I once read a fascinating short article by Arthur Foulkes contrasting traditional university economics with the Austrian school of economics and its best-known advocate, Ludwig Von Mises. It was amusing and confirmed my own academic and life experiences regarding most economists and what is commonly referred to as “that dismal science.” While Von Mises was not new to me, it was refreshing to once again touch a measure of reality in the so-called academic world of economics. The whole article was prompted by Foulke’s wife asking him, as a professional economist, what really is the study of economics? While his usual answers to that question may have satisfied his students, he knew they wouldn’t satisfy his own wife. They would be too turgid and untied to reality. He couldn’t answer her so he wisely chose not to. Leave it to the wives to stump both husbands and experts!
While studying economics at Berkeley I encountered my first of many-to-follow challenges of grades versus intellectual integrity. As I remember in the basic courses I got Cs which demonstrated my lack of ability to resolve the conflict. I had to pass but tried to tell enough truth to still pass. Many of you can identify with both my dilemma and my half-hearted response. Indeed, “this is B.S.” was used by me more in lower division college courses than even in my later experiences of street life in Berkeley in the 1960s. However misguided my reality-finder was in those days, even in the midst of cultural insanity my “smeller” did occasionally work. Big words or academic explanations can’t cover up the smell of confusion.
The Greek word for economics comes from the word “Ekios” which I discovered after I was released from the academic prisons. It literally means the study of how one manages the affairs of their personal household or estate. Now we are at least getting near the playing field. While the academic definitions define relationships between numbers, scarcity-value and human choices, they virtually never sufficiently deal with the elements making up those human choices. In other words, the reason academic economics is dismal is because wives know that it is unconnected to the real world. Wives have better “smellers,” as a rule, than the academicians. Foulkes, a married economist, had the good sense to see his wife’s enlarged nostrils as he groped for an answer that wisely never came.
Since Jan, my wife, has not asked me to define economics, I will boldly go where usually only single men and academic fools go; I will take a stab at it. Economics is ultimately about human choices, and the reasons they have made them, as they pertain to how they spend their time, energy, and resources. Okay, no cigar, but it certainly surpasses the bean-counters’ approach. Since I really do want to be in reality, I know that many of you are stretching to understand why I even bothered to write about economics in the first place since there are so many other things to spend our time on. Exactly. You have just confirmed my definition and why I did it. Real economics is about the study of life choices. Now you need never again be bamboozled by the experts. And if perchance reality eludes you once again, ask some wife to ask a question; reality may well once again appear and that’s the bottom line.
Principle Based Evaluation: The driving force behind economics is human choice.
For more information on the author, Dennis Peacocke, go to: http://www.gostrategic.org/
