ST JAMES — I think of rubbish collectors. Or proctologists. There are lots of jobs out there that no one really wanted, but had to be done. And there are people doing them because the market makes it hard for someone to avoid doing them.
No one wakes up in the morning and says “I think I’ll go make people miserable today” or “what I’d really like to do it spend my whole day is physical pain and exhaustion.” But there are jobs like that.
Both of my grandfathers were engineers. Gavin, the great Scot and athlete, who was my mom’s dad lived on the Gulf Coast of Florida for 30 years. Sox, who ran a big American engineering firm, was all about heavy equipment. But neither man would have guessed that we’d be seriously trying to get oil out of the ocean floor. Like it is something easy to do.
Imagine trying to collect rocks on the dark side of the moon. Can do it? Yes. I believe we can. Will we do it? Of course not. Why would we?
Demand drives behaviour. In this case I don’t think we can complain about the behaviour unless we’re willing to look at the demand that drives it.
/df
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