On the other hand, electricians have weird gaps in their knowledge. If I ask them to do something slightly out of the ordinary, this becomes apparent. For example, none of them understand inductive coupling, or even know what it is. When I ask them to do certain things to avoid inductive coupling, they give me this indulgent smile, and do what I ask, although it's clear they don't understand why.

I eventually wound up doing the low voltage wiring myself, because I simply couldn't explain to them why you don't run low voltage wires through the same holes as the A/C wires. One of them tried to run a 12VDC wire in 25 feet of conduit with a 120VAC wire.

They also simply did not understand how generators worked, and botched up the wiring for mine.

It's the same with roofers. They have no idea what galvanic corrosion is, and will invariably use the wrong nails for anything metal.

Examples:

- Taxes/Pensions - if you just rely on your accountant then they'll do the bare minimum and you'll miss out

- Energy company - we're rolling out smart gas/elec meters in the UK. There is an old type (smets1) and a new type (smets2). You don't want to be stuck with the old type but the company had no idea which type they were installing. (I ended up with the old type)

- Lawyers - We're constantly having to chase ours and highlight things to them to make progress

- Doctors - If I haven't done my research then they invariably try to fob me off (maybe this is a UK nationalised healthcare thing)

I could go on but the crux is that the average professional does the bare minimum to move you along. I'm not old enough to say if it's always been like this but it has been my observation over my decade of adulthood. If it's a new thing then maybe it is partly to blame for the anti-vax and lack of faith in experts.

1) There's a race to the bottom with services in terms of pricing. For example, NHS GPs have strict time limits within which to provide a particular service. These time limits have reduced over the years and so individual doctors are capable of providing a better service but are can't given the constraints. People rarely are willing to pay more for a service unless they know that the quality level will be higher. With services, it is not clear that a higher price will translate to higher quality.

2) Most services are not chosen based on quality. They are chosen based on perception, brand, reviews, pricing and a whole host of other things. Often the most profitable services are the ones who can manipulate these variables best rather than the ones who actually provide a great service. If there is a sole accountant who is fantastic at accounting but poor at marketing and review collection then they are going to struggle and may end up joining a firm who constrains their time such that can only provide the minimum viable service.

E.g. if I have a new button that’s been sewn on a jacket, or have my house painted, I can easily see if the right button was used, or if spots were missed while painting. However if I take my car in for an oil change, I don’t really know if the right grade of oil and an OEM filter was used, nor do I really care to recheck my accountants work on my taxes (as long is it roughly pencils to what I expected).

In a culture obsessed with looking for exploitation opportunities at every corner, what do we expect? Everyone is running so "lean" and "efficiently" that anything beyond the lowest cost options can hinder you. Are you getting ROI, or diminishing returns and if you are getting diminishing returns, then that's now viewed as waste and a poor path to choose.

Capitalism has been great at motivating people to innovate and create but the current state of capitalistic systems, I say, isn't healthy for humanity. We need to acknowledge this and fix perverse incentive structures across the board (that doesn't mean destroying the system, simply fixing it). Much of what you're seeing these days used to be used in arguments for capitalistic systems against socialist systems--what really seems to have happened is that we've just traded who we want to give power to. Instead of those who tower over government systems in an authoritarian manner in socialist systems, we seek business leadership who... tower over us in an authoritarian manner.

One reason the US had been so fantastic is that we had a government and economic system that forced capitalistic ideals to compete with socialistic ideals. We had government services inspired by socialist systems that kept capitalistic drivers from going off the rails into too competitive of states with social safety nets to protect us. Meanwhile, to avoid the stagnant systems you see in prior socialist systems, we had capitalism provide incentives to motivate people to work, to do better for themselves and improve their lives and therefor those around them. Now, we seem to have mostly swept away socialist ideals (competition in policy simply isn't there anymore), capitalistic policy has won, and we're witnessing what unconstrained capitalism looks like. It's less value creation and more wealth extraction.

