Everyone has heard something described as a Rube Goldberg machine, but few these days know where the phrase comes from. It is from Reuben Goldberg, born 1883 and died in 1970: engineer, cartoonist, writer, and artist.
A book called Inventions (NY: Simon Schuster, 2000) collects his most famous material, mostly consisting of hilarious and overcomplicated machinery to accomplish simple tasks like turning a page of music or emptying out sand from shoes or closing a window. In a goofy sort of way, his works celebrates the inventor and innovator, and the problem-solving spirit.
Each contraption takes a few minutes to figure out, as the cartoonist explains to the reader the workings of each part. There’s always one implausible step that will guarantee failure in real life, but that’s also part of the fun. His work still holds up for both kids and adults.
What surprised me, however, was to discover that Mr. Goldberg seems to have been very solid on politics too. All the drawings in the politics section show government as the most complicated and unworkable machinery of all, that nonetheless does accomplish its primary goal of giving some people power at others’ expense.
The drawing to the right is perhaps the best visual description of central planning I’ve seen.
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Wow, that’s a lot of fun! Herbert Spencer’s description of government bureaucrats as “slow, stupid, extravagant, unadaptive, corrupt, and obstructive” instantly springs to mind. As does how Spencer’s sentence ends: “can any point in the other, vices that balance these?” From http://www.econlib.org/library/LFBooks/Spencer/spnMvS7.html.
Speaking of Art, it reminds me a lot of Popeye, as I never knew it was so political until I saw the 80′s (Disney?)movie, the musical with real actors, featuring Robin Williams. Very artistic, very inspiring too (remember that taxman?).
I wish I knew other movies from that director.
The director is Robert Altman, who also directed M.A.S.H. and Nashville.
Though to follow further in the vein of cartoons and economics, I don’t think anyone can top Carl Barks – the creator of Uncle Scrooge – whose comics demonstrate an understanding of economics that notably surpasses pretty much every contemporary poltical pundit. There are a few strips in particular that deserve note, one being “A Financial Fable,” which is a reworking of Hume/Rothbard’s fairytale of doubling the money supply (or in this case having a tornado redistribute Scrooge’s money to everyone else) in which case everyone, vastly “richer” than they were before, “rushes out to spend [their] new-found wealth,” only to find that everyone else has stopped working to do the same.
Or “Tralla La,” which delightfully showcases the breakdown of a socialist economy, or “The Golden Helmet,” which chillingly demonstrates the corrupting nature of power. Barks himself once said that “a little exploitation is good once in a while, providing you don’t hurt anyone else,” which I think is a wonderful summary of Libertarian philosophy – though I don’t mean to speak for him. Nevertheless, I think it merits attention…and praise
Thanks.
My wife keeps mentioning that quality of Barks comic srories all the time too, remembering all about Uncle Scrooge economics… not being at all a comic fan like me though!
Living in conservative Europe, my parents did throw away all U.S. comics they found under my bed, so I had to read them too quickly I guess. Those were prohibition times! They believed like most Europeans that U.S. comics were “bad taste”. (Later they paid to send me learn English in the U.S. however, so I forgive them. Now that I read English, I am able to import those original editions at much lower rates!)
HE WAS A GREAT MAN I SOOOOOOOOO GLAD TO BE HIS FREIND.
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