So give up on making a lot of money, and just find yourself a nice government or corporate job with plenty of benefits, security and a nice pension. Oops…I think they’re plugging up that loophole. How about starting a business, instead? Yeah, that’s a no-risk option.

Or you can just plow everything back into your career. Send your kids to college. Get an MBA. Spend all your money on training, education, tools, the best materials and infrastructure so you can be more valuable and productive in the future. That is, if your profession doesn’t get outsourced or automated or NAFTA’d or otherwise become obsolete before the future gets here.

Its all rigged. Nothing is safe because people who know the game better than you do are always gaming the system, no matter what game you decide to play. And there are enough of them that you can count on there always being more of them guessing right than you possibly can. The horse race is always crooked, but remember, if nobody, or everybody, knows that, then it doesn’t matter. You can always get lucky and bet on the right horse.

The truth is that there is no way to predict the future because you will never have all the information you need, or any guarantee you would use it properly even if you did. You can avoid doing stupid things, but you have no assurance you’re doing the right thing. All you can do is rely on your intuition and your wits, stay a moving target, don’t paint yourself into a corner, and hope you get lucky. If you don’t, you can always blame it on all the evil forces that are victimizing and conspiring against you. And if you do guess right, through no fault of your own, you get to feel smug and self-satisfied and look down your nose at all the fools who weren’t as clever, hard-working, responsible, creative, bold and ambitious as you were.