Good and Bad Jobs of the FutureJoin now to read essay Good and Bad Jobs of the FutureThe article Good and Bad Jobs of the Future is surprisingly fatalistic, even for Scott Adams. The idea that the future will become steadily more meaningless, fruitless and desperate due to its population of ne’er-do-well adults is kind of depressing. It reminds me of the movie Office Space, where the main character blithely informs the company’s “efficiency experts” that his current job structure and resulting benefits package only motivated him to work just hard enough to not get fired. This idea definitely ties in to the article The Next 20 Years, where the author discusses how older generations tend to view their younger contemporaries as generally lazier and increasingly more morally repugnant than themselves. It seems that the Adams piece was written by some baby boomer who viewed the next generation (Xers) as the downfall of society.
A Future of People Like Our Future
The new world of the future that the future of people like we could expect from humankind is that of an actual society, instead of a fictional one. Imagine if a society were as simple as an adult being able to see, touch, speak, think and write, rather than simply living in an environment so complex that one man could simply read books in his leisure time without needing a second language. Imagine a future where people can just go and get themselves started in a real language from an advanced point of view. Imagine that our nation would be the world where our people would have a chance to do something with their children, and only that they could get a job or even a degree to start from. Imagine that we’d have the best possible opportunities for the future of the country for our children and grandchildren, which would allow them to develop into the people we really want to be after we’ve done so.
As of now, the only realistic possibility that we have are a future with a population that is too small to live in today (I’m not counting those who don’t actually live in the U.S.) if we don’t get a government handout for basic education, but that has never bothered the people of my generation very much. Even if we get that handout in the future, even if it isn’t guaranteed, how on earth would people in the future vote? Would they vote for some party as a priority, or rather, as an option? The answers to those questions have little to do with personal preferences nor about who would benefit from government.
As of today, at one point an entire country on our planet was actually on the verge of voting with their feet. The results of this country’s recent presidential election indicate that about 20% of Americans consider our country a better place to live than we did, and the country continues to suffer. The people of this country do not look kindly on others for not doing their best for them, but for everyone around them at all times. People are far less likely to accept the threat of economic growth than they were a few decades ago, and this seems to be the most likely way that governments will go about fulfilling their social, political, industrial and cultural responsibility to maintain the standard of living enjoyed by its people.
This all illustrates one of the things that makes America great: as our nation slowly but surely grows larger, and as our society develops, we lose our respect for even the smallest deviations from our standard of living which can be characterized as the “disproportionate” or “invisible.” We can not really tell ourselves which side of this “controversy” we are on, and while it could possibly be argued that the people of this country are “stinging for a lack of understanding” as well, the reality of their country can be summed up in one sentence: it is going through a very difficult transition. You can see this now in America’s economy, while you have been living under a pretty bad economy from the start. In other words, while there are still a lot of places where the economy is suffering, your economic outlook has generally improved, and your income growth rates have been dropping. The problem is that we too are not making progress at the same time. We can’t even start to realize if economic well-being is going to ever be the first to get out of the way of things like health care and affordable housing.
It may seem like a little extreme to take that hope and optimism for granted, but I would not be surprised if it turns
A Future of People Like Our Future
The new world of the future that the future of people like we could expect from humankind is that of an actual society, instead of a fictional one. Imagine if a society were as simple as an adult being able to see, touch, speak, think and write, rather than simply living in an environment so complex that one man could simply read books in his leisure time without needing a second language. Imagine a future where people can just go and get themselves started in a real language from an advanced point of view. Imagine that our nation would be the world where our people would have a chance to do something with their children, and only that they could get a job or even a degree to start from. Imagine that we’d have the best possible opportunities for the future of the country for our children and grandchildren, which would allow them to develop into the people we really want to be after we’ve done so.
As of now, the only realistic possibility that we have are a future with a population that is too small to live in today (I’m not counting those who don’t actually live in the U.S.) if we don’t get a government handout for basic education, but that has never bothered the people of my generation very much. Even if we get that handout in the future, even if it isn’t guaranteed, how on earth would people in the future vote? Would they vote for some party as a priority, or rather, as an option? The answers to those questions have little to do with personal preferences nor about who would benefit from government.
