Family-run circus: an example of customization

Definition of customization and comparison with other abstractions such as capital and knowledge

A family-run circus is a small-scale circus where the majority, if not all, of the performers, staff, and management are members of the same family or extended family. They often travel to rural areas. Children often grow up learning the family trade and become performers themselves.

Is it art, entertainment, or a real circus? It is a family making a living, more than anything else. They use the abstract idea of a show, adapting it mostly for small children living in small towns. Despite that we would hesitate to call it a "real circus", it is the most traditional kind of circus from a time when there were no cars or TV and most population lived in rural areas. The more professional circus that we would call a "real circus", is in fact an adaptation of the abstract idea of a family-run circus, mostly for an urban population.

The same happens for most workers in most economic activities: a random person trying to make a living by adapting abstract ideas to the real world. An expert is a particular kind of worker, who customizes the idea of "expertise", for customers who appreciate "experts".

For instance, capital abstracts the concept of scarce resources, such as gold or a worker's time. However, a naive implementation of capital as a scarce resource, for instance measuring it in units of gold, would lead to an unstable economy. Thus, people measure capital in units of fiat currency, which is not a scarce resource (not for the central bank, at least). This has many advantages, but it fundamentally undermines the assumption that capital is a scarce resource. Thus, someone who claims to be capitalist, is most likely just someone who is making a living by severely customizing the abstract idea of capital.

There are also striking similarities between modern scientists and priests in the middle age. This in turn affects market economies, which assume a minimum level of reliability of mainstream public information that does not exist in practice and allows for severe market manipulation, similar to a centrally planned economy.