Is automation coming for truck-driver jobs?; housing boom; & Levine, Black, & Hutcheson on just what Elon Musk imagines þt he might possibly be doing wiþ Twitter as a profit-making &...
I would go even further regarding sports. When sports was just an extracurricular activity for the boys/girls who excelled in the sport during the allocated sports activity time, that was fine. After all, some kids were academic, others sporty, and some both. There were more ways for an individual to excel at something.
But US sports at high school and college has become the tail that wags the dog. Sports teams, especially football now command and extraordinary large part of school budgets, with the sole aim of collecting trophies and perhaps entertainment on a Friday night. As school budgets have become tight, academic classes have suffered, as well as other cultural activities such as music. In addition, sports is the wedge to accept poor academics in college. Notably those faked elite sports achievements were used as a means for the wealthy to get their less than academic kids into college.
It seems the US is increasingly looking like Ancient Rome, with stratified classes based on inherited wealth and privilege, with sports as our version of gladiatorial games.
My constant frustration with people who make predictions about the future without being explicit about what policy set they are expecting. To be taken seriously one needs to believe both the parameters of their model AND the policies.
In this respect inflation/recession/climate change are all the same.
I think we are much farther away from self driving trucks than we think. It's not like anyone has solved the problem of self driving trains which should be simpler. Trains have a dedicated right of way and system operators can impose all sorts of constraints that cannot be imposed on trucks using a public road. Meanwhile, railroads have cut train crews to a bare minimum, sacrificing safety and effectively eliminating worker time off.
There's an obvious incentive. There's plenty of money. There are a lot fewer regulatory obstacles. It's a simpler problem technically. Where are the self driving trains?
Rail is fine for moving low cost bulk goods and shipping containers to depots. However the plan of our cities requires trucks to deliver to loading bays. Just look at the trucks unloading at grocery stores as a single example. Small trucks/vans for delivery are now some of the main causes of traffic in some cities.
The US grid pattern for city layouts is well suited for cars, but not for fixed route public transport and rail systems. When towns were small, a station on the main street made sense. Those days are long gone. Self-driving vehicles are the future. [I like the Dutch experiment of having vehicles charge while traveling on roads. This would make a lot of sense for long distance trucks too, eliminating the need for lots of heavy batteries.] What seems problematic to me, is that California roads seem forever in need of repair, with too little budget to do the repairs to last. I would like to see self-driving buses and lots more of them, perhaps with remote driver control to sort out problems that an automated bus cannot handle.
If trucks were nose-to-tail but stayed in the slow lane, would that be so bad? I would rather have convoys of self-driving trucks on interstates that did not play games blocking lanes by very slowly overtaking slower trucks. Removing the human element from driving would be good.
Replacing the rail system across the US would be a massive, and extremely expensive proposition. Unlike European rail tracks that have 2 parallel tracks, one for each direction like roads, US tracks are single lane requiring passing sections. This means that capacity is far more limited. When we consider the rail accidents from trains containing hazardous materials, the rail system would have to be extensively changed, as well as better maintained rolling stock. I cannot see how this would be economic compared to incrementally replacing trucks with electric, self-driving ones.
Trucks offer far faster loading and unloading, with greater schedule granularity. Trains have gone in the opposite direction - hugely long trains pulled by massive diesel engines. That seems better suited to very predictable supply-and-demand, unsuited to the wide variety of goods that consumers want.
The comparable transport to US rail is global shipping, with ever larger container ships. AFAIK, the vast majority of containers are moved by trucks to and from ports. As ports are few, it makes sense to load up a large ship with containers, but have the more granular delivery done by trucks taking different delivery routes. Would this model work with rail when the road infrastructure is already in place? I don't think so.
The problem is rights of way for rail. California funded a vanity high speed rail project. Unfortunately very little of the track has been built as rights of way were unable to be acquired for the track. It may be easier to build a 2nd rail track next to existing tracks, IDK.
Re: Human Capital
I would go even further regarding sports. When sports was just an extracurricular activity for the boys/girls who excelled in the sport during the allocated sports activity time, that was fine. After all, some kids were academic, others sporty, and some both. There were more ways for an individual to excel at something.
