While getting ready to go, I was talking with a co-worker here and a conversation not unlike any other conversation I’ve had ensued:

Mike: I’m outta here. You leaving? Travis: In a few minutes. I have stuff to finish up. Mike: It’ll be here next week when you come back. Travis: Yeah, but I’m in training Monday through Wednesday, so it will still be here, but accompanied by more work than when I left.

Pretty cut and dried, right? Well, this got me thinking. Work is a commodity that accumulates faster than you’d like it to, and regardless of the amount you do, there’s always more. Work “interest” accumulates faster than any interest on any bank account I can imagine.

Wouldn’t it be cool if you could invest in the amount of work that piles up?

So, like, you could go out to NASDAQ and invest in Work Futures, or more likely in a stock “WORK.” Then, based on the amount of work that gets done during the day versus the amount of new work you get, your WORK value goes up or down. Unemployed? Sorry, you’d best sell off your shares of WORK because you ain’t doin’ nothin’.

You could also attribute sort of a “popularity” or “work value” factor to the value of your WORK stock. Kind of like the idea of whuffie, but based on how much people value the work you do.

I figure if I bought 100 shares of WORK at $1 in the morning, I’d be a millionaire by 5:00p.

Then again, I could name you off a few people who’d be dead broke, too. Ah, the economy of WORK.