If you're a capital holder, it looks pretty good. My investments that I simply threw money at have grown beyond belief--without any sort of effort on my behalf--it's astounding to think how much money I earned doing nothing. It's an interesting situation because I still work and get paid fairly well, but when I look at my investment portfolio I can't help but think I'm cheating because asset growth well beyond inflation just appear in my accounts, meanwhile, at my day job, everything has grown more and more demanding without equal compensation.

It's an interesting time and I hope we course correct this nonsense before I get too old.

Making something a "human right" doesn't make it immune to the rules of scarcity. Expert services are scarce, which is why they cost more, even in socialist/communist countries. Communism is, after all, just state-owned capitalism. :) People still get rich in communist countries, experts still get outsized reward, it's just that the opportunities to get rich are constrained to the bureaucrats, and the outsized reward will either come from the system or be facilitated by a black market.

Personal story: moved into a EU country and tried to import my car tax-free as personal property. Went to a customs agency because apparently you don't talk to customs directly, you go through one of those. They had me collect all sorts of documents, which took me months before it became evident that this type of car cannot be imported tax-free in the first place.

The stress from expecting people to take their responsibilities seriously has cost me many meaningful interpersonal relationships, not to mention innumerable brain cells. On the other hand, the work to achieve more self-sufficiency is alienating in its own right, and, depending on starting conditions, can twist a person into an unlikable mess.

It's vicious cycles all the way down.

Iedereen doet maar wat ( Dutch )

Loosely translated : Everybody just fucks around, wether it is car mechanics, doctors or laywers.

Would love to hear a more canonical term for the phenomenon.

edit: And if it is absolutely critical it is done right? Do it yourself.

Je doet maar wat ( You )

Ze doen maar wat ( They )

There is no doubt though that people do better work when supervised and knowing what questions to ask an expert helps sets expectations about what level of work you will settle for.

Information asymmetry is a real problem, particularly when people are selling information.

This is starting to push me in the direction of off grid/ sustainable living just to minimize these dependencies

I understand good vocational training (for example certified plumbers) in a country pays itself back very much.

A good university program teaches very few hard skills, but you learn to reason about your field essentially from first principles. On the other hand, to do a mechanical job, you really need just the job skills, and the connection to cause and effect is almost irrelevant.

This is typically why university education is held up as a better key to long term career prospects, because of the adaptability rather than rote memorization.

In real life I realize it's a lot more messy.

So I suspect it is not in the building codes. I don't think the codes say anything about about low voltage wires.

Not that vocational jobs are not important - clearly they add value and create employment.

BTW, if you ever see an EE with a card that has printed on it:

   V = I*R
   I = V/R
   R = V/I

https://testguy.net/content/266-Ohm-s-Law-Watt-s-Law-Cheat-S...

A definite no-hire :-/

P.S. Maxwell's Equations on a t-shirt are popular, I even sold one for a while.

2. The 3 versions of the formula are obvious to anyone who remembers high school freshman math. It's barely even algebra.

Carrying that cheat sheet signals you know neither electronics nor the most basic algebra.

Maxwell's Equations, however, get introduced in 2nd or 3rd year in college. You'll need a year (probably two) of calculus to even understand the notation. The equations unify the theories of electric fields and magnetic fields.

Only people who have studied Maxwell's Equations will even recognize them, so by putting them on a t-shirt you're signalling that you are an educated EE to other educated EEs. Other people won't even know what they are.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_equations

Besides, EEs usually cheat by assuming a sinusoidal solution anyway.

Physicists assume the pointless mass.

https://generalatomic.com/teil1/B.html

Proper EEs don't need a cheat sheet for it.

I had no idea there were EE's walking around who were rusty with basic electrical formulas.

Edit: Ah, come on! That's one of my best jokes and I got downvoted?!

The bigger issue is that there are tons of electricians that never went through apprenticeships and who never picked up and read a copy of the code (which has major changes every three years). The result is a lot of cargo cult installation which may or may not actually be correct.

Likewise with the machine shop a few jobs ago: although we weren’t a union shop, for some jobs we hired contractors in for the union members produced better work, especially for the safety critical stuff.

I have no experience with unions outside the skilled trades — certainly there are many horror stories.

