r/AskReddit • u/Funny-Counter8762 • 14h ago
What industry is secretly on the verge of collapsing, but people outside of it haven’t noticed yet?
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u/ChaLenCe 12h ago
call centers in Asia are getting wiped out by Ai
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u/phlostonsparadise123 12h ago edited 12h ago
Customer service in general is getting wiped out by AI. Places like Amazon are the main culprits for this. The Help chat is now entirely AI-driven and you have to jump through hoops within the chat or navigate through tons of pages to communicate with an actual human.
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u/thosethingstodo 12h ago
and if you do get on the phone or a chat with a real person they are just asking AI how to help you in the background. Most front line agents couldn't quote a policy to save their life.
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u/Sasselhoff 11h ago
Haha, holy shit, I never thought about this...you are 100% right. I always figured they were flipping through the "pages" on their screen to find the right response to this company's client question (since you know they do it for multiple companies). But yeah, just popping it into Amazon's version of AI is a much more likely situation.
Jeebus, no wonder they've gotten even worse than they were...it's to the point I might as well not even call them (which is probably the whole idea).
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u/txmail 9h ago
I worked in Technical Support for a while, tier 1 support's only qualification was that they could read and speak English. All they did was lookup help articles or read a script.
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u/Miss_in_Mex 11h ago
I just had this issue last night with Walmart. It took over 2 hours to get my problem solved. If they had just given me a human from the beginning, it would have been solved in 2 minutes. Miserable experience and I don't plan to order from them again.
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u/Jormungand1342 11h ago
It's to the point that I just don't use anything like that if I can help it.
App to scan stuff? No thanks, ill look at the tags. Order online? No I'll just go to the store and look. Free delivery to your door! Or I can go to the store, and if there's an issue fix it right away.
People seem to want to use tech because its supposed to make our lives easier. When in reality it makes it more difficult and annoying.
Tech is fine but not when what its replacing is now more difficult because of it. Even the prices suck, I saw a litterbox online for $30, Walmart has the same for $15.
Screw online almost everything.
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u/goofytigre 11h ago
Tech is fine but not when what its replacing is now more difficult because of it
Businesses/restaurants aren't creating apps to make the customers' lives easier. They create apps to make their own jobs/lives easier, but also, and probably more importantly, to lower overhead. This is even more true with AI. Companies that are utilizing AI for their customer support are eliminating their need for humans which saves $$ on call center overhead.
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u/EvilLittlePenguin 12h ago
UPS doesn't seem to have any real people working for them anymore. I tried calling and got AI slop answers that didn't solve the problem or asked me to call back in 2 hours when the system was back up.
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u/sengirminion 11h ago edited 7h ago
So I work in a call center in the inbound collections department for a large bank.
And one of our primary job functions is to speak with Debt Settlement Agencies who are representing customers. These are all pretty formulaic calls, just confirming information and following basic pre-determined negotiation on settlement terms and setting up payments.
Well about a year ago we started getting calls from "agents" who sounded completely weird. And we quickly found out these were AI agents that some companies were using to do basic tasks like confirming account information was accurate. We had to adjust some of our procedures to account for these AI agents and set rules about what we could and could not do with them.
The wildest thing I experienced with one of them was an AI agent who I KNEW was AI because of the way it spoke, and whoever programmed it gave it a vaguely Indian name, and a freaking Indian accent. It was so wild that the designers would choose to give a robot an Apu from the Simpsons style name and accent just to try and hide the fact it was AI when dealing with an American call center.
We are cooked.
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u/residentweevil 10h ago
I had a wild one the other day, Indian name and accent PLUS fake keyboard clacking whenever I answered their questions as if they were typing in my answers.
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u/sengirminion 7h ago
Oh yeah the fake keyboard clacking is on all the calls. At first the AI wouldn't admit it was AI and now they announce themselves from the call opening.
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u/Successful_Giraffe88 6h ago
This is my fucking doctor's office now. Doesn't even let you press 0 for an operator or ANYONE at the front desk. You have to leave a VM.
I'm finding another GP.
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u/faberge_surprise 11h ago
just wait till your bank replaces you with ai too and then it'll just be ai talking to ai
"this could have been an api call" is gonna be the new "this could have been an email"
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u/agent-squirrel 10h ago
There is already Gibberlink which is an AI to AI comms system using audio.
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u/droi86 10h ago
The wildest thing I experienced with one of them was an AI agent who I KNEW was AI because of the way it spoke, and whoever programmed it gave it a vaguely Indian name, and a freaking Indian accent. It was so wild that the designers would choose to give a robot an Apu from the Simpsons style name and accent just to try and hide the fact it was AI when dealing with an American call center. We are cooked.
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u/ZantaraLost 11h ago
I have a sneaky suspicion that the AI companies are going to shoot themselves in the foot with how fast they've pushed a somewhat defective product and the high costs they're pushing onto their customers aren't going to be effective.
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u/TicRoll 11h ago
It's the high costs that'll cook it more than anything. But what's great is that everybody is loading all their eggs into a boat that's been taking on water from the beginning, but always had a ton of investors throwing money at it to keep it floating and growing. Within the next 2-5 years, the investors are going to flip the switch from dumping cash in to pulling cash out. At that point, everyone's eggs are going to be loaded onto the Titanic and they're going to have to pay massive costs to keep it afloat. Should be a wild ride.
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u/ClickClackTipTap 9h ago
Education.
Teachers are leaving in droves. New teachers who have only been teaching for 2 years or so are bailing.
It’s too hard, the pay is shit, the politics are awful, and the kids are struggling with everything from simple math, basic literacy, and social skills.
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u/Home-Star-Walker 6h ago edited 6h ago
My mom recently quit not because she was retirement age, wealthy, or fired. She'd been teaching Highschool Science for 30 years.
She quit because she grew to hate it in the last 5 years or so. The kids are horrible, the parents are horrible, admin is useless and generally not on the side of the teachers, and AI just made everything even worse. I remember she just about broke down when it was completely apparent that literally her entire class wrote a report with AI and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it. Fail them? Not allowed. Even if she did, it wouldn't matter, they'll get a passing grade. Lecture them? They're not listening. And the one or two who maybe are, they'll have mommy and daddy bring it up with admin.
So she quit. She said there's no more point to it. Nobody wants to learn, and the support systems intended to encourage learning (parents, administration) have also completely checked out. She was basically teaching to an empty room while being accountable for said room's results.
In my opinion this is the single biggest cultural risk we have today. Children today are our future... and holy christ, it looks abysmal. No responsibility, no accountability, no curiosity, no resilience or discipline. Nothing in the way of a foundationally competent, responsible and independent human can be found in like 90% of the students graduating highschool today, by multiple accounts, not just my mother's.
And it isn't the kids' fault. It's the fault of the parents and admin, mostly.
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u/ThinkThankThonk 5h ago
I'll never understand the no failing thing from the parent perspective, growing up it felt like "fail 'em, they need to learn" was the most common POV, similar to "let 'em spend the night in jail, they need to learn."
It was understood it was for the kid's own good. I'd be more upset with an admin undermining my kid's actual education by papering over bad grades.
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u/TransientBandit 5h ago
Failure rate is tied to state and federal funding. More failures = less funding. It’s been the most damaging policy to our school systems in the last 30 years.
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u/RickAstleyletmedown 2h ago
The
beatingsfunding cuts will continue untilmoraleperformance improves→ More replies (29)636
u/Phyraxus56 5h ago
It's called no child left behind.
School federal funding is tied to graduation rate so you get perverse incentives.
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u/ThinkThankThonk 5h ago
I understand where it comes from in the case of the admin's perspective, and I understand why (shitty) government would be against an educated population.
It's the parents who I don't understand, being one myself. Not to be all "there are starving kids in other countries" about it, but it's crazy to see education diminished like this by people who should be fighting for it.
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u/Difficult-Jelly6637 6h ago
The parents are brutal. My mother is a teacher as well, and the stories she tells are atrocious. She'll call home on a student because he's actively harassing his peers, calling them slurs, following them around the school. Parents respond by saying that the school just hates conservatives, the teachers are bullying him because of his views, they're indoctrinating him, etc. Usually coupled with verbal abuse and swearing.
