What’s the deal with economics? Why is it significant? Why should the average folk have any care in the world for it? For starters, everyone has a home. And if you desire a properly managed planet, the home of all our homes, then you also desire a proper economic system. 

The word economy comes from two roots: eco and nomy. Eco comes from the Greek word oikos meaning house, and nomy comes from the Greek word nomos or nemein meaning management, law, and rules, etc..

Economics then, is a lot more than the popular idea of it as a study and practice of money. It is a study and practice of the management and laws of all life, not only human life. We can derive this from a similar word with similar origins, the word ecology.

The word economy is essentially the same as the word ecology except for the difference in their suffixes. The suffix ology means the study of. Ecology is the study of the household (eco meaning house). Economics is the management of that household. Just as ecology studies all life, so too economics deals with all of life. It is only because we are humans that we use economics in regards to ourselves. Technically however, economics can apply to all life on earth, and therefore, in a broader sense, economics is the management of the whole world.

Thus, etymologically (relating to the roots of the words), the economy is the management of the home, and the ultimate home of us all is the world. Colloquially (relating to common conversation), the economy is the management of resources and money. The etymological and colloquial meanings however, do not differentiate. The world is made up of resources, therefore, managing resources is managing the world, and vice versa. When you hear economics, don't just think about it as the management of resources or wealth, think about it as the management of the world.

While economics is the management of the world / resources, more specifically, economics is the management of a finite world and the scarcity of resources. 

Sal Khan of Khan Academy (backed by Google and MIT) teaches the following about economics in his Macroeconomics course (in the video titled Scarcity under the module titled Introduction To Macroeconomics) available in Khan Academy:

“The entire field of economics is based on the idea of scarcity, and arguably we wouldn't even need a field of economics if there wasn't the notion of scarcity in the world.”

Elsewhere he mentions: “Victorian historian Thomas Carlyle once called economics the ‘dismal science’ because he believed it obsessively focused on the scarcity of resources.” (Lesson Summary)

Sal also mentions that “Scarcity is sometimes considered the basic problem of economics. Resources are scarce because we live in a world in which humans’ wants are infinite but the land, labor, and capital required to satisfy those wants are limited. This conflict between society’s unlimited wants and our limited resources means choices must be made when deciding how to allocate scarce resources.”

Scarcity, therefore, is worth mentioning, to know that if we can reduce scarcity, we reduce the need for economics to begin with. This concept of scarcity will also become increasingly more important in Real Economics, as it is this reduction in scarcity, that quite possibly can be achieved through Real Economics itself, which would paradoxically eliminate the need for Real Economics altogether. See the article Re-Prioritization for more on this topic.

To understand the importance of economics we can simply open our eyes to the reality that economic systems are completely intertwined with governmental / political systems and can even be considered as governmental systems in their own right. 

Governments govern the world, this includes not just the governing of natural resources or wealth, but also people, and people are primarily involved in collaboration, creation, contribution, and consumption, which are all economic activities. The majority of the weekday of any adult is (hopefully) work (a primary economic activity). The government therefore, mainly governs economics, is mainly involved with economics, and the government itself is a major player (buyer and seller) in the economy.

The two major economic systems, capitalism and socialism, can both be considered political systems in their own right, as these economic systems dictate how governments operate at their most fundamental level. 

Socialism is an economic system whereby resources are controlled by the government, (supposed to be) representing and serving the public's interests. Capitalism is an economic system whereby resources belong to private interests, and as such, trade is primarily left to natural forces (without any governmental intervention). However, even capitalism is entirely entwined with the government.

It can be said that the whole idea of capitalism is to reduce the meddling of governments in markets, yet even so, governments create the legal frameworks (property rights, regulations) and adjudications (establishing justices) that sustain capitalist markets to begin with.

As well, the government is just people, and therefore the government also needs an income, and to ensure that those they govern have an income as well, and secure at that.

According to the Torah (from which Real Economics is derived), the government is akin to a mouth, using words to rule. An economy is akin to the entire body as a whole, with all its parts and their contributions to other parts of the body / economy, with the mouth being but one part. One part is contributing education (the brain, which also educates the mouth), one part is contributing infrastructure (the bones and vascular system), etc., with the mouth playing its part to try to direct the body with internal sub-local speech (talking to oneself).

Without a body, what good is a mouth, and more so, what good is a mouth without the blood providing and powering it according to its needs. Blood in the Torah, is a metaphor for money. The blood is the primary resource exchange mechanism in the body, just as money is for the collective body of all mankind. In Hebrew, the words for money (dam) and blood (damim) are also cognate (etymologically related) and nearly identical with one another.