One person’s right to keep a job is not greater than humanity’s right to reasonable progress. It’s cases like these that give unions a bad name.
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The GM strike is really about the switch to electric cars
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Re: The GM strike is really about the switch to electric cars
#42The US auto industry is on two non sustainable paths. The first is internal combustion engines. The second is building fewer but more expensive cars.
The second part is difficult because pretty much all cars last longer than they used to. People will grumble about plastic body panels and cheap interiors but overall the average car simply lasts longer than they would in the heyday of the Big 3. Even with a growing population, better built cars are creating less demand. There are other factors, such as ride sharing, remote work, and online socializing, but none of them point to the solution being to build more cars. Perhaps making less expensive entry level cars would get some non-owners to take the plunge but the durability of existing cars makes buying a new entry level model less desirable.
Re: The GM strike is really about the switch to electric cars
#43Can somebody explain to me why we need to switch to electric cars when we have Fischer-Tropsch to produce fuel literally out of thin air? We could keep all the existing infrastructure while having zero CO2 impact. I think digging up loads of Lithium and Cobalt and plastering the country with charging stations is neither more sustainable nor less environmentally harmful.
I'm not intimately familiar with Fischer-Tropsch, but reading the list of existing plants on the wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer–Tropsch_process#Commer... Virtually all of them are producing synthetic fuel using other fossil fuels. E.g. natural gas or coal. One is using pulp/paper waste, and the other is using a combination of natural gas and landfill gas. So while the process promises to convert…
> Virtually all of them are producing synthetic fuel using other fossil fuels.
Recently a plant was demonstrated by DLR in Spain that produced Fuel from air directly only with solar power:
https://www.dlr.de/content/en/articles/news/2019/02/20190613...
Edit: apparently this converts H2O and liquid CO2 to a "synthesis gas" CO + H which then can easily transformed into any fuel you want via Fische-Tropsch. So the only step that is missing is liquefying CO2 which can be done via conventional solar power using electricity.
As far as I see it we have all pieces to the puzzle. Electric cars don't make sense anymore and are actually more harmful to the environment because of all the exotic materials used and the losses from transport of electrical power across the whole country. Also keep in mind that much of the electricity is still produced using coal.
Re: The GM strike is really about the switch to electric cars
#44Yeah, uh ctrl-f "buybacks" as in, stock buybacks. This has very little to do with electric cars, but I'm not sure you're going to get that from MarketWatch
Re: The GM strike is really about the switch to electric cars
#45I'm skeptical of several of the claims in this. Is 125 less parts "far fewer"? Have they really already automated electric car assembly better than gasoline vehicles, even though we've been doing that all my life? Are they really striking because they fear being replaced by robots, or is it for higher wages?
History is full of labor transitions. Nobody makes wagon wheels anymore. Noboby cuts pins from wire. Certainly the job opportunities in auto manufacturing are waning, but new jobs are popping up in battery tech, solar, etc. Change is never easy.
Re: The GM strike is really about the switch to electric cars
#46As a society we need to make sure we are taking care of people when their industry is destroyed. The whole “learn 2 code” thing that was directed toward coal workers was exactly the wrong thing to do. If we want those coal plants to shut down we should have offered to pay off the workers until they reached retirement age. If you “take away” someone’s job for the sake of progress, then you’ll make enemies of progress…
> The whole “learn 2 code” thing that was directed toward coal workers was exactly the wrong thing to do.
Can somebody go into depth on this? Everyday I interact with people who have jobs that suck way more than coding and pay way less.
Why wouldn't people want to work 40 hours remotely with full benefits making decent wages?
Re: The GM strike is really about the switch to electric cars
#47One person’s right to keep a job is not greater than humanity’s right to reasonable progress. It’s cases like these that give unions a bad name.
Even coming from a place of no empathy for displaced workers lives, if we hang these people out to dry we will pay the price down the line. If america had invested in a social safety net for the past 30-40 years, we might be in a different place. People would be ok with change because they'd know that society was going to have their back while they find a new career.
> if we hang these people out to dry we will pay the price down the line.
If we continue promoting industries that cause the global climate to worsen more rapidly, we're going to pay a MUCH bigger price down the line.
Taking jobs from folks who work in such an industry is a price worth paying, considering the alternative.
Re: The GM strike is really about the switch to electric cars
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm usually on board with HN moderation but I have to disagree here. They're literally refusing to do their jobs, for a reason analogous to farriers striking because the automobile is taking away their jobs because no-one needs horseshoes anymore.
They’re striking because they believe they should be paid more considering GM is making billions in profits. Concessions were made when the economy was in trouble, and the union wants those concessions reversed. Why is this unreasonable? I understand that labor unions aren’t well understood in America, but this is what they’re for: to get a better deal from a corporation for their labor. The alternative is what used…
Agree, up to: "what used to happens centuries ago: dragging business owners into the street and beating them to death"
This seems like a mischaracterization. The history of worker/owner conflict has a lot more dead workers than owners.
Re: The GM strike is really about the switch to electric cars
#49As a society we need to make sure we are taking care of people when their industry is destroyed. The whole “learn 2 code” thing that was directed toward coal workers was exactly the wrong thing to do. If we want those coal plants to shut down we should have offered to pay off the workers until they reached retirement age. If you “take away” someone’s job for the sake of progress, then you’ll make enemies of progress…
Putting entire communities or indeed entire regions on welfare for the rest of their life smacks of unintended consequences later on.
Re: The GM strike is really about the switch to electric cars
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
They’re striking because they believe they should be paid more considering GM is making billions in profits. Concessions were made when the economy was in trouble, and the union wants those concessions reversed. Why is this unreasonable? I understand that labor unions aren’t well understood in America, but this is what they’re for: to get a better deal from a corporation for their labor. The alternative is what used…
Agree, up to: "what used to happens centuries ago: dragging business owners into the street and beating them to death" This seems like a mischaracterization. The history of worker/owner conflict has a lot more dead workers than owners.
Fair enough. I should’ve said “violent civil unrest” to encompass the long history of worker/employer conflict. It’s hard to distill complex issues into a sentence or two.