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This Was the Year the Robot Takeover of Service Jobs Began (gizmodo.com)
merbs writes: Out of the three major sectors of the economy -- agriculture, manufacturing, and service -- two are already largely automated. Farm labor, which about half the American workforce used to do, now comprises around 2 percent of American jobs. And we all know the rust belt song and dance, beat out to outsourcing and mechanization. Which is largely why some 80 percent of all American jobs are service jobs. And this year, quietly but in the open, the robots and their investors came for them, too.
There's a case to be made that 2018 is the year automation took its biggest lunge forward toward our largest pool of human labor: Amazon opened five cashier-less stores; three in Seattle, one in Chicago, and one in San Francisco. Self-ordering kiosks invaded fast food and franchise restaurants in a big way. Smaller robot-centric outfits like the long-awaited auto-burger joint Creator opened, too, and so did a number of others.
In Las Vegas, our service job mecca, hotels' and casinos' widespread plans for automation in everything from bartending to waitstaff to hotel work led one of the city's most powerful hospitality unions to the brink of a 50,000-person strike last summer before a successful negotiation was reached... Combined, they act as a set of markers on a trendline we can no longer ignore. We face the prospect of major upheaval in the last dependable pool of jobs we've got.
There's a case to be made that 2018 is the year automation took its biggest lunge forward toward our largest pool of human labor: Amazon opened five cashier-less stores; three in Seattle, one in Chicago, and one in San Francisco. Self-ordering kiosks invaded fast food and franchise restaurants in a big way. Smaller robot-centric outfits like the long-awaited auto-burger joint Creator opened, too, and so did a number of others.
In Las Vegas, our service job mecca, hotels' and casinos' widespread plans for automation in everything from bartending to waitstaff to hotel work led one of the city's most powerful hospitality unions to the brink of a 50,000-person strike last summer before a successful negotiation was reached... Combined, they act as a set of markers on a trendline we can no longer ignore. We face the prospect of major upheaval in the last dependable pool of jobs we've got.
So I guess it's not the end of the world. Plus, I can always go back to dancing in the clubs like I did to get myself through college.
Increase minimum wage and allow floods of immigrants from Third World countries in. That will...ahhh...never mind.
"...with your order in about five minutes."
I was flipping burgers in San Francisco and this Creator company came in and everyone went there and there are no burger flipping jobs left. So then I became a Chess grandmaster and the AI took that job, so I became a Go grandmaster and then the AI took those jobs too. I finally settled on being a taxi driver, so I am OK now.
We can continue to provide government subsidies, charge high import tariff on farm products to make sure the farm industry can replace workers with robots, while blaming China for the lost jobs.
What happens when labor has no value? Or, when all that matters is capital? .. to say nothing of provide for their life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness?
How will people earn respect
Please reply with your ideas, ideally without trolling. I would especially like to hear anything beyond the extremes of Death Universal Basic Income. Neither of these allow for self-respect.
I saw him dancing in a club last week. He wasn't on stage though, so I am not sure what he was doing.
It didn't just start. I remember calling in to the movie theater, getting a person on the phone, and having a conversation about which movies were playing. Poor woman probably wanted to kill herself, and she was replaced by a tape machine - and eventually by "MoviePhone". This was just one part of an overall move to voicemail/menu systems to replace human interaction. I remember the first self-checkout line at the grocery store, and prior to that the first barcode scanner. Prior to that the stock boys had to use a price gun to put a price on every goddamn item (I know because I was a stock boy and I had to do that). Airplanes had a flight engineer. Postal workers manually sorted mail. Companies had "secretary pools" to manually copy documents (OK, that was before my time, along with washing machines, vacuum cleaners, and dishwashers). Service jobs have been replaced by machinery since we invented machinery. Maybe it has accelerated or reached some kind of inflection point, but it certainly didn't "begin" this year.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Before Before the "Whip buggy manufacturers" comments start pouring in, I got three questions for those posting them: "When are your replacement jobs going to be available?", "Will those replacement jobs pay enough for people to live on?", and "Will the vast majority of people be given the education they need to perform those jobs?"
