I do not understand why you would fantasize a future where your child works with its hands instead of having a computer job. A computer job is undeniably a better outcome, it’s why people jump through all kinds of hoops to have a computer job.
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I think a lot of these people fantasizing about people going back to work in factories and coal mines have no intention of taking these jobs themselves and are imagining these jobs based on books they read as a child. It's just another form of nostalgia for their childhood.
Sorry, as a person who is Computer I am telling you my son is going to have a respectable job, like a garbage man or an actor. No Computer for him. It's the devil's box.
His unspoken assumption is that his child will receive capital gains from, and possibly manage, with uncallused hands, places where other people will work with their hands. Presumably, his child will receive some sort of vague aesthetic pleasure from proximity to the manual labor of others.
I feel like these guys are permanently culturally stuck in the late '90s/early 2000s where so much of the culture, especially movies were about how white collar office jobs were the worst thing in the world.
lol. Exactly. I’m pretty sure the point of Office Space wasn’t that we would all be happier going back to the assembly line. It was that official jobs were almost as bad as the assembly line!
Technically he didn't say **his** child would be working in manufacturing, presumably because they will inherit America's secret and only graphite mine.
My father and grandfather were both carpenters, active in their union, very good at and very proud of their work. I, too, am incredibly proud of their work and careers. But one thing they told me from the time I was little was “we work with our hands so you don’t have to.” Always stuck with me.
A few years ago, I created a corporation for a client who installed/repaired screens. He brought his early-teens son into the office with him so he could say this, pointing to me: “Look, this is what I want for you: To work with your mind, like he does, and not with your hands, like I have to do.”
THEIR kids won't work with their hands of course. They will sit at home making content about how hard they work and taking money from investors and the work of employees.
I mean, I enjoy making things with my hands in my spare time. It’s fun and therapeutic. Do I want to do it for a living? Absolutely not. All of my ill-fitting joints are screaming at me at the suggestion.
You think that's better than working with dangerous machinery, where if she's lucky she can lose fewer than 3 fingers before earning a promotion to supervisor???
Pratt & Whitney produces more engines than ever with fewer people.
how?
NC machining and CAD make it possible to design the form, function, and manufacturing instructions and send them to automated machines. no machinist needed.
My grandfather was a coal miner. He worked like hell to make sure my dad went to college and never had to spend a day in the mines. I do not understand this fetishization of black lung disease.
The biggest grift going right now is a rich guy with a computer job glazing trade school for someone else’s kid, never their own kid mind you. lol that’s silly, their kid will go to Wharton. But yours should definitely aim no higher than plumber!
He sucks—but, I've had a 'computer job' & my joints beg a word about labor.
Heavy metal doesn't rack & repair itself and typing wears after a decade.
Towing is more laborious and less lucrative, but more fulfilling than writing clever yet unappreciated code ever was. Also Agile makes me wanna die.
That said, obviously we shouldn't swing the opposite direction (the way they want) where everyone works on a factory assembly line.
However, I do think there is value in keeping manufacturing knowledge and skill alive here.
Outsourcing everything has also fucked us bigly.
At the end of the day, we're animals.
Some are perfectly suited to stare at a screen professionally and be satisfied—many are not.
In my humble opinion, if the US is a melting pot, that should also apply to industry.
Just, not in the 'retooling the factory' way these jagoffs want to go about it.
I have done factory work for 3 years before I decided to go back to school. It was safe, clean, and you could make a living there if you wanted to live in Sheboygan WI. But it was incredibly boring and dull, the sense of accomplishment was minimal and you were looked at with little importance.
And, I was told by multiple factory lifers to get out of there and do something else with my life before I have kids, a house and car payment because then I’m stuck.
There were also some other factories in the area that were not so clean and safe.
I worked with my hands for 30 years take the computer job your body will thank you! I’m in my 50s and can’t do the things my white collar friends still can all my blue collar friends have back, heart hearing issues etc.
