[HN Gopher] Amazon is bypassing supply chain chaos with chartere...
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Amazon is bypassing supply chain chaos with chartered ships and
long-haul planes
Author : thunderbong
Score : 293 points
Date : 2021-12-05 16:27 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnbc.com)
| ghostly_s wrote:
| > "Who else would think of putting something going into an
| obscure port in Washington, and then trucking it down to L.A.?
| Most people are thinking, well, just bring the ship into L.A. But
| then you're experiencing those two-week and three-weeks delay. So
| Amazon's really taken advantage of some of the niche strategies I
| believe that the market needs to employ,"
|
| What? Surely, everyone is thinking of this?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > What? Surely, everyone is thinking of this?
|
| Exactly my thought. Amazon hardly has a monopoly on good ideas.
| They may have a culture that rewards impulsive strategies,
| though.
| judge2020 wrote:
| > This season, a handful of other major retailers -- Walmart,
| Costco, Home Depot, Ikea and Target -- are also chartering
| their own vessels to bypass the busiest ports and get their
| goods unloaded sooner.
| Hokusai wrote:
| Then why is the title 'Amazon is'?. It seems that just
| mentioning Amazon brings more clicks, I guess.
| Forge36 wrote:
| Thinking maybe. Execution is hard, the extra truck overhead may
| make it a non-starter for many
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Amazon's scale makes some things workable for them that would
| not work economically at smaller scales.
| Closi wrote:
| Not really, lots of companies are sharing space on charter
| vessels at the moment, and trunking networks are pretty
| well developed.
|
| Lots of retailers are doing exactly what this article
| describes, it's not just Amazon. In fact, I know a company
| that only ships c5 containers a day that is renting space
| on a charter vessel, so you don't need Amazon-scale to do
| this.
| roughly wrote:
| They do also seem to be willing to or have a culture of
| taking bets like this that I suspect a lot of the other
| companies of their size don't - it sounds like they started
| working on this back in 2015, and I imagine it's been a
| pretty big investment so far. I'm not an Amazon fan, but
| not a lot of other companies out there seem to be willing
| to take bets like that.
| dbavaria wrote:
| This article sounds more like a PR piece for Amazon. At this
| rate, I wouldn't be surprised if in the coming weeks Amazon
| singlehandedly saves Christmas.
| justicezyx wrote:
| That would be a nice PR project! I think you are onto the
| right idea here. Let's seem what happens after the Christmas.
| pysogge wrote:
| Maybe we will see seaports as a service in a few years.
| jcims wrote:
| I have and claim zero expertise in this area but it seems that
| there is an emerging trend towards supply chain contraction with
| hard goods. Certainly the lesson of the last 24 months seems to
| be that lack of strategic risk management in the supply chain can
| cripple you when things go south. This was always obvious
| conceptually but the discipline seemed lacking.
|
| Yet software and software-based services seem to be going the
| opposite direction. Certainly supply chain security issues are
| beginning to surface but I don't see anyone contracting the
| dependency graph with stacks on stacks of SaaS products.
| mcguire wrote:
| NASA's email system is outsourced to Outlook.com. This is the
| first time I've ever seen anything potentially secured allowed
| out of internal networks.
| judge2020 wrote:
| The Azure, AWS, and and Google data centers are some of the
| most secure facilities on the planet, maybe even rivaling
| that of our nuclear missile silos. If us-east-1 got nuked or
| went offline [for months], we'd probably see an instant
| depression in the U.S. economy as so many parts of life
| break, so it's in the DoD's best interest to protect Virginia
| and North Carolina extremely well[0].
|
| Azure even offers multiple levels of clouds that can house
| government secrets[1], although I couldn't find a way to tell
| whether an outlook hostname is part of a higher-security
| region or not.
|
| 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28825009
|
| 1: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-government-
| top-...
| jcims wrote:
| I did a bunch of security contract work for NASA and have
| worked in security capacities for other government and
| financial institutions. Honestly I think a lot of the
| migration to cloud providers is a form of mutiny against
| the ever increasing cost of running highly regulated
| workloads in your own data center. It's nearly impossible
| to do anything in a reasonable amount of time when you've
| got layer upon layer of regulatory and internal audit
| oversight. It's not just basic processes but governance
| around those processes and governance around the governance
| of those processes. It's a nightmare.
| nimish wrote:
| I believe someone once characterized AWS success as
| stemming from hacking around procurement and IT policies
| in sclerotic organizations. One approval, one admin =>
| all services.
| ghshephard wrote:
| Did anyone else find this somewhat surprising:
|
| "The seasonal workers are unloading and loading, picking and
| packing at more than 250 new facilities Amazon says it's opened
| in the U.S. just in 2021..."
|
| 250 new warehouse facilities opened in the United States in 2021.
| Five new facilties per _state_? And, obviously, some states would
| only have gotten 1 or 2 (or maybe less) - so some states would
| have been getting 10-15....
|
| That just seems like a suspiciously high number to me, I'm not
| sure if I buy it.
| trenning wrote:
| Looking around the surrounding Seattle area I see a ton of new
| warehousing going up. From SODO to Tacoma there are major
| projects. I'm not in that industry at all, just observational
| and noticing a lot of it is Amazon related. They've also been
| buying a lot of empty lots between Seattle and Kent for their
| delivery vehicle parking.
|
| I want to say there's been a few articles that have discussed
| commercial property boom of new warehousing.
| huitzitziltzin wrote:
| 1. What possible reason could they have to lie about it?
|
| 2. It's likely that this information could be confirmed in
| other publicly available information.
|
| 3. They were the beneficiaries of a gigantic positive shock to
| demand for their services in the last half of 2020 which
| continued through 2021 so the number seems very plausible to
| me.
| ghshephard wrote:
| Ahh, I'm wondering if they got it (uncredited) from this:
|
| https://www.commercialsearch.com/news/amazon-to-open-more-th...
|
| So - not just warehouses, but also delivery stations. I can buy
| that.
| willhinsa wrote:
| I heard an anecdote 15 years ago that Walmart at the time
| opened 600 new stores a year. If that anecdote was true, this
| isn't that surprising to me with such a large shift we've
| experienced during the pandemic of increasing online purchases.
| It might be expanding too quickly, but it doesn't seem insane
| to me.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| I think that's a believable number based on the info I've heard
| out of MN. evidently AMZN is crazy about their privacy and
| contracts so might be impossible for us to know unless we work
| directly.
|
| The bigger more shocking number would be the huge % of
| commercial space bought up by PE and blackrock type etf money,
| & REITs. often paying shockingly high prices because they're
| bidding against each other & their investors keep pouring money
| in.
| samwillis wrote:
| My theory on how this works is as (nearly) everyone shopping on
| Amazon is logged in they know where you are probably going to
| ask to ship your order to. And so they show you search result
| tailored to what is in stock at your nearest Amazon warehouse.
| That way they don't have to distribute the same stock to all
| warehouses.
|
| Try searching Amazon in a privet window, you get very different
| result and prices (from different sellers) for the same
| products. I think that's down to what's regionally distributed
| near you.
| ghshephard wrote:
| You definitely get different shipping times for different
| products based on your location - so presumably they are
| cross referencing what is in your local distribution center
| to get you that shipping time.
| teeray wrote:
| "Facilities" may be grander language than the reality. I know
| of one new facility near where I grew up which was a new mall
| that could never find tenants. It sat vacant for a decade.
| Amazon leased the whole thing and uses it as a warehouse. The
| parking lot is filled with their last-mile delivery vans.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Yes, they've taken over vacant buildings in our area as well.
| Hard to complain about that but some folks still do.
| loonster wrote:
| Mourning the lost potential.
|
| There is a grocery store near me that sat vacant for
| several years. Finally a storage company took it over. It's
| a good thing that something is there, just wish it was an
| actual grocery store.
| massysett wrote:
| My area in suburban Washington DC USA is filled with old
| grocery stores. Just within several miles of my home, one
| is now a trampoline park, one is an Amish market, and one
| is an LA Fitness.
|
| My theory is that between huge warehouse stores, newer
| huge supermarkets, Dollar General, and Walmart (even non-
| supercenter ones) selling lots of food, and online
| shopping nibbling at the margins, marginal supermarkets
| are getting pushed out. There's another supermarket not
| far from my house that I doubt will make it.
|
| I have no idea what it's like near you but where I am I
| don't think I'll be seeing any new supermarkets.
| ehsankia wrote:
| A whole mall+parking lot is probably as grand if not grander
| than I was imagining an average facility to be.
| anonnyj wrote:
| Is it so surprising in light of the absolute pummeling brick
| and mortar got during covid?
| logicalmonster wrote:
| I can buy it because I don't think we've yet gotten anywhere
| close to a full accounting of the second order effects of the
| collective reaction to Covid-19: not just in terms of negative
| health impacts of the shutdowns, but also the long-term
| economic devastation.
|
| At the same time as many governors were effectively shutting
| down hordes of small businesses for daring to stay open even
| while Amazon and other big firms were doing record-setting
| business, scammers rushed to claim many of the government loans
| meant to keep actual businesses afloat. I think many real
| businesses got completely hosed.
|
| Don't expect to hear an inkling about this forced transfer of
| wealth from Main Street to Wall Street from self-described
| progressives who are currently focusing on enriching Big
| Pharma. They might start to focus on the economy again when
| it's entirely too late.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I agree that the wealth transfer is awful, but your take is
| so wrong. Sanders was talking about it explicitly and
| continues to do so, and many progressives think the impact on
| small business during the pandemic is awful.
|
| But you seem to think that vaccine advocacy is a bad faith
| attempt at giving pharma money rather than a good faith
| attempt at pu lic health and economic recovery. I think is a
| ridiculous opinion.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| > this forced transfer of wealth from Main Street to Wall
| Street
|
| Another reason some people think the entire crisis was
| engineered, if not the virus itself, then it was certainly
| seized as an "opportunity"
| errantspark wrote:
| What would be awesome is if instead of this we gave a fuck ton of
| money to the post office and tried to solve this problem for
| everyone and also eroded amazon's competitive advantage. That's
| the sort of infra we need, it's frankly embarrassing that we're
| not looking at amazon as a country and thinking "why don't we
| just enable remote commerce like this for everyone as a societal
| good".
