Supply Chain issues

[Rkangel]

Problem now is that the cell providers keep changing standards to force you into new devices. Just yesterday was contacted and told that the phones I bought (not rented or via payment plan) three years ago would not be supported on Jan 1 and I had to get new ones. I called. We had a chat, New replacement phones are on their way for free, no plan changes, or obligations.

Planned obsolescence. It is real and manipulative and a common tool that is used, strategized and planned within the wireless industry (and most tech companies)...along with social engineering and the psychology of addiction. Billions of dollars are spent each year to mine your information and preferences for use in advertising and predictive algorithms. Billions more are spent to make technology, apps, and interfaces more addictive through the study dopamine triggers and brain chemistry. And billions more are made by making you or tricking you into buying new stuff you didn't need to replace the old stuff you no longer want.

 

[Certaindeaf]

IMO it's time to use selective service to enlist truck drivers and dock workers from among the unemployed and able bodied as this qualifies as a national defense issue. Your choice when you get the notice - take a job at the going rate or become Private Dockworker for military pay.

Comfort wimmins!

Lol, not really

 

[Knobgoblin]

Comfort wimmins!

Lol, not really

 

[OldBroad44]

There's a long and excellent article
"Inside America's Broken Supply Chains" in today's Washington Post. Sunday Oct 3.
A whole lot I didn't know.
Could someone supply link?

 

[2506]

And it gets worse... the Bluefascists want to pay for their spending orgy with head-taxes on livestock. $6500 per dairy cow, $2600 per head of beef and $600 per hog.

Blank Check for Socialism

mullin.house.gov

Except it doesn't.

Fact check: $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill doesn't include 'animal agriculture tax'

The Build Back Better Act does include a proposed methane fee, but it's not aimed at farmers.

t.co

 

[The Heretic]

 

[Certaindeaf]

View attachment 1043626

The lawn was on fire too.

 

[AshWilliams]

Planned obsolescence. It is real and manipulative and a common tool that is used, strategized and planned within the wireless industry (and most tech companies)...along with social engineering and the psychology of addiction. Billions of dollars are spent each year to mine your information and preferences for use in advertising and predictive algorithms. Billions more are spent to make technology, apps, and interfaces more addictive through the study dopamine triggers and brain chemistry. And billions more are made by making you or tricking you into buying new stuff you didn't need to replace the old stuff you no longer want.

And throughout human history this differs, how?

I suppose I'm being combative and I don't mean it as such, but this has been going on for millennia. This is no great reveal.

I'd say technology is a tool. Unfortunately, we're always going to use it to clobber our fellow human beings over the head with it no matter what victory we had in mind during its initial discovery.

 

[Soli]

Deep. I'm reminded of something I heard decades ago.

Every current problem started as the solution to another problem.

No it's probably not absolute. And no I don't advocate not solving problems. But I try to always keep it in mind, cuz it's so true so often.

 

[AshWilliams]

Thucydides.. as long as he wasn't Spartan. Spartans loved buggery.

True.

 

[OldBroad44]

The supply chain is broken on so many levels, it's only going to get worse, and having largely been built on top of a house of cards, it's already collapsing I'm on it's self!
Abusing truck drivers with long hours, limiting the miles able to be driven per 24 hours, just in time deliveries, forced dispatch, forced extended on the road away from home time, and pay that has failed to keep pace, by at least 20 years, you got the fire started. Add the cost of fuel per mile, the cost of the lower miles allowed per 24 hour period, shippers who will not take shipments outside a very strict appointment schedule, and the serious abuses of those drivers, now the fire is stocked. Abuse the port/terminal workers with longer hours, vax requirements, extended work shifts against a back log of stacked freight that isn't moving through the terminals and out ether onto the trucks, or onto the rails, and back, and now you add fuel to this fire. Abuse those mariners who were all forgotten during the Covid lockdowns, abandoned at sea with no ability to get off their ship to change crews or seek medical care, many quit and walked off when the ships were finally allowed to dock, while the rest were kept in vertical limbo! Add more fuel to this fire and keep stocking. Look at the wearhouse situation, no one to deliver freight in or out, and at the consumer end, empty shelves, now we're in real trouble, we got ourselves an inferno! All because we took such draconian measures for Covid, and now it's all broken! All those millions of jobs are now idle with no one willing or able, and add in the vax mandates, there is no putting this fire out!

