Robert Paterson's Weblog

Jobs and Bacon show the way - Choose your future

What future will you choose? Will you chose to stay in the machine world and so increase your investment in it? Have you given up? Or do you choose a different world and are you making this new reality your own?

I see that the signs are that we had better consider choice #3 soon. I see clear signs that more investment in the old world is a very bad idea. 

Let's start with Bacon.

I have just got back from a visit to my local farmer's market where I chatted with my pork person about what is going on with pork. She had been in the machine model. She had 350 sows and sold the piglets on in the big system. But her 350 sow operation was too small. Even combined with her cousin with another 250 sows, they were too small. They could make a major expansion, fold or do somethng different.

She chose the radical different. She now has less than 30 sows. She sells direct and locally. Now she makes money rather than loses it all the time. But she too might have to be even more radical. If she is to survive at all and you and I will have any bacon.

Only huge scale works in the machine world. Machine meat depends on corn and soy. Which in turn depend on oil and water. This year's drought has driven up corn prices from $200 a ton to nearly $400. There is talk of corn at $800 a ton if we have drought next year. First of all this means that all the huge operators who have been at the scale demanded by the machine system, are now cooked. They have no moves in this scenario. They cannot find any alternatives at this scale. Their fixed costs are so high that their cash flow cannot survive another year like this. They will have to fold.

My local pork person has a chance though. She has her own market and buyers who are personally connected and she has rock bottom operating costs. She might also be able to hook into new food supplies such as the waste stream from local restaurants and households. This is how pigs always fed. She also has the room to change her breeds to pigs such as Berkshire, who can live outside all winter and also forage better. 

She has still choices and room. The Big Pig Operator has none. She also will be still here to take advantage of higher prices. For when all the pigs in the system have been killed, there will be a shortage. Bacon will be scarce.

I see a pattern here with Jobs in large institutions.

Scale is the issue here too. To play at the high end in business you have to be a giant now. With being giant comes giant fixed costs. But the entire enterprise also depends on cheap oil and  other cheap inputs. Any disruption to these inputs and the cash flow kills the operation. When you are at that scale, you only can shed labour and hope.

So the smart giants will continue to hire in cheaper markets and replace labour with technology. The well paying jobs in North America and Europe cannot come back. They are gone forever. And when the crisis in inputs takes place, as with corn for meat, then they will have to fail.

What will be left are the small operators like my pork person. There is no safety in a Job Job. There is no safety in the huge organization. 

After the crash has settled, will the old system comes back? Will it be smart in an ever more uncertain world with risks attached to water and energy to rebuild a machine system based on the hope of secure key inputs? I doubt it.

Every year that passes, the key inputs to modern life become more fragile. Water, oil, topsoil are all at risk. And so is the underlying human capital. For a while, many seem just lost and incapable. But I also see signs that many are also taking their lives into their own hands and starting, like the pork person, to operate an economic model that works for them.

Smart people are dramatically reducing their own fixed costs and so attachment to the machine system. Just like the Pork Person. They too are making their own stuff and selling it directly. They too are investigating how to use their network to help them do better.

So this then is why the pork person is such an important story. She had to make the choice - scale up - fold - or change radically.

We all have a choice though like the Pork Person. We can stay in the old game and increase our investment in it. We can just give up. Or we can try the new model. We can rely on them or on ourselves.

The stakes are high. Time is short. 

I expand on this in my new book - You Don't Need a Job - which I plan to launch next week on Amazon. Watch this space.

Barnes - Our General Store - an old idea whose time has come again

This is Barnes - our local General Store in Knowlton. Once upon a time every community had a general store. Not only was a place of commerce but the hub of the community. But big boxes and commuting has destroyed the concept.

But not here and what is happening here is a timely model.

Barnes is also a Home Hardware outlet. So while it has the footprint of a small general store, it is in reality a vast store with every type of hardware.

