Singapore: Moving from "farmer" to "hunter"

I just interrupted myself reading at page 242 of  "The Lords of Strategy".

What if we are propelled into a world of the "hunter" rather than the "farmer"?

The hunter feasts and starves depending on the success of his hunting. Life for the farmer is more consistent and stable. In a stable economy with secure jobs, that is the moral equivalent to the farmer. In a low inertia and responsive economy which turns on a coin, there is no job security. Hired for a project, fired after it is completed, that is one form of the hunter's life. More likely, hired with the "farmer's" promise but lived and eventually fired like a "hunter". In this case the firm does not need to reward you like a hunter for the upside. No wonder workers feel like heads the bosses win, tails they lose.

Voters will finally pressure the government for a farmer's social contract but in a hunter's Zietgeist . It is an impossible task. This transformation takes years to complete and a long time to recognize; like a frog in slowly warming water, you cannot tell that is actually happening.

If we survive this, life for the hunter is marked by unpredictability but unlike the farmer, there are more frequent big game conquests. Modern hunters like their ancient cousins must save for lean times. Not regular savings mind you, but saving like mad, enough to depress the economy. It's a crazy idea. Unrealistic.

It is almost impossible to forecast or more honestly we are just bad at it, the business opportunities that might wash ashore. It is even harder to capture those that are sailing by. That's why we need to import the foreign talent. We have no time to train our own for opportunities that wouldn't wait for us to be ready, much less spend the money to train the workers.

We are drifting toward a hunting paradigm. It comes with businesses increasingly taking a short term view. It is a tough life.

When did this trend start? When pension benefits moved from defined benefits to defined contributions. It has been many years in the making but that process is now accelerating, the backlash has also become stronger.

I sense the seeds for building a new set of binary scenarios around the concept of the farmer and the hunter. I am not sure I have the time for this. What is the value of doing this? May be all I need is to figure it out as I go along. Unlike when I was with a big corporation, there is no need to share this with colleagues.