Let me blow your mind. Imagine that we lived in a world without corporations, jobs, bosses, salaries, benefits, etc.
You don't get a pay check every two weeks, just for showing up. You don't have to go through some demeaning review process by a senior employee that you don't respect, knows less than you do, has no interest in anything other than power & politics, generates nothing of substantial value in their lives, has their own personal problems, etc. You don't get any benefits like health care, subsidized savings for retirement, bonus plan, etc.
How would that world look? Could you handle it?
The reality is that we individual humans were not born into a world of jobs, organized labor and corporations. We exist on our own individuality and the skills that either we were lucky enough to have organically, or have honed through years of learning, crafting and mastering. The days of the past where the village had a blacksmith, a market gardener, an apothecary, a builder, etc. are celebrated in the vast array of video games that we play but these days do not factor into urban cities.
Should they? Have we created a society of expectation, where the concept of "I deserve a job because I spent X years in education and had to pay money for that" is commonly held? Are we no longer valuing the contribution that the individual can bring to the overall community rather than celebrating the ascendance through a corporate maze upwards to CEO-ship?
Each day we distance ourselves from the reality of our human journey with artificial walls. Take, for example, the urban city. It is designed simply to feed the corporations that reside there. They find a common place that is near where the employees reside, so that they can attract and retain employees for the longest time. Our local governors build rail, bus and airports to bring people to the cities. The skyscrapers represent expansion - not outwards, but upwards. We block the sun and force those that want to live close to the "opportunities" to live in small square boxes, often only with basic human resources such as water, power, shelter and sleep. We create a fictional world around us that attention can be diverted from this ridiculous lifestyle by watching endless hours of media that simply reinforce the will of the corporation, as they are the only organizations that can afford to pay for the advertising on said media.
This is a downward spiral. Is it not surprising the longevity of movies & TV shows that laugh in the face of this ridiculousness?
Like Office Space....
Or "The Office"...
Comedy depicts a social embrace of "something is wrong". And it is. Jobs are stupid.
I will give one positive thing to the concept of corporations & jobs... It helps build very large things. For example, if you wanted to build an airplane, you probably need a team of hundreds if not thousands of people to do it right. It is a complex system of interconnecting parts and nothing is allowed to go wrong. Because of this, we can travel the world in hours. Good job, corporations.
Another big thing might be healthcare. Because of large pharmaceutical corporations being able to leverage investment, we can fund research & development into the next "wonder drug" that will save and improve lives and create longevity.
There are countless other examples that would support the positive nature of corporations & jobs.
But here are a few contrary positions you should consider....
The very same corporations that create the airplanes produce so much waste that the advantage of air travel is now impacting climate, air quality and future inheritance of a destroyed planet. So those that want to travel from place A to place B are doing it to "escape" from this jail created in their jobs. They long for a vacation to escape, or even just a change of scenery to get some break from the burden of their mundane and repetitive life. What families give up to have a family member have to travel for work, etc. is absolutely ridiculous and erodes the very fabric of what a family is supposed to be, often leading to a high rate of divorce and raising of kids in dysfunctional and often unsupported environments.
The myth that pharmaceutical technology advances can only be done with hundreds of millions of dollars of investment has been countered over the course of hundreds of years, where it is commonly found that most new technological advances come out of the "garage" and not the boardroom. That corporations, by their very nature, are poor creators of new things, and don't foster an environment that challenges the status quo because they shackle the very same disruptors that would have invented the new technology. Instead they "acquire" new startups to add to their collection of inventory, often for the sheer reason to stop them doing that because it will reduce the value of their existing assets.
Creative people have a really hard time existing and thriving in jobs & corporations. They can't break free of the pressure from others to not disrupt the status quo. After all, the boss just wants a raise and to play more golf. If you go and invent something revolutionary you are just going to bring the spotlight on you and your boss, and if that negatively affects someone else in the corporation, it often never ends well. Often those high achievers get so fed up with jobs that they quit and go and form their own "startup" so that they are free of the shackles to create.
In 2018 we have leveraged our inventions of "information technology" to the point now where we have cars that drive themselves, robots that build those cars, automation software that generates the designs, etc. You can see where this is heading. Machines will do all the routine things that currently the employees in those very corporations do. This is clearly not in our self-interest.
We have created a society that values template based production - you create a design for something, build a way to mass produce it, and like a cookie template, just stamp them out. By the thousands. No originality. No culture that challenges the next person to create something from their vision that adds some value to all of us. Just keep building the same thing from a template.
Like all the McDonald's restaurants out there that blatant boast that their business model is that you can go anywhere in the world and get the same food at their chains - travel to Moscow and eat a Big Mac, travel to Buenos Aires and eat a Big Mac, etc. WTF? Why the hell are you traveling to get away from your routine? How about you challenge yourself to eat THEIR food and learn something about THEIR culture?
The cities we have created are just jails for employees. Families have a hard time growing into happy and peace oriented groups. They deal with pollution, traffic jams, neighbor disputes.... Like rats in a cage.
Did you sign up for this when you choose to go to college? Are you searching for a career that embraces this self-destructive tendency that we collectively have embraced? Are you thinking that your only hope is to leave college and get a job that forces you into this rat's nest? And what happens when you get in? Can you get out?
Corporations have a nasty habit of illusion in the form of "corporate handcuffs". This is where they offer incentives to join the company with the intention of locking you in there for a period of time. It might be "vesting" for some stock options they give, or periodic eligibility after X years to participate in the company's retirement fund, etc. Or it might be that they will pay you something upfront (ie. relocation assistance, deposit on buying a home, etc.) on the basis that you have to stay with them for decades in order to pay it back. This is pure enslavement.
