What I Didn't Learn in Economics 020

Many more years ago than I care to disclose, I was a first-year student at the University of Western Ontario, better known to many as UWO. Of course, I was filled with great optimism on my very first day of lectures at this most venerable of Canadian universities.

However, my enthusiasm quickly turned into disillusionment, as our dour Economics professor skulked about the lecture theatre, with her self-satisfaction and abundant sarcasm. Obviously, my classmates and I were being graced by the presence of an intellectual luminary, who had just written a textbook. Actually, it was still a manuscript, awaiting further editing and perfection before it would be published in hardcover form and placed on the shelves of what our good professor believed would be the campus bookstores of every post-secondary institution in the world.

Of course, I was humbled. After all, I was awash in the glow of the professor's obvious stature. Suitably impressed with the value I was already receiving in exchange for my hard-earned yet heavily-subsidized tuition payment, I realized that I was in the presence of an intellectual giant, who was well on her way to becoming published.

Well anyway, to make a long story short, the professor sternly let the class, an overcrowded lecture theatre clearly intended for about 50 fewer students than the number that signed up for the course, in on the basic tenet of economic theory, a school of thought known appropriately enough, as the "dismal science". I think this summation clearly matched her mood, which apparently was the product of too many years of lecturing first-year students like me. An occupation, in fact, which kept her from fulfilling her true purpose as an author of a landmark and highly-acclaimed first-year Economics text.

The basic tenet, the "Rosetta stone", if you will, of economic theory, was this: "There is no free lunch." I immediately thought that she was full of crap. I've had lots of free lunches. On our farm growing up, one simply had to walk about 30 feet behind the house to the garden, where a veritable cornucopia of fruits and vegetables awaited. Many friends and their families served me lunch, dinner and breakfast for that matter. Cognitive dissonance set in, just in time for the next pearl of wisdom to be imparted on the class: "Economics is the study of scarce resources and unlimited demand."

My faith in the good professor was broken from this moment on. The course, which I had to repeat the next year, was an endurance test, filled with vitriolic diatribe, sarcastic remarks, and moments of sheer verbal cruelty. Oh, did I forget, we also had to buy the professor's "manuscript" as our course textbook, not even a "real" textbook! Of course, she would receive royalties for each copy sold. More on my opinions of professors, publishing and textbook sales at universities later. Anyway, the professor's comments about scarcity did serve a good purpose. They made me think. Think for myself. I critically appraised everything I was told ever since.

Over the intervening 21 years since that first Eco 020 lecture, I have arrived at the following conclusions: yes, there is a free lunch, and resources are not scarce. There is abundance. Of everything, for everyone who is willing to see it.

If the supply of resources is indeed limited or finite, then people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett or Jim Balsillie and his business partner (apologies for forgetting his name, but I'm on a roll) for that matter, would not have revolutionized how we interact, communicate and do business. These three individuals have created more wealth for themselves and for millions of other people, than my Eco 020 professor could have possibly dreamed. They have created wealth and abundance and convenience for the world. And they have rightly profited from their inspired creations. And we can too. Join me on a journey of discovery, where we will explode the myths about the current economic meltdown and examine ways to build wealth in any market, during any part of the economic cycle.