I've done manual labor in both construction and at a lumber mill.
Invariably, the following happened:
- I was given grunt work as a I was the new/junior guy
- Did this for about 1.5 weeks
- After the above, someone (usually the owner's wife) would say something like: "Instead of Alex doing grunt work, why doesn't he helps us <fix technology thing>"
And that ranged from "order us a new computer" to "fix the North American Controls lumber sorter machine".
My point is:
Being able to solve complex problems is a surprisingly transferable skill. It's so transferable that even in the trades, if you can solve those problems, people will identify it and rapidly move you to the most complex problems they have.
Indeed, university educations go with you everywhere, they're one of the few stores of big wealth that cannot be seized at a border.
Whereas, okay, the whole reason we are paying electricians so much is because unions in California and New York, where real estate is the largest and second largest economic sector, prevent you from doing almost exactly that: transferring a prefabricated piece of a building from China across a border with all the work built into it, same as everything else.
You can split hairs on my metaphor here but don't miss the point. There's no scarcity of labor to correctly install safe wires, whether it is in datacenters or homes or electronics, nor scarcity of innovations in logistics or whatever to transfer that labor from places where it is cheap to places that need to build. It's all guild feuds.
RFK Jr spent a bunch of time lambasting how less American children needed to go to university these days and focus on getting a job, buying a home, starting a family (hah).
Somewhere in amongst those posts, his wife posted some selfies of them at their kids' Harvard graduation.
They very much want the Eloi and the Morlock, and are counting on law enforcement/military/ICE to keep the Morlock in check. "My kids need to go to college, yours need to learn how to fix their cars and build them new homes."
alexpotato · · focus · HN ↗
Invariably, the following happened:
- I was given grunt work as a I was the new/junior guy
- Did this for about 1.5 weeks
- After the above, someone (usually the owner's wife) would say something like: "Instead of Alex doing grunt work, why doesn't he helps us <fix technology thing>"
And that ranged from "order us a new computer" to "fix the North American Controls lumber sorter machine".
My point is: Being able to solve complex problems is a surprisingly transferable skill. It's so transferable that even in the trades, if you can solve those problems, people will identify it and rapidly move you to the most complex problems they have.
doctorpangloss · · focus · HN ↗
You can split hairs on my metaphor here but don't miss the point. There's no scarcity of labor to correctly install safe wires, whether it is in datacenters or homes or electronics, nor scarcity of innovations in logistics or whatever to transfer that labor from places where it is cheap to places that need to build. It's all guild feuds.
FireBeyond · · focus · HN ↗
Somewhere in amongst those posts, his wife posted some selfies of them at their kids' Harvard graduation.
They very much want the Eloi and the Morlock, and are counting on law enforcement/military/ICE to keep the Morlock in check. "My kids need to go to college, yours need to learn how to fix their cars and build them new homes."