# 70 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: A college degree is unnecessary if; you have an innate, voracious appetite and capacity for knowledge, you also have the personality and skill to sell yourself to a prospective employer. Otherwise, a degree is proof that they can teach you and you can stick to something long enough to be considered a credible candidate for employment.
Having written previously on the benefits of a college degree, this companion piece is my take on the sine qua non attributes any person in the modern economy must possess if they are to make money using their mind (and not their muscle) in sufficient quantity for the lack of the college degree not to be either a roadblock, or a constant source of anxiety.
Whew! That was a long sentence. If you don’t have a college degree, go get one and then come back and try that sentence again.
Look, making a living in the US, in a technology heavy, services dominated, consumer driven economy, will be tough with no degree. Without verifiable skills, as showed by completing approximately 120 credit hours’ worth of study in some concentrated subject, you will compete on price for your talents and presence at any job. Scarcity creates value. Persons with college degrees are not scarce. Their overall value has fallen as discussed in my previous piece. Though they have an achievement on their resume that prospective employers look for.
The Pool is Larger
That means you’ll be competing against a much larger segment of the employable pool of workers for pay. Your competition includes both those with and without degrees. And the larger the pool of anything, the less valuable it is.
You will need to set yourself apart to climb out of the largest pool. To differentiate yourself, you’ll need at least 2 things. One is sufficient mastery of a relatively rare skill people will pay for. The second is the ability to convince someone of that mastery and to pay you. The rarer the skill you develop, the more valuable. But, you’ll still have to market yourself to prospective employers and customers. In short, you’ll need to develop major people skills.
You’ll also need to have the resilient personality and mental fortitude to face lots of rejection. Lots of potential positions on job posting sites will require a degree as the first requirement of consideration. You won’t even have the chance to talk your way into a trial run.
I am on your side in this venture. We are in the same camp. I am about halfway to a degree, and could complete it, but I made different decisions in life a long time ago that I have absolutely zero regrets about. But I’m damn lucky not to be full of regrets.
I’m warning you on the front end that you may regret not having that proof that you can stick to something, get a degree and never have to worry about that as a requirement in your preferred area of employment.
Now, if you’re Steve Jobs, or Jerry Garcia, or some other whiz-bang, super talented, highly motivated individual who will wow us with your every creation, skipping college might make a lot of sense. If that describes you, by all means, please go for it!
# 68 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: All salesmen are selling. They are a part of the experience you are buying. If you don’t like the salesman, don’t buy the experience he is part of.
I spent 18 years of my recently former life as a salesman. In all honesty, I’ve never not been a salesman. As a little kid, at Christmas, I’d sell my brother on the idea that he wanted a football helmet, and my sister on the idea that she wanted a Johnny West. I’d go through the huge Sears wish book and mark their selections for them.
But this isn’t about my selling ability, other than to sell you on the idea that all sales attendants are selling. They all have a vested interest in you buying whatever it is they’re pitching. Salespersons are not altruistic and disinterested. Shocker, right?
Consider: If you are ready to part with money to buy something, you already have an idea about what you’re trying to buy. (It may not be the correct idea, as discussed here, but it is what you think you’re buying). So, you know what you’re hoping to gain from your purchase decision. Your purchase is a means to those ends. All good. Just keep a couple things in mind.
You’re buying an experience
1- You’re not just buying a widget, or a service. You’re actually buying an experience (or a series of experiences). You are going to have different emotions before, during, and after you take ownership of the particular item or service. The feelings will change at each stage of the transaction from pre-purchase to newly minted owner.
A skilled sales agent will steer your attention to the experience of some of the after-sale emotions before ever concluding the transaction. They will target your emotions attempting to create positive feelings. In fact, this technique may precipitate and accelerate the conclusion the salesperson wants. Pay attention and watch for this during your next interaction with a salesperson. Remember the premise; all salesmen are selling. Listen for clues like these.
“Those earrings look so beautiful on you.”
“Man, you look good in that car!”
“You are smart to get in now before this opportunity is gone.”
One of the world’s most famous salespeople, Zig Ziglar, said, “Selling is essentially a transfer of feelings.”
There is nothing inherently wrong with this. Good sales associates know it to be true and help their customers determine what it is they’re really trying to buy. They know the customer is trying to buy a feeling. And they help them get there. But, a line is crossed when the sales associate over promises or misrepresents just to close the sale. In that type of interaction, you’ve been sold.
As the customer, or buyer, you also need this awareness. Behavioral economics predicts you won’t make rational economic decisions. Nine times out of ten you will make emotional ones. You feel one way, you convince yourself that getting “X” will make you feel better, so you decide to purchase “X”.
