Nickel and Dime Economics

Governments tax people through excess fees, legal penalties, and other forms of taxation in the hope to recoup revenue.

one city in Missouri imposed many new fines and taxes to add revenue to their budget. The method they implemented is called Nickel and Dime Economics

by jondich September 20, 2022

Tanked the economy

Hey... Hey, guys...

Hym "Wouldn't it be funny if every time liberals got into office we tanked the economy and blamed it on them? Heh... We could probably be pretty subtle about it and just tank it every time we lose and then hold 'a good economy' hostage so we can maintain the status quo. LIKE WE DO WITH OUR RELIGION! It'd be, like, the same exact thing except for politics!"

by Hym Iam November 22, 2023

Hard Problem of Economics

The micro-macro divide: Economics struggles to coherently connect the behavior of individual agents (assumed to be rational, self-interested) with the emergent phenomena of the whole economy (booms, busts, inflation). Models that work for a household or firm fail catastrophically at the national level (the fallacy of composition). The hard problem is that the economy is a complex, adaptive system of billions of interacting, emotional, and sometimes irrational people. It's like trying to predict the weather by studying a single molecule of air. The elegant mathematical models provide a comforting illusion of certainty but repeatedly break down in the face of real-world crises, bubbles, and panics.

Example: For an individual, saving money is prudent. But if everyone suddenly increases savings simultaneously (the "paradox of thrift"), aggregate demand plummets, businesses fail, unemployment rises, and people end up poorer overall. The rational individual act leads to a collectively irrational outcome. The hard problem: Economics cannot be reliably scaled up. Policies that seem sound in theory (austerity, deregulation) can trigger disaster in practice because the model's simplifying assumptions (perfect information, rational actors) evaporate in the chaotic reality of herds, fear, and speculation. The economy is a story we tell ourselves, and sometimes the characters rebel against the plot. Hard Problem of Economics.

by Enkigal January 24, 2026

Theory of Constructed Economics

The argument that "the economy" is not a natural force like weather, but a human-constructed game with invented rules, players (households, firms), and scores (GDP, money). Concepts like "inflation," "unemployment," and "the market" are models we built; they then take on a life of their own and shape our behavior, but they began as ideas, not laws of physics.

*Example: "A 'recession' is two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. GDP itself is a constructed metric invented in the 1930s. The Theory of Constructed Economics shows that the terrifying, objective-sounding force that 'causes' layoffs is actually a story we tell ourselves using numbers we invented. We built the game, forgot we built it, and now tremble at its rules."*

by Abzu Land January 31, 2026

Theory of Economic Social Control

The idea that your wallet is a primary tool for steering behavior. It examines how access to resources, job markets, debt, and consumer culture dictates your life choices and keeps you invested in the status quo. Control is achieved by making your survival and social worth dependent on playing by the system's economic rules.

Theory of Economic Social Control Example: The crushing weight of student loans and mortgage debt. This isn't just personal finance; it's a potent form of economic social control. Needing to make huge monthly payments makes you far less likely to risk your stable job by striking, protesting, or starting a radical business. It funnels you into a compliant, productive life path by leveraging your economic vulnerability.

by Abzugal Nammugal Enkigal February 7, 2026

Psychology of Economical Systems

The study of how human psychology shapes and is shaped by the systems that produce, distribute, and consume goods and services. Economics traditionally assumed rational actors maximizing utility; psychology reveals that humans are predictably irrational—loss-averse, status-conscious, prone to herding, and terrible at probability. The psychology of economical systems explains bubbles (herd behavior, overconfidence), crashes (panic, loss aversion), inequality (status seeking, positional goods), and the persistence of poverty (scarcity mindset, cognitive load). It also examines how economic systems shape psychology in return—creating desires we didn't know we had, defining success in narrow terms, making us feel like winners or losers based on arbitrary metrics.

Example: "She studied the psychology of economical systems during the housing bubble, watching otherwise rational people make obviously terrible decisions. It wasn't stupidity; it was psychology—herd behavior, overconfidence, the thrill of the gamble. The system encouraged it, exploited it, and collapsed when the psychology inevitably turned. The next bubble was already forming."

by Dumu The Void February 16, 2026

Critical Theory of Economics

The application of Critical Theory to economics as a whole—examining how economic knowledge is produced, whose interests it serves, and how it might be transformed. Critical Theory of Economics asks: How has economics justified capitalism? Why are certain assumptions (rationality, equilibrium, efficiency) treated as universal? What would economics look like if it prioritized human needs over market outcomes? Drawing on Marxist, feminist, and ecological economics, it insists that economics is never neutral—it's always political. The question is which politics it serves.

"Economics says markets allocate resources efficiently. Critical Theory of Economics asks: efficiently for whom? At what cost? Markets produce winners and losers—economics that ignores that is ideology. Critical theory demands an economics that studies power, that centers human flourishing, that imagines alternatives. Not just describing how the economy works, but asking how it could work differently."

by Abzugal Nammugal Enkigal March 4, 2026