- How the World Prospers
- We All Share the Same Goal: Maximize Happiness
- Love and Protect Your Econosphere
- The Marketplace Is Perfect: It Is Information That Is Imperfect
- You Live in the Econosphere
- Can You Be Green About Your Econosphere?
- The Econosphere's Tough Love
- What Happens When We Try to Stop Change? Here's Your (1952) Buick!
- The Protection Racket
- The Kinder, Gentler Econosphere
You Live in the Econosphere
Because economics is about making decisions, you must see your economic condition as a collection of actions—past and present—made by individuals to increase each individual's happiness. And you should not just see this as simply a product of consumerism or greed—many wonderful things make you happy that are not related to stereotypes of mindless consumption for-its-own-sake. Happiness can be derived from providing for your family, preserving free time to mentor young people, the pursuit of the arts, or the opportunity to engage in charitable activities. It's all the same, as long as it brings you happiness. Every day you decide what makes you happy, and you make decisions to achieve your goals with whatever information you can gather. You do this every second of every day that you are awake. (You even shape your sleeping habits to maximize your happiness as well!)
You are born to live in your environment; both a physical environment and a social environment. Your physical environment should be plainly obvious to you. It's the sun to warm you, air to breath, food to sustain you. Your social environment is mostly invisible, and the parts you encounter can seem chaotic and not particularly interconnected. Until you know what the rules are, it's going to be difficult to contemplate and enjoy the Econosphere. But whether you understand it or not, you are living in it. Just as you don't need to be an environmentalist to breathe air or drink water, you don't need to be an economist to function within the Econosphere and work to maximize your happiness. It's inborn.