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People tend to be much too glib about this. Megan Mcardle nailed this: "Moreover, people invest a lot in building up a professional identity, which helps make
by massysett 10y ago
People tend to be much too glib about this. Megan Mcardle nailed this:
"Moreover, people invest a lot in building up a professional identity, which helps make the work more bearable (and, by giving people pride in what they do, probably ensures that the work is better done). Suddenly abandoning something that has constituted a major part of who you are, and taking a job at the bottom of a new field, is not any easier for a machinist or a coal miner than it would be for a professional."
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-01-06/some-blue-collar-workers-probably-shouldn-t-do-pink-jobs https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-01-06/some-blue...
- jacquesm 10y ago> Suddenly abandoning something that has constituted a major part of who you are, and taking a job at the bottom of a new field, is not any easier for a machinist or a coal miner than it would be for a professional. As if blue collar workers are not professionals.
- nicwolff 10y agoBy the usual definition, they're not – the noun "professional" means a white-collar worker.
- jacquesm 10y agoWell, color me surprised, I always figured the usual definition of 'professional' means he or she who is schooled in their art and using that knowledge professionally, not 'those who don't get their hands dirty'. I find it hard to see a machinist not as a professional but fine, I'll change my internal dictionary. Reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional it looks as if this is a cultural difference. Edit: thinking about this a bit longer, it seems clear that the distinction was made by those who don't get their hands dirty at the expense of those who do, and it seems extremely demeaning to me. As if the 'white/blue collar worker' distinction wasn't bad enough now people who spend a lifetime acquiring the knowledge to do their jobs are not even allowed to be called - or call themselves - professionals.
- grzm 10y agoAnd then there's the sense of professional versus amateur. I suspect your internal dictionary is just fine, and we're running into different senses of the use of professional. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/professional https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/professional
- losteric 10y agoDoctors are professionals, miners are tradesmen, artists are craftsmen. They're just legacy words. If there is any cultural respect or stigma, it's mostly tied to income not the work itself.
- euyyn 10y ago> it seems clear that the distinction was made by those who don't get their hands dirty at the expense of those who do That doesn't seem clear to me at all.
- WalterSear 10y agoIt's more than professional identity: it's social identity too. Conservative society has an answer for everything: how to be a man or woman, who is appropriate to marry, why you shouldn't worry about death or global warming and what is a socially appropriate job, so retraining to do something that comes from outside society is an even bigger identity threat.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- enraged_camel 10y ago>>Suddenly abandoning something that has constituted a major part of who you are, and taking a job at the bottom of a new field, is not any easier for a machinist or a coal miner than it would be for a professional. It's not sudden. At all. The coal industry has been on the decline for quite a while now, and green jobs have been on the rise.
- therpe1 10y agoIt's always a good laugh to see the mental acrobatics that Bloomberg columnists will undergo in order to maintain the Party Line. She literally links to a dubious study of 34 rhesus monkeys[1] to justify her insanity. I can imagine the cognitive dissonance going on, though: imagine spending decades of you're life defending capitalism and "creative destruction" in all its glory only to have the whole country (left and right) turn against you. The reality is that these sorts of economic migrations are not new. The whole point is that the market produces winners and losers. But now the wrong people are losing so people like Mcardle are forced to wring their hands and make pseudo-evolutionary nonsense arguments and appeal to identity politics (which are now suddenly okay because it's the right people whose identity is at risk.) It just goes a long way to show how empty these people are. Now, when their entire model is most at risk, they point to rhesus monkeys and claim they don't know what "Plan B" is. [1] I don't use the word "dubious" lightly. The study draws fantastically broad conclusions from a very limited data set. This is not okay because it opens the door for people like Mcardle to come along and really abuse the science to fit their crackpot agenda.