Radio Australia Today Editorial

Keynes versus Hayek, the YouTube sensation

3 February 2010

My, education has come a long way since the days when Mr Keast in 6th class used chalk, blackboards, dusters and a Gestentner copying machine to teach us that Tirana was the capital of Albania.

Mr Keast would never have heard of the internet, nor would he have known of hip-hop.

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 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