What’s abundant and what’s scarce? The question matters because as economist Michael Spence (among others) has noted, value and profits flow to what’s scarce.What’s in over-supply has little to no scarcity value and hence little to no profitability.01

What’s abundant is unprofitable work, commoditized goods and services, and conventional labor and cap.ital (which is why wages are declining and yields on capital are near-zero).

What’s scarce is profitable work, highly profitable niches that are immune to commoditization/ automation, and meaningful work.

Drew Sample of the samplehour.com and I discuss scarcity and profit in the contexts of Decentralization, Entrepreneurship, Bike Paths, Craft Brew, Automation & more (1:12)

The conversation is not between two ivory-tower types who have never started an enterprise in their life; it’s a conversation between a young mobile creative(Drew) who is establishing a hybrid work career of multiple micro-enterprises and paid work and a grizzled veteran of multiple careers and businesses (me–with plenty of failures that gave me the necessary experience to learn how to accumulate all forms of capital and own my own means of production).

In other words, this is a conversation between people who are walking the walk, not just jawjacking about abstractions that somebody else is supposed to make real with their own money and time.

So let’s get started.

Everyone wants an abundance of “good paying” jobs, but employers can only afford to pay employees if the work being done is profitable. Paying people to do unprofitable work is a one-way street to bankruptcy.

Those who want the government to fund “good paying” jobs forget that government tax revenues depend on profitable enterprises and the private-sector wages they pay.

(Borrowing from our grandkids to pay public-sector wages today is immoral and financially unsustainable.)

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