The Invisible Heart: By Robert Russel
The book combines fiction and economic realities found within society. It combines Romance and ideas of economics. The author uses the book to radiate economic polemic in the form of an imaginary tale. The whole book is about a romance story that is intertwined with the business and economic affairs of the day. Through Laura Silver and Sam Gordon, the book takes a confrontational gaze at economics, trade, and regulations. Both Laura Silver and Sam Gordon are teachers at Edwards Schools in Washington DC. On one hand, Sam represents capitalists whose main concern is profit maximization, which is one of the assumptions of an open market economy. Due to this, Sam believes that most regulations imposed by the government are not necessary and can sometimes be harmful and that humanity succeeds economically under economic freedom. Besides, he supports the opinion that business success is a virtue; the implication of this is that anybody with a capitalistic mind is free to get as much in business as he or she can get. This takes into consideration the sole goal of the increasing rate of sales and subsequently maximizing profits (Roberts, 2002).
While on the other hand, Laura Silver’s ideas are the complete opposite of those of Sam. She believes that where persons succeed economically or in business there are victims of such circumstances. In other words, she does not agree with Sam that business success is a virtue. The view she expresses gives the notion that as Sam sees victors in business, she sees victims of the capitalistic system. Moreover, Laura thinks that the government should give protection to the consumers and employees concerning the capitalistic market in which Sam greatly believes. The ideas of Laura are representative of a controlled economy where the government is expected to play an influential role. Again, Laura shows that the primary concern of economists is the need to get as much money as possible. She argues that the market gives more favors to the firms than it does to the consumers hence making the consumers victims of the system (Swanson, 2009).
The first chapter deals with two significant issues. The first is the supply of energy. Laura gives an analogy with pistachio nuts to discuss what is likely to happen with the world’s oil demand. The analogy proceeds in the sense that it explains how free pistachio nuts in a room finally become expensive and subsequently, it makes it cheaper to buy than take hours looking for free pistachio nuts with the inconsumable remains of the nuts. The applicability to the oil situation is that even the demand for oil for energy will one day shift from oil to other cheap sources due to the fact it will become more expensive and hard to extract oil from its deposits. The second one is the pursuit of wealth. In this case, Sam uses dollar bills of different denominations. He starts with the lowest value, places it on the table, and asks the students to pick. He increases the value of the dollar bill on the table and later on evaluates the behavior of the pupils. He compares that to the acquisition of wealth in which profit opportunities are great motivators of effort. It is important to note that the economic concepts explain what takes place in an open economy where the market is controlled purely by economic forces.
Important to note is that Robert Russel tries to offer a platform for debating the morals of capitalism. This manifests in the arguments of pro-capitalism Sam and the anti-capitalism Laura Silver. Laura states that capitalism is the root cause of poverty that people are now trying to fix. This scenario implies that capitalism of a free-market economy encourages individualism and everybody else is not much concerned with the economic wellbeing of his or her fellows who the government must necessarily protect (Fairclough, 2002).
The Economic Concepts in the “Invisible Heart”
Robert Russel’s book is a fictional presentation of certain macroeconomic concepts that are very relevant to current world economic affairs. Interestingly, these concepts are presented in romantic terms by the use of fictional characters like Sam and Laura, who are the main characters in the book. The first macroeconomic concept that comes out in this novel is a capitalistic market economy. Normally, a capitalistic market economy excludes any form of government intervention and the prices of goods and services are exclusively subject to pure economic forces. In this case, economic forces always determine the equilibrium between demand and supply notwithstanding the period taken to achieve the desired equilibrium. The arguments for capitalism are advanced by the author through the character Sam. However, the author tends to be biased towards capitalistic ideologies (Welch et al, 2009).
The other macro-economic concept counters the ideologies of capitalism; closed market system or government-controlled market. The author advances the ideas of this system through Laura Silver. Under a government-controlled market system, the demands and supply of products in the market are under great influence of the government’s economic decisions. Prices of commodities are not determined by purely economic forces but may be set by government policies (Brus, 2003).
