If you look back at human history when it comes to the world of work, it first revolved around self sufficiency. You ate what you caught and foraged and sure there was a little trading and bartering going on as well.
Then came the agricultural based economy where people started settling down to put down roots instead of wandering about. They grew their own crops, sold them, traded them, bartered with them, etc.
Then came the shift to the manufacturing based economy in the United States due to the industrial revolution. People traded their self sufficient ways to be paid a good wage for showing up and working at a factory. They learned the routine and off they went to work.
This combined with a booming economy led to the rise of the middle class during that time period.
But now because of the global economy, manufacturing has declined and thus, the middle class that came with it and we find ourselves at another major shift in the world of work.
What will replace manufacturing to help create the new middle class?
What kind of economy will take root now?
Interestingly enough, if you take this same timeline mentioned above, you’ll be able to overlap a cycle of social classes with it.
First you had a very small rich minority who owned all the land and the vast majority as the poor. Through technological innovation, opportunities arose that allowed the poor to rise to the middle class. This happened with the industrial revolution and the rise of a manufacturing based economy.
As the economy prospered, greed started to infiltrate, which we could see happen in the 1980’s to the early 2000’s which led to multiple bubbles, along with the decline of a manufacturing based economy due to globalization that led to the decline of the middle class.
It’s interesting to see this cycle playing out in other countries too. India is just now experiencing a rise in the middle class. Countries like China and South Korea have the middle class and find themselves in the greed stage of the cycle.
But going back to the United States, we are now seeing a return back to the beginning of the cycle – namely a distribution where we have a very few being rich and the rest as poor.
What technological innovation will give opportunities for the poor to rise to middle class again?
And what kind of economy will arise after a manufacturing based one?
My prediction is that we will not see as big of a rise in middle class as we did before in the U.S.
The reason why the middle class got so big then was that it was easy to get there.
The manufacturing based economy was all about learning a system.
You were told when to show up, what to do, you learned your routine, showed up at work, did the same thing over and over for years on end, got paid a good wage, got a pension and with that, you could live the middle class lifestyle.
That kind of thinking and expectation doesn’t fly anymore.
Technology has replaced a lot of those jobs and for those jobs that technology can’t replace, they’re outsourced overseas. As for the jobs that are left over that are not technically systemized, there’s not a lot of them so many people are clamoring over them and the end result is you get a lot of competition for a lot of low paying jobs.
Any work that can be taught and systemized isn’t going to cut it anymore in the new world of work.
That kind of work is akin to a replaceable cog in the machine. If for any reason it’s not working out with you in that place, they can hire another person and easily train him/her to fulfill the job and for less pay or create some technology to do it efficiently at low cost.
You have to take responsibility to CREATE YOUR OWN WORK.
In other words, we need to go back to the world of self sufficiency.
We need to grow our own figurative “crops” and learn how to sell them to prosper in the new world of work.
And don’t be swayed by thinking you have to produce tangible products. “Crops” is an all encompassing word that involves a variety of ideas, products, and services.
But you might be thinking – when that happened back then, when people were self sufficient, there was no middle class.
True.
That’s because there were so many physical constraints then and not enough resources.
Now there are not that many constraints and plenty of resources.
We live in a world of technological abundance where you can literally sell while you sleep to anyone in the world. Back then, you were constrained to selling during waking hours and to your geographic location.
Now you have so many resources and information to tap too. Back then you had very few.
We need to go back to this model of self sufficiency utilizing the resources we have now and the low barriers of entry to grow our own respective “crops” and to sell them.
The people who are able to do this will be part of the few to rise to the middle class once again.
We have to wean ourselves off manufacturing based psychology where we expect to be told what to do, to show up and do the same thing over and over again, and receive a good wage for it.
People who worked their whole lives in a factory repeating a process are obviously having trouble coping now with the new world of work because they’ve been conditioned to do the same thing, to work IN the system, not to think to be able to see what they could do outside of it.
If you keep doing that, you slowly lose the ability to CREATE and without that, it’s hard to adapt and survive in the new world of work.
This is always a good thought experiment to do once in a while.
If you were laid off from your job, what would you do to survive, without resorting to finding another job?
Plant some figurative seeds. Grow some figurative crops.
Imagine the possibilities.
You don’t have to quit right now.
Just make sure something’s cooking up there.
The new world of work requires you to use your creativity to create your own “crops” that will add value and to people and businesses, to solve problems, to create your own processes, and not only that, to communicate effectively in order to market and sell them.
The old style of working where you’re told what to do and you just execute doesn’t fly anymore.
You can’t depend on organizations anymore. The average employee is seen as a commodity that can be interchanged and paid little due to tons of competition for the same spot.
So what kind of figurative crops can you grow?
It’ll be one of the major keys to prosperity in the new world of work.
