Homeless turn overnight bus route into Hotel 22 - <AUTHOR> http://www.mercurynews.com/bay-area-news/ci_24429126/homeless-turn-overnight-bus-route-into-hotel-22 <comment><USER3> A 10 year old child has spent 5 months sleeping on the bus at night with her father. She's getting off the public bus and onto a school bus each morning.

I'm not saying that the adults deserve to be homeless, but can't _everyone_ agree that no child should be in this situation? I can't even imagine how 10 year old me would have done in such a situation. I know kids are resilient, but it sounds absolutely terrifying.

According to a quick search, it is claimed that there are 1.6 million homeless children in America, with 1.1 million enrolled in public schools. That is insane. I can only hope that this number counts mostly children who were homeless for very short stints, and that most of them aren't doing anything like sleeping on a bus for 5 weeks straight.

<comment><USER4> I was under the impression that every state provides a foster home or group home for children in need. Is that incorrect?

(Granted, I'm under the impression that these systems suck. But it's not as if there is no effort to care for the children.)

<comment><USER5> Why do you think they suck? Not "why is that your impression", but granted they suck, why?

<comment><USER6> It would be better to provide support that makes the family successful rather than tearing it apart as our default approach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I used to work swing shift, and would take the late night busses in Orange County home. I'd get on Line 60 in downtown Long Beach, taking it to the 57 line in Orange, then the 2 or so miles to home. The drivers of those late night busses usually having the interior lights off. They knew what their passenger load's like -- regular working people just wanting to nap before they got home, the homeless people who would sleep as the motors wound up, brakes hissed, and stops were announced -- so tiny bits of peace and quiet were appreciated.

I'd see the same faces night after night. Some were grumpy, years of living on the streets having turned their faces and attitudes to weathered stone. Some were friendly; willing to chatter, unbowed by what the fates had given them. I'd say hi, but not much else; we didn't have much in common -- my ipod and sidekick were very out of place for them.

There were routines, ways to keep their semi-warm, if bumpy, beds. People getting off at Harbor to transfer to the 43 bus. Long bus line there, could get lots of uninterrupted sleep. People getting on at Harbor; they'd done a round trip, needed to change to the 60 so they could get to the 57 for another good trip, another few hours of sleep.

It saddened me. Couldn't do much about it. I donated when I could to shelters, even when people in my social circle would question my sanity for it. "Fuck you, got mine" being the mantra of entirely too many. After all, this was a county where a light rail system was vetoed because of fears that "those" people would have too much mobility and become visible in areas where they obviously didn't belong.

Unfortunately, a few years back, the Powers that Be decided to cut even that most slim of safety nets. Budget cutbacks, no need for busses in those wee, cold hours. Regardless of the passengers inconvenienced, regardless of the people thrown even deeper into misery. Regardless of people working those late nights. Having a soul is too expensive in times of austerity.

<comment><USER6> Well, we need to stop trying to solve homelessness per se. We need to work on taking better care of people generally. That will shrink the numbers of homeless.

<comment><USER8> ...

explain.

No one's willing to gives these guys work.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I know that. I am homeless and people have told me I should not admit that online, they would not hire me..blah blah. But most homeless were not born that way. It isn't a trait like skin color. "The homeless" come from the rest of of the population. They aren't some distinct separate population that interbreed or something, geez. So you get homeless by failing all of your citizens in some important way.

Welfare in America was designed to "help poor single moms" at a time when most poor single moms were widows and intentionally having a baby out of wedlock was a huge taboo. The very framing of it changed the social contract and actively undermines the social fabric. It has helped foster an atmosphere actively hostile to fathers and has single handedly all but put an end to the practice of "shotgun weddings." In Europe, programs are more generally designed to help women (like maternity leave), help children, help families -- not POOR women, not POOR children, not POOR families.

America requires you to be a failure before you qualify for assistance. Therein lies the problem. It actively creates a culture of failure and too many broken, shamed people.

It's a terrible system. Just terrible.

But I don't really want to discuss this at length tonight.

Later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> No one should be homeless and freezing in this country.

I am really disgusted how we let people fall this far.

We should all be ashamed.

The comments on that article are even more disturbing but I am going to assume it is people trolling because they are in warm homes with computers so they feel comfortable being asses.

</comment><comment><USER10> Hack this; disrupt that; look down at your smartphone when the 22 rolls by.

<comment><USER11> This to me points at the flaw of the startup model. Most of the problems startups are solving are not real problems, they don't need solving - <USER2> there is money to be made in solving them, so they get solved. This is a problem (lack of jobs/affordable housing) that does need solving, but there isn't much money to be made in it.

<comment><USER12> Edit: replaced snarky response with this.

It's not just startups -- businesses tend to focus on earning money. I don't know if we can realistically expect private industry to take an interest in social or economic problems. At the lowest level, there are founders trying to choose a niche that gets them from debt to break-even as quickly as possible; at the highest level, you get into transnational corporations which act only in their own interest.

I would be happy if Apple or Google were to dump their excess billions into social welfare or government reform, but it is vanishingly unlikely.

<comment><USER11> Jobs are something we can focus on.

Many companies choose to make marginally more profit by moving production to 'low cost markets' rather than manufacture here. I believe firmly if you make your product overseas it should cost some amount of money in duty to bring your product back to the United States, ideally about (or maybe more than) the difference in cost between what it would cost to make your product here and what it costs to make it there - is it an easy to implement solution? no. But its the right thing to do.

That said, I believe that rising transport costs will eventually solve this problem for many types of goods, probably within the next 10-15 years or so.

<comment><USER13> Why do you prioritize giving work to Americans over those in developing nations?

<comment><USER11> Because I'm selfish. I'm an American, my countrymen are hungry, homeless, and cant find jobs, in a country that is not well accommodating for the poor. I hardly think I can be blamed for wanted to help my countrymen first.

<comment><USER14> Selfishness is caring about yourself. Caring about people who share your nationality at the expense of others is nationalism, in much the same way that caring about people who share your race at the expense of others is racism.

<comment><USER15> So it's selfish to help my neighbor?

Give me a break -- that's some nonsense PC excuse to mask a decision purely driven by profit.

If choice of production locations is driven by concern for our brothers and sisters in the developing world, why aren't we making stuff in India? Or Liberia? Or Bolivia? And why are we generally operating in a model that shifts liability for things like pollution and labor problems to local partners?

<comment><USER14> Choice of production locations is generally driven by actual selfishness rather than nationalism or racism. But actual selfishness can produce good results if things are set up properly. Not so for nationalism or racism.

<comment><USER11> In short, I believe I need to solve problems near to home before I worry about the rest of the world. There are hundreds of NGO's who worry about Africa and development in the developing world, there isn't really anyone working on poverty here, at home, not with any resources. So I want to work on creating jobs here, here where there are real environmental rules, protections for workers, occupational health and safety rules.

<comment><USER14> I think it's natural to care about people who are closer to you or more similar to you. But that doesn't make it right, because that exact same tendency is what drives racism. And it's hard to say the moral effects are any different when you compare what poverty looks like in China or Bangladesh to what poverty looks like in America. If you start with the premise that all human life has the same value, then the difference between subsistence farming and a sweatshop job in East Asia is a much bigger improvement than you could ever create in the United States.

This kind of selective altruism, where you care about other Americans so much that you'd make comparatively _marginal_ improvements to their lives instead of making _drastic_ improvements to the life of a foreigner, is the moral equivalent of racism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This points to the need for less restrictive zoning. There are cheaper ways to house people than in a moving bus. They are willing to pay, maybe not the full rate, but they are paying something. Build army barracks style residences (which I guess is what homeless shelters are).

<comment><USER17> There is this:

[http://www.weirdasianews.com/2009/11/21/hong-kong- citizens-l...](http://www.weirdasianews.com/2009/11/21/hong-kong-citizens- living-cages-literally/)

Which is not a good way to live, but much much better than riding a bus.

Zoning and fire codes and whatnot means this may be illegal here. But really I think people here are more comfortable with homelessness than allowing uncomfortably affordable housing to be built.

<comment><USER18> >Zoning

it is what "we the people" through our elected representatives use to keep unwanted (i.e. weak/ill/less fortunate ones) out. Shame.

>fire codes

this obviously a necessary and what is most important - pure technically solvable thing for minimum amount of money.

