Doctor Coffee. Issue 3 (Issue 3)

Author: Zhong Wei
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: If you don’t do pointless things, how can you spend your limited life meaningfully? Here, I recommend a brain exercise that is beneficial to both body and mind—learning economics. If you study economics but don’t do well, you still have a bright future. There was an international trade student who, after graduation, switched careers to become an actor. His name is Schwarzenegger.
Studying economics is very demanding. It involves building models, reading literature, playing with econometrics, collecting data, conducting surveys, and writing papers. From the beginning to becoming proficient, it takes at least five or six years. If you can master economics, there’s nothing you can’t endure. Moreover, economists often take pleasure in hardship. For example, there’s a paper that studies the price elasticity of the Dutch cotton market from the 16th century to the present, five hundred years of history—almost makes you wonder if the author has a self-abuse tendency.
Although it’s exhausting, studying economics is highly beneficial for shaping a correct worldview. The discipline has a profound impact on a person’s temperament. I suspect that someone who has studied psychoanalysis might even avoid looking directly at the Monument to the People’s Heroes at Tiananmen Square. However, I’ve never heard of an economist going insane—Nash might be an exception, so I’ve never considered him an economist.
Studying economics makes people optimistic and calm. Economists believe in the "invisible hand": when everyone pursues their own self-interest under certain conditions, it can inadvertently promote the public good. Even with the caveat "under certain conditions," I find this to be the most optimistic social thought I’ve encountered.
Learning economics makes you believe that there’s always a solution to every problem, and that solution doesn’t require us to overthink it. All it takes is recognizing the legitimacy of people’s pursuit of self-interest while skillfully guiding their self-interested behavior. Economics is full of clever wisdom, giving ordinary people confidence and happiness. Oh, almost forgot to remind everyone: studying economics requires self-awareness, because it’s only suitable for people with average intelligence and moral standards. "Angry youth" can’t succeed in economics, ambitious people can’t, people with too high IQ can’t, and those with too much compassion can’t either.
But if you study economics and don’t do well, you still have a bright future. There was an international trade student who, after graduation, switched careers to become an actor. His name is Schwarzenegger.