<p>Rising first-years will learn as they get into the class–although the enrollment outlook is looking pretty fierce right now, so I’m not sure how many will get in in the end.</p>
<p>Look: Dasgupta, Economics: A Very Short Introduction; pp. 1-31 of Seabright, The Company of Strangers; pp. ix-69 of Milton Friedman and Rose Director Friedman, Free to Choose; and “Introduction” and I:1-5 (i.e., chapters 1-5 of Book I) of Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. That’s 3 pages a day over the summer, which doesn’t seem a lot given that you are going to pouring about $1,000 and 150 hours of your time into your taking the course this fall (and the good taxpayers of Orange County and elsewhere are going to be pouring $1,000 into your taking the course as well). They are not big pages: 3 pages a day is at most 3 minutes a day on average.</p>
<p>Assigning Dasgupta allows me to avoid the “what is the subject of this class about” opening lecture, and thus gets me about 4% more real material I can cover in the lectures–and it is, I think, not just a very short introduction but a very good introduction to economics. Seabright has sweated blood to make his book better-than-readable and very thought-provoking. I don’t know of a better place to start shaking you out of your standard oh-of-course-the-world-works-this-way mindset and take a step back to start looking at the economy with fresh eyes, as if one could get fish to take a step back and think about how yes, they are swimming in water. And Friedman and Director Friedman are the most eloquent expounders of an important political and moral-philosophical take on the economy and its proper management that, while it is not mine, is one whose power and force you need to feel and that you need to be acquainted with.</p>
<p>These are all things where, if I don’t make you read them or their equivalents, I am not doing my job.</p>
<p>Smith… Well, with Smith I am trying an experiment, and making you guinea pigs of a sort. Adam Smith in 1776 is one of those guys who has a genuine game-changing insight into society: that we are no longer living in a feudal custom-based economy or a mercantile politically-managed economy but in a market economy, and this market economy that we are living in seems to be throwing off an immense amount of wealth. And Smith is the first (OK, one of the first: I can hear Michael Perelman from CalStateChico muttering over the internet) to recognize this and try to figure out why.</p>
<p>But will the writings of an eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment figure who was supposedly kidnapped by gypsies when a child and who made his money by serving as the private tutor for a young Duke resonate with college students in twenty-first century California? I think so, but I do want to find out…</p>
<p>Yours,</p>
<p>J. Bradford DeLong
Professor of Economics</p>