We don't have to go for extreme HK approach. A city like PA, MV, Sunnyvale could easy build on a single-family size lot a shelter that would take a busload of homeless. Considering that MV (San Antonio/El Camino) and Sunnyvale (near downtown) have just had huge redevelopment projects going so fitting a couple of 10-20 bdrm appartments somewhere on the back alley (so it wouldn't offend eyes and noses of our sensitive citizens) would be noise for the projects' cost.

<comment><USER19> >Zoning it is what "we the people" through our elected representatives use to keep unwanted (i.e. weak/ill/less fortunate ones) out. Shame.

Or it's what we the people, through our elected representatives, use to keep the strip club and petroleum refinery from opening across the street from the elementary school.

It's not black and white. Zoning laws are a way for the people in an area to have a say about how their community is developed. That's both good and bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The influx of money into silicon valley has many side effects; not all of them are good. People outside the tech industry are becoming relatively poorer across the board, including those at the bottom in this article. What bothers me the most is that none of this is planned. It's just happening and everyone is observing. I would be more comfortable if this 'relatively poorer' effect was part of a plan since it would imply that someone had considered the consequences.

</comment><comment><USER17> Curious if there are any examples of major metros that have successfully tackled homelessness without simply forcing them to go somewhere else.

Anyone know of any examples?

People paying to sleep on a bus clearly shows the problem here is ridiculously bad.

<comment><USER21> There are 2 problems that I can see here that need to be tackled: shelter, and safety. It is _relatively_ easier to provide shelter: just 4 walls and a roof, basically. The more difficult part is the safety. City-run shelters are a haven for criminals, who are much better than the homeless in working 'the system'. And then there's the problem of amenities: showers, toilets, etc. Who will build them? Who will maintain them? And finally: homeless come with assorted mental/physical/drug issues. It's very rare to find a homeless person who does not have serious issues.

SF is doing a massive underground dig for a subway line. I often wonder: how difficult would it be to create some more room down there, and let the homeless just pitch a tent or crash for the night? But that would solve the shelter problem, which isn't that hard. It's the other facilities that are needed, which make the problem intractable.

<comment> grey-area Safety really isn't an intractable problem. There is absolutely no reason, apart from lack of money and will, that the city run homeless shelters have to be oversubscribed and unsafe. A few security guards keeping an eye out and throwing out anyone unruly, and better facilities with lockable single/family rooms would make them a far safer and a reliable option.

With a little bit of money, this problem of secure _safe_ sheltered housing could be solved, even if all the other problems leading to homelessness could not. As you say there are often other issues leading to the lack of a stable life which cannot be easily solved.

Just as an example, we have sheltered housing round the corner from me in London for the homeless in a normal house - people have their own rooms, and it works, even if it doesn't solve their other issues. People seem to stay a few years then hopefully move on to a more stable life, I think that's the idea anyway. The provision here is inadequate as in the states, but it can be done with more money.

<comment><USER21> > A few security guards keeping an eye out and throwing out anyone unruly, ...

... and therein lies the problem. I know my evidence is anecdotal, but: there have been many cases here (in SF) of such security guards actually running protection rackets for drug dealers and participating in associated criminal activities.

Look: I know that if you throw _enough_ money on a problem, you can mostly solve it (or mitigate it). If we had $1MM to spend per homeless person, I'm sure we could put them up in top-notch places with full care. But then the ~7000 homeless people in SF would eat up the entire budget, leaving $0 for the rest of the city.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The mental picture of these people, huddled on a bumpy bus, in the middle of the night, being the only regular thing they can look forward to is incredibly saddening.

I wish there was something I could personally do.

<comment><USER23> Volunteer your time, give of your resources, open your home up to a family in need. This list of things we could do to make a difference in someones life is bounded only by our own selfishness.

<comment><USER24> Find a church, shelter, or other organization, and send them a check each month for $100. (that's $3.30/per day). Try it for a year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Just to build homes for the homeless. Provide food, water, soap, security. It can't be much more expensive then the millions the government wastes on other things.

<comment><USER26> Not quite that simple. Homeless shelters, per resident-wise, are much more expensive to run than an equivalent place housing, well, people like us.

Some homeless people avoid shelters even if there are space because they are frequently giant nests of disease and violence. Besides catching some rather unpleasant diseases and pests, your odds of getting stabbed increase dramatically.

So you'd have to pay for hygiene, health, and security expenses well above and beyond the norm. And that's just if you want to pursue the "containment" side of housing the chronically homeless.

If you want to pursue the "rehabilitation" side it gets even crazier. A large portion of the population suffer from severe mental health problems that prevent them from any meaningful integration into mainstream society, and mental health care ain't cheap.

That said I do believe it should be done, but it isn't "oh yeah just levy a tiny tax" territory.

<comment><USER25> Give the homeless homes.

Homes with lock, bathroom, AC/Heat, kitchen, bedroom, living/dining area, and food.

I predict 50-70% of the issues disease and violence would go away if they had homes and not shelters.

A security,sanitation crew could probably bring this disease and violence down even further.

<comment><USER25> I fail to understand why providing someone a comfortable, safe home to live does NOT fix the problem of people using hotel 22

<comment><USER7> It solves the immediate problem, but doesn't come anywhere near actually solving the reason why people end up using hotel 22. To do so means doing things like destigmatizing mental health issues so that people are willing to get help before the problems spiral out of control.

You also need to work on outreach -- letting people on the streets know that there is a place they can go to get help. Social services departments tend to not be nearly explicit enough in helping get people to the right sorts of help they need; additionally, a lot of social workers are overworked and underpaid, which leads to a good amount of burnout which further exacerbates the problem.

Saying we need more housing shows a misunderstanding as to why this problem exists. There are a lot of things that need to be done before, and concurrent with, housing in order to fix this problem. Otherwise, you'll end up just whitewashing the situation.

<comment><USER18> >Otherwise, you'll end up just whitewashing the situation.

no, what you end up with is homeless people having a chance to sleep under the roof whenever they want and for whatever long they want (why shelters kick people out on the street every morning? At least why not provide the homeless with a fixed guaranteed bed every night and a locker to keep her/his stuff?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I hope my YC application gets approved for BusBNB: disrupting traditional fixed shelter in favor of housing that is simultaneously mobile, social, AND local. Extensions to the bus add food truck capability, washroom/shower facilities, dedicated hacker spaces, and more.

</comment><comment><USER28> This happens in Chicago too, on the blue line.

<comment><USER29> This happens on the Red Line as well. 1:20 each way.

The nice thing about the Blue Line is they generally don't make you get off at O'Hare. You can doze until the train goes back downtown. That means you can get a 2+ hour sleep in a round-trip between Forest Park and O'Hare.

<comment><USER28> I just remember picking up the Blue Line in Forest Park, the southern terminus of the line, at 8:30AM, and the train always having several sleeping homeless people on it.

<comment><USER30> One thing that may be different is I'm not sure how many people use this bus, while I regularly took the blue line when I had a red-eye into O'Hare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This guy [https://twitter.com/LiCharles1985/status/396322399198539776](https://twitter.com/LiCharles1985/status/396322399198539776) reached out to the reporter, he wants to help the man and his daughter.

</comment><comment><USER32> Can't these people learn to code?

<comment><USER33> Sure, go ahead and teach them.

Remember you will need to start from the ground up. "To start the computer -- that machine in front of you -- press the button that is right there"... then, in about a year, perhaps you could teach them to code.

<comment><USER34> That's a pretty condescending reply. Homeless in no way implies stupid or ignorant. To state that a homeless person wouldn't know how to turn on a computer is insulting.

<comment><USER35> Is it? I managed convicts on work-release recently. Some of them had quite a bit of trouble clocking in and out. I'm talking basic "fill out this form" stuff.

<comment><USER24> Also, many employers will balk at employing people with criminal records. Many are legally prohibited from hiring them too (banks, etc).

Want to help? Make a company, hire people at the bottom who need help getting their sons and daughters out of shelters and to school on time at 7:48 am with a full breakfast in them after a good night's sleep. Keep your company going by providing excellent and valuable service to your customers. And when your janitor invites you to his daughter's middle school graduation, put on your best suit and go. Just because a man has darker skin, tattoos, a shaved head, doesn't want to talk about his past, and clams up with a frown and a thousand- yard stare when discussions get heated at the office, doesn't mean he's spending his pay on drugs and hookers. He's probably thinking that his girlfriend needs him to keep his job so he can make the car payment and the rent and buy groceries so he can feed the three year old at home that's watching Curious George right now.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


5 Oil Myths and the "Great American Oil Boom" - <AUTHOR> http://www.fool.com/newsletters/08/sfr/08/01.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> Fools report: _5 "oil crisis" myths debunked -- PLUS 3 U.S. businesses that will profit from high crude prices._

Myth #1 -- The Saudis can save us.

