Is That Thing Alive?
Note: Welcome to Economics for Busy People. Over the following months, I’ll be sharing this book chapter by chapter. Today, let me show you why economics matters more than you think—starting with a story about a razor clam in the Las Vegas desert.
Quite The Shock
A few years ago I found myself face to face (if you can call it that) with a live razor clam.
I’d honestly never seen one before.
I was staring at the shell when suddenly, slowly, it cracked open. To my shock, this long, off-white “foot” slid out, searching for somewhere else to be.
My mind raced with questions. “What is that? Is that thing alive? Is it safe to eat?” But most importantly: “What is that doing here?”
What shocked me wasn’t seeing a new sea creature. It was where I was sitting when I saw it.
I was in a sushi bar, behind a 7/11, in a suburban strip mall, in Las Vegas—300 miles from the closest ocean.
Why Was I Surprised?
I shouldn’t have been surprised for two reasons.
First, I’ve lived in Las Vegas all my life. Growing up here, you see things that should shock you every day. Medieval knights fighting in castles next to pyramids, across from a Statue of Liberty surrounded by a roller coaster—all under billboards featuring showgirls, magicians, and chefs.
In comparison, a live razor clam isn’t that shocking.
Second, I’m an economist. I’ve spent my career studying how we all come together to make each other’s lives better in ways no one expects or plans. Fresh sushi in the desert shouldn’t surprise me. And yet it did, because knowing and experiencing are two different things.
It’s one thing to understand how economics works. It’s entirely different to see and feel the magic of economics playing out right in front of your face.
You might be asking: “What does the most boring subject in the world have to do with sushi in the desert?”
Short answer? Everything.
How Fresh Fish Gets to the Desert
That razor clam’s journey to my table is a remarkable story of human cooperation. And it happens millions of times every day without anyone being in charge.
It started in Japan, where someone I’ll never meet spent years learning to harvest razor clams from cold ocean waters. They got up before dawn, worked in dangerous conditions, and perfected skills most of us couldn’t imagine developing.
Within hours of being scooped from the ocean, that clam was packed in ice and rushed to an airport. A pilot then flew it, along with other cargo, across the world.
At the Vegas airport, freight handlers moved it through customs and onto refrigerated trucks. The trucking company took it to a distributor. The distributor sent their own trucks out to the restaurant.
Meanwhile, the sushi chef had spent years perfecting his craft. He built relationships with suppliers and created a reputation that made customers willing to pay $8 for a single piece of clam.
In about 24 hours, this razor clam went from the ocean in Japan to the cold case in front of me.
Nobody planned this. No “Foodie Commission” decreed that Vegas should have world-class sushi. No government agency designed the optimal clam transportation network. Yet thousands of strangers across the globe cooperated to deliver exactly what I didn’t even know I wanted.
From Experiencing to Understanding
Right now, whether you like it or not, you’re experiencing economics every day. But experiencing something and understanding it are completely different things.
Most people go through life as passive participants in the economy. They react to what happens around them without knowing why it’s happening or how they might influence it.
This book is about changing that. It’s about taking you from just experiencing economics to actually understanding it. Its goal is to help you start making economics work for you.
The goal isn’t to turn you into an economist. It’s to help you think like one when it matters. This is all so that you can see the patterns, expect the consequences, and make choices that align with how the world works rather than how we wish it worked.
Economics is already shaping your life. This book will help you shape it back.
Why Should Busy People Care About Economics?
You’re busy with work, family, errands, bills, health, and trying to find time to relax. But the reason you’re busy is because you care deeply about your life. You work hard to provide for and take care of your loved ones.
That care and love for your family and community is exactly why understanding economics matters so much.
Economics affects everything you value: your job security, your family’s opportunities, your community’s prosperity, your country’s future. Understanding how it works gives you clearer thinking about decisions that shape all of these.
Most people think economics is only about complicated formulas, confusing charts, and debates that don’t matter in everyday life.
That’s what happens when economics is stripped of its humanity and is reduced to mechanical models that treat us like predictable machines.
In reality, economics is the study of how we act, make decisions, and work together in a world where we can’t have everything we want. It explains why we make trade-offs, how our choices reveal what we value, and why outcomes often differ from intentions.
Economics won’t tell you what to think. But it will give you a framework for thinking more clearly. And once you begin to think like an economist, you’ll see the world in a whole new way.
How This Book Works
You don’t need to memorize terms or master complicated theories.
Understanding a few key ideas—like scarcity, value, trade, and the cost of time—can help you understand how our world works better than any equation or talking head on television will.
Each chapter is written for your busy schedule. They’re clear, short, and practical. Every chapter has a “One Takeaway” and a “Bottom Line” that capture the key ideas; though you’ll understand better if you read what’s in between.
Economics isn’t boring when you realize it’s the study of how people like you make the world work.
Let’s get busy.