|
| P.S. Let the post office do banking too so we can take some wall
| street's pie as well.
| ozzythecat wrote:
| Unless the Post office has some strong incentive to compete,
| such as a private company, there's no reason to believe the
| Post office would be even half as effective as Amazon.
|
| Amazons incentive, whether you agree with it or not, is to grow
| their company and show value to stakeholders. It's quantitative
| numbers. They can certainly lie, but at the end of the day the
| market will punish them.
|
| The USPS is driven by what incentives? Politics? Future pension
| obligations?
|
| In reality, government ends up being a bloated mess, waste of
| tax payer dollar. Don't believe me?
|
| How many campaigns have we seen just in our own lifetimes of
| candidates promising "change", "making America great", fixing
| healthcare, infrastructure, reforming education. One of the two
| parties does win every election. Fundamentally, what has
| changed?
|
| Regulating private companies might be the answer. But
| government has proven itself to NOT be the answer.
| goostavos wrote:
| I agree. I'm kind've stumped by people's belief that you can
| just throw money at something and have it work. Doubly so for
| a government organization that's steeped in politics. Amazon
| is freaking lightening in a bottle. Last night, I was
| ordering Christmas presents at 12:30am, and they were at my
| door by 9:30am. That's completely _insane._
|
| Government programs are frequently and mysteriously hamstrung
| by not having enough money as the sole explanatory variable
| for why they failed at X or why business Y performs more
| efficiently. It's never an organizational failure, the wrong
| people, the wrong incentives, just more money is all that's
| needed. If we'd properly funded the USPS 20 years ago, surely
| we'd all have same day shipping for pennies, right...? Money
| would've enabled that?
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| >there's no reason to believe the Post office would be even
| half as effective as Amazon.//
|
| I never understand this argument, take Amazon now. Pay
| everyone the same to do the same job, but don't pay
| dividends, reinvest profits (or pay them as if taxes). How
| does it suddenly become everyone is incompetent and can't do
| their job?
|
| Why is it capitalists think people can only work if there's a
| rich person creaming off a profit?
|
| Explain, please.
| whiddershins wrote:
| Because logistics is mind boggling difficult.
|
| I would say the burden of proof is on anyone who thinks
| they could fund or create an org that can match Amazon's.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| _Pay everyone the same to do the same job..._
|
| The federal pay ceiling in 2021 is $172,500 per year.
| That's about what a SWE new grad at Amazon makes in their
| first year out of college.
| kortilla wrote:
| > Pay everyone the same to do the same job
|
| That's the crux of the issue. Government employees across
| all branches are capped into pay scales that don't compete
| with private. More importantly, that absolutely cannot get
| anything like profit sharing or stock grants so nobody is
| invested in the financial success of the operation.
|
| > Why is it capitalists think people can only work if
| there's a rich person creaming off a profit?
|
| Because in the real world, all of the employees are
| benefiting from the profit as well. Every company has
| bonuses/promotions for exceeding performance doing good for
| the company.
|
| Why is it that socialists thing working for a company
| produces the same incentives as working for the government?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| The problem is bureaucratic and union capture.
|
| You would have very different results if you took the same
| people, removed performance bonuses, removed merit
| promotion, instituted seniority promotion and seniority pay
| scales.
|
| You remove all incentive to take risks, perform, or
| innovate.
|
| In such an environment, there is only downside to do
| anything more than the bare minimum.
| Kalium wrote:
| > P.S. Let the post office do banking too so we can take some
| wall street's pie as well.
|
| They did that for a while. Wall Street ate the Post Office's
| pie, rather than the other way around. Which is why the US
| postal system's banking service shut down.
|
| Which is not to say postal banking is a bad idea, but that
| perhaps we should be careful with our expectations.
| mgaunard wrote:
| Vertical integration is what makes the service that Amazon
| provides so good.
|
| Splitting things into different siloed entities just leads to
| inefficiencies.
| [deleted]
| derefr wrote:
| Counterargument: as someone who doesn't live in the US, I
| personally benefit from the international logistics
| infrastructure built by private US companies fed mostly by
| demand from US private citizens. But I don't benefit at all
| from well-funded US public _domestic_ logistics services.
|
| International logistics can't really be solved at the national
| level, because the _interests involved_ aren 't
| national/unilateral -- they're international/multilateral.
|
| (You could maybe make an argument for treatied multilateral
| investment into public logistics infrastructure tied to said
| treaties, maybe led by the Universal Postal Union -- something
| similar to the Paris Agreement, but with global-economic goals
| rather than global-ecological ones. But that's a very different
| thing from just saying that one country's citizens should
| demand their own government nationalize a particular service.)
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| US citizens don't benefit from forced spam, or bad service
| from from USPS either. They could go paperless for most
| official documents but they need to give these spammers a
| reason to stay afloat: "official documents".
| AngryData wrote:
| Many parts of the US still do not have reliable internet or
| anything other than degraded phone lines that barely
| service 56k with cell service that gives 1 bar part of the
| time, which is a huge barrier to paperless service. Also
| they still need a way to send government documents, jury
| and court summons, ect. My own internet is wireless
| microwave transceiver which only works because I live on a
| hill, the people around me in the bowls and swamps barely
| have workable cell service even outside their house. And
| that is all on top of the fact that internet and devices to
| connect to the internet cost a significant amount of money
| to maintain, and paying private companies should not be a
| requirement to live your life on your own property.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| The USPS doesn't serve all households, you of all people
| should know that. Degraded phone lines can fax. They're
| lucky they don't get spammed.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| Because if there's one thing that makes the government run well
| is more spending!
| rootusrootus wrote:
| That is quite possibly true. The primary goal of government
| is not efficiency. We need to quit making that some kind of
| top priority. The first thing government should be is
| _effective_. This is fundamentally why mixing for-profit
| businesses into government functions always ends up a
| clusterfck.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| Spending more creates more bureaucracy and makes government
| _less effective_ , which was the point of my sarcastic
| quip.
| kortilla wrote:
| > We need to quit making that some kind of top priority.
|
| Then how do we pay for it? You're either making the
| customers pay the true cost or you're just stealing it from
| the entire tax base.
|
| If you do the latter then it's unfair to any business
| competing in the same category and they will all eventually
| go out of business because they have to be sustainable.
|
| So we end up with less efficiency and absolutely no other
| options.
| golemotron wrote:
| Please read the history of post office budgets and spending.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| They've actually done pretty well, given the amount of
| politics that gets played with their funding.
| bogota wrote:
| It's great wishful thinking but I really dont think our
| government can pull it off at this point. Maybe 30 years ago
| but not in today's environment of everyone trying to screw the
| other side over at all costs.
|
| Personally im happy we at least have one company who can get me
| stuff in a decent amount of time. But i gets it's fun to throw
| out f the big company the government should do that. It's not
| like it took thousands of well paid people years and years of
| work to develop that supply chain so im sure it's as simple as
| "let the government do it".
|
| It's the same in every Uber/Lyft comment thread. "It's just a
| simple backend app why do they need so many people". "I could
| do that in a year with a small team". Yeah have fun dealing
| with every single state, city, country's different regulations
| and requirements. "It's JUST an app".
|
| I realize a lot of engineers have this problem. They
| oversimplify everything except the code they are working on and
| dismiss it as easy or unnecessary. I did early in my career as
| well but im surprised how prevent it is here.
| roughly wrote:
| > I really dont think our government can pull it off at this
| point
|
| That's not, to be clear, for reasons of technical capacity.
| The vaccine drive that started in ~February or so of this
| year was pretty good evidence that the government is still
| capable of doing big things.
| akiselev wrote:
| _> fuck ton of money_
|
| _> tried to solve this problem for everyone_
|
| It doesn't sound like the GP was oversimplifying the problem,
| quite the opposite - wanting to spend a "fuck ton of money"
| to _try_ to solve something implies that it is a complex
| problem that may not be solved with a "fuck ton of money".
| adventured wrote:
| > I did early in my career as well but im surprised how
| prevent it is here.
|
| Most of the people here have never run or attempted to create
| a business. That's true about the general population as well.
| As you hint at, it comes from lack of life experience at
| doing a thing.
|
| You get a similar naivety from the average consumer that
| fantasizes about starting a restaurant because they have
| strong opinions about food; they've eaten at many
| restaurants, they've made food at home thousands of times,
| how hard could it be.
| newhotelowner wrote:
| Amazon uses USPS for small and rural cities. Only USPS delivers
| my Amazon packages at my business. Amazon vans delivers at my
| home. My business & my home is 20 miles apart.
| bloqs wrote:
| One of the few certainties in life, along with death and taxes,
| is that a Government body/or institution (any government) will
| be less efficient, the more money it has.
| kyletns wrote:
| Great write up on the USPS banking pilot:
| https://prospect.org/economy/postal-banking-test-in-the-bron...
|
| Not a fun outcome but the fight isn't over, yet.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| The post office is unfortunately vulnerable to political
| pressure. Both from their unions, and from the federal
| government.
|
| Imagine the nightmare of Pete Buttigieg sending down dictates
| to the post office as he tries to build political career. Look
| at what's happening in CA right now: just park the ships far
| enough offshore that you can't see them and then claim the
| problem is solved because there aren't as many ships waiting,
| charge the people who are already losing money because they
| can't get their containers out of the port fines, and punish
| them further, claiming this as a political win because it
| punishes the businesses.
|
| Absolutely no thank you. This is an actual problem that needs
| real solutions, not politicians grubbing power.
| jorblumesea wrote:
| Those people are in theory at least, elected by the American
| people. Meanwhile Amazon is beholden to whom, wealthy board
| members and stock holders? How is that better?