If the answers to those questions involve the words "In ten years", "Why would we pay that much?", "No, pay for it yourself", or just "No" then you have some thinking to do. You cannot expect to upend the vast majority's ability to provide for themselves, provide no replacement, and expect people to go along with it. They will see it for what it is: A massive power and wealth transfer from them to you, that will impoverish them and their children for generations. They will see that, and they will fight you over it.
Yes, you may counter with "But death drones, advanced military training / equipment, and wealth", but those people will be making a choice of not how to live, but how to die. Given the choice of "Go down fighting" vs. "Starve to death / die of dehydration or sickness", many will take the "Go down fighting" option for the sole glimmer of hope, the hope of living and being better off regardless as to how small those chances may be, it provides over the idea of waiting to die.
So I have one question for you "Where's those easy to get regardless of qualification service center jobs, Mr. Automation?" "Where are they?" Until you can answer that question, you have a problem, and soon to be blood, on your hands.
The Whip buggy manufacturers used to have the same issues. But everyone survived.
Some ancient philosophers argued that slavery were necessary in order for others to have the leisure and energy to be, among other things, philosophers. They had something of a point, although full-on chattel slavery seems a bit much. Similar arguments used to be made for serfdom---how could enough food be grown without people figuratively chained to the land and their boring-awful farming jobs?
I'd suggest that at least at the start, nations or large co-operatives own the machines that do the work and that make the machines to do the work; eventually when labour becomes too cheap to meter.... Of course, that would reduce the level of hierarchy in society, and some people seem to love that, and not just the ones at the top; it could eliminate poverty, and some people love having someone below them, especially if such 'deserve' it....
There are very, very few dependable pools of good jobs. Most job descriptions constantly change - emerging, growing, adapting, stagnating, expanding or being automated out of existence. Very few job descriptions stay constant for very long.
On the up side, this is a good thing. When society realizes that there is an unmet need for a particular set of skills, people rush/train to meet the need. High demand and a low supply of qualified people means good compensation. For a while at least.
On the down side, it can be quite a bit more brutal. When a field gets automated, some people manage to keep the few jobs that still exist, and some manage to move into another field by retraining or adapting their pre-existing skills to new conditions. However, it turns out that many people are 1) poor at adapting and 2) incapable of being trained for a job more than once in their lives. These people wind up with permanently reduced income. Understandably, they tend to be unhappy about it.
Or, you could learn a new skill that robots won't be able to do.
Change happens. Compare your lot in life to that of people who literally had to leave everything they owned and RUN FOR THEIR LIVES during the years of 1938 - 1945.
Maybe you can quit acting like such a helpless pussy after you mull that over.
"Find out more... after this message from iRobot."
unlink health care from jobs
Without livable wages, the options left are UBI and corporate slavery. Glad to see you make an argument for UBI.
"I slacked off in high school, got bad grades, never considered going to college or tech school, and now I deserve LOTS OF MONEY FROM TEH GUBERMENTS!!!"
Please. Take some freaking accountability for your life.
What a preposterous point. As if automation costs the equivalent of $14.99 per hour.
Guess what. If the minimum wage rising with inflation means you're outcompeted by robots -- you were doomed already.
True, but there was a lot of chaos an uncertainty if you wanted to stay an employed textile worker, carriage maker, carriage driver, etc.. I'm speaking about the middle and late Victorian Era during the Industrial Revolution. The Luddites might be considered backwards today, but they were real people who got displaced and had to face real consequences and in some cases they were severe for them or others (ie.. when they'd riot or tear shit up). I don't know if that has any bearing on if it's inevitable or not, but that isn't my point. I have to wonder if the ends always justify the means. I agree with you in general, but I don't know if I agree with what I perceive as the underlying logic: just because "we survived" didn't mean it didn't suck donkey balls. Ask the Donner Party, for example. Still, I'm also not saying anything should have been done radically differently. I mean, trying to hold back automobiles.... pretty dumb. I guess all I'm saying is that I have a sympathy for the Luddites and I'm starting to wonder if "automation everywhere" is going to lead to a utopia or a Chinese hell.
