Human Resources are the Disconnect at the Intersection of Do-It-Yourself and Highly Regulated Markets

First, I would like to acknowledge the influence of the No Agenda podcast in contributing significantly to the conversation concerning the concept of “human resources“. In contrast, my own very lethargic enthusiasm for the topic has apparently taken many decades to crystallize and it was indeed not until I was actively pondering last night that my very long and hardly smouldering fuse has finally become sufficiently smelly as to irritate my senses enough for me to recognize that something seems to stink.

My hunch is that several centuries of dogmatic propaganda have led to my rather dire educational opportunities in this regard. I do not believe to have suffered from poor teachers as much as I seem to have suffered from poor teachings — and not all teachings deserve to be thrown out with the sewage, yet quite a few do indeed seem to be plagued with an insufferable stench.

Having read quite selectively from Adam Smith and Karl Marx alike (and many similar authors of treatises), I have been imbibed for most of my life with a quite steady diet (or should I say “flow”?) of bullshit. Now that the coin seems to be at least falling (although it may still not have completely dropped), I am beginning to wake up to the notion that humanity is actually somewhat unsuited for economics.

While sand and pebbles and rocks and fruit and vegetables and livestock and plants and animals and other life (and death?) forms and natural resources of each and every kind under the Almighty’s heaven may neatly fit into the mathematical formulas widely used to calculate supply and demand, I strongly doubt that the first thought to cross a human’s mind when a person from the homo sapiens species is suffering from bedroom eyes is anything like “oh, dear — we need more gravediggers” [1].

If the so-called “New Deal” (which is now nearly a century old) had mandated the government to pay minimum wages, and thereby enforced something like a minimal “universal” or “basic” income, then we might be living in something like a “Brand New World” — but that didn’t happen. Instead, what we got was war and death and destruction.

Yet I think I need to ponder quite a bit more before I reach a conclusion whether the coin has indeed dropped or whether the fuse has extinguished or blown or maybe whether something completely different has happened.