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Look at reality. Do you want packages stuck at harbor?
| jorblumesea wrote:
| My packages are stuck in a harbor regardless. Many major
| shippers, both public and private are having issues.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Amazon doesn't really seem to have a long-term solution...
| they had to ease drug testing requirements at one point
| recently because their turnover is so high that they were
| running out of people.
|
| Their last mile drivers are contracted companies that treat
| their employees so poorly that it's somewhat typical for them
| to leave their keys in the van and quit on the spot.
| newhotelowner wrote:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/09/18/trump-a.
| ..
| spamizbad wrote:
| The post office does things that private carriers are unable
| to do: deliver a high volume of units to any valid address.
| FedEx pushes a fraction of the volume of USPS and is buckling
| under the strain of the current labor shortage[1]
|
| [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-04/labor-
| sho...
| pxeboot wrote:
| The Post Office doesn't actually deliver to every address.
| There are hundreds of rural areas where residents get a
| free PO Box in the nearest town, without the option of home
| delivery.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| FedEx is so bad now that I avoid buying from sellers that
| use FedEx for shipping. The last few times I had a FedEx
| delivery, the delivery status went to pending twice, and
| the deliveries were a week late. Looking at the Google Maps
| reviews of the distribution centers where the packages sat,
| I consider myself lucky to have received the packages at
| all.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| The US Post Office delivered the mail on time for generations
| until the prior administration got its hands on it.
| landryraccoon wrote:
| This comment is pretty disingenuous. Your argument implies
| that ANY public service is not worth improving, because any
| government agency is vulnerable to political pressure.
|
| If you think your elected leaders are not competent and
| professional, then fire them and elect leaders that will
| improve the government. If you want a better post office, we
| need to FIX the post office, not destroy it.
|
| This sort of argument is the one that leads to hypocritically
| de-funding the post office by playing politics, then since
| it's too political pointing to it and saying "See? The
| government can't do anything right", then completely
| dismantling it.
|
| Other countries manage to have public services that actually
| work. I don't believe that the American people are somehow
| genetically predisposed to having a bad government.
| kortilla wrote:
| > Other countries manage to have public services that
| actually work.
|
| Which countries have something competing with Amazon?
|
| > I don't believe that the American people are somehow
| genetically predisposed to having a bad government.
|
| All governments are bad. The American people just happen to
| have alternatives that have revealed how bad some of the
| overlapping government orgs are so they make a lot of noise
| about how bad government departments are.
|
| > If you think your elected leaders are not competent and
| professional, then fire them and elect leaders that will
| improve the government. If you want a better post office,
| we need to FIX the post office, not destroy it.
|
| The whole thing is fucked from an incentives perspective.
| No government employee has motivation to try hard or
| innovate. There is no shared bonus structure to bring that
| on in any branch of the government.
|
| When government is competing with an industry, it's either
| going to need to run at a loss and live off of other tax
| revenue or it just won't be competitive for whoever the
| customers are.
| oblio wrote:
| Look up Eni and Enrico Mattei:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrico_Mattei
|
| Mattei took over the relatively small national oil
| company in Italy, expanded it aggressively until it was
| able to compete with the Seven Sisters (Exxon, BP, etc,
| all not state owned). State owned companies can
| definitely compete.
|
| Should I add that Mattei died under mysterious
| circumstances?
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| Any government employee care to weigh in on whether
| you're motivated to try hard and innovate? I don't think
| I'm being hopelessly optimistic, believing we've got a
| lot of good people in government service, doing their
| best.
| fragmede wrote:
| > Which countries have something competing with Amazon?
|
| All of them? Mail-order catalogs preceded the Internet,
| even! If you're referring to which other countries have
| let capitalism run amok to the same degrees - none, we're
| the only ones that stupid.
| wutwutwutwut wrote:
| > Which countries have something competing with Amazon?
|
| Amazon have tried to enter the Swedish market and it has
| been a complete train wreck. The other businesses who
| were initially worried ended up just confused over how
| they could screw up as bad as they did.
| adventured wrote:
| Amazon has made a lot of mistakes in its history. They
| can keep trying at the Swedish market perpetually until
| they get it right.
| [deleted]
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _that ANY public service is not worth improving_
|
| The argument is specific to logistics. Our government has a
| poor track record in that domain outside the military.
|
| Instead of doubling down on a concentrated bet, increasing
| competition would seem to be the solution. For example, the
| federal government could grant porting rights on its
| property, thereby breaking the Ports of LA & Long Beach's
| monopoly.
| fivea wrote:
| > The argument is specific to logistics. Our government
| has a poor track record in that domain outside the
| military.
|
| US public services have a long track record of being
| actively sabotaged by governments. See the US Post Office
| being undermined by Trump's appointment of DeJoy.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _US public services have a long track record of being
| actively sabotaged by governments. See the US Post Office
| being undermined by Trump 's appointment of DeJoy._
|
| Why they have a poor track record is a separate
| discussion.
| fivea wrote:
| > Why they have a poor track record is a separate
| discussion.
|
| The whole point is that if you're trying to dismiss an
| obvious option for it's track record, even though it is
| quite capable and able to do the legwork, then being
| aware of the root cause of that problem, and the fact
| that it's an artificial constraint with ideological
| roots, is very much central to the discussion.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| The post office was a mess long before Trump.
| bllguo wrote:
| > I don't believe that the American people are somehow
| genetically predisposed to having a bad government.
|
| I sure do. Nothing is going to change until rejection of
| authority is no longer foundational to the culture. We
| literally convinced ourselves that dysfunction and gridlock
| are features of the system, not bugs.
| jen20 wrote:
| That's cultural, not genetic.
| bllguo wrote:
| sure, that's more accurate. I kind of assumed that's what
| they meant. in any case changing either significantly is
| a long shot
| throwawayboise wrote:
| In the USA, the best and most competent and professional
| people have better options than elected office.
| adolph wrote:
| > instead of this we gave a fuck ton of money to the post
| office
|
| Or the post office could find a sustainable and growth economic
| model . . . at which point it might be indistinguishable from
| Amazon/Walmart/Safeway/etc.
| cronix wrote:
| Amazon doesn't send me shit I don't order and don't want. More
| than 95% of my mail is junk mail and there's nothing I can do
| about it. Circulating what the vast majority of people would
| consider as junk is the only thing really keeping the USPS in
| operation. Well that and they don't have to turn a profit and
| also have the protection of law to keep them going.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| You can make a big dent in your junk mail by opting out at
| various direct marketing associations. It's a bit of a pain,
| and won't stop all of it, and you have to redo it
| periodically, but it does make a difference.
|
| Now I just bin everything that's not first class, directly
| addressed to me by name before I even bring it into the
| house.
| deep-root wrote:
| Alternative take: USPS is really quite a remarkable business
| and worth learning about as a case study - from their fleet,
| to eating 90s darling FedEx alive, to overcoming artificially
| created political pressures (eg PECA), to becoming Amazon's
| chief US delivery partner, and much more.
|
| Was curious: "marketing" mail was 18% of USPS revenue[1]
| (2020) and dropping. Low share of total earnings compared to
| Meta, Google, and soon Amazon's ad revenue.
|
| [1] https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-
| releases/2020/1113-...
| pixl97 wrote:
| >Amazon doesn't send me shit I don't order and don't want
|
| Give it 10 years when Amazon is looking for new ways to
| increase profitability and shit's shipped to your door that
| you have to schedule a ship back or you'll end up being
| charged for it.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| They already do it by hiding the "add to cart" button in
| favor of periodic shipments for certain consumables.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| My brother in hated of USPS being an unnatural monopoly! http
| s://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=GhettoComputers&next...
|
| Its incredible how many people support this horrible service
| and think selling stamps makes it profitable.
| alpha_squared wrote:
| USPS would be, and historically has been, profitable if it
| weren't for the politicians actively trying to drag it down
| with arbitrary, arcane rules to protect their donors.
| cronix wrote:
| > if it weren't for the politicians actively trying to drag
| it down with arbitrary, arcane rules to protect their
| donors.
|
| Is there a sector/program in the gov't where that isn't the
| case? Every entity that is created is just a new fiefdom to
| expand and lord over from the time it's created to
| infinity.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| If the USPS wasn't a government agency, I would weld my
| mailbox shut and never look back.
|
| USPS is profitable because we all accept the idea that
| companies are allowed to pay somebody to load _literal
| trash_ through a hole in the side of my house.
| rileymat2 wrote:
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/ebauer/2020/04/14/post-
| office-p...
|
| It is interesting, because shouldn't the expectation be
| that a pension be funded as the benefits accrue? That seems
| like the safe sustainable way to run things.
| gruez wrote:
| > arbitrary, arcane rules to protect their donors.
|
| like what? The ones I heard of were prefunding the pension
| plans, but I'm not sure how that benefits any of "their
| donors"
| pzduniak wrote:
| USPS being weak (AFAIK primarily because of this law)
| benefits their competition, who are lobbying against
| "fixing" it.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > I'm not sure how that benefits any of "their donors"
|
| You can't see how kneecapping the USPS might help FedEx,
| UPS, and Amazon?
|
| The point of making the USPS pre-fund their pension
| obligations was to be able to turn around and say "look
| at the horrible state of their finances, government is
| clearly so inefficient, we should privatize it".
| hk__2 wrote:
| > More than 95% of my mail is junk mail and there's nothing I
| can do about it.
|
| This can be fixed. In France for example, it's illegal to put
| junk mail in a mailbox that has a "stop pub" (= no junk mail)
| sticker on it. I have one, and as a result <5% of my mail is
| junk mail.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Not in America. It's not illegal and it seems you still get
| junk mail.
| JackFr wrote:
| > What would be awesome is if instead of this we gave a fuck
| ton of money to the post office and tried to solve this problem
| for everyone and also eroded amazon's competitive advantage.
|
| Amazon solved a problem and reaped a reward.
|
| Your response to that is to take everyone's money, and give it
| to someone else in the hopes that they can solve the problem.
| Sure, I suppose, no reason for it not to work.
|
| On the other hand "why don't we just enable remote commerce
| like this for everyone as a societal good" is beyond simplistic
| and naive. Amazon is very good at what they do and what they do
| is not easy.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I'd much rather we disincentivized intercontinental transport
| to incentivize domestic production and reduce carbon emissions
| due to transit. I don't necessarily mind that Amazon is
| successful so long as they aren't simply the best at deriving
| profits from Chinese slave labor, IP theft, and pollution. I
| don't think the solution is to make the Post Office better at
| those things.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > reduce carbon emissions due to transit.
|
| Bulk and container ships are extremely efficient. Most of the
| carbon emissions are from the last few miles.
| derefr wrote:
| That's like saying that spaceships are extremely efficient,
| because "all they have to do is accelerate at the beginning
| and decelerate at the end." It's not the trip that gets
| you; it's the delta-V (or in this case, delta-p).