So you built two homes, one with a well researched union labor group and one with a well researched contractor? Or is this just some BS elaboration based on comparing contractors you hired for small time shit with the big house job?

But to really get to your question: I started my 3-year home construction odyssey with a non-union contractor who had to be fired due to poor execution. The replacement was a union shop. That’s about as much A/B testing as one can get.

These are decades apart in time, too.

Maybe, they don't need to? These trades should have cheatsheets where they can check for certain scenarios - like the 2 described, and it would provide Do's and Don'ts?

The closer the low voltage wires are to the high voltage ones, and the longer the distance, the more hmmmmmmm they'll pick up.

The reason you don't mix low/high in the same raceway is because if exposed low/high voltage conductors come in contact with each other, the low voltage cable has a much higher chance of catching fire.

See also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_induction

The reason you don't mix low/high in the same raceway is because if exposed low/high voltage conductors come in contact with each other, the low voltage cable has a much higher chance of catching fire.

Also the shield needs a low impedance return path to be effective.

But like everything else it depends. Is the DC feeding something like a lightbulb or a fan? Then it probably won't matter.

Does the DC feed something that has a good low pass filter or is it an expensive AC cable with good shielding? Then it might also not matter.

None of the above should be considered be professional advice and it's probably a good rule of thumb to never mix wires like that.

After university I was well equiped to do freelancer work in my field and earned well.

I don't think this "you have to be hard or else you won't survive"-mentality in the US is very beneficial to its society as a whole. Ideally you want to live in a society where everybody is well educated, healthy, happy, friendly and so on. Maybe it is a naive idea, but I think this is more achievable if there is collective investment into those goals rather than internal economical warfare where everybody is a army of one, except for the big corporations who will happily milk a atomized, divided population.

Yet I am constantly amazed by how much some of you guys endure. I just wish you wouldn't have to.

Europeans often have this opinion but I don't think it's an accurate reading of the issue. The issue is not that Americans work too hard, it's that this hard work is no longer actually amounting to anything. In the past, you could pay for college by working summers at the local restaurant. Today the average debt is $30K and you still won't get a decent job.

The article (and others) just show that American men are starting to put their efforts into places that do reward them; namely, the trades and entrepreneurship.

Good point. I did not intend to argue otherwise. To go into trade is not an irrational reaction on an individual level — quite the opposite in fact. What I did argue however, was that making it hard for people to get a higher education is not a good thing for a society. Not good in the short term, because educated societes will make more informed decisions, and at the same time not a sustainable strategy for any western society that wants to play any role in the next century.

Having an educated society should be in the national interest just like having public roads or drinkable water is.

> accurate reading of the issue. The issue is not that Americans work too hard, it's that this hard work is no longer actually amounting to anything.

That was the American dream. This is a nice model to keep big numbers of people playing the lottery and bear a ton of stress, because they have the hope that one day they might win and then everything will pay off.

But even of you are one of the few lucky ones that wins you still live in a society where 90% are struggling and crushed. There may be people that enjoy being on top while everybody else suffers, but I personally would prefer being middle class in a society where nobody is poor over being a billionaire in a society where everybody is crushed. Maybe this is empathy, but maybe it is also just egoistic: I like to walk through my city and not see suffering, I like to walk through my country without having to fear being robbed, shot or angrily screamed at. I simply prefer living in a healthy, happy society where people help each other over living in one where everybody has to kick down to stay on top.

Not that that any nation achieved that goal, but there are certainly observable differences in tone between the industrial nations.

As I said, the issue is that this hard work no longer results in progress. The system has become broken. This is easily observable via a bevy of statistical measures like inequality and college costs.

I think it leads to people drawing their distinctions, around who is superior and who is inferior, and then it leads to those people making an unnecessary logical jump and deciding that those inferior people need to be HURT or REMOVED… and we've seen all this before.

And they go from there to decide that anyone arguing, wishes to crown those inferior people as the kings, and hurt the superior ones, because that's the only way they can perceive anything anymore… and they just get hostile and paranoid we've seen all that before too.

