The latest of Bitcoin copies and/or spoofs (after Litecoin, Altcoin, Peercoin and Dogecoin) is Coinye, featuring a nice portrait of Kanye West as a big fish.
But why get in late in the game like a sucker, when you can just buy a starting kit and start your own cryptocurrency?
A textbook on macroeconomics* that I’m reading spelled out a link to a video that recounts the controversy between Keynesian and Hayekian economics.
I was curious as to why a textbook would recommend a Youtube video, so I painstakingly typed the url into my web browser, and lo and behold:
The use of such a silly format to explain such a complicated subject matter results in a kind of dry humor that I love. Also, for the first minute or so of the video, I thought that the depiction of alcohol and bars was just normal parody of regular rap videos, but when it got to the hangover part I realized that it was a metaphor for bubbles and spending frenzies. Pure genius!
However, do note that the video is not completely neutral.** While the arguments of both sides seem to be fairly represented (as far as I can tell), the creators sympathize with Hayek, which is apparent in the imagery. Keyenes is portrayed as the over-confident and overrated superstar, while Hayek is the humble but sensible man who is right all along (he is still standing up while Keyenes moans in the hangover following his spending-fest).
*Yes, the textbook is serious, and also very good. It’s Klas Eklund’s Vår ekonomi (2013).
**It seems almost impossible to find unbiased information about economics. I guess the very subject matter makes it difficult to remain apolitical; economics is, after all, about the distribution of wealth. Interestingly, Eklunds book addresses the fact that the vast majority of economists seem to be in favor of the free market. He claims that it is the logical conclusion of studying economics, kind of like how all biologists “believe” in evolution (my example, not his). If you learn economics, you will see through both logical models and historical examples that price regulations and subsidies generally create problems. I don’t know any reason to disagree.
Sannas academic blog 