Money: Hero or Villian?

What is money?

What are all these bits of paper we carry in our pockets, or (if we’re lucky) we find digitally in our bank accounts? Why is the pursuit of money so universal, and when did it start?

Is the pursuit of money the root of all evil? Or of good?

To answer these questions, and many more like them, we need to examine how money developed historically, and how it has evolved since.

Understanding the nature of money is crucial for every serious student of economics, especially since money forms one half of every transaction, because money is so widely misunderstood, and because when the quality of money is undermined then so too is the economy.

This week we discuss money, sound and unsound—and ask: money, hero or villain?

Time: 6:00pm
Date: May 28, 2012
Location: Case Room 4, Level 0, University of Auckland Business School

Look forward to seeing you there.

Weekly Meeting – Economic Harmonies IV: Planning Without Central Plans

ECONOMIC HARMONIES, IV: Planning Without Central Plans

 

Tomorrow evening, Monday, we will complete our discussion of planning without a central plan—which completes our exposition of what Frederic Bastiat called the “economic harmonies” of the marketplace.

 

The market has a plan. It’s called the Price System– the means whereby hundreds of million individual decision-makers can coordinate their plans without ever having met each other.

 

This is the “Visible Hand” of the market that is all but invisible to those unable to see the millions of interactions that ‘are the products of human action but not of human design’ representing the ‘spontaneous order’ of the market.

 

So this Monday at the Auckland Uni Economics Group we complete our discussion on “horse trading”  and answer more questions Price System and Economic Coordination—offering answers to many questions, including

     

   -> Price signals: what exactly do they communicate?

   -> Who exactly sets prices, and how?

   -> What sets prices: supply and demand or costs of production?

   -> Speculators—good or bad? and

   -> Is our need for wealth unlimited?

 

All this and more, including five simple principles the Classical Economists observed to explain how the market almost automatically coordinates the economic activity of every person on the planet, and why the result is, not an “anarchy of production” but, regularity and order.

 

Our economist heroes of the night include Frederic Bastiat, David Ricardo, Eugen v. Bohm-Bawerk, Friedrich Hayek and George Reisman.

Where: Case Room 4, Level 0, Business School Building

Date: Monday, 7 May

Time: 6pm

 

Come along and be both entertained and educated!

Riko Stevens

UoA Economics Group

 

PS: Note that due to popular demand all meetings are now being held on Monday evenings instead of Thursday evenings. We hope to see you there!

 

PPS: Many of you have been asking if you can bring friends along, especially friends who are not students—or not economics students. Our answer: of course!  The more the merrier.