China wants to build infastructure in the US

[aieeegrunt]

Heh heh heh I'm not sure how to take that

[Simon_Jester]

The irony of "Randist dystopia" is that Rand herself is so well known for a novel that features a society which slowly falls apart because no one knows how to make or fix anything anymore.

And now it seems to turn out that the people who are needed to make the machines run and the system work aren't a handful of super-geniuses who know how to pay other people to create new alloys. It's the masses of people who have practical skills like "make diesel fuel lines that don't dissolve in diesel fuel" and "weld reliably." Fire them and replace them with people who can afford to work at half the wages, and it seems you have the same problem Rand expected to see if the tycoons went on strike.

[aieeegrunt]

It's delicious isn't it? I have so many white collar friends who can't even unstick a window, and their first response to any mechanical device not working is to throw it out instead of "take apart, find broken spring, bring spring to store, buy new one for 5 cents, replace". It's even funnier when they watch in awe as you replace a brake pad or something equally trivial, like you're fucking Gandalf because you pried open a caliper or something. I'm not some Leonardo de R2D2 by the way, 90% of this is fucking common sense. I only landed in a factory job because of the IT bubble of the late 90's popping and I'm not too proud to get my hands dirty. You couldn't drag me back to database driven web shenanigans with a fork truck now though.

My current dilemma is do I evolve into a Skilled Trade or Floor Supervisor/Lead Hand. The former will require some extra schooling which could be tricky, but once done it's far better job security than the latter.