• Economic planners have been trying to reduce the number of people needed to run the economy for many decades now.
  • They’re also trying to impose their own decisions regarding who gets the remaining jobs. If you’re reading this, they probably don’t want YOU to have one of the jobs.
  • Even those favored for jobs, via affirmative action, are at risk of racking up student debt and, in some cases, business loans. It’s not so much that they love women and minorities as it is they want to control them via debt-slavery.
  • With a shrinking economy AND high levels of automation, it will be hard to keep a job even if you haven’t been specifically targeted for replacement.

Let’s put the matter into a historical prospective: for most of history, employment for wages hasn’t been an option for most people. Before the Industrial Revolution, privately-owned companies were marginal to the economy, and did not offer enough jobs to provide wage opportunities to many people, especially not for anyone not closely-related to the owner. A few people competed for jobs with a much smaller government than exists now, others competed for jobs with religious institutions, and most of the rest were serfs or servants for landed aristocracy. Serfdom wasn’t analogous to private employment: you couldn’t quit! You were subject to harsh and possibly arbitrary measures by your boss; you might get a beating if someone didn’t like the work you did. It was just one step up from chattel slavery. For most of history, in most parts of the world, chattel slavery was an option too!

While there’s talk of Universal Basic Income, so far it’s just that: talk. The only reason they’re even talking about it is because they want a plan in place so as not to destabilize the economy faster than they themselves can manage the change—including and especially “unforseen consequences”. If and when it does show up, it will likely come with undesireable strings attached.

The more desperate you are, the more compliant you’ll be. You might find yourself agreeing to concessions of your freedom that result in a vicious circle of impoverishment and loss of freedom.

What I’m getting at is that the stakes are higher than your immediate need for income.

You need a strategy to avoid economic starvation. You’ll need to think creatively, “out-of-the-box”. Those who made big plans for the future are not working out how to keep you employed; they’re thinking of ways to get rid of you completely.

There are no easy answers; you’re going to have to live with uncertainty and live by your wits. Here is my advice:

  • Be on the high alert for unmet needs for which there is a viable market for products or services. “Market” meaning that the intended customer actually has the means to pay for your services; there will be a great many needs that will go unmet for lack of means to pay.
  • Maintain a competitive spirit.
  • As of this writing, there’s a shortage of skilled labor. If you choose to pursue it, maintain a vigilant watch for signs of economic change that impacts your future opportunities. For example, appliance repair might eventually dry up for lack of spare parts as the supply-chain breakdown continues.
  • Distinguish between wants and needs. If you can get your expenses to reflect primarily needs, you can reduce how much income you need to come up with in the first place.
  • Get comfortable with poverty. If you have food, clothing, and shelter, you’re doing well.
  • Producing your own necessities reduces the amount of income you need to buy goods.
  • Favor owning things that generate income over things that have cost-of-ownership: rental property, not vacation homes or boats for your own use.
  • In an extended family, you have more prospective breadwinners and also more members who can supply non-commercial services to the rest of the family. This is how people survive in parts of the world where unemployment rates run in the 50%-90% range.

Diversify your income sources for the same reasons investment advisers tell you to diversify your assets. The more different sources of income you can come up with, the less impact losing any one of them is on you:

The fleamarket economy: sell items you don’t need. Buy used items from other people who no longer need them. Sometimes these arrangements don’t involve any actual exchanges of money; only goods change hands: you offer what you don’t need, other people offer what they don’t need.

The sharing economy: Can you rent out your car, or space in your house? There are websites where you can list items you own to rent out. Can you rent out items you’re not using, like musical instruments (I’ve done this)?

The gig economy: Can you do temporary assignments on-call, or as an independent service provider (eg Fiverr)? These jobs tend to be more abundant than salaried positions with benefits, because they present less risk for companies & customers.

The microbusiness economy: can you sell items that you make on websites like Etsy?

Tip: if you provide a product or service over the internet, nobody needs to know that you’re a white, heterosexual male, or that you’re unvaxxed, a prepper, part of a homeschooling family, a political populist, etc. Keep your professional branding very separate from any activities you might engage in that would make you a target for blacklisting.

If you post on social media for business-related purposes—even if only marginally—maintain a SEPARATE account for that; DO NOT mix it with issues related to your race, cultural affiliations, tastes (yes, your adversaries are offended by people having the wrong taste in things; @WrathofGnon on Twitter has gotten targeted for having traditional taste in architecture and building technologies!), or political affiliations. Do not post the same material on both accounts; that’s how adversaries figure out that one is connected to the other, followed by doxxing & cancellation.

Don’t use any social media (Facebook for example) that require you to use your real name, even if you’re willing to use your real name.

Warning: Dekulakization

“Dekulakization” is an anglicized version of a Russian word dating from the Soviet Union referring to the process of eliminating businesses (typically farms) owned by peasants. One of the goals of the Great Reset is to eliminate most small businesses, ostensibly because it’s hard for central economic planners to rally them to save the planet (more likely, because the central economic planners loathe kulaks and also see them as easy targets for looting). The process has already begun, using shutdowns and lockdowns as a pretext for shutting down small businesses longer than their reserves would hold out, and by preventing small landlords from evicting non-paying tenants. It’s not over yet; policies will remain in place indefinitely to drive small businesses out-of-business, aside from micro-businesses that are part of the business model of big corporations like eBay, AirBnB, Uber, and the like.

