jurassic-2
Explanation
This comic imagines a business presentation about Jurassic Park, the fictional dinosaur theme park from the movie franchise. A suited executive stands before a chart showing rising revenue, presenting a cost-benefit analysis: the annual park revenue is projected to be in the billions of dollars, and since the "statistical value of a human life" is only about $10 million, the investment "remains viable" even accounting for the inevitable deaths.
The caption reads: "Economists do not understand the ending of Jurassic Park."
The humor works on multiple levels. First, it satirizes the cold, utilitarian logic of economics, where everything -- including human life -- is reduced to a dollar figure. The "value of a statistical life" (VSL) is a real concept used in regulatory economics and policy analysis, typically around $10 million in U.S. government calculations. The joke is that an economist, applying this framework literally, would conclude that Jurassic Park was actually a sound business decision despite the carnage, since the revenue far exceeds the cost of the deaths. This is a darkly funny inversion of the movie's moral lesson -- that some things shouldn't be done regardless of profit -- highlighting the gap between economic rationality and basic human values. The comic also pokes fun at the classic SMBC trope of economists being incapable of thinking in non-monetary terms.