In an income-addicted, hand-to-mouth, economy your standard of living is connected directly to the price of your labour (your salary). This is precarious if the work disappears or the set of problems that need solving changes. Price is not value. Price discovery is hard. It is a negotiation between the ask and the offer. If lots of people can solve a valuable problem, its price will be low. Aluminium used to be prized as special cutlery for the wealthy. Now we wrap food in it, cook, and discard. Supply and Demand. A good rule of thumb for if an industry is broken is if the price for the same thing keeps going up. That means we are not finding better solutions. Prices should go down. We need to wean ourself off defining ourselves and our lives by our income source. Like the Government Pension Fund of Norway (known as the Oil Fund) which gradually shifted investment from oil to a broad basket of international investments that are independent of the Norwegian Economy.
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