I’m convinced that the key to prosperity is in building relationships and trade with others.
The most recent Sketchplanations post, The Butcher, the Brewer, the Baker, shows the concept intuitively. When the Butcher, the Brewer, and the Baker don’t talk and don’t trade, everyone is poorer. You have the Butcher with her surplus of meat just sitting around having a carnivore diet and never being able to enjoy a good meal with beer and bread. Then you have the Brewer, with his surplus of beer, but not much to eat. Likewise, the Baker with her surplus of bread is stuck eating bland meals of bread and water every day.
The Butcher, the Brewer, and the Baker all improve their lives and prosper only when they start to build relationships and trade with each other. All of a sudden, life becomes not so lonely, and everyone can experience the abundance of life.
It’s very tempting to want to do everything by yourself. You have complete control of the entire process, and you reap all the benefits of your hard work. But this is both a narcissistic and selfish way to work. You’re assuming that you know what’s best, you want complete control, and you want all the benefits to yourself. Helping others becomes an afterthought, and as a result, nobody cares about what you’re working on.
When large companies do this, it’s called vertical integration. Vertical integration is when a company tries to control every stage of its supply chain or production process. It can be highly profitable in the short term, but makes it difficult to adjust to change… and there WILL be change.
For example, suppose a publishing company in the 1980s wanted to vertically integrate. They buy a an oil power plant, a paper mill, and printing presses to control the entire process of creating a book. The company flourishes, but forty years later, it languishes. Technology had moved on to renewable energy, digital assets, and e-readers, but it’s quite difficult and costly to upgrade the old oil power plant, paper mill, and printing presses to modern technology. If instead of vertically integrating, the company forged relationships with the best companies in the supply chain, and purchased the best resources for their production process, they wouldn’t struggle so much to keep up with technological change. A company that works well with others and intelligently outsources resources succeeds in the long run.
The same is true for countries. As I write this in 2025, the United States is vertically integrating by focusing on self-sufficiency and withdrawing from relationships and trade, in order to “Make America Great Again.” Only time will tell if we will see abundance as a result, but I question the long-term viability of this approach. By taking a selfish approach and alienating other countries, the US is assuming that its approach is the best approach, and that other countries will only hinder the US. However, I believe that withdrawing from the world stage will only stunt the potential growth of the United States and ensure that the US will not be the superpower of the future. Again, only time will tell, and Stoicism says we should not dwell on things we cannot change.
That brings me to the Self. How can we learn from the concept of the Butcher, the Brewer, the Baker?
Back in 2016, I quit my day job to pursue a career in publishing. It probably wasn’t the smartest financial move, but I learned all about the publishing industry and got a taste of what a career as a content creator might look like. Looking back, my biggest mistake was probably that I tried to do everything myself. I did the writing, book covers, illustrations, formatting, marketing, website, branding—everything—myself. Doing that really inhibited my growth as an author and limited my customer reach.
I returned to my day job in 2020, but I still crave returning to the creative freedom I enjoyed in 2016. I plan to retire early from my day job and go back to being an author—but this time with a different approach. When I go back to being a full time author again, I’m going to dive headlong into building business relationships and trading skills with others. I’m convinced that doing this is the only way to thrive as a business and reach the full potential.
Think of any product you enjoy, whether a movie or a video game or lawn mower or smartphone. Chances are that if you looked at all the people involved in producing that product, it’s a very long list. The most revered products are likely to have hundreds of people involved in making them. Have you ever watched through the credits at the end of a movie? I can think of no successful products that was created and delivered to me by only one person with no help.
If you want to be successful, you must build relationships and trade with others.
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