Hi Tom,
I certainly won't disagree with you on this, but I do have to wonder how many of these conditions are "inevitable" as a result of both the social and structural effects of globalization. Let me toss out a case in point.Originally Posted by Tom Odom
In 1968, North America began to show a breakdown in the post WW II employment patterns and social expectations called the "post-war compromise". A large part of this breakdown came about as a result of the economic reconstruction of Germany and Japan after the war, while the US and Canada hadn't modernized most of their manufacturing capacity (and also had too much - BTW, this was most apparent in the automotive industry, but also showed up in others as well). Now, the post war compromise was linked to a fairly explicit social contract that can be summed up as "loyalty for security" (basically a form of the Authority Ranking [AR] social relationship; military organization is another form of the same AR relationship; see Alan P. Fiske's work on Human Sociality).
This relationship was pretty much shot by 1975, and was generally recognized at the cultural and social levels by 1982/83, when it was in the process of being replaced with a different form of social relationship - Equality Matching (EM), aka reciprocity and/or networks (BTW, very similar to a form of neo-tribalism). In this setting, loyalty isn't given to organizations, it is given to personal networks. If you are interested, take a look at al of the literature on job search, which is how this little bit of cultural adaptation / engineering happened. As another comment, not that this shift coincides in the US with the abandonment of the draft and the shift to the volunteer Army.
Now one of the characteristics of EM systems is that loyalty tends to be personalized - it is to individuals (including yourself, family, friends, network, etc.) and not to abstract institutions. This type of relationship is dominant in the Gen Y'ers (<30) who form the bulk of current junior service members, amongst whom "consulting" does not mean "unemployed" but, rather, has connotations of "freedom" and a balance between work and life. Most Gen Y'ers are also quite aware that hey need requisite training in order to pursue this type of life, and look towards the education system, loosely construed, to provide it. We can see it in the attitude of students at universities and colleges today and also, I suspect, in the attitudes of many junior officers and enlisted.
In this type of social environment, it is, to my mind, inevitable that we would see a rise in the PMC market, with the emphasis on the "consulting" angle. Anyway, that's my 2 cents.
Marc
. I did my dissertation on this topic but aimed at the creation and spread of the career counselling industry - then I worked in it as a consultant for 3 years (along with teaching and web design) after I got my PhD. 
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