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Comment by blunte | Hacker News Reader

One person’s right to keep a job is not greater than humanity’s right to reasonable progress.

It’s cases like these that give unions a bad name.

Even coming from a place of no empathy for displaced workers lives, if we hang these people out to dry we will pay the price down the line.

If america had invested in a social safety net for the past 30-40 years, we might be in a different place. People would be ok with change because they'd know that society was going to have their back while they find a new career.

> if we hang these people out to dry we will pay the price down the line.

If we continue promoting industries that cause the global climate to worsen more rapidly, we're going to pay a MUCH bigger price down the line.

Taking jobs from folks who work in such an industry is a price worth paying, considering the alternative.

> Taking jobs from folks who work in such an industry is a price worth paying, considering the alternative.

The options are not fire them or keep screwing the planet. There's a third option: fire them but don't HANG THEM OUT TO DRY. Provide a social safety net - retraining, early retirement, health care, etc. This is the whole idea behind the "green new deal"... catch the people who would otherwise be ground up by the transition away from fossil fuels.

It isn’t like governments haven’t been trying. Certain groups prefer “job creation” over “government programs” and then get angry when their industry collapses.

America has an education problem, and we need more people taking microeconomics in high school.

We could have a social safety net, but if the reporting and polls are to be believed, many of those in these collapsing industries have tended to vote for those trying really hard to dismantle what social safety nets we have. Let alone implement new ones. I imagine that is because candidates promised to save their jobs. But no one thought to ask, “what happens if they don’t?”

So do we get mad at the people who believed the lies and got swindled, or the people who told the lies and got rich?

> Taking jobs from folks who work in such an industry is a price worth paying, considering the alternative.

I don't think that's worked out very well so far. America is polarized on economic lines, and as long as some people's interests are unaligned with the environment / global needs, then this will continue.

The way you actually remove these jobs for good is to change the incentives for these workers so that they benefit from the new order.

This is why I think elements of the Green New Deal are a good idea: because it says that these folks have an even better future with green jobs than the present.

Let's not hang them out to dry. But let's make the changes needed so we aren't hiring more 20 year olds into that skillset and perpetuating this endlessly.

I don’t understand the comment “if American had invested in a social safety net”. Half of govt expenditures are for the social safety net.

Would be more accurate to say “if America had expanded the social safety net”.

And benefits of the social safety net overwhelmingly go to people who complain about its existence.

I suppose so. I don't know how much the US spends, or how that compares to other countries, but I do know that from where I'm standing (Canada) it sure does not look like much of a safety net. e.g. gap in employment + health crisis = homeless? yikes!

"if American had invested in an effective social safety net”

When shipping firms moved to shipping containers mid 20th century, the productivity gains were split between corporations and the union to buy out longshoreman so there was a graceful transition out for these folks who were no longer needed. (Check out the book “The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger - Second Edition”, which goes into some detail about this)

It’s not having systems in place like this that give our society a bad name. The US is one of the richest country in the world, no lies needed to say we can’t afford it (we can afford it) or don’t have the legal framework in place to institute it.

That would be labeled socialism. Seemingly all it takes to defeat a proposal in US politics.

I assume more success will be had as suffering reaches a tipping point. Change happens slowly, and then all of a sudden. I’d just like people to be able to avoid the interim suffering, but empathy seems to be in short supply compared to capital.

Transitioning to electric mobility is necessary, but if you’re treating workers inhumanly (possibly contributing to deaths of despair in middle America), what is the point of progress? We can treat citizens humanely and deliver on the progress we desperately need, I have no doubt about this.

The word socialism has lost the sting. Considering one of the top presidential candidates has been running in the platform for decades. And the DSA has made large gains in liberal cities.

Simply calling something socialism isn’t the scarlet letter it used to be.

The more that capitalist greedheads label anything that involves being nice to people instead of seeing them as perfect libertarian spheres who act only in their own absolutely rational financial self interests as “socialism”, the more people who give even half a shit about their fellow humans start to think “socialism” must be pretty good.

