Household Management- Part 1 ( The Origins Of Economics In A Nutshell)

Its five in the morning and you are awoken by a clamour. You get out of bed to see what’s
going on only to find out your parents bickering over personal finances and how they (they being the finances) allegedly got out of hand.

Unfortunately, you become the direct recipient of all their anger and frustration and wonder how the ‘grown-ups’ landed in such a disastrous situation.

I suggest you start panicking, because if ones’ household management skills are poor then
I’m afraid one does not have the brightest of futures to look forward to. Nevertheless, you
and I will try and figure out where your elders went wrong and what are the appropriate
countermeasures that can be employed.

Oh! A friendly a piece of advice “do not count your chickens before they hatch”, I for one
am a strong believer of this saying. Thus the first thing we will do is look into the meaning of economics, what it means to us right now vis-a-vis how its meaning differed for our

ancestors. You can scrounge out terms like ‘usury’ in some religious scriptures but that is
not the topic of our little discussion.

Our journey does not begin with either Adam Smith or Richard Cantillon, it goes back to the great philosophers of Greece. Some might argue that the subject’s legacy precedes even Greek philosophers and you know what, they are not wrong.

This being an introductory article will not contain a lot of mathematics or general
knowledge, this is just a preview of what's about to come.

In the next article, we will discuss Aristotle and how his philosophy shaped economics. As

for the entirety of this blog, we will discuss different economists, philosophers, mathematicians and their theories. Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten my promise of helping

you out with your ‘household management’ skills and I will try my level best to make the
journey as interesting as possible.