Costco hired 3 container ships and all the conex containers they could, but with no dock space available, and no one to load or unload, let alone move it through the terminals out to the wearhouses, and the emptys back to the yard and back aboard ship to return to point of origin, Costco screwed it's self, combined with just in time shipping, it's ever worse, there is no back stock to fill the gaps, and no substitutes ether!

It sounds like one component of the collapse now is that for both truck drivers and dock workers, the jobs had been made less desirable and less profitable over the last decades with level or decreased effective pay and more regulations and other demands. Same as the situation for restaurant and hospitality workers where there was level inflation adjusted pay but the jobs now required serving a schedule maximally flexible for business that involved loss of freedom or ability to do other work or activities with your own time, which was no longer yours. In other words, part of our current crisis is that the power balance has swung so far toward business and government regulation that many people were just one more kick in the face from saying "You can take this f-ing job and shove it." So then the restaurant closed and fired everyone instead of trying to stay open to the extent they could. Or the shipping company employee found himself stranded offshore on a ship full of disease and not allowed to land. And that was the last straw. A lot of them aren't coming back to those jobs.

I think the same is true with nurses. As for profit or insurance controlled health care became the norm, fewer nurses have been expected to care for more patients. Nearly everywhere is way understaffed with respect to nurses. The pay is low compared with the stress and responsibility. Many were expected to work even when there were no masks. Now they are required to get vaxed.

What about school teachers? I'll bet that job is a lot more stressful and has a lot less freedom to choose what to teach and how than it did in the fifties.

 

[Ura-Ki]

Here at the Salem hospital, there is a very large number of young national guard troops in place of care givers and other needed staffing requirents, so, who is paying them the higher pay? Not!!!

It sounds like one component of the collapse now is that for both truck drivers and dock workers, the jobs had been made less desirable and less profitable over the last decades with level or decreased effective pay and more regulations and other demands. Same as the situation for restaurant and hospitality workers where there was level inflation adjusted pay but the jobs now required serving a schedule maximally flexible for business that involved loss of freedom or ability to do other work or activities with your own time, which was no longer yours. In other words, part of our current crisis is that the power balance has swung so far toward business and government regulation that many people were just one more kick in the face from saying "You can take this f-ing job and shove it." So then the restaurant closed and fired everyone instead of trying to stay open to the extent they could. Or the shipping company employee found himself stranded offshore on a ship full of disease and not allowed to land. And that was the last straw. A lot of them aren't coming back to those jobs.

I think the same is true with nurses. As for profit or insurance controlled health care became the norm, fewer nurses have been expected to care for more patients. Nearly everywhere is way understaffed with respect to nurses. The pay is low compared with the stress and responsibility. Many were expected to work even when there were no masks. Now they are required to get vaxed.

What about school teachers? I'll bet that job is a lot more stressful and has a lot less freedom to choose what to teach and how than it did in the fifties.

 

[OutwardHound]

Thanks everyone. This thread compelled me to go buy new shoes for the wifey's tactical Prius. I was going to wait until Spring. This thread made me say "yikes" and off to the tire store I went. Tactical Prius has new shoes now.

Yes same here. On Friday morning I found four tires in stock at the local tire shop, same tire I'm running now, bought them on the spot, had them mounted Friday afternoon.

 

[The Heretic]

Yes same here. On Friday morning I found four tires in stock at the local tire shop, same tire I'm running now, bought them on the spot, had them mounted Friday afternoon.

