Henry George, Swift, and Piketty go to the movies (premises discussed, but no spoilers)

Yes, I’m talking about Downsizing, starring Matt Damon.  If Henry George is right about exorbitant rents and land scarcity, of course the solution is to shrink the people, thereby creating in real terms more land (plus solving a lot of environmental problems).  In this movie, shrinking people to a few centimeters tall raises the value of a dollar by about 1000x — how’s that for a Georgist result?  The small people live in splendid houses, massive relative to their diminutive size, and can eat all the gourmet food they want because they need only a snippet of foie gras or for that matter a very small piece of diamond.  Yet they still must interact (badly) with the larger world, thus the Swift connection.  How about Piketty?  Well, the small people have trouble mastering nature or producing for the larger outside world, so they are dependent on their preexisting wealth.  The wealth to income ratio is remarkably high, and woe unto anyone who has to rely on labor income in the “small world.”

Then the movie starts!  It’s an uneven film in a number of ways, still for economics “food for thought,” or for that matter social critique, I haven’t seen anything nearly as good for a while.

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