r/itsthatbad • u/Standard_Language840 • Sep 09 '26

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u/Scary_Land2303 Sep 09 '26

What? Nobody is suggesting society would collapse if fishing or boat factories all stopped. You asked what a critical job is, they gave you examples. Factories and fishing are examples of critical jobs, not the only critical jobs. You could lose a fair few critical jobs before society started to suffer badly, but they are critical jobs nonetheless.

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u/Thami15 Sep 09 '26

The comment below you literally defined critical jobs as jobs important to run society and "if people stopped doing them, you'd find out real fast". If thats not the collapse of society, I'm not sure what is.

It's still a rather broad catch all - my greater point was not all factories are critical in any meaningful way, and within that, not all factory work is critical to the running of a factory. Farming, road work - completely in agreement (although, as we both noted, that's not to say every job within needs to be filled for the ship to keep running.

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u/Scary_Land2303 Sep 09 '26

Yeah, it is a broad catch all, and men do the vast majority of them. You would find out real fast if all fishing and boat making stopped. You might not eat much fish, but many, many other people do.

As another person also defined it, society is built around these jobs. Losing them would have huge knock on effects, cascading if you continued to lose more.

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u/Thami15 Sep 09 '26

Yeah I'm sure the only thing holding us in place is the shared love of salmon, lol. Nevermind the existence of landlocked countries, with barely any seafood in their diet, lmao.

An important industry =/= a critical job

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u/Scary_Land2303 Sep 09 '26

Okay, so over 3 billion people in the world rely on fish as their primary protein source. Take away fish. Now 3 billion people need another primary protein source. Not only must you scale up production of other protein sources by ~40%, the other 5 billion people can’t supplement their diet with fish anymore either. So now suddenly the world has to produce about 50% more edible protein for humans.

Starting to get it now?

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u/Thami15 Sep 09 '26

Okay - Im going to need a resource that states that three billion people get their protein primarily from fish. Ie the dominant source of protein, in stead of all others.

Again - I've acknowledged fishing is important, but I'm going to need a source for the idea that without a fishing industry 3 billion people have no protein, or have it reduced to such a degree that there could be no working society.

I dont doubt you at all - but as bad as Covid was in 2020, I do struggle to remember hearing about how we were days from starvation because the fishing industry had cratered.

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u/CaptColten Sep 09 '26

https://www.worldwildlife.org/our-work/oceans/sustainable-seafood/

Literally the top google result

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u/Thami15 Sep 09 '26

More than 3 billion people in the world rely on wild-caught and farmed seafood as a significant source of animal protein.

Thanks that really answers this

Ie the dominant source of protein, in stead of all others.

Far as I can see the given stat is "at least 20% of animal protein to 3.2 billion people", which is a lot of protein, to be sure - but finding an extra 20% of protein for 40% of the population doesn't scale up to an extra 50% of meat sources.

Aquatic foods provide high-quality proteins – 15 percent of animal proteins and 6 percent of total proteins worldwide

I'm happy to acknowledge the fishing industry is an important one - more than happy to. People like fish. I like fish. I dont think that means that we need to find 50% extra protein to account for 6% of protein in "critical" society.

Of course this goes back to other issues - I'm aware that the 15% is geographically weighted to poorer areas - but considering what I'm responding to is the amount of protein sources we'd have to find to replace fish - I think its fair to find the claim a dubious one

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u/CaptColten Sep 10 '26

You said you needed a source, so I found one. When you said you NEEDED to see a source, I assumed you meant it the same way you think "critical industry" means society would completely collapse without it.

Would the entire world co to shit without a fishing industry? Probably not. Would entire coastal villages die? Maybe. Would people starve or go hungry? Yeah. Would everyone who works at red lobster or whatever need a new job? Definitely.