WTF is economics?
Economics is a subject I have no clue about. Therefore, I sat down to read some fundamentals today.
Note: This post wasn’t published till 3rd February, 2024 because I lost interest in it. It eventually got published (at the older date) because I didn’t want to just discard them. But it hasn’t been updated or completed.
“According to #Schumpeter, fundamental fields of economic analysis are economic history, statistics, economic theory and economic #sociology. Mastery in these fields is what distinguishes the ‘scientific’ economist from others who think, talk, and write about economic topics”. https://t.co/67Eh56CHo1
— Dolgion Aldar (@Dolgiona) February 26, 2020
I saw this tweet and realized that my understanding of economics is like an ant’s understanding of Euclidean geometry. So I asked for a book recommendation and received a paper. I tried reading the paper and realized I don’t even know what the definition of Economics is.
So, I decided to do a thorough search using duckduckgo and opened many many links for the term “economics”.
The Wikipedia article seems well written. It sounds like defining economics is like defining law. There are multiple schools of thought and many correct ways of looking at it. I like the Lionel Robbins way of putting it:
Economics is a science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses.
Economics is studying what humans do when they can do many things (especially with things of value). Economics is the generalization of “free will”.
This can be applied to individuals (micro) and countries (macro).
(I think, thus, the question of capitalism vs socialism is something that economics can help answer! Great! I knew this morning was going to be useful.)