 Welcome back to The FeeCast, your weekly dose of economic thinking from your friends at the Foundation for Economic Education. I'm Richard Lawrence, and I'm here with our panelists ever, Brittany Hunter, Dan Sanchez, and Mary Ann March. And we are coming off of a week where the highest grossing in an opening week film in the animated genre debuted. And of course, this was The Incredibles 2. They grossed in the opening weekend $188 million. And I know that we haven't yet had the chance to see it, but we thought it was an excellent opportunity to talk about some of the themes in this movie, particularly how certain people, all of us in fact, have special talents, special abilities, special needs, special wants, everything special about us, and that society tends to push those down from time to time, tries to make us less special. And that's a beautiful thing. And in the era of political correctness that we're talking about that is actually quite exceptional. And so we want to talk a little bit about that on The FeeCast today, The Incredibles. And maybe in fact, some of the stories that we have individually, for my part, I was a nerd in school. And when I look at The Incredibles, the original one especially, I think of the time when I was hiding the fact of my nerdiness, if no one was actually picking up on it, which I doubt heavily. And when I got to be about in the fourth grade, I started being able to let loose a little bit more with the fact that I liked Star Trek, and especially the fact that I was really good with computers. You could even say I was the superhero of my school when it came to computers. You were incredible. I was incredible. And so as I became to feel better and easier about letting people know that I was a nerd and got more comfortable with that fact, I actually started teaching a computer class. And that class was attended by people who were in my grade, people who were younger, teachers, various other people from the community. They came in after school and they actually learned about computers from me and a few friends. How old were you? This was in the fifth grade, so 10 years old. But still computer. I mean the internet was still brand new. It was brand new. I don't even know if any of our computers had modems attached to them. But this was a case in which most of the teachers were baby boomers. They didn't quite know how to operate computers. And if they did, it was very new technology for them. And by opening myself up and by letting people know of this talent that I had, I was able to create some extraordinary value for my fellow students and teachers and to get some recognition for it. What was the reaction from your peers? Were you picked on? Beforehand I was. Before actually doing the class. Probably picked on a little bit. Not anything big. And it was probably more in jest, right? Richard's the computer guy. I was called Four Eyes, right? Because I had glasses. And the computer thing didn't help. Four Eyes. That's really original too. I was going to say unoriginal kids. Exactly. So it reminds me of an aspect of the first Incredibles movie also set in school. So the son in the family of superheroes are the Incredibles. Dash. I think his name was right. Dash. Yeah. So his power is super speed. He could run at superhuman speeds. And he is on the track team at school. But because there is stigma against superhumanity in this world, there's even a law against superheroes. His parents tell him like you can't use your superhuman abilities. You can't even win the race. Like you have to slow down and do a close second. What was as best as he could do. And so it's similar, but like the jock version of your story. Right. Sort of. Right. And it just goes to show that like, you know, a big part of the story is like people who have special abilities, they have something to offer. And especially superheroes that they weren't able to help a lot of the people who needed help in that movie because of the stigma. Yeah. Well, there's that really poignant movie or poignant part of the movie in the first Incredibles where Dash is in the car with his mom. And she says that everyone is special. And he says that's the same as saying no one is special. That's right. Yeah. That's a great line. If everyone is special, no one is special. But that's a line. I remember my teachers always telling me in school, what was it? You're unique just like everybody else. And every time we tried to be special, that was kind of what was used to squash our uniqueness. You know, oh, you're unique, but everyone else is too. And so I'm curious, what was your unique quality that you might have had that really allow people to see until later? A lot of them. I'm loud. That will shock our listeners. But I was very embarrassed about that. And I think more of what that did to me was I didn't go into theater. I wanted to be in theater. I wanted to be singing. I wanted to be doing these things. And I was so embarrassed that they would make, all the kids would make fun of me because I was the loud one. I was the one who wanted to be center stage that I didn't. And I think I missed out on a lot of coping mechanisms actually in high school where time is tough, you know, in junior high because I didn't have those clubs because I was so scared of what everyone else would say about my talents. That is so interesting. So by the fact that you didn't allow your talents to be seen, later on you missed out on opportunities to sing, to act, to be on stage, and then perhaps maybe to get scholarships and various other opportunities that would have been given only to you if you had demonstrated. If I had done it, yeah. Should anyone ever call you a show-off? All the time. I mean, and that was a thing. So if I would win a speech