|
| Also, cargo shipping voluntarily uses fuel ("bunker fuel"
| -- the dregs of the petroleum distillation process) that's
| absolutely awful for the environment per watt generated
| compared to any other fuel (including any other petroleum
| distillate.) They do this because it's the cheapest
| [liquid] fuel to buy per watt generated, and because they
| "can" -- cargo-ship engines are designed to deal with the
| low quality of bunker fuel, and ships at sea under most of
| the common charters [e.g. Bermuda] aren't subject to any
| ecological regulations restricting them from burning it.
|
| Bunker fuel shouldn't be marketable for sale as a fuel at
| all. We (= OPEC, in this case) could still sell it to
| chemical companies, but the rest, we should just be
| sticking back in the ground. This would reduce global
| greenhouse gas emissions by such an extent it's not even
| funny.
|
| This would naturally make shipping more expensive, since
| their next-cheapest fuel would be slightly more expensive.
| (Probably not for long, though; some capital investment
| into ship engine design, using modern engine technologies
| like Cylinder Deactivation, could probably claw most of
| this cheapness back.)
| snovv_crash wrote:
| Yes, bunker fuel is terrible. But this doesn't change the
| fact that most of the carbon emissions would still be
| there for domestic production, because ships are
| extraordinarily efficient per tonne-mile of goods hauled.
| derefr wrote:
| The carbon emissions would still be there, but they might
| not be nearly as toxic/hazardous. (See my reply to a
| sibling comment.)
|
| On the other hand, they'd be happening over land, where
| people live; instead of over water, "merely" killing
| marine life, so that might be a wash in policy-makers'
| minds.
|
| To be clear, though, I'm not arguing against using cargo
| ships for domestic logistic _as a concept_ ; just the
| current implementation. Cargo ships that _didn 't use
| bunker fuel_ would be an _unalloyed_ ecological win
| compared to _both_ domestic ground logistics, and the
| current implementation of domestic marine logistics.
| tomarr wrote:
| >Bunker fuel shouldn't be marketable for sale as a fuel
| at all. We (= OPEC, in this case) could still sell it to
| chemical companies, but the rest, we should just be
| sticking back in the ground. This would reduce global
| greenhouse gas emissions by such an extent it's not even
| funny.
|
| Bunker fuel is responsible for ~3% of CO2e emissions? OK
| it may have a greater impact on air quality, but in terms
| of carbon it is not exactly a stand-out item.
| Schiendelman wrote:
| As a single line item, that's vast.
| derefr wrote:
| Carbon is a heuristic, not a target. The air isn't bad
| _because_ of carbon; carbon oxides are just the most
| common of the GHGs we put in the air.
|
| Bunker fuel contains a lot more light-molecular-weight
| things that _aren 't_ hydrocarbons (e.g. nitrogenous
| molecules), and so when they burn, you end up with
| _toxic_ GHGs being produced, rather than just _bad for
| climate change_ GHGs. (And, as you mention, the fact that
| we 're burning it mostly at the beginning and end of the
| trip, means we're burning it _near ports_ , and therefore
| making the air _at port cities_ -- and nearby estuaries
| -- toxic.)
|
| But even then, the concern with bunker fuel in particular
| isn't really the GHGs (i.e. the low-molecular-weight
| products of combustion that stay airborne), but all the
| _high_ -molecular-weight stuff that's mixed in there,
| that _doesn 't_ stay airborne, but is temporarily put
| _into_ the air during combustion.
|
| Bunker fuel is "dirty fuel", using a similar sense of
| "dirty" to a "dirty bomb" -- not that it's radioactive,
| but that it "salts the earth" where it goes off. Except
| that a bunker-fuel "bomb" goes off over water, and all
| the resulting heavy-molecular-weight vapors that come off
| the combustion then fall into said water, contaminating
| the oceans+estuaries with these chemicals. Bunker fuel
| _salts the sea_.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I'm sure they're "extremely efficient" compared to the last
| few miles, but those are still a whole lot of emissions
| that don't exist at all when production is domestic. That
| said, the more realistic possibility is that the threat of
| bringing production domestic will drive China (and the
| shipping industry, perhaps via nuclear marine propulsion)
| to make concessions.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Post offices in Europe did banking for many years. Most of them
| have been broken up now though.
|
| I think there should be an even more general effort made to
| remove the competitive advantage that comes from simply being
| big. Small enterprises suffer from the lack of economy of
| scale. As a private individual or sole trader it is more
| expensive for me to send a parcel than it is for a large
| company, this gives the incumbent an advantage.
| kortilla wrote:
| > I think there should be an even more general effort made to
| remove the competitive advantage that comes from simply being
| big.
|
| That's ridiculous because you completely disincentivize
| automation and efficiency with those types of rules.
|
| There is no reason to ensure that two guys spending 5 years
| to hand build one car need to be subsidized to continue that
| way.
| Kalium wrote:
| The USPS is also an example of a postal system that formerly
| provided banking services.
| justinator wrote:
| The USPS is getting into banking:
|
| https://www.govexec.com/management/2021/10/postal-service-la...
| whiddershins wrote:
| Why do you favor paying via taxes over paying via purchases for
| the same service?
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I completely disagree. Funding a government mandated monopoly
| is a _terrible_ idea.
|
| I would vote so hard against Post Office handling banking. It
| is incalculable that this kind of stuff gets upvoted by the
| intellectual diaspora of HN.
| CrazyCatDog wrote:
| two words: visit Switzerland
|
| Also, absolutely agree with anyone suggesting that we
| eliminate "bulk rate"--unsolicited mail should cost as much
| as first class--both to avoid real world spam, and to save
| trees.
|
| I pay extra for my carrier to block spam calls--I world
| gladly pay the post office to do the same--like
| PaperKarma.com but last mile...
| systemvoltage wrote:
| If you expect USPS to turn into Swiss-like government
| agency, sure. But it is not. And it can never be. The
| culture inside government agencies in USA is rotten.
| hairofadog wrote:
| I'm equally agog at your take, for whatever it's worth. The
| Post Office is wonderful, and it boils my blood to see
| legislation that aims to destroy it. I would _love_ to see
| the Post Office handle banking.
|
| I'm also fascinated when can this sentiment expressed when
| there are so many posts along the lines of
| _{Apple,Amazon,Facebook} deleted my account with no warning
| or explanation_ , and I can't help wondering if the folks
| saying _this is why you 're an idiot if you don't run your
| own email server_ are the same as the ones saying you're an
| idiot if you _don 't_ trust Amazon to be your sole postal
| provider.
| kortilla wrote:
| Amazon isn't a postal provider and they aren't a monopoly.
| WTF are you talking about?
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| This is obviously not universally true. Do you really want to
| have privately owned roads? Privately owned courts?
| [deleted]
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Let's ban all bakeries, should bread be federalized?
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| No because then everyone would just...loaf.
| keyb0ardninja wrote:
| Agreed. I thought that was meant as sarcasm at first, but
| apparently not. I'm shocked that is the top comment.
| kortilla wrote:
| Because the post office doesn't care about doing it efficiently
| or with a profit.
|
| Government employees don't (and can't legally) get bonuses for
| doing well or beating expectations.
|
| The entire post office org gets no bonus (or punishment for
| that matter) by impacting the cost to revenue ratio.
|
| Both of these are the reasons it never works to throw a pile of
| money at a government org and expect something sustainable
| monetarily _and_ good to come out of it.
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| The post office should be run efficiently. But I don't
| require it to make a profit. It is a service, for our
| collective benefit. Just like the Army. I don't expect the
| Army to make a profit.
| bsder wrote:
| These are really good ideas except ...
|
| Republicans specifically _blocked_ the Post Office from doing
| these things with legislation.
| maxerickson wrote:
| The replies to this that slag the post office would make more
| sense if Amazon didn't rely on the post office for last mile in
| so many places.
| syshum wrote:
| We do, and have in the past gave a fuck ton of money to the
| Post office.
|
| The idea that any government agency can solve this problem with
| the same amount of money defy's all documented history of all
| government programs
| kyletns wrote:
| Some governments actually govern decently well, certainly way
| better than the US. I assume you haven't actually read much
| of said documented history.
| syshum wrote:
| "Well" is subjective, "well run" Governments by their
| nature have run programs to meet the needs of the "average"
| person which means there will be many people for which the
| programs simply do not work.
|
| Poorly run government are corrupted so you end up with the
| programs working for a very small minority, but at best the
| government program will work for probally 51% of
| population.
|
| Government programs can simply not offer the level of
| customization, flexibility, and variety that a private
| market can
| kyletns wrote:
| Right, but I hope you also acknowledge that the US _does
| not_ have very many flexible, customizable offerings
| competing in healthy markets?
|
| There is barely a US industry left that isn't completely
| captured by 2-5 corporations. We may have the illusion of
| markets and choice, but we don't. We have monopolies and
| oligopolies extracting monopoly rents because they buy,
| destroy, or merge with the competition.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Private markets only cater to those who can afford to
| pay, which can be a _lot_ worse than only catering to the
| average.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I understand that you're intending to rebut the local claim
| that "giving money to government programs always ends
| poorly"; however, to the extent that your rebuttal is
| correct, it seems like a reason _not to give more money to
| the US government_?
| kyletns wrote:
| Indeed it might! I personally hate paying a chunk of my
| annual income to the department of defense. But "the US
| govt" sure describes a large machine, and it's worth
| highlighting that some parts of that machine are better
| than others, and I believe that some of them are
| definitely fixable. We should fight for the good programs
| and try to kill that bad ones, imo.
|
| But yeah, I mean on the whole, if I could abolish the US
| govt (not other govt's, just this one), I probably would.
| But that's not my call! So in the meantime I'm voting
| progressive and contributing to pressure to repair the
| good systems we have and make life more livable for the
| unlucky souls born poor in this country and on this
| planet.
| drstewart wrote:
| Ah. I assume you can point out which of these "some
| governments" have logistics that rival Amazon via throwing
| a "fuckton of money" to their post offices?
| Spivak wrote:
| Which is why public-private partnerships are a thing. This
| would end up essentially contracting one or more logistics
| companies to do the fulfillment for the public facing
| government service.
