JHG, this "tulip" stuff wears pretty thin after awhile. If you think about the economic necessities of human activities, they might consist of food, shelter and health. So you could dismiss any endeavor that didn't fit into any of those basic categories as a "tulip".
But that kind of thinking is pretty shallow, because it neglects the supporting services required to clothe, house, feed and nurture us. For example, feeding a modern nation requires a chemical industry for fertilizer, an automobile and trucking industry to harvest and bring food to market, retail outlets to sell the food, and so forth. So when you begin to think in terms of economic realities rather than botanical abstractions you begin to realize that there are precious few companies that could even begin to be categorized as tulip bulb houses.
But now, consider the entertainment industry. Is this really a tulip greenhouse? Not if you consider that pinnacle of human desire, Maslow's "self-actualization" as important. That's why we read novels, watch escapist TV and eat exotic foods.
There is one potential tulip in the economic garden. It is a share of stock. But like many other abstractions. it represents different things to different people. To investors, it is a representation of ownership of a corporation that they expect to grow, flourish and bloom with profits. But to a trader it is a piece of paper without value other than what the next trader will pay for it. This should sound familiar, because it is the classic description of the tulip craze.
So I think it is the traders who are the tulip dealers.
TTFN,
CTC |
