February 2018
Dear Finley and Henry,
You are 7 and 5. You don’t have jobs.
Your life savings, such as they are, can largely be attributed to the generosity of your grandmother who sends you ten dollars each birthday. Good thing too, since the earnings you generate through your half-hearted efforts at household chores would not support the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle lifestyle to which you have become accustomed.
A sympathetic father might argue that none of this is your fault; that in the Internet age, you and all your chums are digitally displaced paperboys rather than lazy bums. Young victims of technological advancement. But I see the digital economy as especially well suited for kids. As a child with a wagon, I earned 2.5 cents for every copy of the Pennysaver I delivered in my neighbourhood. As children with gmail accounts, you have access to digital sales platforms and global distribution networks that would have dazzled titans of industry a generation ago. You are missing financial opportunity every day that you are not running an online business. You could literally earn a living unwrapping toys on Youtube... if you wanted to.
HR experts these days like to say that eighty percent of the jobs of the future are in fields that don’t even exist yet. I call bullshit. There have only ever been 6 jobs in the world. Making things. Selling things. Telling others what to do. Amusing people. Putting yourself in direct danger. And taking care of the needs of others.
Of the six, I find making things to be the most satisfying. Telling people what to do generally pays the best. Putting yourself in danger has good starting pay, but doesn’t scale up very well. Taking care of the needs of others pays, on average, the worst of the bunch. Amusing people for a living comes with such risks (failure, drugs, alcohol, exploitation, etc) that it sometimes seems no different from putting yourself in danger. Most people sell things.
A good career tip is that if you are exceptionally good at anything, someone will be willing to pay you a lot of money to do it. We still have calligraphers, and blacksmiths and people who make a living carving wooden ducks. The right rich person will pay a lot of money for an exceptional wooden duck. So, if you are good enough at something, you will have a job. To get that good, you have to work hard.
My final word of advice on the topic of job security is this: No man of the future will ever find himself wanting for work if he is capable of both building and destroying robots. You may experience a momentary lull during that period between the ascension of our robot overlords and the beginning of the human revolution - this would make an ideal time for a little holiday.
Everybody needs a little holiday.
Love,
Your Dear Old Dad.