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Breaking down things nobody was taught that keep you naive

I just spent the last two weeks reading a 700-page book by Thomas Soul, a Stanford economist. It's called Basic Economics. The economy seems confusing and complicated. But it's not. Most people never learn how it actually works, so they keep getting fooled. By the end of this blog, you will understand why taxing the rich hurts the poor people the most. Why making rent cheaper creates housing shortages. Why making food cheaper makes it disappear. I know it all sounds backwards, but once you see the proof, you can't unsee it. So, let us start.

The year is 2008. The state of Maryland has a problem. They need money. So, someone comes up with an idea. Let's tax rich people more. Maryland had about 8,000 millionaires. They do the math and say, "If we raise their taxes, we'll collect $106 million more every year." Done. Problem solved. Everyone celebrates. Here's what actually happened. Year one, they collected the tax. Everything is going to plan. Year two, somebody counts the millionaires again. There were only 6,000 left. 2,000 millionaires had just vanished. They moved somewhere else. Instead of gaining 106 million, Maryland actually lost 257 million in total tax revenue. Oregon tried the same thing, raised taxes on high earners, and lost billions over time. And here's the lesson, and I really want you to get this. People respond to rewards, not intentions. Maryland intended to raise money, but what they actually did was reward millionaires for leaving. So, the millionaires left and they took their businesses, their restaurants, their companies with them. The jobs disappeared. Now, you can wish that people would just sit there and accept higher taxes, but intentions don't matter. Rewards do. What this means for you in your business, your relationships, your life. Don't ask what you want people to do. Ask what you're rewarding them to do.

Number two, every choice has a cost.

Let's say you have $10. You want a Starbucks, a burger, and a movie ticket. Can you have all three? No. 10 bucks is 10 bucks. You get the Starbucks, you skip the burger. You get the burger, forget the movie. Every single choice means giving up something else. That's a trade-off. Economics is not about what you have. It's about what you do with what you have. And this isn't just with small things. This is how the world works.

For example, Venezuela has massive oil reserves. They should be rich, but they're broke. Switzerland has nothing in the ground. They should be poor. But they're one of the richest countries on Earth. The same rule applies to you. Every dollar you spend, every hour you work, every person you hire, it can only be used once. The real question is not, "Can I afford this?" It's what am I giving up to get this? For example, you buy a BMW for $50,000. Beautiful car. Leather seats. You feel like you made it. But here's what you didn't see. If you bought a Toyota Corolla for $20,000 instead and invested the extra $30,000 in 10 years, it could almost be worth $60,000. In 30 years, you are looking at almost $250,000. That BMW didn't cost you $50,000. It cost you a quarter million. That's the tradeoff.

Every time you spend money, you're not just spending money. You're spending what that money could have become. Same with your time, same with your energy, same with your attention. Once you start seeing trade-offs, you can't unsee them. And that's either the most terrifying thing you'll ever learn or the most powerful.

Number three, prices are messages

There's this famous story. Soviet leader Gorbachev visits Britain and asks Margaret Thatcher, "How do you make sure people get food?" She replies, "I don't. Prices do." Think about that. London has not grown enough food to feed itself for over a century. millions of people, three meals a day. There is no minister of sandwiches. No government office decides where the bread goes. And yet every morning, fresh fish arrives from Norway, beef from Argentina, coffee from Brazil. Nobody is coordinating this.

Prices are. Let me show you why no human could ever do what prices do. Imagine you're in charge of all the pizza in your country. Not one pizza shop, all of it. Your job is to make sure everyone who wants pizza gets it. You would need to know how many people want pizza today versus tomorrow, which cities need more, what toppings, how much cheese to make, which means deciding how much milk goes to cheese versus ice cream, how many tomatoes to grow, how many ovens to build. And all of this changes every single day. You cannot know all this. No human can. No computer can.