More of a stone-cold bluff. There isn't enough in the aged wells.

Myth #2 -- The free markets will work out the oil crisis.

Oil is a way of life today and there are no big incentives alternate energy. (except a global responsibility which won't come into existence till we face a huge calamity or something)

Myth #3 -- Tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) will increase oil supplies.

It is a famine reserve only for the rich America and can not influence prices.

Myth #4 -- High oil prices are the work of "speculators"

There is no conspiracy and no fools fooling around. It is a mass effect due to large demand and short supply.

Myth #5 -- The world is simply running out of oil

In fact, there's plenty of oil left in the world -- close to 2 trillion barrels of black gold sitting in our own backyard right now.

That's right, the U.S. has the largest oil reserves of any country in the world. Fool unveils 3 most prospective positive investments in Oil industry.</comment>


Landau's Theoretical Minimum (2002) - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0204295v1

<comment><AUTHOR> Reading how hard it was for Boris to pass Landau's theoretical minimum makes me feel ashamed when I realize how much we students used to whine when a professor gave a slightly more difficult ("unfair") exam.

I wonder how test procedures differed in the Soviet Union from those in the US/Europe at that time.

<comment><USER2> I took upper-division quantum from one of Landau's grad students, who was by that time (the 90's) an old man. I don't remember his name, but he spoke with a thick Russian accent and _also_ had a bad lisp. It was a very difficult course, but for all the wrong reasons: it was very hard to understand him, and it was all math technique, and very little of the things I personally like to do when understanding stuff, like exploring simple pedagogical examples where terms fall away, visualizing of different cases, etc. The course felt very _Soviet_ in nature. Rigorous, but also mechanical, technical, and unrelenting. The tests were epic in length and difficulty. The lectures were basically him starting on the upper left of the board and continuing until he hit the lower right, some 90 minutes later. There was very little class participation.

It was a truly horrible experience for me, an unfortunate waste of time and resources. I squeaked out a C, (which was actually a pretty good grade), but I truly didn't take anything away from it except fancy, esoteric math tools that might have helped me had I gone into theoretical physics, which was never my goal.</comment></comment>


America has a truck driver shortage - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/05/28/america-has-a-massive-truck-driver-shortage-heres-why-few-want-an-80000-job/ <comment><USER3> At a rough point in my life, I was a truck driver for CR England and Knight Transportation for a few days short of 7 months.

You don't start at 80,000 a year. That's such a lie. You make about 600 a week to start, roughly, depending if you get enough miles. You don't get the good routes, staying in well populated areas like the i5 corridor, at first. You stay in the middle of no where Arizona, North Dakota, etc.

You spend a lot on food because you can't buy bulk that easily like you would for an apartment. Want a hot meal? You have to eat at fast food restaurants or truck stops.

How's your back? 7 months I went from never understanding back pain to 6 years later I still suffer from the back pain.

Family life? HA! How does that work when you VISIT home for 3 days out of a month and you get calls CONSTANTLY that you have to get back to the truck. It's not likely the military where you are doing something decently important. You are wasting your life to ship clothes for the Gap or frozen pizzas.

You are constantly sleep deprived. Constantly sitting. The companies hound you constantly about speeding up and trying to break the law to get loads faster to their destination because they screwed up the logistics and didn't do some simple math. Yes, they publicly say they don't tell drivers to break the law. Bullshit. CR England is the worst about this. Knight wasn't so bad.

Fuck driving jersey in a truck.

The industry needs MASSIVE reformation. Then, some of the arguements here by folks who never did it can be remotely valid. You ruin your personal life and your body for realistic 300 a week after you figure all the costs for not ever being home.

<comment><USER4> The guys I meet who are pulling in good money are all union vocational workers. We're talking dump trucks, cement mixers, sometimes roll off (dumpsters/skips), and the holy Grail: heavy haul. I know a guy in New Jersey who works for a well known hauling and rigging company. Makes 130k/yr. Small shop of a dozen guys, no one makes under a 100k, and home just about every night. But good luck getting into those shops. Cronyism and nepotism abound.

<comment><USER5> This is one of the main reasons I am so heavily in favor of UBI, even though I am quite the anarchist if we are talking about idealism and not pragmatism.

There IS money being made out there by large firms and small firms alike, but it is absolutely NOT based on merit or skill at all.

Whether a business is a failure or a success is 99% based on the relationships and contracts it forms. Typically, unskilled managers and executives will forge the deal FIRST, and then go get the expertise and skilled laborers after.

Startups are an exception to this rule, since the technology is all so new. But rapidly, we all see the "money guys" and the "business guys" coming in to the profession day by day, buying up tech, creating bogus certifications and so on that just add the cruft and bureaucracy that monopolies need to survive.

For every trucker making $130,000 a year, there's 100 truckers making $35,000 a year.

For every trucker making $30,000 a year, there's probably 10,000 unemployed or underemployed people begging for the chance to make middle class money rather than $10 an hour at Burger King

<comment><USER6> Isn't the ability to develop business relations and close deals a skill in and of itself? That pretty much describes sales skills perfectly.

I know this is NH, so skills are viewed as technical with all other skills regarded as "unnecessary fluff", but at the end of the day business is built on human relationships, so I'd argue the ability to make and maintain relationships with the right people is one of the most important skills one could have.

<comment><USER7> It's not about HN's technical focus. It's that for many of us here - <USER2> strongly included - sales and marketing can be seen as a large-scale defection in the game of free market.

In the ideal world, when you want to buy a product or a service, you would consider the value it brings to you based on hard facts, consider other circumstances impacting the costs - like e.g. product A is a bit better, but product B has support people in your country, speaking your language, etc.

Suddenly, comes product C. It's very much inferior compared to A and B, but the producers of C spent most of their budget on sales and marketing. Your boss knows all about C from on-line ads. A C salesman comes to you, promising you features they know they won't deliver, but also know they'll be able to weasel their way out of along the way. Oh, and he brings some nice "off-the books" benefits for you personally, as part of "building customer loyalty".

Sales and marketing _as applied in practice_ distort the market. What a salesman says can be - and often is - completely disconnected from reality, so in presence of salesmen, products are no longer chosen based on objective value they provide. The incentive structure this creates makes everyone else have to lie too, or go out of business.

That's why many people don't like those skills and practices.

<comment><USER8> I don't mean to be glib, but nothing is perfect. What some of the other posters are alluring to is that the ability to organize deals and market a product is an essential skill in running a business. If product A is technically superior, but there is not sufficient business talent to sustain a business on it, then the quality is moot.

What you're describing here, sales people lying about capabilities and then failing to deliver, is something that maybe happens in complex business to business transactions, where the product is a set of services and products that defy "apples to apples" comparison.

Again, the sales and marketing are integral to the product. I don't believe companies will survive if they practice outright fraud on their customers. This is not an easy problem. For the example, simpleminded approaches like forcing government to accept the lowest cost bid on complicated products has tremendous downside.

FWIW, managing people, organizations, setting up deals, marketing...these are "hard" skills. What makes them hard is that the parameters of the "problem space" are almost infinitely complex, the work product is ambiguous, and often the involves the focused cooperation of people, who are notoriously unpredictable.

Managed systems comprises of "soft components" is a very hard challenge.

<comment><USER9> _What you're describing here, sales people lying about capabilities and then failing to deliver, is something that maybe happens in complex business to business transactions, where the product is a set of services and products that defy "apples to apples" comparison_

No. It does happen, not "maybe", every day and for every kind of decision, complex and simple. If something is "apples to apples", the sales work is to mud the waters.

<comment><USER10> > If something is "apples to apples", the sales work is to mud the waters.

... obviously unless you happen to work for the company with the good (or least bad) apples, in which case your jib is to spread the word that good apples exist.

