Source: Andrew Macafee
The red line is employment.
Do you see what I see? I see that the connection to the economy and employment has been broken. Broken by the use of a global workforce and by the use of technology.
If you see this too, then we are all confronted with the question - what do we do if there are no jobs? The quick answer is to stop looking for them.
Politicians are obsessed with job creation. We as voters judge them here. But they cannot turn back the clock. Should they continue this vain search for jobs or encourage something different? What would be a better use of their time?
We spend a fortune on formal education to get a job - but for most young today, there are none to be had. Should we spend even more on paper credentials or develop real skills? What would be a better use of your time and money?
We live to our 80's and do not have enough saved and need to continue to have a job but cannot get one. How can we do work that will be paid? How do we reduce our costs to give us a hope of making it through to the end? Is hope a method or is taking the right action better?
If we think our future is in getting a job, then I fear we are stuck. Stuck because we are looking in the wrong place for that we need. But we are not doomed.
There is an alternative way of seeing what is going on. Seeing why the jobs have gone. Seeing what will take their place and how each of us fit into this new paradigm.
Many people are in this new world already - just as the early pioneers in America on the wagon trains in the 1840's lived a very different life to their cousins in Europe.
We might not see them as being serious as they sell their knitting patterns on Ravelry, sell their pots on Etsy, rent their apartments on Airbnb, develop apps for Apple or Wordpress. We might think that the mini farmers who sell you veggies at the farmers markets are fringe too. All the people that are fooling around with 3D printers are the Steve job's of our own time in their own garage now but.. later? All those that are self publishing like me are using the real new press of our time. The most successful are doing all this "making" in the context of networks. They have an entirely new kind of relationship with their customers.
This may all look fringe to you now. But what did Henry Ford look like in 1905 when 95% of transport was by horse and only the mega rich could afford a car? Who needed a phone in 1905? And what was the electricity thing? All the new has to start at the fringes. This is why I describe the early adopters as pioneers and compare them to those that took a wagon train west. We are now still in the pre-railway era.
In my new book - You Don't Need a Job - I will show you that there are new rules to be learned so that you can do well in this new world. I will show you why this new world demands that you open your mind - like Neo in the Matrix. For this new New World is not an ocean away but a mindset away. The barrier is a lifetime of being immersed in the old culture.
Morpheus: The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work... when you go to church... when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Morpheus:That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind.
The barrier is the Matrix The old rules are hardwired into us.
So simply reading my book will not be enough. But I hope that it might give you hope. I see my book as a letter from a friend in America in 1840 as the move west really started. It's a guide book for when you get to St Louis and cross the Missouri. As with the pioneers then, your journey will transform you from an old world person into a New World person.
What do you choose?
