The other day I was trying to explain the cost of doing business to a 6th grader during class. It was easy to point out the cost of the supplies and materials however, it was the intangibles, things like time, labor, and the process of creating a prototype that actually worked, that eluded this young grasshopper still green in the ways of economies. He, like so many of my adult students wanting to make a living creating, forgot about all the oxygen they sucked up whilst developing their masterpieces, the things we can't hold in our hands but are required to continue living...
For those who manufacture something, it is a difficult uphill struggle to continue to monetize their intellectual property, ideas, techniques, and processes in a "freemium" society. We've trained a generation of people to see an object and immediately apply a "race to the lowest cost" mentality to it never once thinking about the fact that the person who created that wonder cannot eat praise or pay their rent in product or accolades from the global online mob-ocracy.
I explained to the child in my class, "Sure, you can most certainly hang your clothes out on the line and wait for them to dry (longer during a rain storm and even longer during the winter) for free however, the other options have a cost (unless you are mooching off your friends or parents who will pay for the electricity for you). One can own the equipment (in this case a dryer) or, pay to use another person's property to achieve the final goal and, in both cases, one is paying for air- something unseen yet inherently necessary." The point is, to exact change, we must be vigilent in reminding people that the unseen costs in business count too.
