Economics, as a pearl in social science, often gives laymen the feeling of "ignorance" and "inconceivability", just as laymen look at it and code farmers. However, once we study economics, we will look at the world from a completely different perspective and see many wonderful things that we never saw before. The differences between the two groups who have been trained in economics and those who have no foundation in economics far exceed their differences in race, belief, occupation and identity. Now we are in this world, but unfortunately we don't know how the world works.

The reason why economics is so attractive is that it is a subject that studies the interaction between strangers. Our cognition and judgment are still mainly driven by intuition and short-distance interpersonal relationships. However, our bodies and opportunities have long been in subtle cooperation between large-scale strangers.

Since ancient times, human beings have been faced with four basic constraints: lack of things, limited life, interdependence and the need for coordination.

First, there are not enough things.

What is not enough is scarce. Scarcity not only refers to the scarcity of material resources, but also includes appearance and geographical location. For example, although the land is infinite, new york, Peking and Shanghai are just a few in the world. The reasons for scarcity include: 1. What we want is what others want; 2. People's desires are infinite.

Since things have changed, people must choose the use of resources when using limited resources, and whenever they want to make a choice, they must adopt certain standards. Once they choose the standard, it means different treatment, which is equivalent to discrimination. Don't get me wrong, "discrimination" here and "discrimination" used in our daily life are not the same concept. In economics, the four concepts of scarcity, choice, discrimination and discrimination are four in one.

? Discrimination stems from preference and information asymmetry. Discrimination comes at a price. The more you discriminate against others, the greater the price you pay, while market competition broadens your mind and reduces discrimination.

Second, life is limited.

Interest is one of the oldest phenomena in human society, which stems from time and human patience. As long as time-related phenomena involve interest.

On the issue of consumption, people have a preference for time. "Impatience", that is, impatience and impatience, is a natural tendency of people. This is because the future is uncertain.

There are many reasons for uncertainty, such as natural disasters and man-made disasters. Another important reason is that people will get old. Life is limited. Therefore, as long as other things remain the same, people always want to spend earlier, because spending earlier is a certain consumption, and spending later is an uncertain consumption. Therefore, economists also like to call "intolerance" "deterministic preference".

People's patience is different, so the valuation of hand durable goods is also different. Some people value the utility of commodities today, while others value the future value of commodities. Some people like cash, while others like futures. There will be transactions between those who prefer spot and those who prefer futures, that is, transactions will not be tolerated. In this kind of transaction, the price of spot and futures is what we call interest rate, referred to as interest rate. The degree of intolerance determines the interest rate.

We must clear up a common misunderstanding. Many people think that deposits have interest rates because deposits themselves will rise. The idea that things will grow or increase, so things have interest rates is problematic. The key to the existence of interest rate in any spot and futures trading is that people have time preference, and people are willing to spend early rather than late.

In order to persuade others to postpone consumption and accept futures, people who want to exchange cash have only one compensation method. Compensation is the basis of interest rate. The more uncertain the future, the greater the compensation; The longer the consumption is delayed, the greater the compensation.

Intolerance is the basis of interest rate. The more uncertain the future, the greater the compensation demanded by those who accept futures, and the higher the interest rate at this time. Because interest rate is a kind of compensation that people demand when they delay consumption, the more uncertain the future is, the higher the interest rate will be.

Third, interdependence.

A team has such an obvious feature: it can bring more output than the sum of each member's output. A group of resources, put together, bring more benefits than the sum of each element in this group of resources. This is a team.

When two teams play a game together, the entertainment effect it brings is greater than the sum of the entertainment effects brought by each player in the team taking turns to perform, so the team is a team. It is better for a symphony orchestra to play a symphony than for each member to take turns, so the symphony orchestra is a team.

In other words, the team has a mysterious function. After adding things up, some new effects will be produced out of nothing, so that the effect brought by the team exceeds the sum of the effects of each element. And these new effects can't be traced back to every element that makes up this team.

The symphony sounds good, but it's impossible to tell whose contribution is great. The overall effect is produced by the addition of each element. Teams can produce some new effects out of nothing, which is the fundamental reason why people set up enterprises.

Then a question arises: how to judge the contribution of each member of the team to the team output? For example, symphony is an inseparable whole product. So how much contribution does the orchestra conductor make to this team? Economists Arqin and Demsetz believe that it depends on the marginal contribution. The same orchestra is conducted by different people, and the marginal benefit brought by this person is the marginal contribution brought by the orchestra command post. It was also in Philharmonia Orchestra, Berlin and karajan that one was conducted, others conducted one, and then another was conducted without command. Look at the income of these three concerts, and you will know how much the whole concert has gone up with karajan, how much it is worth without the conductor, and how much the concert has depreciated under the command of others.

Simply put, an enterprise is an economic organization that can bring extra benefits out of nothing, and the income of each member depends on his marginal contribution to the team. Of course, the marginal contribution of everyone in the enterprise is not printed on everyone's forehead, so the staff of the human resources department of each enterprise will judge the marginal contribution of each employee to the enterprise through various clues, so as to determine their salary.

Fourth, coordination is needed.

Coordination is the core issue of macroeconomic research, and the core means of coordination is currency. In other words, the focus of macroeconomics is how the whole society realizes cooperation and coordination through money.

Early philosophers came to a conclusion when they reflected on the function of money-money is useless. The philosopher Aristotle said that money is useless.

Economist Meng Le said that money is very useful. It is useful because everyone thinks it is useful and everyone thinks others are willing to accept it. The origin and form of money are very similar to language. Whether a sentence or a word can be popular depends not only on how the speaker likes to say it, but also on whether the listener can accept it and whether others are willing to say it.

There is an important concept in the Austrian school called "spontaneous order", which means that the order seen in today's society is not designed by any one person or authority, but formed by the actions of countless people.

The language we use every day is spontaneous order, and so is money.

The first help provided by money is that people don't have to meet the requirement of double contingency in transactions. In the era of barter, it is conditional for people to reach a deal. I have bread to sell and I need milk at the same time. At this time, you must meet someone who happens to have milk to sell and needs bread at the same time. Only in this way can I make a deal. This is a double contingency in the transaction. It is the first chance to meet a milk seller; This man needs my bread, too. This is a second chance. It is not easy to add up two contingencies and lose one. Fortunately, with the help of money, transactions do not need to meet double contingency, as long as they meet a double contingency. With the help of money, as long as I meet someone who wants to buy bread, we can complete the transaction.

Money represents opportunity. Making more money doesn't mean that people only love money. More money only means more opportunities and more choices. How a person makes use of this opportunity is a personal choice, and different people have different ambitions.

The second function of money is to greatly reduce the cost of quality inspection in transactions. Without the help of money, people can only barter things. As a bread seller, the butcher comes to buy bread, and I want to learn to test whether the meat he changed for me is qualified; When the brewer comes to buy bread, I must taste his wine. When the tailor came to buy bread, I had to check his clothes. Without money, I need to be a quality inspector for all goods in the world; With money, I just need to be able to test the authenticity of the money.

The third function of money is to increase the volume of market transactions, which is based on the first two functions. We don't need to meet the requirements of double emergency, and the quality inspection cost is greatly reduced. What is the result? As a result, the transaction volume has greatly increased. Everyone involved in the transaction in the society has greatly improved their happiness. Therefore, in any society, even in prison camps, people will naturally enjoy the benefits brought by money.

The above is only part of this lecture. Xue Zhaofeng's lectures on economics are easy to understand, which can help us better understand the role of economics and make us live more intelligently.