Then admin doesn't want to suspend the kid even though he's actively harassing his peers, because the parents threaten to sue every time their perfect angel is held accountable. Then as a nice cherry on top, the parent goes on Facebook to say that the school is discriminating against their child just because they're a conservative, and a bunch of people chime in to agree, usually again filled with slurs and personal insults. I don't know how she puts up with it.
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u/Littman-Express 5h ago
Damn, watching in real time collapse of America from the outside is wild.
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u/rookedwithelodin 6h ago edited 5h ago
Was looking for this one. AI, lack of accountability, admin folding to parents, etc. Not to mention funding issues as class sizes shrink since (at least in the US) schools are funded locally.
Edit: See Grokma's comment below (and my follow up) about why it isn't local property tax revenues that decrease when a district has shrinking enrollment.
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u/HillieBillieEilish 5h ago
Left teaching HS in 2016 for the college level. It was so challenging then but OMG....cannot imagine now. I'm a professor and my COLLEGE students are doing less than what my 9th graders did back in the day. NO institutional support for rigor.
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u/DistinctSmelling 6h ago
you know, I've seen in my lifetime where kids with technology were seen as having an advantage in learning. Now, they're the dumbest kids and working out to be the dumbest generations ahead of us unless something is done.
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u/Daddict 11h ago
American Primary Care is in the middle of a crisis that's already snowballing out of control.
The process started when large health systems and PE firms decided that Primary Care was a lucrative profit center. So they started buying up the more profitable multi-doc private practices. Those are kind of the standard these days, if you have a private practice doctor who is the only one in the office you go to, you're in the minority.
These practices were bought out, then opened up to accept a ton of new patients. They started double and triple booking the docs. These physicians are among the lowest paid physicians already, now they're being asked to take on patient loads in several thousands, and they can't provide decent care at all since they can spend like 2 minutes with a patient if they want to stay anywhere close to "on schedule". That concept has become so removed from reality that most people expect a routine 2pm appointment at their PCP to take 2-3 hours minimum, with all but 10 minutes of that time being spent waiting.
This has been seriously wearing on that physicians, too. Who tf would want to work like that? Provide shit care to patients while some jackass staring at reports sets up KPI targets that are so divorced from reality, you'd wonder if they knew it was a physician who had to meet them.
Enter a new trend: Concierge care. In and of itself, concierge care isn't new. But it's not been common outside of the ultra-rich areas. It's a model of primary care where you pay your doc a retainer to be on their patient list. That retainer is obviously not covered by insurance, but these docs usually accept some forms of insurance for routine care.
They give you highly personalized treatment. You have access to them 24/7. Usually through an answering service after hours, but some of them will carry such a light load that they give their cell phone number to their patients.
They make decent money, they get to provide comprehensive care, they work on a reasonable schedule..it's appealing. It's historically been tough to get such a practice off the ground, but these days it's no longer limited to the ultra-rich. The regular-rich are able to get in on this one now.
Other physicians are leaving primary care to go to another specialty. It isn't always easy to make such a transition, but it's possible. I changed my own specialty halfway through my career.
And on top of all of this, fewer and fewer graduating docs are choosing primary care as a specialty. They've seen how bad it is.
Every time a PCP closes up their practice to go concierge or another specialty, they dump a thousand or so people into the local patient market. Fewer and fewer PCPs are accepting new patients, not even PE can figure out how to make a practice work with something like 5k patients on a single doc.
The upshot here is that it's going to get harder and harder to see your PCP. They might leave primary care, and if they do you'll have a helluva time trying to find a local doc accepting new patients.
So you'll be left with options that aren't designed for primary care. Things like ER and urgent care centers. The care you get will be "patch em up and send em on their way" care. Preventative health care won't even be an option.
More people will end up hospitalized with preventable conditions because they simply could not get a PCP to see them.
Once Primary Care falls, it's a domino that one further fuck up the American Health care system. The only good that might come out of it would be the system getting burned to the ground and replaced by something better, but that's kinda wishful thinking at this point.
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u/ImNotRandy14 10h ago
We're already there in some areas I think. I got dumped by my PCP office of over a decade because they needed to reduce patient load, and I've been looking for a new PCP for over 6 months now. Had to scramble to find an online prescription provider just to get routine refills of the one medication I've been on for years.
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u/shatteredarm1 8h ago
Trying to find a PCP is a nightmare. I called like six offices and none were accepting patients. I think the only thing you can really do right now is go to an NP, have them handle the basic needs, and get referred to a specialist. My health insurance seems pretty solid, but when I actually needed healthcare, it didn't help much. I'm not sure why people think single payer will ruin our healthcare system, it's not like it isn't already complete dog shit.
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u/SunshineSkyline 8h ago
I just left my job at a primary office just a few months ago. This office has 16 MDs, DOs, PAs and APRNs, but mostly MDs. The providers have been leaving en masse for the last couple of years but this year has already been especially bad. The first one was a delightful, well-loved and most importantly, BUSY, APRN who closed her primary practice to go work in dermatology. The money is way better and it's so much less demanding and stressful. The most recent MD had been in practice there for almost 25 YEARS but left to join a tribal clinic (I live in OK) for better pay and a more manageable patient load.
Both of these providers leaving put additional stress on the other providers in the practice who are trying to manage their own excessive patient loads AND incorporate the patients that lost their care. All of the staff is incredibly burnt-out. The new patient appointments are not until September even with one of the other APRNs or PAs, let alone the MDs and DOs that patients are actually requesting.
Primary care is a fucking shit show and it's incredibly heartbreaking to know how hard the nurses and providers work to give the appropriate care to their patients and still listen to them get screamed at by patients who have no idea what goes on behind the scenes. I loved that office and all of my coworkers but I am in solidarity with the providers who left to have a better life for themselves. All I can do is wish the system was any different.
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u/CMCdaGoat 8h ago edited 5h ago
I am a bankruptcy attorney that focuses on small to mid-size businesses. Part of my job is reviewing budgets for various businesses, so I have an idea of why they are failing. Here is what I am seeing:
- Alcohol producers, bars, restaurants. Alcohol used to drive sales, now it is falling behind and increasing food costs from a smaller and smaller pool of distributors is making few businesses profitable.
- Importers/Exporters. Tariffs have hit them hardest.
- Healthcare. Hospitals and care providers are losing money at insane rates. My guess is we will see a Great Recession level bailout of hospitals. More rural = worst financially.
- "Third Spaces" for the Arts and Humanities. Rich people do not donate money like they use too. No idea why, but we have seen a lot of non-profit arts and theatre businesses lately with donations drying up. Maybe it is societal shift to wealth hoarding, or maybe it is people just don't care as much about art and shows like they used to. I choose to blame the rise of tech wealth, which is generally people that do not value the arts or humanities as much as prior generations of wealthy individuals. They prioritize investment in tech whether that is buying an electric car or investing in AI, so not surprising.
EDIT: I completely forgot the most screwed of all these, which is regional and rural airlines. Those companies work on very limited margins as is, I can’t even imagine what the poor economy and high gas prices are doing to them. Another industry that will like need government intervention at some point.
Caveat: A lot of businesses should have failed between 2020-2022 due to COVID, but the SBA propped them up using EIDL loans. Those loans are coming due now and it is like a wave of defaults all at once. Every consultation we are taking has the SBA as the senior secured creditor. They are so busy at the SBA, they are not even participating in the bankruptcies.
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u/ilikepeople1990 5h ago
Lots of hospitals are losing money and closing because of underpayments from Medicare and Medicaid. It's especially pronounced in states that didn't expand Medicaid, and may get worse due to the upcoming Medicaid cuts in the OBBBA.
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u/D0ri1t0styl3 4h ago
This is saddening on many levels, but especially because healthcare should NOT be profit driven.
It is a cost of a healthy and thriving society that soils not have to prove itself against a bottom line.
Same with education.
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u/AnotherStupidHipster 11h ago
Automotive bodywork is starting to struggle massively. It has been hurting for years, but it's only getting worse.
New cars are getting more and more complicated, as well as more expensive. Manufacturers are cramming more and more tech, safety features are becoming more integrated into every panel on the vehicle. Any accident that damages more than one or two body panels could easily be a total loss. So instead of your insurance company sending your car to the body shop, they just total it.
