Specialization Versus Generalization: The Economy Chooses

“Hey, you’re really trying to be accurate.  Is it getting hot in here?  Wait a minute! What’s happening to my special purpose?” – The Jerk

You could say a generalization made by a farmer is an overall statement.

The economy has been really stable for a long, long time.  Certainly, there have been dips here and there, but for the most part, we have seen amazing amounts of . . . stable.  Even the Great Recession (after a liberal application of amazing amounts of money) was made as smooth as leather – I’ll never be suede in that.

In many ways, the solution for the economy for the last twenty years has been exactly what a college freshman would ask at a party at 2 AM:  “Dude, I’ve got a $20.  Can we get more beer?”  The Fed® has a fake I.D. and decided to add more money.  Keep the party going.

Of course, everyone loves a party.  And everyone loves stability.

But what does stability bring?

Specialization.

In a stable environment, every ecological niche gets filled with very specialized variations.  Look at the Arctic.  It may be cold, but it’s stable because the climate varies only a little.  There are very specialized variations of bears and foxes and birds that exploit the ecosystem.  Likewise, the equator with its constant miserable heat produces the same thing:  amazing amounts of specialization including a zillion things in the Amazon jungle that will kill you just for a picture that they can post of Facebook®.  The anteater comes to mind:  a creature so specialized that it eats only ants and has a tongue specialized just for that.

Anteaters can’t catch COVID.  They’re filled with anty-bodies.

In the economy, this flourishes as credentialization©.  Microsoft® doesn’t recognize that word, so I put a little © next to it so now I own it.  Ha!  Take that!  I’d make a “Bill Gates is getting divorced joke” here, but he’s had a hard enough time already.  I’ve already been rejecting his updates since 2017.

We live, however, in an economy built on amazing levels of specialization.  How does one prove their ability to work?  A credential.  The number of credentials has flourished, even in my lifetime.  There was even one where all I had to do to get the credential was apply for it, as it was brand new.

I didn’t apply.  I still look upon that particular credential with disdain – as Groucho noted, why would I want to be in a club that would accept me as a member?  This particular credential is entirely built upon the idea that if I know a specific set of terms that they agree on, I can put a few letters after my name.

Pfffft.  Nope.  Though I did speak at one of their meetings for a few beers.  I may have standards, but they’re low.

Let’s get in a time machine so we can have some fun.

If I wanted to be a doctor in 1821, how did I do that?  I called myself one.  If my patients lived, I’d get more of them.  If they died?  I’d have to move to another town and give bad advice there.  Or run for Congress.

I might not save patients, but I’d be a popular doctor.

One of my personal heroes is Isambard Kingdom Brunel.  Why?

Isambard built stuff and set the stage for the entire twentieth century.  What kind of stuff?  Docks.  Boats.  Railroads.  Bridges.  The first transatlantic steamship.  The first tunnel under a real river.  He even built a hospital that was prefabricated and shipped to the Crimea for all of those Light Brigade guys that rode half a league, half a league onward.

One ship he built, the Great Eastern, could travel from London to Sydney, Australia (it’s somewhere south of Kentucky) and back.  Without refueling.  The second Transatlantic Cable, the one that worked?  It was put down with one of Brunel’s ships.

Did Isambard Kingdom Brunel have to take a test to prove he was an engineer?  No.

If there is a mountain worthy of the name mountain, it’s Everest.  If there is a man who is worthy of the name engineer, it’s Isambard Kingdom Brunel.  Credentials?  Isambard don’t need no stinking credentials.

His work speaks for itself.

What do engineers use as birth control?  Personality.

But now we live in a credentialed world.  Landscape architect?  You have to take a test to call yourself that.  Trim nails and put polish on them?  In many places, you have to have a credential for that.  Cut hair?  Yup.  Have to pass a barber test in many places.

But nails and hair grow back.  If you have bad landscaping, there’s no worry because chainsaws are a thing that exists.

