"You don't need to understand every subject, but you need to master the main ideas of every important and independent subject." - ? Charlie Thomas Munger
Brother Liang wants to imitate "Uncle Munger" and try to establish an interdisciplinary thinking that has been passed down from mouth to mouth in rivers and lakes, but no one has ever seen it. Look at how powerful this magical power is.
This is the second question: the thinking mode of economics.
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0 1
China real estate market observer once said: Economics is the pearl of social science, just like the position of physics in natural science.
Since it is a social science, the core is to study human behavior, especially economics, and it is our responsibility to study the interaction law of strangers: from small companies to big countries.
Xue Zhaofeng's Lectures on Economics summarized the basic constraints faced by human beings into four categories: lack of things, limited life, interdependence and the need for coordination.
Simply put: scarcity, patience, life and cooperation.
Let's take the school district as an example and feel the charm of economics.
02
Good educational resources are scarce everywhere, which makes no difference at home and abroad.
But the problem is that, because the nine-year compulsory education in China is free, even the best schools can only be selected according to the location of real estate and household registration.
Supposedly, this is a good policy.
But the problem is that the distribution of educational resources in China is extremely uneven. If you want to go to a good school, you must buy a house in a good school district and settle down.
As a result, the "school district housing", a special industry that affects the hearts of hundreds of millions of parents, was born.
According to the current free compulsory education policy: in fact, after the school district is finally passed, the families who can afford the highest expenses are screened out, which has not yet reached the fair goal.
Moreover, because the school district housing index is used up, the house can be sold to the next one, and finally it becomes an investment product with great appreciation potential, further pushing up the price of the school district housing.
Then, let's discuss: Is there a better plan to replace the current "school district housing" policy?
a.？ Equalization of educational resources
This is too ideal, it will not be realized for a while, and the educational resources outside the Sixth Ring Road and the educational resources inside the Second Ring Road cannot be balanced.
b.？ On the basis of dicing, good schools charge certain "school selection fees" to other high-quality students.
It seems to reduce the heat of some school districts. In addition, it also allows good schools to increase their income and better develop teaching.
c.？ Unified examination in the city, merit-based admission, no school selection fee.
Completely canceled the heat of the school district, and everything was done according to the score.
Everyone's first reaction must be that the final plan is good.
Then the question is, why not implement this policy?
A. Contrary to the ideal of compulsory education, children enter the Wang Yang sea of ranking and examination prematurely.
B. going to school every day causes a huge waste of transportation and other resources.
c.？ Unstable factors such as renting a house are not good for children's growth environment.
The core is the first point: do we want children to be graded from the age of six?
Will those children who entered the poorly ranked primary schools from the beginning go with the flow or even give up on themselves on a large scale?
This actually deviates from the essence of education: the starting point of fairness, teaching students in accordance with their aptitude.
Every child comes from a very different background. If the starting point of education is unfair, then the children of poor families will remain poor in the future.
Therefore, in fact, the second policy is currently implemented: "merit-based" admission on the basis of dicing.
However, this "Excellence" is the "Excellence" of the school district strength that parents can bear, not the Excellence of the children themselves.
This is the first economic thinking: ideal and reality.
The extra rewards that good educational resources should have received were all earned by an irrelevant "school district".
03
Let's talk about renting a house first.
If there are too many rented houses around Beijing Second Experimental School and there are few houses, the price will be pushed up by the market.
The government wants to reduce the rent, so it sets the maximum rent.
For example, for a one-bedroom apartment with a market price of 5,000 yuan, the maximum rent is limited to 4,000 yuan, which is illegal.
What will happen to the market after this regulation?
First, it is unreasonable for the landlord to choose tenants, such as not renting standard Mandarin.
Second, tenants have to do all kinds of things and find other redundant relationships before they can rent a house.
Third, although the rent is 4,000 yuan, other expenses such as house maintenance are added to the contract, making the actual cost still around 5,000 yuan.
Did everyone see it?
Originally, I wanted to strengthen fairness so that families with average economic strength could afford high rents. As a result, no one could easily rent a house.
