Sometimes at work when I think about what I need to do to get a promotion ( a little premature, I know). I also think about how the field of economics is just too constrained within its little structure. For example, I was reading a blog about environmental economics and saw that the author was rejected from the journal he submitted the paper to. The problem was that the author didn't use an optimising model of behaviour - such as to maximise happiness (utility) or profits, etc. I am against this sort of thinking personally, as most of us in the real world know that when you go to the shop or restaurant you don't have perfect information to make an optimal choice so we do the best we can (I know it can seem like optimisation). Other choices are made much in the same way.
Some times to get ideas about an optimisation paper I might search the Internet newspapers so that I can something off the wall. One such site is weird news asia, with a tonne of interesting reads. Check out the picture below from China, what was this guy optimising when he was constructing his house? I like music a lot, yet not that much. Perhaps if I was playing an instrument it might suit me more. Anyway, I am confident that once he plants a garden it would be a gem of a house. Definitely a talking point.
Scrolling down the page I came to a picture that pretty much sums up academic economics as I think it stands.
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