Praying for better finances and sleight of economy

A couple of points have come up in the last few days that prompted this post, with the first talking about praying for a better economic future. I mentioned that in my experience, praying doesn't help and the answer came that since they don't know anything about the money system, all they can do is pray and hope.

The second point was a post from @newageinv talking about helping his daughter with her social studies homework and what they were saying about banking, namely, "A bank is a good place to save money". Without going into too much detail, he introduced the idea to his daughter that, "there are always better ways to do things if we are able to control our own decisions."

I am all for hoping (not praying). but by my estimation, there is quite a difference between the two positions and I wonder how much affect it would have on the average outcomes of populations where one group prays, the other takes control of decisions. Perhaps a third group can do both, since there is nothing stopping the running of both "strategies" simultaneously.

What these two little points does potentially bring up is the difference in parenting approaches also, where some parents introduce financial consideration as something that can be used to influence outcomes, some might take the stance that economics is something that happens to us, not something we can affect. If we simplify this into two position, one person believes they have agency, the other believes they are economically impotent.

One is an economic force, the other an economic victim

This is a very, very large topic which requires many books to be written on it, but I wonder how many people have been raised to be economic victims that have no control over their actions and therefore outcomes - and how many have been raised to take control. The problem with this is, we as individuals do not choose where, when and to whom we are born, we do not get the chance to choose any aspect of our life and definitely have very little affect on how we are raised to believe in one thing over another.

The problem I have with the "pray" approach is that it encourages an external excuse as to why not to take internal control and actually learn about the things that affect our lives. For better or worse, we are all actors in the economy at a macro and micro level and we are all influenced by market forces that shift across the globe. While we may not be able to control at a macro level, we do have some influence over the micro levels where we make daily decisions on how we act.

From my perspective, one of the best decisions a person can make in life is to embark on the journey to understand economics from as many viewpoints as possible and both how the economy itself operates and perhaps more importantly, how behavior is affected by economic activity. For better or worse, we are all affected as participants in the system and we will never have complete control, but understanding what affects us and what we can influence and control allows us the opportunity to predict and prepare for various events and through this, we get the space to benefit or mitigate damage, which is a benefit in itself.

Personally, I find it incredibly telling that while in most schools there is some kind of compulsory social studies or geography courses, economics is not a compulsory course. While school might not be the best teacher of much of anything, if you consider that a great number of parents struggle to understand economics at any level due to their own past limitations and conditions, at least a class would open up the possibility and understanding that we are agents, not victims. This might pass over many heads as teens, but it could also pique the curiosity in some, who will explore further and then be better able to introduce their own children to ideas of taking economic responsibility.

While not religious myself, I would consider praying is something that would be done to ask for what one cannot do for oneself - when there is no other option. For all else, we should take responsibility for what we can take responsibility for. We live in a world like we have never lived before with access to the entire retained information of all that we know, yet there seems to be a lot of people who feel that they do not have any agency over their outcomes and are victims of the world.

Pray all you want and perhaps it will help bring all your hopes and wishes to fruition, but I suspect, that without preparing the ground, planting the seeds and tending to the trees as they grow - praying alone will bear no fruit.

I believe that there is a systematic and possibly intentional failure to introduce and encourage good economic hygiene by making people feel that they have very little control over their own financial decisions. So, those who control the economy, control them. As our eye of attention is drawn to the latest drama, what are we missing?

Sleight of hand, sleight of economy.

We are consuming, we are wasting - but what are we producing and who benefits from what we create?

Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]