Amazingly, during their frequent strikes, the topic of "automation" of their jobs is never raised in the media. Though obviously much easier than self-driving-cars - many Germans have fully computer controlled toy-train landscapes in their basements; see Hamburg's tourist attraction No. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACkmg3Y64_s
Fascinating, that it's just for the new lines ;) - France is not alone in this. Progress seems to be slow enough to let existing drivers (many unionised) reach their pension age safely ...
In France they are _all_ unionised. They are currently planning Christmas strikes. Of course I don't care, I am sufficiently elite that I don't need the train at Christmas; but I do feel sorry for all those who do, most of whom are at best no better of than the strikers.
Ports & trade. Ports & shipbuilding. Ports & shipyards. Related topics where the US has shot itself in the foot. Corporate, Union & Congressional leaders are to blame. Not a 1-post or comment subject.
There is that old Churchill quote where he asks a woman if she would sleep with him for a million dollars. She says yes, and Churchill lowers the offer to $100. She says “what kind of woman do you think I am?” He says, “we’ve already established that, now we are just haggling over price.”
The issue is that they can’t negotiate because once you start negotiating the lies on which your monopoly power is built are exposed for mere self interest.
You obviously cannot say the same about the teacher's union because their issue is not that there are automated means to replace them that they're resisting.
I’m pretty sure Kahn academy could replace a lot of them. And in my district half the budget is admin, what are those people doing? Seems like a lot of makework.
Cremiex, it's not that your analysis itself is wrong. But "pay them off" isn't a solution. What will we pay them to do, and how much? What's the path these people are to follow? You're pretty good at fearlessly identifying real individual differences in cognitive and other abilities, yet you sometimes seem to ignore this when offering solutions. They won't just go away because they can't. Or at least, if you were in their place, what would you do?
My understanding is that the entire North American west coast is organised by the ILWU on a single contract, so if anyone tries to automate a single terminal there, all the terminals will go on strike.
It means that to automate a terminal on the west coast, you have to take a fallow, disused terminal, and automate that - look up the Middle Harbor Redevelopment Project at the Port of Long Beach.
As for the east coast, they're on strike against automation right now, but I don't know how the ILA organises terminals there.
Yeah, let’s put a lot of workers out of work. That’s the whole point of “innovation”, after all. Pay them with some crypto, let ‘em go. They’ll never figure out that they’ve been scammed.
May be practical and good ROI for this case, but politically, is there any precedent? It looks like "losing to the enemy" by giving them what they want. Doesn't this encourage and embolden other unions to try the same rent seeking tactics?
Actually, rising energy prices created the Rust Belt.
Automation will help; but at a lot of ports the issue is getting containers out of the port yards. Getting trucks or trains in to move the containers once they're off the docks is an issue even with automated ports.
And foreign ports do better because they're newer; whereas it's doubtful Americans will support the necessary changes to upgrade ports for truly higher efficiency.
Only surface knowledge on my end, but one of the major complaints that the ILA had was that some of the ports were implementing remote truck checkins. Which was considered a breakage of the contract. They wanted every truck to go through the ILA checkpoints.
The question is where the political coalition to pay them off could come from. The Democrats won't take the lead because it would tarnish their general pro union brand and union organizers are key to their ground game. The Republicans won't either because the ILA members are mostly the sort of thuggish low human capital people who love Trump: the intellectual descendants of the construction workers who enjoyed beating up antiwar protesters in the Hard Hat Riot. So who's going to make this happen? Best hope might be a blue dog type moderate partnership -- but it's damn hard to see where that partnership gets the votes it needs in these polarized times.
You don’t need to get politicians involved. There are other organs of statecraft. Like he said, allow Elon or Bezos to build a fully automated port with private venture capital. Side step.
Australia, NZ and the UK had roughly similar problems until the late 80s, early 90s or so (Australia still does, to some extent). The solution in the UK and NZ was the big-bang waterfront reforms where they just did your proposed solution of right-sizing the workforce all at once. Australia did the same thing in the early 1990s (look up the "Waterfront Industry Reform Authority"), but in a less comprehensive manner, so Australia's container terminals didn't improve as much as NZ's or the UK's (hence the Australian waterfront dispute of 1998 - nothing similar happened in NZ or the UK, because the job got done properly the first time there, unlike in Australia).
Still, it worked well enough in Australia, such that the most automated container terminal in the world is in Melbourne (unions hate it!)
Automation is the only solution here. If every terminal in the world were as automated as the ICTSI terminal in Melbourne, there wouldn't even be enough employees to make quorum at a union meeting (only slightly exaggerating).
Hard agree. Just pay them off.
I was thinking the same thing today. The ILA is an absurd aberration on the face of American economic efficiency.
And now the same for train drivers - whose union in Germany is infamously the most "greedy" and reviled (no one likes being stranded at the station). Its strikes have an entry in the English wikipedia even: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gewerkschaft_Deutscher_Lokomotivf%C3%BChrer
Amazingly, during their frequent strikes, the topic of "automation" of their jobs is never raised in the media. Though obviously much easier than self-driving-cars - many Germans have fully computer controlled toy-train landscapes in their basements; see Hamburg's tourist attraction No. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACkmg3Y64_s
This is why every new metro line in France for the past 20 years is automatic 😄
Fascinating, that it's just for the new lines ;) - France is not alone in this. Progress seems to be slow enough to let existing drivers (many unionised) reach their pension age safely ...