Dennis has also become the "Paint Guy" for the entire region. Barnes is also a Benjamin Moore outlet. Most people here buy their pain from Dennis - who of course not only stocks everything but is very knowledgeable. People come even from Montreal for advice.

Barnes also stocks a lot of the local food from the local meat producers and when the market closes - is the key outlet for Foodies.

And it is our Depanner and so the source of beer and snacks.

Oh and it is also in walking distance of most of town.

Do you have a general store like this near you?

Out with the old - In with the new - Furnace #resiliency

We had this old coal converted to oil furnace removed and replaced it with this

This is an electric furnace that heats our old radiators. It is 100% efficient. Heats only on demand. It has an outside sensor also that reads the outside temperature and increases or decreases the effort depending on how cold it really is.

It is silent and tiny.

The old radiators also have huge latency and once taken to the right temperature hold the heat well after the furnace shuts off.

Of course in Quebec electricity is both secure and good value. This may not apply to you. But I am advised that even on PEI where they have the most expensive power in Canada that this type of arrangement is cheaper than oil.

I will let you know how this works out.  We will also be replacing the windows and bumping up the insulation. The intent is to get our exposure to oil prices down to the minimum.

 

The opening of my new book - You Don't Need a Banker

This October I will publish 2 short books the first is You Don't Need a Job, the second is "You Don't Need a Banker". 

They are the core of the monthly series I plan on how to thrive in the alternate world of the network economy.

Here is the opening of the Banker:

The Pioneer

I write this short book for a special person. For you. 

You are already aware that the system that we have lived in for generations is unwinding. You are not looking to the job market as your future. You are looking to have your own business.

What you want to do is based on what you love to do and who you really are. It may be that you love to sew. You love to grow things. You love to write. You make things. You don’t want to be Steve Jobs and build an empire. You want to be able to make a living doing what you love. You have no choice but to make this work, for there are no jobs for you.

You know that with the web, there is a market out there for things and services that are real. Real because they are made by you and you can be trusted. You are starting to sense that with this community, you might do OK.

But you have a core problem. Where do you get the finance that you need?

No bank will look at you. No Government development agency will look at you. You are too small and don’t have enough “ambition” to hire other people and to grow. You don’t have a “real job” . You may not own a home. You cannot in all honesty offer up a predictable business plan that shows clear markers of earnings growth over 5 years into the future. They laugh at your hopes that you can make a living by making children's’ toys or by growing vegetables on two acres and a greenhouse.

It may seem that you are stuck. But I promise you that you are not.

This book is all about hope. You will find that there is an entirely new credit system out there that is based on ancient rules of credit that is ready to help you. This book will tell you what it is and how you can become part of it. 

Modern Banking is McBanking

You are not the problem for the banks. They are the problem. 

They have lost the art of lending and have become like McDonalds, places where unskilled people assemble mass market products using an industrial formula.

Modern banking is only 35 years old. It is not how banking was operated in the past. It is a product of regulatory changes in the 1980‘s. It became a new business that adopted the Mass Production process. 

This new formulaic approach to credit was based on a simple industrial algorithm. The job and the home. Our job was a simple way of assuring a stream of income. Our home was a simple way of offering up up collateral. Using these two data points, a banker did not have to know anything more about you. He did not have to know anything about your character or your network. He did not have to know anything about your community or your place in it. Instead he relied on a formula. Like people in the kitchen at McDonalds.

This made sense back in 1980’s when 80% of us had a job. Jobs had become our normal. Back in in 1980, we all aspired to own a home. This all made sense. With such a simple view of who we were, banks no longer had to have staff that understood self employed people and entrepreneurs. We had entered the age of McBanking. 

The age of the job is over. We are half way back to where we were in 1800 when only 20% of people had a job. The age of all of us owning our own home is also over.

The core principles behind McBanking no longer work. Bankers, as they are now, cannot respond to the new reality either. Imagine asking a food assembler at McDonalds to cook a real meal from scratch? It cannot be done.

