Comment Re:Back to the future. (Score 2, Informative) 511
It doesn't matter how skilled you are as a laborer if there are a great many more laborers who are willing and able to do your job. Unskilled laborers are always in that situation, but if you are a game developer or investment banker, you still face the same buyers market as people with the skills to be hired are pouring out colleges much faster than they are being absorbed by the jobs market. So to that extent, the analogy to coal mining or textiles holds.
It's not like you could feed your family just by giving up on skilled labor and going to work in the "coal mines" of unskilled labor (fast food, I guess)! Then you'd be competing in an even larger pool of applicants.
Just because it's a cliche doesn't make it invalid. Coal miners are symbolic of a specific upheaval in labor-capital relations that was a part of industrial revolution. We're living through a new revolution now, one that's faster and global. So far, workers are losing, and if problems like this don't get solved, you should expect another upheaval that makes the wildcat cole miner strikes look like a tea party.
It's not like you could feed your family just by giving up on skilled labor and going to work in the "coal mines" of unskilled labor (fast food, I guess)! Then you'd be competing in an even larger pool of applicants.
Just because it's a cliche doesn't make it invalid. Coal miners are symbolic of a specific upheaval in labor-capital relations that was a part of industrial revolution. We're living through a new revolution now, one that's faster and global. So far, workers are losing, and if problems like this don't get solved, you should expect another upheaval that makes the wildcat cole miner strikes look like a tea party.
