When it comes to opportunity, what appeals to you most?
With so are many aspects to it, opportunity is an exciting concept to ponder.
Perhaps you are most attracted to the soaring prospect of hope that opportunity can present. Hope for a good life, hope to make a new start, hope to see your dream come true.
For those fleeing war-torn countries and narrow-minded societies, perhaps their hope is for peace and a place where others are open to new or different ideas. Certainly the opportunity to shift from a state of relentless stress and tension to one of freedom and relaxation is a compelling one.
Then there’s the prospect of opportunity that a job can offer. I’m talking about a good job here, not the kind that neither pays enough or gives enough hours to make a decent living. What really provides opportunity is a long-term and sustainable job; the kind that won’t disappear with the rise and fall of fickle stock markets, the kind that makes you feel good about going to work and contributing to society in a meaningful sort of way.
Jobs like this fulfill our basic human needs of food, shelter, community, and purpose — not only the worker but also for the recipient of the effort. Add in a reasonable profit for the employer, and you’ve got one of those ideal win-win-win situations.
If you can’t land a job like this, then you might think about creating one of your own. With entrepreneurship alive and well in Canada, creating incomes for ourselves and others is constrained only by our ability and willingness to identify people’s needs and get the job done. Hopefully though, for long-term job sustainability, those needs identified and our way of fulfilling them will be of good intention.
When they’re not, that’s when you get into some very expensive opportunity costs. Ah, yes, the other side of the coin isn’t always sunshine and roses. The opportunity to save money on production by outsourcing jobs to less developed countries might be a great way to improve a company’s bottom line, but at what cost?
First, local jobs are lost to an unfamiliar and far-away workforce often willing to accept cheaper wages and poorer working conditions. Second, this brings us to a huge, and often invisible, opportunity cost: that of exporting the costs of pollution and other risks that less-powerful people are willing to accept as their lot in life.
Although I am grateful to live in Canada where we have environmental and workplace laws in place, our offshore hiring practices begs the question: what gives us the right to expect someone else to suffer from rampant pollution or other dangerous conditions just so we can more readily afford to purchase a pretty set of new dishes, or fast fashion, or the latest electronic gizmo? Think uber-smoggy Beijing to catch my drift.
This brings us to international trade agreements, where there are both opportunities and opportunity costs. These trade deals can be very exciting or very scary. The kind that have us stoop to meet the lowest common denominator, especially when dealing with human and environmental rights, are the scary kind. Very scary.
But, what if we opted instead to strive for the highest common denominator and follow the lead of an advanced way of doing things? Now that’s exciting! So, do we prefer fast and dirty, or would we rather support fair wages and sustainable practices? International trade deals can be worded either way.
It’s up to us to tell our governments what we think is the right way to proceed.
Working towards a world of sustainable opportunity—now that’s in our best interest.
For more in your best interest, follow Sheelagh @sheesays or visit www.ideagarden.net.
