How I came to be interested in economics
For too long I lived my life believing that economics was boring. The small pieces of economy news I got from TV and papers was rich in numbers and descriptions of specific events but thin on information about the larger picture. That changed when one day July, coincidentally the first day that the iPhone was on sale here in Sweden. I was in line outside a store for a few hours in the morning and while I was waiting I was listening to podcasts of the radio show This American Life. One specific episode caught my attention, and that was a one hour program dedicated to trying to explain the subprime mortgage crisis called The Giant Pool of Money. I found the story incredibly fascinating and when I had listened to the end I wanted more. So I looked around, primarily for podcasts with economy news, explanations and commentary and I found lots of interesting stuff. I followed NPR Economy News and learned a bit here and there, and then, when the real crisis hit in mid September I was hooked.
I found the Planet Money podcast from NPR that has been producing almost daily episodes. The length suits the bike ride down to the office almost perfectly. In addition to that I’ve been listening to Bloomberg on the economy which has had some really interesting stuff. Both programs mainly interviews different kinds of experts and ask them questions about current events in the financial and political system. That, combined with some blogposts and online newspaper articles has opened my eyes to a whole new world of knowledge. The world economy is such a complex machinery, with interactions that no one can fully understand but at the same time something that affects us all in many ways every day.
One thing that struck me when thinking about this is how much more difficult it would be to acquire the same amount of knowledge 15 years ago. I can now learn complicated stuff about how intra-bank lending works or doesn’t work and hear expert opinions about the levels of interest rates for free, without the need to have a higher education in economics or subscribe to any publications.
I think that this new easy access to massive amounts of knowledge and explanations of complex systems is something of a radical change in the pace of the development of the human race. Thinks might look depressing right now, when many people are talking about a world recession, but in the long run I think that the fact that the barriers to access to knowledge has lowered so much in just the last years will make life on this planet much better in years to come. That thought makes me happy.
Filed under Economy |2 Responses to “How I came to be interested in economics”
Leave a Reply
I dessa tider när handikappanpassning ligger högt uppe på dagsagendan tycker jag att det låter som en underbar sak i linje med tidsandan att människor som har ett osedvanligt stort behov av intellektuell stimulans kan få det på vägen till jobbet. Så att om ingen av hjärnorna på jobbet ger det livsnödvändiga så kan ändå dessa udda personer få sin livgivande näringstillförsel.
För 15 år sen gick inte samma sak… Intressant nog är jag själv 14 år äldre än bloggaren och vet knappast ens vad en iPhone är. Har varit så trött i hjärnan i många år att förmågan att lära sig nytt inte har existerat. förutom att jag varken haft så mycket pengar eller intresse för det nya tekniska. Visst är det intressant att få lite insikt om vad de moderna grejerna kan användas till!
Jag blir förstås också glad över att få veta att möjligheterna att bilda sig själv verkligen ökar i snabb takt! De vanliga skolorna och utbildningarna är väldigt ofta inte särskilt bra. Jag kan tycka att det är deprimerande att tänka på hur många år jag har tillbringat i skolor som oftast har lärt mig så lite… När folks eget intresse och kunskapssug är vad som driver så går det oftast mycket fortare än när någon dirigent som ska ha kontroll över det hela håller i taktpinnen.
Inte vet jag om jag kommer att fullfölja den universitetsutbildning som jag har halvfärdig. Jag har upptäckt att en del vad som drev mig dit är att jag har ett behov av intellektuell stimulans. Att det behovet kan tillfredställas minst lika bra på andra sätt har jag förstått.
Intressant också att du kom att skaffa dig den här insikten om hur ekonomin fungerar just nu…
You seem to me being a genious, Noa!
Probably I’ll be interested to read your analysises on economic matters here in the future. In case I’ll understand more of it than your programming things… Of course that isn’t at all sure… maybe that’s for those who had spent at least some effort on the field?
Or possibly the opposite? Maybe your capacity to get an overview of it very quickly also makes you able to explane things in a new way, not beeing stuck in the normal structures so the listener has to know all the standard things, but give an overview we usually don’t get?
I’m not at all learning the subject. It’s not really my thing. I focus differently. But I suppose maybe this subject will be just more and more in the top of the news? More and more of us will be frustrated by the small pieces of information that don’t give any picture of anything as a whole.
As a priest said in a sermon I heard a few months ago: All these changes on the stock is governed by two kinds of feelings: Fear and Gried.
Can it possibly be true we need an owerview of a different kind to raise different kinds of feelings and behaviours that can guide us to find new solutions? New solutions that may be needed to find new ways to adopt out of crises?