I don't know how to convince them that seeking a civilized environment for all the people (without it being conditional on performance) produces the best societal result, through the widest possible range for SOME person of whatever description to excel.

It seems like there are a lot of people for whom, they're more than happy to throw away overall system performance because they're mad that anything lower-performing can even exist. They are PC builders so mad that RAM can't run as fast as L2 cache that they're all CPU and refuse to have any RAM installed. It's stark madness from my point of view.

Society functions THROUGH conflict and chaos. It's like brownian motion, noise in circuitry: if you're trying to define an ideology where there's no more conflict, the most direct way is to define an enemy and then rally everyone to destroy it. And that is said to work for a thousand years but actually blows up within ten, leaving enormous wreckage and shame.

Better to design the fault-tolerant system that runs through conflict and chaos.

What you are talking about is a war-based society, a fault-tolerant system, with lots of redundancy, that runs through conflict and chaos. The last two decades were an experiment in that one.

Call it toxic or not, there's a male drive toward autonomy. Joining corporations that are run by HR just isn't as attractive.

That sounds...reasonable. I can't speak for the rest of Europe but a $30k student loan would be perfectly normal after a 4-5 year of study in Sweden.

Back of the envelope, $30k for 4 years is $625 a month and that is not much for just food and rent.

The numbers aren't great, but the majority of students finish with either zero debt or a very manageable amount of debt. There is a small fraction of students taking massive loans that skew the overall picture.

And bachelor degree holders continue to earn, on average, $1 million more than high school graduates over their career.

All that said, I agree college should be affordable without loans. Summer jobs, co-ops/internships, etc.

https://www.aplu.org/projects-and-initiatives/college-costs-...

Many young 20's somethings don't complete college, but end up with debt as well.

If the question is whether is a difficult for society to maintain college as a necessity for success, they should be included in the review.

OECD data seems to suggest so

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiar...

However, there should be a playground for innovation as well.

Europe makes it so damn hard to innovate because of it's many laws. Ambitious people inevitably move to the US.

(ignore the headline and go to the actual numbers)

Germany is much better at shunting people away from university who are not qualified to be there. Generally, they go to trade schools and apprenticeships.

So I don't have a problem with the MA, but the framing of "life is wonderful in Europe" is missing the fact that the only theoretical upside is you had less choice.

But if paying the full cost, there would be a choice where down one path there is more money because less resources were consumed, and one that would be roughly equivalent.

Flash forward and I start to rethink the decision. I want to go back now, but I’ve attempted multiple times to investigate it and the numbers never work. Because I didn’t play my HS years correctly, the bureaucracy will not let me in, regardless of the things I’ve accomplished in the years since. Additionally the price is just so prohibitive, combined with the fact that I would get next to no aid and even a standard State school would be ridiculously expensive. These are just a handful of the issues though. Let’s not even bring up how I would need a simultaneously drop out of the workforce, suddenly turning the financial burden into Tuition/Books/Fees + everything needed to survive.

I’m really convinced that universities in the US do not want non traditional students at all. Obviously there are some programs that target them, but are often limited. I.e. you have to be part of the right demographic, be limited in the areas you can study. A notable state university near me offers over a dozen online Bachelors programs, but not a single “useful” degree, they’re all BA’s in subjects that people in HN mock. Other seem to cobble together “made up” degrees, which are bachelors that don’t have a traditional or on-campus equivalent and seem to be not particularly useful for employment in attempt to scam poorer, non-credentialed people out of their money.

I could still probably go back, but since I can not hack my way out of the bureaucracy or financial cost, majority of the value proposition would be completely dead by the time o could manage it.

I don’t know where you live or what you want to study, but if you focus on taking the coursework you need it becomes a lot easier. I’d suggest calling admissions departments as well, not trying to piece everything together yourself online. Feel free to email me if you want to share more information and I can give more specific and better researched suggestions.

I mean, what is the goal of a good live? Extract as many resources from your surroundings as possible, kicking your competition down and then die in an slightly above average house? I want to live a good live and leave my environment in a better shape than I entered it in, because the two are not a contradiction.

This seems like a pretty good guiding principle in life.

