Just as there are two main political parties in the U.S., so, too, does there seem to be two main income-earning paths that people pursue:  (1) be an employee, or (2) be an entrepreneur. 

Of course, there are the Switchers, those who leave the “safety” of employment for the “risk” of self-employment.  The Switchers have been more of the minority to date.  But, what if that tide is turning?  Will our current economic crisis create a larger percentage of  employees or entrepreneurs? 

I hear more and more how “the Depression Era created more millionaires than any other time”, that “this financial crisis is our biggest break“.  Now is also a time of much rightly placed mistrust and suspicion. And, we are again and again reminded that what appears ”too good to be true” probably is.  What are we to make of all this well-meaning advice? 

Isn’t pursuing our dreams ”risky”?  If people don’t pursue their “dreams” because they don’t know how (or are afraid they won’t be able) to make a profitable living at it, is that really an unwise decision?  Living the life of the stereotypical “starving artist” doesn’t make society a better place for anyone, right?

When some people talk about the reticent workforce and the gullible populace/citizenry, a.k.a.  “sheeple“, i.e. the masses that don’t (or are afraid to) question authority while expecting “nose wipes” from their government, it is usually meant derogatorily.  To me, it implies that more people believe in the Madness of Crowds than the Wisdom of Crowds.

Add to that the assessment that:  “our current educational system trains people to be employees not entrepreneurs.”   While I agree with that to a point, I must admit that I also somewhat take offense to it, too. 

I am a product of our educational system.   I have been an employee for many years.  I have dreams of more, too.  I’ve also walked on fire and heard all of the empowerment talks.  I’ve bought and read the books: ”Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow“  and “What Color is Your Parachute?”  There seemed to always still be some elusive missing ingredient to having a dream life.

A new wave of this type of book is now surfacing that may soon overtake those older “classics”, they include:  ”Escape From Corporate America“, “I Don’t Know What I Want, but I Know It’s Not This”, and the new-to-be-released “Career Renegade“, the latter of which looks to address this very issue of “passion and prosperity.”

I believe, or maybe it’s a hope, that there is a layer of people that have appeared to lie dormant for far too many years that are now awakening to a need to change the status quo.  Can the upcoming unprecedented economic crisis create a societal shift in our expectations for our working environments and income opportunities?

At the same time, this reminds me of one of my favorite thought-provoking quotes from my Twitter buddy, Blair Warren:

Can society really change?

Seth Godin, in his book, “Tribes“,  also talks about a related concept of “Sheepwalking”, i.e., employees that have been raised to be obedient and fearful, afraid to speak up and challenge the status quo.

I believe that this fear isn’t always misplaced.  People aren’t going to risk their livelihoods for something they aren’t passionate about.   

However, sheepwalking certainly does become a tragedy when there are ideas worth fighting for that aren’t fought for because of a misplaced and unproductive fear. 

Another online-friend of mine, Jim Kukral, recently spoke about how he looks at fear.  He does not have a fear of failure as an entrepreneur because his incentive to succeed is his fear of having to get a job where a boss yells at him all the time.

Have the past twenty years, which created our current financial crisis, also created an environment that has made people become more curious and passionate about changing the status quo?  As quoted from “Tribes“: 

“It’s easy to underestimate how difficult it is for someone to become curious.  For seven, ten, or even fifteen years of school, you are required to not be curious.  Over and over and over again, the curious are punished …. It’s more about a five- or ten- or fifteen-year process where you start finding your voice, and finally you begin to realize that the safest thing you can do feels risky and the riskiest thing you can do is play it safe.” (Tribes, p 64)

Might we now be at the point where an awakening is brewing?  I want to add, too, that I don’t believe this is a trend that is being lead by the Millennials, though they are clearly a part of it.  I think this is a concept that is finally ripe and ready to be enjoyed by those that have dreamed of it for so long.

Maybe we can create more jobs through a changing of the guard.   As one layer of “sheepwalkers” awaken and become entrepreneurs or leaders of change, the jobs they leave behind can be filled by the currently unemployed that need to get back on their feet.

Either way, as “risk”, “fear”, and “safety”  take on new meanings, I mostly want to suggest that we not underestimate the potential of the people which can too easily be written off and assumed to be “sheeple” — they might not be (or remain) as fearful and unaware as some may assume.

Writing a Book Review of sorts can be intimidating. I’m sure it’s common to feel hesitant about being able to adequately come anywhere close to doing justice to the many inter-related ideas an author has expressed in his work.  At the same time, there is an eagerness to share the insights gleaned from their work as well.  The latter is what I will attempt to do here. 

The book I’ll be referring to in this post is George Soros’ “The New Paradigm for Financial Markets:  The Credit Crisis of 2008″.  I am by no means any kind of a financial expert. While I’m sure that different people will focus on different aspects of this book, my aim is to simply express the main point that stood out for me.  That happens to be the human element of the equation. 

In his book, Soros demonstrates how the long-held belief that markets naturally tend towards equilibrium is actually a misconception. He states that markets trend away from a norm as often as they trend towards a norm (assuming a ‘norm’ even really exists).  He goes on to explain that markets are not scientifically predictable because the decisions of the market participants and the regulators are not predictable. 

He writes about the resistance he receives to his ”no equilibrium” theory due to the fact, which he also agrees with, that markets can appear to be self-correcting to a point, especially in normal conditions.

Yet breakdowns can occur.  These boom-bust cycles, or bubbles, occur due to what Soros describes is a “self-reinforcing but eventually self-defeating” interaction between a misconception and a trend which ultimately becomes unsustainable, for example: “whereby valuations affect the fundamentals that they are supposed to reflect”, or “where the willingness to lend influences the value of the collateral.” 

He argues that this potential for a breakdown is what creates the necessity of oversight, regulation, supervision, or eventually intervention of some sort. And, as Soros openly acknowledges, it is also true that regulators can be as wrong as the markets at times, too, so that’s why it is so important to get the regulatory environment right. 

Soros covers so much more in his book, but it is the dynamic of the human element being both the cause and the solution to the problem that intrigues me most.  In his own words: “the future is dependent on the participants’ decisions” and the current financial crisis “is a vivid demonstration of how much damage misconceptions can cause.”

How will we learn from the past?   Could the general public become a regulator of sorts, too?  Can we individually and collectively take more responsibility for doing some of what Soros suggests is needed, such as: finding a way to stay in touch with reality as objectively as possible; being aware of when thinking deviates from objective reality, or is carried too far; noticing when old rules no longer apply to new circumstances; and avoiding practices that aren’t fully understood. 

How will we address the present? How will we help each other recover from this devastating man-made Housing Bubble?  And what “New World Order” will develop if this is the “end of a long period of relative stability based on the United States as the dominant power and the dollar as the main international reserve currency”? 

With the future being determined by human choices and not being predictable by scientific laws, what kind of a future will we decide to create for ourselves?  These questions remain an open book.
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For other perspectives on this book, more book reviews can be found at: Goodreads.com .