Not that it isn't good to have solid, union-backed, blue-collar labor as part of the economy, but I can guess how many generations this guy is removed from any family member doing real work and it's at least four
(unsurprised that his job seems to be "tweeting about playing with stocks")
They want a return to a simpler time, when people knew their neighbors, knew who you could count on, and who was just in it for himself. They know that there is nothing they wouldn't sacrifice to help this country and the great men who want to run it like their own personal game preserve and
the concept everyone is dancing around here is being alienated from your labor. Whether its a wooden bench or lines of code it is satisfying to have control over your work and to personally see its fruits. And yes, this is vanishingly rare under capitalism
They are mythologizing a world that wasn’t very glamorous and also does not exist any more. They’re not talking about custom carpentry or baking, they want pre-OSHA sheet metal factories. Agreed working with your hands is very satisfying but at scale for a modern economy, we should choose high value
Have you ever been in a working textile factory? The noise is literally deafening and the constant motion of the machines is overwhelming and makes you sick. It would be tantamount to torture to be in that environment full time by today’s standards.
This is what gets me about these arguments. Americans are too good to make their own stuff, factory or otherwise, but sweatshops in Bangladesh are fine?
I said working in textile factories is not something we should aspire to have more people doing. That means people everywhere, not just America. We should absolutely be automating as much of the very difficult and unrewarding work that people do around the world, while also improving conditions.
There is a big difference between wanting to work with your hands and having to.
My dad works with his hands because it's all he knows. Growing up in poverty in Mexico and having to give up middle school to work to help provide for the family isn't a fun time, apparently.
I guess me question is just, why? Like seriously why is it objectively good?Your son the baker is probably awesome- I enjoy getting my hands in some dough too and fantasize about that life, but I also bet some bakers fantasize about desk jobs. Just wondering why either is objectively good?
absolutely _nobody_ wants to be addicted to oxy because they ruined their back and knees, by being hunched over an assembly line at a curling iron & blow dryer factory for decades, from the day after they got their GED, until the day before their first DOGiE-fied Social Security check fails to clear
Lots of people make a living making stuff with their hands - the problem is that many millions of them are willing to do it for a lot less money than you want to earn.
It’s obvious you don’t work trades. I’ve worked trades my whole life and never met a plumber, electrician or carpenter who wanted their children to have to do it.
that’s good respectable work, good on your boy! we have to make sure we draw a distinct line in this narrative though, because those factory jobs the bootlickers are pretending to be excited about, aren’t coming back. they’ve been automated.
Good luck with that. I’ve got a home bakery and the tariffs will make the cocoa I use increase by $7 a kilo. It’s already gone up by $10 because of cocoa supply issues. You’re on your feet a lot too. I’m a retired state employee and am glad I didn’t do this my whole life.
No, it sucks ass to work in a factory and that’s why people want white collar jobs around the world. This isn’t running a Pinterest store for handcrafted goods.
Nothing like handling a fiberglass chop gun while wearing a tyvek suit and a respirator in 100° heat and 80% humidity in an un-airconditioned Quonset hut for minimum wage, that’s what made America great.
The more people romanticize jobs based on physical labor, the less of it they’ve usually done. My husband is a carpenter in his 40s and he and most of the people he works with around his age are now trying to figure out how to transition into a sustainable job that doesn’t physically break them.
working in a factory (or mine etc.) sucks ass >> you're standing next to your colleagues and you hate it >> you organize and strike for better pay >> you achieve union strength at parity with membership >>
you build a well-remunerated economic sector >> everyone looks up and envies your job >> technological changes attrite it down to nothing >> your triumph is regarded as a lost golden age >> MOTHERFUCKERS THINK IT WAS THE SHOVELS AND THE HAMMERS, NOT THE UNION.
gonna start a youtube channel where I post carefully edited, asmr-ful videos of me shoveling talc onto a conveyor belt with no PPE for twelve hours a day
Hey hmu when you guys have a job vacancy, I'm doing similar work over here at the asbestos mine but the shift supervisor isn't letting me set upy microphone where I want it
For many years my job was calling on factories across N.America and selling them the parts & machinery used in manufacturing, covering practically every industry. Not an office job but definitely white-collar. Tons of cool stuff & great people, never once did I think, I’d trade places with that guy.
I go back and forth, but I do prefer being a mail handler over being a loan clerk or a teller. But the job would be a lot more bearable with better pay and hours.
A cousin's partner works graveyard shift on a CNC machine. Good pay and long term job security. But he always looks wrecked, and drinks insane amounts of coffee.