Thanks cap, there is always this one commenter who thinks we in europe don't understand how taxes work.

Edit: Of course, if you’re very well off and live somewhere that’s relatively stable, large gaps in equality might benefit you. That’s for a select few though.

Area, ethnic, cultural, gender, and group studies (I'm assuming "Grievance Studies" falls under this category), at least in the US, have been in steady decline since 2008, and even at their peak only accounted for 0.5% of majors (now just 0.3%). Even if you want to add in humanities in general that has gone from 3% to just above 2%

The idea that college campuses are ever more filled with people studying "useless" majors is a fiction. The largest areas of major concentration are business, biology, health professions, and engineering and all of these have been more or less growing for years.

There is this pervasive myth that most students in undergrad are having trouble transitioning to industry because they wasted their time studying their non-practical passion, but the data[0] clearly shows that the trends for the last decade have been increasing focus on career oriented practical majors.

[0] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d19/tables/dt19_322.10.a...

That's not to condescend on electricians, they clearly have a useful skill. And being able to certify a house pays a good few hundred pounds a day, nothing to sniff at.

But if you're used to looking at physical models, learning a few conventions and adding another model won't be terribly difficult.

I think a lot of people are actually better off doing that kind of work. There's a tangible output that is much easier to connect to purposefulness than if your job is mainly in the ideas realm. A cousin of mine that I grew up with is a carpenter and seems to cheerful all the time, now that he knows what his thing is. I grew up with him and it wasn't always so.

> all the Grievance Studies majors

So you're polite to those you find useful and insulting to people majoring in something you presumably disagree with? And assuming they will all be condescending to a plumber or electrician for some reason?

Perhaps you don't have to look quite so far away if you're looking to reduce the amount of condescending happening in the room you're standing in?

I’m a registered nurse which is a weird hybrid of university-level knowledge (understanding pharm and patho) but also it is a physical trade (turning patients, providing personal cares, mental resilience). It has roots in being vocational with a push in the last 50 years to provide an academic background to turn it into a profession.

Floor nursing is the bread and butter of the profession, but it burns you quick. Older nurses, particularly in medical-surgical nursing, tend to take on less stressful 8 hour day shifts, end up as spinsters, or have a terrible home life that they’ve resigned into accepting.

I moved into a desk position in my mid 30s and can’t possibly imagine going back to the physicality of it all.

I wore a fitness tracker then and now. I averaged about 10 km in a given shift, where as my daily total now is now closer to 5 or 6. However, now I have time and energy at the end of the day to do an actual physical activity instead of coming home like a limp noodle and taking the next day to recover.

Mentally, there is comradery that I absolutely miss. This is something really hard to explain unless you’re in it. When things got tough, the dark humour got us through. We took care of each others’ loved ones (at their family’s request). We demanded excellence from each other, and (rightfully) called out unsafe practice and supported staff as needed.

However, my home life suffered. It was fine at first as my partner is also a nurse so there was a mutual understanding. However, it started to wear on me when I had kids. I’d come home and my kids would be asleep/at school/daycare, so I’d have missed out on a day’s interaction. I realized that they’re only little once and no job in the world is worth missing out on them.

This feels very much like the "astronomy/telescope" argument.

I hate to have to mention this, but not all American men are white.

Its schrodingers privilege. the privilege was being so priveleged that you were pushed out of the traditional credentialing system.

I read somewhere that (ironocally) plumbing it the less likely thing to be "automated" via an AI or something.

Get in early. Get in a union. 25-30 years to retirement in most unions. You don't want to be 60, and still in construction.

The test is easy, but figure 1000-2000 guys are taking the test too, so you need to get most of the questions right to get in. An oral interview counts for 1/2 the hiring process.

Just say you love working with your hands--love unions, but understand the needs of the contractors too.

Remember it's construction. You're around guys all day long. It's brainless work, and you will never have to act cheery when the owner's spoiled kid comes to work.

I do not recommend non-union construction at all.

Then again---hide in school for a long time. I loved college. It was cheaper 25 years ago though, and not that fun, but much better than any job I've had.

Your interest will change as you age.