Karmancer on Nostr: “Specific knowledge is knowledge you cannot be trained for. If society can train ...

“Specific knowledge is knowledge you cannot be trained for. If society can train you, it can train someone else and replace you.”

The Almanack of Naval Ravikant,
by Eric Jorgenson

If you have the same skills and abilities as everyone else, you have no leverage. You can never ask for a raise or more time off or more recognition because there are a dozen people right behind you ready and willing to take your job.

This, it need not be said, is a precarious position to find yourself in, but it's the economic reality of a huge portion of the world's workforce.

Specific knowledge is often highly technical or creative and cannot be outsourced or automated. A professional athlete is in no danger of having his job outsourced because there is no one who is able to do what he can do for his team - assuming he is any good. He can make demands on his employer and have a reasonable chance of getting what he wants because he's not easy to replace.

Contrast this with, say, a garbage man (a perfectly respectable position), and you can see that he would never be able to make the same demands. Almost anyone can be trained to become a garbage man, so, even as worthy of respect and dignity as he may be, he has no leverage.

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