I have included the phrase “how to get a job” in the title of this chapter because the cynics who infest my publisher’s marketing department demanded it, as they wished to exploit for profit the obsessive insecurity that nearly all Earthlings feel concerning this issue. But now that you have fallen for their ploy and shelled out your precious lucre for the book out of the naïve belief that it might help you “get a job,” you might as well know that I am not going to waste either my time or yours with such a completely irrelevant discussion.
Well, before you run back to the store and demand a refund, there are two things you need to know: (a) My decision in this matter is fully justified, and (b) this book is being sold under nonrefundable terms. So, since there is nothing you can do about (b), allow me to console you by explaining (a).
There is no point writing a chapter about “how to get a job” on Mars because the problem does not exist. I know that this statement must sound unbelievable to you, coming as you do from a planet where your primary lifelong concern has been to find a way to convince some institution to grant you a livelihood in exchange for service, but that is not how things work here. On Earth, you no doubt spent years or even decades of your life enrolled in innumerable programs whose advertised purpose was to “prepare” you for various professions but whose real purpose was to exclude you from such work until you had “paid your dues.” Then, armed with a sufficient number of certificates of submission so acquired, you might hope to go forth and prevail in your desperate effort to beg someone to allow you to validate the potential utility of your existence through the gracious allowance of permission to do something useful.
On Mars, in contrast, no one is interested in blocking you from exercising your talent. If there is something useful that you can do, there is no web of red tape to hold you back. No one is going to ask to see your certificates before they “let” you work. You don’t need anyone’s permission to do anything; you just need to be able to do it.
This startling difference between the two planets in the way things are done is not because we Martians are so much more intelligent, quick-witted, open-minded, fair, and practical than Earthlings—though of course, we are. It is simply a matter of economics. Earth has a labor surplus, while Mars has a labor shortage. Since the time of the First Landing, the dominant reality of social life on our planet has been that there has always been too much work to do and not enough people to do it. Nothing is more precious on Mars than human labor time. That is why none of the anti-innovation regulations that tie up everything on Earth are in effect here. That’s right, none; whether you’re talking about the restrictions on “work destroying” technologies like meta-robotics or hypercrops, “methods stabilization” requirements, or the employment qualification and reservation laws, no one here—not even the Mars Authority—has the slightest interest in their enforcement. There is simply too much to do.
The situation, I am told, is directly analogous to that prevailing in old America, back in the period of its open frontier. Because land out west was there for the taking for anyone willing to strike out on their own, there was a perennial labor shortage in the more settled areas. This drove many employers to offer pay rates that were unmatched on the world scale, and to try to maximize the productivity of their workforce through the encouragement of technological ingenuity. Others, however, met the challenge of a tight labor market by recruiting indentured help from Europe through the offer of paid overseas transport, or even by hiring raiders to seize and enslave involuntary workers from Africa.
It’s the same way here. The issue is not one of “getting a job.” Believe me, if you want to work, there is no shortage of people here who would be delighted to put you to work. On Earth you were unnecessary. Here you are wanted. That can be a good thing. The key, however, is that you must choose the right job.
First, let’s talk about some of the wrong jobs. Under no circumstances should you, as a new immigrant, accept employment from either the Mars Authority or one of the Sisterhood syndicates.
If you go to work for the Mars Authority, you will be generally viewed as a potential stool pigeon, and never be accepted in the mainstream of Martian society. And while it is true that middle- and high-level MA personnel can do fairly well for themselves by accepting gratuities in exchange for noninterference with unregulated activities conducted in the public interest, it is very unlikely that you will be placed in a position where you can avail yourself of such opportunities. Rather, they will probably put you to work cleaning out blockages in the sewer pipes in New Plymouth, and make use of obscure clauses in the fine print of your employment contract to impose “disciplinary” measures that keep you trapped in such work forever.
If you are male, it goes without saying that you don’t want to work for the Sisterhood, because you will be limited by code to the three lowest levels of their thirty-three-level organization. That means nothing but low-paid muscle work until such time as your accumulated knowledge of their ways leads them to feel it would be best that your employment were concluded by means of some sacrificial diversion operation directed in the name of “the Higher Good.” If you are female, your prospects with them are not much better; as a new immigrant who doesn’t know squat, they are likely to see you as being useful for just one thing. If you want to do that, you can make a lot more working on your own. (For further details on the latter subject, see Natasha Charity Reynold’s excellent work, A Lady’s Life Among Prospectors: How I Became the World’s Richest Woman and Most Notable Philanthropist, Random House, New Plymouth, 2113.) Perhaps later, when you have developed experience, property, and connections that would allow you to be taken seriously and offered entrance to their organization at the twenty-sixth level or above, you might consider accepting a position. But until then, keep your distance.
Note to any syndicate members who might be reading this book:
Dear Sisters:
Please do not take any of the comments in the previous paragraph amiss. As you know, I have always been both a good customer and a friend, voluntarily providing useful information, paying my bills promptly, and delivering favors upon request. By no means do I wish to imply that I believe that any of your activities are wrong. After all, business is business, and you know your business. And certainly I, as both a businessman and a Martian patriot, appreciate the value of your many fine endeavors, and most particularly, your prompt retirements of those MA officials who choose to request gratuities beyond the accepted rates. Your vigilance in this area has done wonders to curtail governmental abuse, and all of us in the Martian community applaud you for it. Yet the newbies reading this book are my customers, and I feel it is my duty to both you and them to steer the men away from a course that might lead them to become liabilities to you. As for the women, surely you can see it is in your interest that I advise them to hold off joining until Mars has toughened them up a bit. Think of it as free pre-enrollment screening and training. After all, you don’t want your organization glutted by weaklings. So peace, sisters, and onward toward the Higher Good.
