Why "Self-Help" is Relevant to Economics

The self-help genre gets a bad rap. Check here for some thoughts from the author of SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless, Steve Salerno. Basically, self-help is often criticized as an amalgamation of psychiatric and folk-lore notions that are specifically designed to target vulnerable individuals looking for something to believe in. I'm going to give self-help practitioners the benefit of the doubt though. For the sake of argument, let's assume that so-called "self-help" literature is written by sincere individuals who are simply writing down advice about how to live and how to navigate the complexities of today's world.

Under this assumption, self-help literature or any book or paper giving individuals specific advice, is extremely significant to economics. The economy dictates and is dictated by the sum total of the global infrastructure. Economics is essentially a discipline of observers and theoreticians influencing one another - and helping to map the reality of our economic infrastructure. An economist sees this infrastructure from the top-down, as though he was flying over a corn maze, or huge open air labyrinth.

What if you cannot "afford" a plane ticket? That is, what if you can't be an economist, and understand in great depth the full scope of our economic system?

Let's take the labyrinth analogy and extend it to the common man. Let's say the labyrinth is magical, and moves around dynamically, unpredictably, even while you're attempting to make your way through it. Now let's say you are standing at the entrance to such a labyrinth, wishing for some help on successfully making it through to the other side. What kind of directions would you want? What help would you need? A few people try to help the hapless traveler before he sets out on his journey:

- The economist lands on the ground after flying over the labyrinth in a small plane. He walks over to the traveler with a rough sketch of the entire labyrinth from above. He took a photo as well, but it's blurry, and everyone knows the labyrinth is constantly changing - magically and unpredictably. The economist tells the traveler in exceedingly technical terms how he believes the magic changes are occurring, and why they may occur, and what could cause them to occur at any given time. He then tells him that he has a fairly high level of uncertainty about any particular labyrinthine prediction, but in general, he's right about the labyrinth's behavior.

- The traveler is then approached by another traveler who has already been through the labyrinth, and has also read the stories of the many people who passed through the labyrinth and lived to tell about it. He explains to the would-be traveler that the labyrinth is a dangerous place. He tells him that he'll have to keep his wits about him, and always try to change his situation for his own betterment. He explains how it feels to be alone and scared in the labyrinth, and how to get past those tough times. He explains why it is worth fighting on, and finding a way through to the end.

At its very best, this is how self-help, or religion, or any personal advice plays into the tapestry of economic thinking. We need to be able to find meaning in the economic infrastructure we work and play in. We need to be able to have human compassion for one another as we fight through to the end. The best economist can do both things - explain what the system is all about, and how we can help ourselves to find meaning within it and make a valuable contribution to it. We are all "economic agents" to economists, but we are each very real as well, and we need to be taken seriously as people, talked to as people, and have economic ideas justified in a way that matters to us.

To the extent that self-help authors do this in a way that is not fundamentally deceptive, they deserve the success they've enjoyed.