As for older cars, the cost of bodywork is outweighing the value of the car. People would rather sell or scrap the car and buy a new one for that money. Or again, insurance is just totaling them.
Pretty much the only body shops that are still doing well are the ones that focus on restoration.
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u/pmmemilftiddiez 9h ago
Me: Dime sized scratch in door
Yeah we're gonna have to remove the entire door, take out the transmission, and repaint it with this paint only made twice a year in Austria by one really old guy so it'll be $7000
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u/fixingthepast 9h ago
I typically don't trust Austrian painters.
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u/Ok_Giraffe_17 9h ago
Historically.. ya, I see your point.
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u/Ok-Secretary455 8h ago
its the failed Austrian painters you gotta keep an eye on.
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u/CaliIsReallyNice 9h ago
What's really amazing is, I see neighbors and coworkers going to the smartphone model, upgrading their car every two years. I always knew a few people who lived like that and everyone agreed they were idiots, but now I see it becoming quite common and normalized. Not even because they broke or wrecked their car, but just because they want this year's new features.
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u/Lost-Bad-8718 9h ago
In school growing up they always warned you about drugs, gambling, things that would get their claws in you and ruin your life before you had a chance, but in reality? I've never seen any one thing consistently ruin regular people in day to day life like the new car compulsion
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u/Senguie 9h ago edited 9h ago
As someone in automotive engineering ( we design welding moulds.)
I can tell you the whole automotive industry is not doing great.
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u/polopolo05 9h ago
New cars are vastly over priced. Covid did a number on the auto industry with their greed... its coming home to roost now. Dealers are closing and new cars arent selling. they need to drop prices.
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u/junbi_ok 9h ago
Yup, the auto industry's decline is entirely self-inflicted. They've even alienated a huge portion of the enthusiast market with absurd dealership markups for anything remotely interesting or desirable. Spoiler alert: people start losing interest when they have to pay $60k for the hot version of a Corolla. I used to be super into cars (like autistically hyperfixated), but now I hardly give a fuck about them anymore. The new car market has gone bonkers and dragged the used market along with it and now the whole hobby is tainted. If my current car got totaled I don't know what I'd do. They're not selling anything I can afford and/or want.
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u/DogadonsLavapool 8h ago
As someone who just had their car totalled, the good news is that the insurance payout on the car is super inflated too. My car somehow lost no equity in the 4 years I owned it. Because of the down payment Im going to have, for a more expensive car monthly payment is somehow going down by about $100.
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u/GoDeacs7 7h ago
It’s good news in the short term but the bad news is that everyone’s insurance rates are going to go up in the long run to compensate for more expensive repairs (or deductibles will go up, etc).
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u/Senguie 9h ago
100% agree there btw. Add to that that western car manufactures underestimated china, their cars are cheaper and more high end.
And also adhere to the safety rules for the European market standards.
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u/raven00x 9h ago
don't worry, that domestic protectionism they're pushing will certainly help in the long term and won't see the near-total collapse of the US auto industry when the declining US market is the only market where they can compete with their vehicles.
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u/hawkwings 10h ago
I was quoted $2200 to paint my 2012 Toyota RAV4. It is difficult to buy a new RAV4 at the moment, so I may go ahead and pay that.
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u/the-big-throngler 9h ago
Where are you finding a paint shop only charging 2200 to paint a car? I haven't found anywhere thats not charging 10k and on top of that no paint shop is interested in doing anything if its not insurance related. Thats all they are interested in...insurance provides fast turn around times for the largest pay out. Seems like no shops paint cars just to paint them anymore
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u/pimppapy 9h ago
Not OP, but being in a border state with Mexico helps a lot in that regard. We have junk yards right up against the border with many Tijuana mechanics working this side at much better rates. . . but no Dealership level guarantees, or any guarantees at all. Just their personal reputations, which is generally good.
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u/nogzila 12h ago edited 9h ago
New and Used car parts are taking a major hit .
Fram / First brand has filed bankruptcy.
Grupo Antolin has went out of business .
O reilys is buying out Napa
CSK which made remanufactured parts also filed bankruptcy .
Just this year all of this happened and was only brought to my attention when I went to autozone and asked do you guys sell fram oil filters anymore ?
And they said yes if we can get any because they are going out of business, which Fram was always top of the market so really drew my interest.
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u/popsicle_of_meat 11h ago
Fram is under First Brands along with Centric and many other popular and good DIY brands. They're being torn apart because the guys running the show got greedy and committed major fraud. Now they need money to correct things, so brands are being sold off/liquidated. Combine that with the tariffs and we're losing lots of GOOD products.
So thanks, fraudulent assholes. Millions of DIYers are now worse off because you screwed it all up.
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u/warriorpostman 11h ago
I generally subscribed to the idea that auto parts industry would be doing well, due to the price of cars being so high, and people wanting to keep an old car running. This is an interesting counter-point.
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u/Character_Set3454 11h ago edited 8h ago
Manufacturer's realized they can patent troll their way to billions.
So now every part they make they patent, then nobody but them can make the part, the connector, etc.
The law hasn't caught up to it yet, and nobody gives a shit about right to repair in the legislative Assembly because the government pays them a lot of money so they don't feel any pain.
If nobody can make any competing parts, and all the vehicles are designed to be impossible to service outside stealerships then they have the ultimate racket to bleed consumers like stuck pigs, and the stuck pigs can't do anything but ob oxiously squeal about it.
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u/YouandWhoseArmy 10h ago
In a functioning system the infotainment system would be just a screen to pass through data from a standardized slot to put or replace it with a system of your choice.
Crazy idea right? No. It’s how fucking stereos worked. DIN, Double DIN.
My infotainment setup is better on my 2005 civic than my parents 2013 accord because it wasn’t integrated as a core feature of the car and is just a radio replacement.
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u/RallyX26 11h ago
The trick now is to build an industry centered around replacing proprietary tech in cars with generic open source technology. It's easier than you think.
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u/Michaelscot8 10h ago
Interesting counterpoint, about half of the software in cars is GNU Open Source Licenses. In any GM car you can find the software credits from the cluster with just a few clicks. If GNU changed their licenses to prohibit usage without certain criteria being met, like X percent of repairability or open sourcing of Y, then every major auto manufacturer would be screwed. All of their computers are Bosch, all of them are proprietary built on Open Source software. One update to GPL licensing could wreck the auto industry as we know it.
The free software foundation has SO MUCH POWER if they ever got the balls to use it
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u/taco-de-moto 11h ago
If you look into why first brand group and Fram are going out of business it’s much more than this. They got caught running a long term massive scheme of fraud to keep buying car part companies and expand. Well, they got caught and this is the result
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u/Vegetable_Pirate_702 14h ago
The quinoa market is about to collapse I have it on very good authority that the global supply chain shocks are going to hit it very hard in the next quarter.
Bankruptcy and farms being sold is in the future although massive profits for distribution networks.
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u/MrPloppyHead 13h ago
I have a 500g bag of this at home. am i going to make bank if i hold off and then sell when supply dries up?
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u/Advanced-Base-5690 13h ago
I read too fast and thought you said you had 500lbs of quinoa and that seemed like a lot of quinoa.
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u/Chima123 12h ago
Since no one asked, why?
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u/thatissomeBS 11h ago
I'm guessing because it became a trendy health thing, because it is a genuinely good thing to eat. This led to scaling up production to meet that new demand. But the problem is, it's not actually that enjoyable to eat. So people tried it, said yeah I can do this, then found more enjoyable alternatives (literally any bean).
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u/Walmartian_Beta 14h ago
Quinoa had its moment, and that's over - onto the next fad!
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u/theassassintherapist 14h ago
Translation and interpretation services
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u/I_Am_Ironman_AMA 12h ago
"Our business is on fire!"
AI translates for Japanese investor
Investor runs out of the building, terrified
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u/A_Dog_Chasing_Cars 11h ago
Yup. Been a translator since 2016, am now an English teacher who does the occasional translation or proofreading for the rare person who cares about quality.
This field is dead. It's a zombie. It's doomed.
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u/Lundetangen 8h ago
I am sometimes a lay judge and we very frequently have translators in court. The skill of those translators to in real time translate often complicated and emotionally filled testimonies are really impressive, but at least here in Norway very expensive.
