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Trades would collapse if even 10% of the population switched to them. What does no one get about this?
by tsunamifury 1y ago
Trades would collapse if even 10% of the population switched to them. What does no one get about this?
- cafp12 1y agoThis is a good point and also why are people so certain that superhuman capable robots aren't right around the corner.
- mtillman 1y agoI’m convinced plumbing would pay better than programming in certain neighborhoods right now now.
- Workaccount2 1y agoPlumbers never realized that they should be selling service plans and leasing toilets to people. Software's golden goose is not letting people own things.
- toyg 1y agoI'm pretty sure plumbers do sell service plans to businesses. It's just that households don't really need regular work.
- pjc50 1y agoThe people who lease toilets to people are landlords, as part of leasing the rest of the building or unit.
- bongodongobob 1y agoService for what? I'm in my 40s and now that I think about it, I've never had to call a plumber in my entire life. The only time I can think of is my parents calling one when they got a new dishwasher 25 years ago.
- kenjackson 1y agoI've had the plumber out twice this year. Probably depends on how handy you are with plumbing issues. Me not so much.
- NikolaNovak 1y agoThat's not new though. My colleague does IT for a few years then works as a construction worker for a few years, depending on the market. He's ready for anything :-)
- pjc50 1y agoTrades tend to do a good job of preventing people from switching in due to apprenticeship systems. Depends on your jurisdiction, but you probably can't just hang out a sign saying "plumber".
- Pet_Ant 1y agoYeah, I feel like kids are encouraged to move not to jobs that will be profitable to them (ie the children) but that the moneyed want to pay less for, because the number of people being swayed would collapse any market. It's like a boat captain telling all his passengers to rush to one side of the boat. Any single side will tip the boat over.
- guappa 1y agoWell in sweden it's forbidden to fix anything electrical on your own. You're allowed to change your lamps and little else.
- the-mitr 1y agoIs it so? Is it true for other work also? Genuinely asking.
- belorn 1y agoThere is a concept called regulated professions. The US equivalent would likely be accredited or certified. Typically, anything in health, security, and education, but also things like accounting or commercial diving. EU has Directive 2005/36/EC that specify how this kind of laws may operate in EU.
- triceratops 1y agoBut I wonder if lower labor costs would change the repair vs replace calculus by a lot.
- eyesofgod 1y ago> What does no one get about this? Its all idiotic romanticisation. Thats why all the out-of-their-ass anecdotes involve someone who's more of an entrepreneur than a tradesmen as well. Theres some bizzare analog of the noble savage myth, but applied to blue collar work.
- lostphilosopher 1y agoRelated - there needs to be individuals and businesses that want/need and can afford upgrades and repairs. If office workers are getting replaced with AI we don't need to build and maintain offices and the ecosystems that support them (see also WFH/Covid) and those workers won't have income to pay for plumbers, electricians, roofers, etc. for their personal property. A worst case scenario AI workforce revolution would attack trades from both supply and demand.
- renewiltord 1y agoIt's just viral memes. Most people are inferior to the average LLM in reasoning and repeat phrases wholesale without comprehension of what it means. Few, if any, have even approached understanding what they are saying. Among those, fewer still have validated their assumptions. Many years ago we had to deploy an HFT trading strategy on a specific hardware platform because that was the one that was (in this field) closest in network topology to the exchange. I just read the released docs for the platform, and watched a couple of videos where they hinted at certain architectural decisions and then you could work something out from there. Latency was reliable and our strats made money. But this was public information and we were actually late to it. It had been released for 3 years at the time. And many people I talked to had told me that what they had was as good as it gets. But they were each just repeating what the other guy said. Many of the things you see on Hacker News are just that: it's deterministic parrotry.
- tsunamifury 1y agoI agree but the signal noise ratio is slightly better here. But it’s fine down hill over the decade.