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Comment by sodafountan | Hacker News Reader

Yeah that's very "woke" of you for saying that but there's really no positive way to spin this. When a pilot, or flight attendant, or engineer has to retrain and possibly leave an industry they've worked in potentially their entire life that causes pain and suffering.

It doesn't surprise me that the HN crowd lacks the empathy to see the damage being done here, but say for instance someone told you couldn't code anymore, you lose your job, and you might have to pivot into another industry at a time when nobody's hiring and you don't even have the skills or training to get in the door. Then some pompous asshole online says "well ackchually this is good for the environment because computers consume energy and don't run off of the hot air I blow everytime I open my mouth"

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Please don't conflate being realistic with being "woke". It sucks you've lost your job. Retrain or retire. I'm not without empathy, but America has chosen the lack of safety nets it exhibits. And I can appreciate the environmental benefits from the pandemic that we couldn't do ourselves as a species.

I would be a huge fan of Medicare for All and more robust safety nets resulting from this carnage, but I don't expect it. People are irrational and selfish in aggregate, and when times are good they are entirely apathetic to the political process. Only under duress do they scream "do something" to the people they've elected who actively do harm to their constituents' interests.

I think many here do have empathy with the people involved. I certainly do. But we also see the bigger picture.

Every industry that dies or suffers a setback is a tragedy, but it's also the unavoidable result of progress, of capitalism, and of any sort of active economic activity.

And the people involved can be taken care of. There doesn't need to be pain an suffering unless society decides that people who lose their jobs because of something like this need to suffer.

And for the record, a close friend of mine did indeed lose the ability to code. He dropped out of his PhD and become a shop security guard for 7 years. Not exactly his dream job, but he accepted it and it worked out. There are millions, probably billions, of people in the world who don't get to work their dream job. Pilots and flight attendants aren't the only ones. I'm all for helping them.

None of that changes the fact that excessive air travel does a lot of damage.

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