I found them, at last!!

Around 2000, I read something that deeply impressed me about the future of work and politics in “first world” countries.

It was something about the Bad Things that “will” (said around 2000, remember!) happen when all the kids of the 90s, fooled into believing that a (high tech) degree would surely make them billionaires will realize this is not true.

Back then, I did not bookmark or write down that text anywhere. So, whenever discussions about what we may call “the end of work” popped up, I would describe that passage, and ask for help to find it. This year, I finally found it, almost by chance.

“What will result from this awakening?”

“So far, most of the high-tech discards have deluded themselves into thinking that sooner or later they will find a great job that provides remuneration appropriate to their talents and abilities."

“In just a few more years, however, the stark, chilling reality of abandonment will finally begin sinking in for millions of these outcasts."

“One day, very soon now, these middle-aged intellectual giants will suddenly wake up to the truth and realize that they have no realistic hope of participating in society as valued, appreciated individuals once they have been eliminated from the mainstream workforce. What kind of rage do you think will result from this awakening?"

That’s page 127 of “Seven LEAN Years: America’s New High-Tech Underclass”

So, what “will” result from this awakening?

What is already resulting now, that those college students are “middle-aged intellectual giants”? Quiet Quitting, Great Resignation… does any of that looks connected?

On one hand, it doesn’t, if nothing else because “what people are now calling quiet quitting was, in previous decades, simply known as “having a job”."

But what will happen if quiet quitting IS only the preparation before that “kind of rage”? What if that “kind of rage” coalesced, in all industrialized countries, in different voting patterns? Maybe as soon as the next elections?

What if “Rage applying is the new quiet quitting” were applied to political candidates, instead of jobs, in different ways than today?

Thumbnail source (and full strip): Work and Money