What a 25 year old SHOULD Do

With the exception of a doctor repairing our body, is there anything that relieves us of worry like getting our motor vehicle repaired? I thought about this after a long-distance tow to town, recently. Both the van and the trailer were towed, so I could sleep overnight in the repair shop's parking lot. Being stranded at an inopportune place could cause a lot of worry for an RVer.

I envied the owner of the repair shop. He did a job that was tangible and crucial to his customers. Contrast that with some insignificant college boy in a cubicle at a large organization, wasting his life by writing reports that no one will read, attending useless meetings, following arbitrary organizational rules, laughing at the boss's jokes whether they are funny or not, and hoping to dodge layoffs in middle age. Of course there are a number of reasons why my mechanic might think that running a car-repair business is a hard way to make a living. Do you think he subscribes to the one-time American Dream of sending his son to college, as if that really were a step up in the world? (Maybe it used to be.)

Maybe my mechanic would be happier to be an employee rather than a business owner. Well, at least he has that choice. Joe SalaryMan, in the cubicle of a corporation or government agency, probably doesn't. My mechanic will never have to worry about which country the car is designed or built in; same with the parts. His job can not be replaced with slave labor in East Asia.

A specialized college degree might force it's victim to work where ever the job is, rather than where he really wants to live. He'll probably end up at corporate headquarters in some ghastly megalopolis. Over the course of a lifetime, literally years of his life will be squandered fighting metropolitan traffic. In contrast, the auto mechanic could probably find a job in any location. (Thanks for pointing this out, Sondra.)

An automobile mechanic is also in harmony with a societal megatrend. There seems to be no limit to how complex and expensive automobiles will be legislated to become, in the future. The soccer moms in the suburbs hear that Candidate X wants to mandate higher fuel economy standards; so she thinks, "Gee, what a nice guy. He wants to protect the environment." Meanwhile another government agency, the safety Nazis, mandate yet more safety equipment. (And the suburban soccer mom says, "Gee, what nice folks, they want to protect the Children.") Generally safety equipment increases the weight of the vehicle, which cancels the effect of the fuel economy mandates.

So who wins, besides government regulators? They have turned a mechanical contraption into a financial and bureaucratic "perpetual motion machine." (Eric Peters writes a lot about this issue.) 

As the average length of motor vehicle "mortgages" increases, the financial arm of the automobile companies will rake it in. But many people will go into sticker shock over the price of a new pickup truck and will refuse to take out a long term mortgage on it. Instead, they'll plow several thousand dollars per year into repairs for their older, high-mileage vehicle. So your mechanic wins.

This trend seems endless. A mindset has overtaken society; it doesn't ask about Benefits versus Costs. It doesn't even consider the concept of Diminishing Returns. It looks at environmental and safety issues as holy, religious things. Although he isn't responsible for this insanity, the guy who will laugh all the way to the bank is your auto mechanic. And that, young man, is what you should do for a living. Don't go to college.