If you can understand this image, you could understand the economy :)
I think that I’ve chosen economics because I was not able to decide on a specific subject. In fact, the economy could be considered one of the most general matters among all, because it is related basically with all fields. In some sense, the economy is all and nothing. One thing that I discovered later, that is quite strange, is that for the common thought, the economy is something completely material: there are certain laws of the economy that cannot be changed, in the same way as in physics, and that’s all.
Instead, it is quite the opposite. At its roots, the economy starts from the collective thought of human beings, which depends upon the history, ethics, and culture. These elements are inevitably connected with human consciousness, emotions and physiological needs, which shape ideologies over time and are the basic drivers of societies.
A brief summary of the economy
A long time ago, ancient people started to divide labors and tasks, finding that cooperate was a more efficient way to save energies and to increase the chances to survive into the group.
This created the need to build solid relationships between people, which thanks to innovations and discoveries, are became more and more interconnected through each other, allowing for the born of different types of organizations, with the passing of time.
Every institution of the economy, which is the basic structure of the society, was born to answer a collective need, which was the need to manage relationships and exchange value through goods and services. This is why, in principle, the economy is about what individual people choose, or delegate to choose, to manage these things.
Then, with the growth of societies, it followed the increase of the need for trust, which therefore led to the creation of property and rights, or in other words, the laws, which aim is to regulate different points of view.
If laws can be thought of as the skeleton which maintains solid the structure of societies, money can be defined as the blood, which allows for easier communication between parts. Indeed, money is nothing else that an innovative collective agreement that “smooths” exchanges between people, or put differently, a tool that diminishes transactional costs increasing the efficiency of trades.
Century after century and innovation after innovation, first with the industrial revolution, then with the scientific revolution and the information revolution, the economy has shifted multiple times its point of equilibrium.
In the first case, the programmed division of labor jointed with the discovery of accumulation of energy, allowed people to not depend on the location of production, being able to transfer energy into longs distances. The scientific revolution instead, allowed the application of math to processes of production, increasing exponentially efficiency and productivity. Finally, the information revolution with the internet, allowed the connections between people without borders, increasing the rate of speed of innovations and the spread of abundant information, which lead us in the world we are today.
What I’m trying to explain with this brief summary of the economy is that all starts from individual action and thoughts, and then it branches into all the sectors of societies, which in sum represents the aggregate ideologies.
Meaningful resources for the economy.
Regardless of what are the individual ideologies, everyone at one point in life came across some resources that made him/her start to think differently. In this regard, I would share the most influential resources that have shaped my economic thought, and that allowed me to see things with another point of view. I hope that they will work also with you.
Moreover, I would say that in this article I would concentrate most on these resources, writing less and leaving more space for them, because I think they speak for themselves.
- The first one is titled “sacred economies” from Charles Einestein and talks about the more general fundamentals of the economy with an amazing simplicity. Here you can buy the book if you want to support him, or here you can find the free copy, while the following video explains what he is talking about.
- Another useful resource to understand how the economy works is called… how the economic machine works. And it really explains clearly what is essential to know, to understand the economy. This video will teach you in 30 minutes more than a specific university course could do in one semester. Here you can find the channel, while the video is posted below:
- Because of the fact that I started entering the job market in 2008, as the third resource, I would put a movie to understand the financial crisis.
In addition, if you are interested on the topic, on my Youtube channel you can find a good playlist that further deepens economics.
Meaningful resources for cryptocurrencies and investments.
As you know from my previous articles, during my years of economic studies I preferred to not deepen every argument, rather I tried to connect them all, to have a more detached view of the economy. As a result, I found different elements that are recurrent in each field of the economy. They are:
- Exchange
- Value
- Property/Rights
- Structure
- Equilibrium
- Trust
- Emotions
- Innovations
- Power/control
- Energy
- Information
- Math
Where each element taken in a group with other elements could be a rough representation of an institution. For example, taking the first three will give you the institution of money, taking the second three will give you public institutions and so on. However, note that they are part of a continuum.
Interestingly, most of them appear in the Blockchain protocol of Bitcoin, which I think is worth to give it a chance to investigate. Because it is a quite recent technology and because of the fact that it is continuously under development, sometimes it is hard to find useful resources. In the following list I would recommend some must-know authors in the field of cryptocurrencies:
- Saifedean Ammous: He is the author of “The Bitcoin Standard”, one of the most appreciated books towards bitcoiners. In this book, he talks about economic history and the way value is created and why Bitcoin could replace monetary systems nowadays. Here a cool video that gives a very important hint about the difference between the method of payment and unit of account.
- Andreas M. Antonopoulos: He has written “Mastering Bitcoin”, another pillar to understand cryptocurrencies. However, this book goes more deeply in technical detail, which makes it not suitable for all readers. He also has made a lot of useful videos where clearly explains some mechanism of the economy and Bitcoin. For example:
- Giacomo Zucco: Is an Italian speaker which talks about all the aspects of Bitcoin, starting from economic incentives to cryptography or distributed databases. Hence, is a very useful resource to understand the protocol, also because he has remarkable synthesis skills.
If you are looking to content more oriented to the investment point of view about Bitcoin, but also to investments of other assets you should look at these resources:
- Bob Loukas: is the author of the “4 years journey” video, which explains very clearly how do cycles work and what we could expect in the incoming years. Moreover, I found inspiration in the following video, to write some parts of my thesis:
- Chriss Dunn: He talks about the general roles of investment and how to start building the correct mindset to become an aware investor.
Meaningful complementary resources
After that, I would list some interesting channels that, at a certain point, enlightened me in something that until that moment I was unable to understand. These are some of the representative videos, but following the channels will give you for sure interesting insights.
- 3blue1brown: The author of the channel represents mathematics in a graphical way. Here you can find elements of algebra, statistics, cryptography and many others. For example, this is a video which talks about the mechanism of the Bitcoin protocol and its levels of security.
- Map of mathematics: An amazing video to see the maps of mathematics. Here you can have a detached view of the applications of mathematics in different fields.
- Statquest: It is a channel dedicated to statistics. The author brings to you exactly the passages in statistics to understand logistic regressions, machine learning, and others. Moreover, the author is very funny and make seem statistics easy. DOUBLE BAM!!
Finally, I would post other useful channels, which has an answer for all the subjects. But before, I will just put a great song, so you could feel comfortable when exploring these resources :D
And here the channels:
- TedEd: This is a channel dedicated to inspirational content.
- Freecodecamp: A channel to learn how to code freely.
- Kurzgesagt: A funny channel that explains curiosities with beautiful animations.
- CryptoGameTheory: And obviously my channel! Where you can find good playlists about these arguments and a possible way to be independent! :)
Page of support. (cooming soon!)
Resources where to find free material to study: (only for poor people, if you’re not, respect intellectual properties):
Final remarks
Now that you know something about me, it’s time to reveal my self. I am the guy in the middle.