Robot baristas have been here for a while, right? I hope they become more common.
I hope they will have a program that will slap millennial customers who make everybody else wait while they engage in chit-chat (bro!) and take ten minutes to order when they haven't decided when they get to the front of the line, and have a zillion question about the ingredients. Also, a non-overridable function for the robot to not ask about the desire for "an alternative milk". And not throw indecipherable passive-aggressive shade.
(Us Baby Boomers can be a bit rude when we don't get good service. But we say what we are unhappy with so that you don't have to guess IF there is something wrong, and if so, WHAT is wrong. In other words, we were taught some basic communication skills.)
Customer service with millennials on both sides of the counter are a shit show. But neither side will say anything about it, so it never gets fixed.
" Farm labor, which about half the American workforce used to do, now comprises around 2 percent of American jobs."
And they get hundreds of billions of dollars of tax money and they still go bankrupt and commit suicide in droves because they cannot compete on the market.
It sure needs to adapt quite a bit more. If self-driving cars in big city traffic get along, I'm sure that trekkers and other machines would be able to find a field by themselves in the sticks.
The hotel and meat packing industry notoriously use extremely high rates of illegal labor. They could also pick veggies which is still done nearly exclusively by a mix of legal and illegal labor (but nearly all non-American). Those are the jobs "nobody will take" because they pay way below minimum wage. I visited a Iowa Beef Packers plant one time in Pampa, Texas. Even the supervisors didn't speak English. That's not an exaggeration, either. The place was also like some kind of Mad Max prison complex where as soon as you came in people would start hooting like chimpanzees and running their knives over things to make sparks. I wish I was joking. I was just there fixing some old Unix boxes that ran the scale calibration tools. Now, that was a long time ago, but I really really doubt it's changed. I'd say it's probably worse, but when you are already at nearly 100% illegals. *shrug*. That's why I think building a wall is a waste of time (I mean you could still just walk/fly/drive in with a passport and overstay). Only e-verify has a chance of helping with the problem.
Now we have apps and AI so I am sure it will be different.
How do you have a capitalistic society when human labor has no value? This video outlines the issue fairly well. There is this transition period between a totally non-needs based society, and our current state, that concerns me. That period when more that fifty percent of the population is unemployable, but we are still married to the idea that those individuals should somehow make themselves employable through self improvement. It's simply NOT a reasonable dismissal. https://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU
were to automation not outsourcing. To be fair outsourcing makes it that much more painful for the few jobs left. But I think it's pretty clear that our current system of wealth distribution isn't going to hold up. As much as people hate it when people get money they didn't earn (which is funny, since rent seeking on the properties your dad willed to you is A-OK) we're either gonna have to get over all that puritanical bullshit or get comfortable with a dystopia of 1% haves and 99% have-nots.
Here's the thing folks, when 99% are the have nots you're probably not going to be one of the haves. But there's always pride. True story, buddy of mine's a basement dweller living at home in his 40s because he can't find a decent paying job (blue collar guy, couple of mental issues that means he can't hustle like you're expected to in 2018). If you ask him, he's middle class. And Taxed to the Max. I don't even know where he got the phrase, "Taxed to the Max", but he got it, and he's convinced he is, even though on the crappy wages he makes working part time he's not paying any taxes ourside of his vehicle registration on a 20 year old truck. This is what we're up against folks...
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Typical. Jealous of those that are better off then you.
No, not jealous and not of the better off. Angry and at those who rigged the system *against* capitalism so they & theirs could win before I ever got into the game.
You going to kill someone at your job that has a higher pay grade also? How about someone that has a nicer house, a nicer car.
No, of course not. Most of them aren't actually "rich" they are just better off than me. I'm talking about truly rich folks that participated in the rigging, not someone with a nicer car. I'm talking about the C-suite, not the guy who worked for 30 years so he could afford a Mercedes.
Remember this asshole. The rich are those that employ. Who the fuck do you employ? Nobody. You are a leach.
