Economics of "Life"

The concept of Currency evolved around 2000 BC. Its form, shape & size have been changing ever since. It gained importance into the society as a medium of exchange and trade, taking over the earlier practices such as barter system. It helped nations bring their economies on a common platform. It boosted trade and built relations among different countries. Today, the same money seems to be influencing our daily lives. As we see, changes in the US dollar price having big impact on the decisions taken by different financial organizations all over the globe. Even the natural resources a country has are being calibrated using the same medium of exchange. Today it has become one of the most important concepts in the history of social development of humans.
 

Moreover when we zoom into the lives of the individuals in our society today, we see the major driving force or motivation to work is Money itself. This is true to the extent that most of us participating in this “rat race” never try to understand or question the basic need for running in the direction we are going. Turning to the classic evolution theories, fight amongst individuals/ species for the available resource has been the decision factor for survivability of an organism in a given population. The “rat race” can be a result of the same. Keeping aside the greed aspect, it is very important and interesting to know, from where we acquired the knowledge of “economics”? Or how this concept was discovered? Or was it a necessity based invention as in most of the cases? I believe the knowledge is already embedded within us, as life has its own economics.

The way we manage our income-expenditure equations and the noteworthy common Indian mentality to economize every aspect of daily life is amusing. If we zoom into “LIFE” itself, we may find many answers for this behavior. Every organism has a genome (the Blueprint), having genes, coding/non-coding regions, accessory elements (regulatory elements) etc. In all the aspects of organization, growth & reproduction of cell we see precision in the usage of all the above mentioned components. The size of genomes/ genes/ proteins, number of genes, percentage of non-coding regions in genomes, expression of particular genes at particular time points, their amounts, re-usability of particular proteins for different functions/ reactions/ interactions (hub proteins, having flexible structures), the way these elements fit into a series of reactions forming networks (may it be gene regulatory networks, biochemical network or signalling networks), all this is following certain thermodynamic constrains. In all this, the complexity is huge. But using all the above mentioned information in a genome, still following the constraints, cell tries to survive adjusting to given environmental factors. Ones a cell is born (as in after division), its internal machinery starts transacting with the environment using the currency of energy. It gains energy from exterior (in different forms). According to the availability of resources (and signals in case of multicellular organisms) it prioritizes its actions to either go into dormant (sustain), growth or reproduction/ division state. From the whole organism’s point of view, the maintenance charges also matter. The bigger the entity or component more energy is spent on taking care of it. Having more genes/ bigger sized genome (more information) is not always advisable for a cell. Bigger the genome, more energy is spent on its thermodynamic stability, repair mechanism etc. Same is the case with, cell as a system. All the proportions of its contents and overall size have to be maintained. Hence the rules seem to be universal. Although the evolution can be seen from two different dimensions (thermodynamic constraint based or adaptation based), both of which are leading to the same conclusion that the genome has prior information about the economics it is dealing with.

Likewise, most of rules seem to be embedded within us, which when explored result into progress in our thought process. The concept of language (grammar), programmability of a system (coding the machines), abstracts (mathematics), music etc, are derivatives of the same universal rule book nature follows (or may be have created). We need more unbiased observation systems and theories to learn more about the same. Interestingly one lifetime may not be enough to reach this state of understanding and knowledge about nature, we can merely try.