<comment><USER7> The problem is, the market isn't static, but dynamic. You play an iterative game. It turns out that spending more money on spreading the word about your apples has better ROI than spending that money on ensuring you actually have the best apples... And even if you achieve best apples and best marketing, think of just how much money you had to spend on the marketing part. How much better still would your apples be if you didn't have to play the zero-sum game of advertising? How much better everyone's products would be?

<comment><USER5> Everything you are saying in this thread is exactly right, in my opinion. And I'm a sales guy! Haha.

Inventing something is a value-added game. If I make us a knife that lets us cut a cactus in the desert for water, and we both survive the day because of that knife, I've added value.

If another guy makes the same knife, and now we have to compete for your attention, distort deal terms and product features to "seem" better than the other knife, etc, then this is not adding value. This is destroying time and money.

Sales is a zero sum game. One company wins, the other company loses. That's ok, but the winner should succeed thanks to price + features (e.g. who makes the better knife), not who "promises" you their knife is "better".

In an ideal world, we all just have a spreadsheet of all the knives available out there, their price, what they're actually built to do, and you just hit buy.

<comment><USER8> I know this thread is probably dead, but just feel like responding: the factor you're leaving out is that having multiple people competing to develop the best knife leads to better knifes.

This is old school Econ 101, but I think it's relevant. Know we have multiple options for knifes. How do we decide the best one? We let people decide for themselves, and price is the signaling mechanism as to where resources should be focused.

So we have a "market mechanism" for discovering quality, thereby making "market" an integral part of the system.

It could be done otherways, and markets have known weaknesses, especially for certain categories of goods.

But for many categories of goods it's a very powerful system to spur and support innovation and entrepreneurial endeavors. So to call an essential part of a market bases system valueless does not make sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you're an employer and you cant find employees, the answer is virtually always to increase total compensation. Theres no reason $80k is the top end of the pay range for any job.

The economy does not price jobs based on prestige, education level, or some other signal... that's a judgement made by certain people about what they think a job is worth.. not the market. The opinions of people about the worth of a job are irrelevant.

<comment><USER12> >If you're an employer and you cant find employees, the answer is virtually always to increase total compensation.

Most cases I would guess this is true until you hit the point that the pay is enough to live comfortably. Then it changes.

My partner was recently approached for a position offering compensation more than 200% of their current for the same work. However,the hiring process is exposing red flags hinting at a toxic working environment: On-fighting, lack of planning, unreasonable expectations. I'm guessing this is the reason the pay they offer is so much higher than it 'should' be.

That position may remain unfilled for quite some time. Working conditions are such a major aspect of any job, and while folks will put up with a bad working environment if the pay is right, that only works up to the point of being comfortably paid. Once you reach that level most folks start to care more about what their work day feels like. Toxic work cultures are very hard to fix, too.

<comment><USER13> There's always a price. I wouldn't work that job for $100k/yr; I would work it for 1000 times the amount. Somewhere in the middle is, technically, the right price.

This all gets silly when looked at in isolation, though. :-) I'd agree that there's not always an amount of compensation that the company _could_ pay that would also attract enough workers.

<comment><USER14> When asked, "what will make you stop looking at other jobs and join us today," my response is always, "a $500k salary." We laugh, but I'm not kidding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> From the article: _A few drivers told The Washington Post that they earn $100,000, but many said their annual pay is less than $50,000 (government statistics say median pay for the industry is $42,000). As for the bonuses, driver Daniel Gollnick said they are a "complete joke" because of all the strings attached._

Yet the headline talks about 80 kUSD/year.

<comment><USER16> This is the nature of truck driving, the headline has been $100k/yr job without the need of a degree for years, but in actuality, only those who work very hard & cheat the books get close to that.

Are you willing to drive while sleepy, break regs when the customer is demanding you drive longer to deliver their products (due to traffic delaying you or similar)? Its a really screwed up industry.

<comment><USER17> _This is the nature of truck driving, the headline has been $100k /yr job without the need of a degree for years, but in actuality, only those who work very hard & cheat the books get close to that._

No, trucking was a decent living 'till deregulation in the 90s.

"How Trucking Went From One of the Best Jobs in America to One of the Worst" [http://time.com/money/4325164/trucking-worst- job/](http://time.com/money/4325164/trucking-worst-job/)

<comment><USER18> "No" is an incorrect response. The 90s is two decades ago. Your comment doesn't contradict the previous one at all.

<comment><USER19> Presumably he was contradicting "This is the nature of truck driving" \- saying, in other words, that the problem isn't inherent to truck driving but rather came about due to deregulation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> They track your every move with a gps and you never have time to take it easy between runs. Traveling,the one upside to the job aside from money is ruined by their control-freak managent.

You want people to be truck drivers? Get the trucks good internet access,provide laptops and tablets where possible and give the drivers time to take it easy between and during runs. Internet access wherever you are means you can maintain some social life and video call with the family.

On the flip side,trucking isn't just a job,it's a lifestyle. You never leave work since your truck with the hidden Mics and location tracking is also your home. The compensation just isn't worth the job for most people. Better pay helps but so does hiring convicts and relaxing the driving history restrictions (like running a stop sign 4 years ago shouldn't make you unhirable)

</comment><comment><USER21> Industry races itself to the bottom with cheap labour and terrible conditions, surprises itself that no one is interested anymore.

Unfortunately it's the good companies and drivers that find out their industry was swiped from underneath them first. It happens in farm labour markets too.

Bigger companies start undercutting with cheaper labour and worse conditions, the smart people leave the industry all together because the writing is on the wall, and those companies willing to pay for good people with reasonable work conditions have no one to hire anymore.

</comment><comment><USER22> So the headline ("$80K job") and actual content of the article are at complete odds. All of the people they interviewed were making $45K-50K ish, with this one company offering $80K and claiming there is a "shortage."

If there is a real shortage why do truckers get paid less than some fast food employees? The article seems to answer its own question: Very low pay, very high hours, and little time spent at home/with family.

</comment><comment><USER23> They are terrible jobs. Years ago I had a class B and drove dial-a-ride buses. All-in-all it wasn't a terrible job because I got frequent breaks between passengers and could get out of the truck on those breaks and hang out at a mall or get something to eat. My counterparts that drove the city buses _had_ to stay in their seat for 8 hours driving in circles around town.

The other thing that people don't realize about those kind of jobs is, for men at least, they are very hard on your prostate. Sitting for such long periods can cause it to swell leading to prosatitus along with a whole host of other bad health effects. All that being said, our jobs were cake compared to long haulers. You would need to pay people $120-150k before you could get a consistent hiring pool.

<comment><USER24> I guess maybe self driving trucks won't be a bad thing then.

<comment><USER25> The issue of self-driving trucks taking the jobs of truckers seems to be a unique occurrence where 2 problems solve each other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> A related read (1):

Things I found interesting from the article:

a. Approximately 150,000 Sikhs (my edit: Sikhs are a subset of Indians and to a smaller extent Pakistanis) in trucking, 90% of whom are drivers.

b. Those numbers are growing rapidly, with 18,000 Sikhs entering the industry in 2017 alone.

c. Sikhs control about 40% of trucking in California.

d. (In the US and Canada) - A network of Indian truck stops is spreading along the main routes, serving some fine daal and naan bread. (My edit: Sikh highway food is a cultural bookend in India and it is whimsical to see this transported to the Rockies)

e. Earnings of $42,000, or about $20 an hour, a sum that may dwindle after expenses. Annual turnover rates within firms hover around 90%.

f. The American Trucking Associations warned of a shortage of 50,000 drivers by the end of 2017, rising to 174,000 by 2026.

d. The median age of the private-fleet driver is 52;

(1) - [https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/05/03/an-all- am...](https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/05/03/an-all-american- industry-changes-the-all-american-way)

<comment><USER27> > d. (In the US and Canada) - A network of Indian truck stops is spreading > along the main routes, serving some fine daal and naan bread. (My edit: Sikh > highway food is a cultural bookend in India and it is whimsical to see this > transported to the Rockies)

Now THAT would get me to conisder trucking for a living.

Indians know how to do truck stops right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Brazil's current trucker strike brought to light how things could go if there were a similar strike in the States. The BBC article below doesn't say much about the lack of products available for the average person living in a major city, but friends in Brazil said the repercussions to their day-to-day life have been large.

[http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin- america-44275782](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-44275782)

<comment><USER29> > but friends in Brazil said the repercussions to their day-to-day life have > been large.

