British comedian and actor Russell Brand has written a book named Revolution. It was published to general derision by reviewers last week.
In the past 12 months, he’s guest-edited the British political weekly The New Statesman, appeared on the BBC’s flagship daily current affairs programme Newsnight and been interviewed before a live audience by Owen Jones, a columnist at The Guardian of the UK. That interview was screened live at 200 British cinemas.
On the same day, Brand was interviewed over lunch by Lucy Kellaway, the FT’s star columnist. Newsnight devoted 17 minutes to another interview with Brand in the evening.
Brand’s one of Britain’s best-known public figures with 8.4 million Twitter followers. His appeal crosses borders. He’s been in four Hollywood films, none successful, and was married to Katie Perry, the American pop star.
The consensus among those that have read his book and articles and listened to what he has to say is that Brand’s political views are stimulating but impossibly anarchistic.
But there’s a universal thumbs down for his comments about economics. In her article about meeting Brand, Kellaway wrote:
“I read him a bit (of Revolution) I’ve underlined: ‘The economy is just a metaphorical device, it’s not real, that’s why it’s got the word con in it.’
‘People like shit like that,’ Brand says, evidently enjoying the reading.
But it’s nonsense.”
Brand admits he doesn’t understand the economics text books he’s attempted (including Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st century).
Reacting to a graph showing real wages in the UK since 1870 during the latest Newsnight interview with by Evan Davis, an Oxford and Harvard graduate, Russell said: “This is the kind of stuff that people like you use to confuse people like us.”
Davis laughed.
So should all economists dismiss his views on economics?
The overwhelming majority would probably say yes, but they are wrong.
Economics2030 argues that value is exclusively created by constructive interaction between and among people. The value created is subjective and only perceptible intuitively at the level of the individual.
This conclusion is based on a close reading of foundational economic textbooks supplemented by the work experience of the author in business and the media.
But service workers who have never studied economics instinctively know that this is how they create value in a way that merits payment in cash or kind. Teachers understand that they are more effective when there is a strong positive interaction with students than when there isn’t.
And the service workers that understand this best are entertainers, like Brand.
An entertainer, whether he or she is a comedian or a soccer player, knows that he or she can create no value without an audience to interact with. They know that the value created and shared in a live performance is intangible and immeasurable. They know that the response is based on the reaction of individual audience members. They know it’s not tangible capital like theatres and soccer stadiums that create value. It’s people.
And they know if they get it right, they can earn as much as the highest paid chief executive of one of the world’s largest manufacturing firms or banks. According to Forbes, no less than 79 sportsmen and sportswomen were paid $20m or more in 2013. The Forbes’ list of the world’s wealthiest people includes Oprah Winfrey, Paul McCartney and Bono.
Kellaway in her interview observed that Brand’s necklace seemed to include amethyst.
“How much did that cost?,” she asked.
“Who knows?” Brand replied. “I’m not interested in making money any more.”
This may be true, but a technically superior answer would have been: “A lot, but it’s the fruit of creativity not exploitation.”
In fact, the creative arts, often the last industry that economics seriously considers, is the place where the theory of value creation defined by Economics2030 finds its fullest practical expression.
And everyone that goes to the theatre, listens to a symphony orchestra, watches a film or attends a sporting event knows that these are all businesses and ones with more obvious validity in their personal lives than some – like banking – that conventional economists venerate.
Brand may not know the theory of service economics. But he unconsciously applies it in practice.
And his intuitive understanding that constructive human interaction is the key to both economic growth and greater equality compares favourably with most conventional economists’ attachment to questionably scientific economic models constructed on the assumption that all goods are either tangible or might as well be tangible.
Brand’s encounters with the FT’s Kellaway and the BBC’s Davis looked and sounded like a dialogue between people that spoke different languages.
It says something about the state of conventional economics that Brand, despite his evident ignorance of economic theory, actually makes more economic sense.