-massive argument about the meaning of the word glamorus as it relates to blue collar jobs-
To be fair, while andir is silly, often wrong and rediculous about a fair number of things, he is correct about this, being a lineman isn't glamorous and high pay doesn't make something glamorous (although it helps), glamor and good aren't synonyms.
full of glamour : excitingly attractive
an exciting and often illusory and romantic attractiveness
Is being a lineman "full of "an exiting and often illusory and romantic attractiveness truean""?
Actually,
my point was that being a lineman isn't glamorous, hence why I cited all those death rates. What I was doing, all I was doing at that point, was showing that no, they aren't highly paid considering the dangers they face. He was pointing to high pay, which I maintain was him saying it was a good/glamorous job, due to the high pay. He then went on about how this term wasn't applicable or what he said, lovely red herring. He of course disputes this and I could care less.
Glamorous = type of good, high pay = good
First, Glamorous is a type of good, it certainly isn't a type of bad, or neutral. Thus it is a specific type of good. Second, the specific type of good glamorous is
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/glamorous "Excitingly attractive."
If glamorous is a type of good, specifically excitingly attractive, and high pay is a type of good, specifically excitingly attractive, then high pay =glamorous.
That's the logic; agree with it or not. High pay = glamorous, aka excitingly attractive, was the statement I maintain his words added up to.
I maintain this was a massive red herring on his part, just like how my avatar is "threatening" somehow. He's done this before, repeatedly, which makes it more likely he's doing it again.
The Good/Glamorous thing:
I'm not implying anything, western civilization and common usage do. "Among the best paid," jobs are good/glamorous jobs in common usage. Yes or no? The answer is yes....
Truean, seriously, this semantic confusion you keep having where you misread something some has said and then blame "society" for your mistake is getting grating.
No one I know thinks of glamorous, or even good, when they think of high paid blue collar jobs. When I mention it in context of linesmen, I get responses ranging from "I guess there's a shortage to linesmen" to "well it must be dangerous or hard work then". A few people associated it with them likely being better off financially (which is obviously true) and no further. Not one managed "glamorous". Not one even came close. The idea that you could come to that conclusion based on "society" is ludicrous. You read a meaning into it that wasn't there and wasn't justified, just accept that and move on.
Anyways, on topic instead of quibbling over semantics:
From the arguments made here and elsewhere I've seen on this topic, the following seem to be the three main points of opposition to having a large reserve force to handle this sort of work (ignoring the fact that our current system is actually pretty damn good! Seriously! Could it be improved? Probably. But those sort of conclusions require actual research and evidence, and I doubt anyone here has any of value, so I'm going to stick to theoretical for the most part)
1: There's not enough work to go around to keep that many linemen experienced enough to be useful (or happy). Even if you're keeping this linemen mostly in "reserve", they need experience. Relevant, recent experience. Preferably lots of it. Unfortunately, there's only so much work that needs to be done in an average year, so keeping a huge increase in employees properly skilled would be incredibly difficult. Even if there was enough work for the numbers you're proposing, you would have to admit each linemen is unlikely to have as much experience (since, currently, all the normal repair work gets done). In addition, these new linesmen would likely be competing with the old linesmen for work.
2: Linesmen are already one of the highest paid jobs and they can't find enough employees. Logistically, a 50% hiring increase is huge. It's already one of the best paying blue collar jobs, and people still don't want to do it - how much would you have to increase the price to get them too? Where would they come from? And most importantly, would it lead to a decrease in quality? (Considering the shortage the industry is in, they'd either have to relax standards or raise pay, probably both, to hit this number. And it would still take years to get there. And is raising the risks and deathrate of the industry by having less competent workers who get less experience overall due to a diminished workload really worth the trade off? Because if you combine less competent workers with less time spent working and more time "in reserve", there's a chance that's what you'd get.)
3: There are more efficient ways to tackle the problem. People have brought up generators - generator investments could go a long way towards offsetting the costs of disasters such as these, and may well be far more efficient than hiring additional workers.
"Blame Society for my mistakes?" "Semantic confusion?" "grating?"
You do realize I interpret contracts and statutes for a living right? This is pretty standard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_personThat and using common or legal definitions for words....
If that's "semantic confusion," then the entire legal profession is guilty of it. "Grating," do you realize this is about 80% of what I do, especially in legal research? This is a big part of what lawyers charge for, and they charge a ton for it....
If you do what he did in a contract in a court setting, then standard objective interpretation, and contra preferendem
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contra_proferentem means you lose. If you subjectively, within your own mind, meant something that doesn't appear on the page, you're screwed...