Stick men. You come across them all the time. They’re on road signs, they illustrate points. They don’t complain, they just live in a strange world that we create for them. But, if the situations we created for stick men were real, what would the economics be like?

Firstly, stick people are stuck in one situation. They live in a certain world and cannot move from it. There are no additional inputs beyond what their creator imagines for them. If there is a sketch of a shop in stick world; that is the only shop. As far as an economist is concerned, this is a monopoly situation, creating high prices in stick world. With all of these high prices, it can be assumed that stick-land is reasonably wealthy to be able to keep up.

Next, all stick people look the same. This is terrible for the fashion industry in stick land, except for the occasional hat.

Obesity is very rarely an issue, implying a healthy dieting regime. Thus the workforce can be expected to be highly productive; this may help to lower the high prices from lack of market fluidity.

No racism.

A derivative culture. New ideas come from the outside world and not the inside. A lack of creativity within stick world, a lack of stimulus but an incredible adaptability to change to meet new situations, even bizarre ones drawn by children.

So stick people are uncreative but hard working, adaptable, wealthy, non-racist and have no fashion sense.

Like a seeing-eye dog, or maybe Gimli a bit after getting over his elf-issues with Legolas.

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