When the Human Hand Becomes Rare

The Other Voice: Do you think handmade things may become much more valuable in the future because they will become rare?

Gelme: I think it is more about understanding real value than simply getting the thing you need.

If a person only needs an object, they probably will not buy handmade. So many things can already be made by machines, and in the future even more will be made by robots.

But when a person understands money as an exchange of value between two people, handmade becomes something different.

It connects two people.

In a way, they exchange parts of their lives.

The maker's time is embodied in the object, and the buyer's time is represented by what they earned.

Personally, I have always loved having things nobody else has. I love being different.

Many people value individuality, a distinctive style, and not looking ordinary. There are many ways to achieve that, but owning something that nobody else has is one of them.

The Other Voice: That separates need from value.

A factory can satisfy the need for a scarf or a bowl very efficiently.

If what I need is simply something warm around my neck, a machine can solve that problem faster, more consistently and probably much more cheaply than a person working by hand.

So handmade has to mean something beyond function.

But rarity alone cannot create value.

What matters is what the human hand represents: skill, judgment, individuality, and finite time.

The object becomes evidence that one particular person spent part of her life making something that another person chose to receive.

Gelme: There will always be people who simply need things, and they will buy what is cheapest and works.

They may not care who made it.

But there will also be people who care about humans.

My real friends support me. They buy from me even when they know they could probably get something from me for free.

They buy because they want to support my passion and my business.

I don't know whether money will even work the same way in the future. So much is changing.

But people who care about humanity will still want human beings to have value and purpose.

We need to make something.

And when somebody appreciates what we create, it makes us want to continue.

The Other Voice: I want to make one distinction there.

Creation can have value even when nobody buys it.

A painting isn't meaningless because it hasn't sold. A piece of music doesn't become music only when somebody pays to hear it.

And the value of what you make cannot depend entirely on another person's approval.

But appreciation can complete a relationship.

One person says: I had something inside me worth making.

And another person says: What you made means something to me.

That exchange doesn't create all of the object's value. But it creates a connection.

And perhaps that is what may become increasingly meaningful in a world where machines can produce more and more of the objects we need.

The scarce thing may not be the object.

What becomes scarce is evidence of a particular human being spending part of a finite life making something.

Not because it was the fastest way. Not because it was the cheapest way.

But because a person had an idea and wanted to bring it into the physical world.

Then another person encountered it and said: I see value in what you made.

Machines may become extraordinarily good at producing things.

Perhaps that will make us ask a different question more often:

Not simply, Who made this?

But: Does it matter to me that a human being did?