Yes, they have. First, the fuel situation: trucks carrying fuel to gas stations were blocked by strikers, so they quickly ran out of fuel. Buses need diesel fuel to run, so people can't get to work. Cars also need fuel (gasoline or ethanol) to run, so even people who have cars can't get to work. Those with gas-powered cars (mostly taxis) could still get fuel (it goes to the gas station through pipes), but even these need a small amount of gasoline to start the motor.

Then, the food situation: almost all the fresh food is gone from the markets, and what little there is got really expensive (like 4 or 5 times more expensive). Longer-lived but basic food (like rice and beans) flew from the shelves, since people still have memories from the hyperinflation days last century. Huge amounts of food had to be thrown away in the farms.

Hospitals had to cancel all non-emergency surgery, since stocks are running really low. Industries have stopped, since they can't get their inputs or don't have space to store their outputs. There was a risk of water rationing in some places, since stocks of water treatment chemicals ran low.

We're lucky that our country's power supply is mostly hydro, and most of the thermal generators either get their fuel through pipes, or had enough fuel stored locally. Only a few distant cities (probably without interconnection to the national system) lost power.

Things are getting better. Many of the blockades have now been cleared, and fuel trucks escorted by the police or the army are getting fuel to essential services and to the gas stations. Hopefully trucks will soon be able to get food from the farms to the markets.

<comment><USER30> > Those with gas-powered cars (mostly taxis) could still get fuel (it goes to > the gas station through pipes

That's interesting. So the gas stations have compressors?

<comment><USER31> I think they mean compressed natural-gas rather than petrol. Many fleet vehicles run off of CNG in the Americas and elsewhere.

<comment><USER30> Yes, I understood that. But those stations are pretty rare and typically need a (quite expensive) compressor to turn the gas in the pipes into CNG if it isn't delivered by truck. (Former gas station owner here...)

The other option would be LPG (Liquified Petroleum Gas), that too is usually delivered by truck.

<comment><USER29> > But those stations are pretty rare

In my experience, not all stations have natural gas, but it's not exactly rare. I found a list which matched my intuition: [http://www.gasnet.com.br/postos_gnv_lista.asp?nomestado=Rio%...](http://www.gasnet.com.br/postos_gnv_lista.asp?nomestado=Rio%20de%20Janeiro) shows 531 stations on my state, several cities have 10 or more, the state capital has over 200.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Funny that the manager's pay is the only one that's not listed.

It seems to me that truck driving is at the same boring, unhealthy and dangerous. I can't imagine not making serious mistakes if I had to drive on a freeway for 8 hours a day or more.

</comment><comment><USER33> omg this is a massive con job - there are lines of trucks with non-english speaking drivers, waiting for twenty or thirty hours without accomodations, every week at the second busiest port in the western United States, right now. A glance shows signs for "contractors" and abundant evidence of labor abuse left and right. Who is being fooled by this story ?

</comment><comment><USER34> Have a look at the trucking jobs in the European Union. Loads of truck drivers from low wage EU member states. Some working for under 500€ a month, or 6000€ a year.

A friend from the Baltics is teaching new drivers... from the Phillipines, because the local ones are getting "expensive". To speak of a race to the bottom...

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm sure you could almost double the number of drivers by getting some "girls can drive big trucks too" program.

</comment><comment><USER36> When you're planning to replace a profession with technology, it's a winning strategy to start spreading long-term career doom over the profession a few years ahead of when you're ready to launch, so that there'll be a labor shortage and higher wages when you're ready to enter the market.

(Not dealing with ethics here, just strategy for winning.)

We've had a few years now of news stories about how truck drivers will all be replaced with self-driving. I'd wondered about whether that was good strategy on the part of companies working on self-driving, because it might cause truck drivers to organize and lobby for regulation to keep it out. But it seems to be working for them.

<comment><USER37> Or the people making predictions are basically right, and young people are rationally not opting as frequently to join the profession?

<comment><USER38> Yeah that has already been a problem with petroleum engineers. Even if they don't have any ethical objection to working in it the writing is on the wall that it may not be a 40+ year career. The same with COBOL. Although the old software is zombie-ing along there isn't much new being written.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> More intercity traffic should be shipped by rail anyway. Heavy trucks cause enormous damage to the freeways, far exceeding the weight taxes charged.

<comment><USER40> But ... that would require the freight customers to actually have something resembling decent logistics planning ... And these people clearly are idiots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I hope that the "shortage" of drivers will lead companies to prefer shipping by rail, which is much less polluting, easier on the workers, and more efficient.

<comment><USER4> I miss the days when the train delivered things to my door step.

<comment><USER27> The last time someone used an 18 wheeler to make a long haul delivery to my door step was 18 years ago.

It's been small utility trucks ever since, driven on short hauls, by people who might well live walking distance to my house.

A train would never deliver to my house, but to this day there are still unused train slips leading to factories around my urban area, and in Europe there are plenty of shopping malls that have a train slip as well as a truck loading bay.

<comment><USER42> LTL trucking is how just about everything you buy in a store is delivered, and it you ever buy anything online that is large or heavy it is also shipped this way to your house. The UPS truck isn't delivering pallets of bananas to the grocery store.

<comment><USER27> Nope. But note you said pallet. Nothing stopping those pallets from making the long haul on tracks, and the last mile on a truck.

(Except politics, that is)

<comment><USER4> How does the pallet make it from train to truck in a cost effective way? Adding labor into the equation is grade A bean counter kryptonite.

<comment><USER27> There is no way for it to be more cost effective to truck a load long haul than it is to pay for a forklift operator to unload your truck onto a rail car at one end of the haul and another forklift operator to do the reverse operation at the other end.

The reason it isn't done this way is certainly not the amount of labor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Trucking pays great on paper when you are an owner-operator. This means you own (and insure) the truck, pay for gas, and insure the load. You cover maintaince, and you cover finding yourself new loads to haul. You personally carry the fiscal risk. Your take home pay is AMAZING, but it doesn't factor in your expenses.

Most truckers work as members of a fleet. Where a larger company handles the contracting, insurance, fuel, and maintenance while the drivers are paid to drive. This job can pay ~40-60k/yr.

This article tries to paint a world where truckers are fabulously paid. Why would nobody want to work this job?

But in reality it's a very stressful job underpaid job. And a small subset of truckers manage to become well paid contractors but the VAST MAJORITY aren't. This swings the average/high end pay into idiotic territory.

</comment><comment><USER44> Median truck driving wage is $42,000 according to the article, so...

</comment><comment><USER45> Headline: "Here's why few want an $80,000 job."

Paragraph 5: "government statistics say median pay for the industry is $42,000."

Well. There's your problem.

<comment><USER46> Short haul trucking has miserable pay and long haul trucking is a miserable job.

It's also not clear if the $80k jobs referred to here are employee or owner- operator jobs. If they're employee it's a massive outlier and if they're owner-operator the expenses are high and $80k results in rather pathetic take home pay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> There's an Indian start up addressing some of the issues with long haul driving by turning them into short haul ones. This way people work closer to home. I thought that was innovative.

<comment><USER4> Do you have a name or link?

For some reason I can see this company operating like an uber with tractors waiting at way points to swap trailers. Problem is the swaps will be conducted at the drivers discretion which opens the flood gates to all sorts of abusive shenanigans and race to the bottom economics. I can picture all the complaints of drivers meeting in private parking lots causing damage and trespass. Or meeting in residential neighborhoods off highways causing all sorts of noise and possible damage. Excessive idling causing noise and air pollution, drivers taking up parking or partly blocking roads while waiting for other truck which is trapped in two hours of back up.

These are heavy vehicles that make a lot of noise and beat on the pavement. Best keep them rolling along the highways where they belong. That or keep the heavy duty noise to terminals located in industrial or commercial centers where people wont be bothered by the racket.

<comment><USER48> I don't know India, but in many countries highways have truck stops every 100 miles or so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Make them pay their weight, demand will go down [http://cityobservatory.org/the-real-welfare-cadillacs- have-1...](http://cityobservatory.org/the-real-welfare-cadillacs- have-18-wheels/)

</comment><comment><USER50> I hired the same company to move my car across the country then back four years apart. The same man drove the truck. He told me he expects the company will shut down in another decade or two as it's too hard to find good reliable drivers who want a long term trucking job. It's a family run company with a stellar reputation and they aren't interested in short timers

<comment><USER51> I'll be shipping a car soon - have any contact details you can pass along?

