ichthyoid

Economics is a term that most people would relate to the study of money or finance in society. At least, that's what I thought when I was a still in school. And since I didn't really care (or want to care) about money, I had absolutely no interest in taking any courses relating to it.

Little did I know that often the adult life would revolve around it.

But the truth is that economics is far more like psychology and sociology, the former of which I did study at university. Both psychology and sociology, while dealing with minds and attitudes, regularly result in the study of human behavior. Psychology mostly focuses on the individual and how he or she relates to others, while sociology tracks group behavior and dynamics as a whole.

In the same way, economics is also a study of human behavior, but with a particular bent. The word comes from the ancient Greek word, oikonomia, which itself is two words: oikos, which means household, and nemein, which means management. This idea of “household management” or, in other words, the ways in which a person or group of people behave so as to get their life in order, is the crux of what economics is. While the ancient Greeks may not have thought of oikonomia the same way we think of economics in the modern day, the similarities in principle

And because most of us are attempting to get our lives in order all the time, I believe that learning simple and foundational economic principles is a helpful and beneficial way to improve them, just like learning a bit of psychology will often benefit our mental health. It's not always about money, but understanding the way people behave with money, as well as in society around goods and services, is a stepping-stone to augmenting our lives for whatever purpose we deem best.

I've talked about this topic before, with posts like Rethinking Money and Dealing with Debt, both of which were topics in my Be Your Own Bank series I first wrote when I started posting on Coil.

So, in a similar way to the Be Your Own Bank series, over the next few weeks (and probably months), I'll be taking a deep dive into the book Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell. Sowell is a renown author, philosopher, and economist in the United States, and has written an innumerable number of books on a vast number of topics. This particular book is an easy and accessible one meant to bring the principles of economics in an easier to understand form.

Hope to see you there!

Header Image taken from here.