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A comment on American Airlines' Legendary Mechanic Passes Away at 100 After 80-Year Career. Parent comment

Re:American Airlines' Legendary Mechanic Passes Away at 100 ... by 1718627440 on Tuesday September 01, 2026 @06:50AM (#49520224)
The thing is that profit is not the only reason people do something. Some people just like their profession, I would argue that this is kinda a requirement to actually become really good. So in order to actually matter for a good skill you must lack the very argument you argue with.

The leading of companies with people not actually skilled at the craft is still a historic anomaly.

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Re:American Airlines' Legendary Mechanic Passes Away at 100 ... by cucumber3732842 on Tuesday September 01, 2026 @07:09AM (#49520386)
Money is not the "only" reason people do things. But it sure helps.

Would we have nearly as many slime-balls scheming up ways to plaster ads upon everyone's eyeballs and record our every movement and click if not for the money in it? At a societal level almost nothing ever gets done at scale if there isn't money in it. You remove the financial incentive and things atrophy, new investment stops replacing old, etc.

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Re:American Airlines' Legendary Mechanic Passes Away at 100 ... by 1718627440 on Tuesday September 01, 2026 @07:57AM (#49520744)
Sure, but the incredible skilledness in a single craft, which we are discussing here, doesn't happen at a societal level. That is the hard work of an individual and has always been.
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Re:American Airlines' Legendary Mechanic Passes Away at 100 ... by cucumber3732842 on Tuesday September 01, 2026 @09:10AM (#49521507)
At the societal level it's a numbers game. These people are the end of a very long tail. If you reduce the area under the curve you also reduce the long tail.
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Re:American Airlines' Legendary Mechanic Passes Away at 100 ... by NetMageSCW on Wednesday September 02, 2026 @11:34AM (#49537865)
Much of today’s world run on FOSS that says exactly the opposite. Gnu, emacs, Linux weren’t created for money.
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