| syshum wrote:
| Yea I will pass on that as well, as an example I my City
| pays a private company to pick up trash, I have no
| recourse, I have to pay the city, the company has no
| obligiation to me at all, and there fore I get TERRIBLE
| trash service
|
| When I lived out outside the city limits I had the choice
| of 5 different trash service vendors, all offering a
| different range of services at different monthly costs to
| suite my needs (and the needs of my neighbors) not only was
| the service CHEAPER, I got more for the money and if I
| needed something special or out of the ordinary I simply
| called up the company, asked for the additional service and
| maybe paid a little more... I have no such options with a
| city / government "public -private" partnership service
| kyletns wrote:
| That is super rad, and markets can be so dope, and
| nothing beats good fair service like that, but doesn't it
| also seem kind of crazy inefficient to have 5 different
| company's trash trucks running around the city? Maybe I'm
| wrong, but in terms of overall ecosystem input/output, I
| would guess that 1 system consumes way fewer resources
| than the sum of 5. I guess if the prices correspond to
| resource-use, then maybe it is actually more efficient
| overall? Crazy.
| kortilla wrote:
| > but doesn't it also seem kind of crazy inefficient to
| have 5 different company's trash trucks running around
| the city?
|
| Why would you even think that? It's going to be roughly
| the same number of employees, equipment, etc. The total
| amount of trash didn't change.
| kyletns wrote:
| The truck only has to drive down the street once, as
| opposed to 5 trucks driving down the same street?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I like the setup we have. The city regulates the trash
| company. So while they are private, they provide service
| according to what the city demands, and prices are
| regulated right along with it. I get _great_ trash
| service, even with only a single company serving the
| entire area. And the prices are completely acceptable.
| oliv__ wrote:
| I don't know about you but from my personal experiences in
| dealing with the USPS, they're not exactly what I'd describe as
| the most efficient (or friendly for that matter) organization.
|
| Compare that to same-day or next day delivery from Amazon, it's
| night and day.
|
| I'd rather not dump more tax money into that mess.
|
| EDIT: I find it interesting that 90% of the responding comments
| in this thread are seemingly against the parent comment's ideas
| yet all are being heavily downvoted now with practically no
| answers to justify the downvotes
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > EDIT: I find it interesting that 90% of the responding
| comments in this thread are seemingly against the parent
| comment's ideas yet all are being heavily downvoted now with
| practically no answers to justify the downvotes
|
| I think that's because many of the comments are posting
| regularly debunked misinformation.
|
| Personally, I like the USPS more than Amazon. Because while
| Amazon frequently gives me great service, they can terminate
| that relationship at any time and then I'm completely stuck.
| Because the USPS is quasi-governmental, they can't just
| decide I'm no longer allowed to be a customer.
| kortilla wrote:
| > I think that's because many of the comments are posting
| regularly debunked misinformation.
|
| Such as?
|
| Most of these faded out comments are talking about how the
| USPS is a government org so it has no incentives to
| efficiently fix things regardless of money. How do you
| debunk that? It's true of the incentives of every
| government agency.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Why does the CEO of a private company have incentive to
| fix things? Presumably because they'll be fired if they
| don't. How is that any different for the head of a
| governmental organisation?
| mdgrech23 wrote:
| The government would find a way to fuck it up - most likely
| through forced diversity hiring. Look at truly innovative
| companies - every year they can can 10% or so of the lower
| performers - if you're not doing your job your fired - doing
| that in a gov ran business? good luck. everyone would claim
| wrongful termination so it becomes cheaper to keep the lower
| performers which leads to our current situation w/ the post
| office.
| rdtwo wrote:
| You don't think big companies have diversity quotas in 2021?
| Where have you been for a decade
| tonguez wrote:
| Big companies can fire people if they are not doing their
| job, which obviously is not true of USPS.
| jbm wrote:
| Your 10% example was used by Jack Welsh GE and Enron right?
| Do you consider them innovative / forward looking?
| spiderice wrote:
| So because Enron is bad, everything they did is bad? I'm
| not arguing in favor of firing the bottom 10% each year,
| but your logic here is ridiculous.
| jfk13 wrote:
| > Look at truly innovative companies - every year they can
| can 10% or so of the lower performers
|
| So you're a fan of stack ranking, huh? I thought that was
| pretty widely discredited, and "truly innovative companies"
| know better by now.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| > Look at truly innovative companies - every year they can
| can 10% or so of the lower performers
|
| Name the truly innovative companies that have this as a
| policy right now.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| how does diversity hiring fuck up companies and government?
|
| it shouldn't be consider a 'quota' to give equitable access
| and try to catch up the the actual balance of diversity in
| this country.
|
| Tech I get is harder because of the century of lack of
| education and lower opportunities.
|
| But you can't write off entire races as less performant.
| mattrighetti wrote:
| Because it moves the hiring focus from skills and
| "meritocracy" to something that should be irrelevant: age,
| tattoos, hair color etc.
|
| Skills give value to an organization making it more
| competitive and productive, your appearance does not. If
| you make decisions on who to hire based on the former
| you're basically saying "Guy X is better than guy Y but I'm
| gonna hire Y because some people are offended by the fact
| that we're not 50/50", which is obvious in every single
| part of life.
|
| Also, I know a lot of friends that are saddened by their
| hiring process and they feel like they've been hired just
| because the HR had to and not because they were the top
| choices.
|
| But yeah, this is controversial nowadays so I don't really
| try to put it out there at all and let it be.
| ldjkfkdsjnv wrote:
| Dude the post office would squander that money. I have no idea
| why people think these public entities can execute like Amazon
| does. Its the same with SpaceX and NASA, very clear at this
| point that NASA was a huge waste of money and completely
| incompetent.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Why doesn't NASA get any credit for creating and funding the
| Commercial Cargo and Commercial Crew programs?
|
| SpaceX looks like a very savvy, competent investment made by
| NASA to me.
| ldjkfkdsjnv wrote:
| Because if a private company had worked on that same thing,
| the results would have been 10x.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Yeah, sure. Go look up what those programs involve.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX#2005%E2%80%932009:_F
| alc...
|
| > The first two Falcon 1 launches were purchased by the
| United States Department of Defense under a program that
| evaluates new US launch vehicles suitable for use by
| DARPA. The first three launches of the rocket, between
| 2006 and 2008, all resulted in failures. These failures
| almost ended the company as Musk had planned and
| financing to cover the costs of three launches; Tesla,
| SolarCity, and Musk personally were all nearly bankrupt
| at the same time as well; Musk was reportedly "waking
| from nightmares, screaming and in physical pain" because
| of the stress.
|
| > However, things started to turn around when the first
| successful launch was achieved shortly after with the
| fourth attempt on 28 September 2008. Musk split his
| remaining $30 million between SpaceX and Tesla, and NASA
| awarded the first Commercial Resupply Services (CRS)
| contract to SpaceX in December, thus financially saving
| the company. Based on these factors and the further
| business operations they enabled, the Falcon 1 was soon
| after retired following its second successful, and fifth
| total, launch in July 2009; this allowed SpaceX to focus
| company resources on the development of a larger orbital
| rocket, the Falcon 9. Gwynne Shotwell was also promoted
| to company president at this time, for her role in
| successfully negotiating the CRS contract with NASA.
| jimjimjim wrote:
| spacex stands on the shoulders of giants. don't forget that!
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > can execute like Amazon does
|
| We'd have to be willing to let the USPS operate at a
| significant loss for a decade, kinda like Amazon.
| ldjkfkdsjnv wrote:
| Or differently stated, reinvest all profits back into the
| business, report a loss. Amazon is brutal to its employees,
| a government run entity will never match the level of
| execution. Its really a fantasy to think otherwise, and has
| never been shown to be true
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| > What would be awesome is if instead of this we gave a fuck
| ton of money to the post office and tried to solve this problem
| for everyone and also eroded amazon's competitive advantage.
|
| Why hasn't this happened already? What makes you think it would
| actually happen?
| kyletns wrote:
| Takes political courage and public pressure. There is a
| little bit of that being exhibited by the current
| administration, but it's also pretty clear that another
| potential administration would have had a lot more potential
| to fix these problems.
| kortilla wrote:
| What? The current admin spearheaded some 3-6T in spending
| bills presumably for "infrastructure". It seems like all of
| the support is there.
|
| The problem is that nobody gets political credit for
| improving existing systems. That money will instead be
| pissed away on other political gifts and novelties.
| kyletns wrote:
| Thanks KittenInABox.
|
| Politicians absolutely do get credit when they improve
| actual systems and improve people's lives. People like
| it, and will vote those politicians back into office. But
| it has to be actual, felt, day-by-day changes in their
| lives (such as fixed roads, the USPS offering free check
| cashing, or even a friggin relief check in the mail with
| the president's signature on it). The current
| infrastructure bill(s) promise that real support, but
| they didn't fund it enough imo and it's far from clear
| that they'll be able to use the money they did get to
| make meaningful changes in people's daily lives.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| What do you mean "infrastructure" in quotes? The
| infrastructure bill is almost entirely infrastructure
| like roads, bridges, waterways, electricity, and
| broadband internet. (It's also only 1T. Not 3-6.)