Reminds me I need to get my daily driver tires rotated.

Just picked up and installed some slightly better 16" snow tires for the pickup - mounted on Tacoma rims. Set aside the shorter/smaller 15" rims and worn out tires that came with the pickup. A few years ago picked up some steel Toyota 16" rims - going to put some dedicated mud tires on those.

I have a set of studded tires for the flat bed sitting in the shop - never used them - yet.

---
On another front, just got an extra months supply of prescription BP/Heart meds - so I am up about 6+ months supply of those due to the timing of refills and renewals of the prescriptions.

 

[Ura-Ki]

Batten down the hatches boys and girls, all the forecasts i'm seeing point to a pretty cold frosty/snowy winter, especially just outside the valley floor, This year might match up with the winter we had in 2010, and with things in this state so screwed up, plan for the worst!

 

[Certaindeaf]

It sounds like one component of the collapse now is that for both truck drivers and dock workers, the jobs had been made less desirable and less profitable over the last decades with level or decreased effective pay and more regulations and other demands. Same as the situation for restaurant and hospitality workers where there was level inflation adjusted pay but the jobs now required serving a schedule maximally flexible for business that involved loss of freedom or ability to do other work or activities with your own time, which was no longer yours. In other words, part of our current crisis is that the power balance has swung so far toward business and government regulation that many people were just one more kick in the face from saying "You can take this f-ing job and shove it." So then the restaurant closed and fired everyone instead of trying to stay open to the extent they could. Or the shipping company employee found himself stranded offshore on a ship full of disease and not allowed to land. And that was the last straw. A lot of them aren't coming back to those jobs.

I think the same is true with nurses. As for profit or insurance controlled health care became the norm, fewer nurses have been expected to care for more patients. Nearly everywhere is way understaffed with respect to nurses. The pay is low compared with the stress and responsibility. Many were expected to work even when there were no masks. Now they are required to get vaxed.

What about school teachers? I'll bet that job is a lot more stressful and has a lot less freedom to choose what to teach and how than it did in the fifties.

The few (all things considered) greedy longshoremen shut down the port of Portland to international cargo forever some years ago.
Ever since, everything here comes by rail or road from elsewhere.
F you, longshoremen.

 

[kmk1012]

Batten down the hatches boys and girls, all the forecasts i'm seeing point to a pretty cold frosty/snowy winter, especially just outside the valley floor, This year might match up with the winter we had in 2010, and with things in this state so screwed up, plan for the worst!

I really hope so, but only if it's snow. We moved a couple years ago to a bit higher elevation and have been wanting snow, still waiting. We only got ice last year and that really, I mean really, sucked.

 

[Ops]

no shortage on masks in landfills

 

[OldBroad44]

The few (all things considered) greedy longshoremen shut down the port of Portland to international cargo forever some years ago.
Ever since, everything here comes by rail or road from elsewhere.
F you, longshoremen.

All our at exports from Or and WA go out through Portland, don't they?

Were the longshoremen asking more than those at other West coast ports get? Or operating less efficiently?

I thought one problem was ships kept getting larger and the Columbia wasn't deep enough for the bigger ships. Sounds like when the longshoremen staged their slowdown, there were really only two shipping companies stopping at Portland.

But how are our exports like white soft wheat making it to the Asian noodle making market for which it was designed?

 

[Ura-Ki]

The few (all things considered) greedy longshoremen shut down the port of Portland to international cargo forever some years ago.
Ever since, everything here comes by rail or road from elsewhere.
F you, longshoremen.

Look at what the city/state did to Evergreen Shipping @T-6 all those years ago, they had a great thing going with Evergreen there, and the politicians screwed it all up and Evergreen said screw you and pulled up stakes and left! Don't just blame the longshoremen, the city/state was the ones who really put the screws to the unions and forced them to take action! Combined with how the Tug Boat companies, trucking companies and the rail road got screwed in the deal, it's no wonder this state is so phucked up!