- he problem with journalism, we were told after the election, is that we in the media focused too much on the facts and too little on the people, their stories, and their feelings. Coastal elites holed up with their precious data and forgot about the middle of the country.
So on the Thursday installment of the New York Times’ daily podcast, host Michael Barbaro attempts to do his part to fix this problem. His plan? To interview a coal miner named Mark Gray. It’s a miraculous 10 minutes of radio, ending with Barbaro crying while realizing that he really doesn’t understand coal country at all, and perhaps if he just visited a mine he would have an entirely different perspective on the situation.
There are a few things I understand are killing coal jobs. 1. Automation. More coal can be mined with fewer people. 2. Flat electricity demand. Any external pressure (competition, efficiency) will reduce jobs. 3. Cost competitive natural gas. It's simple economics. If a MW is cheaper from a gas plant than a coal plant, gas it is. Forty years ago coal plants ran nonstop. Now I see those same plants ramp up and down each day. They run but use less fuel. 4. Carbon emissions. This is the closest Gray has to a valid point. The concern over future carbon restrictions will limit any utility's interest in building a new coal plant. They might have a 30-40 year payback, and future carbon restrictions could hurt their future economical. But that isn't Obama, he's merely a reflection of it. It's the global recognition of climate change. Utility executives and financiers are pragmatic. They see the writing on the wall. Trump can't undo this any more than Obama created it.
Learn. New. Skillsets. Then quit your jobs before your employers replace you with automation. I don't think this little comment will reach the target audience. :(
rd95 had a post a couple days ago in which I bold-texted "fuck you, 'The Midwest'" because it was an entire article about a town seeking external help for external problems. I've been feeling bad about that off and on because hey - it isn't the coal miners' fault that people aren't burning as much coal. But the issue is this: - if you could have learned new skills, you would have by now. - if you could have retrained for a similar amount of money, you would have by now. - if you could have relocated to where the jobs are without achieving refugee status, you would have by now. - if you could have solved the problems yourself, you would have by now. Kids move away. Parents try to pay off mortgages, take care of ailing parents and hope they'll still have a pension when they reach retirement age. Your average tradesman doesn't think things like "this job I've been doing for 20 years probably doesn't have 10 years left in it, I oughtta start over while I can" because you don't casually throw away a career, a home and a life. These are dead-enders - they've made the assessment that their quality of life is going to be better if they hold onto that which is slipping through their fingers than it will be if they flail out and grasp at a passing chance but they know they're falling. You know they're falling, I know they're falling, Democrats know they're falling Republicans know they're falling but they're falling because Capitalism and that is a tough fucking lesson to internalize in Central Murica especially because there is fuckall they can do about it. Wiki says there are 77,000 coal miners working in the US. It also says that 60,000 have lost their jobs since 2011. Here's some perspective. Let's say we give everyone who had a coal job in 2011 a hundred thousand dollars to walk away from coal, pay off some debts, figure out some retraining and STFU about saving their dinosaur industry. We'd be out about $13 billion. That's the equivalent of 150 F-35s, so no big deal... which would also be a 10% reduction in orders to Lockheed, who directly employs 97,000 people not including subcontractors. Yeah. There are more people with Lockheed badges in the United States than there are coal miners.
When every one of those 77,000 voted for you, it doesn't matter how small of a demographic it is, nationally. You pander. Then, if you're DJ Trump, you spin it at 212 BPM back around (throw in other obscene numbers for obfuscation) to make out like we are a nation comprised of mostly coal workers. Maybe exclusively coal workers. We need more women in Big Coal! (GODDAMNIT it is so easy to get derailed trying to outdo reality) It doesn't matter that most of the people in the cities know that losses in coal industry jobs have nothing to do with who's in the presidency. We have failed at communicating to them what the root of the problem is. Whether or not they are capable or willing to comprehend the blend of basic economics and environmental science required to grasp the concept is another debate. During one of the seventy-some-odd rants my poor girlfriend has had to endure within the last couple months or so, I've definitely said "Fuck you, rural America, you fucking morons." And I do kinda regret it. Kinda. I'm going to try to work on my end of things, at least. I look around, inside of my little bubble, and everybody's certainly still pushing upwards, but they're not pushing outwards. Most of them have forgotten how to talk to normies. I'm not the greatest, either. Our "work" generally benefits humanity, not the United States. Over 75% of our "workers" weren't born in the United States. So I think there's no denying that the larger cities of the world have already formed a global network of dependencies, and rural America has been left behind. The countryside is beautiful, and I miss it, but there's generally no one doing any serious thinking out there, and if there is, they're taking good ideas back into the big cities, because that's the only place they can cash them in anyway. What should we do? Can't make anyone move out of bumfuck nowhere. I guess we're starving them out? Automation already wrecked those guys, and the cities are next. Personally, I think the huge administrative structures that we've built, e.g. at universities, are going to fail rather spectacularly. Software for filing business expenses, payroll distributions, calendar and scheduling applications, online travel booking, etc. is probably culprit to some of Graeber's "bullshit jobs". I can't imagine what's next (besides driverless). Crypto could threaten big banking. Oh man, that's gonna get fucked. Things are kinda tense in academia right now, btw. Someone prominent in the department had someone else forward a "see you at the march for science" to everyone. I liked that a lot. Oh, and... Hubski has been talking about the book "Seeing Like a State". One of the things it rags on is unrestrained scientific dependency. If anyone could relay the central tenets of that criticism, I would appreciate it. flagamuffin, and there was someone else too, in the comments of an entirely separate post, but I lost it.
tenet: evolved, adapted behaviors are likely to be successful in non-obvious ways, which The State repeatedly discovered to its dismay when it steamrolled in with High Modernism thinking it could Fix Everything, and failed (in the examples given by the author) colonialism in africa/india, centrally-planned cities like brasilia, stupid tree-planting patterns in siberia, etc
I've been in my (white collar) career for over ten years, and I couldn't imagine learning a new skillset. But I mostly agree with you. Instead of learning a new trade, learn how to spin past experience into marketable experience in a different industry. I worry a little about automation long term. But I hope to be the one driving the automation bus rather than the one run over by it. I suspect existing artificial intelligence could do much of my job, just not cost effectively.Learn. New. Skillsets.
Why people who accept climate change are not also doomsday preppers is beyond me. There is absolutely no reason to hope that we're not going to be in seriously bad shape in another 50 years.
I hate to agree with kleinbl00 on something like this but we arent going to change Mark Gary's mind though arguments, data etc. The fastest way to change Mark's mind is to let him die and convince a younger generation that coal is not the way to go which is much easier when there is no coal industry to push the opposite view point. Culture is really fucking hard to change, its got a 25-50+ year inertia and we as human beings have difficulty changing and adapting (we usually do it by dieing and letting the younger generation decide on their own). Increased human lifespans have actually slowed this process down considerably. Bad ideas/beliefs/values can now live 70-100 years instead of dieing after 50-60 :(
People lack the foresight to understand the amount of suffering that is going to come when the planet rejects human beings. Its honestly not all their fault that we are raised to believe so strongly in ourselves. If we want to stop what comes a lot of people are gonna have to struggle to make it so. If enough people decide their personal struggle is more important than the continued existence of human beings, then we are screwed.