Thursday, October 23, 2014

Herd behavior and individualism

In honor of blog posts that get at panics, animal spirits, groupthink, and how people tend to engage in herd behavior... thereby producing the conditions for crises.

As context: Monty Python's The Life of Brian is a switched-at-birth comedy about a baby (named Brian) who is placed in the manger next to Baby Jesus. Which leads to some people mistaking Brian for the Messiah. Here is Brian as a grown-up, trying to discourage his adoring followers.


Markets are full of individuals making highly individualuized decisions.

(All together now: "Yes, we ALL make individual decisions.")

Side note on comedic theory: your garden-variety everyday decent comic writers could come up with the central joke here. The genius of Monty Python, if you ask me, is the joke echo, the extra little clever punch line. That is, the last two lines.

No comments: