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Able-bodied? Sure. Able-minded? Not quite. There's a huge surplus of middle-age men more interested in pointless office politics and political propaganda than d

Able-bodied? Sure. Able-minded? Not quite. There's a huge surplus of middle-age men more interested in pointless office politics and political propaganda than doing good work, conducting themselves respectfully, and maintaining competence. And a dearth of the hardworking, skilled variety. This isn't just a training problem, it's a cultural issue. Praising charlatans like Scott Adams, and worse, failing to recognize their lack of ability and their motives is another cultural issue. Ultimately, the reason we have so many unemployed is because we're stupid. We suffer from a cultural stupidity partly the result of longterm political propaganda campaigns by less-intelligent politicians and industry leaders who can't gain support any other way (because they are also stupid). If America wants to slip back to the level of a third world country in terms of political systems and the average education of the citizenry, a higher unemployment rate is just par for the course. We have people unfit for training. As an aside, how can the American workforce maintain world class competency and compensation? We need to interact with the best in the rest of the world. Bringing them here and giving them the option to stay in a safe, fair environment is best. On the flip side, engineers need to believe they are being compensated fairly for their efforts, and not take so many pains to prevent the industry from developing better ways of doing things.

dv_dt 10y ago
I disagree, I've met many very sharp people who happen to not have a background that does not fit the traditional 'knowledge worker' funnel. The fundamental problem is that once you make early life decisions - our society has increasingly closed the paths to retrace that decision. Employers are unwilling to fund retraining, even if one re-educates themselves there is discrimination for entry positions vs someone young and cheap (and has no expectations of good treatment...).
nol13 10y ago
Wish I disagreed with you more than I do.. Still I think mostly that's just what the system rewards. Hardworking and skilled people with disdain for office politics will either get exploited or never get their foot in the door in the first place.
thehardsphere 10y ago
> Praising charlatans like Scott Adams, and worse, failing to recognize their lack of ability and their motives is another cultural issue. I'm confused by this part. What does Scott Adams have to do with what you just wrote and how is he (in this context) a charlatan?
- Arizhel 10y ago
  Yeah, I don't get it. Scott Adams draws comics lampooning office politics. He's not actually an office worker, just a comedian.
  - cvwright 10y ago
    Adams has recently come out as a Trump supporter. Maybe that's it? He's still a strange choice of target, since he's not (as far as I know) one of the crazies screaming about "cucks" or Benghazi or whatever. Personally I've found his blog to be pretty helpful for understanding the Trump phenomenon better. http://blog.dilbert.com/ http://blog.dilbert.com/
  - tomc1985 10y ago
    Wasn't he an office drone before drawing Dilbert?
    - thehardsphere 10y ago
      He was. His experience being a drone is where he drew his inspiration for Dilbert from.
therpe1 10y ago
As somebody doing the startup dance this is really what I find, far and away, to be the greatest challenge. People love to go on and on about cheap labor China, increasing automation, government welfare, regulations, Wall St., blah blah blah, etc etc. These are just headwinds for an entrepreneur. I can figure out a way around them, navigate them, and in certain situations even leverage them to my advantage. But a poorly educated and poorly motivated labor force is a structural deformation. It's like not having any fuel for my boat; no matter the environmental challenges and the weather, without fuel I'm not going anywhere. And it's not just a matter of poor education, it's workers who reject the entire idea of education, of expertise, of innovation in itself. It's hard to put a finger on it but so many men and seem to think "knowledge is overrated" or that you can't believe experts. These people are not just unserious about their own educational project they seem to think education itself is the problem. And then you check up on Hacker News and you find a bunch of comments railing against universities and calling for the creation of more basic trade schools. Like I said it's easy to blame immigration and inequality and almost certainly those have contributed to a slack labor market that explains the collapse among, say, those Americans with just a high-school degree. But then I wonder why do we have so many Americans with just a high-school degree in the first place? It seems like outside of a few major cities a large segment of the population has rejected education and a certain idea of human excellence. I mean seriously -- bring back coal jobs? More plumbers? That's the plan? And what's frustrating is that the labor market isn't really slack at all. In the cities you can find the highly educated, highly innovative knowledge workers needed to get a venture off the ground... but these "super-knowledge workers" require enormous salaries because everything in the cities is so expensive and they've got huge student loan debts right off the bat. Anyways the problem is so large and amorphous that I hesitate to even approach it. It's not clear that a country as large and decentralized as the US can address such distributed, systemic market failures. But I definitely don't think we need to punish universities or focus our efforts on producing more plumbers.

dv_dt 10y ago

I disagree, I've met many very sharp people who happen to not have a background that does not fit the traditional 'knowledge worker' funnel. The fundamental problem is that once you make early life decisions - our society has increasingly closed the paths to retrace that decision. Employers are unwilling to fund retraining, even if one re-educates themselves there is discrimination for entry positions vs someone young and cheap (and has no expectations of good treatment...).

nol13 10y ago

Wish I disagreed with you more than I do.. Still I think mostly that's just what the system rewards. Hardworking and skilled people with disdain for office politics will either get exploited or never get their foot in the door in the first place.

thehardsphere 10y ago

> Praising charlatans like Scott Adams, and worse, failing to recognize their lack of ability and their motives is another cultural issue. I'm confused by this part. What does Scott Adams have to do with what you just wrote and how is he (in this context) a charlatan?

Arizhel 10y ago
Yeah, I don't get it. Scott Adams draws comics lampooning office politics. He's not actually an office worker, just a comedian.
- cvwright 10y ago
  Adams has recently come out as a Trump supporter. Maybe that's it? He's still a strange choice of target, since he's not (as far as I know) one of the crazies screaming about "cucks" or Benghazi or whatever. Personally I've found his blog to be pretty helpful for understanding the Trump phenomenon better. http://blog.dilbert.com/ http://blog.dilbert.com/
- tomc1985 10y ago
  Wasn't he an office drone before drawing Dilbert?
  - thehardsphere 10y ago
    He was. His experience being a drone is where he drew his inspiration for Dilbert from.

therpe1 10y ago

As somebody doing the startup dance this is really what I find, far and away, to be the greatest challenge. People love to go on and on about cheap labor China, increasing automation, government welfare, regulations, Wall St., blah blah blah, etc etc. These are just headwinds for an entrepreneur. I can figure out a way around them, navigate them, and in certain situations even leverage them to my advantage. But a poorly educated and poorly motivated labor force is a structural deformation. It's like not having any fuel for my boat; no matter the environmental challenges and the weather, without fuel I'm not going anywhere. And it's not just a matter of poor education, it's workers who reject the entire idea of education, of expertise, of innovation in itself. It's hard to put a finger on it but so many men and seem to think "knowledge is overrated" or that you can't believe experts. These people are not just unserious about their own educational project they seem to think education itself is the problem. And then you check up on Hacker News and you find a bunch of comments railing against universities and calling for the creation of more basic trade schools. Like I said it's easy to blame immigration and inequality and almost certainly those have contributed to a slack labor market that explains the collapse among, say, those Americans with just a high-school degree. But then I wonder why do we have so many Americans with just a high-school degree in the first place? It seems like outside of a few major cities a large segment of the population has rejected education and a certain idea of human excellence. I mean seriously -- bring back coal jobs? More plumbers? That's the plan? And what's frustrating is that the labor market isn't really slack at all. In the cities you can find the highly educated, highly innovative knowledge workers needed to get a venture off the ground... but these "super-knowledge workers" require enormous salaries because everything in the cities is so expensive and they've got huge student loan debts right off the bat. Anyways the problem is so large and amorphous that I hesitate to even approach it. It's not clear that a country as large and decentralized as the US can address such distributed, systemic market failures. But I definitely don't think we need to punish universities or focus our efforts on producing more plumbers.