[bleepblorp]

> It is creating a schism in the American workforce, and those on the outside lack access to the necessary educational institutions to ever catch up.

The implicit idea of offering a transition to knowledge work as a means for people who have been economically shut out to catch up is a misreading of the situation.

An economy must consist of more than just knowledge workers. If a guy who's stuck stocking shelves in a supermarket gets an education and moves up to a career working at a keyboard, those supermarket shelves still need to be stocked. The supermarket will need to hire someone else to fill that dead end job, and will need to do that again (and again) when/if the next guy with the dead end job gets training and moves up. Repeat.

Repeat for every hands on economic sector that treats its workforce poorly.

As long as low-status need to be done to keep civilization running by keeping food on the shelves, there will be people who cannot be knowledge workers. If there is a solution to help people who do hands-on work catch up, it involves paying them more for the jobs that must be done rather than training them to do other work.

(This does not apply to transitioning workers out of dying industries -- retraining people in this situation is the only reasonable option.)

[rrivers]

I don't agree that it's a misreading.

Your point that there are hierarchies within the skill set of various tasks is true, however the argument isn't that everyone needs to be a KE worker - it's that everyone needs the opportunity to be one. Presently that is not the case, many are completely shutout simply because of birth lottery.

A core part of Unger's argument is the expansion of a vital suite of protections for all people. E.g. if everyone has access to universal healthcare, greatly expanding public housing verticals, ample opportunities to retrain and direct their lives it fundamentally changes the nature of our relationship to work.

The grocery store job is only dead-end now because our well being is entirely dependent on our ability to generate capital. In this reimagined future it might be the perfect job for a new mom (or dad) who wants to focus on spending as much time as possible with their child while still having some human interaction outside the house.

If everyone is capable of being a KE worker, it doesn't mean they will be. When and if they want to they can.

[pjmorris]

> the argument isn't that everyone needs to be a KE worker - it's that everyone needs the opportunity to be one.

But the key point against the argument is that not everyone is able to be a knowledge worker, so a universal opportunity for becoming one still ignores important segments of humanity as well as important needs of KEs themselves (e.g. grocery shelf stocking.)

[rrivers]

Why do you think not every is able to be a KE worker?

Do you mean in the immediate present, or are you saying that even in a scenario of reimagined social organization there would still be people unable to do this type of work?

The former I understand and agree with, the latter I would strongly disagree with. IMHO every human being is a blank slate of infinite potential at birth, at the circumstances they are born into in combination with the time of their arrival are the two most determining factors. Ungers argument is to radically redirect ourselves in order to make the second option possible.

[pjmorris]

> IMHO every human being is a blank slate of infinite potential at birth

I respect that and principally agree on the ideals. And I don't think that's a complete picture. I ask you to consider the disabled and the aged as examples of what I'll call 'shaped' potential to distinguish from 'infinite' potential. I hope you would make the distinction between the availability of education and the requirement for its use. To demand 'infinite' growth from 'shaped' potential is cruelty, not generosity.

[pksebben]

not to mention that if we could magically poof 30% of the working age population into KE jobs overnight and still have a significant amount of workers for sticking shelves, because the labor force participation rate is abysmal.

[pjmorris]

> The implicit idea of offering a transition to knowledge work as a means for people who have been economically shut out to catch up is a misreading of the situation.

I agree with this premise. In essence, to argue that education is a sufficient (necessary and widespread as it should be) support is to argue that the only people who matter are those with the ability to be trained (and retrained, and retrained as the economy shifts.) And that the only thing that matters about people is their ability to learn, not their need for food, shelter, plumbing, health care, etc. It splits the brain from the body, traditionally a bleak end.

[dragonwriter]

> An economy must consist of more than just knowledge workers. If a guy who's stuck stocking shelves in a supermarket gets an education and moves up to a career working at a keyboard, those supermarket shelves still need to be stocked.

Sure, but if the reason he stopped working as a supermarket shelf-stocker and got an education to move up is that shelf-stockers were in decreasing demand because of shelf-stocking robots or because of workers displaced from other non-intellectual labor because of robots, the shelves are going to be stocked, and he isn't needed to do that.