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Comment by dinkumthinkum | Hacker News Reader

People here in these comments are largely just naive or unable to understand things outside of some nerd fantasy or something. If white collar jobs become untenable, the economy will just collapse. The idea people will suddenly go to the trades and work on "solar power" as someone said just mind-numbing nonsense. It would be a very unstable situation and "pulling wire for the county" would not be the main focus of the day.

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So people working in white collar jobs are holding the economy hostage? That's basically your point. But society has shown it is far more resilient than narratives like this would make you believe. We seem to have survived through a lot events such as the 2008 crash and covid as recent examples. And yet there is no "collapse" except in the most extreme cases. Even some countries that are in war have not yet "collapsed".

The west has transitioned away from a manufacturing economy into a service economy. We gave China all the manufacturing while we (the US) transitioned into a 'service' economy. Once the service economy is run by AI, there will be no jobs here. Manufacturing ain't coming back...well maybe once everyone is impoverished and willing to work 40 hours a week for their bread ration.

Grandparent poster is making the claim that the economy is structured in a certain way. Their claim is that simply dismantling the existing structure of labour and economy is something that will have a very negative effect.

Also the COVID part is a false analogy / non sequitur. COVID was expected to end. Surviving COVID doesn't mean the economy can survive permanent shocks.

Everything either eventually ends or we adapt, and Covid shut down a lot of blue collar work. Society is resilient and has proven to be many times over not just with Covid.

> Covid shut down a lot of blue collar work

Not permanently. And, as sibling pointed, not at all in lots of areas.

How did Covid shut down blue collar work? None of the construction shut down where I live.

> The idea people will suddenly go to the trades and work on "solar power" as someone said just mind-numbing nonsense.

That is pretty obvious and mostly correct idea. I don't understand why people who have even a little bit of common sense about how the economy works thinks that mass layoffs of programmers or office workers will destroy the economy.

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