Right Livelihood, Free Agency, and Lifestyle Migrants

FACT SHEET

Right Livelihood, Free Agency, and Lifestyle Migrants

Rural America is hardly the only place to witness the rapidly changing workplace and the type of employment some are now seeking. However, rural America does have many qualities which lend itself to those searching for a quality of life over jumbo-sizing their mortgage, smog-alert days, or commute times.

If it would all end tomorrow, who wants to be sitting around in a cubicle?

- According to Dan Pink, author of Free Agent Nation, there's a growing number of people who are asking this simple question. He defines a "free agent" as "somebody who works for him or herself. The ranks of free agents include the self-employed, freelancers, "e-lancers," independent contractors, home-based businesspeople, solo practitioners, independent professionals, and operators of very small businesses -- just about anybody who works untethered from a large organization." Source: Dan Pink, Free Agent Nation

About 1 out of every 4 American workers are a free agent.

- 33 million working Americans work, in one way or another, for themselves as free agents. Source: Dan Pink, Free Agent Nation

Home-based small businesses are booming.

- "Someone starts a home-based business every 11 seconds ... Those home-based businesses are raking in $401 billion in annual revenues." -- Faith Popcorn, Cashing Out in the Popcorn Report

Running a business or earning a living is more than about making money.

- Right livelihood, taken from a Buddhist concept, "reflects a belief that each person should follow an occupation consistent with the principles of honest living, treating with respect other people and the natural world. It means being responsible for the consequences of one's actions, living lightly on the earth and taking no more than a fair share of its resources." Source: Right Livelihood Award Foundation

- "Many of the young people who left to raise their families and seek higher salaries in the large cities are calling home to see what's changed here. They want to know about the price and availability of housing, insurance, food, healthcare, high quality education ... all those factors that make up the essense of life's quality. They want to make a living, not just a salary." -- Rick Killion, Editor of Prairie Business

Rather than focus on earning a living, more and more people are re-making their lives.

- "The so-called rural renaissance has been driven by non-economic migration—relocation patterns that reflect decision making on the individual level motivated by something other than economic concerns."
-- Dr. Brian Hoey, Research Fellow at the University of Michigan Center for Ethnography of Everyday Life, in Michigan Today, August, 2004 article.

- "Because lifestyle migrants are typically those who have been downsized, displaced or voluntarily downshifted from other, frequently corporate, jobs, this has meant that they generally begin in urban or suburban areas. But it's a mistake to overemphasize the impact of economic factors in this group's relocation to the country. Lifestyle migrants "go ex-urban" as a deliberate step on a personal quest to remake themselves." -- Dr. Brian Hoey, Research Fellow at the University of Michigan Center for Ethnography of Everyday Life, in Michigan Today, August, 2004 article.

- "Lifestyle migration is a category or subset of this larger phenomenon of non-economic migration that I use to emphasize the central concerns that include lifestyle and a concern for quality of life. Relocation is a necessary part of the equation for lifestyle migration. -- Dr. Brian Hoey, Research Fellow at the University of Michigan Center for Ethnography of Everyday Life, in Michigan Today, August, 2004 article.

- "...people of all ages will take a fresh look at lives wasted on accumulating material goods and will, instead, opt for new lives that celebrate the truly valuable things in life. Things like fresh air, clean water, low crime rates, orderly streets, dedicated teachers and professionals and businesspeople ... all contributing to an inner satisfaction that isn't contingent on more money and more toys." -- Rick Killion, Editor of Prairie Business

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