<comment><USER52> Be careful, this is the worst of all shipping. The car is never shipped until it's fully loaded.

Make sure to pay extra for a top slot, and go on youtube. Everyone who owns a luxury car despises car shipping companies.

uShip used to have a decent program where people will do it for about $400-700 with no wheels touching the ground. You need proper registration and title work though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> My step sister's husband drives a truck. It pays well, but it's a terrible job. They have two kids, and he is gone a lot. It's a hard life, that I wouldn't wish on anyone.

</comment><comment><USER54> I guess that's one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is America has a truck driver wage/compensation shortage.

I'm sure if the companies increased wages that shortage would magically disappear.

</comment><comment><USER55> So do Brazil.... at least today.

Anyway, I don't think is a wise move t o invest in truck drive carrer, when we are so close of autonomous trucks.

<comment><USER56> I think this is a big factor as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Low wages, terrible working conditions, drivers as commodities: autonomous long-haul trucking looks like a no-brainer.

I had two uncles who retired from a F500 train company (many years ago). It sounds like this industry is going to end up with one person riding in the equivalent of a caboose to handle the unexpected stuff, or to oversee intermodal activities.

</comment><comment><USER58> Truck driver's are basically consultants. They generally have to cover the costs. So 100k has a lot of expenses attached to it. Plus long hours and time away from friends and family. And long boring drives in the middle of Nebraska. I don't think I would want to do that for 45-65k take home pay.

<comment><USER59> Only if you're a owner-operator. If you're a company driver you'll only pay for living expenses.

Either way, most are paid by the ( loaded ) mile which makes them some weird bizarro version of Uber drivers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Becoming a truck driver currently doesn't seem a wise choice when self-driving trucks are on the horizon.

<comment><USER61> This, not a single word about automation and self-driving trucks in the article but every person I talked to that considered this career path* has mentioned automation as a reason staying out of a field. A lot of people value job security really high.

I agree with the comments saying that if the pay was higher then there wouldn't be such a shortage and the fact that is generally true. That doesn't mean the market always adapts fast enough and balances itself though.

* only 3 people, so purely anecdotal.

<comment><USER62> TFA did touch on this, the comment was that self-driving trucks are a long way off. And I happen to agree that they are a lot farther off than people think. That last 10% of functionality needed to be safe on the road in non-normal situations such as construction zones, traffic accidents, ice, heavy rain or wind, is going to take a long time to achieve

<comment><USER60> If a lot of people think that they're not so far off that's a lot of people who'd rather not become a truck driver only to be displaced by a robot in ten years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> I think I would enjoy trucking, but as a person born in the 1990s, I grew up in an area supplied entirely by trucks with no substantial agricultural land. One of the retail airstrips with the movie theater and a mall and a supermarket. Our community was connected by automobile transit, internet, and telephone.

I wouldn't want anyone still living like this to go hungry--we don't make the choice to enter the world we find ourselves in, as far as I know--but I can't stomach that lifestyle for myself or my children, or the kin of anyone I've known or met. When I was young it was thrilling, with engines and freeways and drive-thrus. My friends bought cheap sports cars and motorbikes, and there was 100 years of movies to watch.

Now I am older, and I find it inhumane.

</comment><comment><USER64> As a 28 year coding veteran, I sometimes dream about the life of a truck driver. Hours on the road, seeing the country go by, seems like a nice change.

But an article like this one brings me back to reality. I guess I'll stick to coding for a while longer.

<comment><USER65> You should code from an RV. Not kidding

<comment><USER66> Been my goal since I got my first remote programming job. Have a ball and chain of a house to deal with first but hopefully soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Is it the trucking companies or the customers that bound the pay? What does it cost to move a container a distance of five days?

What would be the annual billable revenue if you decided to buy a truck and start hauling cargo around yourself, cutting the middlemen? There are people who do this.

Obviously your income is limited by regulations regarding how long you can drive and how long you must rest in between. These physically clamp the amount of time you can do billable work (unless you're driving with a partner and take turns).

I would guess some hundreds of thousands of gross revenue per truck annually, EBITDA is probably a lot less. Would be interesting to know what the books might look like.

</comment><comment><USER68> What does "shortage" really mean? Isn't it just a matter of price?

<comment><USER69> Not if all the experienced drivers retire and there isn't enough young ones to fill their seats. Raising wages would help, but it still takes time to get people up to speed. Do you want the new guy in a hazmat tanker next to you on the freeway?

<comment><USER68> If that's the case, it must be a very temporary problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> This is heartening as automation is sure to ravage the trucking labor market.

</comment><comment><USER70> > "The ATA predicts that it's likely to get worse in the coming years"

Not really. These vehicles are at the top of the list to go autonomous sooner rather than later. In fact, aren't they being tested in Europe? Germany?

Editorial (and slighly off topic): Perhaps it's time for the USA to revisit its consumption based economy? Less good consumed means less goods to ship. Perhaps the driver supply is fine. It's the excessive demand that's gone mad.

</comment><comment><USER71> Apart from not having a CDL at this time, there is a simple reason why no amount of money is going to make me get a truck driving job. Driving jobs I see advertised require an accident free record, and I had a fender bender a couple years ago (even though it was the other driver at fault). I have no tickets, suspensions, or anything else, but the accident automatically disqualifies you.

<comment><USER28> As in totally accident-free? The accidents I was involved in in my late teens/early 20s made me a way better driver.

<comment><USER71> Within a certain number of years, i.e. anything currently showing on your driving record. But the point is, they don't care if you were at fault, just that there was a police report.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> I'd imagine that a part of it is that being a truck driver is not a sexy job. It's hard enough trying to find a girlfriend when you're in IT, the stigma with being a truck driver is probably on a whole other level.

Remove the stigma, make it "cool", and they'll see more people applying.

</comment><comment><USER27> Not finding enough applicants for your shit job. Do you...

a. Raise pay? b. Improve benefits? c. Improve working conditions? or

d. Bitch and moan to the press?

</comment><comment><USER73> I am so sick of this perpetual fallacy about labor shortages. If you can't find enough workers it means you need to raise the price you're offering. (But yasp the article cited one particular firm has already increased prices 15% this year.) Doesn't matter. There is a certain price at which the market will clear. If the market isn't clearing it's because the price being offered is too low. Keep trying.

<comment><USER32> Our economy has split into areas where in some areas "talent" can get almost infinite amounts of money and in other areas it's simply not conceivable to pay people more. I wonder how free market people explain this. Based on the market theories I have heard it doesn't make sense.

<comment><USER74> It does make sense, you don't need "infinite" amount of money. Pay a driver $200k a year. Or give them an 8 hour workday, and week off week on schedules so they can see their family.

There's many solutions, all of them involve incentivizing people to become drivers. If people want their Amazon orders so bad, they'll end up paying. And if they don't, then they have to re-prioritize what they want.

<comment><USER75> I wouldn't re-train as a truck driver for $200k a year? Would you?

And you can't just say 'there's lots of people for whom $200k would be a lot of money' because there's a lot of people who whom $50k is a lot of money and those jobs aren't filled either.

Short of literally offering a million dollars a year, it's got to be more complicated than how much you offer.

<comment><USER76> I wouldn't re-train as a truck driver, but my partner, who makes $35,000/year moving heavy things around in a Seattle theater would. She'd step over a lot of bodies to do so.

The $50,000/year jobs that aren't being filled have one of:

1\. Require years of non-transferable training.

2\. Have insane working hours, that make your real pay closer to minimum wage.

3\. In especially shitty working conditions.

4\. Are in locations where $50,000/year isn't enough to live on.

5\. Destroy your body after a few years on the job.

6\. Have better-paying, better-work-condition alternatives that use similar skill-sets.

7\. Or, more typically, two or more of the above.

<comment><USER77> Truck driving ticks boxes 2, 5, and arguably 3.

That said, if it paid $200k/yr (median or even 75th percentile), the shortage would disappear post haste. The vast majorly of other jobs that pay that much tick boxes 1, 4, or both and are thus logistically out of reach of at least half the population.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> The shortage, if there is one, won't last long once the autopilot-enabled truck convoys get going.

