After we sent off your ship, we realized we could use the infinite energy drive and

super robots we built your vessel with to clean up the planet.

it's just easier.

Easier?

I mean clearly if we can build flying solar-powered laser robots we can figure

out how to recycle aluminum.

Our bad. Sorry. Hopefully, you haven't been drifting through space for seven hundred

years or anything.

Oh, also, according to our calculations human life on your spaceship will become

unsustainable once your robot's achieve sentience and

decide to murder all of you. Just FYI.

Unsustainable? What?

Now, if you'll excuse me, technology has become so

awesome in your absence that I'm gonna go play X-Box with a holographic dolphin and

Kate Upton Bot. Adios!

Hello! I'm Andrew Heaton and you're watching EconPop,

the show that scans the ravage wasteland of a popular culture to find the seedling of

Economics within.

Today were diving into my favorite romantic film, WALL-E.

Of course, the fact that I can only relate to the romantic feelings of a cartoon

robot may explain why I'm single.

But i digress. After all, this is not

just to robo romcom. It's also a tragedy. A tragedy

of the Commons. WALL-E opens in a post-apocalyptic landscape of abandoned

buildings

rusting machines and towering piles of garbage but this isn't modern-day

Detroit

It's Detroit in the year twenty seven hundred. Or it could be.

In Pixar's vision of the future, the entire earth has been transformed into a

smoldering wasteland,

ravaged by pollution and the excesses of consumerism.

Things are grim. Robocop grim.

Operation cleanup has well....

failed.

What you know, rising toxicity levels have made life unsustainable on Earth.

But it isn't all doom and gloom on Planet Pixar. WALL-E has an adorable,

disgusting cockroach companion.

He has a hobby collecting shiny junk. He even has a VHS copy of the 1969 musical,

Hello Dolly. Which he learns essential life skills like dancing,

and donning a top hat.

Now, WALL-E the robot is a technological wonder just as WALL-E the movie is an

innovative piece a digital filmmaking.

However, the film's dystopian vision of overpopulation, resource depletion and

societal collapse,

is centuries old and has been repeatedly refuted.

Too much garbage in your face? There's plenty of space out in space.

BNL Starliners leaving each day. We'll clean up the mess while you're away.

For example, in the 1890s economists predicted that if New

York City continued to grow,

it would literally drown in pony poop in 30 years. Back then, shipping,

transportation, and glue production all relied on horsepower.

Experts envisioned canals of manure criss-crossing Manhattan and

exorbitant still prices to boot. But they failed to imagine automobiles

and electric streetcars and flying recliners, which as everyone who has watched

WALL-E knows

will be an integral part of our future transportation infrastructure.

Humans are great at projecting today's problems into tomorrow,

but we're terribly at foreseeing the solutions we will ultimately come up with

along the way.

USB drives have saved more trees in the last 10 years than Arbor Day campaigns have.

History teaches us that technological progress doesn't just make us richer it

makes our world cleaner as well.

Does that mean everything's hunky-dory? Not quite.

In real life, we do see garbage in gutters and public parks and

pretty much every reality television program. Yet you hardly ever see litter in

peoples front yards.

Why? In a nutshell people tend to take better care of things they own.

Have you ever washed a rental car. Not me. I use rental cars to transport exotic

animals across state lines.

I don't clean up after the emu when I'm done. Whenever one owns something collectively

nobody has an incentive to take personal responsibility for it.

Imagine a common room in a dormitory or the stairwell at

my apartment complex. In WALL-E,

Earth's orbit is littered with space junk. Nobody owns the exosphere so

who's gonna clean it?

When a resource is commonly shared there's nothing to stop me

or you or anyone from exploiting it. This is known as The Tragedy of the

Commons.

everyone takes nobody has an incentive to be a steward. The result is a world

like the one we see in WALL-E.

Out there is our home. Home, Otto.

And it's in trouble. I can't just sit here and

do nothing. That's all I've ever done. That's all anyone on this blasted ship has ever done.

Nothing!

One solution is to introduce private property rights.

Logging companies don't cut down their trees without planting new ones.

Cows are plentiful despite the popularity of hamburgers.

Whereas lions and unicorns are in danger.

Property and the opportunity to profit from it

actually promote sustainability. Another big theme in WALL-E is consumerism.

You can feel free to lambast consumerism if you're watching this

video on some kinda

do it yourself hand-carved on Amish smartphone. Otherwise, let's just admit we

all like buying stuff.

There's nothing wrong with buying books or shoes or fun movies about robots.

Do I believe that gadgets are the most important thing in life?

No. Am I glad I have a microwave? Of course.

I'm a bachelor. I would starve to death without one but the film imagines that

consumerism and technology

ultimately strip away our humanity. Sure, some people do become lazy and worthless

when given the opportunity.

I've seen it. I was in a fraternity but I think

most human beings want to live purposeful lives. All of human history is

a story of people reaching for new heights

just as they attain formerly unimaginable ones. A good many of humans use

the leisure time they gain from technology to be creative or social.

Because when you don't have to spend your days churning butter or hand

washing all of your clothes or

hunting and killing whatever kind of animal producers denim, you can dedicate

yourself to higher pursuits

like writing e-books about werewolf romance or bonding with your family

or bonding with your secret family. Or even making movies about robots.

I wanna live in a clean planet with fresh air and plentiful animals that i can

trap and befriend or eat.

but I also know that the world is going to need among other things

technology and commerce.

Otherwise, who gets around to building WALL-E?

And now it's time for everyone's favorite part of the show,

Subjective Value. Where we invite an economist to discuss the film.

Today, Julian Simon

Oh, Paul Ehrlich, I saw you on the Johnny Carson

talking smack about resource depletion.

When it comes to prices you say that the sky is the limit.

You say that space is the place. Well, I've got a bomb to drop on you, Paul Ehrlich.

A knowledge bomb. I'm throwing down the gauntlet

read my lips, the price of tin, tungsten, copper, chromium, and nickel is gonna

dropppp

and when the dust settles, Ehrlich, I'll see you

September 29, 1990

at the Cato Institute

4 Stars

Well, that's our show.

Thanks for watching. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel. You can download

the EconPop podcast with economists Steve Horowitz,

professor of literature, Paul Cantor and myself. Available on iTunes.