Too many variables changing too fast. But this problem gets solved every single day. Remote little towns get pizza. Big cities get pizza. Nobody is in charge. Nobody is planning it. Prices do it. When pizza is scarce, prices go up. Suppliers rush to make more. When there is too much, prices drop. Suppliers slow down. Nobody sends these messages on purpose. They just happen based on how many people want something and how much of it exists. The price isn't the enemy. The price is the only one telling you the truth. So the next time you see a price that makes you angry, just pause for a second.

Ask yourself, what is this price trying to tell me? Is something scarce? Are too many people chasing too little supply? The price isn't the problem. It's the only honest signal you've got.

Number four, price controls never work

New York City has thousands of abandoned apartments, just sitting there, empty. Meanwhile, homeless people sleep on the street right outside those buildings. There are four times as many abandoned apartments as homeless people in New York. Let me show you how this happens. Imagine your school makes an announcement. Tomorrow, free pizza at lunch, unlimited. Take as much as you want. At first, just the kids who normally buy lunch show up. Small line, normal. But word spreads fast. Now, everyone shows up. Kids who usually bring lunch from home. Kids from other grades. Everybody. And everybody's grabbing extra slices just in case. 20 minutes later, the pizza is gone.

The early kids hoarded everything. The ones who came late got nothing. This is what happens every single time you mess with prices. Now go back to New York. Rent was getting expensive. People were struggling. So politicians step in. They make a rule. Landlords can't charge more than a certain amount. Rent control. Problem solved. Right. Wrong. At the lower price, suddenly everyone wants their own place. The college student who is going to stay with his parents now gets his own apartment. The widow who is thinking about moving in with the family keeps her three-bedroom to herself. Remember the free pizza example? The same thing happens here.

Everyone grabs extra and the people who actually need it get nothing. But wait, it gets even worse. If landlords can't raise rent, they stop fixing things. They stop repairing roofs. Buildings start to rot. Eventually, some landlords just walk away entirely. And that is how you get thousands of empty apartments in a city full of homeless people. Price controls made them worthless to operate. Same pattern with food. Zimbabwe artificially kept prices low during the inflation crisis. Stores emptied within hours. Farmers just stopped bringing food to market because selling at the controlled price meant losing money, so they didn't sell. People starved while crops rotted on farms.

This is what happens when you set prices too low. Now, let me show you what happens when you set the prices too high. India, early 2000s, the government wanted to help farmers. So they guaranteed a high price for wheat. No matter what happens, farmers get paid. Well, sounds great, right? Wrong again. If the government guarantees a high price, farmers grow more wheat to make a profit. So that is what they did. They produced way more wheat than anyone could need. And the government had to buy it all. 11 million tons of wheat piled up in warehouses. And then it rotted. while people in other parts of the country were starving. So, here's the pattern. Set the price too low, shortage. People can't get it. Set the price too high, surplus, product rots while people starve.

Either way, you mess with the prices, you break the system. And here's the cruel part. Price controls are supposed to help the poor. But when the thing disappears, rich people find workarounds. They bribe someone. They know someone. Poor people suffer the most. The solution becomes the problem. What this means for you? When a politician promises to make something affordable by controlling the price, ask one simple question. What happens to the supply?

Number five, profits and losses are directions

Picture a school lunch table. You notice kids go crazy for fruit snacks. So, you start bringing extra packs and trading them for stuff you want. It works. You're making a profit. The profit tells you something. Keep going. Bring more fruit snacks. People want them. Now, imagine you try the same thing with raisins. Nobody wants them. You cannot give them away. That is a loss. You wasted your allowance on something nobody wanted. That loss also tells you something. Stop. Try something else. Profits say yes, do more of this. Losses say no. Stop doing this.

Simple. But here is what most people miss. Losses are just as valuable as profits. Maybe more. When a company keeps losing money and shuts down, it sounds sad, but it's good for everyone else. That company was using engineers, steel, electricity, trucks, all to make something people didn't want. When it dies, those engineers go work somewhere useful. That steel gets melted into something people actually need. But here is where governments break the system. They say, "This company is too big to fail. We will give them money to keep going." Now the signal is broken. the company was supposed to stop. Instead, it keeps wasting resources on stuff nobody wants, funded by your taxes. It's like paying the raisin kid to keep bringing raisins forever and everyone else just has to deal with it.

