Meaningful Work and the Value of Capital
Meaningful work is a treasure of great value. It can be a source of many positive human attributes. Just the belief that it could be within reach can be powerfully sustaining. If it provides a good income all the better but if it only provides enough to get by, it is still a joy.
Capital, what good is it? If you eat it, it is gone. If you can’t find a place to invest it, it depreciates. Can it be used to create Meaningful Work? Yes, that is the most valuable application for Capital, invest it to create Meaningful Work. People performing Meaningful work will make heroic efforts to keep their jobs and they will know that producing a return on invested Capital is necessary to keep those Meaningful work jobs.
Meaningful work in the 4th Industrial Age. Their is not now nor never will their be enough Meaningful work for everyone. In the 4th Industrial Age jobs for just a paycheck, those meaningless and undesirable jobs that pay a good or even not so good wage will be fewer and fewer.
The world is awash in Capital. This is a result of stimulus and inequity. Governments and NGO’s are trying to create jobs by making cash available and the rich have more money than they can find good ways to invest. Money, Capital is going into safe haven bonds that have very low rates of return because there is nothing more meaningful to do with it. Capital is also going into startups, lots of startups and tech companies with little hope of making profits but even a little, tiny little hope is enough these days to draw capital.
I know of someone who has invested his own fortune in creating Meaningful Work, good jobs and he demands much of his workers. This guy’s companies make some very impressive products that have very few evil attributes. I applied for a job with one of his companies and was rejected. I had relevant experience, maybe too much and they probably also assumed I would want too much pay. The company’s rep is that they don’t want people tainted with the culture of the traditional companies in that field. They aren’t really ageist just blazing their own path. Well, maybe they are a little ageist.
I have Meaningful Work, working with his competition. Competition is good and even necessary. Hating the Competition is not required although I have seen my share of that kind of hate. Right now each of our endeavors depends a lot on the success of the whole commercial space industry.
Space, it might not be the Final Frontier but it could be the next big thing and the next Frontier for Meaningful work. It needs to attract more capital, many great Space Ideas were killed due to the lack of investment. Read up on Kistler or Space Elevator or Tethers or Hybrid Rockets.
Space the new Frontier for Meaningful work, if we built it they will come. The will probably work for Food and Lodging in Space and retirement on the Moon.
TEK
