If you ever want to learn economics, just purchase books about entertainment and sports. It’s that simple. Considering antitrust alone, the whole profession could be put out of business by the memoirs and biographies written by actors and entertainment journalists.
All of this came to mind while reading Tim Matheson’s (Animal House, Fletch, The West Wing, Virgin River, etc.) excellent new memoir Damn Glad to Meet You: My Seven Decades in the Hollywood Trenches. While Hollywood swings left politically, its economic reality as revealed through the recollections of its leading lights makes a case for free-market libertarianism in ways that few professions do. And while Matheson happily keeps his politics out of his memoir (while perhaps giving a few hints?), his story doesn’t disappoint when it comes to informing readers in ways well-beyond what they didn’t know about Matheson.
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