Great Course - Thinking Like an Economist

Why would I be attracted to a course on Economics?  If you take a look at, the course description on the Great Courses site for "Thinking Like an Economist: A Guide to Rational Decision Making" you will see this:

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A Tool Kit for Changing How You Look at Daily Life
Many of the concepts in Professor Bartlett's tool kit may be familiar.

• People respond to incentives.
• There's no such thing as a "free lunch."
• There are at least two sides to every interaction.
• Everything affects everything else.
• Any action can bring with it significant unintended consequences.
• In this world of complex interrelationships, no one is really in control.

However, when used in the context of three core concepts of economic rationality, marginal analysis, and optimization that Professor Bartlett clearly lays out, his tool kit can make this perhaps the most practical, life-enhancing economics course you'll ever take.

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One thing I immediately notices about the above is this: the bullet points look like common sense, not "economics" per se. In fact, I have been composing, in my head, a series of essays with the theme "It's Not That Simple" and several of those bullet points fit exactly into the arguments I was composing.  In fact, one scheduled blog entry is entitled "The Myth of the Single Reason" and the final three bullet points fit precisely into that post.  So, I figured, this "economics" course just might be a new way of looking at the world which would resonate with me.

It is.  It does.

Dr. Randall Bartlett takes the first couple of lectures in this 12-lecture series describing those six basic rules, and the three core concepts.  He does so without technical jargon, and with easy to follow examples.  Then he begins applying them to issues we face every day, such as deciding whether to purchase an extended warranty, and issues facing the world, such as overfishing and voting.

So, while I learned a bit about economics as a field, and that was quite interesting on its own, I also learned how to understand the way people behave a little better.

At a total of six hours, this is one of the shortest Great Courses I have taken, but it left an impression, and taught me how to express some concepts, which will last a long, long time.