John Papola visited Hillsdale on the request of the Praxis Club on Tuesday, Jan. 24. Papola with his production company, Emergent Order, produced two rap videos called “Fear the Boom and Bust” and “Fight of the Century: Keynes and Hayek Round Two” which colorfully depict the tensions between Hayek’s philosophy and Keynesian economics. Papola has worked for such television networks as Spike, MTV, and Nickelodeon.
How did you get started making the Keynes versus Hayek Rap video?
I reached out to Russ Roberts, an economist at George Mason University. He has this podcast “Econ Talk” which I was listening to religiously and basically learning economics from that and reading I was picking up randomly by recommendation on the Internet. I called him and figured I am a creative director in New York that should get this professor to call me back. When I called I left my website so he could see my work and see that I was for real. Working together, we didn’t want ultimately to demonize Keynes. We wanted to explore the ideas and eventually get the Hayekian view into the discussion. Russ had joked, “Do you know what would be funny? What if did like a rap battle or a rap song?” And I really latched on to that idea.
How did you recruit the actors?
My wife reached out on Facebook to friends and said, “Do you know any comedy rappers?” We decided that they should really look like Keynes and Hayek as best we [could make them]. It was just a leap too far to have say an African-American actor with a mustache. It turned out that these guys (Billy and Adam) had a comedy rap routine that had highly produced songs. The funniest thing is when my wife Lisa found them, she sent me to their Myspace page. I was like, “I can’t believe it! They look like Keynes and Hayek! He is wearing Hayek’s glasses!” There have been a lot of things that have been kind of meant to be.
What would you say the goal of the videos is?
The goal of the video is really two-fold. First, it’s to try to advance economic ideas and to try to be more engaging. I really think that it is the most important social science. Economics gives you a view of the world that makes you feel like you are looking into the matrix. And it’s not that you understand it. I think that economics well taught and understood, and this is very much Hayek, teaches you how little you know. I am a Hayekian, which I think is the second part. Economics is exciting and you should engage it as a subject and you really should check out the ideas of Hayek. They are very powerful. The guy did win a Nobel for his ideas. And that’s the place to start. See how thing stack up against each other.
Do you have any advice for people who want to communicate free market or libertarian principles as college students?
My advice would be to work very hard to understand the people you are talking to first. I think that is important for two reasons. One: you are not as smart as you think, so you have no ideas what sort of insights about the world you might gain from talking to people who have a different set of experience or point of view than you. And to think you know everything because you took Econ 101 or even if you have a Ph.D, is just not good econ. It’s not being a good Hayekian. But second, you can’t communicate effectively with people you don’t understand any better than you can communicate with people that speak a literal different language. We need to try to tailor our message to that. And even something as simple as putting these ideas into a creative form, even in a rap song. The form is as important as the function when it comes to how people receive a message.
