Comment by anigbrowl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by anigbrowl | Hacker News Reader

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Yeah, I can't understand the widespread ignorance of/indifference to micro either. It's like people either think it's less important (because of the name) or that it only applies to people running manufacturing or retail businesses. Macroeconomics is seriously incomplete, so when it fails to predict the future well people dismiss economics as a whole, not realizing how fantastically useful and illuminating micro is. Admittedly micro suffers from not having a good theory of oligopoly, but I venture to suggest that that's a bit like the 3-body problem.

For philosophical types, I recommend 'New Ideas from Dead Economists' by Todd Buckholz. If you just want to get going with the math, I like the Barrons Business Review book on Economics by Peter Eisen. You should be able to find either of these used for a few bucks.

I don't think it's an indifference to microeconomics in particular so much as an indifference to anything that doesn't seem like it's especially relevant to one's life at the moment. People are indifferent to structuralist anthropology too, just to pick a random example. I agree that people are probably misinformed as to how useful microeconomics might be to their life though. It's a fantastically useful subject.

The reason macroeconomics is on the Khan Academy and has more general interest these days comes from the fact that people feel like their lives are in turmoil due to the economy, the real estate collapse, and Wall Street, and they don't understand how any of it works. Macroeconomics may be incomplete and perhaps even problematic, but it's the subject that can most shed a light on complex interconnected problems as opposed to local specific ones.

Agreed...I just have my doubts about how well one can really understand macro without a firm grasp of micro. Some people reflexively dismiss economics in general as just so much dogma, and it's hard to make the case for economics as a discipline when micro is so poorly understood.

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