And when the sales dry up?
Adapt, start another MLM?
:rolleyes: I’m not trying to sell you on anything, but what I am talking about is being an entrepreneur.
Look, all you’re doing here is fishing for excuses. If you have no job because of the structural changes that happened to the economy in 2008, you essentially have three choices:
Choice #1: whine about not having a job and beg the Government to intervene; or
Choice #2: keep beating your head into the corporate or small business wall hoping someone will hire you; or
Choice #3: strike out on your own and try to run your own business and rely on yourself instead of others.
You’ve spent all this time making immature and ignorant MLM jokes but you have yet to spend one SENTENCE discussing any alternatives - namely, what your idea of what choice #4 should be. You won’t respond to this because you have no idea what else to do. If it doesn’t involve standing at the welfare/unemployment office with your hand out or chasing employers who have no need for you, you simply don’t know what to do. Which is why you keep recycling MLM jokes while refusing to recognize the difference between working for someone else and working for yourself. I know for a fact that you’re not stupid and you know the difference; which must then conclude that you’re trolling.
Why is it that every response you ever come up with is “but this is how it won’t work?” Ask yourself something… is this how you believe successful people think?
Do you not find it odd that you cannot, in this entire discussion, come up with even one idea that can get an unemployed person some income? Does it not strike you as odd that you mock and shoot down every single idea that goes beyond the box of depending on the Government or an employer for your livelihood? I bet it doesn’t even register with you that you have presented absolutely no alternative ideas.
Oh well. Still, I will persist, because others who are looking for work will inevitably be inspired.
So now you mock working at home. Fine and well. To pursue this example, I will give you some ideas of how to make this work.
If you really want to work for someone else, a person of your intellect and writing caliber could EASILY make a hell of a living on a content mill website like About.com, WiseGeek or Suite101. No, really. I think you’re smart enough, even if your motivations would be in question. If you were unemployed you could quickly make more than you could earn on unemployment.
If you have the ability to draw you could start selling stuff on a print-on-demand website like Zazzle or Printfection. This would be not unlike the way others make a living selling shirts streetside except that you don’t have to sit on the streetside and get harassed by the cops. If you’re good you’ll make a LOT of money, quick. But then you have to be GOOD at what you do.
You could run a blog and make money that way; many people do that now. These are not scams - people are already making good livings doing this stuff. You have to come up with a blog that people will read, though, and know how to get the page clicks.
See? You bring up the work at home thing and I am about ideas about making money. Sadly, you’ve bought into the “But… it can’t work!!! It doesn’t! I’m sooo gonna make fun of that idea!” line of defeatism.
There are three major types of employment to look at here.
#1: you work a 9-5 for someone else. This means you work the hours they dictate and you abide by the dress they dictate. You can be fired for no reason at all. The market for your line of work could be booming and you get paid only minimum wage or lose your job to someone overseas. A rising tide may lift all boats but you may be drowning if you’re left standing on land. If you increase your output by 10% you rarely ever get a 10% raise but if your performance drops you will most certainly hear about it. You as a worker have NO idea if your boss is embezzling his company into bankruptcy and you into unemployment.
#2: you work as a 1099 independent agent/contractor/consultant. It’s a gray area. You work for someone else but only in that you sell their products and abide by their company’s basic rules of conduct. Or you work on their site to install something, say a computer. Other than that you determine your own hours and for the most part your own dress code. In direct sales (for instance the dreaded evil MLM) and many (but not all) other 1099 type jobs, when you do 10% higher production your 10% raise is automatic. If business is booming and you’re able to tap in, you ARE the boat that gets lifted. 1099-style work at home jobs are especially good (potentially) because that even eliminates the commute time and gasoline usage that goes with being a 1099 contractor. If the company making the product you sell goes under, you simply parlay your sales skills into selling something else: hence, the term ‘independent’.