Nothing wrong with employers. There is something wrong with feudal inducement and rigging the game. What do you say when it's no longer capitalism but corporate feudalism? I'm all for small and medium business when it plays by the rules, but are you seriously going to sit here and defend shit like corporate personhood? If the C-suite got their fucking heads chopped off, do you think it'd really ruin things? I don't and history is on my side.
I look forward to a civil war. I will be on the side that helps kill those that live off the goverment. I look forward to seeing you with a bullet hole center chest.
Well, good luck sir. I think you have misjudged me. I'm not the leftist you were looking for. I'm a centrist with a fairly small gun collection, but an expert aim and a lot of ammo. 8 years of biathlon. I'm guessing you are the type who holds his gun sideways and says "blam!" and "pow" when firing. So, we'll see who's chest explodes first on a clear day at a 1000 meters.
LOL! Hehe. Okay. Here's hopin!
Hmmm... I'm not sure you really understand the way this works.
... and if you've ever worked for minimum wage, you know the only thing which even resembles a safety net in that circumstance is "Bank of Mom and Dad" if there's anything there to withdraw. As such, while some people might be able to do that, most people aren't suited for these jobs. They generally require professional confidence. My company leased space to a company like this, when we went to the cafeteria, we saw them. They had an entirely new set of people almost every month possibly quicker.
Let's clarify some stuff.
Have you ever seen how much work there is involved with most of these service jobs? Did you ever notice that McDonald's employee's don't spend a great deal of time sitting around? A waitress at a Friday's spends most of her time running her ass off. I can go on, but to be fair, these people work a hell of a lot harder (calorie burning-wise) than I do and they get paid about 1/5-1/20 of I what I do.
Why in the world would this be the case?
I've never looked for a job for myself using a job website, but if you look there are generally two types of jobs.
1) A long ass wallpaper of job requirements that even after 20+ years in the industry with job references from multiple CEOs from successful companies and more current (and maintained honestly) certifications than most engineers, I don't meet half the requirements needed.
2) "Desperate for money?, We'll hire anyone... and I mean anyone. We won't pay you except commission, but come talk with us"
The first type, I know I can apply to it and get it usually because I understand the way job requirements are written. I'll google the company, read their shareholder reports, find out what products I'm likely to work on and then I'll write a CV or Resume which doesn't answer the job listing but instead identifies why I'm well suited to the position they're hiring for. I've never needed to do this, in fact, it's more likely I'll call a friend of a friend of a friend and get their boss to call me instead which will place me on better terms to list and negotiate my requirements. This is I'm skilled at getting jobs. Most people aren't.
The second type... unless you have a safety net
This leaves the final type of job... "Help wanted".
When you're at a burger joint and there's a sign on the wall which says "Help Wanted", it's convenient and the employer is clearly expressing their needs. You understand that the job will pay minimum wage before you even apply but you take it because... well it's there and the terms are pretty well understood by both the employee and employer before the application is filled out.
If you're applying for a job which has a... well job application... which means they don't expect to see a CV/Resume and if you provided one, they will still ask you to fill out this form anyway, well, you know this is not going to be a great position and you also generally won't be highly regarded since... well instead of talking with you and learning about you, they instead justifiably assume there's something wrong with you... after all, you're the type of person who would actually apply for such a miserable job.
Now, most people don't know that McDonald's and Burger King have always had incredible internal educational programs and if you work there for 2-3 years and work your way up, the owner of the restaurant may decide it makes sense to sponsor you at McDonald's or Burger King University. If this happens, you can be on a great 6-figure career path. But probably less than one in a thousand workers go that route.
No. Personal responsibility is not an option.
Another example is that America builds prisons faster than McDonald's builds restaurants. This is great because the people sit around on their asses waiting for the government to open coal mines back up... even when there's simply no coal left in the mine or there's simply no one left to sell it to and even
And how tall does the mountain of machine-made-hamburgers get before the machine realizes nobody has the money to buy them?
A very big change is right on the horizon, but I don't think anybody can even comprehend the consequences.
