> Unskilled feels unfair, it requires a fair bit of skill, and you're also learning how to forge while doing it.

Both of those points are untrue. Strikers are unskilled labor and in general are not learning how to forge. The smith shows where he wants the hammer to fall, and they let it fall there.

https://acoup.blog/2020/10/02/collections-iron-how-did-they-...

> Things were worse for the many strikers and other laborers who were essentially unskilled hired hands or even enslaved laborers (given their depiction in artwork, it seems likely many ancient strikers were slaves) of much lower status and who could not expect to be trained into blacksmiths themselves some day. While some strikers were probably apprentices in training, it is quite clear that not all of them were! These workers would also have been far less richly paid; indeed, the entire point of strikers was to have laborers who could be paid very little but still amplify the production ability of the blacksmith himself.

(emphasis original)

The reality is that, depending on circumstances, a highly skilled craftsman of yesteryear could have any number of obviously less-skilled assistants. Some would be "career track", some semi-skilled seasonal help, some minimally-skilled (whether due to youth, infrequent day labor, poor talent, or social status), and some in supporting type of skilled work - animal handling, cooking, bookkeeping, etc.

I tried to maintain a certain kind of optimistic humility, that almost anything which employs a person full-time is a problem-area that has fractal layers of complexity one don't have to know from the outside.

The only question is whether someone will pay you for doing the fancy skill/science tricks or not.

This has been such a frustrating culture war definitional argument.