MAJOR STEREOTYPES: Economics

People choose economics for a major for similar reasons people choose to drink Diet Coke. Economics (henceforth "econ") looks like money... it smells like money... maybe choosing it will... get me a lot of money?! Diet Coke similarly looks and tastes a lot like cocaine infused sugar water [1]

I like MONEY

One way in which econ majors tend to be refreshingly honest is in admitting that they like money. While university students of other majors may dance around this topic, asserting they are primarily concerned with abstract, difficult to get a handle on things like "the common good" or even "the environment" [2], econ majors are near invariably straight up about their like for the $$$s.

Unfortunately, econ majors are often rather shallow thinking about $$$. For instance, many of them believe you can make more money in the world by printing more dollar bills and that cryptocurrencies must be regulated. Naturally, economists will inform these decisions.

While econ majors are self-aware of their greed, they are often not-so keen on fulfilling their desires by exchanging value for value. Rather, they would like to oversee you (plebs) and extract money from dollar-printers and speaking tour fees. You can pay to consult them. This at least is what econ majors often aspire for—but first they must get through the rat race of completing their degrees.

You, me, and econ

Econ majors tend to feel very uncomfortable around individuals, and instead prefer to think of people as functions. If they are quantitatively inclined, they learn about how you make decisions using computer models. Otherwise, they read page after page of prose, pretending to grasp the occasional equation that pops up.

To most parents, people passing by, and other non-econ majors that see our studious friends eye-brow furrowing at PDFs on a Macbook pros while drinking $6 lattes, it looks like a lot of complex, important work is being done. From long distances, econ papers resemble physics papers. Their spreadsheets have lots of numbers on them, which scare away non-econ majors that chose their own majors to avoid numbers.

An Encounter

The econ major looks towards you. Reading a novel? The econ major quickly shifts their gaze back to the symbol shuffling in front of them.

Ha. I only read non-fiction. That's how I know about reality.

You look back towards the econ major. The econ major pretends to not have noticed you.

I have to be senpai. Senpai doesn't notice you. You're just an irrational consumer!!!

The econ major continues trying to look at some assignment while secretly being jealous of your fashionable shirt and wondering about what you're reading.

Game Theory

Econ majors don't care that you learned about game theory by watching YouTube or reading a book on your own. That's just one theory, they have more theories.

Quoting the Austrian School to an econ major is like quoting Freud to a psychology major. Why don't you just worry about your own studies?

When other people think about or learn about economics, this makes econ majors nervous. Econ is a zero-sum game which must be dominated by degree-holding economists.

The Economy of Econ Majors

Majoring in econ is kind of like drinking Diet Coke for nutritional value. Sure, its better than being on the streets committing violent crimes and likewise offers some funsies short-term. I surmise that ultimately, however, most econ majors do not major in econ in order to figure out how to add value to the world through providing goods and services—exchanging value for value. They just want to observe and manage you while you do that, an extract some $$$s for themselves.

As I see them, econ majors aren't unusually bad people. To use their own jargon, they are simply responding to incentives.

Currently, many institutions incentivize people to shuffle symbols of any sort (including dollar signs), create rules and regulations to make that symbol shuffling game more complex, and then extract $$$s from others for help navigating the symbol shuffling game as a kind of Dungeon Master in an unfun game.

Econ majors have fully bought into this unfun game, and are prepared to make it more unfun. Think of a person that wants to play Monopoly till the end, even if it takes 8 hours. Now, imagine if this same person gets paid by the hour and controls the game's bank. 

Try inviting an econ major to your next board game night.

Notes and References

[1]: Have not done a fact check on the cocaine part, but Cola certainly is sugar filled.
[2]: The question of how human beings should relate to planet earth is not an easily answered question. I want to have lots of nice trees, clean air, etc. too. But there are a lot of people on this planet, and we cannot simply add or delete them as we see fit (ethically, anyways).