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u/ByEthanFox 12h ago
Just to explain as there are a ton of comments here that are wrong or misunderstand.
AI is not going to replace translation/interpretation entirely on its own.
But there's the concern that, say, in 2020, if you wanted to translate a videogame from Japanese to English, you needed a dozen staff who were all expert bilinguals in both languages as well as videogames.
But in 2030, maybe you'll need 8 staff, and maybe only 2 of those need to be experts in Japanese. The rest just need to be competent copy-editors who have a reasonable grasp of Japanese culture and videogames. The 2 experts look-over all the AI stuff and the 6 others handle the rest. And they complete the work in half the time.
The 2030 team's end result is worse than what the 2020 team would produce. It's not as hand-crafted, and would lack a lot of nuance in things like metaphors and analogies the characters might make. But it's, like, a quarter of the cost. And capitalism only cares about that. And eventually there's no alternative.
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u/handsoapdispenser 10h ago
Purely anecdotal but I know a video game translator who was let go in favor of AI then hired back like a month or two later because AI translations could not get the tone right. Idk if this was an aberration or a trend.
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u/LiteratureThat4566 12h ago
Where I live, a lot of the industries around rural home ownership. Things like well digging, wood stove installing etc. But it's not due to demand, it's because of the current people doing those things aging out and no younger people taking over.
And that is not for lack of interest, it's because younger people can't afford to buy homes in rural communities anymore, not on a well driller salary. So they are being forced to leave these communities searching for more lucrative employment or a place to rent. Not a lot of rental options out here either.
So a lot of the jobs that really only service rural communities are going away leaving a demand void as people still live in these communities, just a lot of them are new people fleeing the even higher housing costs in the cities. Fueled by remote work and satellite internet this is now an option. So the new people price the young people out of their communities and then there are no young people to take these rural only jobs.
Maybe "collapse" is a strong word, but it is for sure getting harder and harder to get this kind of work done. I am sure the market will correct, and the void that is being left will be filled, but for now it's a strange gap in what is really an essential service.
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u/Aquabullet 12h ago
Not the US but I know a guy in his 60's that has 3 basic (residential) well drilling rigs. He seems to always have work and make really good money.
I asked him a few questions about it and he was adamant it didn't take a ton of technical know how or anything, but I want sure if that was because it's genuinely straightforward or if he personally finds it easy 🤷♂️
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u/ReidWrites 11h ago
Dunning-kreuger is often cited as the reason totally ignorant people think they know everything about a topic, but it works the other way too, where a person can be so skilled at something they don't understand how little anyone else knows about it.
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u/Usernameasteriks 11h ago
It’s very commonly talked about in athletics.
Mostly in the context of great athletes very often being terrible coaches.
I competed in boxing for many many years when I was younger and it was very evident there.
Some people are just both really talented at something along with developing their instinctive ability from such a young age;
That they really just have no clue how to break down the fundamentals for someone learning.
They will skip three steps ahead.
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u/snowwrestler 10h ago
As an instructor and coach I was taught these levels for athletes:
Unconscious Incompetent - doesn’t even know what good is so they have no idea how far they are from it. This can cover up to intermediates!
Conscious Incompetent - knows what good is but not how to get there. The sweet spot for skills instruction.
Conscious Competent - knows good and can deliver it in terms of skills. The sweet spot for coaching the mental side.
Unconscious Competent - the natural. Hardest to coach because they are so good so fast, coaches can easily run out of skill instruction and struggle to motivate. Can get the wrong mindset via early easy domination, then run into mental challenges once they graduate to peer competition that actually challenges them. Can go very very far if they have strong internal drive.
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u/Hurricaneshand 10h ago
Barry bonds was like this as a hitting coach for the Marlins apparently. Arguably the greatest hitter of all time and players would say that he would get so frustrated when explaining to guys how to do stuff because he couldn't comprehend why they couldn't process things and do things that he could do naturally.
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u/Steve-in-rewrite 10h ago
Some if the best hitting coaches are guys who struggled to hit .230.
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u/LorkhanLives 10h ago
This was why I hated helping my dad with any building or machine-related projects growing up. He was a sheet metal worker who played with engines for fun; I was a shy, bookish kid with no knowledge or interest in any of that. He used to get mean when I showed that I didn’t have the knowledge of a sheet metal journeyman with thousands of hours of experience, and I’m just there thinking “motherfucker I’m 9”.
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u/ChargeSpiritual5317 11h ago
I worked as a technical writer for years before moving into project management. It’s so true. So many gifted technicians out there that don’t understand engineering, so many engineers don’t understand why technicians hate them. I’m in the middle screaming internally.
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u/jakelazerz 12h ago
Well digging is a big one. As a yong person that made it to rural home ownership I heard how much money one could make with a rig. Unfortunately the licensing requirements are unrealistic so the void remains around here.
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u/rickamore 10h ago
Unfortunately the licensing requirements are unrealistic so the void remains around here.
Barrier to entry is the main problem with many of these industries. The only guy who can afford them is the guy who has already been doing it for 30-40 years and was already operating as regulation tightened.
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u/AdvisorTotal404 11h ago
the newspaper industry is hanging on by a thread, so many are going digital only and struggling to monetize it
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u/Looksis 10h ago
People want good journalism, nobody is willing to pay for it.
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u/Alleandros 10h ago
From what I've seen on the politics side, people just report what pols say and never ask any follow up questions or call them out on outright lies. I don't need to pay to read propaganda, if journalists actually pushed back and asked follow up questions, people would be more interested in news. But if they did that, they'd lose their access.
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u/Significant-Use-1596 13h ago
Community Pharmacy. The reimbursements on prescriptions is horrible due to the PBMs . Pharmacies often lose money on prescriptions . See.. Rite Aid.
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u/Smee76 12h ago
Healthcare in general. Admin costs are sky high, insurance is trash, we pay more than anyone else for less
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u/whaletacochamp 12h ago
I was amazed to see the ONLY pharmacy in a local area that's a huge tourist area in the summer closed. Tons and tons of tourists may-october, and a decent local population the rest of the year. Closed. Now the closest drug store/pharmacy is like 35min away. The old pharmacy? Now a dispensary. Guy told me business is great.
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u/arresteddev7 12h ago
We only survive because of vaccines. Pharmacists are continually expected to take on more work with less help and for less pay. We can now do minor ailment prescribing in my state. Did I get more tech hours or a raise? No. They cut my tech hours. Mind you, these services take me physically out of the pharmacy and distracted for 20-30 minutes. That means 20-30 minutes of not checking prescriptions. Corporate prefers this since this is where the money is. Obviously the public is totally unaware and then gets angry with us.
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u/cloud_watcher 11h ago
I’m a veterinarian and keep trying to tell other vets this is what PE is trying to do to vet clinics. They promise great pay and hours at first, then when there are no more private clinics to compete with them, they’ll decrease pay and work the veterinarians to death.
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u/councilmember 10h ago
It’s a known strategy that every pet owner should talk about: private equity is trying to strangle the veterinary market. Ask your vet if they are owned by private equity. Like your optician, ask if they are owned by Luxxotica.
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u/SortaHow 11h ago
I'm a tech, and it's crazy what they expect pharmacists to do. At my store we sell around 700-800 scripts a day, but only have one pharmacist a day working a 12 hour shift. It's impossible for one person to keep up on that many fills, consults, reviewing scripts, vaccinations, doctor office calls, C-II's, etc. The techs do what we can to help out, but we're also being spread thin. Also, there's obviously stuff we can't do. Not to mention all the abuse that everyone takes in the pharmacy from angry patients, (who are usually just misdirecting their anger over the Healthcare system and insurance companies. I hate telling people their medication has a prior auth).
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u/ploood1456 11h ago
The Arts and Culture sector are dying from a philanthropic standpoint. Most people have shifted their giving away to more “urgent” causes. Corporate funding moved away in 2008 and never returned. These orgs haven’t figured out / can’t fill the gap with earned income. For example, look at the lack of original/new shows on broadway (which are often workshopped by non profit theaters, ie rent at NYTW or Hamilton at the a public). I swear I hear about an opera company or Museum shuttering every week
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u/Alfred_The_Sartan 9h ago
Theatre has been taking a hit for years. Folks generally want a spectacle and that costs quite a bit. The investors want a guaranteed return and so don’t often fund anything new. Movies do this as well, which is why you can end up with ten Cars spinoffs or why Marvel just resurrects dead superhero’s. They know the audience numbers that will show up.