My solution? \
Human sized hampster wheels to generate the power for the machines. Automation AND green power.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
No. There is a third option. Revolution. Don't tax and redistribute from the rich. Hang them from lamp posts and chop off their heads with guillotines. Wages rose almost across the board after the French Revolution. Other similar historical events argue for "kill them or make them believe you will" as the best option. I guess the rich folks were able to un-ass some additional funds, after all. Funny how they were able to rummage through the couch cushions after they'd just watch the last rich dude get his neck stretched by the locals after his foreign guards in his gated community fled the scene.
Seems to have worked so well in Venezuela.
"Socialism. THIS TIME it will work!"
Grow a brain.
And...how much will that $15/hour with no additional benefits buy you in 2020 compared to $9/hours in 2016 plus food stamps and welfare
FTFY
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Which is a bit of a bugger if you're already on the bottom one.
http://peterhousehold.blogspot...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
1) A long ass wallpaper of job requirements that even after 20+ years in the industry with job references from multiple CEOs from successful companies and more current (and maintained honestly) certifications than most engineers, I don't meet half the requirements needed.
The first type, I know I can apply to it and get it usually because I understand the way job requirements are written. [after some research] I'll call a friend of a friend of a friend and get their boss to call me instead which will place me on better terms to list and negotiate my requirements.
That kind of job posting is what you see when they already have the candidate they want, but are required to post it and give others an "equal" chance at it. They don't want to switch. So they post a set of requirements that exactly matches the qualifications of the candidate they have in mind - all of them, not just the ones needed for the job. Few, if any, others will have every single oddball bit of experience the one they have in mind, so nobody comes by to rock the boat.
Sometimes it's impossible - because the actual candidate didn't have the qualifications, either, but had a fake resume. (That often happens with agencies bringing in H1-Bs. They do this so no real candidates can displace their warm body. My wife once hired one who supposedly had a masters in Comp Sci. The candidate didn't know about this, and risked her visa to point it out. My wife hired her because she DID have enough on the ball to do the job and was honest enough to tell truth to power even when it might be detrimental.)
If you do get through, and do convince them that you're a better pick, they'll have to post it again before they sign you up. So they'll make up another one exactly tuned to your history.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Somebody will have to maintain the robots....until the new generation of robotic robot maintainers is deployed...
4wdloop
It's funny how Neo-Cons who call for civil war or 'thinning the herd' always assume they are worthy and they'd be spared being placed against the wall.
You have to go back to the early 1980's to get such a bad labor force participation rate though... It's been pretty much like that since 2009.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
or even that special. I'm not the first person to notice that the working class refuses to think of themselves as such. He's not the other, known the guy since 7th grade and he is and remains my closest friend.
But you're strawmaning to avoid the issuea, which is that:
a. Automation is going to put us all out of work and if we don't change how we distribute wealth everybody but a lucky few born into it will live like shit (think Indian reservations but on a global scale).
b. Right wing politics don't work, you know this and it makes you very uncomfortable. Stop reading Ayn Rand and hating yourself and start looking around at the deck stacked against you. You'll have an uncomfortable free years while you work out the demons put in your head by the billion dollar propaganda machines like Fox News and Rush but you'll be better for it.
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Yep. They also assume that only the farthest far-right folks could possibly operate a firearm. They don't realize that there are some rather civilized sporting activity which involves firearms and that sometimes a non-far-right-person with a gun. I'm not a far-right guy (centrist/pragmatist here), but as a 20-something it was hard to stop biathlon in college and I still love shooting. I'm not saying I'm some kind of trained sniper/soldier (and I don't like/want to hurt people). Those are different skills. Soldiers know how to work together to kill other soldiers and I definitely don't. However, nether do most vocal jerkhole "I'm gonna git you when the SHTF, you lefty!" types either. The soldiers I've met are more polite and professional (albeit, usually right-of-center politically) than that and wouldn't be threatening to shoot me "center chest" (do you think he meant "center mass" ?)
1) Since the Industrial revolution (and really with every advance in production technology), fewer people are necessary to create things that people value. The phenomenon is the "consolidation of the production of value." For example, instead of 10 farmers producing enough for a subsistence living with primitive technology, one farmer can produce a lot with advanced tech. Instead of 100 people required to run a store that generates 20 million a year in revenue, with advanced tech it now only requires 10.
