Author: Baichuan.
What is the nature of poverty in today's society? If we take away all the resources that the rich have now, will they still be able to complete the transformation from poor to rich?
With the rise of the gig economy, how can we seize the opportunity? This article discusses how workers can thrive better through the gig economy.
In 2009, in Hong Kong society, where the rich and poor classes are solidified, there was a variety show called "Rich and Poor Wars", which threw Hong Kong's elites and rich second generations into the bottom society, and let them get a very low hourly wage, but do hard work, to see if they can reverse their fate with "rich thinking".
The guests invited by the program team are all upper-class elites with ability, knowledge and wealth. These people are undoubtedly the beneficiaries of the dividends of the times, but most of them believe that they can achieve what they are today, and the dividends of the times are only a small part of the reason, and the fundamental reason is that they are smart and hard-working enough.
At the beginning of the show, the audience was asked three questions:"Is a person destining to be poor or rich in his life, or is he destined by God or relying on his hands? Is it the uneven distribution of social resources or the lack of outstanding individual ability? If a person has the ability and mentality of the upper class, can he change his destiny in Hong Kong, where there is a huge disparity between the rich and the poor? ”
At the beginning of the show, each guest was very confident in themselves and believed that they could change their difficult fate.
In the second episode, there is a guest Tian Beichen, who was born in the four major families in Jiangnan in Hong Kong, and is nicknamed "Tian Ershao". His dad is a "generation of trouser kings", a graduate of Harvard University himself, and the founder of the clothing chain G2000. He bluntly said: "I believe in the free market, so to speak, and I have eliminated many weak people. But if you have fighting spirit, the weak can also become the strong. ”
The four major families in Jiangnan in Hong Kong refer to the families from Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, including the four families of Dong, Tang, Tian and Rong. The representatives of the Dong family include the "ship king" Dong Haoyun and his eldest son Tung Chee-hwa, who served as the first chief executive after Hong Kong's return to the motherland; The Tang family is a textile family from Wuxi, Tang Yingnian, who was the former chief secretary for administration of Hong Kong; The Rong family, headed by Rong Yiren, is even more well-known and is known as the first "red capitalist".
And Tian Beichen, who participated in the show this time, is from the Tian family with the same name as these three, the Tian family is a textile family from Shanghai, in addition to the wealthy Tian Beichen in the family, his brother Tian Beijun also has a pivotal position in the political and business circles.
These guests are not the rich second generation who will only lose, on the contrary, they are very successful in their own fields. They all know very well that there are many poor people in the world, so they will definitely not ask such words as "why not eat minced meat". But the rhetoric still more or less shows the attitude of the upper class: "Poverty is due to your own lack of strength." ”
In this show, Tian Beichen changed from a wealthy man to the lowest-paid sweeper per hour, with an hourly wage of only 25 yuan. There is only 50 yuan a day for living expenses, and living in less than 15 square meters of cage house.
Unexpectedly, on the first day, I found that it takes a lot of effort to get to the easiest commute. In order to be able to work in Wan Chai at 6:30, you need to leave at 6 o'clock, but the earliest subway will arrive at 6:11, so it is too late. You can only go to take the overnight bus, which costs a "huge sum" of 13 yuan.
I finally arrived at the place of work and started cleaning the street, but after half an hour of work, I was supposed to clean 8 garbage cans, but I used all my strength to clean 2 of them.
After 9 hours of work, he was exhausted, and in the heavy labor, Tian Beichen said frankly that in the heavy labor day after day, "hard work every day is a good meal, I now understand their thoughts, how to plan next week, next year, and what will happen in the future." The most important thing is to solve the next meal".
Two days have passed, and the rich man has completed his experience, but his street sweepers are still doing this kind of work day after day, and even have to work two jobs to make a living.
I believe that this show has told us very profoundly that hard work sometimes does not make you rich, without planning and patience, and leaving yourself in a state of exhaustion for a long time will firmly confine people to an island.
The 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Dufro, two of the winners who wrote a book called The Nature of Poverty. After 15 years of research, investigation, and experimentation, the book finds that the poverty of the poor is not explained by laziness.
Rather, it points out the problem:The lives of the poor are fraught with risks and it is impossible to try more possibilities. Affluence increases patience, while poverty makes people lose patience and lose their time and ability to plan for the future.
For example, Bill Gates, if you tell him that you can increase his wealth by 1% every month, he will be very happy and want you to be CEO, but if you say the same thing to a poor person, it may be dismissive. Because their wealth is so small, they simply don't have the patience to make a long-term layout.
Fortunately, in our current society, it is not Hong Kong, nor Africa and India, which are interviewed in this book, but China is full of opportunities. In the current environment, each of us has more opportunities to think about our own development.
Some people may say that we are now in a certain company or platform, and we don't see hope, and we don't know how to cultivate a certain ability of ourselves for a long time, so that we can get rid of the busy people who are getting poorer and poorer.
The times have given us new opportunities. In 2023, the gig economy has risen, and we have changed from the original 9-to-5, working in one unit for a lifetime, to being able to choose when and what to work more flexibly. The market can better allocate the labor force, so that the majority of workers have more time to find their talents and plan their careers.
In general, the gig economy includes employers with temporary needs for services, gig workers with skills, and platforms that connect the two. The gig economy allows a new generation of workers to set their own work schedules, work while traveling, and have the freedom to choose the company they want.
We have been focusing on the improvement of hard skills, but with the development of digitalization, the evolution of technology and industry is getting faster and faster, and we may have to cultivate our own iteration ability to adapt to this changing era.
Today, the gig economy is disrupting industries, companies, and individuals, which means that not only the way we work, but also how and how we earn will be changed, and even the way we live, travel, and socialize. It's possible that your parents did only one job in their lifetime, and you did six jobs in your lifetime.
More and more people are no longer limited to "dead wages", which means that the gig economy is changing people's production and lifestyle. These changes are a great way for us to be able to make our own career plans and have more freedom to choose what we want to do.
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