I have read most of your posts. I agree with a lot of them, or find them entertaining, and on some of them I have no opinion, but in this case I think you are wrong. 

First of all, your example of Joey the Skeeball guy. I don't dislike his creation, or want to lower its value, but the simple thing he did was combine the concept of a trailer with that of a skeeball lane. That idea could come up with anybody who has a skeeball lane and thinks "Hmm, tomorrow I would like my skeeball lane to be elsewhere. And after that perhaps even another location". And any guy with the tooling and enough reasons to make the combination can do it. It is not a completely new concept. This kind of creativity is all over the place and I see it happen daily. It's certainly not a 1-out-of-100 or 1-out-of-1000 thing. 

The main problem with this article is that it makes a wrong division, and it is totally black-and-white. You seem to want to put a certain group of people (amongst which yourself) into some (elite?) group by saying they have a certain ability that other people do not have. I on the other hand think that "creativity" is something that comes in gradations, and you can put people on a continuous axis from "not creative" to "extremely creative". I myself perhaps will not fall in your 1-in-1000 criteria of "creators", but I absolutely create new things (be that original ideas at the work place, music with my band and also articles etc). I certainly agree with your message that there are probably a lot of people in the world not living up to their potential, stuck away in paper-shuffling jobs. But I don't think it is right to dismiss their numbers in the order of magnitude that you do.

A division that I might agree with by the way (but also in a nuanced way) is the division between dreamers and do-ers. It seems a bit like this is a division you might actually mean with this article: many people have lots of creative ideas, but only few people manage to take their ideas out of their imagination and putting it into existance into the real world. But still, in this division I think there is also no black and white, and a lot of shades of grey. What was your rationale for putting your article in such a black-and-white way?

The reason I write about creators, though, is because there are a lot of creators stuck in the role of assembler. Instead of embracing who they are at the core, creating, and taking the risks and the rewards that come with the territory, they take a job.

Heh alright given I'm guilty of this I should give insight to my decision to join the masses. I've always been the creative type - when I was younger I was enthralled with the personal computer/programming glitz of being able to create and not just take what was given. In high school and early college I continually released a rash of simple game concept custom based minigames onto the unsuspecting masses of the Starcraft/Warcraft 3 communities over many years. I always liked walking to the beat of my own drum - breaking expectations. People always told me 'oh you're so creative...' etc... and stroked my ego with it and as much as I tried to put it in perspective and play it off I kind of absorbed it.

By the time College came and went - looking back at my life - I realized I lived in sort of a haze for those 4 years. So much time spent doing "trivia and memorization" work while partying and gaming away the minuscule 10% of free time I had left didn't exactly make me the most developed kid coming out of college. Thus I was 'educated' but was not 'learned' in the ways of life. Normal jobs came in and offered a sort of stepping stone to really train one on how life really works. I find it very sad that internships and apprenticeships are not emphasized much if at all in college - colleges are just moneymaking mills that spit out sub-par education - not knowledge. I won't go on about this since this place already has a couple posts in the backlog regarding why college sucks :D. I always knew in the back of my mind though growing up that I didn't want to get trapped in a 'job' forevermore but before reaching the point of actualization I needed to have working monetary capital and health insurance and all that life foundation stuff down. While working at a job and seeing the world for how it truly was I started to undergo a sort of 're-education' process in which I observed how and what make things work which in turn gave me the knowledge and confidence to better make my move once I'm ready. I really think if I tried to strike it out on my own straight out of college I'd fail miserably. Some people are naturally streetwise and good with the practical aspect of life. I tend to think and live more out of the higher ungrounded aspect of life (dark side of creativity?) so for people like me we need to ground ourselves in jobs to get a solid idea of 'how the game works'.

For all creators stuck in assembly jobs - I can't speak for everyone but if situations and life choices between people are similar then I reckon many of them are just training up to become real contributors to society. You mention risks and rewards of being a creator. There are risks and rewards and many of these risks are of a much more 'tangible' sort than the risks of lets say asking someone out on a date. Asking for someone's number is considered child's play on the risk scale compared to quitting your job and starting your own business and taking all of the nuances that come with that path. Nothing worse than striking it out and failing; to dig yourself a hole you will spend the next 30 years trying to get out of. Student loans, medical emergencies without insurance, living expenses, etc... - all of these risks have to be managed. To make a move into living creatively on your own terms you need to have a sort of self-assurance that you have enough intestinal fortitude to follow that path through. If not, assembler jobs make for a very effective 'gym' of sorts while giving you a stipend every 2 weeks. Imagine if you got paid to work out at the gym! Wow.

Anyway that's my take on it. When I have kids one day they're going to learn the game early like that one post where a mother was having her kids create their own value contributing businesses at a young age. Thus they won't need college and won't need to get trapped into the assembly mill since they'll be strong enough to break it's pull. And if my kids aren't of that sort at least they'll know early so that they can play the system and reap the biggest advantage as master assemblers :D.

Closing Note: I have the non-completion attribute too - I have a lot of great ideas but I want other people to implement them so I can spend the rest of my time thinking of more crazy ideas. I'll complete prototypes and working samples but I won't run through them to 110% completion (nor do I want to spend the rest of my days providing support for such things). Need to somehow integrate that into a survival self-employment plan somehow...

It's funny. The more you create, the better you get at having your ideas stick. I may have made a fool of myself with some of my creations, but it has led me to become a very confident creator.

Here's my chance to prove that. I challenged myself to create the foundation for a multi million dollar business in the next three months. :)

Excellent post! A political problem is implicit here, because the 99% of assemblers have the political power and often do not heed the all-important creators. We see this in socialist governments around the world.

BTW, do you usually do things like the cave diving traveling alone - or do you go with someone from the USA? I assume you have a guide waiting for you in Mexico (unlike your Peruvian adventure).