Economics in Context

I think economics is a great tool for understanding business and business behavior but I get frustrated when it is taken out of context. Economics is a new social science and had is kind a fluffly science at best. Economics shines when it is used as a tool to better understand our behaviors around choice AND put context. I've always thought of economist sort of like meteorologist. A meteorologist spends his educational years learning about all the different clouds, pressure systems, psychical land structures  etc and how they will affect the outcome of the weather. If you live in Southern California on the ocean you meteorologist often predicts your weather fairly accurately. They can see the storm and there isn't a whole lot of things that are going to change the outcome. But it gets more complicated when you add mountains, other bodies of water, shifting convergence zones, etc. All this applies to the economist.

The fact that if you ask 5 different economist what they think about a given situation and you get 5 different answers is something that as future business people we need to understand. I believe successful business not only considers the economics of there situation but of the psychology, history, science, etc that will affect heir business. I mean really,  McDonald put a lot of psychology and science into that Big Mac meal and super sized the fries!

Economics is not accounting. Accounting's purpose is to track and provide financial information to evaluate past performance and make future decision. Economics is a social science dedicated to figuring out how we as a complex individual make decision regarding scarcity. When an economist makes a prediction or interprets a series of recent events they have imperfect information and as a result their own belief system and education translates informs their predictions or interpretations. Accounts can spin their information as well but it is based on numbers that have been tracked and collected. Yes, 'creative  accounting' is a realy thing but somewhere there are real number gathered. The point is economist are often smart people but they are often interpreting imperfect information gathered from imperfect sources.

I'm excited to continue looking at economics through the lens of sustainability and in the context of everything else that makes us human. Keynes in 1930 thought by 2030 we would have done away with this obsessive drive to collect and gather wealth. I'm excited to continue this search for ways to use wealth as a tool for our overall well being. Economics is just a tool to be used in context.

The Good Life: Ikigai and Mortality ("well being" and mortality)
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-good-life/200809/ikigai-and-mortality

Dan Buettner: How to live to be 100+
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_buettner_how_to_live_to_be_100.html

What is the point of our Food System Anyway?

Is our food system meeting our expectations? What are our expectations? Do we have any? How do we measure and rate the system’s success? Is it a successful system?

I believe these are important question to ask at the individual level, at the city level, at the national level and at the global level.   If we do not put intentions behind our food decisions we are defaulting to create a system that is good at providing cheap, convenient, and shelf ready foods because that is what we are buying.  Unlike many industry sectors you can chose if you participate or not but most of us are not farmers growing everything we eat and thus are using the food system to provide for us.  As individuals we can influence the way business provide us foods and we can influence the priorities that our city and state governments set regarding food, and as cities and state can influence national policy and so on and so on up to the global level.

In the article The City that Ended Hunger (http://www.dailygood.org/view.php?sid=351) the City of Belo Horzonte in Brazil city administrators made a policy that food was a right that everyone should have access to. When the city shifted its goals around food it was able to help facilitate increased access not buy providing more handouts but encouraging direct farmer to city marketing. The City administration subsidies selected healthy produce at the farmers stands. They also created local People’s Restaurants were anyone could come eat regardless of need.  While I have gone into great detail here the shift from quantity of food to the right of everyone to had profound effects on the City. Belo used many creative and innovative ideas because it was tasks with the responsibility to ensure everyone’s right to food.

Restaurante Popular in Belo Brazil

In Norm’s blog The Processed Food Industry And Coronary Capitalism
(http://abnormalecon.blogspot.com/2012/02/processed-food-industry-and-coronary.html) he mentions that a system of “pure capitalism” doesn’t exists because if it did we wouldn't have the big market failures we see in the food system  i.e. obesity and hunger.  If pure capitalism isn't the solution because we live in the imperfect world than it is up to us as evolved human thinkers to set goals for our food system and provide it the intention and direction that it needs. It turns out that just not thinking about it and letting the magical world of business do it for us hasn't worked. This isn't to say business doesn't play a role, it actually plays a huge role it will be the driver and the foundation of the new food system but it will be guided by a higher goal that we as individual have imposed on it.

Imagine if we all decided that our food system was only successful if everyone had access to quality, nutrient dense, sustainability grown foods.  We currently would get a big fat F on our grade card. We would need to create new creative solutions to reach this goal. Food would undoubtedly become more expensive because we would begin to pay the true cost but if we pair this with the idea that food is a right and hunger is unacceptable we will get creative. We are a capable and innovative species... when we decide it matters to us.