#3: you start up your own business. You determine the hours and the dress code not only for yourself but, if you have employees, for them as well. You are the lead dog; whatever happens to the market, you get hit first, for good or for bad. Nobody fires you. You set the rules of conduct. You are the lord of the workplace and its success or failure falls entirely on you: you’re 100% responsible. You’re the captain of that ship and if you know you need to steer directly into the oncoming wave, it falls to you to make it happen. Unlike #1, you have full access to the company books and you know if there is trouble coming (if you are competent, that is). Unlike #2, no one (except the Government?) tells you how to conduct yourself. If you are a woman working for a certain makeup MLM sales company that wants you to wear a skirt to company meetings, then you’re stuck; but as an outright business OWNER of type #3? Nobody tells you what to wear! You come to the worksite in PJ’s and the employees can go suck it. Common sense, of course, says you should know what attire is appropriate.
Please don’t tell me these basic facts are news. Feel free to claim it’s wrong… but at least have the courtesy to show where it is.
If you’re good at networking and marketing, why not? Or better yet, start another type of business altogether.
Just because you’re a salesman at 25 doesn’t mean you have to be doing that at 45.
Think outside the box!
I guess when Cisco says they will become a 100 percent Chinese corporation, i extrapolate bad times for those in that field. They are not the only company. But there are many educated and talented people whose jobs are headed abroad.
Offshoring of America's Top Jobs Plan your life accordingly. i hope you don’t have too much time and money invested in schooling and experience in the wrong fields.
Ooooooooh, that’s what I was doing wrong.
Can’t I be both?
Some businesses DO need employees. I work for a company that creates very, very complicated software products. We have teams of engineers to do this work. It can’t possibly be done by a business with no employees.
Or, to continue the example you started above, who do you think makes the movies that go onto those DVDs? Companies that have a lot of employees. There’s no way a business with no employees can make a movie. Where do the producers, directors, actors, etc. come from?
I think they’re each considered independent contractors (see case #2), so technically they’re still working for themselves.
That article speaks in generalities. An exceptionally capable person, who is known in the industry as exceptional, will always be able to find a job. I know several people who have written several scientific papers in my field, making major advances in algorithm design. Companies compete to be able to hire them.
It is good you believe that. Someone has to be convinced they are valuable when they are not. There will be a huge shakeup across the globe for a long time. Perot warned of what was coming. The giant sucking sound has hit and it is loud. Jobs are being taken abroad and wages will drop here in response. But we have so far to go that we will have an enormous unemployment problem for a long time to come. It will include the educated and will take high paying jobs. Why would a corporation pay triple for an American worker. All they exist for is to make money. They don’t owe their workers a thing. We like it that way. China and India are graduating millions of engineers and technicians. We don’t have a chance.
Interesting thesis, just one question: So?
Its OK to admit that you overstated your position. For example, it is widely acknowledged that while partners at law firms work pretty hard, they don’t work as hard as they did the couple of years right before they make partner or the couple of years right after they make partner. But these guys make 2 or 3 million a year and its really hard to get everyone else to let you coast while taking that kind of draw.
[quote=“HRoark43, post:94, topic:564619”]
Wishful thinking.
Ah, you are not even aware of the difference between starting your own business and getting a job working for someone else. No wonder you think I’m contradicting myself.
I’m not whining. I’m telling you, or whoever here is running around pursuing jobs - get over it. The fundamentals are not there anymore to sustain employment levels that we had in the past. Many of today’s jobless are going to be so, permanently, because the work they used to do, won’t be coming back.
Ah yes, again you don’t understand the difference between creating jobs to work for someone else and starting your own business.
I think you are not being realistic about the paucity of opportunities out there, if there were a lot of opportunities out there, people would start those businesses, but they’re not.
America doesn’t have too many workers for its economy, it has given up to much economy to other countries.
A valid point. Custom top secret software (especially for Governments) will require workers. But how many do you think will be required to do such work, nationwide?