Whew, that was close. I almost forgot to stick that in.
To continue, I also recommend that you decline any job offer from S&R or similar corporations. They are dead ends and strictly for losers. Furthermore, if you are one of those for whom S&R has paid interplanetary transport in exchange for a seven-year indenture, I advise you to scrimp and save and moonlight other jobs to put together the funds to buy your way free of your contract as soon as possible. You didn’t come to Mars to be a sales clerk.
So, if government, crime, and corporate servitude are all out of bounds, what’s left?
Good, old-fashioned, honest, hard work, that’s what.
While government, crime, and corporate dronery may exhaust the list of occupational paths available on Earth, this is by no means true on Mars. Ours is a planet with a new civilization that is growing by leaps and bounds, and there are any number of things you can do.
In the first place, to take the most obvious, there is construction work. New settlements are going up everywhere on Mars, and the demand for construction and well-drilling teams is terrific. As a result, construction crew recruiters are everywhere, fiercely competing with each other for available labor. If you are willing to do some hard work, you’re hired. As a newbie who desperately needs to learn the ropes, you should seriously consider accepting such an offer. By joining a construction crew, you’ll make some good friends with good people and get solid training in how to use all the basic outdoor gear, as well as a number of specialized tools, all in a work environment where help is readily available if, or rather when, you screw up. The pay is not too bad either, and you can supplement your income significantly by selling off spare equipment to other teams when the boss isn’t looking.
In just a few months of such honest, hard work, you will accumulate a set of skills that will place you in high demand among contractors all over the planet, enabling you to charge top rates for your time. Alternatively, you will have gained both the experience and nest-egg capital needed to join with a few of your pals to start your own construction team. After that, your future is secure.
If you get a spaceport job, be sure you know the launch schedule. (List of Illustrations 10.1)
But once you’ve learned how to handle yourself outdoors, you can do better—because if you’re looking for quick money on Mars, the real action is not in construction but in prospecting. I mean really, why waste your time drilling a well when you can make as much, or more, simply by finding one? In fact, why bother looking for water at all, when there is gold, platinum, and rhodium to be found? Because there is.
Mars, like the Earth, has had a complex geologic history, including all the volcanic, hydrological, and microbial processes necessary to create concentrated mineral ore. Mars, however, today offers much greater concentrations of readily available precious metal ores than is currently the case on the home planet—because the terrestrial ores have been heavily scavenged by humans for the past five thousand years. In contrast, our world has remained pristine, unravaged by such barbaric pilferers, and thus is generally believed to still possess large surface or near-surface deposits of metallic treasure, including silver, germanium, hafnium, lanthanum, cerium, rhenium, samarium, gallium, gadolinium, gold, palladium, iridium, rubidium, platinum, rhodium, europium, and a host of others. All of these possess sufficient sales value on the terrestrial market that they could potentially be lifted to orbit and transported back to Earth and sold for a substantial profit. While this has not actually been done yet, the fact that it clearly could defines Martian precious-metal ores as a resource of tremendous value. All you have to do to get fantastically rich is to go out, do a little good old-fashioned prospecting work, and stake a claim, which you can sell off to others to utilize. And the beauty of it is that since actual mining operations are still well in the future, it doesn’t matter how much precious metal your claim really contains, or if it contains any at all. Thus your success is virtually guaranteed. This is in marked contrast to the business of geothermal well prospecting, which is much riskier, as such claims may be subjected to attempted exploitation in the relatively near future.
It should be noted that in selling precious-metal mining claims based upon optimistic interpretation of the field data, you are not putting your customer at risk: Assuming he possesses any skill at all at his business, he should be able to resell the property at a considerable profit regardless. Far from harming anyone, by transforming previously worthless geographic locations into marketable property, you are creating wealth, thereby enlarging the pie of well-being that sustains all of humanity. Having done the work to confer this blessing, it simply stands to reason that you should be the one who gets the wealth in question first. The great metropolitan stock exchanges of Earth, which have done so much good—enriching millions of people with trillions of dollars by trading in companies that never produce anything—all work in accord with exactly the same principle.
If, however, you don’t like field geology, are finicky about generating claims that are not necessarily completely proven by every redundant nitpicking scientific test that might academically be desired, or are some kind of holy roller who feels the necessity to actually deliver “useful” goods in exchange for the money you make (such confusion is the result of a poor religious education; the Bible clearly says you can’t serve Mammon and God at the same time, and business is about serving Mammon), there are still plenty of ways you can get in on the prospecting action. One of the best is to go into the business of supplying the prospectors with replacement gear and supplies. You can easily acquire plenty of such equipment at low cost, simply by scavenging the camps of the failures, or alternatively, by picking quitters clean while they are sobbing around the spaceport before they ship back to Earth. Either way, prospectors who know what they are doing will be happy to pay you for the stuff with some of their claims, which you can then mark up handsomely and sell yourself with a clear conscience.
The Martian precious-metals prospecting business is thus a magnificent win-win enterprise, open to participation by people of every skill and character. A truly wondrous gift to our fair planet from the bounty of Nature, it promises to provide excellent income opportunities for all concerned for some time to come.