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From Zero Hedge comments section on Millions Without Power After Blackouts Hit Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Wednesday, January 26, 2022 – 04:15 AM:
- I worked for a fortune 100 company planning and building country scale power and water infrastructure.
About 20 years ago we realized that the education system was not going to produce enough people educated to operate the infrastructure. We tried to support programs in schools to get people into the appropriate careers.
As you can tell we failed. As the 60+ year olds retire and die there is no one to operate the machines. Sure there are younger people to fill the slots, but they do not know what they are doing.
- Yep. It is happening in every technical field where you need to actually use tools / build things in real life, even surgery in medicine. The next generation think everything can be solved by software. ‘Put it on a blockchain and it will work’.
The very worst part? Nobody cares. There is no ‘memory’ to recall what was lost, so they will believe things were always this shoddy and ****. Like flat pack IKEA vs solid wood furniture. BTW, the infrastructure that always goes first is the railway. If there was one to begin with. - Operators are just the ‘tip of the iceberg’.
- Maintenance –
- Electricians,
- pipefitters,
- welders, etc.
- and all of those that make the stuff they need to do their jobs.
It reminds one of the economics question – “How many people does it take to make a lead pencil?”. The answer: Infinite!
- Maintenance –
- In New England when I was a kid, no one had portable generators. Now every one does. Portable and enclosed General systems. Ding ding ding. From smooth, cheap, high trust to erratic, expensive low trust. People talk today of moving to the woods to survive, not to urban “modern” cities.
- Where I grew up in Pa in the 70’s/80’s, there were still small functioning farms dotted throughout the country. They all had PTO driven generators, if the power went out, within a half hour the farm was up and running again. But yeah, I don’t remember any homes being set up for it. Glad mine is. When an outage comes to New York, they’ll have the toilets **** full by sundown. Not gonna be pretty.