Meanwhile you sit in your cubicle, staring at the carpet covered walls, looking into your computer screen hoping for any sign that life gets better than this. Eventually you crack and you quit. This is how it works. The corporation hopes that they have extracted as much "productivity" out of your soul that helps them fuel their ongoing upward profit motives. But you are nothing other than a liability on a ledger. Don't let the HR department fool you - they don't give a shit about you if a robot will replace your productive contribution. I'm not saying that as a disgruntled employee - I haven't had a job for 20 years. I'm telling you that this is reality. All else is a fiction you care to believe, but it is PURE fiction.
There is one really simple thing that will help you be wealthy & secure in life. This economic formula:
If you have skills that are in demand, you can determine who you want to sell them to. You can choose to have MANY income sources for those skills. You can choose if you want to subscribe to the fiction of a job, or be a free agent and sell them to the highest bidder. You are 100% in control. If you choose to have the wrong skills, you will not thrive. If you choose the right skills, you will prosper.
This takes some courage, but it really doesn't if you never subscribed to the concept of corporations & jobs in the first place. Because you learn the basics of how business and economics work because you are living in that world. It is the world of small businesses, independent freelancers, contractors, etc. You don't get graded on whether you have a "permission slip" from education (ie. college degree). You get graded simply by how well you do something. Something that is natural to you. Something you love to do. Something that you do WAY BETTER than the corporation schmuck that has the cubicle job because you have the freedom to do it better and the motivation to work on it because it is a reflection of you - not a reflection on the ideology of the corporation who has no allegiance to you at all.
We have created a society where we pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to send kids to colleges, who come out often knowing less than they went in. They are programmed by an education system that creates a "feeder network" to the corporations who will enslave them for decades. Students are programmed to celebrate getting their first job, hired out of college, because they can show off to their peers that they were "special". They are at their most vulnerable in terms of this pretense because they have never really been out there in the workforce, and the banking cartel have lumbered the majority with debt (ie. handcuffs) right out of the gate that forces them into a world of jobs & corporate enslavement.
When a professor tries to tell you that you should strive to get this or that grade (based on an incentive that they push out more trained and qualified worker bees than their peers), so that you can get a "good paying job", you are hearing the propaganda that should be coming from a communistic regime. You are at an incredible time in your life to have the opportunity to travel, learn and develop the skills that are in demand. But not because some organized system taught you - because you learned it due to understand the formula of supply & demand.
We are creating a society that is killing off the small business, because an upstart operation that actually invents something of value threatens the very well being of the corporate monolith. They get stomped out, suffocated of funding, and often destroyed by heavily lawyered-up corporations that can afford to dump products out at a loss to kill off the threat. If you get sued by corporation X, can you afford to defend yourself? Probably not.
Let me illustrate exactly what the corporation sees when they looking into your eyes....
Yes, you are a piece of meat. Sorry, but it is true.
Now the good news.... It doesn't have to be this way. Recently I watched a very interesting video on YouTube that really had some impact on me:
A young man wrote into this guy's video channel who had been convicted of shoplifting in his younger years, was at college studying IT and was living with the fear that when he completed college, he would have a very hard time finding a job with a felony conviction on his record.
Despite all the positive messaging in the video for him to keep his spirits up, etc. the reality is he is a square peg trying to fit into a round hole. The reality is that the corporation only wants to employ those that won't disrupt the status quo - fit the corporate image, etc. and the perception of the mistake this kid had made will not likely fit the corporation. He will be branded with this for the rest of his life, and that is just not fair.
However when looking at the alternatives, my attitude is "This is a blessing - not a curse". You see, if that kid can't get a job in corporation, he will be forced to look at his skills, hone them, hustle and become a much stronger person. In the end, he could invent the next big thing. He could live in the peace of his own environment and thrive.
The key here, as I have said in so many other blog articles, is to be financially independent which can be done with generating income from whatever source (yes, even a job works here), but saving 75% of it while being frugal and leveraging community - live in a house with 4 other people; college students are doing this anyway and yet don't wish to recognize it, save that money and build up financial independence that can protect you from the ebbs and flows of cashflow. Work really hard - but it won't be work. It will be investing in yourself. Man, we do this without thinking. We train at the gym, we read books, we learn organically. Do this and do it well. Learn something that the corporate schmuck doesn't know and laugh in their face. They might not want you, but they sure as hell want your output.
Then you are in a power position. Don't underestimate what you have learnt over the years and what you have created for yourself. Sell it confidently at a price you think it is worth - not what they are willing to pay. If you are in a field where there are too many people doing what you do (ie. oversupply), price will go down. Find ways to differentiate yourself by how you, personally, do things that are uniquely different to competition. Then you can get back to naming your price.
This is about you realizing the true value of you, and investing your time & energy into being a more valuable you. For the sake of you. Not for the sake of some cop out of a job, a corporation that treats you more like a slab of beef than a human being, and for a society where your footprint matters. Where you can embrace what you believe in - not what the corporation believes in.
We are blessed with the individuality of human existence, and although we are social animals the reality is that you have to realize who you are. And you have to uncover what passion & skills you have, and direct yourself into honing those skills. Others will need to train you. Realize you don't have anything of value YET. You should strive to pick something you love to do, and become the best you can be at it. That will take time. Making the right choice is crucial to getting in front of the competition. And understand that supply & demand dictate your value. If you pick the right thing before the world sees it, you will win here.
Never sell yourself out for propaganda, no matter how much money you have paid to be propaganda-ized (ie. college). Never commit to long term debt based on what society tells you to do, be or act. Never stop listening to your inner voice that tells you who you could be, and never let others deter your confidence in yourself. Those that might put you down will never be a part of your life and they will go and work for the very same corporations as job slaves while you are a free spirit and thrive in a world that you can master.
