Much of today's political chaos, can ultimately be traced to struggles over who retains access to high skill knowledge. Consequently, it helps to consider: How much of this skills capacity might be artificially scarce?
Still, artificial scarcity was built into quality services product for understandable reasons. Originally, professional services were largely intended for citizens with relatively high income levels in prosperous areas. Over time, however, professional services provision gradually became the norm, replacing the mutual assistance which citizens with limited incomes had long provided for one another. Even though the move from mutual assistance to professional activity has been a centuries long transition, the real turning point towards complete professionalization began about fifty years ago.
By the late seventies, professional healthcare had mostly replaced the last vestiges of local and less formal services options. Nevertheless, the details as to how skilled forms of mutual assistance were legislated away, aren't really well known. Even the latter stages of these transitions were scarcely noticed, since the professionalization of services in general, benefited from widespread media support.
What is belatedly apparent, however, is that when production rights are withdrawn from groups lacking the money for extensive human capital investment, markets for useful services are going to suffer. Fortunately, what has become a woefully insufficient services marketplace, can be addressed. But doing so means not being afraid to explain to citizens what actually happened. The less blame in this regard, the better. Forgiving what happened, means we get the chance to create a more productive and hopeful future. We now have the opportunity to create greater economic meaning for time value, and doing so would extend the skills capacity needed for today's knowledge based economy. Much of this skills capacity will also need to take place on non pecuniary terms capable of creating monetary equivalence.
Why so? Healthcare is mostly a dependent secondary market. Since much of it relies on government support, periods of slow economic growth impact the revenues actually available. Consequently, even though demand continues to grow - especially due to aging populations - healthcare providers have limited ability to expand supply side capacity via the same pricing terms. Yet how could healthcare providers be paid substantially less, if their human capital investment costs remain relatively fixed?
For the U.S. in particular, present day organizational capacity was created during relatively long periods of increasing tradable sector growth. This organizational capacity was also accomplished via strong price making mechanisms, especially in the latter decades of the 20th century. Now, in certain respects the price making approach has reached its natural limits, given other near future budgetary obligations. In other words, even though more capacity is needed, revenue can't realistically grow to meet that demand. Consequently, services demand now needs to be met by different means than what have occurred in the U.S. thus far. This is the dilemma many high skill providers currently face. What can be done?
The moment is right, to create human capital organizational patterns which include reliable and easily defined non pecuniary rewards. This approach would help compensate the fact that healthcare as a secondary market position, cannot respond to further demand with full monetary compensation for an expanded supply side. Non pecuniary rewards would create greater monetary equivalence for those willing to participate in healthcare, through new forms of organizational capacity.
Services such as healthcare could gain greater monetary equivalence by increasing time value as part of an applied knowledge continuum. This process could be undertaken with relatively minimal costs for human capital investment. Education for services skills would be integrated into local communities and their workplaces. The symmetry of time arbitrage would allow education and other services capacity to function as components of wealth creation, instead of simply more demands on other existing wealth.
Such an approach could be a tremendous boost for communities which presently lack the resources necessary to compensate today's high skill knowledge providers. Plus, monetary equivalence for human capital investment via non pecuniary means, could help stabilize skilled services markets in general. And in modern economies, services stabilization is certainly important for wealth stabilization as a whole.
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