contest or something, then it was oh, you're just showing off. Yeah, because that's another thing that Dash's mom says to him is that you're a bit of a show-off and you're really competitive, but you've got to reign it in. And that speaks to an experience of mine, not when I was a child, but when I was a teacher. And I was developing a game for young kids. And it was a competitive game. And I remember one of my... It's like a board game. It was like a... Not a board game, but it was like an in-class... Sort of activity. Activity, exactly. Cool. And one of my fellow teachers, she objected to the fact that there were winners in my game. And she said, well, you can't have winners because if you have winners, then you're going to have losers. That's so interesting. And that was something that was told to you while you're developing an activity for students to actually understand how to excel, what they could potentially excel in. It's amazing how there's a pressure in society. I know I felt it to strive for mediocrity. I never had the talent for singing that Brittany has, but I remember a couple of different things. One in particular that stands out in my mind is history in high school. I skipped a lot of school, but I still managed to do well in history. And my fellow students would discourage me because I would break curves and so they wouldn't get extra points on their tests. And so they would just say, just do worse. It would be fine if you did worse because then we would all do better. It would be fine if you did worse. That was a request for you to do worse. Right. For me to not do as well on tests because then they weren't getting curve points. But it's funny to me they didn't ask you to help them study. It was just do worse. Yeah. Yeah. And so when you glorify mediocrity, essentially, then really it hurts everybody because not everyone is going to be winning all the time at everything, but when people are striving against each other to compete, then everybody as a whole advances because of that striving, I think. And so at the end of my story of when I taught this computer class, of course you have your fifth grade graduation and they had a very special award that they gave to me. It was the Daughters of the American Revolution, Good Citizenship Medal. And this was something they had never given to anyone before in the school. And they gave it to me and I thought it was the coolest thing. Now a Daughter of the American Revolution. Still wear that with pride. But then about three years later, Microsoft of all companies had a contest for their Macintosh division and the winner of the contest was able to have a $3,000 Macintosh of their choice. And because I had done all the lesson plans in Microsoft Word and maybe Excel and maybe a couple other programs on the Mac, I got that Macintosh from Microsoft which at the time in like the late 90s would be totally unthinkable that you would have gotten that. But I think by putting myself out there and maybe opening myself up to the ridicule of some other students, friends even that might have said, well, why are you posing with a computer keyboard in your portrait for school, which I did do. That I did, I was able to actually go out and see some amazing things happen out of that. And I was the computer guy and was able to make some good money after school and doing that afterward. I'm always interested in what makes a nerd or a geek. And oftentimes it's just like being really into something. So it could be like a pop culture thing like Star Trek. It could be a technology or science thing. It could be so many different things. It could be an economics thing. Right, economics, exactly. We're kind of all economics geeks here. And so it just seems that like having a passion about something that you're too non-mediocre, it seems. Right, yeah. Well, we'll talk more about mediocrity, success, incredibleness, all that when we get back from the break. Hi, I'm Sean Malone, director of media for the Foundation for Economic Education. And I want to talk to you today about FEE's podcasts. You're currently listening to our wonderful FEE cast, but did you know we also have two other amazing podcasts for you to listen to each and every week. There's Words and Numbers featuring Anthony Davies and James Harrigan, where they talk about economics, political theory, and current events every Wednesday. We also have a brand new offering called the FEE Audio Experience, where we bring you content from our seminars and events held all across the country. You'll get to hear fascinating talks from speakers and panelists, which we'll make available to you right after each event. So be sure to check out the FEE cast, Words and Numbers, and the FEE Audio Experience right here on our homepage at fee.org slash shows, and also subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and Google Play. Thanks for listening. Welcome back. We were talking in the break about the fact that we have an amazing article on our website right now entitled, Incredibles 2 is making superheroes great again, and we've got a link to it underneath the video right here. So if you want to read that, please do so. But we were also talking about, in the original Incredibles movie, there was a particular scene where, well, I'll let you take it. So yeah, so in addition to Dash being repressed at school, the father, Mr. Incredible, was repressed in his work life. So instead of being a superhero, because being a superhero was outlawed, he had to work in a very bureaucratic insurance company. And this little cubicle. Right. This tiny cubicle, this tiny desk, and he's got this superhuman physique, and he's just like bursting out of the cubicle. And he's very repressed because he actually sees a mugging