Lostonomics

I’m maybe an episode or two away from punting on Lost. Despite the writers’ avowals that they will avoid suffering the fate of The X Files, I don’t see how they can possibly avoid it. They’re writing checks that they can’t cash, and the backstory stuff is just getting tedious.

Anyway, for those of you who are still interested, and even for those of you who once were, I came across this site that spells out the economics of the Losties. It’s not too long, and it doesn’t require any previous knowledge of economics. Since I’ve been thinking about this issue myself ever since I first got into the show, I found this analysis pretty interesting.

In short, Jack represents socialism, Sawyer represents capitalism, and Locke (despite his namesake) represents some form of primitive tribal economics. The page also indicates ways in which these characters diverge from those economic types.

To my mind, they’re mostly on target with Jack, although it might be more accurate to say that he is simply an authoritarian, and one of the ways that manifests itself is through the distribution of goods and resources. This has been one of the infuriating things about his character. If I were a Lostie, I would chafe under his heavy-handedness, especially when he makes such terrible decisions (think: if there’s one doctor on the whole island, why would we send him off to do the really dangerous work?). Not only does he want to control the distribution of resources, he also wants to control information (and he’s not alone in that regard). That’s a pretty good recipe for failure.

There are similar economic questions to be asked of Battlestar Galactica. How they can produce things like clothing, light bulbs, paper and ink? What do they use for currency? How do they procure and distribute public goods among the fleet? Are they recording or transmitting specialized forms of knowledge (like medicine)? But I try not to let questions like that get in the way of my enjoying the show.