Students: if you wish to understand the economy DO NOT major in economics and DO NOT expect to find the answers in economics classes. These are mostly propaganda that pretends that our world is the same as a make-believe world of “perfect markets” about which they teach. Beyond being propaganda, economics courses are confusing, boring, illogical, unempirical, ahistorical, and even mathematically deficient. Despite priding themselves for their supposed mathematical rigor, real scientists and engineers can find the flaws of their reasoning easily. The standard textbooks are poorly written, deceptive and expensive. Fortunately, there are better places to study the economy if you look carefully.
If understanding the economy is your passion, the best idea would be to craft your own interdisciplinary major along the lines of what I explain here. If that option is not available at your university, then probably the next best major is business. Unfortunately, many of the core courses for the undergraduate business major require truly obnoxious textbooks. You have to think beyond them as you suffer their uncritical corporate cheerleading, horrendous wordiness, endless euphemisms, and contempt for the students’ critical reasoning powers. Yet despite this, if you seek out the best professors and think critically about everything you read and hear (take plenty of notes), you will learn some useful things that in fact contradict most of what economics would teach you about the economy.
No matter what is your major, any student wishing to understand the economy should take several accounting courses. These are the most useful part of the business core. Skip any introductory accounting course if you can and go straight to the first two usually required of all business students: financial and managerial accounting. Then find one more accounting course that treats the special problem of accounting for financial firms (banks, insurance companies, etc.) and transactions. This is called by various titles, so you must read course descriptions or talk to a professor. It is NOT what financial accounting is about. If you can take more accounting beyond these three, take another course in tax or managerial accounting. The reason you must study accounting is to learn how business actually accounts for costs and evaluates pricing decisions. If you study accounting before you study microeconomics, you will better know how to think critically and carefully about what is being taught. You will uncover economics’ lies about the theory of the firm and the supply curve. Real businesses do not behave the way economics argues they must in order to maximize profits and produce efficiently. The gap between accounting and economics is between actual business practices and propaganda designed to convince you that the economy is stable, efficient and fair.
Second most important is taking a marketing course, which contradicts nearly everything assumed in microeconomics about consumer behavior. In the make-believe world of economics, consumer preferences determine what gets produced and strongly influence price. The marketing textbook also does its best superficially to sustain that myth by claiming that the field is entirely about giving the consumers value for their money in order not to expose too obviously the deep rift between the consumer sovereignty taught in economics and the power of marketing taught in business classes. However, if you think for yourself what the marketing textbook is actually teaching about shaping consumer desires and manipulating them with price strategies, you will understand how this contradicts both the specific assumptions of microeconomics and the broader idea that corporations exist for the consumer rather than the consumer being subject to sovereign corporations. Economics argues consumers rule. Common sense knows that the weak do not rule the strong. Corporations shape consumers much more than consumers shape (or even understand) corporations. Information and power are mostly on the side of the corporation.
Other than these core business courses, all your other course selections should aim to fill the gaps missing from this core. The most useful courses might be in any number of departments. More than anything else, they depend on a good professor to make them useful, so seek out the best regardless of the course title. The departments you should peruse include economics, business, history, political science, sociology, urban planning, anthropology, geography, agricultural economics, psychology and philosophy. Almost any course on the history of business, economics, economic thought, technology, or urban development should be useful. Far too little history of political economy is known or taught. Look for international political economy, which is typically a political science course. Supplement your course’s textbook with my own on that topic and my related blogs. Also check if your political science department has any courses that examine the influence of money in politics, lobbying, or corporate power. Look to sociology for any courses on social theory, private power, or corporate organization, networks and power. Social network theory is useful. Economic anthropology is typically a fascinating course for understanding the origins of various types of economic systems. Try your psychology department for any courses on consumer or investor psychology or anything that mentions economics. These will show you why the behavioral assumptions of microeconomics are false. Take philosophy of science to discover why economics is unique in its strange ideas of what constitutes science. If available, take a course on the philosophy of statistical inference or inductive reasoning. Finally, any course that seems to be taught by a heterodox economist is likely to be worthy, regardless of title. Seek them out!
No matter what course curriculum you follow, take responsibility for your own education. Seek useful sources of knowledge outside the classroom. Classes from a good professor can give you the tools to think more systematically about a problem than you might merely by reading on your own. Beyond that, use your school’s library and online resources to explore topics. Talk to reference librarians. Explore archives, particularly the papers of business leaders and organizations. Reach out to off-campus community organizations such as political parties, community development organizations, environmental groups, and labor unions. As you learn, share what you know with others. Teach each other. Organize or participate in discussion clubs, speeches, debates, and study groups. Invite heterodox speakers to campus.
Protest injustices!