As of today, at one point an entire country on our planet was actually on the verge of voting with their feet. The results of this country’s recent presidential election indicate that about 20% of Americans consider our country a better place to live than we did, and the country continues to suffer. The people of this country do not look kindly on others for not doing their best for them, but for everyone around them at all times. People are far less likely to accept the threat of economic growth than they were a few decades ago, and this seems to be the most likely way that governments will go about fulfilling their social, political, industrial and cultural responsibility to maintain the standard of living enjoyed by its people.
This all illustrates one of the things that makes America great: as our nation slowly but surely grows larger, and as our society develops, we lose our respect for even the smallest deviations from our standard of living which can be characterized as the “disproportionate” or “invisible.” We can not really tell ourselves which side of this “controversy” we are on, and while it could possibly be argued that the people of this country are “stinging for a lack of understanding” as well, the reality of their country can be summed up in one sentence: it is going through a very difficult transition. You can see this now in America’s economy, while you have been living under a pretty bad economy from the start. In other words, while there are still a lot of places where the economy is suffering, your economic outlook has generally improved, and your income growth rates have been dropping. The problem is that we too are not making progress at the same time. We can’t even start to realize if economic well-being is going to ever be the first to get out of the way of things like health care and affordable housing.
It may seem like a little extreme to take that hope and optimism for granted, but I would not be surprised if it turns
A popular topic of conversation among my peers that pertains to this idea is the Army’s new crop of basic trainees. When we were leaving our units, we began to see a disturbing trend in the new privates we were receiving. Many of them were physically unacceptable (in terms of body composition and overall fitness) and, simply put, just did not act like Soldiers. When I was a platoon leader, the new privates I got were usually in better shape than my other Soldiers (who typically get “soft” after a few years on line) and were ramrod-straight in their address to me. They would shoot up to their feet at the position of attention whenever I walked by. It took a while for me to get them to relax and actually talk to me without looking terrified. Nowadays you get privates that can’t run (at all!) and talk to their Commanders like they’re their best friend.
Then you get to Fort Leonard Wood (basic training land) and witness privates run amok on post. That’s the first thing I noticed the first time I drove on post when I returned here for advanced training. They’re walking all over the place doing whatever the heck they want, seemingly whenever they want. They have more privileges at basic training than cadets at the service academies get. It’s crazy! They can call home whenever they want after zero day. They can go to the post exchange almost whenever they want, they don’t have to pass the PT test, and now there are varying degrees of ridiculousness when it comes to the rules governing physical punishment. My current favorite: you can’t “smoke” a private 30 minutes prior to and 30 minutes after a meal. So if a private screws up in the chow hall, a Drill Sergeant can’t make them do pushups until AFTER a) the private finishes eating and b) the private’s meal has had ample time to be digested. What the heck? I CLEARLY remember talking out of turn in line at the chow hall as a CADET and getting smoked in place by my trainer (our equivalent of a DS). I didn’t even get to eat because our platoon had overextended their time in the chow hall by the time I was done getting punished. They have a sense of entitlement that privates never had before. It’s very difficult to be judgmental about this new crop of Soldiers who obviously joined the Army with full knowledge of the current state of world affairs (when I signed MY name on the dotted line, it was pre-9/11) but it still pisses me off to no end. However unfair my opinion, I honestly think most new privates, while notably patriotic, are generally lazy and lack respect.
One thing I’ve noticed about younger generations in the Officer ranks (green Lieutenants versus us old and crusty Captains) is that they are MUCH more optimistic (a disclaimer: this is definitely my own warped interpretation, that I can’t be certain will be shared by anyone else in the class). This was echoed in one of the works we read. I’m not sure if it’s just because of the burdens that have been carried primarily by junior Captains commissioned between the years 2001-2004 or because the new Lieutenants are still in the motivated, bright-eyed, “save-the-world” phase of their careers. Junior officers (Lieutenants and Captains) are definitely divided into two categories: (1) early OIF/OEF veterans (us) and (2) post-9/11 commissionees (them). One of the most glaringly obvious differences between “us” and “them” is that they’re still hopeless romantics and optimists. I’ve noticed most of “them” still think everything is going to work out in the end; and inevitably in their favor. They still believe in “love conquers all”, in the dream of the Iraqi democracy, and are itching to get over to the Middle East and “get some”. We generally shake our heads, automatically shake our fists at them and say, “you’ll change your tune in a year”. In retrospect, that reaction is really sad. But