Suraj Chaudhary, Author at Suraj C.

This is an article about depression, not the ‘depression’ of mental state, but the ‘depression’ of the economy. I am aware that it seems like a click-betty title (which it is), but the content is worthy of it. This is an article about an undergrad university student who saved the world from collapsing and so many things that we can learn from it. Even if you are not all that interested in Economics, trust me, it is going to be very interesting, so much so that after listening to this story I am considering a double degree in CS and Economics.

The story begins on September 4, 1929, in the USA when a major fall in stock prices began. The same pattern followed throughout almost all the countries of the world. During the depression, people didn’t really have much money, so the demand for goods and services in the market was reducing as people couldn’t afford them.

The father of Economics, Adam Smith, had claimed that when there is a fall in the prices of commodities, then the demand for the commodity rises. And that the same was true for the opposite, i.e. when there was a rise in the price, the demand falls. That is what everyone in business thought and knew of. So, not surprisingly, the suppliers in the market thought, “Right now people are not purchasing the goods because the prices are high. If we follow the law of demand and reduce the prices of the commodities, demand will increase and people will start buying our commodities.” They were right until they weren’t.

Initially, after the prices of commodities were dropped by the suppliers, people started buying goods and the demand increased, but it didn’t last for long. After some time, people realized that if they didn’t buy for longer, the price would drop even more. So most people stopped buying commodities that weren’t fundamental needs. This caused a disruption in the market. Even though the supplier reduced the price, the demand wasn’t increasing. This led to many industries shut, which further led to the shutting of other related factories.

Since the industries were shutting down, people were losing their jobs, which caused serious unemployment. And since they didn’t have a job, they didn’t have any money with which they could afford the commodities offered by the suppliers, and the demand in the market remained low. The same was the case in almost all the countries of the world.

This economic depression lasted until 1939. But how did the world economy recover from this depression? That’s the question I asked my teacher as well when he was telling us about it. And this is where J. M. Keynes comes in.

During the Great Depression, Keynes was a university student. He was an excellent student, but it was becoming difficult for him to pay his tuition fees due to the depression. So he decided to apply for a government job by taking the Civil Service Commission exam of the UK. When the result of the exam was published, Keynes had failed the exam.

That was shocking for both Keynes and his friends as Keynes was a scholar of Economics, and he had got the lowest marks in Economics itself. By the suggestions of his friends, Keynes filed a request for rechecking of his paper. The news got out and everyone started questioning the professors and scholars who had checked his paper. The professors claimed that Keynes had discarded all the theories of the classical and the neo-classical eras of Economics, and had suggested his own solutions to the ongoing problem of the Great Depression which the professors couldn’t comprehend. For that very reason, they failed him.

The matter didn’t extend much, but then, in 1936, he included these ideas in his book The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money. He had suggested that the situation was not in control of the supplier and consumer now. He claimed that the governments needed to interfere, and solve the problem. They could do so by creating employment in the market. It could also be done by the dig and undig method (making people dig a road, then making them fill/undig it).

This would require people which would create employment, machinery, and tools to dig which would increase the demand for steel and iron, and it would require cement and other materials which would increase demand in their respective sectors. By the late 1930s, leading Western economies had begun adopting Keynes’s policy recommendations. Soon all other countries followed. This increased development, created employment, which led to the increase in demand, which ultimately restored the economies of the world.

This story has a lot of takeaways, one of them being that even if your ideas are discarded by some people, namely “scholars”, doesn’t mean that what you think is entirely wrong. With time and effort, could be through building an audience online, you can find the people who agree with you which could ultimately lead to greater things. This story isn’t very detailed, because if I did so, it would reach at least a dozen pages.

I appreciate it if you read it till here, and I would love it if you dropped a comment down below with your thoughts. Also, if you find what I write interesting, please do share this newsletter with your friends and family. This way they can get a weekly story of inspiration, effort, and we could all figure things out, together.

I have no idea what I am doing right now, but I wish to write. I have tried writing before, but have never been consistent with it. Several times when I am not doing something that makes me feel like I’m being productive, I feel guilty. The same was the case when I first started reading.

