Relativity is an important matter, and in more subjects and
fields than it may seem at first. Essentially, everything is relative and everything is defined in relative terms, which may
seem outlandish at first glance. Absolutely everything humans have defined is
relative and requires a point of reference. Even a concept such a time, which may
seem to be absolute, is relative and that was revealed by Albert Einstein. Since
even something as concrete as physics is built takes into account points of
reference, so it's quite understandable and even expected that economics can
only be explained in relative terms.
It may seem that physics and the other sciences are have
absolute, but it's important to remember that even the concepts of length,
time, mass, gravity, temperature, pressure, and force don't have absolute
reference points because their units are defined on often arbitrarily-set reference
points. Thus, it is important to remember that anything that isn't defined
relative to something else or a reference point has absolutely no meaning
whatsoever. It cannot be ignored that even a written language
would have no meaning if its basic building blocks or letters would not be
defined relative to one another because words would've had no meaning. Thus,
it is important to create reference points in such a subject as economics
because otherwise any topic or theory in economics would have no meaning, which
is obviously not true. This leads to the question of how well-defined economics
is.
Economics is further complicated by the fact that a result
can have multiple causes and associations, which causes ceteris paribus to
quite a useful, but a certain result doesn't have just one cause as
in physics. Thus, it's nearly impossible to test economic theories and it
requires for much testing of various theories in economics economics under variable conditions to finally gain an adequate
grasp of economics as a whole. As a result, it's of utter importance to understand the basic underlying
principles before trying to understand more complex subjects within economics.
One such basic concept in economics is the boom and bust cycle
and the chapter covering The Roaring Twenties and Austrian Business Cycle led
me to examine everything read in relative terms by comparing the boom to a bust
in the most generic terms. Also, the theory of the business cycles seemed to
hold much merit, but it's very difficult to call it a true in all cases without
further background, which was somewhat provided by the theories developed by
Keynes and Mises-Hayek explaining booms and busts. Still, it's nearly
impossible to call one of the semi-conflicting views correct or incorrect because
each one has its merits.
One of the most interesting parts of the reading was on how
there are stages of production of consumer goods and why a bust must follow a
boom. Still, I was not too convinced that I understood the reason entirely
because of my relatively little exposure to economics, and that search is the
reason why I find economics to be a very interesting subject to explore. After
reading the chapter, I have once again reaffirmed that the exploration or
search for better understanding of subjects within economics can be a worthwhile and
lifelong hobby.
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