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Money’s a matter of functions four, A Medium, a Measure, a Standard, a Store.
‘money’ is the standard unit we use to measure the ‘value’ of something.
The invention of the printing press in 1440 by German innovator Johannes Gutenberg helped these revolutionary ideas spread quickly, encouraging more people to think and build and paint and write. No wonder the period is now called the Renaissance (‘rebirth’ in French).
it was fleets of Arabian dhows that carried spices from the east—the Maluku Islands in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, the Indian peninsula—to Europe, first by sea to Egypt, then up the Nile and the Mediterranean Sea to somewhere in today’s Syria, and finally by land to Constantinople (today’s Istanbul), the gateway to Europe.
All zero-sum games are therefore ‘win-lose’ games.
Adam Smith believed that wealth could be a ‘win-win’ game, or a non zero-sum game.
idea of governments ‘letting go’ of control and allowing people themselves to decide what to produce and what price to sell it at is called ‘Laissez-faire Economics’.
opportunity cost is: ‘what you give up to get something else’.
Because resources are limited and wants are unlimited (economists call this ‘the problem of scarcity’), everyone is forced to allocate the resources wisely and to make tough choices, i.e., give up certain things to get other things that they want more. Which is what David Ricardo was talking about.
The closest English translation of daana is charity, although it doesn’t quite have the same meaning. When you give daana, say the ancient scriptures, you must expect nothing in return; you are not even allowed to feel, ‘Aww, what a lovely person I am! I made the giftee so happy!’ The scriptures go on to say that if you want to lead a blessed life, you must, must, MUST regularly give daana; and you must especially give away things that you are fond of, without feelings of regret, and without hoping that now the giftee will give you something that she loves too because you were so unselfish
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Developed countries, where most of the development has already happened, have a very low rate of inflation, just a little over 1 per cent.
India’s dollar exchange rate is largely based on the exports and imports between India and the US
exchange rate, based on the purchasing power of a currency, is called purchasing power parity.
India is the world’s seventh-largest economy by nominal GDP but the third-largest by PPP GDP.
British organisation called the New Economic Foundation has come up with another index called the Happy Planet Index,
‘Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it and I shall move the world.’
Oligopoly: Let’s keep this between ourselves.
Monospony: The customer is queen.
