As I stated in yesterday’s memo, I’m trying to keep up the practice of doing these posts to practice my dictation. I have learned from several false starts that dictation as a source of input requires much more mental discipline than I had initially conceived. The benefits, however, far outweigh the effort it will take to become good at this practice.

This morning, I watched several videos explaining different aspects of market economics. They range all over the place regarding quality, but they provide some insight into how to explain or not explain economic concepts.

Just saying the word “economics” causes many people to shut down. They seem to think that economics consists of a subject only of interest to eggheads who want to talk to other eggheads, somewhat like the subject of cosmology. Who among us common folk understands the movement of stars, planets, and other celestial bodies? We just have to get on with our lives.

“Getting on with our lives” is really what economics is all about. When you decide to eat Cap’n Crunch instead of oatmeal, you have made an economic decision. When you go to the grocery store with peaches on your grocery list, and you find the peaches are all rotten, you make the economic decision to either buy something else or save your money for another day. In other words, economics deals with the exchanges we make throughout our lives.

Where most discussions of economics become complicated is one people begin to discuss what we commonly refer to as “macroeconomics.” To my way of thinking, macroeconomics is rife with the errors of abstraction and aggregation. Collectives (a figment of people’s imagination) do not buy peaches; individuals do.

I want to convince people that if they have an interest in living life, they also have an interest in free-market economics.

Jim Berger