Making a Living

Here are some ideas that need work.

Poverty is a major cause of dystopia. Some is deliberately created, but much occurs by happenstance or neglect. Modern technology could provide a comfortable life for everyone (though no technology could support unlimited exponential growth). But technology isn't the main problem today.

Billions of dollars and many thousands of people have worked to reduce poverty, with considerable but inadequate success. Here we are interested in what has worked on a personal or community level. Both big-system and local approaches are essential.

The practices described above can help in obvious ways, like doing better in job interviews, or finding out about job openings, since some jobs are never advertised publicly (modern estimates usually vary from 30 to 80 percent, a rough guestimate, but personal networking is very important in any case).

One practice that helped me early in my career was applying for jobs I did not intend to accept (I almost did accept one of them, which would have changed the direction of my life). This is a way to understand the field and see what's going on, without the anxiety that interferes with awareness and learning. (That was 50 years ago. A book for employers then advised planning on 20 interviews per one hire - meaning that employees should plan on an average of 20 interviews per job as well. It's different today when it's hard to get any interview, since employers are swamped with hundreds of online responses and no effective way to select the good ones. Another complication; many, possibly most of the jobs now advertised don't exist - although a software "agent" may pretend to be a person interested in your career. It costs employment agencies next to nothing to gather information this way about what's out there.)

Beyond the individual level, we need community action and support. Otherwise, it's giant corporations and governments against individuals alone - not at all conducive to fair negotiation or outcomes.

Nonprofits can help, but we can't rely on them completely. Usually they have good people but also are part of the system, and if their funding goes away so do their programs.

Besides helping individuals get better jobs, we need to research communities that have developed one or more industries to support the group.

For example:

(1) Mondragón, a co-op started primarily by a Catholic priest in 1956 in the Basque region of Spain, now employs about 70,000 people, about 80% of whom are members of the co-op. The president of the company earns only 6 times more than the lowest-paid worker. We want to learn how Mondragón has been so successful, and how that information can be applied in very environments.

(2) Religions that separate from the general society in order to live their faith are often very poor as a result; but sometimes middle class or rich (not necessarily a virtue). We want to understand how and why.

(3) Many successful careers happen unplanned, through a series of accidents. But many failures do, too. What made the difference? It's hard to find out, especially when conditions are changing so fast.

One question to investigate: why were North Koreans so successful at faking their way into hundreds of U.S. tech jobs, when it was so hard for Americans to get those jobs legitimately? Part of it was that the North Koreans had a community to help them, while the Americans were scattered individuals, usually doing it all on their own.

Also we need good thinking about what to do as robots replace people, especially in good jobs. Most production problems have been solved, but poverty and inequality are increasing rapidly in the U.S., the UK, and many other countries, regardless of technology.