I (23M, American) feel completely paralyzed from a career perspective because I have no idea what the hell to do. If I choose the wrong degree program, I have to pay back all the debt with nothing to show for it. Even if I get a job, there’s no telling how long that will last. Everything keeps changing so fucking fast and it seems like any field I could go to college for could cease to be viable by the time I finish. On top of that, I have chronic health conditions to worry about that limit what I can even do.
(Edit: Basically I have POTS and a neck injury, so it’s hard to do physical labor and I suffer from dizziness, brain fog, and fatigue from being up for an hour or so. I don’t know my exact limits yet, since the severity of my condition varies by day and there appear to be ways to partially recover from the fatigue without having to lay down.)
I think stuff like urban planning and designing walkable environments would be cool, but I’m not sure if that’s a viable path in 2027 and beyond. I also used to be interested in programming, but ever since AI and mass layoffs hit the scene, I’ve become disillusioned and stopped pursuing that path.
I used to feel like the world was stable and I could pick a career based on my passion and be fine. But ever since 2020, everything has felt increasingly more uncertain. The world seems to be losing its collective shit and that doesn’t appear to be changing anytime soon.
Is staking your sense of stability on your career the wrong way to think about this? Should I be trying to find close friends or some kind of supportive community that could act as a safety net? Or is everyone too hyperindividualist to look out for each other?
Trades are fine but IMO if you have to use a union to make your income then the people at the top of the field are too much of an asshat to know that what they do is broken and causing people to need unions.
Isn’t that the case with almost every field?
Unless the people at the top have an incentive to keep the field healthy, they’re not going to bother to do it. That’s why regulations, regulatory boards, and unions are helpful
That is the perverse incentive of capitalism yes.
Not every field is prone to this perverse incentive and it depends on a per company level how bad it is at any given place, we can choose to get paid well and not need unions easily enough so I’d avoid supporting a company with the work I do for them if something got so bad that it needed a major regulating body to sprout up.
Maybe this is just me being privledged or something but I’ve never seen instances where a union was just automatically better and I’ve actually heard a handful of accounts where it was mostly wasteful so it seek very much like your mileage will vary.
I come from a nordic country with very high level of union membership. Pretty much every time it’s a benefit to be a part of a union just because of collective bargaining. It’s also very important for when there’s a dispute and you need a lawyer, the unions can have a salaried lawyer that has experience with your contract because it’s the same one as for all the other people.
Unions also sometime provide heavily discounted vacation homes and bunch of other nice things.
Oh yeah definitely wasnt thinking about Nordic countries.
Its my understanding that Nordic countries are basically moving capitalism along the slowest by burdening everyone in many ways but more evenly compared to somewhere like in the us so it makes sense to me that in countries like that people could benefit more from unions because they have more direct things for unions to deal with but in the us all the businesses operate much more variably so it really depends on what place in particular is in question and it could even be a matter of location of the same business having wildly different problems or lack of problems.
Funny, you actually think businesses are less varied in the nordics. Capitalism is also just not slow, nordics at the top of billionaires per capita lists, income and other money metrics. Only difference is we’re not swimming in poor people like the US.
Says they aren’t less varied
describes how they are less varied
Just noticed your name, figures
You are reading “varied” differently from how I meant it. I wasn’t saying Nordic countries have less variety of businesses or less capitalism.
I meant the conditions workers experience from one employer/workplace to another are more constrained by collective bargaining and other institutions. If there’s a stronger common floor for wages, benefits, working conditions, dispute resolution, etc., then whether you happen to land at Company A or Company B matters less for some of those things.
In the US there’s a much wider space for individual employers to determine those conditions themselves, so “is a union useful?” can depend enormously on the particular workplace. That was the distinction I was making.
I mean, that’s always been the case, in almost every company ever. There are some rare business owners out there that truly take incredible care of their people without a union demanding it, but organized labor and collective bargaining are what brought an end to child labor in the US and Europe. It’s where we got weekends and mandatory safety practices. We’ve always had to fight back to demand humane conditions.
I’m not saying unions are bad and we should not have them I’m saying we should not need unions in the first place so we should seek out where they aren’t needed.
Also side note, I’m surprised how many people are downvoting my posts in this thread lol can people not read the subtext?
I mean, your reply comes off a little, well, unwise? Like you’re maybe making assumptions on a subject you don’t know much about. I’m not trying to be mean, just guessing at why you’re getting beat up on the votes.
You should in fact seek out unions, because union membership makes unions stronger, and union presence increases working conditions and wages for not just union members but for non union workers as well. It’s documented and confirmed.
A lot of the union contractors I’ve worked for have worked with our trade unions for generations, and some of the higher ups in those companies came from the union ranks and still mostly keep their loyalties. It’s not all roses, but usually when companies get used to playing by our rules, they end up doing okay at it and some are downright pleasant.
This is probably less the case when you’re hearing about sectors that are traditionally non union (gaming studios, Starbucks, whatever) where Union organizing is a new thing and those companies are kicking and screaming and plotting to stop it.
Seek out unions where unions are happening is different from seeking out unions where they aren’t yet established and where they aren’t at all are places where they seem to be functionally well without extra governance and so likely more people worth helping out because they have things going in non destructive ways from the start.
Sure whatever
You’re catching downvotes because what you’re saying doesn’t make sense. Non-union workplaces are usually more fucked up, that’s not a sign that “unions aren’t needed.”
Mhm, I’m saying find the lens that aren’t.
Still doesn’t make sense, my guy.
Woops thats an autocorrect mistake lol “lens” is supposed to be" ones"