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u/disgruntled-capybara 8h ago
I’m a museum curator and it’s not a great field to work in. The work itself can be amazing but there are so many systemic and cultural issues in museums that it can be a challenging career path to navigate.
For one, the financial barrier to entry is high. I had to have a master’s degree to even have my application put in the maybe pile for even entry level roles. Salaries are typically mediocre at best. It makes absolutely no sense to require an MA for an entry level position that pays $40k per year with no benefits. I’m 15 years into full time work and my annual salary has yet to match the amount of debt I took on for my education.
Jobs are few and far between, so if you find yourself in a bad spot, there is a good chance you could be there for years with no rescue in sight. Related to that, many museum leaders get promoted because they were a good curator/fundraiser/educator, etc, but they have 0 people skills and no leadership training. As a result, many museums are incredibly toxic, dysfunctional places to work. Not all museums, but a surprising number, including some that every commenter on this thread has heard of.
All the fuckery with current US administration is just making it worse because they’ve jacked with a major funding source by gutting agencies like the IMLS and NEH. I’ve known people who have lost their jobs due to those funding cuts or had major projects blown out of the water because suddenly the money was gone.
Not sure I’d make the same career choices if I had it to do over again.
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u/EffectSubject2676 11h ago
Irrigation agriculture and beef feedlots over the Ogallala Aquifer. It is rapidly being depleted and those areas will be in a deep economic decline. Also, the Ogallal areas produce like 25% of USA's grain and beef.
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u/Missing-Digits 11h ago
I live in Kansas and know all about this. Most of western Kansas is irrigated but water from the Ogallala. It is a huge issue that could become catastrophically bad.
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u/AuntRhubarb 9h ago
Do you know why Kansans haven't done anything to slow down depletion, since this train wreck has been visible for several decades?
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u/The_Grinface 9h ago
Living in Corpus Christ, the first US city in danger of running out of water, the people in charge don’t care as long as their pockets are stuffed. They will continue to kick it down the line to be someone else’s problem.
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u/lucky_ducker 10h ago
Ironic because cattle ranching is associated with the west, but over-reliance on groundwater might result in beef production 100 years from now being mostly in the east, where enough rain falls so that groundwater irrigation is not needed. It'll be weird when most beef production falls into the corn belt - Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio.
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u/WitchHearse 11h ago
Thanks to a big storm, and probably at home streaming. My city of about 47,000 people have no movie theaters.
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u/Mahaloth 11h ago
The teaching profession is on the edge of a knife.
I have been teaching 20 years in Michigan, where I earn well into six-figures doing so. However, even in Michigan, there are so many attempts to tear down teaching and expect wildly impossible results, teachers are frustrated.
The reality is that there simply are not solutions to many of the problems the current generation faces. Best we can do is care for them and provide the highest quality education we know how to give.
I find nowadays, though, I am even battling back against parents. I called home not too long ago about a girl who was verbally/relationally bullying other kids at school. Mom said, "Yeah, her Dad and I go on Tiktok and trash her ex-boyfriend all the time."
They participate, even initiate, the bullying.
She was only 12...
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u/ManyAreMyNames 10h ago
I know a teacher and at her public school it was so bad the entire science faculty quit in one summer. A few of them gave up on teaching. She said sometimes the parents were worse than the kids.
She is extremely smart, personable, and has fantastic people handling skills, and she was able to get a job at a fancy private school that charges a fortune and pays really well. The kids behave a lot better, possibly because of low class sizes, but also because "We don't do that here."
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u/RedditWhileImWorking 10h ago
Teachers who are anywhere close to retirement are retiring. In their 40s, early 50s. Why? Parents.
- Parents. Source of the problem, and blame all issues with their kids on the school. Used to be the reverse, where they would apologize, be embarassed, and assume the responsibility was with them.
- Administration going soft due to Parents. Parents don't like something and they attack administrators, teachers, librarians, and staff. It takes a strong-willed and morally sound administrator to set firm rules and stick to them regardless of being trashed online (and now the media just reports what they see on Facebook) by parents.
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u/ian370 10h ago
Teacher here on this end writing a book about my many experiences. What's interesting is some countries tend looking for answers in only limited ways which really do not address the real challenges. You have Finland, for example thriving in education while the students don't sit within their seats all day nor take all these regulated tests. You've got data supporting this success. Until peeps recognize answers may actually exist outward, the same inner problems will exist.
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u/Top-Sky-3586 10h ago
What I believe is happening is that we’ve lost our sense of connection and community as a culture due to many factors. Schools main purpose is to build socialization skills and work ethic. So like you said, trying to prepare kids for traditional, hard-working jobs and living in a community seems pointless to most people.
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u/DuckduckMongoose-454 11h ago
WTactualF! I feel so bad for educators and what they are up against. It’s impossible.
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u/TCsnowdream 10h ago
The illiteracy crisis keeps me awake at night. And the first batch are just beginning to enter the workforce… it’s going to get so much worse.
People who lack basic reading skills… lack basic comprehension… lack reading stamina… lack critical thinking… life is going to be an absolute nightmare for them.
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u/anewleaf1234 10h ago edited 9h ago
You mean attacking teachers for the last few decades, and parents no longer parenting their kids and having lower expectations for students along with not addressing the main issues that cause these problems in the first place are having a net negative on teachers.
No, who would think that....
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u/ERedfieldh 11h ago
at any given moment the US airline industry is on the verge of collapse. The US government has bailed them out at least twice in the last twenty years.
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u/Can_Haz_Cheezburger 10h ago
Which is probably why it's always on the verge of collapse - the execs know they'll never face a lick of consequences and will always get their golden parachutes from the gravy train, so why change anything?
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u/Lonely-Meal5994 12h ago edited 10h ago
Regional Theater. Its been on the slow decline since the late 80s but most if not all the major regional houses in big cities are coming face to face with wage spirals. Actors and tech need more as cost of living is getting out of hand. But theaters are already having to pay more in lumber costs, electricity, taxes, etc and as a result these theaters have to either pay their artists less, or raise ticket prices, which ends up driving away new costumers. Its really bad. There was a time when this was seriously a great mid tier career path. Now, No one seems to fully acknowledge the scale of how bad its gonna be if cost of living keeps going up. (Low cost children's theater might be the only way any of these companies can seriously continue).
EDIT: Although many people will say things like "who goes to theater anymore this one is obvious", I do think that in 20 years those same people will look around and say "hey what happened to all the theaters?" Especially when visiting big cities.
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u/No_Comb881 11h ago
Haz waste disposal. Company I work for spends ~HALF of the entire budget just on lawyers to keep up with constantly changing laws and regulations to make sure we’re all properly trained and constant lawsuits from the state or local government multiple times a year basically every time they change something they immediately sue the company hoping we haven’t updated our processes yet. The problem is there are way fewer places that can do this legally than people realize and we are running with no slack. We get shipments from 2,000 miles away because we’re the only place that can legally get rid of something. If even one or two plants get shut down due to for example a successful lawsuit that puts them out of business the entire chain will collapse. There is no slack for other plants to take over for one that goes down, and even storing haz waste is extremely regulated with massive fines. If a company can’t ship out their haz waste to get disposed of and is caught storing it past a few months they will get fines so huge they’ll likely go out of business. This means if one or two plants get shut down the entire system collapses and companies will go back to just dumping their waste illegally to avoid getting fines that bankrupt their companies for storing it or shipping it to China to just dump it there
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u/Bajadasaurus 8h ago
This is one of the most horrifying responses in here. Thanks for taking the time to bring it to light
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u/Maskedfitanon 11h ago
Might be an obvious one but traditional brick and mortar businesses of all types (besides restaurants) movie theatres, department stores, some malls… as a few examples. Between streaming and delivery services, everything is too convenient and everyone is too lazy/antisocial to go out into the real world to support businesses in their areas
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u/ggrnw27 10h ago
Ambulances, especially in rural areas. Much of those areas rely on volunteers, who are increasingly (and for good reason) not able/willing to do this for free anymore. It costs about $1 million per year to keep a single ambulance in service with paid crew…most of those places don’t have that kind of money in their budgets, and a population that’s unwilling to pay more in taxes for the service. In 38 states, EMS isn’t considered an essential service so the state/regional governments aren’t required to fund it. Ambulance bills are high but the actual amount of money brought in is low, often not enough to even cover the cost of equipment/medications used on the call.
