Author Topic: Please Stop Telling Miners To Learn To Code  (Read 3501 times)

rcjordan

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Please Stop Telling Miners To Learn To Code
« on: December 31, 2019, 10:48:57 PM »

ergophobe

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Re: Please Stop Telling Miners To Learn To Code
« Reply #1 on: January 01, 2020, 03:46:27 AM »
This is a major theme of the Yang campaign.

“You’d be more likely to get punched in the face by one of those truck drivers than have them sign up on your clipboard. So if a politician says, again, we’re going to educate and retrain all Americans for the jobs of the future, they’re essentially lying, and I am not a liar.”
  -- Andrew Yang
https://www.inquisitr.com/5656628/andrew-yang-retraining/

You can't turn truck drivers into coders, Andrew Yang says of job retraining
https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/jobs-automation-andrew-yang

Brad

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Re: Please Stop Telling Miners To Learn To Code
« Reply #2 on: January 01, 2020, 11:29:09 AM »
I have much the same thoughts when politicians and others suggest everybody should go to collage.

buckworks

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Re: Please Stop Telling Miners To Learn To Code
« Reply #3 on: January 01, 2020, 01:53:15 PM »
As a society we should be encouraging trade school at least as much as college. Academic snobbery is not A Good Thing.

A person in the trades who reads widely can end up better educated than many people with academic degrees, and likely with lower student loans.

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The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water." -- John W. Gardner


ergophobe

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Re: Please Stop Telling Miners To Learn To Code
« Reply #4 on: January 01, 2020, 04:00:18 PM »
Agreed. We send too many people to college. I know many people who make really solid livings in the trades. Because they are not also forced to live in outrageously overpriced housing markets, they often have a higher standard of living than a Bay Area engineer.

Of course, we also educate too poorly in high school. I was always surprised in Switzerland how "well educated" my non-college climbing friends were. They commonly knew more about literature and philosophy than my college-educated friends in the US and held jobs mostly in the trades (and made comfortable livings).

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'Your land must be a realm of peace and content, and there must gardeners be in high honour.'
'Not all is well there,' said Frodo, `but certainly gardeners are honoured.'

But I think the larger point is that mid-career coal miners and auto workers are going to be hard-pressed to successfully retrain in anything and get a job without having to pick up their families and move. There are so many obstacles to making the retraining scenario work.

Even if they do all learn a trade and become plumbers, Detroit doesn't need another 10,000 plumbers, nor does West Virginia.
« Last Edit: January 01, 2020, 04:02:18 PM by ergophobe »

Mackin USA

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Re: Please Stop Telling Miners To Learn To Code
« Reply #5 on: January 02, 2020, 10:54:07 AM »
"Academic snobbery is not A Good Thing."

SO TRUE !!!
Mr. Mackin

littleman

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Re: Please Stop Telling Miners To Learn To Code
« Reply #6 on: January 05, 2020, 07:38:21 PM »
OK, so programming may be a stretch, but how about solar panel installation or wind turbine maintenance?

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According to new data, by 2016 it was generating more than US$1.3 trillion in annual revenue and employed approximately 9.5m people – making it the largest green market in the world. It’s been growing rapidly too – between 2013 and 2016, both the industry’s value and employment figures grew by 20%.

...

Our analysis also suggests that in the US, nearly ten times more people were employed in the green economy and its supply chains (9.5m) than employed directly in the fossil fuel industry (roughly 1m) – that is, miners, electricity grid workers, infrastructure manufacturers and construction workers. This wide gap comes despite the US fossil fuel industry receiving huge subsidies, estimated at $649 billion in 2015 alone.

https://ponderwall.com/index.php/2019/11/02/green-economy-growth-trump-fossil/


 

rcjordan

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Re: Please Stop Telling Miners To Learn To Code
« Reply #7 on: January 05, 2020, 08:24:59 PM »
>solar panel installation or wind turbine maintenance

Seems reasonable  ...other than the balls-o-steel it takes to walk on one of those wind turbines.

littleman

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Re: Please Stop Telling Miners To Learn To Code
« Reply #8 on: January 05, 2020, 08:46:14 PM »
I'd imagine steel balls are pretty much required to be a miner?

rcjordan

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Re: Please Stop Telling Miners To Learn To Code
« Reply #9 on: January 05, 2020, 08:59:27 PM »
>miner

I'm guessing acrophobia is more common than speluncaphobia.

ergophobe

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Re: Please Stop Telling Miners To Learn To Code
« Reply #10 on: January 06, 2020, 01:10:54 AM »
Wind turbine work? Sign me up. Several friends do it. Decent work except for living out of hotels all the time. Hard rock coal mining? It gives me the shivers just thinking of it (open pit mining is probably most miners these days though).

If it's important to us a society to get off coal, then how much would it cost to simply "buy out" the small number of coal miners still working?

Or put another way, just because people like me have decided that we should mine coal, does that make it incumbent on miners to pick up and move thousands of miles for their new job? Or to live as itinerant turbine installers? Turbine installers make good money, but everyone I know burns out after less than 10 years because of the travel. It's not job for someone with kids.

rcjordan

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Re: Please Stop Telling Miners To Learn To Code
« Reply #11 on: January 06, 2020, 07:07:14 PM »