In France they are _all_ unionised. They are currently planning Christmas strikes. Of course I don't care, I am sufficiently elite that I don't need the train at Christmas; but I do feel sorry for all those who do, most of whom are at best no better of than the strikers.
A Madame Thatcher cannot come quickly enough.
Can we get some EA effort on this? Pay off some mafiosas for a measurable gain in global prosperity. This seems like a slam dunk.
Ports & trade. Ports & shipbuilding. Ports & shipyards. Related topics where the US has shot itself in the foot. Corporate, Union & Congressional leaders are to blame. Not a 1-post or comment subject.
You could say the same about the teachers union.
There is that old Churchill quote where he asks a woman if she would sleep with him for a million dollars. She says yes, and Churchill lowers the offer to $100. She says “what kind of woman do you think I am?” He says, “we’ve already established that, now we are just haggling over price.”
The issue is that they can’t negotiate because once you start negotiating the lies on which your monopoly power is built are exposed for mere self interest.
You obviously cannot say the same about the teacher's union because their issue is not that there are automated means to replace them that they're resisting.
Is that true?
I’m pretty sure Kahn academy could replace a lot of them. And in my district half the budget is admin, what are those people doing? Seems like a lot of makework.
There kind of are. Khan academy videos and minders.
Tutoring can be done by English speaking people on poor countries for cheap.
Now I have to watch again The Wire season 2!
Cremiex, it's not that your analysis itself is wrong. But "pay them off" isn't a solution. What will we pay them to do, and how much? What's the path these people are to follow? You're pretty good at fearlessly identifying real individual differences in cognitive and other abilities, yet you sometimes seem to ignore this when offering solutions. They won't just go away because they can't. Or at least, if you were in their place, what would you do?
Why pay terrorists instead of making terrorism illegal and then ignoring them out of existence?
Got another idea about how to get rid of them?
I’m pretty sure it would cost less to just pay them off, but they need to agree to allow automation.
Bring back Pinkertons and convince woke people they're all red tribe Trump lovers. The slaughter will be widely applauded in all media of record.
Just build the automation and declare them unemployed. They can join the NEET strike for more welfare
That was the Amazon / land use reform solution he mentioned, it would be better but harder.
My understanding is that the entire North American west coast is organised by the ILWU on a single contract, so if anyone tries to automate a single terminal there, all the terminals will go on strike.
It means that to automate a terminal on the west coast, you have to take a fallow, disused terminal, and automate that - look up the Middle Harbor Redevelopment Project at the Port of Long Beach.
As for the east coast, they're on strike against automation right now, but I don't know how the ILA organises terminals there.
Yeah, let’s put a lot of workers out of work. That’s the whole point of “innovation”, after all. Pay them with some crypto, let ‘em go. They’ll never figure out that they’ve been scammed.
Pay-off is a bad precedent. Better to break the union with naked force.
That may or may not be more expensive in the short run, but it will (probably) be cheaper in the long run.
May be practical and good ROI for this case, but politically, is there any precedent? It looks like "losing to the enemy" by giving them what they want. Doesn't this encourage and embolden other unions to try the same rent seeking tactics?
Worker buyouts are probably most notable in the auto industry.
It's basically forced redundancy - nothing new here.
Actually, rising energy prices created the Rust Belt.
Automation will help; but at a lot of ports the issue is getting containers out of the port yards. Getting trucks or trains in to move the containers once they're off the docks is an issue even with automated ports.
And foreign ports do better because they're newer; whereas it's doubtful Americans will support the necessary changes to upgrade ports for truly higher efficiency.
Only surface knowledge on my end, but one of the major complaints that the ILA had was that some of the ports were implementing remote truck checkins. Which was considered a breakage of the contract. They wanted every truck to go through the ILA checkpoints.
The question is where the political coalition to pay them off could come from. The Democrats won't take the lead because it would tarnish their general pro union brand and union organizers are key to their ground game. The Republicans won't either because the ILA members are mostly the sort of thuggish low human capital people who love Trump: the intellectual descendants of the construction workers who enjoyed beating up antiwar protesters in the Hard Hat Riot. So who's going to make this happen? Best hope might be a blue dog type moderate partnership -- but it's damn hard to see where that partnership gets the votes it needs in these polarized times.
You don’t need to get politicians involved. There are other organs of statecraft. Like he said, allow Elon or Bezos to build a fully automated port with private venture capital. Side step.
That's a (superior) alternative but much more politically difficult - there are many more points of resistance to that path.
Australia, NZ and the UK had roughly similar problems until the late 80s, early 90s or so (Australia still does, to some extent). The solution in the UK and NZ was the big-bang waterfront reforms where they just did your proposed solution of right-sizing the workforce all at once. Australia did the same thing in the early 1990s (look up the "Waterfront Industry Reform Authority"), but in a less comprehensive manner, so Australia's container terminals didn't improve as much as NZ's or the UK's (hence the Australian waterfront dispute of 1998 - nothing similar happened in NZ or the UK, because the job got done properly the first time there, unlike in Australia).
Still, it worked well enough in Australia, such that the most automated container terminal in the world is in Melbourne (unions hate it!)
Automation is the only solution here. If every terminal in the world were as automated as the ICTSI terminal in Melbourne, there wouldn't even be enough employees to make quorum at a union meeting (only slightly exaggerating).
Why don't we just outsource EVERYTHING to China. Well everything except resource extraction (where it's only available in the USA).
That would result in excellent economic efficiencies and make the profit line go UP.