To Be Continued

I told a guy I was studying economics. He asked, “what exactly is economics?” For a second I was dumbfounded. I eventually told him about my thesis research, and he gave me one of those “if it makes you happy” looks. But the question has stuck with me.

In my principles classes I realized economics just put terms to concepts I learned while working with my Dad in the grocery and video store. I was fascinated that you should sell reduced bananas for a price above the cost of packaging (all variable costs) but should not worry about how much you paid for them. I remember arguing with my father whose rule of thumb was always “something is better than nothing” about variable costs. He just wanted to get the bananas out the door. He always had a better understanding of the concept than I, but I knew the terms “sunk” and “variable.”

Then I got hung up on my social responsibility and went to graduate school “to help people.” I was subconsciously scared of “really” working. I was really scared of people like my Dad who understood the concepts better than I did.

At first I liked graduate school economics. My undergraduate calculus classes were paying off. I was matching calculus with economic concepts. But I soon missed the philosophy of economics. I got a little philosophy from reading Bastiat, Hayek, and Buchanan, and even Veblen, Galbraith, and Krugman but I was reading these books outside of class. None of my colleagues cared or had time to talk about philosophy. From my self-study of economic philosophy and a trip to the Philippines, I learned the best way to help people was to leave them alone.

But I was still scared of the “real world.” So I started the PhD program. I quickly became depressed. My whole first year I could never tell what was important. “Grades don't matter, but I am giving you weekly graded homework assignments. Neoclassical economics is worthless, but I am teaching it anyway. Publications are what matters, but you have to pass the qualifying exam.” I quickly learned graduate economics was about maximization of wealth given constraints. It was about economic tools. It was about drawing maps and measuring distances. It was not about creating wealth or breaking constraints. It was not about my Dad or stores. It was about economists. Instead of killing myself, I have decided to wait, be critical when possible, and hope things get better.

So in the past five years I went from seeing economics as this great tool to “help people” to saying economics is what economists do.

And economists bullshit.

But as Bono said “Some of this bullshit is kind of cool.”