For those outside the discipline, economics is notoriously boring. From personal experience, I can attest that economics rarely makes for tantalising pub talk with anyone but the equally dedicated.
 
Writing for the American Enterprise Institute, Arthur C. Brooks concedes that in the business of public policy, “boring” may be preferable. Inspired by postmodernist Andy Warhol’s declaration “I like boring things”, Brooks claims people must change their thinking towards the new and exciting. When it comes to public policy though, it is the old and reliable that serves the community best. Brooks uses the example of free trade as a reliable means of pulling people out of poverty, but is a policy that often gets overlooked.
 
The analogy with Warhol is certainly apt in this respect; many of the free-market economic forces that shape our world do indeed appear mundane. I have yet to see free-trade advocates gather with the same kind of energy and emotion as those at a Live Aid concert.
 
But if you scratch beneath the surface you will find that those economic forces are complex, often miraculous, and sometimes even beautiful.
 
Don’t believe me? Let us look at the common pencil.
 
Originally written as an essay, which now appears in movie form, I, Pencil tells the origins of the lead pencil.
 
Told from the pencil’s perspective, Pencil traces back its family tree, describing its origins from a number of sources. In fact, the resources and manpower that go into making a single pencil are truly extraordinary: logging, millwork, and mining are just a few steps in the process.
 
No single person could make a pencil from scratch. Pencil argues that “actually, millions of human beings have had a hand in my creation, no one of whom even knows more than a very few of the others”. This collaboration illustrates Adam Smith’s ‘Invisible Hand’ at work.
 
The humble pencil is a physical manifestation of human creativity, technological progress, cooperation and reciprocity, and many times, pure chance. The ‘miracle’ of the pencil’s creation is testimony to what can be created with faith in the free market.
 
The very essence of the free market is one of continuous human innovation. If something is mundane and appears ineffective, then new approaches should certainly be experimented with.
 
I am still not sure if discussing how a pencil is made counts as interesting pub talk (perhaps I, Whiskey is more appropriate); but I am certain that characterising the free market as “boring” either means proponents are misrepresenting its creative beauty, or the peak of human creativity has not yet been reached.