How the Economy Actually Works
Stop viewing the economy as a confusing machine and start seeing it as the sum of human choices. Learn the hidden logic behind prices, trade, and why the world looks the way it does.
Like Duolingo, but for How the Economy Actually Works. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.
27 levels across 3 sections, about 54 minutes end to end, roughly 11 days at five minutes a day. It moves through The Logic of Choice, How Markets Connect Us, and The Big Picture. It starts from scratch.
Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android
Key ideas in How the Economy Actually Works
- Resources like land, time, and labor are limited (scarcity)
- Using a resource for one purpose physically prevents its use for another
- Choice is a direct consequence of having limited means
- The fundamental relationship between scarcity and choice
- Opportunity cost is the value of the next-best alternative, not all alternatives combined
- Cost is measured by what you sacrifice, not just the money spent
- Calculating the opportunity cost of a specific decision
- Non-monetary resources like time and attention are also scarce
- Choosing a 'free' item still involves an opportunity cost of what else you could have done with that time
- Sunk costs are past expenses that cannot be recovered
- Rational decisions are based only on future costs and benefits
- Trying to 'get your money's worth' from a sunk cost often leads to further loss
- Wealth increases options but does not eliminate the need to choose
- Recognizing that 'free' items still consume scarce personal resources
- Even with infinite money, time remains a strictly scarce resource
- Identifying and ignoring sunk costs in future-facing decisions
You've tried the other tabs
Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.
You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.
One answer, then back to scrolling.
Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.
Tomo gives How the Economy Actually Works the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.
Here's what playing it feels like
A real question from this course. Take your best guess.
If a city decides to turn its only vacant lot into a community garden, what happens to the possibility of building a parking lot there?
Get it right to open this lesson and 26 more in the app.
Where How the Economy Actually Works takes you
- 1
The Logic of Choice
- The Hidden Cost of Every Decision
- Thinking at the Margin
- Why Incentives Rule the World
- 2
How Markets Connect Us
- The Dance of Supply and Demand
- The Power of Specialization
- Competition and the Consumer
- 3
The Big Picture
- Money and the Ghost of Inflation
- Growth and the Wealth of Nations
- When Markets Need Help
3 sections · 9 units · 27 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.
You pick the voice
How the Economy Actually Works is taught in the The Professor style: clear, structured, thorough. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.
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Start How the Economy Actually Works today.
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