So this is why when you, the Pioneer Personal Business Entrepreneur, cannot be helped by a bank by a government agency. They have not the first idea of how to lend to you because you do not fit their job/house algorithm. 

Until 5 years ago, this was an impossible barrier.  But no longer. New ways of financing people just like you have been developed and are in place right now. The irony is that these new financing tools are based on ancient principles of how credit has always worked. 

 The new is all based on Trust and Community.

-----------

In the rest of the book I will offer you

• The Real Guide to Crowdfunding - based on experience with it and 30 years in the old business of banking
• An explanation of why the current system has to fail you
• What the eternal system is like
• How the ancient principles are coming back
• How you can use them
• What this will mean to you and to everyone
• Stories explaining how this is working now
• A call to real bankers everywhere to set up stronger new organization based on the eternal principles

 

Euan Semple - How to blog yourself into being

I began blogging 10 years ago. It seems that many who were blogging then are now writing books based on a decade of experience. It is a delight to me that all this work and experience is being distilled like this. Is this the 10,000 hour moment when the real experts speak their truth? Is Kindle the new Blog?

Few of us are as thoughtful as Euan Semple. Here is my review of his new book that is almost sold out in paperback but is of course available on Kindle. 

Buy it here

At the heart of Euan's wonderful book is the context for why anyone should take the risk of going public with their lives and their organizations's lives. Euan talks about what you do so that by the doing you can learn to BE a more grown up person or organization. "Growing Up" is a central theme. For most of us - me back in my corporate stage - are so child like. So much "Look at Me!" And the "Me" is not you but what you think it should be.

Euan shows us how you can find the real you again by using social media well. He reminds us that being vulnerable and compassionate in public enables us to "write ourselves into being". So the person who does this reclaims what actually makes us most attractive as a person - that we are who we are - and this does the same for an organization.

This perspective is what is so valuable. Most of the so called Gurus miss this and focus only on the doing. I think that this reveals that they don't really understand. It is only "Look at me" on steroids.

Also most of the so called Gurus also have never achieved anything real in the field other than to collect fees. Euan is the real deal. A true pioneer whose work at the BBC in groundbreaking. This is a book born from the real struggle and the ups and downs of finding out what works or not at a time when all of this was new.

Finally Euan is true to what he asks us to try. His own humanity shines through very page. Like the true master he is, he does not have to shout out. His deep understanding also is revealed in how he has distilled his thoughts. There is a quotable gem in nearly every paragraph. I all but blew up the commenting system with my own favourite moments . [...]

My fave quote - "By changing within we can change what is outside. In fact this is the only way we can change what is outside - despite decades of management theory to the contrary. Blogging can help people to understand themselves and their work better and by doing so help them to change at a profound and fundamental level. Once more people become more self-aware you will be amazed at what starts to happen. Sure there will be an initial period of awkwardness, but over time tensions will reduce, energy will increase, and disputes will be resolved more quickly. In effect we will start to grow up and take responsibility..."

If you seek to find out how you can be more of who you are - this book is for you.

Why School - If you care about education - Please read this book

Will Richardson has written a new very short book that I think offers us the maximum clarity for the struggle that is going on in education today. Is school a simple matter of passing tests or is it a place where our children learn to learn?

Here is my review of his book on Amazon - You can buy the book here.

"Will Richardson shows us in this brilliant very short book the clear choice for all of us in Education today. Is education all about passing narrowly defined tests or is it all about setting up the habits of learning? Is the context a tiny amount of information that is simple enough to be tested for by a computer or do we today have an infinite amount of material and experience to learn from?

Is our world a simple world where knowing a few standard answers will arm us for life as it is lived? Or is it very complex and so we need to know how to think and test our way through it?

On the side of the test is the corporate world who see a huge opportunity to take over this sector. In the middle are teachers and schools that have shut off themselves from the complex world of the web. On the side of learning are many parents who intuitively know that their kids need to be learners but don't know how to make this happen.

