NO
FERTILE GROUND FOR JOB SEEKERS IN OUR COLLAPSING ECONOMY
For those who
miss it!!
ESCAPING
THE RAT-RACE | Zero Hedge
07/26/2014 Submitted by Chris
Martenson of PeakProsperity,
authored by Charles Hugh Smith Escaping the Rat-Race
HERE
ONLY EXTRACTS do search in google:
Escaping the Rat-Race , for full article
WHY
THIS MATTERS
Why do these characteristics of free-market
capitalism matter to jobseekers?
Opportunity is not randomly distributed; it results
from what I call the infrastructure of opportunity. If there is no mobility of labor and capital, no transparent markets for labor and
capital, no creative destruction of corrupt, obsolete, inefficient systems,
weak rule of law, weak property rights, no self-organizing (i.e. transparent,
decentralized) access to credit, limited means of cooperation, little room for
innovation and no understanding of the essential role of risk in adaptation, opportunities for
successful adaptation (what we might
call prosperity) are intrinsically scarce. Virtually all bets made in this environment will be lost
because there is no fertile ground—it’s a desert for opportunity.
The changing nature of work doesn’t just matter to new
graduates seeking their first career-track job—it’s equally important to
experienced workers seeking to escape the corporate rat-race or build a new
career after a layoff.
Those who understand these changes will be able to
successfully adapt. Those who don’t, won’t.
The Disruptive Forces
Transforming the Economy
There are three fundamental forces disrupting the
conventional order, and everyone with their eyes open sees them
at work every day:
1. Essential resources are becoming more expensive.
2. The system of expanding credit/debt to fund more consumption (i.e. “growth”) has reached marginal
returns and is failing.
3. Networked software, automation and robotics are reducing the need for human labor on a global scale.
As a result of
these three structural forces, economic instability is
not going to go away any time soon. Technology leapfrogs the obsolete and
inefficient; no wonder conventional sectors and the market for traditional
9-to-5 jobs are both stagnating.
[…]
Few “experts”—academics, pundits and advisors—have
accepted the reality of these forces or thought through the interacting
consequences. As a result, we’re on our own in setting a course and navigating the inevitable storms ahead as the old system
lurches from crisis to crisis, weakening further as every politically
expedient reform fails to address these structural realities.
Outmoded Career Advice Is the
Norm
Though the transformative power of these three forces is
self-evident, remarkably, conventional career counseling is still stuck in the past, offering three basic bits of
advice:
1. Choose a career that aligns with your core
talents and interests.
2. Get as many credentials as you can -- degrees,
certifications, etc. -- because the gatekeepers who do the hiring require them.
3. Since the goal is secure employment, try to get
a job in the government or a big corporation.
In my view, the conventional advice has it all backward. What worked in the
past is no longer working because the economy and the nature of work are both
being disrupted by forces that cannot be controlled by those threatened by
these fundamental changes.
[…]
In terms of values, conventional career advice is based
on the idea that happiness and fulfillment require
institutional security and ever more consumption. But the more we learn about happiness and fulfillment, the
more apparent it becomes that family,
community, meaningful work and networks of trustworthy collaborators and
friends are the sources of happiness and fulfillment, not the accumulation of
institutional promises and more stuff, which turns out to have little impact on
happiness or fulfillment.
The Dynamics of Economic
Transformation
Capitalism and
technology are both disruptive by their very nature. That
mature industries shrink or disappear is not the fault of one policy or
another; that process of creative destruction (a
term coined by economist Joseph Schumpeter) is the heart of capitalism and
technology.
Many have attempted to keep technology safely locked up
so it can’t creatively destroy their regime or industry. But technology is a
genie that cannot be kept in the bottle. To quote Bob Dylan: those not
busy being born are busy dying. Every
nation or industry that tries to protect itself from technological
transformation either stagnates or fails.
One aspect of capitalism that
disturbs many people is the mobile nature of capital—that capital will
flow to the highest return, regardless of national borders or religious,
national and ideological loyalties.
Though many
attribute this mobility to base greed, capital that doesn’t seek to expand will
fall victim to creative destruction: the only way
innovation and productive investment can occur is if less productive
investments and quasi-monopolies are dismantled.
This is true not just of financial capital (cash), but of
human and social capital—what author Peter Drucker called the new means of production in the
knowledge-based economy.
This will have implications for every worker seeking to
escape the corporate rat-race or build a career.
One feature of
capitalism that is rarely noted is the premium placed on COOPERATION. The Darwinian aspects of competition are
widely accepted (and rued) as capitalism’s dominant
force, but cooperation is just as intrinsic
to capitalism as competition. Subcontractors must cooperate to assemble
a product, suppliers must cooperate to deliver the various components,
distributors must cooperate to get the products to retail outlets, employees
and managers must cooperate to reach the goals of the organization, and local
governments and communities must cooperate with enterprises to sustain the
local economy.
Darwin’s
understanding of natural selection is often misapplied. In its basic form,
natural selection simply means that the world is constantly changing, and
organisms must adapt or they will expire. This dynamic is
scale-invariant, meaning that it’s true for individuals, enterprises,
governments, cultures and economies. Darwin
wrote: "It
is not the strongest of the species that survives, or the most intelligent, but
the ones most adaptable to change."
These new ideas, techniques and processes trigger changes in
society and the economy that are difficult to predict. The key survival trait is not so much the ability to
guess the future correctly but to remain flexible and adaptive.
Ideas, techniques and processes which are better and more
productive than previous versions will spread quickly; those who refuse to
adapt them will be overtaken by those who do.
This creates a dilemma: we want more prosperity and wider opportunities for self-cultivation (personal
fulfillment), yet we don’t want our security to be
disrupted. But we cannot have it
both ways. Those who attempt to
preserve the current order while reaping the gains of free markets find their security dissolving before their eyes as
unintended consequences of technological and social innovations disrupt their
sources of wealth and mechanisms of control.
THE GREAT IRONY OF FREE-MARKET CAPITALISM IS that the only
way to establish an enduring security is to embrace innovation
and adaptation, the very processes that generate
short-term insecurity. Attempting to guarantee security leads to risk being distributed [dissolved] within
the system. When
the accumulated risk manifests, the system collapses.
Why This Matters
Why do these characteristics of free-market capitalism matter
to jobseekers? Opportunity is not randomly distributed; it results from what I call the infrastructure
of opportunity. If there is no mobility
of labor and capital, no transparent
markets for labor and capital, no creative destruction of corrupt, obsolete,
inefficient systems, weak rule of law, weak property rights, no
self-organizing (i.e. transparent, decentralized) access to credit, limited
means of cooperation, little room for innovation and no understanding of the
essential role of risk in adaptation, opportunities for successful adaptation (what we might call prosperity) are intrinsically scarce. Virtually all bets made in
this environment will be lost because there is no fertile ground—it’s a desert
for opportunity.
========
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The Alienation of Work | Zero Hedge 04/15/2014 Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds
blog http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-15/alienation-work
"Rats
and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and ...
---------
---------
"The
Real Economy Is Somewhere Between The Toilet & A ... 07/07/2014– ZeroHedge. Pee
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