The number of jobs you can’t do without formal credentials keeps expanding.  Do some make sense?  Well, probably.  But I’d suggest that 90% of credentials that exist do so only to prevent competition.  Need a teaching certificate to teach children?

Why?  I can’t think of a single reason other than to eliminate competition.  Laura Ingalls Wilder (from whom I stole the Wilder moniker) graduate grade eight and then . . . was a teacher.

The sea of credentials that we find ourselves surrounded by is also an attempt to avoid liability.  In an attempt to avoid responsibility, lawyers and lawsuits require more and more credentials in jobs where credentials are mostly meaningless.  Oh, and the lawyers were some of the first to pull the ladder up.  Let’s be real:  90% of being a lawyer is reading comprehension.

That’s what comes when you live in a stable economy.  Specialization increases, even to ludicrous levels.  People have jobs where they are so remote from any activity that produces actual value that they don’t even know what their company does that produces value.  HR, I’m looking at you.  Oh, wait, there are at least 12 types of credentials that you can get for HR.

See?

Oh, and I’ve probably made 99% of my readers mad at this point.

But what happens in an unstable economy?  The real winner is the generalist.  I’ll turn to a Robert Anson Heinlein quote I’ve used before:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.

Specialization is for insects.

See, I come screaming out with all of the new themes.  This one is sooooo fresh.

I’ve done almost every one of the things that Heinlein talks about.  I’m hoping to save the “die gallantly” until it’s useful, since it seems it would be wasted if I were to use it in negotiating with DirecTV® over my monthly bill.

In a stable economy, specialization (and the dreaded credentialization©) is valued.  In an economy where things are unstable?

Generalization wins.

The Mrs. bought me a suture practice kit for Christmas.  I was thrilled.  It had a scalpel, needle, and thread.  I can now sew up a wound in plastic.  I would not try to sew up a wound unless you were going to die if I didn’t give it a go.  That’s the definition of unstable.

I’ve taken first aid courses throughout the country.  The second best one was in Alaska.  They spent time teaching skills.  In the lower 48, most of it was, “dial 911 and keep the patient comfortable until the EMTs arrive.”  So, my job, when a human life was on the line?  Make a phone call.

This is Specialization at its peak.

Understand, as long as the economy persists in being stable, specialization will increase.

But when Winter hits?

Or was that generalizations about broads?

Generalization wins.

Personally, I am not very good at supporting increased specialization.

We’re humans.

We can do more.  And if the economy goes where I think it will?

We will need to do more.

Author: John

Nobel-Prize Winning, MacArthur Genius Grant Near Recipient writing to you regularly about Fitness, Wealth, and Wisdom - How to be happy and how to be healthy. Oh, and rich.

46 thoughts on “Specialization Versus Generalization: The Economy Chooses”

  1. You could say a generalization made by a farmer is an overall statement.

    Yes, because farmers are out standing in their field. Have at you, John Wilder!

    Credentialing has indeed gone off the rails, but so has titling, often including gratuitous hyphenation. Gone forever are mere ‘secretaries’, replaced by ‘executive assistants’. Or the more lofty and pretentious, ‘Multi-functional co-ordinators’. (No lie, this poly-hyphenated job title actually exists at my over-the-top, inclusion-happy, hyphen-rich employer).

    Now that we are all fully-qualified ‘Infrastructure Engineers’ by dint of existing on planet Biden, one need never suffer the humiliation of finding oneself sans portfolio. C’,mon, man! even the merely employment-curious will puff up the old calling card with a scrabble board of letters, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

    On the advice of counsel, therefore, I have adopted the appellative TwoBuckChuck, LLC. Got a problem with that? I refer you to our legal department.

    1. J. Noble Daggett, chief litigation specialist at Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe, at your service.

