Entrepreneurial
Opportunities
The direction that most
current educational-provision planners are taking is breathtakingly wrong. I
mean, the conceptualisation of universities as job-training centres for
corporations is really just so nineteen-nineties. With the ever-widening
applicability of algorithms, the growing usefulness of artificial intelligence,
and the competitive cost-cutting reductions in the size and layers of
management on corporate organisation charts – called keeping the head-count
down – the only high-paid, high-status jobs in corporations will be subject to
intense nepotistic competition, even amongst the sons (and to a much lesser
extent, daughters) of the existing board members, senior executives, and
miscellaneous old-money plutocrats.
All that will be left
for others to hoover bored-sucker money from the property-owning, credentialed,
and inheritor sectors, and universal basic income bucks out of the rest of us,
will be personal services. At least until 3-CPO becomes a reality. The more
personal the service, the more lucrative it’s likely to be.
I’ve been thinking
about these services for a while now. It’s time for me to share them, because
although I think they’re viable for a service-oriented, resource-scarce,
post-manufacturing, post-management economy, I have to face up to my age and
lack of business nous and entrepreneurial ability. They’re yours now. Take ’em
and run. With my blessing.
I call the first one
SCAB, because it’s a nifty acronym. I suppose it actually should be called
BSCA, but that’s nowhere near as catchy. Anyway, each letter stands for a
different, if somewhat related, service.
First ‘B’, which stands
for Blame. The world will be crawling with masses of unemployed and
underemployed people who’d played the game the way they were taught in our
training-for-disappearing-jobs educational sector (‘Educational sector’ – I
like that). Fifty-year-old people with three degrees and half-raised children.
Thirty-something former Bright Young Things with brilliant futures behind them.
Skilled people made redundant because their skills went obsolete or their
businesses’ or employers’ businesses’ markets have withered away due to
declining numbers of people who can afford to buy what they have to sell.
People whose beach houses have become both uninhabitable and uninsurable due to
rising water and too-frequent storms. People who are psychologically ill-suited
for scratching and clawing for whatever scraps the system might make available.
And so on.
These bewildered
billions with time on their hands are going to want to blame their misfortunes
on somebody. For a minimal sum,
SCAB’s operatives will offer to take the blame for anything. Anything. Your
lover left you with no explanation? Blame us. Your favourite team always chokes
when the game’s almost over? We’re behind that. Your boss says that sex with
him is part of your job? He’s the product of the culture we created. Global
warming? Our fault. Tell us what unfeeling turds we were to make these things
happen. Let it all hang out. Payment in advance, please. Extra charge for
voodoo dolls.
The ‘S’ is for our
Sympathy service. Everybody craves sympathy, but few feel like providing it. As
societies unravel, global demand is sure to increase for variations on the
theme of, ‘I know. I know. You suffer so much, and yet you’re so brave, but
nobody appreciates you the way you deserve to be appreciated,’ and, ‘No, they
don’t understand, do they? There-there,’ and so on. I envisage queues forming
outside our warmly presented and priced sympathy parlours. We understand.
The ‘C’, of course, is
for our Compliment service. The possibilities here are endless, and may work
best on a retainer-based continuing arrangement: weekly, daily, or hourly. You
know, ‘Lost weight, haven’t you?’, ‘Love your new hairdo,’ ‘Heavens, you’re
clever; I would’ve never thought of that!’, and so on ad infinitum. Love your
work.
I’ve saved the ‘A’ for
last, as an Agreement service would be the most difficult to provide, but due
to that we could charge excessively for it. Yes, for enough dosh we would agree
with anything our paying customers say or write, no matter how inaccurate,
stupid, or nasty. I would think that, properly marketed, this could become Big
in the conspiracy-theory market, for example.
Whaddeya rekkin?
A second, related
entrepreneurial opportunity relates to advanced countries’ social dislocations
and ageing demographics: cuddle parlours. Similar to brothels, these would
provide ersatz love rather than meaningless sex. Lonely people craving close
human contact but with no legitimate access to it – including old men, such as
myself, with budgets that make brothels and hardon pills prohibitively
expensive – could pay by the hour for hugs and cuddles on a comfy couch to music
or ambient sound of their choice by their choice of cuddler – we’d have to
retain staff, at least on call, composed of old, young, middle-aged, male,
female, non-heteronormative, small, tall, average, muscular, soft, wiry,
spot-on BMI, generously proportioned, deep-voiced, soft-voiced, hairy, and
smooth-shaven cuddlers. Maybe even offer a selection of lullabies. No nudity.
No sex.
By appointment only
with a surcharge if you’re picky, such as demanding a close resemblance to your
Uncle Bill or Auntie Annie; walk-in trade pays a flat rate for whoever’s on
duty at the time.
That’s the future, if
we have one: personal face-to-face services of a nature too personal or
otherwise embarrassing to ask friends and relatives to provide them. Let the
big bucks roll in!
You’re welcome.
No comments:
Post a Comment