Swallowed Whole

Not all good ideas are good business ideas. Care Work is the most obvious example. You can force a business model on 1-1 relational care, but there is no real possibility to scale. The only way to make it “worth the time” of the person providing support is to push the price up. Charging by the hour is done mostly because it is easy. Care Work starts to hurt if you push the price up. If you know your hourly-rate, and you know you aren’t being paid because you are doing something else, it can hurt. Like a self-employed person taking time off. Like a consultant going for a coffee with a friend. Like a lawyer or tradesperson doing small talk when you know the clock is ticking at your expense. Long handed pennys. Short handed pounds. The cornerstone of making money is constraint. Being able to put things in a box. To control supply and demand. But, and this is important, you have to be able to put money making in a box too. If you aren’t able to accept limits and constraints, and be comfortable with the concept of enough – money will swallow you whole.

Saturn devouring his son

Francisco Goya

What Counts?

We overvalue the conspicuous, and things we can count. We undervalue the internal, and things for which there is no market. The caring professions are most brutally hit. The economics of 1-1 care, or anything that requires the time and effort to see an individual, are poor. A homemaker raising poor children does the “same” work that a homemaker raising wealthy ones does, but homemaking would be an awful business. No one else would put the level of effort in. Conspicuous is easier to manage. Work where you can clock in and clock out. Work where you say you will dig eight holes in an hour, and you dig nine. Or you dig eight, but in fifty minutes. This means we overvalue things that are easy to communicate. If something is hard to explain, it requires trust and confidence. It requires letting go of a desire to manage and control. The only way the economics of care work is by releasing them from the constraints of monetisation. By empowering them with engines of capital working in areas where the economics do work. Not all good ideas are good business ideas. Not all good work can be seen.