Also there is nothing stopping these people from quitting posting and going to work at a quarry or a mill or picking produce 12 hours a day. Those jobs are available!
I worked at a factory job one summer between years at college to save up some money. I currently have a white collar job. Just take a wild guess which one I prefer.
"Making plastic coat hangers with your hands" means running a giant injection-molding machine for $10/hour, because ain't nobody paying $20 for your bespoke handcrafted virgin plastic clothes hangers.
"Your dumb email job making spreadsheets pales in comparison to my sick manufacturing job, standing at a machine pulling a lever for 10 hours straight."
a corollary to this is contemporary far-left movements really fail to grasp how much of the relative success & lure of revolutionary Marxist movements from c.1870–1930 was due to industrialization being unspeakably terrible in ways our modern minds cannot possibly fathom
“Johnny is 9, has worked in the mine for two years. He works from 7am until 9pm. Used to work with his dad until his dad died of consumption. Says he is scared to go below and prefers pit mines. Illiterate, no Bible knowledge. Mum needs wages to pay debt on a pair of shoes.” https://bsky.app/profile/sababausa.bsky.social/post/3lln3ds22k22j
In college I worked in a metal recycling yard in the summer as an “intern.” (That term should’ve v loosely applied here.) Near the end of the summer one of the guys with over 30 years turned to us and just said “stay in school for gods sake. Don’t come back.”
I think there is really something to our economy being filled with meaningless jobs at computers, but that doesn’t mean we make everyone go back to the factory.
I think we have a different idea of “making stuff with your hands“. I am not talking about the Lucille Ball chocolate factory. More like the Japanese small craft denim shop idea.
Like, no, the average American worker buys mass-produced blue jeans at Walmart sewn in a giant automated factory by people in Vietnam making $300/month. Those same jeans sewn by Americans would cost $250.
Wrong, absolutely everyone is. Because by definition, "small production" is wildly inefficient and cannot be scaled up to produce enough products to meet consumer demand. They're luxury items consumed by people who can afford to pay the premium they command.
Honestly, the only way you do a good white collar job that supports factory workers is by having worked in that factory, or at least being peers with those who have. If you think everyone gets a white collar job, guess what? And while tiring, OSHA reqs and good processes go a long way.
Some people do find assembly work gratifying, I can be one of them, but I would rather have my computer touching day job than be wearing out my joints on an assembly line, an experience I have also personally had. But the appeal of manufacturing jobs wasn't the job, it was the Union won compensation
the can factory where my dad worked had summer employment for employee’s kids enrolled in college. It was good money and *every single person* there told me I had better finish college so I could have a better job than them/ my dad. And they all truly meant it.
Feels like there’s increasingly a tendency on the right to conflate doing the same motion 10,000x/day on an assembly line with, idk, building a wooden shelf because you enjoy making things
I love my "making stuff with my hands" hobby (cooking), but I love it *because it is a hobby*. if you made me work a restaurant to live I'd lose my mind.
I mean... the US hasn't produced graphite in 70 years so... since we can establish he is taking it off his ass, I'm definitely NOT buying his nuclear reactor.
He also is theoretically rich enough that his child will never have to work at anything for a living, so really his kid would already free to do whatever they want for work.
'undeniably a better outcome'..good god. we're never going to have cheap robots doing our labor, but your computer jobs will be easily replaced by shitty AI. it's hard to listen to people denigrate manual labor, when their daily survival relies directly on other humans doing these jobs.
huh, my parents worked for a living, as did their parents before them and etc., and they felt very strongly indeed that I should go to college. funny how that works
I’m convinced that the only thing tech bros can’t reinvent are meaningful hobbies. Go perfect pizza, tie some fly fishing flies, or build armoire for your Lars and the Real Girl-style companion
I work a computer job *at* a factory and I do everything I can to avoid leaving my building because the mill is extremely hot, dirty and dangerous. The PPE required to enter some areas is so burdensome that you need a spotter and can only work in 20 minute intervals due to risk of heat stroke.
We get guys like this trying to sell us up cycled raspberryPis that will revolutionize our process and we laugh when we tell them it can’t be used because it’s not intrinsically safe and can cause an explosion or the environment is too corrosive for it to survive longer than a week or two.
