What were your goals in completing this assignment? What did you intend to do?
Approaching this assignment from a unfocused distance, my goal for this assignment was simply that it be creative and therefore something that would serve as a good example for the students who were looking at my project. For that reason, I was reluctant to write a paper. However, as I’ve explained through a series of Journals, I’m not very artistic, and I think that it’s better to focus on improving one’s strengths rather than one’s weaknesses, so I wasn’t totally opposed to writing a paper. I was concerned, however, about how I would convey knowledge from 900 pages of an economic treatise through one self-designed assignment.
I eventually decided to write an essay that explained some of the foundational concepts in economics. I did this because I wanted to lead by example and define my terms at the very beginning of my project, and because doing so seemed to be the most reasonable way of demonstrating the knowledge I had gained from the economics treatise I had read. An essay is boring, but the definitions I was going to use were going to be rather original, and so I thought I’d let the content be the creative part, and the medium be the comfortable part.
Anyway, my goal for this assignment was to provide a new understanding of capitalism. I think that a lot of people have misconceptions about what economics is, and its applicability, and a lot more people have misconceptions about what capitalism is. So, at the outset, I wanted to provide better definitions for these concepts than what was currently available elsewhere so that my audience would better understand my later arguments.
Did you achieve your goals? Explain.
On the one hand, I did provide original definitions of economics, economy, capitalism, and a thorough explanation of the market. And I think that I did so quite well. However, I did not include everything I wanted to include. First, I wanted to tie the definition of economic back to the concept of change. After all, action is always future oriented, economic calculation is all about planning, and capital is an accumulation of time as much as wealth. But at the end of writing the essay, this element was missing from my definitions. Also, I wanted to include a section on why capitalism was important, which I think I achieved throughout the piece, and a section on the ethicalness of capitalism, which, upon reflection, I realized didn’t fit with the rest of the piece. So, the final product wasn’t exactly what I was envisioning, but the only thing I wish I’d added at this point is a discussion of the time element.
Describe how you built upon prior knowledge. How did this assignment further your thinking and learning?
The inspiration for my definitions came from a passing comment by Professor Hülsmann at a recent conference at the Mises Institute that socialism was not an economic system because the purpose of an economy is to produce more than what is consumed. His comment has been echoing in my head for a few weeks now, and this assignment afforded me an opportunity to really explore what he meant by that and think about some foundational concepts a little differently. I think this different perspective that I gained through thinking through these concepts and developing new definitions for them will help me properly ground my thinking during later stages of my project.
Describe how you utilized the 5Cs in your assignment.
-Critical Thinking: I think critical thinking was inherent in my assignment, since I was reconsidering and revising some fairly standard definitions. Any time one rejects “common knowledge” and tries to understand concepts for himself, I think he exercises no small amount of critical thinking.
-Creativity: Again, I redefined some pretty standard concepts in economics so as to gain a better understanding of them. This was fairly original work, and I equate creative with original. These are new definitions for these words. I created them.
-Collaboration: Like I said above, the inspiration for this project was a comment from Dr. Hülsmann. I’m not sure that this counts as collaboration, however. He did answer a question of mine to clarify his comment, but he was more like a source than a partner.
-Communication: I wrote an essay to communicate my new definitions of these concepts, and I wrote a lot in an attempt to explain the importance of a market.
-Curiosity: My desire to understand economics stems from my desire to understand how the world works. I did this assignment because I wanted to explore these concepts, in search for a better understanding of them, because I was curious about their implications.
What areas did you struggle with in the course of this assignment? (e.g., the 5Cs, motivation, time management). Why do you think this was?
One of the things that I wish I had had more of in this assignment was collaboration. But, I think that was a necessary feature of trying to push my project out ahead of the other students. I’m kind of alone out here. Now, I’m friendly with a number of Austrian professors, but not friendly enough for me to send them a copy of my paper and have them go through it. And my students aren’t quite at the level to actually critique a theoretical paper of mine. So, there wasn’t really anyone I knew who could offer me advice about how to improve my definitions. Now, anyone could have given me advice on how to improve the paper itself, or the structure/language. But, again, I didn’t want to bother any of the other students with such a request when they were under no obligation to help. During the school year, when reviewing someone else’s assignment is part of completing your own, I think that this problem will mostly go away.
I also struggled with time a lot during this assignment, mostly because I just had none. Like I explained in one of my Journals, I leave the house before 8am every morning and return after 10pm every night, at which time I go for a 1-4 hour run. So there wasn’t a lot of time to work on this assignment, and my method of work requires long time spans: I like to just start and finish a project in one sitting, rather than working on it piecemeal throughout a week or two. I did my best to get this essay done one paragraph at a time, but, in the end, I needed to find a four-hour span where I could revise and restructure and rewrite, and it took me a long time to get such an opportunity.
What do you see as your strengths at this point?
I’ve always considered writing to be my gift, although my writing in this piece is rather subpar. I’ve also been really focused on my questioning and critical thinking skills ever since Mr. Bott asked me to help with the program more this year, so I’ve really been questioning everything all the time, which is kind of what this assignment was: questioning the fundamentals, not making assumptions, rigorously examining each step and definition in the logical reasoning process. I often analogize critical thinking to annotating a piece of writing, and I think I did that with this assignment in that I recognized a lot of connections between various definitions of words that revealed more about their real meanings.
What further questions did this assignment generate for you?
What exactly is the difference between praxeology, economics, and catallactics; and is it important?
How can I reconcile more standard definitions with my new definitions?
What other common economic concepts need to be redefined?
How can I use these new definitions in my final product?
How will this assignment contribute to your final product?
As I’ve mentioned in a number of Journals, I think a large part of my project will be providing a solid grounding in economic concepts and principles so that people have the right perspective when considering the environment and climate change. I don’t just want to say “Economically, climate change isn’t the end of the world.” I want to say “This is economics, and this is how to apply it to climate change.” So, redefining these most basic of concepts and explaining the market so that my audience can gain more insight into their true meaning will help a lot, I think, in setting up the general theme of my larger project.
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