<comment><USER79> Someone in the industry suggested to me that the number of long-haul truckers needed is relatively small. And that's where autonomous trucks are going to be viable for quite a while. It's one thing to autopilot a truck down a long straight freeway. It's another to pilot a truck through city streets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> Serious conflict of interest with this story given that the Post is owned by Bezos and Amazon is highly reliant on the trucking industry and trying to grow their own logistics.

</comment><comment><USER81> Some states do not let Deafies want to be driver. Hearing people(not deaf people) who barrier them. that is the problem.

</comment><comment><USER82> Everyone of the x has at shortage articles are silly. We live in a capitalist society so pay more. Truck drivers or software engineers it applies risky. Or teachers and nurses. If you pay enough (and maybe have decent benefits) you will get qualified people. That's not part of the business model? Please go to a socialist country.

</comment><comment><USER83> I couldn't read the article. I read most of the comments.

I'm a new truck driver, since March 1st of this year. I drive for one of the biggest trucking companies in the country.

When weather is bad, they call or message us to shut down. I've never felt any pressure 2 exceed the legally allowed number of driving hours. If you're going to be late for some legitimate reason, you let the company know, and you're then not considered late. They reschedule the appointment.

It's definitely a lifestyle that a lot of people would not want to do. I am unusual in that I enjoy my alone time. Yeah this is Extreme alone time, but I like it. There probably are not a lot of people like me, but probably more than you would think.

Edit:

I've lost 20 pounds since I started driving. Driving doesn't cause you to lose weight, but I knew weight gain is a problem, so I really focus on eating carefully. My truck has a refrigerator. I think it used to have a microwave, but I think the former driver gave it to himself as a going-away present.

Most problems are solvable. I plan on very slowly incorporating a few solutions to a few problems. My truck has a good inverter, so I have a coffee pot and I make my own coffee in the morning, it's cheaper than truck stop coffee and I like it better. I'll get a small microwave eventually, and possibly bring a Crock-Pot or similar.

I shop when I'm home, but that's usually not enough for the two or three weeks that I will be out. So when it's convenient to me I will drive to a Walmart, where they are Truck friendly, and stock up. Truckers also will sometimes Park overnight at Walmart, but not all of them allow it.

Pay to start is low, but larger companies recently, including mine, have begun to increase starting pay, and incorporate bonuses for existing. Pay increases regularly over quarters, but it will be a few years before you're making what you might call good money.

Right now I'm shut down for the night at a truck stop about a half hour north of Las Vegas on I-15, that Corridor that someone here said nee guys never get. This is not my first time on this route. This is my second Thousand Mile trip this week.

My only serious complaint is parking. I'm parked on the street across from the truck stop, because I got a late start and finished late. If the country hired any significant fraction of the trucker shortage, there would be no where to park. Drive down a major Interstate some night at 10 or 3 in the morning, and really look and see how many trucks are wedged into non parking spaces. We have to do it, because of hours of service regulations.

Everyone has anecdotes, pro and con, including me. Don't think that the article, or the comments here, give you good and accurate coverage of the subject. Everything everyone says here is probably true, for that person's experience. But like in any area, your mileage may vary.

[Apologies for Trump style random capitalization, my phone does that to me when I speech to text.]

</comment><comment><USER84> A lot of people are putting forth this notion that the market just isn't offering enough compensation for the jobs, and that's why they're not being filled.

That may be true. It probably is true.

But here's something else to consider: the alternative of not working, especially for people who may do these particular jobs, is fairly competitive. With enough welfare, government assistance, and cheap easy-to-access entertainment, getting a job looks worse and worse (less necessary), so would- be employees won't bother as much at current market rates.

Companies will therefore need to offer higher and higher wages for these jobs to fill them. The same story has been unfolding in China with regards to manufacturing: these "$2/hour" jobs which seem terrible were actually amazing prospects for a half billion rural inhabitants, who were able to move to the city, work and save up money, and provide more for their families than they ever could.

But once those families have higher standards of living, the next generation (their kids) don't need to take these jobs. They could, and they would still make some money, but they don't need to, so they'd rather go to school for the hopes of something better (an office job with AC), or just not work, because saving up marginally more money when you already have most of your needs met on your smartphone and through your parents just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. This is the psychology: my family has some stability, I don't need to work like they did. I can aim for something better. This is not a moral judgement - sometimes it's true, sometimes it's not. On the whole it's a good thing.

So what's going to happen in either case is automation through technological progress. These jobs will disappear as companies invest in their destruction. Why not try out this startup's experimental self-driving truck, rather than raise my total truck driver comp. package to $90K? Obviously a ton of reasons for most companies. But the economic pros/cons will shift towards the technology faster and faster.

And then what for the people who need these kind of jobs, what happens when they disappear? In the West, it seems as if we're moving to some kind of income redistribution scheme, based on taxing the owners and producers of the technology. So essentially: increase the welfare. This seems like a relatively stable short-term solution. But what happens when you're left with a large underclass of unemployed people, and a small upper-class of producers? It's not good, and not long-term stable. Look up the Gini Coefficient, one of the most fundamental social science discoveries, and see for yourself:

[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/08/income- inequ...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/08/income-inequality- murder-homicide-rates)

All the taxing and redistribution in the world isn't going to help this. We're a global economy now, so unless you trap the rich in one area, they're going to move eventually.

In summary - I see big problems ahead the next few decades relating to these issues, and I don't see a good long-term solution just yet.

</comment><comment><USER85> Ultimately we will get self driving trucks and that will solve the problem. The question is not if but when.

Waymo has cars driving around Arizona as I type this without safety drivers so maybe not too far off.

</comment><comment><USER86> Put ads in magazines targeting serial killers. They like driving trucks in the US i hear.

<comment><USER87> Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> Why we haven't gotten a feasible working heavy weight capatul that would slingshot heavy cargo from spot to spot across states like jumping frog, I don't get where the problem is.

I'm not saying catapult eggs, but majority of goods could withstand 1000Gs.

We need Trevor Milton to stop working on electric truck and get into electric catapults.

<comment><USER89> I'm sure a bunch of children also wonder the same thing. The same way they wonder why we can't just cool off Texas with a big fan when it becomes too hot. After all, look how easy it was to come up with the idea (the hard part).

By the way, the reason is because you'd use a trebuchet, not the inferior catapult.

<comment><USER88> Trebuchet is a type of a catapult, smartass.</comment></comment></comment>


Period. Full Stop. Point. Whatever It's Called, It's Going Out of Style - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/10/world/europe/period-full-stop-point-whatever-its-called-millennials-arent-using-it.html?ref=technology&_r=0 <comment><USER2> That s right but it s not new Old Chinese texts never used punctuation marks and Chinese people read them just fine

Why putting a useless dot when you can just start a new sentence with an upper case letter We don t need question mark in English either Why use it

It s already been happening in programming languages too Some arcane languages use parenthesis and some arcane languages use semicolon Hey new languages use white spaces and that s enough

One last point from the article All those punctuation marks should be used for useful meanings

Be gone.

<comment><USER3> >Hey new languages use white spaces and that s enough

Some of those languages also make you "communicate new ideas" on new lines, makes for better organization of ideas than simply depending on capitalization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Isn't that a bit flawed logic to compare a medium that works in logical "paragraphs" (the IMs and social media they mention) with a wall of text?

Yes, I also leave out some punctuation - but either because I hate fumbling with my phone or because it would be the ending period in a single post/message. Not when there are two or more sentences...</comment>


Ask HN: How much can startup charge Amazon for providing a service? - <AUTHOR>

Hi there! What do you think may be the best model for a startup to charge Amazon for a data/service which will be supplied for Amazon mobile app/site? Flat monthly fee? Per API call after user's request coming from Amazon?
Given that deal doesn't have to be exclusive so there will be options to supply the same data to other companies?
And ideally we want to avoid the acquisition offer.
Oh the headache... <comment><USER2> really can't advice you without knowing more about your data/service..

value is very subjective, what amazon would pay for pennies might be dimes to others and what others would pay for dimes could be pennies or worthless to amazon.</comment>


StreetComplete asks questions, with answers used to improve OpenStreetMap data - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/westnordost/StreetComplete <comment><USER2> For anybody who uses StreetComplete - whenever you select "Can't answer" to a quest, an OSM Note [1] (ie. error report) is made. Please consider attaching a photo whenever you can so other OSM mappers can resolve the issue without the need to verify the place in-person themselves.

