on the reaction to “Abundance”

I’ve been at this whole blogging thing for going on 8 years now and have published over 10,500 articles at The Reformed Broker blog alone. I’ve also probably done a few hundred posts and articles for outlets like the Wall Street Journal, Fortune and other media sites and publications I’ve contributed to over the years. And in all this time, I can tell you that most stuff I do doesn’t get a ton of attention. A “big” post for this medium generates something on the order of 5,000 to 7,000 unique page views. And then the calendar advances and the consuming readers move onto the next, newest thing that somebody’s written. Sunrise, sunset. 

But every once in awhile, I write something that really connects. Something that gets a tremendous response and ricochets around the web and even makes its way into the physical world of water cooler chatter and casual conversation among the civilian population that wouldn’t know my blog if they tripped over it.

A few of my posts have made this transition…

Everything is Awesome

The Relentless Bid, Explained

Dear Jamie Dimon

Scarcity

…there are a handful of others.

On February 25th I wrote about Abundance and the thing exploded. Over the last 7 days, it’s been read by over 45,000 people and the number continues to climb. My emails blew up along with my mentions and I’ve had requests from newspapers around the world to reprint it (I always say no, because I can’t control their comment sections, LOL). The response has been roughly 10 to 1 positive, with some really interesting disagreements from smart people that I appreciate reading.

I don’t understand exactly why one post becomes so much bigger than all the others other than a guess that it happens when I say something that everyone else is already thinking but that they’ve not seen fully fleshed out anywhere else to their satisfaction. In “Abundance”, I don’t think I’m breaking any new ground – I just think I found a way to connect a few important things in an easy to understand explanation.

Regarding the detractors or the people who’ve taken issue with the post – I don’t mind at all. If anything, it furthers the discussion and gives me new ways to think about things. The best retort to what I’ve said was written by an FT reporter named Gavin Jackson on his personal blog at Medium. I don’t entirely agree with his citing real estate prices as evidence of a lack of abundance – I view the coastal real estate boom as symptomatic of what I’m saying about the excess of capital screwing things up and so, in his refutation, the writer is only emphasizing my point.

But it’s still a good response. I send you there now and urge you to make up your own mind:

Abundance (Medium)