Will makes the case and I agree completely, that the stakes could not be higher. Our choice as parents is to watch our kids become drones or to come alive. Our choice as communities is to keep our kids helpless in a changing world or to prepare the next generation for the challenges that confront us today - for everything is up for change. The communities that adapt the best, will thrive. Those that cannot think or learn or unlearn will not.

So who is Will to paint this scene? He is not some crank. He comes from the system and his last "job" was as a Superintendant. He gave up all this security to become the St Paul for real reform. He travels the nation and has been to more schools and met more parents than anyone I can think of. Will is also a grandfather of the web. He was one of the tiny number of pioneers back in 2001 to have a blog. Few people know more about the world OUT THERE than he does. Few have made such a positive impression on the online community. Will knows the old and the new better than most. He is a true authority.

Why is this book also so accessible? Will has chosen also the book design of the future. It is released as a short eBook. It is 14,000 words long and I read it in an hour. There is no padding. I could quote almost the entire book. You can see my notes as I read it here. It is priced to make it affordable.

Who should read this book? Every parent and grand parent. You will then be armed with the clarity to make sense of the situation that faces you, your kids and your community. Every teacher. You will have to get off the fence. Every education administrator and politician. You will see the choice before you and will be supported in doing the right thing.

The more that the entire community can collectively read this book, the more it will see what to do and what to choose. For we will have to struggle our way to a better future. The one thing that will be clear though is that teaching to the test is a death sentence.

500 years ago, a monk offered people a similar choice. Luther pointed out that our souls were a matter between God and ourselves. He saw no role for the institution of the church as the arbiter. Our own education and the education of our children is all about learning. Learning is our responsibility and does not belong to any institution.

You will not regret reading this book."

1914 all over again? Will the US react to outrage like Austria?

A series of policy blunders and threats struck the spark in 1914 that unleashed a world changing war.

The Austrians wanted to show that they were strong and wanted to punish the Serbs. 

Once again, a nationalist/religious movement in the Middle East is provoking a world power that is feeling put upon. It is a sensitive time. The Middle East is a Tinder Box.Not only as a result of the Arab Spring and Syria but the desire by many to hit Iran before Iran is a nuclear power. 

It is a sensitive time. It is an election year in America. It is a close election. Americans feel that people don't respect them anymore. It will be easy to lean into this feeling of national frustration.

As back in 1914, our experience of war has since 1945 been local and small. America has only been involved in very expensive colonial wars where most of the pain has been felt by the other side and by the military. Americans have no idea of what a real conflict might be like. 

Just as the European Powers felt in 1914. 

What is at stake is life as we know it. For if the Middle East rose in arms in reaction to a mistep by America, not only would the oil that we depend on go but, be sure, war would come to America. 

This is not a time for bluster. We stand on the edge of a precipice as our grand parents did. If we make a mistake, we will all lose everything. And America, will lose the most.

Why are so many Islanders fat and so few Quebec Townshippers?

It is obvious in the short time I have been here in Knowlton in the Townships, that most people here are not fat.

The local junior school is just up the road and I have yet to see an obese child. I have not seen a single obese person in the last 4 weeks here. 

This is a rural area. People drive all over. In the larger centres there are the usual Fast Food stations.

It is painfully obvious that this is not PEI where most people are at least well covered and many are obese. 

So why the difference? 

It is surely not that different than PEI other than the ancestry of the people. Here they are mainly English and French. On PEI they are mainly Scots and Irish. Ancestry is important. 

We can't change who we are. But here is a clue that may help Islanders.

More and more evidence is available that shows that we are strongly influenced by our networks. If you have fat or thin friends they influence you. Here is a summary of this concept. 

Obesity can spread from person to person, much like a virus, according to researchers. When one person gains weight, close friends tend to gain weight too.