You would think, but not quite. Blows my mind how many of those same people are living off of or approve of social security just in my own social circles.

I don't know why you've been downvoted. I've also watched this change unfold in big cities on the East and West Coast, most strongly among younger voters, since Bernie's candidacy in the 2016 election.

Yep it’s frustrating to be downvoted for simply pointing out the political elephant in the room.

Not sure why socialism has such a bad rap. The opposite is asocialism (a society based on "avoiding social interaction; inconsiderate of or hostile to others."), which can't be good for any society.

Socialism has a bad rap because it comes with a monetary cost. The powers that influence and control legislature today are foremost interested in personal profits - policies that improve society but cost money to do are uninteresting to such parties because, by the nature of them controlling most of the money, most of the funding for such programs would have to be taken from them.

Its financially beneficial to use corporate control of the media to influence and propagandize culture to be antagonistic towards policies that would help the majority but would cost the rulers. Having a protracted half century long war against a nation self-proclaimed to be socialistic was the perfect scapegoat to justify their actions to moderates and rally a base against the ideal for purely selfish motives.

It’s also a false dichotomy. Government has never considered its income when figuring its expenses. That’s just a rhetorical trick politicians use to say they don’t want to do something that’s otherwise popular.

The Cold War is definitely why the S word is so reviled.

One reason is that a lot of European countries have been moving away from socialism and freeing up markets due to their recognition of how stagnant their economies become in the 1970s.

Socialism sounds great if you make the mistake of assuming there are no downsides.

There are no purely capitalist or purely socialist societies, everything is a mix, even the US. The trick is finding the right balance between incentive and fairness.

I'd argue that the US needs some more fairness at this point in history given the income inequality increases since the 60s (gini coefficient), but without removing the incentives which drive the economy.

I see very few “drivers of economy”. This site is a testament to the concentration of wealth and high paying work in very few places. I say the US needs a governmental works program for literally every locality. Something to drive infrastructure through the last mile everywhere. Everyone having decent (doesn’t have to be “great”) pay would curb many societal ills.

One option is remote work for governmental programs. It may even need to include a counter propaganda system similar in numbers to what other governments are employing to prop up internet trolls.

Our lack of a system to prioritize incumbents also gives us our good name, and the wealth you mention. We can absolutely take better care of people out of work, but "change requires the consent of everyone affected" is not the path.

how, exactly, is this a part of "humanit's right to reasonable progress" whatever that is supposed to mean. And for the record, the article is wrong, the reason this is an issue, now, is that GM (and Ford, and Chevy) forced its workers to take paycuts and other slashed benefits as part of the bailout. GM then plowed the profits it has reaped after stabilization into stock buybacks, rather then actually do right by the people who build their product. A fact that goes unmentioned by this flight-of-fancy masquerading as "news".

Would you be willing to say the same thing were it your head on the proverbial chopping block? Would you be willing to lose your career, your only source of income and potentially more as a consequence, such as your home?

Are you willing to right now, make the same sacrifice in the name of progress for humanity?

I've completely changed careers before when the jobs dried up. I'm completely confident in my ability to do so again.

Specialization is for insects.

There has been plenty of advance warning that electric vehicles would overtake combustion engine vehicles in the near future. It has also been published that electric vehicles are simpler and require fewer parts and workers.

Also, the rise of robotics in factories has been visible and known for years.

These all add up to one thing: workers who don't plan ahead will lose their jobs. The farrier eventually lost his job when horses were replaced with cars. Would you argue that we should still have people making and attaching horseshoes in cities where nobody is riding horses?

[edit] But to answer your question, I would not be in this situation because I pay attention and learn new things to stay relevant. Come one, we're mostly software developers here: we're very familiar with having to learn new things to stay relevant (have jobs, get paid, eat). While the auto worker may possibly be less technical and perhaps less educated, they are not stupid. This argument that their jobs should be protected is just laziness (or they are being (mis)led and manipulated by some party with an agenda).

With how many plans GM has been closing, the UAW picked a really awkward time to strike.

Username checks out.

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