Website owner:  James Miller

Jobs, Competition and the Law of Survival of the Fittest




   A basic fact of life.  Jobs are precious things for most 
   people.  Very precious.  For most people the loss of a job is a 
   personal tragedy that ranks right up alongside the loss of a 
   wife or a child.  A job is one's lifeline.  It is one's food, 
   shelter, and all that one needs for living.  A threat to your 
   job is a threat to your life.  

   For most people a job is a scarce commodity --- hard to find.  
   There may be many jobs listed as available but you usually find 
   that they all require expertise and background that you simply 
   don't have.  Finding a job for which you qualify, finding a 
   slot that you can slip into, is a long, difficult and 
   frustrating task for most people.  This fact, combined with the 
   vital necessity for having a job, is why keeping a job, once 
   you have it, is so important to most people. 

   In the natural world, among wild things, the rule is that the 
   strong live and the weak die.  Many are eaten by predators or 
   die of starvation or of some other cause.  It is the cruel way 
   things work in nature.  In the world of man, in the realm of 
   economics and jobs, a similar law prevails.  There are more 
   people who need jobs than there are jobs.  Jobs are man's bread 
   and butter, his livelihood, his very life.  And so he competes 
   with his fellow man for this very precious commodity.  The 
   strong win out and the weak lose out.  The law of the "survival 
   of the fittest" is in action.  Who are the strong and who are 
   the weak?  In a world that is rapidly becoming more and more 
   complicated and technical more and more of the jobs require 
   special technical knowledge and expertise.  Those in the 
   society who have put many years of hard work into preparing 
   themselves and attaining that knowledge and expertise are the 
   strong.  Those who because of inability, laziness, foolishness 
   or some other reason have not achieved the education, special 
   knowledge and expertise needed to successfully compete are the 
   weak and they are the ones who lose out.  They are the ones who 
   die --- who become the angry, downtrodden ones of modern 
   society.  And as science and technology continues to automate 
   more and more jobs there are fewer and fewer jobs for more and 
   more people and the competition for jobs becomes more and more 
   fierce.  A job is more than just a man's livelihood and means 
   of survival --- it is his self-esteem, his image of himself.  
   Take a man's job away from him and you are dealing him a 
   terrible psychological blow as well as economic blow. 


   Feb 1985