happen outside the window, but he's unable to do anything about it, and the government is actually keeping him from doing that. And he actually has like an outburst, a violent outburst. And it just brings to mind how sometimes when you try to repress the natural urge to excel and compete, that sometimes that ends up boiling over in destructive ways. Into neuroses, neuroticism. And point of clarification, Mr. Incredible, even when he's not a superhero, his name is Incredible? Is that right? That's just a superhero name. His civilian name is Bob Parr. Okay, all right, because I figured it might be a little hard to conceal the superhero, the incredibleness, if you were incredible. It's like being like Mr. Superman. Exactly. Well, you mentioned that the government was kind of putting some shackles on him, and it reminded me a little bit of the Kurt Vonnegut story, Harrison Bergeron, which actually does have quite a bit of physical and otherwise shackles being put on, incredible people. And I wanted to read a quick line from this story. The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God in the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. And the story goes into a series of vignettes and a series of stories of individuals working under this regime, living under this regime. The smart people have headphones that screech every particular time period so they can't think. The physically fit people who are dancing on stage as ballerinas or as otherwise dancers, they have weights actually weighting them down physically. And this was the way that Kurt Vonnegut actually envisioned that equality was finally here. We were making everyone the same. We were weighing down those who were better, those who were incredible, and we were making them all the same level as everybody else. Equal outcomes. Equal outcomes. And that kind of egalitarianism can have dystopian outcomes. Even in the Soviet Union, after the forced collectivizations of farmland, what you had was less productive neighbors actually expropriating and murdering, in some cases, more productive neighbors. And so that kind of egalitarianism, when taken to its logical conclusion, can be very ghastly. It kind of reminds me of just speaking of pop culture. I, Tanya, I mean, most of us grew up during that, right? Tanya Harding. I don't know what happened, apparently, but we all saw the competition let somebody take someone else out so that they could be better than them without actually having to compete. And that is a lot of what's going on here. Right, a lot of it is envy, it seems. Envy, yeah, that's what I was getting at, yeah. Yeah, and people trying to get an unfair advantage when they can't measure up. That's right, yeah. Well, and the envy aspect reminded me, Brittany, you were talking while we were preparing for the FEECAST about a book from your childhood, your brother's childhood. Yeah, the Rainbow Fish, the worst book ever written. The reason I think so is it's very much, the lesson of this book is mediocrity is what we should aim for. Really? It's the story of this beautiful fish, the Rainbow Fish, which as you can imagine is filled with color, beautiful fluorescent colors. And he has no friends because he's so beautiful is kind of the theme of this story. Nobody likes him. So no one likes him solely because of his appearance. Right. In order to make friends, the Rainbow Fish learns that he has to give a scale, one of his little scales, to every single fish in the ocean. So by the end of the book, everybody has one pretty thing and everyone is the same and the Rainbow Fish is happy because now people will talk to him. Now he fits in. Now he fits in. He's one in the crowd. It seems like the opposite message of the ugly duckling. Yeah, it kind of is. Because the ugly duckling is like, he's a swan and he's different, but the fact that he's different is actually something to be proud of. Yeah, well, and you look at the Rainbow Fish, I was telling you earlier, this was a little bit after my time. So the Rainbow Fish came out when my little sister was little and the climate did change. It did change from being individual is great to, oh, no, no, you want to fit in with everyone else. Well, that was my experience as a child was the message at first being, well, we're all different and that's perfect and wonderful because it would be boring if everybody was the same. And then somewhere it flipped and it became about equalizing and participation trophies and not making people feel bad and esteem of the self and how we all have to participate in that. Yeah, and speaking of self-esteem, it's really interesting for libertarian circles that Nathaniel Brandon, an associate of Vine Rand was sort of the founder of the self-esteem movement. But he was very adamantly against how the self-esteem movement evolved. So the whole like gold stars, he actually wrote against that by name, the gold stars and participation trophies type things that he considered that as an inauthentic source of self-esteem and true self-esteem was based on behavior and character and not just feel good talk. So Nathaniel Brandon actually compared real self-esteem, which is earned. It's actually done through exceptional work, exceptional skill, exceptional talent and capitalizing on those things versus fake self-esteem, which is when people just kind of patch you on the head patronizingly and say, you showed up today. Well, perfect attendance is one thing, but it's also just the attendance. And kids can see through that. And they feel probably not as good as how they earned it themselves, right? No, we've talked about that. A kid knows when they're getting a fake trophy. They know when they're getting best participant in some random thing. It's a made up award they have