Read in Korean

[Economics 101] is a kind of remake of the book “Economics, Talking to Reality,” which was written to understand the global financial crisis that began with the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis in 2008. This remake revisits the topic from today’s perspective, keeping in mind terms like “consilience” and “complexity economics.”

If we were to distill all the world’s knowledge and wisdom into a single sentence, it would be, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” In physics, this idea is known as the Second Law of Thermodynamics, or the law of increasing entropy. Everything in the world moves from order to disorder. Left alone, iron rusts, apples rot, and houses age. Preventing these processes comes at a cost.

In economics, this translates into one of the 10 principles of economics: “Every choice has a cost.” Milton Friedman, the 1976 Nobel Prize-winning economist, put it more concretely as, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” If there’s no free lunch, then the idea of a free dinner—something even more luxurious—is out of the question.

It’s fortunate, in a way, that we live in a time that recognizes mutual cooperation as a social virtue, underpinned by liberalism and democracy. While the level of fairness is still far from ideal, society agrees on the value of “equal opportunity.” We accept free competition as a good thing, believing that with the right abilities, we can buy what we desire and freely sell ourselves or our goods in the market.

However, history shows that extreme wealth inequality or monopolization of power has often paradoxically triggered change. Democracies that guarantee individual rights, monogamy that brought stability to families and societies, and market economies that ensure free trade—these institutions, which now seem so obvious, were once unimaginable. The freedom we enjoy today wasn’t obtained for free. Our predecessors learned through countless trials and errors, some of which involved bloody struggles.

Despite this, most of us accept these conditions as if they were naturally given. Rather than trying to change the environment, we devise competitive strategies or choose ways to live within it. But the rapidly changing economic environment demands that we learn about its complexities and raise our voices. Sometimes, those changes can transform our businesses and lives entirely.

Learning can be described as “the cost we pay now to minimize the costs we may face in the future.” In this sense, Economics 101 aims to help us reduce tomorrow’s potential costs through the process of learning today.