[PLUG] A training cooperative?

[ptkwt at aracnet.com]

> On Thu, 1 Aug 2002, Preston Crawford wrote:
> 
> >
> > On 1 Aug 2002, Karl M. Hegbloom wrote:
> >
> > > I've been told that there are a lot of underqualified people out there
> > > (with and without college degrees) who have trouble finding work, and
> > > that's why the high tech unemployment rate is so high.  Time to hit
> > > the books, folks.
> >
>  
[snipped lines]
> With the collapse of the tech sector, & the concurrent recession, people
> lost their jobs not from their own mistakes or actions, but due to causes
> beyond their control. Capable people are struggling to find work, while
> incompetent people are warming chairs & drawing salaries -- all due to
> the luck of the draw.
> 
> I really wish there was a magic solution that would fix this dislocation,
> because I would apply it to my own condition. Blame it on being under-
> qualified, on rapacious corporate executives, on the ying & the yang being
> out of balance: if there was one clear cause, then I could act
> accordingly.
> 
> I look in the newspapers & online I can't find jobs. People I talk to
> are out of work & looking, too. It takes money to train yourself,
> even if it reading books (they have to be obtained) or tinkering with
> new hardware (they have to be bought). I could take on debt in pursuit
> of these goals, but it's frightening to owe money when there's no money
> coming in. I wish I had saved more money when times were flush, but
> looking back, I was busy paying bills & paying off debt; I could have
> lived like Ebeneezer Scrooge, but there comes a time when I allow myself
> to enjoy the money I have earned.
 

Lately, at the PLUG meetings I've attended I ask folks if they're working or not
(and if they are working, are they working at Starbuck's ).  It seems to me that
these informal surveys point to an unemployment rate among PLUGers that's
somewhere in the 30% range.  Now, it's possible that if you're not working
you're more likely to show up at a PLUG meeting because you've got the time, so
maybe it's lower, but I'd guess it's at least 15 - 20%. Given the huge loss of
capital in the stock market over the last two years (that continues to this day)
I think it's safe to assume that all the talk of 'recovery' I hear every morning
on the news is mostly propaganda to keep us from more panic selling. [When the
stock market tanked in 1929, how many people knew that it would lead to the
Great Depression?  Not many, it took a year or two for the effects to be felt by
most people.]

Anyway, I don't need to tell you it's pretty bleak out there and it's not
improving.  But that does mean that there are a lot of knowledgable folks out
there with time on their hands.  So, while we're waiting for things to improve
how about setting up some kind of free training cooperative?  People who are
knowledgable in a programming language or technique could train other people who
want to learn that language or technique.  A teacher of one class could be a
student in another.  Given the price of, say for example, those short courses at
OGI, who can afford them at $2K+/3 day course?  A training cooperative could be
a low cost/free alternative.

Then of course the question of 'where' comes up?  Maybe FreeGeek?  They've got
bunches of machines on a network.

..just an idea.
Phil