Ideally, there should be scope for some choice. We should aim to provide opportunities and education so people can get high skilled, high wage jobs in safe environments. But if someone is gifted as a sculptor, carpenter etc. , then if they want to do that, then options should be available.
Almost everyone has a talent of some sort. And where possible, people should be supported earl on in nurturing and fulfilling that talent, but not in a bullying way. It's really about allowing people to fulfil their potential and getting more enjoyment and satisfaction in what they do.
The hilarious part is that Musk is right now promising his shareholders that his humanoid robots will literally take all the manufacturing and manual labor jobs they’re promising Little Isaiah.
My loser son that lives in my basement, refuses to go to community college, and listens to timcast all day, yearns to build toasters on an assembly line.
They just have a romantic idea of good American volk making their shit for them, but they and their kids and their kids’ kids will be still be doing tech jobs and ruling over the blue collar serfs.
Both of my grandfathers lost fingers to the assembly line, and one great uncle was killed in a workplace accident in a mill. A handful of uncles and my dad have been hospitalized at one time or another for pretty serious injuries on roofing jobs including one who almost died falling through a roof
My brother and I are the first generation where we've never had to do any dangerous work, and while they were alive both my grandfathers discussed that like it was the greatest achievement of their lifetimes.
Never thought of myself doing dangerous jobs, but my brother and BIL were killed doing work I had partnered with them on a few years earlier. And I've encountered [large] venomous snakes and worked a summer on a project where we were supposed to carry shotguns in case we encountered polar bears.
Caveat here of course is that I might have given myself cancer but neither of them lived to see that thankfully and also idk maybe it wasn't all the lab and field work who knows
I guess second caveat here is my uncle who fell through the roof did so in Canada and then got high quality free healthcare whereas if he'd stayed in the states he probably would have just died
If you take the capitalism of it all out (no factories, assembly lines, scientific management etc.) and imagine which is better on a purely experiential basis, I would prefer to be a craftsperson.
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I sometimes miss having a soda jerk job where I made fancy ice cream sundaes by hand but don't miss making 9/hr with no benefits.
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/rivethead-ben-hamper/1103620369
When they grow up? No, right now.
Pratt & Whitney produces more engines than ever with fewer people.
how?
NC machining and CAD make it possible to design the form, function, and manufacturing instructions and send them to automated machines. no machinist needed.
right wing eejits are stupid.
Heavy metal doesn't rack & repair itself and typing wears after a decade.
Towing is more laborious and less lucrative, but more fulfilling than writing clever yet unappreciated code ever was. Also Agile makes me wanna die.
However, I do think there is value in keeping manufacturing knowledge and skill alive here.
Outsourcing everything has also fucked us bigly.
Some are perfectly suited to stare at a screen professionally and be satisfied—many are not.
In my humble opinion, if the US is a melting pot, that should also apply to industry.
Just, not in the 'retooling the factory' way these jagoffs want to go about it.
There were also some other factories in the area that were not so clean and safe.
(unsurprised that his job seems to be "tweeting about playing with stocks")
Working in a textile factory is not something we should aspire to have more people doing
This is what gets me about these arguments. Americans are too good to make their own stuff, factory or otherwise, but sweatshops in Bangladesh are fine?
Some people are fine with manual labor.
Work to make places safer, less harmful instead of washing your hands of it. And for climate, human rights sake, build regionally.
My dad works with his hands because it's all he knows. Growing up in poverty in Mexico and having to give up middle school to work to help provide for the family isn't a fun time, apparently.
https://bsky.app/profile/13rrk13.bsky.social/post/3llytdugyms2a
working in a factory (or mine etc.) sucks ass >> you're standing next to your colleagues and you hate it >> you organize and strike for better pay >> you achieve union strength at parity with membership >>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4w8uoOR5P2E
http://www.artisanalpencilsharpening.com/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Condition_of_the_Working_Class_in_England
https://bsky.app/profile/sababausa.bsky.social/post/3lln3ds22k22j
Dude literally thinks the options are "COMPUTER WIMP" and "GUY WHO TURNS GIANT WRENCH WHILE COVERED IN GREASE" and nothing else.
If you take the capitalism of it all out (no factories, assembly lines, scientific management etc.) and imagine which is better on a purely experiential basis, I would prefer to be a craftsperson.