Category Archives: Vibrant Minds

Economics, In The Name of Love

This week I have embarked upon one of the most absurd attempts to strengthen my bond with my husband in support of his passions, and am only just realizing what I’ve gotten myself into.

My husband is currently working on his master’s in economics.  He is specifically passionate about Austrian Economics.  I know what you’re thinking:  What the heck is Austrian Economics – oh wait, never mind, I couldn’t care less.  There being only a handful of people in the world who care anything at all about economics, and an even smaller handful of that who ascribe to the Austrian school of thought, it’s not a huge topic out there in the blogosphere, especially when that blog is being written by a stay-at-home mom of toddlers who doesn’t care all that much about economics herself.

And yet, here I find myself at a week-long conference in Auburn, Alabama, attending nine-hour days of lectures about old guys with names like Ludwig von Mises, Eugene von Bohm-Bewerk and Wilhelm Ropke, all in the name of love.  My husband loves discussions on “marginal utility”, the “subjectivity of value”, and “praxeology”.  He studies about it every night for his classes, he reads about it for leisure, and he unwittingly turns normal conversations about the latest movie or one’s favorite flavor of ice cream into an economic theorem.  It was starting to get out of hand – he was boring friends and usurping dinner conversations with family.  I was afraid he would drive away all our human contact.  He clearly needed an outlet.  So, when the Mises Institute was about to host their annual Mises University (that heavy-loaded week of economic dissertation), and Lukus planned to attend to apply credits toward his master’s, I decided to go along in order to understand this new language he was speaking and participate in this great passion of his so that he could take it out on me and not the rest of the world.

It’s official:  I’m a very. good. wife.  I hardly ever cook dinner, I let Lukus change more diapers than his fair share, and I often won’t wear make-up for a whole week.  But having only sat in on two lectures so far on the first day, and realizing how far in over my head I am, this has got to be a whole new level of partner support, atoning for a multitude of wifely neglect.

But even though my brain is over-heating and wheezing on this mental marathon, and even though I’m only taking in a fraction of a fraction of the lectures and mandatory reading material, I’m discovering that it’s actually quite invigorating to tax one’s mental energies on something one is not even necessarily interested in.  I’m a housewife for crying out loud!  And yet, here I am, with some of the most brilliant minds in the world, able to say that I’m not only out of the house for a week, not only supporting my husband in a completely unpredictable way, but I’m actually starting to absorb the meaning of “praxeology” (the logic of human action), and I’m actually enjoying it.

So bring on the theory of money and credit, go ahead and use terms like “causal realist”, let’s talk about the ordinal rankings of values by individuals.  I’m not afraid of you.  I may have to turn to my husband for some translation, but at least I’m in on the conversation, and I suppose that makes enduring lectures on “Apriorism and Positivism in the Social Sciences” and “The Economics of Legal Tender Laws” all worth it.

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