The human mind is a funny thing.

We all carry around a mental model, a structure, of what the universe is. Our mental models explain everything, as completely as the models of everybody who came before us did for them.

Throughout history, those mental models have changed as we have discovered new things or learned to do things differently or found some small detail that the models couldn’t accommodate.

Naturally, when our mental models change, those changes are incorporated into the way we see things. Which means that, when you are living through those transitional times, there is a good chance that you are always in danger of only being able to see half of the picture.

That would be the half that most closely resembles what you are transitioning out of and you only see it because it is already a part of your mental model of the way things are supposed to be.

That’s neurology at work. When you see unfamiliar stuff, your brain tries to cram it into your pre-existing version of reality. That sometimes causes people to see things that aren’t there and not see things that are.

If the attempted cramming is unsuccessful, then you often don’t really see anything at all. If what you are looking at doesn’t match your mental structure, then it becomes meaningless and random — whether it is or not.

I think about all this whenever I listen to policy makers talk about job creation. The sorts of business activities they recognize as economically valuable (in a big-picture way) are those that involve growth and job creation.

So, from where they sit, the only value that comes about from self-employment is the degree to which an individual can grow a business and create jobs. There is no intrinsic value in creating your own job, sustainability without growth is pointless activity, and anything that doesn’t look or act like what they recognize as a “company” obviously isn’t one.

The economic universe is changing. The only problem is that very few policy makers seem to have a mental model that allows them to see it.