PallasRiot on Nostr: I'm a life long blue collar worker, I'm proud of the different kinds of work I've ...

I'm a life long blue collar worker, I'm proud of the different kinds of work I've done, I take pride in doing practical things that make people's lives better in the most direct, material sense. If I didn't have to work I might still do what I currently do, just on my own terms.

But I'm real suspicious of a lot of the pro blue collar rhetoric out there in the US.

All this talk about needing more apprenticeships and less college degrees, how the trades are better than student debt, etc, seems like part of a long term strategy to discourage working class yankees from seeking education. It seems like a strategy to make more of us feel good about education falling apart and more and more of us doing all kinds of awful menial labor. It feels like there's a lot of long con going on here to be honest.

I want a world where people aren't defined by labor, but in the shorter term I'd like a world where plumbers and delivery drivers and coders and ER nurses all could get educated in philosophy, or economics, or history, or whatever else if they want to, and that all those people feel like they have a right to that knowledge. Capitalism robs us of self-development, it forces us to mold ourselves to whatever advantages us in selling our labor.