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| To some extent it seems to have happened in China.
| austincheney wrote:
| This will work well for some domestic transportation and land
| locked rural areas, but for everybody else... I don't think this
| will do anything. It just sounds like a massive expense.
|
| I live right next to perhaps the largest inland port in the US
| and cargo here doesn't sit for very long because the only options
| are air, trucks, and trains and there is anywhere for excess
| cargo to sit. This is called the inter-modal system of logistics,
| the ability to rapidly move shipping contains between air and
| train via short truck routes or immediately onto trucks for long
| haul truck distribution. In this case the Amazon plan can skip
| sea ports and directly reach inland ports that don't have
| congestion. But, that will only work efficient for domestic
| transport.
|
| The solution ignores the cause of the problem for sea ports, the
| point of congestion to which they are likely a massive
| contributor.
|
| The problem for the congestion is that ports have run out of
| space, mostly from empty containers taking space needed by filled
| containers on ships. This problem is not a labor shortage,
| tracking inefficiency, or distribution failure.
|
| This problem is intentional and created by the vendors most
| severely impacted from the result. Empty shipping containers take
| up space and have to be stored somewhere. If not at a port then
| at a vendor's warehouse clogging operations closer to the
| business. Parking contains costs money. Whether you are going to
| park them at a port or your own warehouse there is an expense to
| that lost space.
|
| Parking at the port was, until about a month ago, tremendously
| cheaper. It takes fuel to drive that empty box around and it
| takes money to pay for a filled warehouse of your empty
| containers that is needed for actual operations. So just leave it
| at the port for a massive discount.
|
| Parking at the ports worked well... until there was a massive
| pandemic and everybody starting shopping online, even from places
| like WalMart.
|
| The Port of Los Angeles is solving this problem on their end with
| rate increases that increase per day (or week, I don't remember).
| I suspect their neighbor at the Port of Long Beach is following
| on that plan as well. Only time will tell if this actually solves
| the problem at those ports. Even the mere announcement of this
| price hike resulted in one vendor removing 5000 empty containers.
| That is a mind boggling amount of space, and from just one
| company.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I have what might be a really dumb question:
|
| Can you helicopter airlift 40' crates off a ship?
| arbuge wrote:
| The most powerful lifting helicopters available can do up to
| 44,000 lbs, which is about the same as the maximum highway
| transport weight for 40' containers:
|
| Source: 60 seconds on Google brings up:
|
| https://www.ukpandi.com/news-and-resources/bulletins/2021/ov...
|
| https://helicopterexpress.com/blog/how-much-weight-can-a-
| con....
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| Probably, with enough planning? The economics of it probably
| wouldn't make any sense though.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Yeah. But when ports are jammed I could see them doing
| ridiculous things to keep the spice flowing.
| vdfs wrote:
| Lifting is probably just a single part of the whole
| process, in your scenario, helicopters will move the pill-
| up from ships to land
| jallen_dot_dev wrote:
| If I understand correctly, it's not a lack of cranes to get
| containers off the ship but a lack of trailers to get the
| containers out of the port.
| tbihl wrote:
| I have a lot of ex-military friends who go work for Amazon, and
| it's not hard to see why after reading this article. Moonshot
| ideas are exciting, but untangling the nationwide chokehold of
| shipping failures would be such a tangible, rewarding project to
| work on.
| lyime wrote:
| Check out https://www.terminal49.com/. We are working on such
| problems.
| gumby wrote:
| Let's not forget that in the 1940s, the allied supreme
| commander for Europe was...a logistics expert, Eisenhower.
| thathndude wrote:
| Dan Carlin's most recent podcast episodes have been on the
| WWII Pacific Theatre. He spends some time talking about how
| the unsexy thing like logistics and supply chains are
| essential to winning.
| gumby wrote:
| The attack on Pearl Harbor was precipitated by a supply
| chain issue: the US's oil embargo on Japan. This is not to
| assign any blame to the US -- Roosevelt did the right thing
| and, TBF, it did ultimately end with Japan out of China.
| thathndude wrote:
| Amazon is executing on an insane level. It's kind of mind
| blowing how big it's getting.
|
| I see a lot of pundits talking about other retailers catching
| up. And I know that's true to a degree. But I think they're
| only catching up in some areas. Meanwhile you have Amazon
| building out a whole delivery fleet for their next moat.
| pphysch wrote:
| I recently ordered from Walmart+ for the first time.
|
| Order arrived direct from Amazon as a "gift".
| goldenkey wrote:
| You likely didn't order from the Walmart.com retailer.
| Instead, it was likely from a Pro seller or ordinary 3rd
| party seller. This is the largest source of confusion for
| shoppers on Amazon. So much so that Amazon now offers $1000
| if a 3rd party harms an individual. [1]
|
| I think the UI that combines the 3rd party sellers with the
| Walmart/Amazon corporation retailer, is deliberately made
| confusing. I believe over voice, like when using Alexa, it
| is even more unclear what vendor is being ordered from.
|
| [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-compensation-
| third-pa...
| syshum wrote:
| It is Non-Desktop Web Browser interfaces that are the
| problem.
|
| Mobile Site, Mobile Apps, Alexa, etc make it very hard to
| see who the vendor it, I do not have this problem on the
| Traditional Full Size Browser Amazon.com site
| rootusrootus wrote:
| My wife just had exactly the opposite experience. She
| ordered something from Amazon and it came in a Walmart box,
| directly from Walmart with no mention of the Amazon seller
| on the shipping label.
|
| Against Amazon's rules, for sure.
|
| Interestingly, the price was lower on Walmart.com but my
| wife had not checked first. But it was only $2.50 less. I
| have no idea how that worked out as profitable for the
| 'drop shipper' (in quotes because this kind of drop
| shipping is IMO not legitimate).
| lupire wrote:
| You got what you ordered at a price to liked. Someone got
| $2.50 for helping you. What's not legitimate?
| tw04 wrote:
| You see them building a delivery fleet as a moat: I see it as
| they've burned through literally every logistics broker in
| the US and now have no other choice. Their modus operandi to
| date was to put bids out to logistics brokers who would treat
| Amazon like any other customer and have some routes that were
| profitable, and some they'd lose money on in order to win the
| overall business. Amazon would then use that broker for
| nothing but the loss leader route and hammer it until the
| broker fired them as a customer. You can only do that to so
| many brokers before there is literally nobody left willing to
| do business with you.
|
| Source: my buddy runs a broker business and will not do
| business with Amazon under any circumstances nor will any of
| his peers in this market.
| pm90 wrote:
| This is pretty amazing (not for the brokers, I'm sure).
| Amazon just seems to be a hyper optimizing machine,
| logically stepping through all possible options to every
| decision.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Taking advantage of your friends doesn't make you a
| "hyper-optimising machine", it makes you an ass in the
| short term and a loner with no friends in the long term.
| Being a sociopath is not an innovation.
| ketzo wrote:
| Companies are not people, and monopolies (and
| monopsonies) don't need friends.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| It's possible because of their scale.
|
| You could drive all over town buying groceries piecemeal
| at whatever store has the biggest loss leader deal on
| those particular items, but for a loaf of bread and a
| gallon of milk and a dozen eggs the savings will be
| offset by the expense of going to multiple stores. Yet if
| you are buying 10,000 gallons of milk and 10,000 loaves
| of bread, it becomes feasible.
| petschge wrote:
| Not surprising given the quote "Amateurs talk about tactics,
| but professionals study logistics." by General Robert H. Barrow
| (then Commandant of the Marine Corps)
| hhmc wrote:
| How _does_ one go about studying logistics?
| hef19898 wrote:
| Like everything else, university and / or professional
| training ajd experience. Amazon wad, hands down, the best
| Supppy Chain and logistics company I ever worked for.
| DenisM wrote:
| Many universities (like MIT) have courses on Supply Chain
| Management, and logistics is a subset of that.
|
| Or you can join the military, it looks like they might have
| some educational program.
| loonster wrote:
| And a lot of OJT.
| jtdev wrote:
| It would seem strange for ex-military folks to do this work and
| not feel as though they were simply helping China and a
| billionaire space cowboy at the expense of American sovereignty
| and oppression of all those under the Chinese thumb.
| ok_dad wrote:
| It's really hard to work with people who don't put effort into
| their work after being in the military around people who put so
| much effort into getting things right. I'm not saying time
| equal effort, either, I'm a clock watcher at work, but at least
| when I'm working I focus on the goal at hand and I actually try
| to think about the problems I'll face after I finish some task,
| so that I'll do it more robustly. The military doesn't have a
| monopoly on this, I've met several great people who have never
| served, and there are many ways in which the military sucks
| (don't get me started). However, it's pretty unrivaled when it
| comes to people who try hard and perfect their craft, imo.
| petra wrote:
| I served in the Israeli military, like every 18 year old
| male.
|
| In ours, there are many places where people don't care.
|
| A lot depends on the role one plays. some are very
| meaningful. In some you carry a direct and deep
| responsibility(for your team mates lives, for the people you
| protect). In some places, you'll get punished severely if you
| make a mistake, So you really try not to. So you try to do a
| good job.
|
| In others ? Not so much. So you do the bare minimum and skate
| by. Many people are like that. It's a general
| "recommendation" for the new soldier.
|
| Now compare that to civilian life - in most jobs you're just
| a cog, you get paid the minimum your employer can manage, and
| most of the benefit of doing a better job is making the boss
| richer. So why give a fuck ?
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Interesting. Based on your experience, would you say it's a
| consequence of filling the ranks with draftees?
|
| Despite the rose-colored (gold-colored) glasses in some
| comments, I'm sure every military, and every other large
| organization, has the same things. We are dealing with
| millions of human beings. I've never worked with even 10
| that were all so highly motivated.
| manquer wrote:
| You are always a cog in the wheel, in a miltary the boss in
| addition making money can also kill you for a useless goal,
| the $2 trillion and thousands killed and injured over 20
| years in afganistan is a recent example .
|
| Being motivated about a job whether miltary /civilian
| should be about what you can do not if its corrupt
| /inefficient /incompetent almost any large institutuion
| usually is
| imajoredinecon wrote:
| > useless goal
|
| Is bringing peace, civil rights, and good governance to a
| corrupt, poor, and violent country useless? (Obviously,
| we ended up failing in large part.)
| maccolgan wrote:
| Yeah violating self-determination of a country without
| also permanently occupying it can be seen as useless.
| [deleted]
| aerosmile wrote:
| Agree that "useless" was a bit harsh. Perhaps
| "unachievable"?
|
| It's a bit like dieting. You take someone who has been
| chubby their entire life, put them through a bootcamp,
| and then look at their weight 5 years later. The stats
| are not looking good in those cases, and I think they
| largely reflect our efforts in up-leveling the political
| landscape in historically corrupt countries.
|
| I am not saying that we shouldn't keep trying. But I
| think we should internalize that the chances of success
| are slim, and then make that a part of our upfront
| decisioning process on budget, casualties, political
| cost, etc.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| Well, considering America's recent military endeavors
| have done the opposite, you have to wonder how many times
| you can hear that until you conclude it was always a
| bald-faced lie to mask our economic interests.
|
| Dropping bombs on a country rarely makes it less prone to
| conflict unless you intend to occupy it, it just gives
| more recruiting material to the "violent" radicals.
