How should economics inform government interventions? July 3, 2026

**SPEAKER_2** (0:02)
A LISTNER production.

**Scott Phillips** (0:04)
Shares, the S&P, the ISX, stocks.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:07)
This is Motley Fool Money.

**Scott Phillips** (0:09)
Welcome to Motley Fool Money, where we try to see the economic side of without everything, most things, or should we?
I'm Scott Phillips from the Motley Fool. He is Andrew Page. He's the man behind strawman.com. He really is strawman.com. In fact, if you look up strawman.com online, you will see a photo of Andrew Page. I'm not sure if that's true, actually. It might be true, and it is true. It should be true.

**Andrew Page** (0:30)
It might be true, and I'm like, really?

**Scott Phillips** (0:33)
They've seen that photo? Can I paint a word picture of a photo you once did and left us with at the Motley Fool?

**SPEAKER_2** (0:41)
Maybe.

**Scott Phillips** (0:43)
Do you remember the photo in question?

**Andrew Page** (0:45)
Probably.

**Scott Phillips** (0:46)
How I went backwards skateboard? Am I painting your picture?

**SPEAKER_2** (0:50)
Yes.

**Scott Phillips** (0:51)
I don't even know the actor's name nor the movie. Would you fill our audience in just for the humorous...

**Andrew Page** (0:56)
Is it Steve Buscemi?

**Scott Phillips** (0:57)
Oh, it is.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:58)
Well done. Buscemi?

**Scott Phillips** (0:59)
B-U-S-C-E-M-I, yeah, yeah.

**Andrew Page** (1:01)
Yes. I don't know what it's from. I don't know. It might have been a show, but he was trying to pass off as a kid, as obviously a middle-aged man with his cat backwards and a skateboard over at the shoulder.
I don't know what it was, but for some reason, I'm still compelled to emulate that shot for something we would talk about in the office.

**Scott Phillips** (1:22)
It was pretty funny. The line was, how do you do, fellow kids, which is, you know, there's a photo of Andrew Page somewhere. I could probably find it, but I won't.

**Andrew Page** (1:29)
No, you don't. No, no, no.

**Scott Phillips** (1:30)
No, just for the fun. 30 Rock, apparently, seems to have come from.

**Andrew Page** (1:34)
Okay, there you go. There you go. There you go. That makes sense.

**Scott Phillips** (1:37)
All fine.
So this is the first of our pre-recorded podcast episodes while I'm away for my road trip, and of course, all podcasts are pre-recorded, it's a usual joke. And we threw out a call for some topic suggestions from our audience. And we got lots of them, which is great. Some are kind of just stuff we'll do in Mailbag, which is awesome because we love having a full Mailbag to go for. And then there's probably one or two where we've had people throw us a topic that we kind of thought maybe this is something that actually needs or deserves, can benefit from a bigger conversation. So this is going to be a study of where economics works and maybe where it doesn't or at least where it doesn't work as perfectly as it might. And this is kind of, we're going to try desperately to, we all bring our own ideologies and philosophies and biases to the table, consciously and subconsciously. So we will start recognizing that. But we're going to try and kind of rather than saying, oh, well, government this, government that, or you know, all this, all of that, try and kind of work through areas where it may or may not work as well as intended, which doesn't necessarily mean that the market's right or wrong, but there's free market, there is market with guard rails, there is government regulated market, then there is government provision, and there's probably subsets of all of those things. But it comes from a question from Geneveive. So Geneveive wrote, hi Scott and Andrew, I'm responding to your recent call out for topic ideas that are not time sensitive for your main Friday podcasts. I loved your episodes on Sound Money.
Oh dear, oh, it's okay, I was lucky.

**Andrew Page** (3:08)
It's a mind virus, Geneveive.

**Scott Phillips** (3:09)
Well, I welcome further discussions like, oh no, of this and other broad economic topics. So I'm gonna take the latter bit, Geneveive, thank you. Like you, she says, I'm an economics nerd, we all the best of us are, and can't get enough of macro, micro and behavioral economics. My topic suggestion, a deeper discussion of where free market capitalism does not work from both, this is interesting too, political and investing standpoints. Take for example, my industry, healthcare. As a doctor, it is obvious to me that health economics violates the foundational rules of classic economics. Healthcare is characterized by unpredictable demand, extreme information imbalance, and the necessity of care for survival. The key reasons, she says, a free market approach struggles in healthcare include, firstly, inelastic and unpredictable demand. You cannot shop around for the best price when you're experiencing a medical emergency. Because consumers will pay virtually any price to avoid severe illness or death, traditional price competition breaks down.