job hiring for 2016

can you freaking believe it? i'm on a tedx stage; how cool is that? (laughter) (applause) and can you freaking believe it, we're actually livingin the golden age of our species. i am in absolute awe of what we have done. if you and i were chattingabout ten years ago, and having a conversation,and you told me that there would be a carbuilt in a software platform

that i could summon with my smartphoneand could do zero to 60 in three seconds, travel 300 miles, have no gas,run on electricity, park itself and fuel itselfwith the hose in the garage? you think i'd believe you?no freaking way. it's called tesla. if you and i were chattingten years ago and you told me that in this strife-ridden world of ours,with all these people dying, that life expectancywould climb by 50 per cent across the world, and 25 per centn the western world,

would i believe you? no. united nations just showedits latest release of data: six years increase in life expectancyover the last 12, globally, three years in the western world. if you told me ten years ago that a lot of cities in this world were getting 15 per cent of their foodthrough vertical farms that use 99 per cent less landand 90 per cent less water?

i wouldn't believe you, but it's true. if you told me more than ten years ago, that the united states supreme court would guarantee the rightof gay marriages? it would be freaking crazy,we talk about the united states! and that the transgender people - i didn't know whatthe word "transgender" meant - would be fighting for their own bathrooms? and the european union was protectingthe rights of the middle east refugees?

then i would say you're certifiably crazy. we can regale each otherwith stories like this for the next couple of hours: we are truly livingin the golden age of our species. and as we live and breathethrough this golden time, we are, as most humans,want to go to the place of risk. and i'd argue that our number one risk is the lack of meaningful work. some would say it's food:i'd say no, vertical farming. there's some who would say it's water.

i'd say no, nanotechnology membranes turn sea water potable. and this is not in the future:it's currently happening in india with millions of litresof fresh potable water being created on a daily basis. some would say energy, i'd say no; solar energy has reached the one per centtipping point, and it's accelerating. solar cells have reduced the costby 99.7 per cent in the last six years, and it's only beginning. some would sayit's global warming, and i say no;

because there are alreadymultiple solutions to it, including microbes that can pullcarbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, and create energy alongside it. it's stuck in us congressand bioethical issues because it's a life form. or georgetown university,who's come up with blocks, carbon blocks that we suckout of the atmosphere and bury deep in. lack of meaningful work,i'd argue, is our number one risk. it is who we are as a people.

it's what makes you and me,it's our evolution. meaningful work is a beautiful thing because it is individually definedby each one of us, and what it means for each one of us. this is not a story about anythingother than you and me as individuals. we define what we mean by meaningful work. for some of us, it might bean economic engine so we can play and we can growand learn and procreate; for others it might bea yearning for significance;

for others it might bean ability to serve humanity. it is our choice, who we are. when i was telling you this story,about me selling the company to ibm, that should have been my crowning moment:the day the deal closed. it was the saddest day of my life. it took me months to recover. my 40-year-old friend, lover, wife,best friend finally lost her temper at me. it took two-and-a-half months, and more than half those nights,i fell asleep crying.

it was hard: i had lost meaning. and that's the major risk we have today, simply because jobs are being decimated at an accelerating pace. that's the noise you hear in the usin the presidential elections today. somebody no lessthan stephen hawkins said, "artificial intelligence is going to ripthe fabric of our society as we know it." between artificial intelligence,machine learning, robotics, some of the stuffyou spend today watching:

jobs are getting decimated. and they are not coming back. so what's the solution? before i get there, let's describefor a second who we are: we're mammals, as we've learnt today. but we're different from other mammals because we have this notionof intelligence and conscience. we have the ability to dream,and create these mental constructs. these mental constructsis what makes us happy,

it makes us who we are. everything of importance in our life,i'd argue, is a mental construct. be it faith. nation states are simply linesin the sand, or on a map. faith, religion - i would argue,family is a mental construct. and so the two mental constructs i wishto change and break today are as follows: the first one is, meaningful work has been with usforever and will be with us forever. it's not jobs.

jobs are simply a subset of work. the word "job" itself is lessthan 400 years old, and did not come into our lexicon until the beginning of the industrialrevolution, about 250 years ago. jobs create money for us. but when we lose a job, all we can dois find another one in the same vertical, in a slightly adjacent field, or move to different verticaland take our skills with us, or migrate. this country is richin its heritage of migrants

creating the wealthand the greatness of this nation, and the city is rooted in that. but jobs do not make work, necessarily. work is something we create for ourselves. this paradigm shift has to change, because the people in societyare changing alongside it: look at the data. in the last 30 years in the united states, the working population, definedbetween the ages of 22 and 60,

increased by 240 per cent. the number of full-time jobsincreased by 180 per cent. unemployment ratestill sits at 5 per cent. what's the gap? it's this whole categoryof independent workers. people went out thereand created work for themselves. in the days of old, it would bethe temporary staff, the temporary secretary, the day labourer. today, it's way more than that:

it's the entrepreneur;it's a professional athlete; it's the entertainer; it is the academic professorwho creates literature and course curriculum,makes over a million dollars a year. we create work for ourselves. that's where our dreams are,that's where our aspirations are, that's what our identity is,that's who we are as human beings. let's break that mental constructthat jobs equal work. no, jobs are a subset of work.

people create work. trudeau does not create jobs: he creates an environmentwhere work is created, and we go out there and seekthe jobs that somebody gives us. that's the mental constructwe have to break. the second mental constructwe have to break is in two pieces:it's called entitlement. and part 2 of that is, forget it:entitlement is here to stay. >from the moment we were born

we were entitled to suckleat our mother's breast that gave us life! entitlement is who we are: as we have grown through society,different programs have come in. when we were a junior species,we relied on communities and families to provide for us whenwe couldn't provide for ourselves. then we relied on the government. we need to discard all formsof social programs, and replace it with one: universal basic income.

which is the individual rightfor every citizen to unconditionally get an incomefrom the state, on a regular basis. as a capitalist, as a business owner,i demand that out of my leader. i am willing to pay higher taxes for that. without it, we will destroythe fabric of society as we know it today. universal basic income is not aboutincreasing dependence; it's about meeting the maslow's hierarchyof needs at the lowest level. universal basic incomeis something we can afford. universal basic incomewill make us greater.

our greatest innovations weren't fromthe hungry, homeless people who didn't have shelter: our greatest innovations - whether it be the internet,that was done by the us army; or the smartphone,which got perfected by apple, began by blackberry, in waterloo. these weren't homelesspeople that did this. they were people with jobs, who lived in a nice houseand drove wonderful cars.

this notion that this entitlementmakes us smaller and weaker is absolutely untrue. and so you and me, together,have to start this revolution. which is, let's think of workto take us to our highest aspirations and bring us meaning. and let us demand from our leadersthis notion of universal basic income. it's not new: switzerland is currentlygoing through a referendum on it. the data that came outof manitoba, in the '70s, had showed that minimal income

created stronger cultural affirmationin that community. it allowed less resource uses,higher graduation rates, healthier people, lower crime rates. we have to change, we have to demandthat from our leaders, because our species' wellbeingin the golden age can move a lot further,a lot farther, a lot further. wherever our destiny takes us,whether it is transhumanism, where the body fuses withnon-biological objects to make us greater, whether it is singularity,or whether we traverse the stars,

as i look into the future,my hopes and dreams, and my prayers are thatmay we find a way to find meaningnot only in our lives, but meaning in the universe itself. good luck, god bless you. (applause)

Fahmy Herbals @ 04.23