| erentz wrote:
| > to mask our economic interests
|
| If "our" means the US and it's people as a collective,
| then it really seems clear that it wasn't in our
| collective economic interests either. If our means
| military contractors, then yes they made out very well.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| It was in interests of the oil companies as well, and by
| extension the interests of the leaders of the country who
| are effectively on their payroll.
|
| But yes, "our" in this case was perhaps a poor choice of
| words to refer to the interests of, for lack of a better
| term, the ruling class, whose interests do not align with
| the vast majority of the country.
| kilroywashere wrote:
| the ghani administration was nothing more than an
| american imperialist puppet government, forcing american
| "ideals" (see: consumerism and globalism) on a people who
| want nothing to do with it.
|
| "God has promised us victory, and Bush has promised us
| defeat. We'll see which promise is more truthful,"
|
| - Mullah Omar.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Mostly: the concept of a nation.
|
| Afghanistan isn't a nation. And you can't externally
| force people to believe they're part of a nation.
|
| Either they do, in which case they're willing to accept
| sacrifices for the greater good of their fellow citizens,
| or they aren't.
| petra wrote:
| // Being motivated about a job whether miltary /civilian
| should be about what you can do
|
| Usually why people care about that is in-job competition
| and status hierarchies and ego.
|
| But the role of those psychological/biological
| mechanisms(for ex. the serotonin system), in apes, for
| example, is to drive you to compete on mates and food. To
| get access to real, valuable resources.
|
| Modern organizations are using those mechanisms to
| motivate you, without giving you any access to real
| resources. Another form of exploitation.
|
| Some chose not to play that game.
| californical wrote:
| I totally don't see it this way -- the machine that we're
| all cogs in does in fact give you access to recourses.
| Being the best burger flipper gives you job security.
|
| Today we have access to insane resources that our early
| humans couldn't have even dreamt about, even for the
| relatively poor people today.
|
| The machine provides a massive supply chain of a variety
| of food and medicine that was unheard of for ~all of
| human history. Flipping burgers for an hour makes you
| ~$10, with which you can buy food for two people for a
| whole day (or more). That's less work for more reward
| than ever before in history.
|
| So the reward system does work -- you're still competing,
| and the rewards are massive, relative to apes and early
| humans.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "That's less work for more reward than ever before in
| history"
|
| This is absolutely, myopic, demonstrably wrong at so many
| levels, from the fact that minimum wage has been stagnant
| for decades to eising cost of living
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/02/24/this-
| char...
| hallway_monitor wrote:
| It seems to me that your comment is the myopic one. GP
| was talking about long time scales. The reason the
| industrial revolution was so amazing was the level of
| efficiency it brought with it. There is no arguing that
| we get more for less work than any time previous to that.
| Whether that's worth the cost of everyone being a cog in
| the industrial machine is however a valid question.
| petra wrote:
| I don't care about the machine. It will work just the
| same without my participation(in most roles).
|
| // Being the best burger flipper gives you job security.
|
| Burger flippers earn close to the minimum wage. They
| always have decent job security, it's easy to find a
| similar job(not necessarily as a burger flipper).
| gumby wrote:
| My experience in hiring ex enlisted folks is 100% great.
|
| With officers...less than that. They are used to more
| infrastructure than a startup can or wants to provide.
| roughly wrote:
| > They are used to more infrastructure than a startup can
| or wants to provide.
|
| I've seen this with ex-Googlers on the software side, and
| ex-Apple folks from the hardware side who go independent
| tend to hit it too ("what do you mean our Chinese suppliers
| are refusing to retool their whole process for us?")
| ok_dad wrote:
| I was an officer (personally, I think I was decent, but who
| knows), I can agree on that to a point: former enlisted
| folks who are technical experts are by far above most
| former officers, and I have to say one of the reasons I
| left was because the officer corp is basically rotten these
| days with the same crappy, entitled managers that you see
| in the civilian world. However, the good officers were and
| are a cut above the rest. The problem is adverse selection
| by the shitty officers who thrive in that crap environment
| and wouldn't last a week as a civilian manager because they
| have no carrot, just sticks.
|
| Anyways, this is kind of off topic, so I'll take my leave.
| mcguire wrote:
| I had a friend who was involved in the early US Air Force
| cyberwarfare stuff. He had a story of a (much more)
| senior officer visiting, seeing the people, who were also
| officers and had CS MSs and PhDs, doing their work, and
| throwing a fit. Air Force officers, you see, don't do
| work; they manage people who do work. Doing things was a
| job for the enlisted.
| petschge wrote:
| Especially the Air Force should know better since the
| people doing the work for flying things are officers...
| manquer wrote:
| Flying is at pinnancle of jobs at an airforce. There are
| thousands of roles that is needed for a one plane to be
| ready to fly by a pilot.
|
| Perhaps the more accurate statement officers do the what
| they see as cool jobs all boring ones are delegated.
| tbihl wrote:
| Although the polar opposite can very often be true. The
| enlisted guy troubleshoots the obscure fault in the
| oxygen generator while his officer drafts messages
| detailing the problem, works to get parts ordered, and
| attends meetings about the whole fiasco.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Aren't the people doing the flying mostly low level
| officers such as lieutenants and maybe captains?
| sokoloff wrote:
| That's somewhat amusing coming from an Air Force officer,
| as all the pilots are officers.
| warner25 wrote:
| This is definitely the institutional culture within the
| US Army. Technical work is seen as being beneath an
| officer. I'm an officer in a specialized IT career field
| (BA and MS in CS, starting a PhD program next year) and
| we constantly struggle against this culture. The Army
| wants us to have graduate degrees in engineering or
| scientific disciplines so that we can almost exclusively
| fill management positions overseeing enlisted troops,
| warrant officers, contractors, and low-level federal
| civilians with high school diplomas doing the technical
| work.
|
| Those of us who get hands-on to be in touch with reality,
| add value, and sharpen our skillset do so at risk to our
| careers. We are only rewarded for what we do as leaders,
| especially expanding our scope of responsibility
| (mission, people, budget, etc.).
|
| When I was an officer in the aviation branch, it was the
| same problem. The rewards for briefing PowerPoint slides
| were greater than the rewards for competently flying
| helicopters.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > _The Army wants us to have graduate degrees in
| engineering or scientific disciplines so that we can
| almost exclusively fill management positions_
|
| The former AF/SF CSO observed that the lack of technical
| expertise in commanding officers is a problem. [0]
|
| > _Please stop putting a Major or Lt Col. (despite their
| devotion, exceptional attitude, and culture) in charge of
| ICAM, Zero Trust or Cloud for 1 to 4 million users when
| they have no previous experience in that field - we are
| setting up critical infrastructure to fail. [...] They do
| not know what to execute on or what to prioritize which
| leads to endless risk reduction efforts and diluted
| focus. IT is a highly skilled and trained job; Staff it
| as such._
|
| But 100% agreed with you that top-loading degrees isn't a
| solution either.
|
| It feels like the military's historical solution to a lot
| of problems (forced, regular duty station rotation, with
| assumed interchangeability based on rank) isn't suited to
| the types of technical project it's now being asked to
| execute quickly and successfully.
|
| There's a _huge_ amount of good that comes from rotating
| people, but it feels like there 's a new local optima
| that needs to be found.
|
| A starter might be to make technical position rotations
| more pull / resume / experienced -based, and less solely
| on billet rank. I.e. Does a given position want _you_? Or
| who of a stack of applicants do they want _most_ , for
| the job they're currently executing?
|
| [0] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/time-say-goodbye-
| nicolas-m-ch...
| gumby wrote:
| > Anyways, this is kind of off topic, so I'll take my
| leave.
|
| Thanks for replying. I don't think it's off topic.
| Startups _should_ know that former enlisted personnel
| make great hires.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Does anyone have a neutral example? All the examples I have
| of military people who are in or adjacent to this part of
| Amazon have been disastrous. Full of themselves and not
| particularly high performance.
|
| In my experience, ex military people are just like any other
| ex government office people. Mostly afraid to be known as
| having made mistakes, a bit too cocksure, and leaning on
| their "when I was at X".
|
| Maybe it's different in different sub sections of the armed
| services. However, the local characteristics make sense
| considering the environment they were in (I only know two
| combat veterans). After all, similar mistakes lead to the
| Navy routinely bashing ships into each other.
|
| I think it's likely that the rubber meets the road very
| little in the US armed forces. Perhaps the people experienced
| in that have different characteristics.
| jcims wrote:
| I didn't serve myself but I ran a small consultancy for a few
| years and one of the primary predictive factors whether or
| not a new hire would do well was former military experience.
| I don't attribute it to core personality issues or
| intelligence or anything like that, I think it's just
| training and experience that was consistent with the
| expectations for the type of work we did (small infosec
| firm).
| aerosmile wrote:
| You have to give it to the military - they really succeed in
| indoctrinating their community in their success metrics.
| Everyone who leaves the military has a very high opinion of
| their peers' professionalism, dedication, and so forth. From
| an outside observer's perspective, the results are not as
| strong - the budgetary, humanitarian, environmental,
| collateral, and political costs of most of the military
| engagements of the past 50 years have been quite bad. You
| never hear the veterans talk about that - it's always about
| the success metrics that they define for themselves (eg:
| casualty ratio - "we lost only 2 lives on our end, and they
| lost XXXXX").
|
| Compare that to the Googlers who constantly complain about
| their employer, and contrast that to Google's net impact on
| our society. First of all, it's not a cost center but a
| massive revenue center, and it paid for endless road
| constructions and similar projects across California, New
| York, and all other states that Google operates in. And while
| we can argue about the political bias in their search
| results, I believe Google has made information more
| accessible, and that's fundamentally a good thing.
|
| I imagine it has to do with how these two organizations
| approach their communities from the very beginning:
|
| - Google: don't be evil
|
| - Military: we have our own law where your jury can consist
| of as few as just 3 officers, and only 2 of them need to
| agree to send you to jail. Oh, and you don't get a lawyer
| until the investigation is finished, including your own
| deposition. So... still want to download all those
| incriminating documents and expose someone in the military?
