221. Find a Problem, Make a Job

Give some­one a job to solve a prob­lem and you can bet the prob­lem will never go away. There is, after all, a job at stake. That is why the mil­i­tary is usu­ally a growth indus­try, not to men­tion lawyers, med­ical researchers and insur­ance agents. Man­darins – nowa­days we call them man­agers – have mul­ti­plied their pres­ence for cen­turies, squeez­ing oth­ers to fund their own com­fort. Recently I’ve pitched camp in a police state, where ever expand­ing squadrons of police are required to coun­ter the ‘mass inci­dents’ their pres­ence incites, and count­less ‘cen­sors’, a.k.a. domes­tic spies, pro­lif­er­ate to pro­tect the ‘secrets’ other folk call com­mon social knowl­edge. Oh well, in dif­fer­ent times and places they dealt in the prob­lem of solv­ing death itself, called the faith­ful to church and kept count­less pious agents of God in bread and wine. What is the next prob­lem-growth indus­try for an ambi­tious young fel­low?