Their study, published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, involved a detailed analysis of a large social network of 12,067 people who had been closely followed for 32 years, from 1971 until 2003. The investigators knew who was friends with whom, as well as who was a spouse or sibling or neighbor, and they knew how much each person weighed at various times over three decades.

That let them watch what happened over the years as people became obese. Did their friends also become obese? Did family members? Or neighbors?

The answer, the researchers report, was that people were most likely to become obese when a friend became obese. That increased one's chances of becoming obese by 57 percent.

There was no effect when a neighbor gained or lost weight, however, and family members had less of an influence than friends. It did not even matter if the friend was hundreds of miles away - the influence remained. And the greatest influence of all was between mutual close friends. There, if one became obese, the other had a 171 percent increased chance of becoming obese too.

The same effect seemed to occur for weight loss, the investigators say, but since most people were gaining, not losing, over the 32 years, the result was an obesity epidemic.

So - following this - if Islanders can work to get a critical mass of people to lose weight - the whole process can start to unwind.

I am sure that the issue is even more complex but this may help get a start. 

Testing Apple's dictation system for posting

A long time ago, when I was a banker, I had a secretary. I used to dictate all my correspondence to her as I could not type then.

Now I think I can dictate again. For every word in the short post, I have dictated to the new dictation system format. This is an old skill that I will have to relearn again. But I am hopeful that I can master it again. For I think my spoken language is much better than my written language.

Back to the drawing board.

How do you get into the new networked world? Some baby steps #Youdontneedajob

Several people have commented asking how they can get into the new networked world. What worked for me was taking baby steps to find my place in communities that mattered to me. The challenge is in our minds though. All we know by experience is the machine world. We think we know ABOUT networks but few of us have been PART of one. It's a bit like bicycles. You can know all about riding a bike but you have to ride one to find out in reality.

So here then is the chapter of my new book - You Don't Need a Job - that offers some easy steps to "riding the bike" of the networked world.

We live in the “Matrix”. We live in an intellectual and cultural context that we think is reality and normal. But it is only a construct. Just as the Medieval World was. There is no harder work than leaving such a construct. 

Years ago I had a special boss. Peter was German. He is one of the finest people that I have ever met. Truly himself, courageous, honorable. Special. But I knew that as a 14 year old boy he had been in the Hitler Youth. He had fought in the final days of Berlin and had been a prisoner and DP for two years before coming to Canada as a orphaned refugee. I could not explain what I saw as a dichotomy. But one night we had dinner and a lot to drink and he told me what had happened.

“Robert, I was 14. All I had ever known was Hitler. He and National Socialism was the only world I could knew. He became more important to me as the war went badly and my family were all killed in the bombing. My friends and I could not imagine a life that was different. We were all willing to die for this life. It was who we were. But when it was all over, it was as if I awoke from a dream. Life did go on, even in the prison camp. By the time I came to Canada and started my first job as a dishwasher, I could see that I had been duped. But it took Gotterdamerung to deprogram me.”

All you and I have ever known is the system that we have. Most of us don’t know how deep the program goes. 

To go to the New New World demands that we unlearn the lessons of a lifetime. This is why the transition is so hard.  We only know the old. 

I am not sure that if Peter had read a book like this aged 13 that he would have seen the light! It was only the death of his world that opened him to the new and it was only in living the new, that he could discover and then accept it.

I think that this is true for most of us. The mind is not enough. We have to experience the new many times for it to start to shape us. The process is really emergence!

So, like Peter, we need to live the new to be changed. We cannot will it. 

Emerge by living the New

Until now I have made the intellectual case for the new. I hope that I have shown you the reasons for the change that confronts us. I hope I have shown you how the new works and why the old will fail.

But even if I have been successful in presenting the case, I know that this is not enough when a Paradigm Shift is involved. For when we are shaped and moulded by a paradigm, we often cannot take in new ideas. The old paradigm prevents us from seeing them and accepting them.

