The purpose of the entire world’s economy is to serve you and me. It has no purpose other than that.
All the shipping containers in massive barges coming into harbor, the 18-wheelers rolling across the highway, the tractors plowing vast acreages of farmland. The warehouses, cranes, bulldozers, high-rise buildings.
It can be daunting to look at all this and think about what an economy is. Maybe, in our 9-to-5 jobs we read financial reports, maintain computer networks, or evaluate stock and bond market reports. Maybe we produce TV ads and commercials or sell things. Maybe we prepare legal documents. Or work in a factory.
Whatever. All of this work, everything we do as participants in the economy, is ultimately about you and me. Providing what we want.
Consider any industry. Like supermarkets. We go to the grocery store and see thousands of products in the aisles. But behind all the fruits, vegetables, and packaged products are farms, small- and medium-sized businesses, and large corporations. That’s what provides the goods and services that supply you and me with: FOOD.
The same is true when you go to a department or clothing store. There you get: CLOTHES.
Property developers, real estate agents, lumber and concrete suppliers, and so on are involved in building and selling: SHELTER.
What about car and airline companies? TRANSPORTATION.
And biotech firms, herb suppliers, or doctors provide what? HEALTH CARE.
What about technology companies like Apple, Google/Youtube, and Facebook?
INFORMATION, COMMUNICATION, KNOWLEDGE, EDUCATION, SOCIAL CONNECTIVITY, ENTERTAINMENT.
We could go on and on with every industry, but the point is to show that everything in our entire economy exists solely to provide either a good or service to you and me. That’s it. You might object and say you work for a company that provides for business customers, not people. But in the end those business customers are producing a good or service to you and me or supplying something to a business that does.
It’s all part of an economy that exists for you and me. The economy really is that simple. Everything in it is provided by you and me, for you and me.
But maybe you’re working a 9-to-5 job and don’t like being on that corporate hamster wheel. Does it make sense to slave for 30 years just to build typical retirement savings? Or is there another way?
Imagine a simple life. Henry David Thoreau described this when he wrote about his stay in nature at Walden Pond for a couple years. He built a homestead, farmed, fished, and was self-sufficient in a matter of months, not 30 years! All we really need is food, clothes, and a home. And, yeah, maybe the Internet.
We have technology, and we have local communities to exchange goods and services with. So shouldn’t life be far easier today than it was for Thoreau over 150 years ago?
[Note: I wrote this late 2014 or sometime around then for my startup blog. I took out the last sentence, but the rest is the same. I did get great editing help on this one, but it's one of my favorites I've ever written!]