Diverse Economies

The diverse economies article brought up a lot of good points regarding how we understand and think about economic practices. Sometimes it’s easy to only see things within our own context, particularly economic systems because they are such an integral part of our lives. We participate in them without giving them much thought, even though they are a defining characteristic of our place in society. It is easy to assume that they are something more than systems constructed by humans, that they possess some sort of greater authority or universality. Along with this comes the tendency to assign value to differing systems and in our culture it is easy to assign more value to our systems and less to other ones. This, however, is not optimum because it limits our potential to be exposed to and test new ideas. I think it is also important for us to realize (as discussed in the article) how much of our daily economic activity falls outside the realm of traditional market interactions. By realizing this it is easier to understand how differing economic systems work because it shows us that our economic activity is more complicated than we might have previously assumed.