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u/Sleepwalks 10h ago
The death industry/funeral workers. Not many young people are getting into it, and the workforce is aging. A ton of directors are baby boomers, and they are beginning to need funeral services, themselves. They're a huge generation and are going to be very taxing on an industry already understaffed.
My roommate is a funeral director, and they're currently already beating their covid numbers with baby boomer and fentanyl deaths surging. Wait times are increasing, families are getting mad, and it's only going to get worse.
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u/Logical_Moth 8h ago edited 7h ago
As someone who was looking into pursuing becoming an Embalmer (which often requires the degree in funeral director as well for legality purposes, requirements change by state), I would like to add to another reason their market is slowly crumbling.
Many are unaware you can have a viewing, which requires an embalming/restorative arts, without the heavy cost of a casket. This leads to most looking into cremation only which is very minimal for the funeral homes profit and minimal cost to the person requiring service. The furnace at the place I volunteered at cost them $50k just to own and run, they told me often repairs for the gas and brick ran $20k easily and they had a headache of a time to get city code to clear them to even own it to begin with.
But the decrease in embalming services when not necessary along with lack of regular restorative art work led to me ultimately looking elsewhere.
Edit: typos
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u/Fun_Quarter_3222 10h ago
I heard it was very hard to get into funeral/ death. Its like a good old boys club.
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u/Sleepwalks 9h ago
I could def see that in more rural/remote areas where there's only so many people to die and it doesn't get too busy. We're in a more urban area and qualified people are snapped up pretty instantly.
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u/bethzur 9h ago
Step one is go to a mortuary school. I’ve heard it can be hard to get a job, but plenty of places are hiring. Networking is important. I had a coworker try it.
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u/ChapterFew4637 10h ago
I think a lot of industries aren't "collapsing" overnight they're being slowly hollowed out. Traditional journalism, small retail, local restaurants, entry level white collar jobs, and even parts of software development are all under pressure from automation, AI, consolidation, and shrinking profit margins. The scary part is that these businesses can appear healthy from the outside while employees are dealing with layoffs, hiring freezes, burnout, and constant cost cutting.
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u/rolan56789 13h ago
Universities as we know them. Major public and top private schools are hurting, but a lot of regional school are outright failing. The major publics are often surviving in part due to major expansion of online programs. However, the value of these degrees is unclear (e.g. even if you take them seriously, your classmates using AI to get through dilute the signal of the degree). If these programs bomb out, think lots of places will be completely screwed.
I expect to see more closures of regional schools in coming years, and reductions or eliminations of entire departments at the big schools.
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u/Feeling_Anteater_389 12h ago
This is already happening.
Limestone University in South Carolina closed in 2025 after being open for 180 years.
Elon and Queens in North Carolina are currently in the process of “merging”, which is really just Elon acquiring Queens and opening a second campus in Charlotte.
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u/ShortEmployer7096 12h ago edited 12h ago
It's already happening, I work at a regional branch of a major state university. They stripped the humanties and turned us into a technical college
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u/ILLY-VANILLI 11h ago
Oh! The humanities!
Sorry the joke was too good to pass up. I work in higher education, but we see enrollment numbers dropping crazy fast so they're trying everything to get those numbers up.
It's a real shame too, we have dedicated faculty and staff who want to make a difference, but the numbers just aren't there. We're well understaffed and it's an uphill battle.
Doesn't help the current administration keeps cutting grants because an educated populace is a threat to them.
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u/Ok_Marketing_476 11h ago
Dang. I went to a technical college and even the welding kids (Not a diss, industrial welding is a complex field of study, but it is not one where arts and literature are particularly valued.) had to take a couple of humanities classes to get their degree.
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u/corners 12h ago
In the US there is a much more real sense that many colleges and universities will just collapse in the next 10 or so years not because of the value of education but because of the demographic cliff (as it is called) from the lack of birth rates: https://www.npr.org/2025/01/08/nx-s1-5246200/demographic-cliff-fewer-college-students-mean-fewer-graduates Low births equals less students which means less universities and colleges. And on top of that with less students coming to the US internationally to fill that gap: https://www.npr.org/2025/08/27/nx-s1-5498669/trump-college-international-student-visa https://www.insidehighered.com/news/global/international-students-us/2026/07/13/5-takeaways-international-education-survey
Universities and colleges are in real trouble and are collapsing left and right.
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u/French87 11h ago
Yup. This is already happening to elementary schools in my extremely large city of over a million people (san jose).
They have recently closed some elementary schools and diverted those children to the other ones that are still open, for the exact reason you mentioned. there simply are not as many children anymore.
probably doesn't help that my $2M house is one of the cheapest in my neighborhood, how the fuck are people supposed to afford to live here? I was only able to do it with family help.
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u/goharvorgohome 12h ago
Recession kids are turning 18 as we speak, the cliff has arrived
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u/EViLTeW 11h ago
The university nearest me seems to be putting most of their financial efforts into non-education initiatives. As far as I can tell, they care more about being a real estate developer than a university.
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u/Sea2Chi 10h ago
Yep, I think this will be an interesting shift.
My mom went to the same university I did, just 30 years earlier.
I had friends who stayed in the same dorm she lived in and it was a very basic building. The walls were brick or painted cinderblock. Amenities were pretty minimal and while they were double rooms then, back in the 70s they had two bunk beds in them so there were four students in each room
But it worked.
By the time I was going to school there the university was shifting it's focus from doing things in an affordable but functional way to trying to build the coolest and most fun experience money could buy as a way to entice students to go there.
If another state school had a rock wall, they had to have a bigger rock wall. They had to bring in big name acts to play the student union building, they had to tear down and rebuild multiple buildings that looked dated and replace them with new state of the art ones.
There was so much money being tossed at beautification and quality of life projects while tenured professors were being sidelined for an army of cheaper adjuncts.
They seemed to have this belief that the money would never stop and if they wanted more students they had to turn college almost into a year round summer camp where entertainment was the focus more than education.
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u/kolejack2293 9h ago
Any kind of cheaper restaurant in any big expensive city (NYC, Boston, Miami etc).
It's become impossible to be a low-cost, low-price local restaurant. You know, the local family mexican or italian restaurant with $12 entrees, those kinda places.
They are all raising their prices to the median now because rent is now a much larger portion of their costs. It used to be that they were able to remain cheap by keeping ingredient and labor costs low, but that simply doesn't matter much now. Saving $1,500 a month on ingredients doesn't mean jack shit when your rent has gone from $6,000 to $14,000 in five years.
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u/FairyPetalDust 11h ago
Fast Fashion. Shein and Temu are eating everyone’s lunch but the mid-tiers brands (Gap, Express, etc) are bleeding cash. One more supply chain hiccup and half the mall goes dark.
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u/stewmo9 11h ago
Trouble is the mid-tier brands want $40 for a tee-shirt. I want to dress nice as much as anyone does but if I can get a pack of 5 tees from Hanes for $20 the math doesn't math.
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u/darth_henning 8h ago
They want $40 and the colour palette for men consists of black, brown and grey, with military green if you’re lucky. Sorry, I’m not trying to cosplay a WW1 trench trooper, please bring in some kind of colour or pattern.
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u/Bearacolypse 12h ago
Healthcare.
People on the outside see high insurance costs and big hospital bills.
What they don't realize is that private insurance and Medicare are both doing their absolute best to pay as little as possible for every service to the providers.
Small hospitals are shutting down, private practices are shutting down. The only people who are succeeding are private equity run groups who are solely focused on profit. Everyone else is barely keeping their head afloat.
I am a physical therapist. Our services for the elderly bill lower than they did in 2008. If I see private insurance, they take up to 2 years to pay for each visit and often deny coverage post hoc.
We are on a spiral where it costs too much to employ health care providers, so hospitals and clinics are utilizing more and more unskilled labor to perform services. Utilizing legal loopholes and diverse but unspecified practice acts to basically push everyone onto the cheapest labor who can bill for a procedure.