The sales process is a transition of feelings
2- The transition between your emotions before a purchase is made, the emotions you anticipate will result from the purchase, and the after-sale feelings is the sales process. The entire experience of which becomes part of the after-sale feelings. Buyer’s remorse occurs when the post-sale feelings don’t match the pre-sale anticipation. Your mind will link the sales process to the item or service forever, to either enhance or erode your feelings about the thing itself. The sales experience will be part of your future memories of the thing itself.
It’s because of the inescapable linkage of #2 to the purchase that I caution you. If you don’t like the salesperson during the sales process, you won’t like their memory afterwards. All salesmen are selling. Just make certain you want to own the whole package, including the associated memory of your sales associate, before you close the deal.
True Justice is Moral, not merely Legal. It treats everyone’s interests equally. (Adobe Stock image: licensed by author)
# 51 on my, 99 Life Tips – A List is: Treat people as if their interests are exactly as important as yours. They are. (But they are not more important.)
The Golden Rule has a couple of variations that condense to the same thing. The interests of people are relative and equal. This being the case, morality requires that you treat people as if their interests are exactly as important as yours. Any deviation is the essence of moral failure.
To be moral, moral codes must be based on truth. At a casual glance, when contemplating aphorisms like, ”All men are created equal…”, the discriminating among us (and I use that term in the positive sense of one who has refined tastes and exercises good judgment), may argue about its veracity. By some metrics it doesn’t appear to be true at all.
Yet, in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, this is one of the enumerated ”self-evident” truths. But, the careful observer recognizes the obvious. There is a disparate distribution of talent, physical attributes, mental aptitude, socio-economic standing, and opportunities for improvement and advancement between humans.
When I compare myself to LeBron James, or Stephen Hawking, or Yo Yo Ma, I see some pretty glaring inequalities. And those exist at the physical, mental, and talent levels. What about differences on the socio-economic ladder between myself and the wealthiest ”10%” who own more than the bottom 70% combined?
EgregiousWealth Inequality is a Particular Kind of Immorality
The following graphics show that the top 1% owns 31.4% of US net wealth as of the 4th quarter of 2020. The population from the 90th to 99th percentile owns 38.2%; the 50th to 90th percentile, owns 28.3% of net wealth; and the bottom 50 percent owned only 2% of the nation’s net wealth. Yay Capitalism!
If all men are created equal, and if everyone’s interests are equal, how is this happening? It may be legal, but is it moral? (Image from https://www.statista.com/statistics/299460/distribution-of-wealth-in-the-united-states/ screenshot by author)
And to add insult to injury, the share of wealth going to the top is increasing as depicted by this graphic:
The rich get richer, the poor poorer. Yet everyone’s interests are equal. This is everyone’s moral failure. (Image from https://www.statista.com/statistics/299460/distribution-of-wealth-in-the-united-states/ screenshot by author)
Of course, I could have saved your time and some screen space by just summarizing the current state of Capitalism in the US with this familiar graphic. One wonders where these traditional, mythical images come from?
Ouroboros. When society, especially economically, refuses to treat everyone’s interests as equal, this is what happens. (Adobe Stock Image: licensed by author)
All men are created equal? Really? How so?
Faced with these inequities, whence comes the certitude expressed, that all men are created equal? Or, on what moral basis are we enjoined to love our neighbor as our self? Or, for what reason are we to do unto others as we would want them to do unto us?
It is because the self-interest of every human being is equal. The lowliest peasant or serf in history had interests as important to him or her as those of the gaudiest Lord or Czar. It may have been ”legal” for a Lord to exploit and use the serf, but it was immoral.
Similarly, today, it may be legal for capitalist billionaires and their corporations to pocket for themselves the wealth created by employees they hire and pay as cheaply as possible. It may be legal to exploit and despoil the environment, stripping it of resources faster than they can be replenished. Laws may allow or even encourage taking advantage of local real estate, utilities, and infrastructure, at little or no cost in resultant tax revenues back to the community and state. But such behavior is reprehensibly immoral, nonetheless. Let’s agree to call it what it is.
It is a special gift of the ultra-wealthy to hide their immorality behind law, and do so to almost universal social acclaim. And yet the interests of Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos are not more important than the interests of the person just hired at minimum wage to scrub the corporate toilets.
Where is our Moral Courage?
Every dollar pocketed by selfish exploitation is an evidentiary document at the bar of Moral Justice, legal though it may be by custom or culture. We just happen to live at a moment in history when we celebrate the immoral as champions, rather than castigate them as villains.
This is possible because for decades now the West has lost any voice of moral courage.
