It's A Wonderful Life II

 

Buffalo Girls

Buffalo gals, won't you come out tonight?
Come out tonight, Come out tonight?
Buffalo gals, won't you come out tonight,
And dance by the light of the moon.

Don’t we all want to lasso the moon!

45 years ago I married into a family from Tioga County, PA.  I spent many Fourth of Julys traveling from my in-laws home to see the see the Elmira Pioneers play baseball.  I shopped in downtown Elmira, Corning, and Horseheads.  While in college, I traveled to Cornell to root against Ken Dryden playing hockey against my college.  I toured most of the baseball stadiums in the New York-Penn League of baseball when it included the St. Catherine Stompers, the Welland Pirates, the Batavia Clippers, the Geneva Cubs, etc.  I am kicking myself now that I was so close but never visited Seneca Falls the inspiration for Bedford Falls,  especially after hearing the podcast, George Bailey Was Never Born.

My favorite movie of all time is still Casablanca.  My favorite Christmas movie fluctuates between Die Hard and White Christmas, depending on my mood.  But those are emotional decisions.  Intellectually, IMHO,  the most important movie of all time is It’s A Wonderful Life.

It is the movie cited most often by economists as being the best teaching tool.  https://www.npr.org/2023/01/10/1148144705/its-a-wonderful-life-bank-run-economics.

The movie intuited Nash Equilibriums before they were articulated by John Nash in 1951, where someone, e.g. George Bailey, blocks the bad impulses of some Users so that the rest of the Users can be equal.  Yes, the second act is a horror movie when George is not born and everyone can pursue their User Optimal. Yes, the first act is a horror movie where George has to accept something less than his own User Optimal to achieve a Nash Equilibrium for everyone.  But his is the price of achieving something approaching a System Equilibrium, and that seems better to him, and to everyone else, as is revealed in the final act.

The movie intuited that our reality is the exact opposite of what we would like it to be if you consider life to be complex. https://dbeagan.blogspot.com/2023/09/distribution-of-income-ii.html

I eagerly look forward to the new museum quarters being completed in downtown Seneca Falls.  My favorite  museum in the world is the Charles Shultz Museum in Santa Rosa, CA, and yes I have been, and am comparing it, to: the Louvre, the MFA in Boston, the Met in New York, the MOMA in Los Angeles, the Vatican Museum, the Rijksmuseum, the Getty Center, etc.  It is because the Schultz Museum loves its subject, and not merely its possessions.  And my goodness there is a great subject to love in It’s A Wonderful Life.