On the Competency Crisis, another thing which feeds into it is that there are simply fewer competent people in the West than there were even twenty years ago - certainly proportionally, and probably in absolute terms as well. Low-status employers who nevertheless cannot compromise on the quality of their employees - air traffic control, civil engineering, etc - are increasingly forced to compete with elite institutions and corpos for this pool of high ability labour. Thirty or forty years ago, there were enough to go around. That seems to no longer be the case
Perhaps the latest wave of graduates from the Third World's leading technical universities will solve this problem for us, but it seems unlikely to me
No doubt. Leading graduates from abroad is a temporary fix, though. They have a limited pool of talent themselves, and as the West declines and living standards in their home countries improve (at least in some of them), more of that shallow pool will remain where they are than emigrate to America. India is a prime example of this. I also suspect that there may be an entire segment of competent individuals that would be able and willing to work in these fields, if the right incentives were provided. Without families to provide for, rapid inflation diminishing the dollar, and being effectively priced out of the housing market, a lot of these people are content to continue working lower paying jobs - why bust your ass for a more intensive, stressful job if you aren't even able to afford a one bed-room apartment on the salary? This is assuming they work at all and don't just become shut-ins, but that's really going more into the adjacent phenomenon of "quiet quitting" and "the great resignation".
This is the only genuine insight I have ever read on the topic of OceanGate, and I saw as much paint-by-numbers knee-jerking as anyone. Thank you so much!
On the Competency Crisis, another thing which feeds into it is that there are simply fewer competent people in the West than there were even twenty years ago - certainly proportionally, and probably in absolute terms as well. Low-status employers who nevertheless cannot compromise on the quality of their employees - air traffic control, civil engineering, etc - are increasingly forced to compete with elite institutions and corpos for this pool of high ability labour. Thirty or forty years ago, there were enough to go around. That seems to no longer be the case
Perhaps the latest wave of graduates from the Third World's leading technical universities will solve this problem for us, but it seems unlikely to me
No doubt. Leading graduates from abroad is a temporary fix, though. They have a limited pool of talent themselves, and as the West declines and living standards in their home countries improve (at least in some of them), more of that shallow pool will remain where they are than emigrate to America. India is a prime example of this. I also suspect that there may be an entire segment of competent individuals that would be able and willing to work in these fields, if the right incentives were provided. Without families to provide for, rapid inflation diminishing the dollar, and being effectively priced out of the housing market, a lot of these people are content to continue working lower paying jobs - why bust your ass for a more intensive, stressful job if you aren't even able to afford a one bed-room apartment on the salary? This is assuming they work at all and don't just become shut-ins, but that's really going more into the adjacent phenomenon of "quiet quitting" and "the great resignation".
This is the only genuine insight I have ever read on the topic of OceanGate, and I saw as much paint-by-numbers knee-jerking as anyone. Thank you so much!
Thank you for reading. The kind words are appreciated.