to give to everyone. What were you saying about your sibling? My sister was a cheerleader, which meant the one they stand on. She literally was just on her knees hunched over while somebody was standing on her, but she won best base. It's something. Is she still a cheerleader today? She is not a cheerleader today. So maybe that was a sign that maybe she should not pursue that any further. She still has a trophy, though. It's something to be proud of that you tried, but maybe not that you continued once you realized... The big piece of all of this is humility. Because I'm sure that Rainbow Fish was beautiful when he still had all of his scales. And it's not a great outcome that at the end he only had one pretty scale left and everybody just had a little piece of beauty. But I think that being the best and being special, that's fine. And we should embrace the things that make us unique. But it's also important to say having a special ability doesn't make me better than other people. Well, having one special ability doesn't make you better and then having one special ability doesn't necessarily mean that you have others that others cannot then do better than you can. So your point about humility is recognizing the things that you don't do as well and letting others do those instead. Yes. Which is an important skill to have. And a lot of times I think arrogance can actually be a sign of low self-esteem. Yes. Because then you're trying to sort of put on a show that you're not confident that your qualities will just shine through just through your everyday actions. You don't have to have earned anything to actually say this is what I've earned, it's just all talk. Maybe that's where some of the suppression of other people's special abilities comes from is that the people who are trying to put them down in an effort to build themselves up are trying to tear someone else down. So I did want to add one more note about Harrison Bergeron. So our friends at the Moving Picture Institute made a film a few years back directed by Chandler Tuttle and produced by Thor Halverson. And they have, it's beautiful, and you can find it online, it's called 2081 because this is the year in which the story is set. But the funny thing or the interesting thing about the person in charge of actually handicapping people is he's the United States handicapper general. So he's actually, it's a government post that has been developed to actually put the excellent people down so that they're all at the same mediocre level. And, you know, we don't quite have a handicapper general, but when we're thinking more of equality of outcome versus equality of opportunity, then we get closer and closer to that dystopian vision that Kurt Vonnegut laid out. And so we're going to take a quick break and we're going to talk a little bit more about the economic side of these ideas when we return. Africa is very rich in so many ways where it's starting with it's demographic, you know, we have such a young demographic and in my mind, youth is also the quality of our people. We have amazing people as well. So yes, it is true. Everywhere you look it feels rich. It's because it is rich. Yet, a lot of folks in Africa have not been able to accomplish a form of prosperity like we could see in other parts of the world despite, you know, offering so much to the world. So to me, it has been a puzzle for a very, very, very long time. How do countries prosper? And we're back with the FECAS we promised an economic angle to all of this and so we're going to talk about that now. So the things that make all of us unique and special, those are obviously valuable to us, to ourselves but also to others. And there's a concept in all of that called specialization that capitalizes on the uniqueness and the special skills of individuals. And in fact, one of our favorite economists, Ludwig von Mises actually talked about this, Dan. Yeah, specialization, especially in a division of labor. So Mises made the point that if everyone were the same then there would be no benefit to social cooperation. That is precisely because people are different. Precisely because some people are better than other people at certain things that makes it worthwhile for us to cooperate. And that's what actually the basis of human society is on. It's not really friendship so much that friendship and fellow feeling that that emerges later, but the basis of it is just the economic cooperation the fact that labor under the division of labor is more productive for everyone involved than isolated labor. Alright, so you're throwing a lot of big concepts out and you're putting a lot of credit on these big concepts. The very foundation of society is specialization and it is the division of labor. Let's take a brief moment to really define what those two terms are. Do you want to take a division of labor and explain what that means? Yeah, and I think you were great to put them both in the same sentence because you really can't have one without the other because division of labor comm is because of specialization. So if we are working on a production line and you are great at growing crops and I'm great at picking crops and you are great at, I don't know what comes after picking crops because I'm not a farmer but we each have these assigned jobs that we know how to do and we do them well and by dividing the labor this way we're able to make things extra efficient. We can get our product out the door into the consumer's hands. So by specializing or dividing the labor we are actually able to be more efficient and sometimes costs are able to be brought down as well. Right, so you don't have division of labor just on a whim it's done through the specialization, the best things that the individuals who are