Daniel Pedrero

Léelo en español.

For a long time, I believed that economics was a confusing social science only accessible to and understandable by specialists due to its excessive technicality. Now, I not only find it enjoyable to read about it but also find it helpful.

My key reason is quite simple. Functioning as a framework, economics provides a paradigm for thought. Since it is a discipline that explains what occurs in reality and why it occurs, its framework is founded on understanding.

As an explanatory-based study, it does not limit its scope and analytical procedures to money, resources, goods, and services. Law, demographics, politics, ethics, and even philosophy are some of the aspects of human relationships that can be studied using an economic perspective.

I have discovered that economics is essentially the study of human beings. What are the consequences of our actions, and how do we act? It is similar to psychology and ethics in that all three examine human behavior, although from different viewpoints.

Economics should not, and cannot, prescribe how people should behave (ethics). Economics doesn´t focus on what ought to be, but rather on what it is. The objective of this explanatory paradigm, which is founded on comprehension and description, is not to dictate a model of human action.

Instead of adjusting how people should act, economic science offers a way to change or adapt institutions to how humans actually act.

The fact that this social science explores and describes the effects of our choices is another important factor that makes it appealing. Given that it is a field that defies first impressions, it seeks to understand what is more deeply beneath the eye. Therefore, it challenges the economist to think and comprehend.

In economics, we realize that our decisions have consequences, not just on us as individuals nor just within a specific group, but as waves on the water, they have unseen impacts on the whole.

The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate hut at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.

Henry Hazlitt