THE DROPOUT ECONOMY

The future of work looks a lot like unemployment. 3 out of 10 American students dropped out of high school as recently as 2006, and less than a third of young people have finished College… But what if the millions of so-called dropouts are onto something? As conventional high schools and colleges prepare the next generation for jobs that wont exist, the US (and the world) is on the cusp of a dropout revolution, one that will spark an era of experimentation in new ways to learn and new ways to live.

People who feel obsolete in today’s information economy will be joined by millions more in emerging post-information economy, in which routine professional work and even some high-end services will be more cheaply performed overseas or by machines. This doesn’t mean that work will vanish. It does mean, however, that it will take a new and unfamiliar form.

Work and life will be remixed, as old-style jobs, with long commutes and long hours spent starring at blinking computer screens, vanish thanks to ever increasing productivity levels. New jobs that we can scarcely imagine will take their place, only they’ll tend to be home-based, thus restoring life to bedroom suburbs that today are ghost towns from 9 – 5. Private homes will increasingly give way to co-housing communities…. Whether this future sounds like a nightmare or a dream come true, it is coming. – [TIME Magazine, Annual Special Issue, March 22 2010]

I suppose that this revolution will de-emphasize office hours, office space or designation. It will cause a cultural insurrection of some sort – where homes are offices; and family-life more intimately co-exist and conflict with office-life. The young adults will not be in a hurry to get their apartments, since they can work from home. Taxes might be much easier to evade; as we make and spend digital currencies more difficult to restrict in denominations and locations. We will no longer be citizens of Nigeria, but of the world – a world without borders.

True wealth will flow in the direction of individuals with ideas – the information resource that will change the world. I know that every digital information has a fiscal charge. What ideas do you have and what is the economic value to the world?