There is also the concept of diminishing returns which is exemplified by future energy demands. The explanation here is that the exploitation of a natural resource may stop before the resource is depleted. This is given by an analogy of pistachio nuts given free to an individual as a birthday present. The pistachio nuts are placed in a big room and the individual is allowed to come with friends to enjoy, but the condition is that empty shells are not to be taken out of the room. The result of this was that day by day, it increasingly became difficult to find the nuts within the hip of waste shells which hid the nuts thereby becoming more expensive than when the nuts are bought from the market. The nuts were left because it became expensive to find them. The economic explanation of this energy situation is that as more oil deposits are being exploited, it will reach a point when the process becomes unaffordable; the result of this will be a shift to cheaper sources of energy. This economic scenario is explained by the concept of diminishing returns. Oil extraction has great returns currently, but shortly it is going to be costly to extract oil; meaning that the returns will be less than investments placed for its extraction thereby becoming capitalists (Hirschey, 2009).
The Book Summary
The title of the book is derived from another book titled “The Invisible Hand” authored by Adam Smith, one of the fathers of economics. The author uses economic romance as the title of the book to imply his love for the discipline of economics and also his love for women. Sam Gordon is an economics teacher at Edwards School in Washington DC. The romance commences when he meets another teacher known as Laura Silver who is a new teacher of poetry. Sam seriously favors the market-oriented economy and views the world positively in the sense that he believes everybody is made better off by the prevailing economic system. Laura believes on the contrary. She views the world a bit differently from the way Sam does; she argues that the poor become poorer due to the quest of the rich to get more and more wealth. The romantic affair between Laura and Sam develops as they deep themselves into serious discussions of the economic system they each prefer for the world.
Charles Krauss is portrayed as a reprobate of the first magnitude by Erica Baldwin who is the head of a Federal Agency. Laura admires being like Erica who is also an attorney. The economic ideas of both Erica and Laura are the same; they both regard Charles Krauss as an embodiment of corporate wickedness; this implies he represents the ills that come with capitalism (Young, 2003). The book progresses as it unveils the romantic relationship between Laura and Sam while at the same time exploring economic arguments that could have soured the relationship between the two were it not for the strong romance between them.
Conclusion
The book is a romantic way of introducing students to macroeconomics. It presents an interesting flow of ideas in a romantic relationship which makes it easy the understand economic concepts. The author tries to bring the opposing economic principles to the limelight by using fictional characters. Knowing that the ideas are opposing each other, the author keeps the argument lively by introducing romance between the individuals with opposing views.
There is a great balance between the two arguments since Sam brings out the advantages of an open market economy on one hand, while Laura also advances the reasons she believes the government should be involved in the market system; one of the reasons is to protect the workers and the consumers. However, while presenting both ideas, the author tends to lean on the side of Sam who is pro-capitalism. This tends to weaken the side of a government-controlled economy. The implication of this is that even though the author wanted to present the two sides of economic systems, he is a bit subjective on the whole issue by emphasizing the market economy. This weakness makes it somehow unsuitable in situations where students are to be introduced to both systems of economy.
Nonetheless, the romantic element of the book makes it entertaining and maintains one’s interest throughout hence allowing the reader to go through the whole book and at the same time understand economic concepts that feature in the entire novel. The most important thing about the book is the fact that students do not need much explanation about economics in the book since every concept is self-explanatory, relevantly exemplified, and easily understood.
Reference List
- Brus, W. (2003). Economics and Politics of Socialism. London: Routledge.
- Fairclough, P. (2002). AS and A Level Government and Politics through Diagrams. Oxford Revision Guides Series. United States: Oxford University Press US.
- Hirschey, M. (2009). Managerial economics. New York: Cengage Learning.
- Roberts, R. (2002). The invisible heart. An economic romance. New York: MIT Press.
- Swanson, K. (2009). Kaplan AP Human Geography 2009. Kaplan AP Series. New York: Kaplan Publishing.
- Welch, S. et al. (2009). Understanding American Government. United States: Cengage Learning.
- Young, S. (2003). Moral capitalism. Reconciling private interest with the public good. New York: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.