In his famous speech at Harvard in 1978, Alexander Solzenhitsyn, the famous Soviet dissident, and Nobel Laureate said this:
”I have spent all my life under a Communist regime and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale than the legal one is not quite worthy of man either. A society which is based on the letter of the law and never reaches any higher is taking very scarce advantage of the high level of human possibilities. The letter of the law is too cold and formal to have a beneficial influence on society. Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relations, there is an atmosphere of moral mediocrity, paralyzing man’s noblest impulses. And it will be simply impossible to stand through the trials of this threatening century with only the support of a legalistic structure.”
~ Alexander Solzenhitsyn, speech entitled, A World Split Apart Harvard, 1978 (emphasis mine)
Our Interests are Equal – The Moral Act Like It
Self-interest is relative. Mine may not mean much to you. But my interests are certainly important to me. Just as important as yours are to you.
This is the basis of equal treatment and the basis of equal love. My hopes and desires and needs are not more important than yours or anyone else’s. They are important to me for reasons of my own. And yours are the same. They are important to you for reasons sufficient to you.
When we acknowledge this, and treat each other accordingly, we’re operating on the basis of truth. We are affording each other the respect and recognition born of interests that are of equal value.
In any dealings we may have together, I don’t expect you to treat me as if my interests are more important than your own. Don’t expect me to make my interests subservient to yours, either. They are equal. We may choose to negotiate and compromise. There may be give and take, but if either of us elevates and imposes our interests above the interests of the other, we are guilty of that which constitutes the entire essence of moral and ethical failure, regardless of our justifications, of so-called ”legality”, and regardless of our stock portfolio or checking account balance.
And let us hold each other to account. Let us act as if our interests have value. And let us think about these things in our business dealings, in our purchases, in our valuation of the character and actions of others, especially when evaluating the wealthiest, who routinely extract from you every penny of interest they can. Just because something is legal does not mean it is right. Remember this and as far as is in you, treat people as if their interests are exactly as important as yours. Because they are.
Handing Over Cash For House in Front of Beautiful New Home. But Is the Cash Really For Just A House?
# 16 on my, 99 Life Tips – A List is: Realize what it is you’re trying to buy when you spend money. The higher the expenditure the more this is necessary.
Money is a medium of exchange. Thus, it is a means, not an end. This is the first clue to understanding what money is for and how to use it properly. To obtain money, most people exchange something else of value, usually their time (which is the most valuable thing they have aside from health). Having received the money, they recognize hunger and the unsettled, dissatisfied feeling that comes with it. Aha! They think to themselves, I’ll exchange this newly acquired money for some food. Then, I won’t feel these pangs in my stomach or my emotions. Now comes the tricky part, along with the second clue. You don’t exchange money just for a different object (in this case food). Rather, you spend it attempting to buy a feeling expected to accompany the purchase. Your wallet is out. Now is the time to realize what you’re trying to buy.
Do you buy sustenance or satisfaction? Do you opt for an apple to quell your hunger, or a quarter pounder with cheese to flood your brain with dopamine along with the 650 calories? This is why, before parting with your hard-earned money, you must know what you’re trying to buy. Otherwise, you’ll end up with buyer’s remorse 90% of the time, thinking you were buying one thing and the resultant feeling isn’t what you bargained for.
Decades ago, economists were dumbfounded to learn people make emotion-driven choices when they spend. They don’t make calculated, objective, quantitative choices. They make emotional ones. This revelation gave rise to an entire sub-genre of economic theory called behavioral economics. Remember what is stated above, money is a medium of exchange. However, it is not so much the exchange of one type of goods (money) for another (food, clothing, a car, a house payment), rather, it is the exchange or one type of feeling for another.
If you question the validity of this, check your wardrobe. How many designer logos do you see? Why do you see them? You were buying a feeling. You were thinking, “People like me buy shirts like this.” There would be no such thing as conspicuous consumerism, or wearable iconography for that matter, if money wasn’t primarily spent for the feeling the buyer is trying to purchase.
That’s why I encourage you to know what you’re trying to buy before you part with the cheddar. You may find that what you’re hoping to purchase just cannot be bought with money.
I’ll leave you with this quote from a dear, departed mother of the guy I do some marketing work for. She said, ”Money can’t buy you happiness, but it can buy you a lot of nice items while you’re waiting to get happy!”
Don’t you love that?
Anyway, look back over your own experience and judge for yourself how many times you just had to have something. You craved it. You thought about how grand life would be once you got yours. And then you finally got it. And to your utter stupefaction, you found that it was a vapor you could wave your hand through. You didn’t feel nearly the way you thought you would and all you could think of was not what you bought, but how damn much you spent to feel so disillusioned. I’ve erred the same way. That’s why I say, you’ve got to know what you’re trying to buy.
