I have been working in some capacity since I was around twelve years of age. For the first few years, it was cash in hand jobs, because legally it wasn't possible to work at that age. The first was sweeping out and clearing trash from newly built houses and apartments before the painters came in, and the money was pretty good. Then once I could work legally, it was a string of fast-food and supermarket jobs, that gave me enough money to buy some clothes and drink with friends on the weekend. As I got a little older, I went into retail, before coming to Finland.
What is interesting now is that there are less and less roles for young people to work, as AI and automation takes a lot of the positions people use to cut their teeth on. And while it might not seem a great loss to lose a serving position at McDonald's, the experience of working consistently and interacting with management, are extremely valuable to learn when there is not much at stake.
But now, even in career industries where knowledge workers develop, the entry level roles are being lost to automation, meaning that young people never get the foundation to build a career from. And again, while this might not seem much of a loss, what it also means is that a lot of people cannot do any work until they are out of university, and even then it is touch and go.
If we think that people will live until they are 80, and retire at around 65, it also means that they have to collect all their pension needs before that. However, previously people were working from when they were 16 a little bit, and then a lot more from when they were twenty onward. So they had 45 years to build a nest egg, at an increasing rate. But with the disappearance of entry level jobs, it means that people aren't going to be starting work until they are closer to thirty, a decade less time for any earnings to compound in retirement funds.
Not only is this a massive hit, but what it also means is that the "new entry level" positions are actually quite specialised, but the people who are expected to do them, have no work experience. The best workers are not the ones that have the most theoretical knowledge gathered from text books, they are the ones who have knowledge, applicable experience and good work ethic to apply what they know and can do to get results. A lot of people entering into the job market now have a lot of expectations on their employers, but very poor work ethic.
But how are you meant to build a work ethic at thirty years of age, after not having worked for the last thirty years? Even in the home, household chores that kids used to do are being replaced by robotic vacuum cleaner, washing machines, dishwashers and all the other stuff so that the kids have far less household duties, or responsibilities. Where are people learning about how to cope with responsibility? Where are they learning how to do the things they don't want to do, like the vacuuming?
We are creating a society of
incompetenceincompetents.
Just tonight friends were here and the wife were talking about an 18 year old being too young to live by themselves, and the husband said that he had moved out by 18. And so had she. Yet, the 18 year olds of today are just too immature, too incompetent, too unable to fend for themselves, and provide for themselves.
Is it their fault?
Partly. But mostly it is because we have created an environment where children at all ages are no longer learning the fundamental skills they need for adult life. Which means that as they mature by age, they do not mature into adults by behaviour. They act younger for longer, with the "only young once" paradigm lasting well into the thirties, and soon those thirty year olds will be in their forties and fifties, still behaving like children.
When will they grow up?
And this is the issue with building an ecosystem of tools that do everything for us, because it means we don't have to learn for ourselves. We don't have to go through the process of learning, the overcoming of boredom and dislike, the forcing through disgusting tasks, like cleaning out the fat trays at the burger station. But as I see it, being able to avoid the basic difficulties isn't a good thing, because it is through this experience that we build the foundation to be able to tackle the far more important difficult and problems that we need to really deal with in society, and our lives as individuals.
But if there is no place to learn, because it is cheaper to automate, where does someone learn? And when people aren't learning, what happens to creativity and innovation and who has the skills, the will, and the work ethic to solve the problems that are yet to be solved, that automation can't handle yet?
And never work a day in your life...
Careful what you wish for.
Taraz
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