In fact, it is often the case that kindness enhances capitalist success while greed makes it harder to be successful in the marketplace. And you can get deep non-monetary satisfaction from doing your job well. We are all self-interested, but few of us are selfish. Most of us share with our family, our friends, and strangers.The person who wrote the Lostpedia article appears to think that what defines socialist is niceness and caring about others and what defines capitalism is being cruel and selfish. This is a particularly weird view given that there is no State on the island (at least I don’t think so) and little or no market activity–later on in the article it mentions that there is very little exchange.Maybe someone who is more familiar with the show than I am could edit the article to make it a bit less biased. The article at the top says the article has been nominated for a “clean up” for “better flow.” It won’t be an easy task–the structure is sort of set with Jack as the socialist and Sawyer as the capitalist. If you’re a fan of the show, take a look and see what you can do.
