Wit is a wonderful thing, especially when it’s both relevant and amusing. I’m convinced at this point that the most important insights we hear that shape our character and business judgment has an element of wit in it. Think about it.
So why it’s rare to use wit in our serious dealings? Certain mornings I wake up and decide to be wittier! And, I usually give up by the time I have my mid-morning espresso. To be clever and amusing is not easy. Just study the insights of Frédéric Bastiat, an economist born 200 years ago, and you’ll see how difficult it is to match his brilliant use of satire.
Monsieur Bastiat is best known for his essay to the French Parliament on behalf of candle makers. His essay talks about the “ruinous competition of a foreign rival who works under conditions so far superior to our own for production of light that he is flooding the domestic market with it at an incredibly low price”. The rival is the sun. His proposed remedy: mandatory shuttering of all windows. That, he claims, using all the standard protectionist arguments, will benefit the French candle industry. As a compelling statement of the case for free trade, this essay is hard to beat.
Noting the popular view that exports are good and imports bad, Bastiat thought if the best solution would be for ships carrying goods between countries to sink, thus creating exports without imports.
Bastiat also suggested that to divide out the limited amount of work available, people should be required to use only one hand, or even to have a hand chopped off. Brilliant! Missing the irony, France imposed a maximum working week of 35 hours a few years ago, hoping to parcel out available work.
Whether Bastiat was a great economist or merely a great communicator of economic truths has been much debated. In any case, writing about his wit more than 150 years after his death is no laughing matter.
..where I receive and entertain my guests
