Quote:
Originally Posted by Hali87
I can't say I'm enough of an expert to really argue for or against the bailout of the mills, but there's a bit of a problem with this logic. In theory it would be relatively easy to replace the lost jobs/economic activity with new high tech startups should the forestry industry be allowed to die. The problem is, how many loggers and millworkers do you think would realistically be able to work in the high tech sector? By high-tech I assume you mean computer programming and hardware design. High-tech startups would do very little for the actual individuals affected should the paper industry suddenly collapse.
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That's the difficulty in NS, isn't it? Trades and resource extraction are becoming less important to the overall economy, but to follow free-market logic and allow them to just die abruptly will be too painful for the people and communities that rely on them. But the opposite—artificially inflating flagging economies with government investment in dying industries—is no solution, since it'll only prolong the inevitable and leave us even more unprepared for the future.
How do we transition, rapidly, to a white-collar, educated, "creative class" (there aren't enough scare quotes in the world to surround those words, but you know what I mean) economy, while easing the pain for the workers left behind?
I don't know, exactly. Just asking.