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Alexei Grigoryevich Stakhanov was not yet 30 years old when, in August 1935, He broke a superhuman record that would make him a hero of the Soviet Union in the following decades: He alone extracted, in one day, 102 tons of coal from a mine, 14 times more than the average of the rest of the workers. A few weeks later, in September 1935, he again broke his mark with 227 tons of coal. With his feat he became the cover of the magazine time, He obtained the Hammer and Sickle medal and became an example for the former USSR for his drive, sacrifice and dedication.
The story is told in the latest book by economists Eduardo Levy Yeyati and Darío Judzik, Automated: Life and Work in Times of Artificial Intelligence (Editorial Planeta), which was presented in April.
The two professors from the Torcuato Di Tella University refer to the “Stakhanovism” in chapter 1, “Nothing will be like before. The vertigo of the new”, in a section of Say goodbye to the Marble Man, in reference to a film by the Polish Andrzej Wajda, from 1977, in which A star worker produces 30,000 bricks in a factory and becomes the symbol of the regime, with marble statue included.
The stories of the old communist system help Yeyati and Judzik to draw a contrast with the “moving target” that is the discussion today (and any attempt to hit it with forecasts) about the future of work. The authors start from the hypothesis that with the current technological transition (with Generative Artificial Intelligence at the forefront) “this time is different.” Or as the Intoxicados song that the authors quote says: “This time it’s serious, I’m not lying, something catches fire.” In their new book they cite a lot of data in this regard, such as that the computational capacity used to train machine learning It is doubling every six months (faster than in Moore’s Law dynamics).
There is Few areas are more difficult to make projections than the future of work. The issue is that not only must the technological impact be taken into account – something that is already complex to predict – but Cultural, demographic, and generational values factors also come into play. composition of families, etc.
An example of massive cultural change is a movement that began to intensify in the United States among millennials in the last decade and that today has groups on discord and other platforms, with hundreds of thousands of members.
It is something similar to “Stajanovich today, leisure tomorrow (but as soon as possible!”). The acronym that identifies it in English is FIRE (like fired, or like the fire of Intoxicados too), and means “Financial Independence, Early Retirement” (“Financial Independence and Retirement Early”). The acronym was created in 1992 by authors Vicky Robin and Joe Domínguez in their book Your Money is Your Life, but it recently gained momentum two decades later. It has gurus like JL Collins or the economist Karsten Jeske, a FIRE popularizer who retired young in 2018 and shares his Excel spreadsheets in the communities of followers of this creed on how to calculate savings and expenses consistent with these types of objectives. There are concepts like “healthy maximum withdrawals” and other financial mathematics instruments appropriate to these goals.
The mantra is always maximize income in the first stage of life, live as frugally as possible (owning a car, for example, is something that is frowned upon in this community) and avoid getting into debt at all costs. There is different early retirement models to plan. For example, there is the “lean FIRE” (stop working completely at a certain age), the “fat FIRE” (continue with high expenses, which increases the amount to accumulate) or the “Barista FIRE” (do not stop work at all, but continue with some occupation part time and undemanding that allows some expenses to be covered).
“It is a very interesting movement and it is “It is quite a novelty that occurs in such young people,” Martín Curiman, an Argentine businessman who was born in Bahía Blanca (he was a deep diver in that city, when he was studying), tells LA NACION and today leads from Houston, United States, the main retirement insurance financial group for the Hispanic segment of that country, with 2000 employees. “It is a whole new market, which prioritize austerity and explore retirement plans that can be moved from one to another, without penalties, generating extra interest according to the financial instruments chosen,” adds the CEO of the Curiman Group.
The mentality described by Curiman is also what is known as a “longevity mindset”: start thinking as soon as possible in life what should be done (at all levels) to reach 80, 90 or 100 years of age in good physical, mental and financial condition.
“It’s the magic of compound interest,” Leo Piccioli, economist, former CEO of Staples and author of several books, including the recent Be your own CEO: Learn the method to eliminate, automate and outsource tasks. And leads in the era of artificial intelligence (The Ateneo).
Albert Einstein once, 100 years ago at a conference in Germany, He cited compound interest as “the eighth wonder of the world.” It implies, says Piccioli, that being aware of many of the issues raised by the FIRE agenda (even if one does not follow it to the letter regarding very early retirement) leads to a much higher return in adulthood if You start following it at 25 than at 35 or 50 years old. “And the same thing happens with other habits, not just with money. For example, “If someone decides to follow a course to learn a certain tool, that knowledge will be used more in life the younger it is acquired,” says Piccioli.
“We should all have an Excel spreadsheet called ‘years without working’”, says the author of Be Your Own CEO, who on his personal site CEO En Camiseta usually postulates the “3Ds” of work: Development, Fun and Money. What would the Polish “marble man” and star miner Stakhanov say about all this? Maybe your grandchildren or great-grandchildren are planning a peaceful “FIRE barista” retreat on a Greek or southern Italian island, in what would be an interesting twist in the debate over the future of work.
