"daslf" writes:
"Jonathan Kamens" wrote in message
.. .
Paul Pluzhnikov writes:
Is it because everyone who is any good is already so booked up that
they don't need any extra work (and extra money)?

Yes.

Again, though, a capitalist system should take care of this. If there is
not enough supply to satisfy demand, prices should go up until there is
enough supply.

This only comes even close to working the way you learned it in your
introductory economics class :-) if there's only one market for the
commodity.

As others have explained in this thread, to make it worthwhile for a
good tradesman to give up a good gig with a contractor and work on a
private job instead, the money for the private job would have to be
*much* higher than the money he's making working for the contractor.

In other words, there are more than one market for the services
provided by good tradesmen. The contractor market is on a different
price scale than the private job market, and the people causing demand
in the private job market aren't, in general, able or willing to pay
enough to compete with the price scale of the contractor market.