As Bloomberg is reporting today that some economists have pencilled out how all can run quite smoothly over the next year or two. Jobs come back, but slowly. Inflation stays mild. Interest rates rise slowly and not until we get into 2005. Markets keep rising. Almost too good to be true. Holding this up next to doom and gloom from some other corners, it makes me wonder if the system we have evolved over the last century or so really is a giant Ponzi (pyramid) scheme like some claim or if the global economy isn’t more like an arms race sort of scenario, ultimately stabilized by the prospect of mutually assured destruction.
Loosely related to this, I’m heartened by DonIannone‘s reference to this from Business Week. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is projecting 8 million more jobs than workers by 2010. Seems like the ramp-up to that ought to be starting pretty soon then. And it sounds like it’s going to be easier to find interesting things to do. Flexible schedules, too, I imagine. Creative and productive retirements. However, the primary driver for the rosy scene reported by Bloomberg was slack in the labor supply. Go figure.
More and more, I am coming to believe that everybody is right. The whole thing is going to crash and burn while everything works out just fine. The stories we cling to about what retirement, for instance, “should be” and how healthcare, education and other kinds of work “should be” organized are likely to take a pretty good hit. This is, in part, why I see Open Space Technology as a sort of hospice care for “the way things have always been done around here.” But I also see it as midwifery. Life goes on.
Everything’s just gonna have to be different AND the vast majority of all of us will just keep on keepin’ on, living life as happily as we know how, as long as we’re lucky enough to be here. My bet today is that Life is thicker than the stories and plans and procedures we wrap it up in. My experience is that OpenSpaceTech helps our stories and connections keep up with inevitable flow of Life.
What’s more, I do think that all the talk that [somebody] should be creating more jobs and/or somehow creating more workers is mostly missing the mark. The question is “what is each of us — you and me — doing to maximize our own learning and contributing to value in our organizations and communities?” If anything is really going to crash and burn, it’s the story that somebody or something out there is going to make everything all right.
Everybody’s got gifts, talents, skills, passions, experiences, and connections. Everybody. And if there really is a labor shortage coming, then we’re gonna need everybody to be using all they’ve got! Anybody who uses more and more of themselves each week and year is bound to be noticed, appreciated and looked after, over time, by friends, co-workers, and neighbors. In the end it seems that stocks, Social Security and even “risk-free” US Treasuries will turn out to be much riskier investments than neighbors and neighborhoods. Is it time to re-balance the portfolio?
“crash and burn” while working out fine … reminds me of a book by David Hurst, Crisis and Renewal, or Claes Janssen’s Four-Room Apartment, the underpinnings of Future Search.
Michael … contacting you this way because of no email while walking about London, but feeling the need/want of connecting more with you, in conversation. I am so glad that things have catalyzed into the OS Giving Space with Wealth Bondage’s Burning Tutor … glad that you and Chris have hooked up with the Tutor, and hoping that I can play with you guys too.
“If anything is really going to crash and burn, it’s the story that somebody or something out there is going to make everything all right.”
that’s a pretty exciting paradigm shift to be midwifing.
“Anybody who uses more and more of themselves each week and year is bound to be noticed, appreciated and looked after, over time, by friends, co-workers, and neighbors.”
i think you’re right, michael, that being noticed, and notcicing, is an imperative key to transitioning such a shift. noticing another’s gifts, talents, skills, passions, experiences, and connections, honors that person’s existence and re-enforces the power and strength that their presence embodies. noticing and being seen feels like a glue that connects people to their neighbors and the neighborhood as a whole.
(almost done!)
it seems that once an individual is connected, the need to be noticed diminishes and the next layer of work begins. all involved invest with awareness and appreciation of their own and other’s passions, skills, etc.
…comes back around then to needs and wants, as you’ve already raised in your blog.
seems so much of what we do for work these days just doesn’t do much to directly support life… needs. guess what i’m thinking is that wants are a lot more flexible and fluid than basic needs. the wants will continue to shift as circumstance and economics and personal capacity for joy allows. the needs, a smaller more solid subset of all wants, will continue to be first priority and largely satisfied, i think.
yes, thank you. we will talk more somehow. the conference is morphing and dancing. i’m sort of waiting to see how it settles. would be great if you can come in july. or i’m hoping to get there to your end for several weeks later this year. but come in july! it’s so much closer than london!