The purpose of warning you is not to discourage you from owning your own business; it’s just to warn you to make plans to evade policies designed to run you out of business. Running your own business might very well be the only way to support yourself; it just won’t be easy.

If you do need wage income, the following tips might help:

  • The market value of a credential is determined by the same measure as anything else: supply vs demand.
  • The western countries are generally over-credentialed: too many people have college degrees, diluting the value of college degrees.
  • College degrees now routinely required for mundane jobs like receptionists, but pay-rates haven’t increased commensurately with employers raising the bar to entry; on the contrary, relative to inflation, they’re falling! People are going into debt to buy credentials for low-paying jobs. Another big cost is time; you could have been making money while you were busy earning the credentials.
  • Generally speaking, the more specific a credential is, the more valuable it is. There are certifications in specific computer skills that are far more marketable than a Bachelor of Arts from a Liberal Arts college, despite being quicker and cheaper to obtain. Always do a cost-benefit analysis BEFORE committing time and resources to credentials. In your calculations, consider the longevity of your economic niche: don’t end up spending a lot of time and money obtaining a credential for an occupation demand for which suddenly collapses. Beware of following crowds into boom-bust situations.
  • In a world of too many credentials but not enough specific skills, skills generally have more bang for the buck than credentials.
  • You can pick up specific skills quickly and cheaply through MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses), and various venues like Udemy that specialize in cheap training. Check job listings for specific skills that keep showing up that could be obtained through online training.
  • Generally speaking, credentials are mostly for getting your foot in the door, except they’re not even good for that because you’re competing with too many other people who have similar credentials. But once you have experience, experience counts more than credentials do.
  • There are alternative ways to get your foot in the door. Spend more time networking, and less time writing essays promoting Critical Race Theory.
  • Networking entails finding situations where you can meet people in your target line of business, in contexts where you socialize and talk about the business. Could be business associations. Could be social media interest groups. It might entail doing someone uncompensated favors.
  • A history of career success is worth more than a credential coupled with a lackluster career or, for that matter, no experience at all.
  • The most important skill is knowing how to do the job well. The second most-important skill is knowing how to relate well with your boss and your colleagues.

Reading:

Get a Job, Build a Real Career, and Defy a Bewildering Economy
https://amzn.to/3v4c6OP
by Charles Hugh Smith

Take care of your health and needs for physical conditioning even while you feel under pressure to deal with other matters that seem more immediately urgent (but never get “done” so that you can see to other matters). Nothing is more important to your welfare than your health; once you’re too far down spiral of declining health, it’s over.

Some “soft skills” to consider adding to your professional portfolio:

  • Mindfulness training might seem like a strange choice, but it will train you to maintain a calm & resourceful baseline frame-of-mind in the face of adversity and “stress”. The less reactive (aka “neurotic”) you are under fire, the more confidence your customers and peers will have in you.
  • Something like the Buddhist Lovingkindness meditation can train your brain to react less emotionally towards other people. Less “drama” from your side, even if there’s plenty from theirs. Being able to work with difficult, demanding people is a superpower! You can make money bringing to the table nothing more than that!

Reading:

Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World
https://amzn.to/3s2KVSs
by Mark Williams and Danny Penman
 

Take what you learn about maintaining calm awareness, and apply it to maintaining continuous alertness for both opportunity and danger.

The standard lovingkindness meditation is fairly simple to explain; you don’t need to read another book, you just need to do it. Try it daily early in the morning after bodyweight exercise and mindfulness training. My version has a little twist at the end: you are not a monk living in a cloistered environment under the protection of the regional warlord who does all your dirty-work for you.

First, get into a peaceful, relaxed, friendly mood.

Then assemble a mental list of people you engage regularly, including family, friends, customers, and people you work with.

Now take a sampling of those people, and queue them up from people you find it easy to relate to, to people you find it difficult to relate to.

Starting with the easy one: think about that person’s suffering in life. Think about how their suffering motivates them. Feel empathy for that person. Then imagine breathing in their suffering, and exhaling relief from suffering.

Maintaining your peaceful, relaxed, friendly mood, repeat the exercise thinking about someone who’s representative of people who are a little harder to get along with.

Now depending on where your emotional stability is, the next step might be hard. For example, if you’re in a severe workplace bullying situation, and you already have PTSD, the next step could be traumatic. Deal with only what’s no worse than a comfortable challenge for you.

When you’re ready for it: maintaining your peaceful, relaxed, friendly mood, repeat the exercise thinking about someone who’s representative of someone you regularly engage with who’s downright difficult to get along with. IT IS UNWISE TO DOWNPLAY THE PERSON’S ANTAGONISM TO YOU. You can be calm, empathetic, AND ON YOUR GUARD.

Now go pursue your adventure, living as if every day were your first day of life, ripe with possibilities. Great prosperity to you! 🙏