|
| Not saying that we should operate like the military, but it's
| important to realize that anyone who joins the military is ok
| with this set of rules. So they are fundamentally not opposed
| to how the military works to begin with, and it's therefore
| not surprising that they are largely happy with their
| internal success metrics.
| ahdh8f4hf4h8 wrote:
| > Compare that to the Googlers who constantly complain
| about their employer
|
| The current set of Googlers that are complaining aren't the
| ones that built the company though. Google's success was
| built in the late 90's and early 2000s when they really
| revolutionized internet search and then email. I would
| argue that since 2010 they have lost this edge - even Bing
| and DuckDuckGo give better results now for many searches.
| Many of their interesting projects today are acquisitions.
|
| I'm curious if SV's culture has changed in the last 15
| years, and what future impact this may have - at least from
| the outside it seems like some of the brutal meritocracy
| attitude that made SV great has died off.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| >Everyone who leaves the military has a very high opinion
| of their peers' professionalism, dedication, and so forth.
|
| This sounds very biased. The VA is constantly complained
| about as is their benefits payments. The MRAs suck, they
| can't speak about some secret stuff, none of this
| information is unusual or buried, it sounds like you have a
| very biased viewpoint, maybe from not getting to know any
| military.
|
| >From an outside observer's perspective, the results are
| not as strong - the budgetary, humanitarian, environmental,
| collateral, and political costs of most of the military
| engagements of the past 50 years have been quite bad.
|
| Vietnam, the fuck up in Iraq, and suicides are well known
| to be bad to everyone including the military, the default
| response to anyone who served is "thank you for your
| service". Many see it as a job. I know a very friendly
| female marine (they complained about her kindness and said
| it wasn't militant -and reflected badly on their
| perceptions), she was well decorated, and complained about
| sexism even though she was a superior to these men. Get to
| know some military people, your biased opinion will change.
| hogFeast wrote:
| > You have to give it to the military - they really succeed
| in indoctrinating their community in their success metrics.
| Everyone who leaves the military has a very high opinion of
| their peers' professionalism, dedication, and so forth.
|
| Same in every bureaucracy.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > Everyone who leaves the military has a very high opinion
| of their peers' professionalism, dedication, and so forth.
|
| Are you talking about the US military and do you have some
| data on that? I see people with no experience of the
| military imagine a storybook entity (which is a very
| popular public concept these days), but the US military has
| significant retention problems, very high rates of suicide
| and sexual assault (signals of and, for the latter, a cause
| of a toxic environment), and a lot of morale, discipline,
| and corruption problems. As a couple of examples of the
| latter, around a year ago, the head of special operations
| said that it was their top priority. In ~ the last year,
| the Navy was having trouble filling higher ranks because so
| many officers had been kicked out due to corruption
| scandals (e.g., the 'Fat Leonard' scandal).
|
| The glorification of the military might seem patriotic, but
| I think it's the opposite: It's a way of not seeing and
| addressing problems, which weakens defense and leaves the
| people serving to deal with the problems and suffer the
| consequences (including the environment, more and longer
| tours, and possibly their lives). It's like a case of
| extreme over-confidence in a CEO - a very dangerous flaw.
|
| > Compare that to the Googlers who constantly complain
| about their employer
|
| People in the military don't gripe?
| Retric wrote:
| Yes, you can find some seriously messed up stuff in the
| military. I was looking at some criminal data and seeing
| a huge number of attempted murder charges related to one
| case I thought the data might have been in error. But no,
| throwing a live grenade into a tent is quite serious.
|
| That said, it's easy to underestimate just how large the
| US military is and how many people cycle in and out every
| year. Just unemployment benefits alone get quite
| expensive during any economic downturn. Recruit millions
| over time and even if you reject the most obvious problem
| cases you will eventually get some seriously unstable
| people.
| lupire wrote:
| People complaing about the military too.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_assault_in_the_Unite
| d...
|
| Everyone who works anywhere is not "fundamentally opposed
| to how it works".
| Jansen312 wrote:
| As long as their internal success metrics align with
| civilian interest, I am ok with that. But some can't
| integrate back especially when jobs require creativity,
| extensive domain knowledge and experience, and multi-
| tasking with multi-roles. It is that later that most
| veterans can't function well. In their previous life,
| things are predefined and roles are limited to just 1 or 2.
| Civilians have to juggle a lot and has no clear cut
| directions how things work out. Employers also won't
| tolerate your disabilities if that can be taken over by any
| other normal persons.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > But some can't integrate back ...
|
| It's more than a few; it's a widespread problem. It's
| always a challenge for people from the military to not
| only adjust to civilian life, but to build up the
| networks of contacts, etc. that deliver us jobs and many
| other resources.
| toast0 wrote:
| > From an outside observer's perspective, the results are
| not as strong - the budgetary, humanitarian, environmental,
| collateral, and political costs of most of the military
| engagements of the past 50 years have been quite bad.
|
| For the most part, all of those issues fall squarely upon
| the leadership. Military personell have a duty to fufil
| lawful orders, and you can't simply resign and take a
| different job if given a lawful order you don't think is a
| good thing for all of those reasons.
|
| In contrast, when working for an employer, you have at
| least some ability to refuse to do things you don't think
| are a good idea. Worst case, you're fired or resign and
| need to find other work. But you're very unlikely to be
| court martialed and imprisoned. Or even sued.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > after being in the military around people who put so much
| effort into getting things right
|
| I met some really bright, hard working people when I was in
| the military. But I met a huge number of slackers doing the
| absolute minimum required to skate by. I don't think the
| military has any particular monopoly on driven individuals.
| curiousllama wrote:
| The military might also be one of the only other places where
| you deal with the physical scale and speed of Walmart. They
| train to go set up a medium-sized city on 24hours notice. I can
| see why a logistics company like Amazon would see that as
| valuable!
| ineedasername wrote:
| Yep, and logistics may not be glamorous but it does have
| interesting problems to solve w/ a lot of real-world impact.
|
| Better world-wide logistics doesn't just mean getting your
| latest shiny gadget on time either: it also means better and
| more robust response times in humanitarian disasters or other
| serious situations.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I argue logistics and ops are _more glamorous_ for the
| reasons you enumerate.
| setr wrote:
| Logistics and operations is the kind of job where no one
| cares whether you exist when you're doing well, but
| everyone's beating down your door when something breaks.
| loonster wrote:
| It's worse. Everyone thinks your lazy when everything is
| running smoothly.
| renewiltord wrote:
| No. They don't. Amazon Prime's pioneering free two-day
| shipping was noticed. The same day shipping was noticed.
| I often hear about Amazon's speed as a factor for why
| people use them. In fact, among my friends people remark
| that Amazon can often deliver to our homes faster than
| Best Buy can deliver to their stores for us to pick up.
|
| It's just that smoothly is table stakes. Amazon raised
| the bar so now you have to do it smoothly blazing fast.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > It's just that smoothly is table stakes. Amazon raised
| the bar so now you have to do it smoothly blazing fast.
|
| Amazon raised the bar. And then they completely failed to
| meet their own new higher bar.
|
| Amazon will no longer _allow_ you to select the speed of
| your shipping. Amazon will offer you shipping at whatever
| speed they feel is appropriate, and if you want faster
| shipping than that, you can suck it. This is a huge
| downgrade from the system Prime started out with.
|
| And when Amazon fails to meet the shipping deadline they
| quoted you, again, you can suck it. This is not
| infrequent. This despite the fact that the deadline is
| something _they_ made up.
|
| Between this and Amazon's giving up on offering lower
| prices than other stores, I tend to prefer ordering from
| other stores.
| lazide wrote:
| What I think the parent meant is that oddly, if you mention
| to random folks at a bar or in line at the grocery store
| that you work in logistics they run _away_ instead of them
| and everyone else in earshot mobbing you for an autograph.
| As compared to being a rock star, movie producer
| /actor/actress, etc.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| This is actually _part_ of the shipping failure. Does Amazon
| have different ports and different workers unloading things?
| Read the article and you will see the answer is no.
|
| What Amazon has bought is priority within the massive shipping
| complex (with ships and port both controlled by the 3-4
| cartels). There's nothing they've accomplished here except get
| an immunity to the problems that actually means the delays get
| shunted onto other organizations trying to get their stuff.
| Basically, the very largest monopolies are protecting each
| other and screwing the medium-sized and little guy operator.
|
| Is Amazon using the Port of Oakland when LA is ultra-busy? No,
| Amazon stuff is going quick through LA and this automatically
| means other stuff is going slower.
| imajoredinecon wrote:
| Did you see the other parts in the article about building
| their own containers and delivering to ports in Houston and
| Washington state?
| papito wrote:
| Exactly. You don't need to be particularly inventive if you
| are sitting on a massive pile of money. Buy priority to stay
| in business? Sure. Lease a whole fleet of cargo planes? Put
| it on the tab.
| op00to wrote:
| You really should have read the article, Joe.
| black_13 wrote:
| Maybe they could get a fleet of ICBMs?
| privatdozent wrote:
| Nice to have money
| EMM_386 wrote:
| Pilots who used to fly Amazon Prime branded planes were actually
| flying for large cargo outfits like Atlas Air.
|
| But Amazon has now gotten into the airline business, with a
| purchase of 11 Boeing 767s.
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-makes-its-first-aircr...
| markdown wrote:
| News to me. I bought a pair of headphones in early September and
| they still haven't shipped. Since then I've had chats with Amazon
| support thrice, and the first two times I was lied to with "it's
| just being packed for shipping now".
|
| The third time I was given $20 in Amazon credit and told that a
| ticket had been lodged about my purchase. That was a week ago,
| and it still hasn't shipped.
|
| I could easily have cancelled and bought another product, but I'm
| pissed off that they sold me a product they didn't have, and now
| I'm invested in seeing how this plays out.
| wayanon wrote:
| Companies can move faster because they don't spend public money
| so have fewer rules to follow.
|
| If we let USPS function in the same way Amazon does (eg scrapping
| unprofitable activity) you'd see changes but USPS is providing a
| service for the public good.
|
| Plus arguably politicians don't benefit from creating an amazing
| USPS though who knows why.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| That's a good idea, we should stop publicly funding them and
| they'll be able to possibly be good as amazon.
| nikkinana wrote:
| Amazon is obviously behind the new Covid virus and the smash and
| grabs. Gotta shop online.
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