Car maker Holden, a wholly owned subsidiary of General Motors, has a market capitalisation of $50.5 billion, but received from our government an equivalent of $50 000 per employee per year in subsidies.4 In the long run, the money invested on behalf of taxpayers becomes a sunk cost that could have gone into retraining and facilitating the development of future-proof industries more suited to the Australian (insert your country here) economic setting.
Hack the system!
I believe our education system won't and actually can't change fast enough. Given this, and the fact that probably everyone reading this has already completed their formal schooling, I wanted to write a book that brings together a way to hack the system. Something that pulls together some of the important lessons we have to teach ourselves, lessons that may have more social and economic value than our formal education gave us. This is not a book about what modern education could or should look like; it is about how to get what you want in life despite the system's failings. It gives you a bunch of tools to take your future into your own hands, things that blew my mind when I discovered them and wondered why they had never appeared on the blackboard. I want to start you on a process of re-education so you can grasp the fundamentals of life, the economic system and how to manage them to shape your life in whatever way you choose. By the end of the book you should be able to better understand the system you live inside, the way this system has shaped you and how to unlearn its bad bits. You'll understand some fundamentals about money, and how to future-proof yourself and any company in which you have an influence. Embrace what this book has to offer and you'll put yourself in a great position to leverage the technological era we are entering.
The little history lessons in this chapter are important because they help us understand why so many questions about economic and life issues go unanswered when we venture out into the world. Grasping the basic design principles of the school, it becomes clear why there are so many lessons that school seems to have forgotten – lessons that are vital to a happy life, lessons we have to teach ourselves and those we care about most. I want to provide short cuts and offer a template with which we can teach ourselves and, importantly, to suggest a survival philosophy.
When we discover the methods that once led to success have become obsolete, it's time to question everything we know in life about economics and technological reality. So strap yourself in for the ride. The industrial age is over; it's time we reinvented our future in a way that suits us, not them. We sure as hell can't rely on ‘them', those who got us into this mess in the first place, yet they did pass on some pretty radical tools for those of us with a positive mindset. And the good news is we can choose to change our minds on what is possible for us.
Chapter 2
A proxy for happiness
The industrial economy introduced a range of linear incentives and expectations that made complete sense when they were developed. It went something like this:
Go to school & Study hard & Get qualified & Get a good job with a stable company & Have a happy life.
You'll have heard this before. It was the narrative passed onto me by my parents. They did so for very good reason: it was literally the formula for financial success during the 20th century. But it requires some reading between the lines to understand its meaning, and once we do this we can see that the script for the in-between bits has changed without notice. Particularly the last two elements:
• Get a good job with a stable company: This was a cognitive short cut for the idea that you'd have a better chance of earning more money, for a longer period of time, with greater advancement possibilities and in better working conditions, under the financial umbrella of a big corporation. It was better than smaller companies because it had more power in the market and paid more than small businesses did. It also had the respect of the market, with a personal branding benefit for those who worked inside it. You could build a career in and around your big-company experience, earn above-average wages and do better than your parents did. Oh, and don't forget, you won't be picked by that good reputable firm unless you have the necessary formal qualifications. Qualifications spelt capability.
• Have a happy life: A good job earned good money, and money was the path to 20th-century happiness. The context of this one runs deep. We need to remember the world our parents and their parents emerged from. They didn't have access to the level of material comforts we do. And I'm not talking about toys and entertainment, but household articles we take for granted today like toiletries, overflowing cupboards, pantries and fridges, pushbutton heating and private transport on demand. This line of thinking has to be traced deeply, back to the lives of struggle and hardship endured by the generations that came before us. They lived through periods of war and economic depression when the most basic material necessities were in short supply for the working classes. So money became a proxy for happiness. Because if you had enough money, you could usually buy the things you needed, and with the things you needed how could you be anything but happy? So money was their yardstick for success in life. We've all since found that money doesn't come close to guaranteeing happiness, especially in a post-scarcity society. The times have changed, but many still believe this false proxy is valid.
The plan was for life to flow in a beautifully predictable, linear fashion:
Happiness comes from money – money comes from having a good job – a good job comes from a good (formal) education – a formal education comes from doing well at school – doing well at school requires following the rules.
Once we revisit the context of the cultural environment that shaped those who taught us, both at home and at school, we can understand why they encouraged us to think that way. Of course they had our best interests at heart. But if the formula was one that didn't suit your personality, your style, your way of thinking, then you'd be ostracised and your confidence might be shattered before you had even entered the post-school money game. Subconsciously society arranged us in a hierarchy: the more schooling you had, the higher up the ladder you'd be placed. Your potential and expectations would be a function of how far you rose in the pre-work system.
Sure, there were always exceptions, but for most of us our place in the hierarchy was ordained before we even started work. Forget the fact that our schooling was a limited test of our abilities and we might have incredibly valuable skills the system simply didn't recognise. None of that mattered; what counted was how we performed in the formal system. We had to conform to the schooling mindset and method in order to be chosen. The market might never find out how good we were and what we really had to offer, because we'd never be given the opportunity to show them what we could do outside of the exam template.
The education tightrope
By now there is a good chance you are thinking I am anti-school. Nothing could be further from the truth. Education is without doubt the cornerstone of all the possibilities I've taken advantage of in my life, and probably in yours too. It's just that school is far too destination focused. Once we reach secondary or high school, our options become more and more narrowly focused. By the time we reach grade 8 we start making ‘career decisions' on which subjects we choose. Career decisions at a time when we still can't decide what we want to do on Friday night. If we stumble in a certain subject, we'll lose the opportunity to work through it. If we love a certain subject that happens to be less valued by the left-brain logic society, like art or drama, we'll be discouraged from pursuing it. If we fail in maths in grade 8, we won't be allowed to take it in grade 9, and if we don't have advanced maths how can we possibility go on to complete a reputable degree at university? If we change our mind on what path we want to follow in grade 11, we've missed out on the foundation years of subject X and we won't be allowed to change streams.
So we are forced to choose our science, arts or humanities path when we are relatively young, long before what is legally regarded as the age of reason. We are quickly siloed into our ‘chosen' trajectory for the remainder of our secondary schooling. School shifts from general to specific learning very quickly indeed. We are no longer learning how to learn; rather, we are learning how to pass tests in certain subject areas. We memorise specific information, which entitles us to continue to focus on that subject at a higher level. The ultimate goal is to pass through the final gate to formal qualification.
Let's