    2. Titles really are off the rails. I think I’ll make an effort to get my title changed to dogsbody.

    1. A King Canute moment if it is not plan (ed) A (successful) invasion.

  2. I am on record as far as my opinion of human resources in general but credential inflation is one of the things that irritates me to no end. Little wonder the most famous “that’s dr. to you” person in America is the wife of the former vice President who demands to be called Dr. because she did some post-grad work in “education”. Again, I fall back on two truths about credentials:

    1. The more someone insists on you acknowledging their made-up credentials, the less impressive and competent they are.

    2. You mostly see this among women and people of color. It is mostly because many of them are rightly insecure in their competence.

    To paraphrase Tywin Lannister, a man who has to keep reminding everyone that he is a king is no king at all. Too many people are not content to just do their job and go home in the evening, they need to make their crappy job sound super important.

    1. Yup. “Dr.” Jill is an example. There’s a LOT more to unpack from that, but I’ll save that for another post.

  3. So John, you are an “accountant” making fun of engineers. Who do you think you are, Scott Adams? Appreciate the pointer to Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Quite an impressive man.

    In engineering, specialization is fairly important these days, although I think a lot of it excessive. The Europeans are going nuts on requiring credentials in engineering. They now require a multi-year program to use one computer tool. Of course it is a method that is frequently screwed up, but the root cause of that is the poor quality of the education and experience. Certification does not address that issue.

    Arthur: I developed the habit of calling people doctor based on their skill. It really pissed off a guy that shared my office because I never called him by his title of doctor. That was because he was an idiot and unworthy of a title other than office idiot. Schools can turn out some really useless PhD people. I don’t know if Jill Biden is worth her title, her thesis was not, and her husband is a dangerous moron without a credential. .

    1. Work at it.

      As a former enlisted man, one can always perfect the fine art of silent insolence, and people can hear the air quotes in your voice. Second lieutenants come to mind.

      For further illustration, allow me to introduce you to the renowned specialist on vaccination: “Doctor” Jenny Mccarthy.

    2. Oh, no, I’m no accountant! I know and like several accountants, but they’d never let me in their secret club: If I’m within the nearest $1,000 that’s a win.

  4. Jack of all trades, master of (few)……De Opresso Liber.

    K7C

    1. I think my forty plus years as a mechanic with the last ten being a Millwright could make me a very popular fellow here in the near future.

  5. “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.”

    Writing a sonnet, balancing accounts, and programming a computer won’t be particularly applicable once we go Mad Max, but the rest of the list is surprisingly useful.

    Also, I just took a straw poll (trust me, I have credentials in giving and analyzing polls) and 98% of your readers want to see a picture of an anteater face-planting onto a beach. I’d volunteer to produce such a thing but my search history is already questionable and I’m not qualified.

  6. Yes, BUT

    Now you’ve done it, mon ami.
    After four days at work practicing the healing arts and plumbing the limits of human stupidity, you have forced me into a considered reply to your post that’s going to be too long even for a few well-chosen words here, so after I go get a sammich and run a few errands, I’ll have to pound out the other side of the coin, at length.

    Dragged back to the blog thing, kicking and screaming.
    Nicely done.

    1. Your absence has been noticed. Don’t know whether that’s a good or bad thing though:) OG

    2. “…the limits of human stupidity…”

      You believe there are limits? Such a starry-eyed optimist.

  7. “Oh, and the lawyers were some of the first to pull the ladder up.”

    Not any more. They’ve been allowing the creation of more and more law schools to create more lawyers at a faster rate than legal jobs are created. This is to decrease the pay of young lawyers which increases the profits of older partners, and is also a huge money maker for universities.

