unions

The point is that bad bricklayers still get to lay bricks, and it's not a huge deal. Any rando can do a half-ass job and in many situations that's just fine. Surgery never works like that. There are no some-guy-with-a-van... hospitals. You can't fake your way through an appendectomy with a Youtube video and seven trips to Home Depot.

For the final time: no shit experienced tradesmen have significant skills. That's never what this label is about. Experience is the polar opposite of the problem. You landed right on the actual issue, whilst chiding me for something you imagined I missed: "skilled labor" is when you require immense training, beforehand.

The concept being addressed is not skill or labor. It's skilled labor. Auf Deutsch, it'd be a compound word. You can't separate the components of that label and pretend you're still talking about the same fucking thing.