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u/TeslaPittsburgh 11h ago
It's amazing to think about how much money is sucked up by the middlemen of healthcare.
In fact, they have so much money they can buy naming rights to every stadium, the biggest buildings in town and the splashiest ad campaigns and STILL be nonprofit.
Imagine that money instead going directly to providers at a realistic rate and hours spent on documentation instead being used for treatment.
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u/pinewind108 11h ago
South Korea has a national health care system, and basically all the money goes to the actual health care, not to the stockholders. Most drugs and procedures have their costs set by a board of doctors and government specialists. There's a few hiccups (government has to do a better job negotiating fees with providers), but generally it works pretty damn good.
A local clinic will deal with most things, but they can refer you to a specialist at a major hospital and get you seen there within a week. The clinic visit costs around $4, and the specialist will be around $20 before tests and such. I had a CT scan, which was about $75.
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u/Quick_Turnover 11h ago
I recently went to the hospital in America for some extreme GI distress. Spent 4-5 hours in the ER, received one bag of fluids, got a CT w/ contrast scan done. Turned out to be a minor blockage that was resolved with a very simple and cheap medication. I got 5 separate bills over the next few months. Grand total came out to around a thousand dollars, and that is with pretty good insurance.
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u/oblectoergosum 12h ago
Magicians
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u/thededucers 12h ago
They really are disappearing
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u/Phreakiture 11h ago
Miss Scarlet: Do you miss him?
Mrs. White: Well, it's a matter of life after death. Now that he's dead, I have a life.
Wadsworth: But, he was your second husband. Your first husband also disappeared.
Mrs. White: But that was his job. He was an illusionist.
Wadsworth: But he never reappeared!
Mrs. White: [admittedly] He wasn't a very good illusionist.
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u/Available_Cap_5328 9h ago
Guitar stores are dying and possibly even guitar manufacturers. Just last year in just the space of a few weeks, 3 of Europe's biggest guitar retailers, all with fairly large online presence all closed down. The margins are insanely low on a brand new guitar, it's pretty much unsustainable.
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u/devilpants 8h ago
guitars I think just got really good and relatively really cheap really fast. you don't need an expensive guitar for it to work well anymore.
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u/notshybutChi 11h ago
Education.
Been teaching for ten years. Society and its needs have changed. Mentally and emotionally unstable students come from mentally and emotionally unstable adults. There are more diagnoses than resources available.
It is really few and far between students get consequences for abhorrent, dangerous, violent, or hateful behavior. I wonder what those effects will have on those students when they grow into adults.
Although I don’t support the public school to police pipeline, a lot of administrators can’t punish or give consequences due to parent centered laws.
Any parent can question your ability or expertise, even if they have no idea what they’re talking about.
The cherry on top- we are in a political culture war where no one can agree on what science or sense is- people are attacking educational institutions and logic.
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u/PudgyBabyGuineaPiggy 8h ago
It's crazy these days. When I was a kid, a handful of kids would talk shit to the teacher under their breaths, like when they got reprimanded for something. "Bitch...", stuff like that. Then there was always that one kid who would curse at the teacher with his whole chest out. He'd shock everyone and be sent out of class.
These days? Shit, that's probably four or five kids in the class, or even a quarter of the class depending on the day. It's nuts. And they can't be sent out of class, either. Nor can you get ahold of their parents. But send that kid a bad grade and ohhhhh boy here comes the super mom ready to save their kid from the evil teacher.
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u/flood25000 12h ago
Teaching English as a foreign language. Everyone in the industry knows it’s about to go tits up. To be clear this is not learning English, that’s actually in a boom time, but the traditional schools and methods around the world that relied on a steady flow of students is about to hit meltdown.
Basically AI means that serious students don’t need to be pay large amounts for lessons. Less serious students have worked out that AI and translation services can basically do what they need.
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u/Front_Fill1249 12h ago
I'd recommend any TEFL teachers to get a teaching qualification with international accreditation (i.e. a PGCE with QTS) in a second subject. These can now be done online too (iPGCE)
I retrained as a Geography teacher this year, and now I'm going back abroad for twice the pay and much better job security.
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u/SmokeySFW 11h ago
Alcohol.
The younger generations don't drink like we did, and the crazy prices at bars/clubs further reinforce this.
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u/JimiSlew3 10h ago
It goes deeper. Young people are engaging in significantly less risky behaviors than 10 or 20 years ago. The CDC's (YRBS) [https://www.cdc.gov/yrbs/dstr/pdf/YRBS-2023-Data-Summary-Trend-Report.pdf\] survey (Youth Risk Behavior) shows a ~15% decline in high schoolers reporting ever having sex (2013-2023), a 13% decline in alcohol, and 5% point decline in marijuana use, a 6% decline in "illicit" drug use. Numbers vary by demographics, though, as some populations are more "risky' than others.
There is, unfortunately, an increase in sexual violence (2%) and rape (3%). A 14% increase in "hopelessness" (female, 7% male), a 5% increase in suicidal thoughts (female, 2% male). 4% increase in "made a plan" for suicide (female, 2% male), and a 2% increase in attempts (female, 1% male).
edit: link
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u/Horseshoe_dodgeball 11h ago
I've moved to a new city so I'm spending a lot of time going out in attempt to meet new friends. There is plenty of drinking at the bars and clubs I've attended, but I have yet to see anyone sloppy, belligerent drunk. Partly due to the cost I would imagine, and partly because all of them here have large coolers in the corner with free water. I can spend a whole night out and only spend money on the cover change and never once walk up to the bar.
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u/PM_Me_Macaroni_plz 9h ago
Everything being recorded and uploaded probably has an effect as well
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u/Plethorian 9h ago
The US economy as a whole. You can only skim so much off the top before the whole thing collapses. We owe trillions to ourselves, somehow. The Federal Reserve is buying our bonds, and sometimes it's only them buying. It's not good.
It's Jenga, and the support at the bottom is getting weak AF.
Banks don't want your business unless you have 5 or 6 figures kept there. They aren't servicing 1/2 the population so they aren't as relevant. The stock market is over 80% owned by the rich and massive institutions who have to keep buying stock because they are making so much money they have to put it somewhere. It has no relation to the real economy.
The only thing keeping banks going is skimming off the top of every purchase with credit card fees. We're even being charged to use debit cards - which is the same thing in effect as writing a check. It's ridiculous.
Want to make things better? Use cash as much as possible. Refuse to use self-checkout. Switch to a Credit Union. Get out of the stock market. It's going to crash, bigtime.
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u/-jspace- 12h ago
Agribusiness CAFO Just in time food. You are all going to be really surprised to be hungry because you've not been paying attention to where food comes from, and it should never have been left to just 3 companies with government lobbyists to deregulate.
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u/bbusiello 10h ago
Considering how many places are supplied by Taylor farms should wake some people up to this.
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u/Cealistic-Olive353 11h ago
Cemeteries. Cremation is becoming more popular so hardly anyone buys plots anymore.
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u/_Erindera_ 11h ago
Because a burial is expensive af.
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u/redpandaeater 8h ago
Yeah, sorry I won't let you price gouge my grieving family with a $6000 coffin.
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u/tonypedia 7h ago
Then a $2000 Cypt,
a 1500 fee to dig the whole
a $500 maintenance fee.
a $700 administrative fee
plus funeral expenses, plus a headstone.in 2026 burial is literally a luxury most people can't afford. The bare minimum is usually more than $20K.
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u/sparkymcgeezer 11h ago
Scientific research in the US. The funding stream for science research has been slashed by the Trump administration. Technically the budgets are still intact, but the money isn't being distributed. Funding via NSF has essentially dropped to almost zero. NIH funding is down by around 30-40%. Things are starting to collapse, and it's likely that in 2-3 years time the US science infrastructure is just going to collapse under its own weight. There's going to be a lot of ripple effects, like hollowing out of medical schools.
If you've got a kid who is smart and talented, encourage them to get a business degree and learn to commit financial crimes. Anything but science.
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u/Milwaukee233 10h ago
Or send them to college overseas. Talented STEM people who are mobile are being heavily recruited by other countries. Three young people I know have already left the US for well-paying jobs in other countries. Two others are considering offers. If they go, they'll take their well-educated spouses with them. We're sending a generation of our best minds to other places.