    Credentialism isn’t necessarily due to specialization. It is due to a certain type of brain being selected for in education. There is a spectrum of brain function involving the internalization of abstractions. People at the low end are more likely to see reality rather than the symbols we use to represent reality. Those at the extremely low end that are also extremely low in empathy are autistic. Those at the other end of the spectrum tend to do better in school due to the ease with which they can memorize things; it’s easier to memorize when you don’t need to understand something. This is why they need credentials to tell them who is qualified; they don’t see reality well enough to judge for themselves, and they see the symbol of being competent as competency itself. It is why true believer Leftists cannot analyze higher orders of effect (and then what happens… and what happens after that…) This also explains the obsession with finding a handful of easily quantifiable metrics to judge performance in people and processes.

    “GDP is up 5%? Everything must be good then!”

    “Clients quitting in droves but calls/ hour is up and absenteeism is down? Looks like success to me! Bonuses to management all around!”

    One of the most ridiculous examples was when the entire auto industry decided market share was the most important metric of profitability, so they lowered prices even below the break even point in order to increase market share.

    1. And there are tons of researchers in India doing background law research, taking a lot of “new lawyer” work out.

  8. Comony we don’t need no stinking comony.
    The stimmy check fountain is bottomless and Joebamessiah is the one that we have been waiting for to build Wakanda.
    One size fits all comrades of the unity collective is the great leap forward way to go for the evolved enlightened beings of the faculty lounge.
    It’s gonna work this time, comrade, my purple haired basket weaving professor told me so.
    Forward! Yes we can.

    1. UBI and more cash for everyone!

      What could go wrong. Oh, and we get to watch the rich burn . . . . .

  9. “Oh, and I’ve probably made 99% of my readers mad at this point.”

    I’m an engineer. Having no personality, you can’t make me mad. 😉

    It’s bad for us, too. I need a separate license in each state to practice engineering. I don’t mind, though. I’m a Tenth Amendment fan.

    And Aesop? You’re like a Visa card – you’re everywhere I want to be.

    1. Weet,

      I take my blog’s link list seriously.

      The best part about finding JW here a few years back was just that. (Well, that and the bikini graphs.)

      The worst part was that it took me so long.

  10. In my third of a century in the field of communication arts (since narrowed down the specialization “graphic design”), there have been constant calls and efforts to credential my industry. I was against it from the start and will always be against it.

    I myself hold a mere B.A. in Graphic Design that I’ve never had to mention in order to get a job or a client. Clients decide to use me or not based on my past work portfolio; and in the very beginning on the strength of my portfolio of fake student work. To the extent college is even necessary, it’s primary purpose is to hone and focus a student so they can show a competent portfolio of projects to secure an entry level position designing mail-in response cards or envelope stuffers for a year or so, then slowly be awarded progressively more creative projects once they earn the trust of experienced professionals.

    In fact, I know of many talented (and busy) graphic designers who hold no degree or credentials, and who have done just fine in the industry.

    Desire. Curiosity. Obsession. Humility. These are the requirements for success in mine and most any other field. How does one credential those qualities?

  11. Credentialization is not the problem and no one from the author all the way through the commenters even mentioned it. Its all about the money. We pay in two ways. The cost to get the education. The payment for permission from the goobermint or agencies. I think someone wrote a long dry reading manual many years ago about obtaining permission from the goobermint to do these things and that alone will get worse in the hyper accelerated future. By they way I use the word goober mint for that reason (think about how coin is made and reverse the words)

  12. Oh, wait, there are at least 12 types of credentials that you can get for HR.—–The SAR team I work with has at least four certified, credentialed HR dogs, so now you can figure on thirteen!

  13. Brunel was an engineering MANAGER. He hired and directed legions of specialists.

    As a mentor of mine (the entrepreneur behind a successful tech company) once told me: “Why should I learn nuclear physics? If I need a physicist I’ll hire one!” A bit of advice that served me well in my career. Yeah, I became an engineering manager – but never got a degree in ANYTHING. I never even learned AutoCAD. When I needed an AutoCAD mechanic, I hired one.

    1. True enough, but he had to be skilled in the are enough to make it happen. He had to have good instincts and know when something was wrong . . . .

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