2) So there's a "production pyramid": at the bottom, everyone makes everything they need. The next layer up it requires fewer people to make everything everyone needs. The next layer up even fewer.
3) Thought experiment: imagine the top of the pyramid. One man (or woman) can make everything everyone needs. He owns all the productive capital. How to distribute money then?
One thing to realize.
i. People are necessary to create demand, for both goods and services, and the money to buy those goods and services. Without any people and no demand, money is worthless, and the single value creator is only making things for his own consumption.
So: How to distribute money in the one creator system, at the top of the pyramid? How about 2 layers down? How about 50 layers down?
Wages rose almost across the board after the French Revolution.
And yet poverty still existed in post revolutionary France. The glorious Soviet revolution also failed to cure poverty in the USSR worker's paradise. Discuss.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Try to see it more practically. Such people are here. Once we decide you can't kill them, they are here to stay and the others will provide for them in basically one of three ways:
-giving them some way of social support/welfare
-putting them in prison for most of their lives
-having stuff that they can steal.
The first option is the cheapest in terms of overall cost to the economy, the last is by far the most expensive and also the most unpleasant.
You honesty can't think of a solution for touchscreens at McDonalds testing positive for feces?
The solution is near field communication to a cellphone you own. No physical contact. Problem solved... ...as if that were the problem in the first place. Did you try testing the door handles at McDonalds?
Try to see it more practically. Such people are here. Once we decide you can't kill them, they are here to stay and the others will provide for them in basically one of three ways: -giving them some way of social support/welfare -putting them in prison for most of their lives -having stuff that they can steal. The first option is the cheapest in terms of overall cost to the economy, the last is by far the most expensive and also the most unpleasant.
Seems to me you are arguing against UBI.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
And you don't think the government is responsible for my predicament?
Trump should be building a wall around you!
Marie-Antoinette, that did not end well for your great grandmother!
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
I see very few people use the touchscreens, unless there is a long line. And you can easily avoid the fecal factor by ordering ahead on the app and picking it up. Plus plenty of companies offer delivery from pretty much anywhere you want through their own app: Grub Hub, Uber Eats, 256ToGo, BiteSquad, Door Dash, Eat24, etc.
and chance of not starving.
Not starving by starving.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
because the cost is baked into my rent. You do know your landlord isn't doing that out of the goodness of his/her heart, right? Donald Trump rather famously used maintenance as an excuse to jack up rates and increase profits.
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Out of the three major sectors of the economy -- agriculture, manufacturing, and service -- two are already largely automated. Farm labor which about half the American workforce used to do, now comprises around 2 percent of American jobs. And we all know the rust belt song and dance, beat out to outsourcing and mechanization. Which is largely why some 80 percent of all American jobs are service jobs. And this year, quietly but in the open, the robots and their investors came for them, too.
Every time I have someone say we need illegals for farm jobs Americans won't do, I just link to sites that promote the robotics for farming. I never hear shit from them again.
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
That's an easy one. First, I'd rather be starving due to my own personal setbacks than due to some aristocrat's boot on my neck. Second, are you really seriously making the point that because a revolution didn't cure absolutely everybody's problems that it still didn't come out better for the common people of France? Plus, your reference to the USSR seems off-topic. What does that have to do with the French Revolution? Are you saying that because the Bolsheviks had a revolution to overthrow the Czars that's some kind of counter example? You think they'd have been better of with the Czars? I'll grant you that some revolutions come out much better than others. I can even think of a few that would have probably been better (again for common people) if they'd never happened. It's dicey business, for sure. The main problem is that the revolutionaries usually start in-fighting for power the minute it's clear they are going to get any. France was definitely no exception to that. Some revolutions get started specifically to put in power leftist regimes and those have a much less successful history (but still it's hit & miss). The bottom line is that when people start watching their children starve, they aren't going to stop for a second and say "Well, hell, if we start a revolution it might not end perfectly. Some people might not benefit." They think "FUCK THIS IT'S ON" and go from there. What matters in the end is if the revolution ends up putting more or less freedom and agency in the hands of normal people. That's the determining factor for it's overall utility and just like life there are no guarantees. As the saying goes it's better to die on your feet than live on your knees.
