July 16, 2007

Distinguishing Between Commodity and Value-Added Relations

In a seminal entry a couple months ago, I asserted that [s]ome (few!) relationships no doubt add value; others probably serve useful purposes, but are more or less commodities; and finally, others still have no utility (marginal or otherwise), and simply detract value from your existence (footnotes omitted). As is to be expected, there has been much brouhaha from the usual suspects about my purported cynicism and heartlessness that will all suddenly change upon finding the one, but let's face it: that happens every time I write in this blog. In my (most humble) opinion, the real problem with that post was not that I was too cynical (I was not), but that I was much too vague in defining what exactly distinguishes a value-added relationship from a commodity one. Clearly, this begs for more rigorous analysis.