assigned that division of labor are able to execute, right, the comparative advantage to throw another term out there. And when we focus on a smaller aspect of production of a good or service we become better at it, hence specialize. And the beautiful thing about it is that in a sense everyone is special. One of the things that David Ricardo an economist figured out is that even say you have two people say you have a Superman and a Jimmy Olsen. Who's Jimmy Olsen? He works at the paper, right? Oh, he's Jimmy! He's the photographer, right? Yeah, the photographer and he looks up to Superman but he's pretty useless. Superman's just always having to save him and so you have someone who say you have two different tasks and Superman is better at both tasks than Jimmy Olsen. But the law of comparative advantage shows that it would still make sense for Superman to cooperate with Jimmy Olsen because even though he's better at both tasks, it makes sense for him to still focus on the thing that he's especially good at and leave the other tasks to Jimmy Olsen. Right, it's like we don't expect for maybe LeBron James to do his own taxes. He might be great at doing his taxes but we would much rather him play basketball and leave the taxes to accountants. Exactly. Because obviously he's got specialization in basketball. All the accountants with their green visors are much better at doing the taxes than they are putting balls and hoops and so hence the value that you get by specializing. You get LeBron doing what he does best the accountants doing what they do best, the cheerleaders hopefully not basing all the time doing what they do best. This whole fear of inequality is really off base because it takes competition for people to figure out where they are best suited in the division of labor. It's not that some people are just going to be losers in this game by being outcompeted out of everything. They're going to find where they're most efficient and that's better because it reminds me of National Treasure but he says a line about Edison creating the light bulb and he said he failed 2,000 times and he said he found I'm going to butcher this quote he failed building a light bulb 2,000 times but he actually figured out 2,000 ways how not to build a light bulb. By failing at something you're not good at you learn this is not my strength but maybe this is and to me the specialization is so closely tied with liberty because it provides me the liberty to do what I want but also the liberty to not ever do what I hate doing because I don't have to I don't have to make shoes and flip pancakes those are not my skills. And so this is a very bold statement to say that society rests on these concepts of division of labor through specialization. For instance I'm going home today and I'm going to see the arborist the tree guy who's going to hang from tree limbs and cut down a bunch of overgrown trees that I've got in my yard. I don't want to do that and society doesn't rest on that but there's so many other things that we each take for granted because other people do them for us that we don't have to do for ourselves and that has been sort of the case ever since society began ever since civilization began it is the beginning place that we have to cooperate with each other and actually in having this conversation it makes me think about that great Tom Hanks movie cast away where he is forced to be alone and he isn't able to work with other people and specialize and in the movie he has to cut out his own tooth with an ice skate because he doesn't have a dentist and he has to draw his own friend on a coconut or a ball right right the volleyball Wilson yes and I think that's just a perfect economic example of what happens when we don't specialize when he has to create his own fire and get his own coconut milk and it's not a fun life it's not enjoyable one thing I was going to say being on a desert island is not the way the world is for most of us most of us live in a world where we have the ability to specialize and to count on others whether through trade that we pay money or we barter or through the goodness of their hearts which is also possible that we depend on other people to get the stuff that we need this is the way the world actually is and it's an amazing thing yeah right hallelujah thank goodness so as we wrap up I'm looking to ask everyone here and then everyone watching as well the Incredibles they are the best people they could possibly be what would a world look like in which all of us were the best people we could possibly be would we still be trading with each other I'll just throw that out there we'd have to be but because we'd be trading with each other so much there would be peace by default you don't want to anger the person because you don't want to hang from those trees so it almost encourages a polite society encourages us to be more peaceful because in order to get that good from someone else we need to maintain a good relationship so even if we were superheroes we would still need a division of labor through specialization yeah and it depends on how we react to them do we react like the villain from the first movie syndrome where it's out of a place of envy where you just want to tear them down or do we react with gratefulness like some of the people that they saved inspiration where you're inspired by the superhero greatness to do as best as you can in your own way and that would be super it would be super it would be incredible so with that let's pause until next FeeCast and if you have thoughts about how we can be our best selves what a world would look like if we could be our best selves write them in the comments we'd love to hear what you have to say until next time we'll see you at the FeeCast