Happy Holidays!!!
Please stop APK.. you're only hurting yourself.
I have no problem temporarily helping people who are down on their luck, but when people such as you support lifelong welfare, it perpetuates the problem and helps no one. It's just continuing the cycle of lazy, unaccountable leaches slowly destroying our society.
Yep. They also assume that only the farthest far-right folks could possibly operate a firearm. They don't realize that there are some rather civilized sporting activity which involves firearms and that sometimes a non-far-right-person with a gun.
True. I know plenty of self identifying radical lefties that own plenty of guns. They just don't advertise it or form things like militias, because they figure it would just be putting their name on another list somewhere.
I've encountered the same types. IMHO, marksmanship, like many skills, is well distributed in the population for multiple legitimate reasons. I'm believe competitive marksmen are the most accurate vs LEOs & soldiers. There is pressure & structure to build skill and it works. However, since I haven't had to use those skills shooting back at people trying to kill me, I acknowledge my total full-of-shitness on any martial use of firearms. I've only ever guiltily killed rabbits for food while camping when it comes to hurting something with a gun. I killed a squirrel and to this day it haunts me and I feel guilty.
Also, I should say, cops & soldiers often are or become competitive and you see that all the time. To have enough time & energy to both sounds tiring.
Not really... but weren't you ridiculous "conservative" idiots clamoring and crying about "picking winners and losers" just a couple years back? $5 billion to employ a couple thousand (underpaid..) construction workers is about as smart as paying Soy and Pork producers to sit on their unsellable wares because you wanted to pick a publicity fight with China (and then cave anyway).
You really need to get back to your "invisible hand" bullshit arguments, those were much more entertaining.
You may not agree with the purpose of a job - in this case, building a border wall - but it's still people laboring and being paid for that labor, not to mention suppliers being paid for construction materials actually used in the building of that wall. That's nothing at all like paying subsidies to an industry that otherwise can't support itself.
That's a whole lot of writing for how little you're actually saying - how little is true fact rather than just personal opinion and perspective. I'm not going to take the time to respond to every line, but there are a couple of important points to be made just the same.
1) There are two types of jobs, yes, but it's even simpler than what you're suggesting. There are jobs that require experience or learned skillsets, and there are jobs that don't. Is it any wonder the former pays more? McDonalds pays a low wage because literally anyone can fill the job. If you hire a teenager who has never held a job in his life, he can learn everything he needs to know on day one, or by the end of his first week at the absolute latest. Manual labor jobs are the same way. You might have to pay out a little more for hazard pay or because people aren't interested in the work, but ultimately, it's something anyone can do.
The other jobs, the ones that require talent and ability, pay more because the supply of workers is much more limited. Perhaps those workers aren't on their feet all the time, or aren't stressed out all the time (though many are), or aren't "burning calories" the same way someone else might. But they're the only ones who can do that job, and they put in a lot of time, effort, and money to get to that point. That's why they're paid more.
2) I don't know how you can go right from a sentence saying "the opportunities are out there for people who go after them, even in fast food" to "personal responsibility isn't an option." It sounds to me like personal responsibility is the only option - those who put in the effort advance and get the rewards. And you yourself said you have the ability to get jobs because you know what you need to do to look good for your potential employers. What is that if not the personality responsibility you've taken on for yourself?
3) Your points about prisons and mines are just a mess of misinformation and bad opinion. We're nowhere near running out of resources to mine, and your framing of the US military as just a spot to put otherwise unemployed citizens is laughable. As for your "jobs are going away" gloom and doom talk, people have been saying that with every new technological advance for centuries. There will always be a place for the human element in the workforce.
4) No one worth listening to considers "government dependency" and "government employment" to be the same thing. Yes, the government employs a lot of people. How could it not? But when people complain about people relying on government aid, they're talking about handouts given out to people who AREN'T working, not salaries rightfully paid to people who are.