Today’s Sydney Morning Herald has the following article on Gen-Y / Millennial attitudes to work:

• Gen y: entitled or talented?

This particular quote is telling:

“Once I get $1000 profit a week, I will think about [leaving]. I always call my day job my back-up plan.”

Rather than telling these kids to get off my lawn, I think the above comment shows a really deep, if perhaps intuitive, understanding of a global change taking place in the nature of work: the whole concept of ‘employment’ as it is traditionally understood is disappearing.

Strong words, but this is more profound than simply saying that people change jobs more often today than they did in the past. What we are talking about here is people not being, not wanting to be, or not able to be, employed any more. At all.

The causes of this trend are multi-faceted, but Western Liberal Democracies exporting their middle classes to the developing world through outsourcing plays a big role. As does the inexorable march of technology not just displacing jobs but profoundly removing the underlying need for whole classes of industry to exist at all. For evidence, consider the impact of the Internet on industries that are built around complex physical distribution networks such as Newspapers.

The SMH article gave me cause to go back and examine some of the “future of work” posts I had put together over the last 18 months or so.

Here they are:

• Recession and technology kill middle-class jobs
• Cracking advice: work while you are asleep
• “Jobs in 20 years will be in 2 categories: people who tell computers what to do, and people who are told by computers what to do.”
• Outsourcing isn’t for everyone
• The digitisation of manufacturing will transform the way goods are made—and change the politics of jobs too
• We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor
• Are jobs obsolete?
• I’m almost certain that I’ll never be “employed” again

Just by examining the titles, it was obvious that I had managed to collect a rather telling list of links and quotes on the changing nature of work without ever really setting out to do so. It is obvious that technology is changing both the way we work and the nature of the work we do, and it is also clear that simple economics encourage organisations to acquire the services of labour from low-wage jurisdictions, with the inevitable consequence that opportunities for traditional jobs in high-wages jurisdictions shrink.

Unless, of course, you can stay ahead of the trend. Which is why I find it very encouraging that the Gen-Ys and Millennials mentioned in the article are actively trying to get ahead by building their own businesses and becoming their own employers. Power to them.

Sadly, this passion and optimism is in stark contrast to the actions and words of our Governments and traditional employers. Whilst we are in the process of being completely broadsided by a fundamental change in the nature of work, no-one seems to be paying attention. Governments of all persuasions are quick to fund programs for traditional employment, but do almost nothing to nourish the entrepreneurial spirit.

Where are the policies for big ideas like founder failure insurance, or better targeting of concessional tax treatment for innovative businesses that mean funds go to real start-ups, as opposed to being funnelled through multi-national mining companies who use the funds to offset the cost of land remediation.

Or what about adopting one of the ideas of the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart:

What we need to do in this country is make it a softer cushion for failure. Because what they say is the job creators need more tax cuts and they need a bigger payoff on the risk that they take. … But what about the risk of, you’re afraid to leave your job and be an entrepreneur because that’s where your health insurance is? … Why aren’t we able to sell this idea that you don’t have to amplify the payoff of risk to gain success in this country, you need to soften the damage of risk? [Source]

Technology has already significantly reduced the cost of failure in starting a business, but as the mining boom winds down, perhaps its time for Governments to look to other areas of the economy to provide growth and gainful, satisfying ‘employment’ for the population.

If not, then what are we going to do when we’ve finished digging all of the holes?

This is one of the most cogent articles I’ve read in recent times about how rent seeking behaviour from special interest groups is harming modern economies:

Great Problems: The Rent Seeking Economy

In particular, this quote on High Frequency Trading rings true:

“High Frequency Traders make money not by adding liquidity or playing market maker (in fact they remove liquidity), but by gaming design flaws in the SEC regulated stock market (essentially they get to peek into the order book and front run the market, a sensible black box auction system would remove this source of gamesmanship).”

What worries me most about trends like the increase in rent seeking behaviour is the impact it will have on the Australian economy. Whilst the problems are currently (possibly?) more pronounced in the USA, Australia is especially vulnerable to rent seeking because of the structure of our economy.

It was once pointed out to me that the ASX200 is just a collection of oligopolies. From mining, to banking, to packaging, to transport, property and groceries and infrastructure. It’s pretty much a coterie of cozy little - and not so little - oligopolies all the way down.

And it is from monopoly power (or oligopoly power in this case) that special interest groups draw their ability to extract rents. 

Bitcoin and related concepts are certainly getting of lot attention by the tech press at the moment. Just today I’ve see these:

• These guys are strongly against Bitcoin because of its inherently deflationary properties
• These guys want to add some more anonymity to the mix: Zerocoin: making Bitcoin anonymous
• And these guys want to make a derivatives market: “Taming the bubble”: investors bet on Bitcoin via derivatives markets

If only we could predict where it’s all going…

I wonder what someone has against Australia Post?

I’ve noticed an annoying trend with the use of the word revert. Something similar is happening to it that happened to decimate - its meaning appears to be changing. But unlike decimate, which I think you can make the argument has had it’s meaning expanded, revert is having its meaning trashed.

This is what decimate means:

And this is what revert means:

Decimate has such a powerful sound that it makes sense to expand its definition from ‘one in ten’ to ‘completely wipe out’. There’s a logical progression in that. But revert means ‘to return to a previous state’. It does not mean ‘reply’. We already have a perfectly good word for that concept: reply.

Here’s two actual examples of the maddeningly incorrect use of the word revert that I have seen in the last two days:

• From a tweet: “Please do revert if you have a requirement…”
• From an email: “Could you please revert to <name> on any issues with the proposed solution…”

And I have also heard it cropping up all too often in general conversation. I’m referring explicitly to you Tier 1 Australian bank. Or should that be: ‘I’m reverting pacifically to you Tier 1 Australian bank”? BTW: I have heard pacifically used in just that context (and bizarrely, vice versa too!) but that’s a story for another post.

These examples make the author or speaker look stupid, because it’s clear that the word reply would be a better choice, simply because a reply is what the author seeks.

Worse, however, is the obvious attempt to use a fancier word just for the sake of it. By doing so you have not only obfuscated your meaning, but also grasped with two hands the opportunity to sound like a complete bell-end. Well, achievement unlocked.

So, reverters, stop. Just stop. And let’s revert the use of the word revert to it’s previous state.

This is some of the best advice I’ve read in ages:

“Get something going for you that works while you’re asleep.” - Michael Caine’s Dad (apparently)

It comes from this post, which is well worth the read:

Working while you are asleep

It was stealing mine. As far as I can tell, iCloud will attempt some magic if someone sends you an invite to the email address registered as your iCloud account. This is great if you are using iCloud as your primary calendar, but completely broken if you are not.

If you want to stop iCloud from being dumb, then try this:

• Log into iCloud at https://www.icloud.com
• Go to Calendar -> (Cog) -> Preference -> Advanced
• Alongside “Invitations” select “Email To: <email address>”

You will now get any invitations sent to the email address that you use for your iCloud account.

Here’s an xray picture of my ankle.

As author (but not owner) of four issued patents as well as two more pending patents of which I am the author and owner, I think the answer to the above question is quite simple.

Yes, we should abolish patents. Here’s why:

The case against patents can be summarized briefly: there is no empirical evidence that they serve to increase innovation and productivity, unless productivity is identified with the number of patents awarded—which, as evidence shows, has no correlation with measured productivity. This disconnect is at the root of what is called the “patent puzzle”: in spite of the enormous increase in the number of patents and in the strength of their legal protection, the US economy has seen neither a dramatic acceleration in the rate of technological progress nor a major increase in the levels of research and development expenditure.