Is entrepreneurship the new safety net? In a viewpoint column this week, Chris Farrell suggests that corporate careers have become more uncertain than ever, and young people are looking to microenterprises for stability.

Corporate loyalty used to work both ways, with loyal employees being rewarded with long-term job security. That model began to fall apart with mass layoffs in the 1970s, Farrell notes. Now that pay cuts and furloughs -- once shunned even by corporations laying off workers -- have become commonplace, he suggests, workers see less value and stability in corporate careers. Along with bolstering savings, workers are looking to microbusinesses as a hedge against the risk of layoffs or pay cuts:

The other lesson speaks directly to the emerging DIY mindset of the post-meltdown era. Instead of relying on the onetime holy grail of employment—a good-paying job with full benefits—workers may find themselves becoming microentrepreneurs, especially those in creative businesses. For instance, many recent college graduates own their own "independent" music company on a social networking site. Small, entrepreneurial ventures provide another safety net, giving workers a small measure of control over their fate in an increasingly unstable environment.

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Adds Dave Ulrich, professor of business at the University of Michigan and a partner at the RBL Group, a consulting firm: "Plan for a career mosaic. Careers used to be linear with stages or steps that people could anticipate. Now they are a mosaic where people move into and out of positions and jobs."

That mosaic now includes your own microenterprise on the side—just in case.

The barriers to entrepreneurship during this recession are lower than they have been during any prior downturn. If you're out of work, the opportunity cost of starting a business is diminished. It's easy to see why some people find entrepreneurship less risky than employment, as counterintuitive as that may sound.

Unfortunately, the country hasn't caught up with this rising entrepreneurial workforce in a lot of ways. Our tax code and especially our health care system still favor traditional employment over entrepreneurship.

Farrell's entire column is worth a read.

Write this one down in your diary. A federal agency has actually done something useful.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is banning so-called robocalls effective September 1st, at least most of them.

You know what I'm talking about. We all get them, typically during the dinner hour to maximize our annoyance. As if it's not bad enough getting a phone soliticitation, the ultimate insult is to get one from an automated voice. I would say it's obnoxious. But, that gives the word "obnoxious" a bad name.

The FTC has heard our cries.

Starting September 1st, it will be illegal to use automated phone telemarketing pitches, with a few exceptions.

1. Companies and organizations can still use them for the sole purpose of dispensing information, like an upate on your flight or your doctor's office with an appointment reminder. Okay, that makes sense.

2. Calls for monetary gain are still allowed by charities, politicians (yuck!), telephone companies (yuck squared!) and banks (The stimulus money wasn't enough? Beyond yuck!).

For those exceptions to the rules, there are some new rules however.

- There must be an opt-out feature so a caller can stop the madness.

- They must let the phone ring four times before dumping the call. This will hopefully curtail the "ring and run" strategy to find out if anyone's picking up before wasting the time of a real human being cold calling that same number.

- The recorded message must begin within two seconds of picking up the phone.

Violators can be fined up to $16,000 per call.

Sounds wonderful. Not very enforceable; but wonderful.