Profits are not the enemy. Losses are not the enemy. They are the honest feedback the economy has. what this means for you. Look at your life right now. The things making you money, making you happy, moving you forward. Do more of that and kill that side project bleeding cash for 3 years. Don't feel bad. That's not failure. That's the market telling you the truth. The moment you kill it, you get your time and energy back. Now you can put all of that into something that actually works.

Number six, your wage is a price, too. Why do some jobs pay more than others?

Construction workers lift heavy stuff in the sun all day. They don't make that much. Nurses keep people alive. They're not millionaires. So, what's the real answer? You get paid based on how much value you create. That's it. Let me show you. You have a lemonade stand. You hire your friend Maria to help. How much can you pay her? Well, it depends on how much extra lemonade she helps you sell. Maria's fast. She's friendly. With her there, you sell 10 more cups at a dollar each. That's $10 of extra value in your pocket. You can pay her up to $10 and still break even. Now, imagine you hire your other friend, Jake. Jake's slow. He's on his phone, spills the lemonade.

With him there, you only sell two extra cups. That's $2 of value. Pay him more than that, and you're losing money every hour he's standing there. This isn't mean, it's math. Now, here's where people get fooled. Someone says, "Workers deserve a living wage. Raise the minimum to $15." Sounds nice, but what if a worker only creates $10 of value per hour? You're now forced to pay $15 for $10 worth of work. You lose $5 every single hour. No business survives that. So, what does the business owner do? He doesn't hire that person. He buys a selfch checkckout machine instead. He cuts hours. He closes the shop. So, here is what this lesson means. Your boss isn't paying for your time. He's paying for your results. More valuable results, more money. Want to earn more? Create more value. Learn the skill nobody else wants to learn.

Number seven, trade makes everyone richer

You've got a sandwich. Your friend has pizza. You each kind of want what the other person has. So you trade halves. Did the total amount of food change? No. But are you both happier? Yes. That's trade. It creates value without creating more stuff. Nobody lost. You didn't beat your friend. She didn't beat you. Both of you won. Now, here's where adults completely mess this up. Politicians talk about trade between countries like it's a war. We're losing to China. They're stealing our jobs. We need to win. But trade isn't a game with winners and losers. If it were, why would both sides keep doing it year after year, century after century?

One country buys stuff from another because it's cheaper than making it themselves. The other country sells because they get paid. Well, both countries end up with more stuff than if they tried to make everything on their own. Both win. Now, here's the part that blows people's minds. Even if one country is better at making everything, trade still helps both countries. Think about it this way. Imagine you're a lawyer who charges $300 an hour. You're also pretty good at cleaning. Should you clean your own office?

No. Hire a cleaner for $20 an hour. Use that hour to do legal work instead. You make 300, pay 20, and you're way ahead. Countries work the exact same way. One country might make both cars and shirts better than another country. But if their advantage in cars is huge and their advantage in shirts is small, it makes sense to focus on cars and trade for shirts. Both countries end up with more cars and more shirts than if they each tried to make everything alone. That's why economists across every political view have supported free trade for 200 years. Trade isn't war, it's cooperation. Both sides win.

Now, what this means for you, think about last week. How many hours did you spend on stuff you're bad at and hate doing? Emails, spreadsheets, admin work. Imagine you paid someone 50 bucks to do all that. And you spent those hours on the thing only you can do. That's the trade. This whole blog comes down to one thing, tradeoffs. Every hour spent on your weakness is an hour stolen from your strength. You don't win by fixing what's broken. You win by doubling down on what's working. That's economics. That's life. I want to end it by saying this. Understanding economics won't make you rich, but it will make you impossible to fool. You just traded less than 20 minutes of your life to read this. I hope it was worth it. If you want more book summaries like this one, check out my other blogs, Thanks for reading.