China's 200M gig workers are a warning for the world

economist.com

12 points·Triumphology··5 comments

I have a theory that the family run business is going to be make a come back.

For decades, kids have spurned working in the family business in favour of going to University and getting into middle class white collar work. But that pathway is closing off and in the near future, if not already right now, the best advice is to work on your fathers bakery and make enough to get by.

That assumes father has a bakery. Supermarkets have driven many bakers, butchers, fishmongers, etc out of business over the past few decades.

As someone whose parents had small grocery stores, those are also super tight margin businesses where you end up eating a lot of the expired food.

Though I’d say there are a ton of small businesses that won’t make you rich but that can be run with google sheets and WhatsApp that have low competition. Especially those that help immigrants if you have relationships in the mother country.

I was actually thinking that when my child finishes college the best thing I could do is to co-found a startup with them so they can get some proper work experience. As a generalist IT and knowledgeable business person I can probably help them with most things they could want to work on as long as it fits the startup model.

This kind of experience would be more valuable than buying them a home. Probably cheaper too.

https://archive.is/kU3Vo

Edit: the paywall is still there actually, sorry.

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