I remember vividly that I was in grade 8 when I first read a book. It was a book that belonged to my class teacher. I was the class representative back then, so I used to collect the copies and lock the classroom’s locker every day before we left. That was where the first book that I read was; in the classroom’s locker. I had been seeing it almost every school day. But one day, I decided to read that book. I found that book so interesting that I completed it in a day. The book was “Who Moved My Cheese?”

I didn’t read the book for days after I brought it home from school. I had it in my cupboard for several weeks untouched until we got a week’s holiday (I guess it was for the Holi festival). I decided to take it with me when I was leaving for my village. My village was about 3 hours away from the town where I used to study. On the bus, I took the book out and decided to just have a look at what was in there. I didn’t realize when I was almost halfway through the book.

It was a really interesting book with only about 150 pages. I completed the book within a day. They say that reading your first book is hard, but it wasn’t, at all. What was hard, though, was taking the book and reading the first page. Once I was through the first page, I wanted to know more, I wanted to learn more. At that time, I had no idea that books were “fictional” and “non-fictional”. I thought books were simply books, and reading them was good.

After reading my first book, I wanted to read more and so I did. I read a few other books as well, most of them fictional. I read Bonecrack by Dick Francis, The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, The Best of Me by Nicholas Sparks, and a few others. By then, I was very much into fiction and love and romance. But that didn’t last for long. Soon after I reached grade 10, I started feeling guilty for wasting my time.

I would feel that I wasn’t utilizing my time as properly as I could. I wasn’t doing as well at school either, I was an above-average student but academically I didn’t perform to my fullest potential. So I stopped reading fictional books, stopped watching movies, and stopped doing anything else that would make me feel that I was wasting my time. I started volunteering at Bridge to Literacy (an INGO that teaches English to children from underprivileged countries) as a web developer, and I also did fairly well in my grade 10’s board exams.

By grade 11, I had submerged myself in the productivity realm. I wouldn’t watch any movies or series unless I needed to, wouldn’t read any fictional book, wouldn’t be active on social media, my youtube feed was filled with Ali Abdaal, Thomas Frank, Matt D’Avella, and other productivity gurus. I wanted to be as productive and good at everything as I could.

Then, I came across creators like Valspire Family and Nathaniel Drew, and I felt like “What’s the point?”. Now, I also wanted to live life the way they did, by actually living it. I wanted to just travel, meet people, document my life, and just enjoy it. Then the guilt hit and I came back to square one. I was back in the productivity realm. I started my own website, started learning how to code, started reading books, taking notes, and being a ‘good student’ at school.

“The quicker you let go of old cheese, the sooner you find new cheese.”
― Spencer Johnson, Who Moved My Cheese?

I did pick up some fictional books to read, but as soon as I’d read the first page, I’d realize that this book was only a fictional book and most probably wasn’t going to help me professionally in life. So I’d stop reading those books. A few months prior to me writing this post, I was at one of my cousin brother’s place and I noticed that he had a few fictional books on his table. I didn’t have my laptop or any non-fictional books with me, so I picked up 11 Minutes by Paulo Coelho. I read a few pages, it is a beautiful book, the type that plays in your head like a movie as you read it. I didn’t want to stop reading but the guilt took over and I left the book.

Even on my website, I wanted to just write, about anything and everything I felt like. But I didn’t because of the guilt and also because then it wouldn’t be a niche educational website. So I got this domain (SurajC.com). Here I want to just write and not get carried away by the design, the SEO, the analytics, and other technical stuff by which we get carried away so easily. I want to document my life here. I want to write about the books I read, the movies I watch, the experiences I have, and I want to write about everything I feel like and whenever I feel like.

Have you ever felt this way? Have you ever had such an experience? What do you think the point of life is?

If you made it to the end, thank you so much for reading. I appreciate it. I would love it if you dropped a comment down below. It can be about anything similar or different. I would love to learn more about you and what you think. I wish you have a great rest of your day, see you again.