I have learned that the only way to really “get” the new is to live it. The only way to learn to ride a bike is to ride it. The only way a baby learns to walk is to try it. My best advice is for you to start living the new. Use the experiences of the new to help you emerge.

So here are some practical suggestions for what you can do that will give you new experiences and habits that can help you make this transition. 

Join a Co Working Site

This link will take you to a comprehensive wiki that has most of the world’s co working sites. Find out who is close to you. 

What you will find is a face to face Connecting Trust Platform. You can still have a job but drop in a get a feel. You can still be a student. You can be retired. What you will find is a diverse community of people with all sorts of skills and with all sorts of projects. It is like Cheers but for work. 

You will have skills to offer and so will the other members. There will be cool projects underway that you may fit into.

Most importantly you will experience the new culture of work and making a living. You will start to put in the hours that will start to transform your program.

Take a practical hobby to the next step

Take small steps to make a living by doing things that you love and are good at. 

You have always wanted to write a book. You can now self publish easily. You may need help though on a cover, a format, on the supporting web page. On marketing. You may want supporting videos. People at your co working site can help.

You make things. Check out Etsy. You Knit. Check out Ravelry. Here you can find Connecting Trust Platforms that live online. 

You have an apartment downtown. Check out Airbnb and see how you can make a little business out of it. 

You grow food in a small way. Join the farmers market. Set up a CSA. Buy a greenhouse and expand. Soon local Connecting Trust Platforms like Big Barn in the UK will emerge where you live. In 1980, 80% of North Americans made their living directly or indirectly from food. Today less than 5% do. In 30 years time, my bet is that we will be back to 80%. Food growing, processing, distribution, services will be a major part of the New Economy and will be where much of the income will be found as the job goes away.

You are good with machines. Learn how to use a 3D printer. The new manufacturing will be distributed and local and will use Open Source designs. Mass Customization will be the rule. There will be lots of opportunity for mechanically minded people. 

You will discover a world of business out there that is alive and growing. Somewhere out there is a place for you. Try what suits you. This first step will teach you so much.

Learn something new for your self

Take a first step to pull away from the gravitational pull of the machine institutions. Teach yourself something!

What really interests you? You don’t need to sign up for a course. You can do all of this yourself. I taught myself about Physics in my 40’s I was a history major and knew nothing about the rules that govern the universe. I did not need a teacher or a school to become quite knowledgeable. 

But if you want, the teachers are there too. The new thing is to be in charge yourself. 

And now there are so many new tools that can help you such as the Khan Academy. The web is full of information.

Maybe you have something to teach? Look at how music lessons are now given globally by using tools like Skype. Edit Wikipedia in areas where you know a lot. Tutor kids who are struggling in school. 

Education opportunities will explode in the New New World as the old system fails. There will be lots of opportunity as the Priesthood loses its power and the classroom falls away.

Learn how to take charge of your health

The biggest new habit that I have created for myself is that I learned enough about health and diet to change how I live and so reduce my risk of being ill. I still will need a doctor if I am in a car accident, but it is unlikely that I will get a chronic illness.

Nothing that I have done has felt so empowering. When you see your body change. When pain goes away without drugs, you know you are doing something important. My body has phase shifted to a new chemistry. A new Rob has physically emerged.

But changing our diet. Changing how we live is hard and we need to get and to give support. There is a mass of information about all of this on the web and soon Connecting Trust Platforms will emerge here too. Maybe you will start one. 

It’s all up to you

In the world we grew up in, we all had to wait for “Them”. We waited for our parents to do things. We waited for our teachers to tell us what to do and how to do it. We waited for our bosses. We waited for our political leaders. 

But to go to the New New World, you don’t have to wait for anyone. It’s just like being an immigrant to America in the 19th century. All you have to do is to decide to go and go. 

It’s not easy. Being an immigrant never is. But just as the real freedom of America called out to millions in the 19th century and pulled people away from the “Old Country”, so the real Freedom of the New New World calls you.