What is your value?
In a low-cost world, your value decreases everyday. What are you doing about it?
Life’s never been easy. In present days, the ghost of unemployment (or under-employment) is expanding in many countries.
In “regular conditions” (that is, the ones we were used to) anyone under this circumstance would just try to look for a new job, update his education with some training, or even explore new possibilities. You just go out there with your resumé at hand, showing your assets, your values. There may be one place on this Earth where someone may be interested on pay you in exchange of sharing these values.
This could be no longer true. Sometimes I argue with dogmatic libertarians about the nature of this so called “crisis”. They state that it is no different than other industrial revolutions from the past, while I just dare to disagree. They point out that every modernization, every technological innovation blows up some jobs while creates the same amount in other areas, or even more. I disagree. Not this time. The fact that something ever happened the same it does not mean that every time has to be the same. This is “White Sawn” statistics, nothing changes, everything is static and cyclic.
When I look around, what I see is a loss of value at an accelerated rate. Everything is turning low-cost. It started with plane tickets, now it’s everywhere. In my hometown I’ve seen low-cost bars, low-cost art galleries, low-cost marijuana seeds, etc. You don’t need a PhD in mathematics to conclude that something whose quantity depends on the increasing existing one, grows up exponentially.
So, the low-cost vicious circle goes on, devouring what it encounters on its path: Jobs are now mini-jobs, salaries become mini-salaries (or none at all, in the shape of extended internships that never translate into real jobs), and it’s pretty sure any value that could contribute to society can be easily found on the internet for free.
Do you write books? Aw, you can self-publish yours electronically using free services after learning how to with free Youtube tutorials, but it’s going to be considered very expensive if you tag it pricer than 4 bucks…!
Do you teach? Sure I can learn more, better and for free in an of the MOOCs readily available from my couch with my tablet.
So you design web pages? No way, I can create my own one in minutes for free with this or that online service…
If you think carefully about it, this low-cost, lesser value spiral is not stopping the whole economy, it is just concentrating the wealth into very few pockets.
Everyday more and more professions are losing its value and replaced with a machine, a software, or something similar. Humans beings got less and less value every day. What can you offer to society that deserves to be paid with real money, with significant amounts of money? Are you sure? How much time do you think your value will stand before it’s eaten by a cost-saving automatism?
If you think carefully about it, this low-cost, lesser value spiral is not stopping the whole economy, it is just concentrating the wealth into very few pockets. The saving in costs is not being translated into a better preserved environment, nor in welfare for most people in the world. Rather, is increasing the gold bags of the (1%? 0.1%) of people who control the markets. The ones who control the Value. And they won’t be eager to give some of this value back to you!