What happens when said project is over? You’d be wise to parlay your skills in writing such software into an entrepreneurial enterprise… you know, for when you’re between major top secret projects and all that.
Adapt to change.
Ever heard of Machinima? You might laugh at this technology now in comparison to what James Cameron can do, but then 100 years ago who thought computers would be playing chess against the greatest of human champions?
Machinima movies comprise extremely small teams of people doing ever larger productions. In the future you will see more powerful character generators and even computer generated voice systems that rival the singing prowess of Michael McDonald or the powerful voice of James Earl “Darth Vader” Jones. Laugh now, but remember: 100 years ago computers couldn’t out-think Yuri Kasparov. Everyone knew they’d never be able to do that.
In short, one person could come up with a story line, fire up a freeware program to create the characters, integrate it with a voice actor program to generate the voice, use the already existing giga library of sound effects, and if they’re creative enough, write their own music, too. That one person will then write the next big hit.
Change is coming.
I don’t think you understand what I meant. You cannot sell things into America while shipping the jobs overseas forever. You start heading towards high unemployment and depressed demand in America with a lot of low wage workers overseas. That is economic cannibalism.
But… but… both you and Gonzomax fall into the same trap.
If you’re unemployed, what are your options?
- Beg the Government to help you out;
- Bang on business owners’ doors while your bills pile up and your belly is growling;
- Strike out on your own with your own business or consultancy; or
- ???
You dislike my solution which is #3. But you have not offered your own solution. Perhaps your response is “I don’t know what the unemployed should do, but one answer is NOT to try and strike out on your own when there are no jobs for you?”
If no one is providing for you why should you not try to provide for yourself? Ah, that’ll never get an answer…
It is also the inevitable march of technology.
We may very well become like Mexico, but what are the poor going to do? Revolt? How many times have workers rebellions actually ended in victory? Nowadays they’re easy to set against each other with tribalism. All you have to do is pit the superior snow white genes versus all the dirty scary brown people (being satirical here, of course). Pit the the self-described “Americans” vs the immigrants (whose land the self-described Americans stole), Set the old social security / medicare leeches (again, being satirical) versus the poor put upon young people who feel the older people are taking their jobs. Southern poor NASCAR hillbillies against northern elitists. Anti-intellectualism. The fear of Catholics. Fear of Muslims. And so on and so on. Yeah, the poor are easily manipulated and divided. They will not ever revolt but if they do they will turn upon each other in short order.
BTW when was the last time there was a full scale revolution in Mexico, where the rich totally dominate the poor?
Your solution is a childish, poorly thought out one, not based in reality. That is why it gets scoffed at. It probably makes sense to an 18 year old, but as you grow up ,you find about real solutions. You are bathing in sophistry. With no analysis at all, it sound like a possibility. But the slightest evaluation junks it as Libertarian gobbledigook.
Ah, more temper tantrums.
Every time you brought up objections I provided you with real world examples of entrepreneurial or independent contractor work that makes people a living RIGHT NOW. You did not so much as you engaged in defeatism and knee-jerk whining about how it doesn’t work, even though it works fabulously for tons of people.
You discount anything that doesn’t rely on begging someone else for a paycheck instead of doing some market research and seeing what is making money right now. It’s like you prefer the domesticated life, hoping someone else will provide you a paycheck instead of taking some risks to be an entrepreneur. Well, wake up, gonzomax - if you’re unemployed, there’s no one out there who’s going to provide you with a paycheck - you’re on your own. What next?
Wow, sounds great, what’s the health plan like? It does provide a health plan, right?
Health plan? Oh that’s easy. Exercise and eat right and don’t smoke.
Sarcasm aside… you do realize that companies are phasing out benefits, right? There are private health insurance companies that the self-employed can go with.
Or maybe you’d rather wait on the Government to help you or beg some employer for a job? Right in the middle of hiring freezes and medicaid program cuts, and all that. I like that idea - for you, of course, not me.