But US sports at high school and college has become the tail that wags the dog. Sports teams, especially football now command and extraordinary large part of school budgets, with the sole aim of collecting trophies and perhaps entertainment on a Friday night. As school budgets have become tight, academic classes have suffered, as well as other cultural activities such as music. In addition, sports is the wedge to accept poor academics in college. Notably those faked elite sports achievements were used as a means for the wealthy to get their less than academic kids into college.
It seems the US is increasingly looking like Ancient Rome, with stratified classes based on inherited wealth and privilege, with sports as our version of gladiatorial games.
Re: Thebes
Also recommended: Claire North's Ithaca (with a sequel coming shortly).
We do know one person who definitely didn't build the walls of Thebes, Phryne. She offered to rebuild them, but her offer was rejected.
That will be 10,000 gallons please, and clean the windshield on the front one.
McCarthy, Wallace-Wells
My constant frustration with people who make predictions about the future without being explicit about what policy set they are expecting. To be taken seriously one needs to believe both the parameters of their model AND the policies.
In this respect inflation/recession/climate change are all the same.
Yes...
Maybe we should be asking how Musk's actions benefit the Saudis, rather than Musk himself. They appear to be behind the thing.
I think we are much farther away from self driving trucks than we think. It's not like anyone has solved the problem of self driving trains which should be simpler. Trains have a dedicated right of way and system operators can impose all sorts of constraints that cannot be imposed on trucks using a public road. Meanwhile, railroads have cut train crews to a bare minimum, sacrificing safety and effectively eliminating worker time off.
There's an obvious incentive. There's plenty of money. There are a lot fewer regulatory obstacles. It's a simpler problem technically. Where are the self driving trains?
Rail is fine for moving low cost bulk goods and shipping containers to depots. However the plan of our cities requires trucks to deliver to loading bays. Just look at the trucks unloading at grocery stores as a single example. Small trucks/vans for delivery are now some of the main causes of traffic in some cities.
The US grid pattern for city layouts is well suited for cars, but not for fixed route public transport and rail systems. When towns were small, a station on the main street made sense. Those days are long gone. Self-driving vehicles are the future. [I like the Dutch experiment of having vehicles charge while traveling on roads. This would make a lot of sense for long distance trucks too, eliminating the need for lots of heavy batteries.] What seems problematic to me, is that California roads seem forever in need of repair, with too little budget to do the repairs to last. I would like to see self-driving buses and lots more of them, perhaps with remote driver control to sort out problems that an automated bus cannot handle.
If trucks were nose-to-tail but stayed in the slow lane, would that be so bad? I would rather have convoys of self-driving trucks on interstates that did not play games blocking lanes by very slowly overtaking slower trucks. Removing the human element from driving would be good.
Replacing the rail system across the US would be a massive, and extremely expensive proposition. Unlike European rail tracks that have 2 parallel tracks, one for each direction like roads, US tracks are single lane requiring passing sections. This means that capacity is far more limited. When we consider the rail accidents from trains containing hazardous materials, the rail system would have to be extensively changed, as well as better maintained rolling stock. I cannot see how this would be economic compared to incrementally replacing trucks with electric, self-driving ones.
Trucks offer far faster loading and unloading, with greater schedule granularity. Trains have gone in the opposite direction - hugely long trains pulled by massive diesel engines. That seems better suited to very predictable supply-and-demand, unsuited to the wide variety of goods that consumers want.
The comparable transport to US rail is global shipping, with ever larger container ships. AFAIK, the vast majority of containers are moved by trucks to and from ports. As ports are few, it makes sense to load up a large ship with containers, but have the more granular delivery done by trucks taking different delivery routes. Would this model work with rail when the road infrastructure is already in place? I don't think so.
The problem is rights of way for rail. California funded a vanity high speed rail project. Unfortunately very little of the track has been built as rights of way were unable to be acquired for the track. It may be easier to build a 2nd rail track next to existing tracks, IDK.