Economics is not about money

As I do, I like to start a section with a definition. Just so we know what we're talking about.

If you search a definition for economics, you'll typically see something like this:

1(n). a social science concerned chiefly with description and analysis of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.

But if we study the subject, we found out that at its most basic, economics is a study of scarcity and choice.

Scarcity is the basic fact that we can't have everything we want. We're going to be limited, by something be it time, money, effort, social pressure, whatever.

And when we hit that limit, we need to make a choice.

Take a look at this graph:

This is a famous economics graph called the "Butter and Guns PPF". Forgetting all the technical stuff; it represents a choice we need to make. We can produce alot of butter but few guns, vice versa, or anything in between.

Points B D and C represent choices that are at the limits of our ability. Point A is under. And point X is beyond our ability to produce.

One thing that economics teaches us is that what works on a large scale often works on an individual scale as well.

Whether we're a nation producing butter and guns, or a parent dividing our time up between work and kids, we all face choices.

In the parent example, we are limited by our time (and perhaps our sanity). How do we decide what are the right choices to make?

I'll talk about it in my next economics post, where I discuss the law of diminishing marginal returns.

The importance of creativity

As I enter into semester finals week of an International Business Management undergraduate, I will once again be tested on my ability to remember models, diagrams and processes.

Many of these I will never use in my future career. That is, unless queue wait time calculations and reciting leadership style categories from memory becomes an important feature of economics.

In fact, even if they were, it seems the ability to memorize these facts aren't really valuable in the workplace or life at all. The only time in the world we can't go and look for the information we need these days is during a paper test.

But we tell children and adult learners alike that they need to memorize to learn. Enforcing this belief however doesn't train anyone for success.

Sir Ken Robinson makes an inspiring speech on the issue where he says: "Creativity is as important as literacy". His talk can be found at TED.com.

His points are clear and should be common sense. Someone entering school today (2011) will be retiring around 2070. But history shows experts have consistently been unable to predict the future 5-10 years ahead. So, how can we know what needs to be taught?

The answer lies in giving learners the skills they need to teach themselves. I'm at a university where unfortunately the majority of students aren't able to research decent information on the internet. They are younger than me and they grew up with the internet. And they will be our future.

Much of what I learn today about business may be invalid 10 years from now. What anyone learns today may not be valid in 10 years. New unforeseen problems will come up, and new methods will be needed to solve them. And as change in our environment accelerates, our ability to adapt becomes more important. For every new encounter we meet, we need creativity.

If we teach our children today how to teach themselves, imagine what kind of future we might create.

Language learning experiment

There is a technique that professes with a minimum of 800 hours of listening in any target language, a person can gain reasonable fluency.

Automatic Language Growth (ALG) started in Thailand as Dr. J. Marvin Brown built on Stephen Krashens' idea of maximum comprehensible input. His theory states that through exposure to language in a comprehensible context, we can acquire language fluency without the need to study rules.

In short, we learn like a native.

A friend, Brad writes about ALG, amongst other things at his blog about Payap University.

David Long heads the ALG Thai program in Bangkok and his site can be found at ALG World.

For my part, I am announcing that I have officially started my own language experiment: Mandarin Chinese.

I have no training whatsoever in the language. And while it's no ALG, access to Chinese TV is the best I have. I'll keep updated at milestones of 100 hours, 200 hours, etc of my progress. My goal is to achieve 1000 hours over the next 4 years.

Let the games begin.

What is a traveling experientialist?

To begin the blog I felt it was appropriate to start with a definition:

Experientialism(n).
The philosophical theory that experience is the source of all knowledge.

Travel(n).
To go from one place to another, as on a trip; journey.

The definition of experientialism is easy. In this blog I hope to share some of my personal observations and the conclusions I draw from them. My history as an Insight meditator, or Vipassana meditator has taught me the value of learning through direct observation.

Traveling is a little more detailed.

As an Australian who has lived in France, currently living in Thailand, and planning to live in South Korea, I meet the definition of "going from one place to another".

But as an experientialist observer, the metaphor is often more real than the literal. To me real travel occurs in the mind, through a change in perception. We gain in experience and our mental landscape changes.

Living abroad gives a person opportunity to observe, should they take it.

This is my attempt.