[kstrauser]

I get why it sucks, but every day someone resists retraining from a dying or dead occupation is a day they’re not getting experience in a new job. In the case of the coal miners, those jobs were gone. No amount of bargaining would bring them back. The mines aren’t going to re-open. The affected people didn’t get to choose between retraining or keeping their current jobs. They had to choose between learning new marketable skills in a classroom or scrabbling through whatever remaining local jobs they could find.

We’re not there with truck driving yet, but to me it seems inevitable. I wouldn’t consider it as a brand new career worth starting today if my intent were to retire from it.

[EatingWithForks]

I'm only arguing that it makes complete sense why people are resisting if someone is telling them otherwise. I would also cling to my livelihood if my alternative was losing my home, my healthcare, my stability. And I'd further be insulted by people offering me retraining programs that don't actually train me to a lateral career. I'm trying to practice some empathy, man.

[kstrauser]

I'm empathetic. My family background is solidly working class. My dad worked in a funeral home. My mom retired from a railroad. My brother-in-law drives long-haul trucks for a living. My ancestors were farmers, miners, settlers, and little horse teamsters. I love these people and want good things for them.

But there's "is" vs "ought". It ought to be the case that these hard-working people can earn a decent living doing the jobs they spent many years in. It is the case that a lot of those jobs are disappearing as the natural result of technological and societal changes. My grandpa couldn't have delivered ice in downtown St. Louis with a horse and cart today if he wanted to. That job no longer exists. In the case of coal mining, most people don't want those jobs to exist anymore: each ton of coal pulled out of the ground is nearly 3 tons of CO2 gas into the air (purely from the burning process, not counting the effort to mine it).

I don't have the answers here. I don't know what we should be doing. I sure don't want my BIL to lose his career. But what is the kind, empathetic thing to do? We've gone from zero to having self-driving cars zipping around San Francisco in a few short years. What will they be like in 10 years? 20? I don't know when it'll happen, but it seems absolutely inevitable that at some point in the near future, autonomous vehicles will be better drivers than we are. After that, do we build a little passenger cabin onto automated vehicles so that we can pay "drivers" to pretend to operate them? Even if we did, how long can we keep that going? I don't know. I just can't see a path where that's the new state of affairs forever.

Sometimes love means having hard, uncomfortable conversations. I think that's where we're at today with jobs like mining, and where we'll be soon with other careers.

[dventimi]

Would it go down easier if you were offered a home, healthcare, and stability in lieu of re-training?