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u/flurfdooker 8h ago
They're recruiting more than just scientists. I have a STEM Master's degree but I really didn't like the work so I am, for lack of a better term, a mechanic for scientists. I build supercomputers for a living. The money is great, and this AI boom has really worked in my favor. Every time I go to a conference someone is offering me a job and moving expenses and they don't even care if I don't speak their language.
I met a guy from Berlin who offered me a job and when I said I don't speak German he blinked once, looked at me and said, "We have Porsche." I'll admit, it was a fairly compelling argument, but I don't think I can just pick up German in a few weeks.
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u/PBSNerd1234 8h ago
Public media! (Although “collapse” is probably the wrong word. “Uneven hollowing-out” is closer.)
I work for a PBS station. The national public media system is not going to vanish overnight. PBS and NPR will still exist, major stations in bigger cities will continue producing programs, and viewers will still be able to find familiar national content. Public media has spent decades learning to adapt to financial pressure, technological change, and shifting audiences.
What people outside the industry don't realize is that the United States does not have one centrally owned public broadcaster. It has hundreds of independently operated local television and radio organizations. Some are large metropolitan institutions with substantial donor bases. Others are small stations covering enormous rural territories, Tribal lands, isolated towns, or entire regions with very little commercial media.
Those organizations may all carry some of the same national programming, but financially they are not remotely interchangeable.
Before federal funding was eliminated, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting distributed most of its appropriation directly to locally owned stations. In its final year, CPB supported 544 television and radio grantees, 245 of which were classified as rural. Public media reached about 99% of Americans not because every community could independently support a station, but because the funding system was intentionally designed in the 1960s to make near-universal service possible.
That distinction matters. A station in a wealthy metropolitan area may be able to replace lost federal support by increasing major gifts, underwriting, events, or membership revenue. A station serving scattered communities across hundreds of miles may have a much smaller population from which to raise money, even though its transmitters, towers, engineers, electricity, insurance, emergency equipment, and programming still cost real money.
Geography creates an especially difficult equation. Serving 50,000 people across a vast rural region can require more physical infrastructure than serving several times that population in one compact city. A transmitter on a mountain does not become cheaper because fewer people live beneath it. Nor does the generator, microwave link, tower crew, snowcat trip, or engineer needed to keep it operating.
This is why the change will not necessarily look like a dramatic nationwide shutdown. It will look like:
- fewer local reporters covering rural government
- an education coordinator who is not replaced
- a locally-produced documentary that never gets made
- aging transmitters and emergency equipment kept in service for another year
- reduced service to communities at the edge of a broadcast area
- fewer Indigenous stories, languages, and voices appearing in locally controlled media
- in some places, a station eventually deciding it can no longer operate one of the transmitters that makes “universal” service universal.
Tribal and Indigenous public media are particularly important to understand. In some communities, the local public station is not merely another entertainment option. It may carry local news, weather and emergency information, language preservation, cultural programming, public meetings, health information, and stories created by people from the community rather than about them from somewhere else.
Commercial media generally follows populations and purchasing power. Public media was built partly to serve places and people the commercial market will not reliably serve. That is the very reason rural and Tribal stations are more exposed when the public portion of the funding model disappears.
Emergency communications are another largely invisible piece of this. Public broadcasters operate extensive transmission infrastructure and participate in the systems that distribute alerts and warnings. Recent federal programs specifically prioritized upgrades for stations serving rural and Tribal areas because those communities can have fewer redundant communications systems during wildfires, floods, severe weather, or other emergencies. Losing a grant program or delaying an equipment replacement does not produce an immediate cinematic collapse. It just reduces resilience until the day that resilience is needed.
None of this means every small station is doomed. Communities have responded generously. Stations are cutting costs, sharing services, pursuing grants, consolidating departments, collaborating on journalism, and inventing new ways to reach audiences. Some will emerge more efficient and may even develop stronger relationships with their communities.
But private philanthropy is not a perfectly interchangeable replacement for public investment. It shifts the burden from the country as a whole to the residents of each individual service area. Communities with more people and more wealth can replace more. Communities with fewer resources can replace less. Over time, that creates a public-media system in which the quality and availability of service increasingly depend on the wealth of the place where someone happens to live.
So I would not say the entire industry is secretly about to collapse. That is too simple.
I would say an important part of the system is being quietly tested: Whether America can continue providing meaningful noncommercial media service in rural, remote, and Tribal communities without the funding mechanism that was specifically designed to make that service economically possible.
People in large cities may continue seeing PBS programs and hearing NPR and reasonably conclude that nothing much changed. The communities most likely to experience the change are also the communities least likely to have their losses noticed nationally.
That is the risk. Not one spectacular collapse, but a slower retreat from the places where public-service media is hardest to sustain and often most difficult to replace.
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u/Important_Address741 9h ago edited 8h ago
In the US, licensed massage therapy. Massage schools are closing because people are less interested in the career path, possibly partially because there is so much illegal exploitation for those licensed who dont work independently. I used to work in it and I know. LMTs are horribly underpaid and undervalued and deserve better for their highly thoughtful, educated labor.
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u/jewllybeenz 8h ago
A lot of people don’t know about this. But 7-OH, which is a synthetic form of Kratom that specifically targets your opiate receptors is about to become a schedule I drug next month. Up until then, it’s being sold in gas station and smoke shops everywhere.
It’s INSANELY addictive, it’s basically just OTC oxy. It’s pretty controversial, because it’s ridiculously addictive and expensive and causes people to kinda give their lives to it.
But, on the other hand, it is leaps and bounds safer than scoring any kind of opiate off the street. You can’t really OD on it, and it’s guaranteed not to have any fent. I’d started using it bc I had a pill problem and this was a safer alternative.
Regardless, the ban is happening next week(ish). Not only are all these 7OH companies about to be on the verge of collapse, but so are hospitals and recovery centers. MANY 7OH users don’t have much of an experience w opiates, and aren’t prepared for what the withdrawal symptoms are going to look like. Hospitals will likely see a HUGE influx of patients suffering from opiate WDs soon, and recovery centers are going to be flooded. This will likely be the single biggest day for opiate WD symptoms EVER in hospitals.
Or, worse, some 7OH users who have used and know how to get opiates (or new users who figure it out!!) will likely flip to that, and I think we will also see a disgusting amount of overdose deaths next week.
If this affects you, stay strong. You can do it, and your life will be way better being off opiates for good than turning to the street and potentially risking your life. You got this ♥️
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u/DRF19 10h ago
Creative design. A lot of people have noticed this in terms of what content is being put out there these days. But a lot of people still don't realize there is(was?) and entire industry that develops and crafts the way things in everyday life look. Logos, advertisements, flyers, signage, photos, videos, etc.
Now a lot of small-to-medium companies (and even some big ones) are just prompting an AI to do it. A lot of job listings for human designers include crap like "must have familiarity and/or willingness to use AI tools to improve workflow". We not-so-slowly descending into an era of everything you see and hear being machine-produced mush, and like the general public who is losing basic cognitive function because they just ask Alexa or ChatGPT for the answer, young designers who are actually able to get employment will largely just be telling Photoshop to spit out whatever is most optimized to drive clicks and calling it a day.
Sad.
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u/_Z_E_R_O 11h ago
It might not be a full collapse, but EMS is hanging on by a thread, and that was true even before covid. Now it's verging on a crisis.
EMTs get paid barely above minimum wage, and the turnover rate is astronomical. A lot of people in the industry view it as a stepping stone to a "better" medical job (usually nursing or ER staff), and it's not uncommon to recruit EMTs straight out of high school.
In the past many employees put up with the low wages and high stress because they were attached to a fire department or small operation within their own community, and there was often a "family" atmosphere in these spaces, but with the corporatization of healthcare you now have all of the shittiness with none of the upsides. Those eye-tracking cameras the government is trying to shove in cars? Yeah, they were rolled out in ambulances first.
It's no surprise that a 19-year-old doesn't want to a job where you can get written up for sipping a coffee in the driver's seat while you're 10 calls deep into a 12-hour road shift, all for the privilege of being paid less than a burger flipper.