Ignoramus30559 wrote:

Steve B made me recall something.

I watched the Gold Rush series made by Discovery channel.

It was, of course, very interesting. I was shocked, though, about the
following:

1) How little money they made in the end
2) How hard they had to work
3) How much risk they had to take to make so little money.

Here, I am talking about two kinds of risk, first, financial risk, and
second, working with dangerous equipment in very iffy conditions,
being rushed, fatigued etc. I personally think that they were lucky
not to suffer any injury or worse, given how they had to work,
operator fatigue, uneven terrain etc.

Well, in this sort of show, I would take everything they show with at
least a small grain of salt. Sometimes it seems like they could make
two weeks of drama about a fuel truck being 1/2 hour later than
expected.

But as well, if it was easy everyone would be doing it.

You don't know that the guys 5 miles away didn't make 10 or 100 times
as much.

It also (according to my Alaskan friends) isn't all that unusual to
work very hard for relatively short periods in Alaska. Usually for
good pay or payback though.
jk