I can’t believe I’m reading slashdot comments, but this one, in the context of outsourcing jobs, is spot on:

24/7 advertising. No job. No career. No credit. Basket full of crap at 28% interest. Get back on that fucking couch and keep your fucking mouth shut, consumer. This is the “corporate dream.”

The outsourcing problem is not going to go away. Conventional wisdom says third world labourers are disgustingly underpaid. No. It’s first world labourers who are disgustingly overpaid. The economy has been globalised. The free market will now commence adjusting itself.

Unless you’re an Owner, you will be forced to compete with people willing to work for a thousandth the cost. Unemployment will rise. Stock markets will also rise, as the Owning class gets richer on the backs of companies who effectively don’t have to pay salaries any more. Both these are happening now.

Eventually first world labour markets will readjust themselves. Expect PhDs on checkouts. Salaries and living standards will fall. There will only be a second world.

Survival Strategies

1. Invent supertechnology and pray for a Singularity. Nuclear fusion is enough to keep the world running while you try.
2. Start owning stuff. Tricky if you don’t already. There will come a point where everybody above a certain level of wealth will get richer, and everybody below will get poorer. This level will rise, faster than the rate at which the Owners get richer; thus low-level Owners will become high-level Renters, and start to descend from there. Outcome? Winner-takes-all tyrrany. Except it won’t come to that. There will be war and genocide and die-offs that stabilise the system.
3. Secede from civilisation. Buy farmland, invest in gold and guns. Become as self-sufficient as possible. When the currencies crash, trade the gold and shoot the invaders.
4. Learn to be poor. Frugal living is possible. Billions live on a starvation diet today. The quality of life is low, but you have no alternative, except to…
5. Die. All this is an extended corollary of Overpopulation anyway, so you’ll be doing everyone a favour!