Human Capital and Being an Individual
Hello there again readers, and welcome back to Coffee Break Liberty, a blog where I tackle books, news, and many other things under the sun where liberty is a guiding principle. If this is your first time here I would like to extend a special warm welcome to you and hope you enjoy yourself while here.
This post is gonna take a shift from the “analysis of the news” norm that I do here. Today I wanna write about human capital, the importance of it, and how it falls into the libertarian doctrinaire of being an individual. In this post, I wanna point out how collectivism seems to strive for a lack of human capital and it’s relation to being an individual. I also wanna share a family story of how much the impact of not increasing your human capital can have. Through these short explorations I hope to impress upon the best blog readers there are (that’s all y’all) how important it is to keep improving.
I’m not the first to explore this idea and if you’ve read any of Any Rand’s novels you’ll see a similar theme here. That theme being that collectivism doesn’t value human capital, worse it finds human capital to be a sin. Collectivists are afraid of the individual, they fear what they can’t control, and increasing your human capital makes you harder to control. The more you learn the harder it is for them to out-think you, the harder you sweat the harder it is for them to outwork you. Being able to either rise above your peers or go off in another individual trajectory makes those that find being an individual a sin furious. Collectivists know that it is easier to control those that refuse to learn more, refuse to sweat more, refuse to train more, and refuse to love less. I assure you nothing is loving about telling your neighbor that you are all the same and worth the same as the next guy that never picked up a book to teach himself a new idea. Lenin had a name for these people with no capital, those that were only good for being in a mob, those that weren’t individuals; he called them “useful idiots.”
The story I wanna share is one of an extended family member who’s name I won’t share. This family member we will call Tom for this story. Now I don’t recall when Tom started working at a printing shop, but for as long as I can remember he always had. He worked there for years, enjoyed his comfortable wage, loved his family, and spent a lot of time fishing or hunting. When I was younger I recall the shift he had to make when days and hours were cut. Going from 5 days a week to 3 days one week and 5 on the next per pay period. These cuts in days kept happening over the years, it did stretch out for some time. If memory serves me right he was down to 3 days a week and that was it until one day the print shop closed. That was it, no more, finished. He had worked there for nearly 2 decades and never learned a new skill outside of the workplace and by no new skill I mean he didn’t learn how to use the internet during that time. He was now an unemployed man in his 50’s in 2014 that had no skills for today’s job environment. Tom is back working again but as a part-time short-order chef at a diner in his early 60’s. Not trying to speak poorly about chefs and such but working for so a low wage at that age just make retirement look like a pipe dream. The point of this story, increase your capital, never stop learning, never stop improving. That job at the factory you work at now may end one day. Tom had lots of warning signs and ignored them, don’t make the same mistake. Ignoring the changes in technology can and most likely will impact you later in life.
I know this post is a bit out there compared to the normal stuff I write about but it has been on my mind lately. Increasing your human capital is how you stay ahead of the game and how you ensure your individuality stays intact. I also want to point out too that going back to school isn’t the only way to increase your human capital either but other training in other areas that might not be so formal also increases your capital. For example, learning to play an instrument, learning to cook, how to garden, how to paint, or other simple tasks around the house. Other ways to improve your capital might be learning how to write and or shoot better (two of my favorites) which require practice. Learning how to start a fire or splint a broken finger two skills that can greatly improve a bad situation should you find yourself in need of one or the other. The bottom line, never stop learning people, you will be better for it and so will your loved ones as by increasing your capital those closest to you rise a bit higher as well.
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Keep that coffee warm for us
LWS
