JONGSON PARK

I think ultimately every product, service, innovation, technology is in some way to preserve, optimize and maximize time. I think we can trace back anything that is in need and demand to the desire for more time.

The light bulb helped us extend our daily active time and work past when the sun goes down. Refrigeration allowed us to keep food longer, meaning required time getting more food. The printing press, telephones and the internet speeds up the flow of information. Cars, trains and planes cut the travel time between distances. Even things like entertainment, movies, performances and music is an escape, maybe a suspension of time. Most of the things we buy like bread, groceries, laundry machines, furniture we are exchanging their time making those things to save us our own time.

Time is the invisible currency, what we are all trying to save and amass, trying to fit more time within a limited time. In a way, the fountain of youth.

In the simplest terms, business is our skills, talents, services exchanged with others. And how much time and work we’ve exchanged is represented with a token we call money.

We’re happy to pay our hard-earned money to a baker, who’s spent years perfecting their craft. Hours upon thousands of hours, upon thousands of breads. For all the work they do in a day to bake that perfect bread. We’re happy to exchange our work and time in the form of a small token in exchange for theirs. The artistry they share with their community to experience and enjoy.

As we go through life we tend to gravitate to the activities that reciprocate the most positive feedback. As a child we might do something because we enjoy it or its fun. Then the positive feedback, an adult or peer might compliment the work and effort. Now that positive feedback becomes a loop, we do more of that activity for self-fulfillment but also because more affirmation helps us feel like we’re on the right track. As we continue on that track, our experience, knowledge and expertise becomes more narrow and focused. To the point where the skill, experience and knowledge reaches an expert, mastery level.

As humans being able to participate an exchange of these talents and skills is a social achievement. This interchange occurs mostly in the act of business transactions and is marred by its own flaws like greed and cheating. But it’s a gift, being able to recruit someone else’s talent with the money you earned from the talent you shared with someone else.

I wish “Purely Business” could mean people exchanging their skills, sharing their talents and gifts with others and the joy it brings to do so.

At its most simplification, Money is an exchange for work and time.
That is… Work * Time = Money

As a people, as a society, community we agree and participate in this exchange. Trying to regain our own time in exchange for someone else’s work and time.

(Work * Time) Rate = Money

The “Rate” is the variable, effected by supply and demand of the skill. How many people can do the skill versus how many people need the skill. The scarcity effected by what we invest ourselves in, education, experience, knowledge, expertise. The more development and advancement puts them in a smaller set of people that can do the job, limiting the supply.

We need this exchange, not everyone can be an expert at everything. When we require a service or product, we are paying for their expertise, ability, knowledge, experience. This is the great interchange of a society. The need for each other. People seek their own abilities with passion, necessity, development, experience, knowledge. And other people seek those people for their expertise, experience and knowledge. And vice versa. The plumber, baker, writer, doctor, we are all on an interchange with each other.