This is the second thought of economics: fairness and efficiency.
It seems to improve fairness, but in fact it not only fails to achieve the goal, but also loses efficiency.
The author has a very incisive exposition in the book: Is fairness a means or an end?
The conclusion is that fairness, as a means, may eventually achieve the goal of fairness; For the purpose of fairness, fairness will definitely not be achieved in the end.
04
Let's look at the third thinking of economics: the invisible hand.
What do you mean?
There is a theory in economics called broken window theory.
Take the school district as an example.
If the glass in your school district is broken by stones, it will cost 100 yuan to replace the new glass.
Broken window theory means: Only by breaking old glass and replacing it with new glass can we maximize the glass market and achieve economic prosperity.
What's wrong with this theory?
It ignores the invisible hand of the market:
If the glass is not broken, my 100 yuan can buy snacks and clothes, and it can also prosper the commodity market, which may make a greater contribution to the market.
By the same token, Trump's trade protectionism is the same now: Can the American steel industry prosper by boycotting China's steel?
Arabian nights!
If the price of steel produced in the United States is high, the demand side will always find other substitutes, and the steel industry will still be depressed.
In addition, those steel workers who have lost their jobs because of the impact of foreign trade may realize greater value in other emerging industries and make greater contributions to society.
The theory of "invisible hand" can be described as a touchstone to test whether a person has profound "economic thinking".
05
In the book, there are other economic ideas that are also very interesting, and the author explains them in simple terms.
For example: information asymmetry.
If you want to hang an oil painting in the rented school district, just pick up an electric drill and cut a hole in the wall to hang a nail.
Because it is an old community, the wall of the owner's house next door was accidentally cut.
Coincidentally, there is also an oil painting hanging in the same place next door, which is only an original Van Gogh, worth 654.38 billion US dollars.
Here comes the problem: due to your ignorance, the other party lost $654.38 billion. How much should you compensate each other?
Of course, there are other "economic thinking" in the book, such as individuals and collectives: everyone wants to enjoy high-quality free medical care, but where does the money come from?
Some people benefit, and some people have to bear the burden.
06
In the book, the author concludes that economics is a kind of knowledge that "backfires".
"Good people do good things" and "bad people do bad things" are relatively simple, and economics is precisely the reason why a good policy can't be implemented or achieve its initial effect.
Like those countries in Africa, why are they getting poorer and poorer? Also, why is it getting higher and higher to suppress housing prices?
In fact, in some aspects, due to the complexity of human nature and the entanglement of causal facts at the macro level, many phenomena are still difficult to give a reasonable explanation until now.
But this does not prevent us from extracting pure "economic thinking" to help our daily thinking and decision-making.
Finally, Brother Liang extracted the three economic thoughts he summarized and shared them with you:
A. Ideal and reality: In reality, it is difficult for a decision to have an optimal solution, which is often a compromise after consideration. In addition, many seemingly good policies often end up in the opposite direction.
B. Fairness and efficiency: Fairness is not an appeal, but a means rather than an end. People with a low starting point can only redouble their efforts, and no one can be your savior.
C. invisible hand: the trend of cars replacing carriages cannot be stopped by the demonstrations of several coachmen. As an individual coachman, where is his future? You may not be able to see clearly for a while, but you must not be imprisoned by old thinking.
07
Some people say that I 10 years ago did not speculate in real estate and missed the opportunity.
Some people say that I didn't collect money five years ago and missed the opportunity.
However, is there an opportunity that you will definitely seize?
Yes!
Where is it?
Now, every minute!
Starting today,
When you arrive at the company in the morning, don't look at the website, recite a few words.
When you lie in bed at night, don't brush Tik Tok, read a few pages of the original text.
Obey human nature, eat, drink and be merry.
Against human nature, make progress every day and climb up layer by layer.
Do you think that Ma's five stunts of "Taobao, Tmall, Alipay, Cloud Computing and Big Data" were all played by the Universiade? What kind of efforts and hardships are there behind the scenery?
When one day, you regard reading and thinking as fun and enjoyment.
Congratulations!
The opportunity for you is not far away.