Musings Report #31 07-27-12 What's Scarce: Meaningful Work
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What's Scarce: Meaningful Work
I have maintained for some time that what will be scarce is not "stuff" or even precious metals but reliable income streams and liquidity, i.e. the ability to turn some material, property or financial instrument into cash. Many investments will be trapped capital, i.e. dead money, because what will be scarce is cash, not stuff/things/property to buy with cash.
I am adding a third thing that will be scarce: meaningful work.
What makes work meaningful? Isn't paying work meaningful enough? We all know the answer is no. What makes work meaningful is the expression of one's skills in a useful project, and/or contributing to a community project of merit and meaning.
Working with others can create a community, even if the work is unskilled or uninteresting. We go to work to be with people, and to gain value from our contribution to helping others complete the tasks at hand.
Is working alone meaningful? It can be, if you are expressing your skills. Here is an example: back in the 1970s as a carpenter's apprentice, I heard about an old carpenter who built houses by himself, only getting help setting heavy beams. Most of the labor he performed alone.
At the time, this mystified me, as the camaraderie of working with others was part of the fun of working. Now, as a 58-year old, I understand why the carpenter preferred to work alone: when you're paying the bills and having to supervise, it's so much easier to work alone. Dealing with people as a supervisor/boss does not offer the easy pleasure of working with equals; it might, but it can also be a real pain in the neck.
It might also have been a personality issue. Working alone offers maximum control and minimum idle chatter, and if you truly enjoy your craft, then you dislike interruptions, radios blaring, etc. The craft is your companion, and a steady companion it is.
But there is a unique excitement in working together with other committed individuals on a project of value and meaning. Often these are community or church projects, but they can be workplaces as well. The workshop of Charles and Ray Eames seems like it was an exciting, stimulating and rewarding (in terms of adding value and meaning) place to work.
We have been bombarded with Silicon Valley Dreams in which such exciting, creative workplaces also reward early participants with millions of dollars in stock options. But what if meaningful work is so scarce that pay is secondary?
My concept of "hybrid work" is based on the idea that one full-time job is unlikely to provide everything we want from work, and this will become more apparent as full-time jobs themselves become even more scarce than they are now. Perhaps having multiple jobs, some paid, some unpaid, some poorly paid in cash but richly paid in meaning, will be the "future of work."
The factory setting of one 40-hour a week job doing the same thing all week is an artifact of an industrial economy that has been surpassed by new technologies, skills and expectations. Hybrid work seems more flexible and dynamic, and thus better suited to the realities of an economy in constant transition.
From Left Field
A very funny and entertaining caper film from 1960--Big Deal on Madonna Street ("The Usual Unknowns" in Italian) (Mario Monicelli, director)
Rent it, you won't be disappointed if you like light entertainment and great acting.
The Reformed Broker: " I realized that life was too short to work in a career I wasn't proud of no matter how much I was making."
1) Study estimates staggering size of offshore economy
2) Private banks help wealthiest to move cash into havens
“You can lose wealth, and you can regain it, but you can lose freedom only once.” Ueli Maurer, Swiss Defense Minister
Thanks for reading--
charles