The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future As

A Prospector

Hi there--what the heck is that animal doing outside the window? A mule? Where you'd... nevermind--I should've learned not to ask questions like that. So--you want to be a muleskinner? No? A prospector? Okay, just let me see, I know there's a info sheet somewhere....

Here it is: "So, to start your lucrative career in prospecting, you'll need to find safe passage through the badlands and eventually make it to San Francisco, where you'll find everything you need to strike it rich up in the Klondike at Jones Mercantile..." What the hell is the date on this thing anyway? Nevermind--things are different now. You probably won't even need that mule. It may go something like this:

You'll need a degree or two in various geology-related disciplines, and then you'll probably have to mortgage your parents' home to get the advanced equipment you need to really make a go of prospecting. Don't expect to have a fixed address anytime soon--you'll wander the most forsaken parts of the earth looking for precious metals, oil, or anything else that will pay the exhorbitant expenses you're running up.

Eventually, you find something good--a load of bauxite, unusual for North America. You play it cool--instead of just filing a claim, you manage to buy up the property cheaply. Now you're ready to make the big bucks, but your money's getting very tight. You get a couple of investors to help keep you afloat, in return for a larger percentage than you want to give them. Just when you think you've got things ready to go--an aluminum manufacturer has already promised you a good price for your bauxite--the roadblocks begin.

First, it's the fact that there's an outstanding claim by a native band who says the land is a combination ritual/burial site--that forces you and your partners to invest heavily in lawyers and eventually buy your way into a settlement. Then the Sierra Legal Defence Fund, along with a coalition of 12 other environmental lobby groups, name your project as the #1 potential environmental disaster of the 21st century. Your cries of "what about the damned rainforest" don't help at the frequent press scrums, either.

Even your deep-pocketed partners are starting to sweat as the costs of creating a large wilderness park--the environmentalists' price to stop picketing your road--become clear. More partners are brought on board, and your share of the project's potential profits is cut to a mere 15%. Still, you reason, there should be enough to save you from bankruptcy, and perhaps cover the cost of two or three years of more fruitless prospecting.

A couple of days before you sign your big contract with the aluminum company, there are simultaneous announcements of huge new bauxite finds in Australia and Brazil. The price of bauxite plummets, and it becomes clear that the cost of extracting material from your mine with North American labor will be much more than it will cost to exploit Brazilian workers--so your project shudders to a halt.

Like rats from a sinking ship, your partners cut their losses and sell their interest in the mine to a large multinational holding company. You resist--you hit up all your friends and relatives for cash, and sell everything you own, in a futile attempt to remain solvent. Eventually, you sell your share to the multinational too, for a pitiful amount that doesn't even pay for your bankruptcy lawyer.

A month later, a civil war starts in Brazil--some suspect the multinational holding company is funding the rebels--and your discovery is once again profitable, as Brazil is suddenly too unstable for the taste of the aluminum cartels who now turn their eyes back north. The holding company makes 3000% profit in the space of six weeks.

You squeak out a living under the poverty line by "witching" wells for ranchers for the rest of your pathetic life. You might wanna think about selling the mule...