The core ideas of economics - FreeEconHelp.com, Learning Economics... Solved!

9/12/10

The core ideas of economics

As every aspiring economist will tell you, the problem begins with scarcity.

Scarcity is the heart of all of our problems (at least from our perspective).

We all have unlimited wants, but only a finite amount of resources. It is because of the scarcity of resources that we need some sort of process to help us decide hell to allocate these resources. This is where the study of economics becomes important.

For example, we could choose to divide everything equally among everybody (equality). Or we could decide that the strongest get the most (anarchy). Or we could decide to sell things to the highest bidder (the market).

As it turns out, the market has been the most efficient solution for most of the developed countries. Whether we realize it or not, we do have a choice in how we distribute the resources allocated to this earth. For the time being, it seems that most of us (our governments anyways) have decided on the market approach.