At some point, in whatever I got that might pass for a college education, I studied economics. The key thing that I learned in this process (aside from the fact that economics is bullshit and that I wasted my time learning about it in an institutional setting) was that economists love bow ties. While envisioning this post I was trying to come up with a way to show this objectively but I realized that would take too much time. However, I have met and talked with 4 nobel prize winning economists (Arrow, Sen, Stiglitz, Krugman). Of those, 3 were wearing bowties (those also happen to the be the 3 I argued with*). Basically, I’ve hung out with a lot of economists, so just take my word for it: They fucking love bow ties. This baffled me for years. Initially, I just thought it was because most economists have a functionally autistic** understanding of interpersonal interaction and can barely dress themselves but I finally decided that economists love bow-ties because they are more economical than regular ties. think about that.

* Arrow is a billion times smarter than I am and it was pointless but fun. For the record, he’s also one of the most hilarious and lovable people I’ve ever met. (vint cerfbeing perhaps the second most lovable person I’ve ever met, followed closely by, of all people, Douglas Feith (one of the main architects of the war in iraq)) Stiglitz is a million times smarter than I am but I caught him saying something stupid. Krugman is probably 5 million times smarter than I am and I didn’t get to talk to him for that long.

**These are people that are baffled by tipping