This is the weekend when commencement addresses are given, and the spirit of giving Commencement Addresses, I am pleased to submit mine.
For more than 20 years. The great majority of you have had zero responsibility for your own life or for others. The food on your table, the clothes on your back, your school tuition and your school books were paid for by someone else. There will come a time in your life when you are responsible not just for yourself, but an extended family including children and possibly parents.
Some of you contributed a pittance here, and a pittance there, but by and large you have lived in familial socialism – fed by that money tree in your parent’s back yard, or at least that was your analysis.
You have only recently looked beyond that comforting but murky picture to the equally murky realization that someone other than your parents, and your recent lover would soon need to be happy with you — someone who is not particularly impressed with your smile, but rather in what your knowledge and labor will bring to their bottom line. Being pleasant will no longer be enough to sustain the money tree.
Now, you may be able to delay this reckoning by joining the Armed Forces or the Peace Corps, and that will certainly help your Country – a wise and fruitful move, but in the end you will eventually have to become a productive member of society who produces something that society wants and needs – or protecting those who do productive work so they can be productive.
Society has a sufficient number of people riding in the wagon – fellow members of society who through medical condition or birth are unable to help – so you, with your education and youth, it will fall on you to pull the wagon.
You will be induced by friends to join them is continuing your life of sloth by hiking through Europe, or joining their commune on the North Coast of Kauai, but you have already spent 20 non-productive years at others expense, so every day you waste is just one more day lost you cannot recover.
President Obama has urged you donate your time to non-profits. I have spent a lifetime with non-profits, but as a volunteer not as a career path. Microsoft was not founded by someone who took time off for a trek through Europe – Bill Gates has the same number of hours as do you.
We each have the same number of hours, so it is a question of what you intend to do with it. Microsoft was built by young brains sustained by pizza and coffee – and 20 hour workdays. That company made more than a thousand millionaires just during their development years.
General Motors was destroyed by work rules limiting the amount of work, and saying what work could be done by whom – at wages and pensions demanded by employees beyond their productivity.
Select your employer, carefully. During your career, there will be many forks in your road with the future depending entirely on what fork you select. Only the future will determine if you make the right decision, but if you make decisions based on long range plans rather than short range advantage, you will be ahead of the game.
How do you make money in this society: Simple. Do work that others cannot, or will not do. If you have scientific or engineering skills, medical or law, all backed by the perquisite education, you have skills that most humans cannot do. You will have paid your price up front. Your future is secure.
For the remainder, you must do work that others will not do – everyone can, and will willingly work in a bank, a flower shop, a veterinary clinic or a book store. Those are pleasant work conditions – and you will have a lot of competition. If you do something that most people hate to do – embalm bodies or clean septic systems, as examples – people will pay you well so that they do not have to do it.
The best way to help your country is to make enough money to be an employer for others, and to be charitable to those unable to do for themselves. Who has done more for humanity: Bill and Melissa Gates, or Jesse Jackson?
I rest my case.
Robert Heinlein was right: “Specialization is for insects.” Develop skills and knowledge in several disparate fields – so that as the economy takes one segment of the economy down, you have an escape route. You don’t know what skill or knowledge base will be overtaken by a new and rising economy being designed today in some Omaha basement. Of course you can depend upon luck, but it is better to have a plan. One man I knew was a Marine Officer, but just in case he should ever be ordered to do something he was not prepared to do – he developed a dual career as a college professor. In retirement he got to indulge his second career – but he made Major General in the Marines so he never needed to use his alternative career as a parachute.
The smartest individual I know is a medical doctor, and a professor medicine. He is also a Ph/ D in Engineering and former professor of mechanical engineering. That man is prepared, but he do not think he is an “Egghead.” He won the Nationals as a hot rod designer, builder and driver! He is a complete package, and like you he paid his academic price upfront.
Paying the price early is an essential of life – you must pay it while you are young and energetic, and of course while you know everything. Life becomes tougher as you age, have lost your energy, and it does not help that you also lose your confidence that you know everything.
You are going to live sufficiently long to have several careers. Make certain you develop career plans in two vastly different career paths.
By the way, no one has ever made a good living and supported their family by hiking through Europe.
Filed under: Economics, Education, Politics, Taxes | 1 Comment »