2013-09-06
Explanation
This comic depicts a scene in what appears to be an Old West saloon or a bar with a Western theme. A character announces: "Okay, I'''ve got a perfectly rational, perfectly reasonable proposition for you individuals." He then explains that they should consider that the cost of staying is worth ten units and the value of their participation is worth seven units. He presents this as a formal economic analysis, saying "Dear me..." as he lays out his case. Someone in the audience responds: "This is why nobody likes microeconomists." Another person adds: "It'''s not the ONLY reason."
The humor targets microeconomics and its practitioners''' tendency to reduce all human interactions to quantified cost-benefit analyses. The scene is set in a social environment (a bar) where people typically interact through charm, persuasion, or simple friendliness. Instead, this character approaches the situation like a textbook microeconomics problem, assigning numerical "units" of value to things like staying and participating. The joke is that while this kind of analysis might be technically valid in an academic setting, applying it to real social situations makes you deeply unpopular. The punchline -- "This is why nobody likes microeconomists" -- is a jab at how economic rationalism can strip all the humanity out of human interaction.
The votey panel shows someone reading a book by Gordon Tullock (a real economist known for public choice theory) and saying "Comedy gold!" with a caption reading "Earlier this week..." This suggests that the comic'''s author, Zach Weinersmith, was reading Tullock'''s work and found its dry economic reasoning so absurd that it inspired this strip. Tullock was famous for applying economic analysis to areas of life where most people would find it inappropriate, making him a perfect target for this kind of satire.