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I wonder if it is possible for me to profit from this strange phenomenon. Basically, every industry I obtain employment in or try to obtain employment in immediately turns to shit. It is really uncanny. Biotech, computer programming, mining in a certain region, real estate in a certain region, Korean English teaching etc. My participation signals their immediate collapse and the ongoing effects often last for years after I give up and go away. This can't really be a co-incidence. Obviously the whole global economy is going to shit, but then how do we explain the timing?

It would appear that I am somewhat like the character in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series who seemed to be an ordinary truck driver but was in fact a rain god, so it was always raining wherever he was. Eventually he figured this out, the media picked up on it and he made a good living from business owners in holiday destinations paying him to go somewhere else. Could I do likewise? If so how? Perhaps I could extort money from industries by threatening to try to join them (but they would likely dismiss it all as being silly mumbo jumbo, only realizing their costly mistake years later). Or else perhaps I could buy the appropriate put options after joining an industry (although with my luck they would expire worthless the day before the effects took hold).

There has to be some way to cash in on this.

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UNEMPLOYABLE: Definition Cornfed- lacking the skills, abilities, or qualities that are necessary to get or keep a job : not employable
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/unemployable

Involuntary celibacy, also defined as Cornfed- is the state of a person who has not established an intimate relationship or engaged in sexual intercourse for reasons other than voluntary celibacy or sexual abstinence.

Cornfed wrote:I wonder if it is possible for me to profit from this strange phenomenon. Basically, every industry I obtain employment in or try to obtain employment in immediately turns to shit. It is really uncanny. Biotech, computer programming, mining in a certain region, real estate in a certain region, Korean English teaching etc. My participation signals their immediate collapse and the ongoing effects often last for years after I give up and go away. This can't really be a co-incidence. Obviously the whole global economy is going to shit, but then how do we explain the timing?

It would appear that I am somewhat like the character in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series who seemed to be an ordinary truck driver but was in fact a rain god, so it was always raining wherever he was. Eventually he figured this out, the media picked up on it and he made a good living from business owners in holiday destinations paying him to go somewhere else. Could I do likewise? If so how? Perhaps I could extort money from industries by threatening to try to join them (but they would likely dismiss it all as being silly mumbo jumbo, only realizing their costly mistake years later). Or else perhaps I could buy the appropriate put options after joining an industry (although with my luck they would expire worthless the day before the effects took hold).

There has to be some way to cash in on this.

Make sure to only take jobs with companies which have publicly traded and liquid shares. As soon as your employment commences, aggressively short the firm's stock with all your available personal funds.

Write down your life story. It will be like reverse Forest Gump; instead of a retarded man miraculously succeeding it everything, it will be about a normal guy somehow managing to fail at everything.

Run, Cornfed, run!

Ghost wrote:As far as profiting from employers, I don't see how it would really work. Even if they did believe that you are bad luck, wouldn't that just make them fire you or not hire you in the first place, thus removing any bad luck? Or are you saying the entire industry that you are involved in will start going bad all over the world?

Well yes. For example, I tried to gain employment in the mining industry in a region with a population of about 15000. It had three large coal mines, with work soon to commence on two more. Shortly after I decided to move to the area, one of the mines was destroyed by a methane explosion. While I was there the opening of the two mines in planning kept being delayed due to legal and financial reasons and was subsequently cancelled. The mine that I was trying to get into - its town's principal employer - closed a few months after I left, apparently due to a decline in the global price of coal (testament to the global reach of my power). The remaining mine subsequently shed most of its staff, but is still limping along at a reduced capacity. So a fairly comprehensive but not unexpected result.

English teaching in Korea is worse than it used to be but the decline has been steadily happening for years.

Indeed, but I'm pretty sure the catastrophic decline in the number of E2 visas granted by a third over a year or so got started shortly after I arrived.

MarcosZeitola wrote:Write down your life story. It will be like reverse Forest Gump; instead of a retarded man miraculously succeeding it everything, it will be about a normal guy somehow managing to fail at everything.

But really I am succeeding at everything, except then the corner of the world I am in comes crashing down around my ears. Sages have often mused about the purpose of this world. It would appear the answer is that its purpose is to be a practical joke on me personally.

If it's predictable, choose an industry to invest in, then short the stock for the company you work for and for other companies in the industry.

MrMan wrote:If it's predictable, choose an industry to invest in, then short the stock for the company you work for and for other companies in the industry.

Yeah, the trouble is as I pointed out above that short positions are time sensitive and with my luck are likely to expire before I can cash in.

I think the issue here is because of the way the economy is nowadays with boom and bust cycles. Most of the industries you mentioned are strongly affected by boom and bust cycles. Look at real estate; when it's hot, it's a great time to make money, but when real estate collapses, it's a horrible industry to be in. Same with mining; because of so much intervention in the economy by the federal reserve you get these huge price swings in commodities, to where when it collapses, you have to abandon the industry entirely.

I don't know much about computer programming or biotech, so I can't comment on those. As for teaching EFL in Korea, that's just an industry that is on a slow and steady downturn...that's never going back to what it used to be IMHO.

There are very few industries these days that aren't affected by boom and bust cycles. Perhaps healthcare? Or maybe food service; everyone needs to eat and people love to get drunk, although that's not really a career.

I actually don't think your problem is as uncommon and bizarre as you think it is.

ezinho wrote:I think the issue here is because of the way the economy is nowadays with boom and bust cycles. Most of the industries you mentioned are strongly affected by boom and bust cycles. Look at real estate; when it's hot, it's a great time to make money, but when real estate collapses, it's a horrible industry to be in. Same with mining; because of so much intervention in the economy by the federal reserve you get these huge price swings in commodities, to where when it collapses, you have to abandon the industry entirely.

The uncanny thing is not so much what happens in the various industries but the timing of events and the fact that a lot of seemingly unrelated factors line up to bring them about.

I was in biotech boom 1.0, dot com boom 1.0 and 2.0 and maybe a little in English teaching boom 1.0.

The key to working is reinventing yourself. Like at the moment London needs 400 paramedics NOW.