Another thing that's super cool is that StreetComplete allows you to answer other OSM Notes (made also or rather mostly outside of StreetComplete) with photos. There are many countries with a deluge of unsolved Notes [2] and a photographic proof allows people to resolve them remotely. Just remember to turn on displaying all notes, not only questions, in the app settings.

[1] [https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Notes](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Notes)

[2] (takes long to load) [http://resultmaps.neis-one.org/osm- notes](http://resultmaps.neis-one.org/osm-notes)

<comment><USER3> I don't really understand the note resolution process, I feel like streetcomplete could do more to improve this but I don't know what, because I only see it from the streetcomplete side of things.

It's pretty common for me to see a note from someone that's like a year old saying "this business isn't here any more". Indeed, it is not. I mean, I could add a picture (didn't realise that feature existed), but how would that help? It's a picture of a thing that's not there. Why not take the notes word for it when it was first posted a year ago?

If this is some multi-verification thing, there must be a better way to present that?

<comment><USER2> > It's pretty common for me to see a note from someone that's like a year old > saying "this business isn't here any more". Indeed, it is not. I mean, I > could add a picture (didn't realise that feature existed), but how would > that help? It's a picture of a thing that's not there. Why not take the > notes word for it when it was first posted a year ago?

"This place has gone or never existed" is a note from MAPS.ME generated by clicking such button in that app. But people sometimes missclick it. Or use it wrongly e.g. place exists but has slightly inaccurate position or name. Or use it on POIs they added themselves as a mistake (MAPS.ME allows adding/editing POI, but not deleting them)

If you solved as many notes as I did you would understand ;) I think that photographing something that's not there is still a valid thing. I try never to trust notes blindly, and when possible corroborate it with outside sources (no copying of Google Maps allowed, though).

> If this is some multi-verification thing, there must be a better way to > present that?

Notes, their usage, and resolving are pretty free-form.

<comment><USER4> > _If you solved as many notes as I did you would understand ;) I think that > photographing something that 's not there is still a valid thing. I try > never to trust notes blindly, and when possible corroborate it with outside > sources (no copying of Google Maps allowed, though)._

I think this can get tricky. I've worked in several office suites where having a business listed on the directory at the entrance was an additional fee that many tenants opted not to pay (not just struggling startups; I've known this category to include large publicly-traded companies who'd existed for decades). Someone could see that a listed business is not on the directory, mark "no longer exists", even posting "photographic proof" of a directory without the business's name -- and they could still be wrong.

The only way to know for sure would be to a) verify the landlord's records; or b) regularly knock and confirm that employees of said company are routinely occupying the space.

<comment><USER2> OSM is a map first, not a business directory - although these do overlap. Admittedly, businesses without a marked presence are not de facto priority (as in: no explicit rule, but they don't get mapped first). Shops, restaurants and so on that are open to the public are more so.

Ultimately in a cooperative project like OSM you have to be able to somehow verify others' work - that's why there's "on the ground rule". [https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Verifiability](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Verifiability)

That said it's only a guideline, which is deviated from in some cases (like administrative boundaries). I guess some other proof could pass, if it was plausible enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I use this quite a lot - even my kids like taking part, on walks around the neighbourhood. Unfortunately, the app has an outdated basemap. During the lockdown I've used other apps and the in-browser editor to trace new outlines of buildings in my relatives' neighbourhoods, thinking that this would then show up in StreetComplete, giving my relatives a nice activity for future walks (adding addresses, roof shapes and street details for the new buildings I'd drawn). However, the app rarely updates the basemap - so the new buildings still haven't shown up. Worse still, the app pretends they're there, floating ghostly address, roof shape etc questions over a seemingly blank background - but a but too densely for people to reliably know what building they'd be tagging. This is a little irritating/demotivating. It's an acknowledged issue on their GitHub - the problem is lack of resources to compile and serve the basemap. If anyone is sitting on idle server capacity and connectivity... Do volunteer!

</comment><comment><USER4> Really think this is a cool idea and have had it installed on my phone for more than a year, but somehow, I never really feel the compulsion to do anything more than open it up and think about how cool it is. Maybe would be nice to present a list of nearby simple quests to get new users started? A little intro/tutorial sequence may help bridge the gap and suck people in.

<comment><USER6> Depending on where you are, the available things to do can be limited and uninspiring.

I have been using it for a while, and I have filled out useful things like bus stop shelter and seating, road surfaces, opening hours on shops etc.

Near me right now, I have a few house numbers (adjacent to known house numbers), one probably unnamed pedestrian passage to name, and loads of default speed limits.

<comment><USER7> I like to think every last bit of that sort of information could at least improve the quality of GPS navigation apps using OSM data. I use OSMAnd for navigation and w.r.t. map completeness it's _pretty good_ but not _great._ I think much of what's lacking is the finer details, thigs like many houses not being numbered.

I've seen a lot of quests on StreetComplete that seemed a lot less relevant, like the number of stories a house has, or the style of roofs. I guess that's useful for 3d maps, but personally I don't see much value in that relative to mapping addresses and street rules.

<comment><USER6> It definitely can.

I'm just saying that as a newcomer, being able to fill out things with obvious personal usefulness like "does this bus stop have a shelter and seating" is really cool and engaging. As is having a diverse range of things to fill out.

When your area is already pretty thoroughly covered, it's not as fun to say "this stretch of road has the same speed limit as every other stretch of road nearby". However, once you are an engaged user, doing a few of those things every so often is fine.

What I was trying to say in my original comment was "if you can't find anything interesting to do in it try somewhere else (when you can)"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The positive attitude towards this project is a great reminder of what the internet could look like (and often DID look like) without the extreme commercial exploitation and the consequential cynical and cautious user attitude.

When Google Maps bothers me with inane questions about my village pub, I'm annoyed, I won't be their unpaid data entry worker. But I'm more than happy to do it for everyone on the internet, I'll even install an app, voluntarily!

Last time I got this feeling was when I first joined what.cd. I'll never forget that "Whoaaaa, so this is what an internet music service could be like if there was no profit involved"

</comment><comment><USER9> It might be a nice alternative to a Pokemon Go, but just as a case in point to all those who claim that "OSM is data, not an application" (so, last that I checked, pretty much everyone in the OSM community): I would really feel the pressure to use StreetComplete a lot, if there was a way for me to _actually use_ OSM in the daily life. The best in-browser app that I know is osm.org, and the best Android app is OsmAnd (which is quite a bit better than osm.org, by the way): and you need to be extremely pro-FOSS (as opposed to pro- usability) to abandon much hated GoogleMaps in favor of them.

<comment> globular-toast I mean, I am "pro-FOSS", but I use OSM when walking and cycling because it's simply the best data source out there. I've used it all over the world from the Peak District, to European cities, to remotest South Africa.

Osmand is great but maybe you should consider that there is no one app to solve all of your problems, especially given that you've already accepted that OSM is data, not an app. There's Osmand for outdoors kind of stuff, maps.me for a simpler, slicker Google maps like experience, Graph Hopper for advanced routing and planning, cycle.travel and others for cycling, hike maps, transport maps, the list goes on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks like a really slick app, can't wait to walk around and use it.

It is a little funny to see that some of the quests are on map features that I have recently added. I suppose I will both fix those things and learn what I can do better when I am mapping in the future.

</comment><comment><USER11> Gamify it like Pokémon Go and you've really got something here!

(like a way to fund your game through a byproduct generated by your users instead of annoying advertising)

<comment><USER12> The OSM community is still fixing damage caused by the Pokemon community so I'd be careful with that comparison ;)

<comment><USER13> What damage?

<comment><USER14> The game spawned creatures anywhere there were parks or water features. Players figured this out and suddenly parks appear _everywhere_. Parks coming out our ears.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Related from 2017: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14290096](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14290096)

</comment><comment><USER16> Looks great! Is there an iOS version?

<comment><USER17> There is a clone in development: [https://github.com/wtimme/OSM- Completionist](https://github.com/wtimme/OSM-Completionist)

<comment><USER18> It is available via test flight and already looks really nice.

One nicely done detail is how the road names stay in place as you move the map. At least I really liked it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> App requires authentication

<comment><USER20> Of course because you need to be authenticated to contribute to OSM...</comment></comment>


USB4 Branding Is Reportedly Downright Bad - <AUTHOR> https://www.extremetech.com/computing/297779-usb4-branding-is-reportedly-downright-bad <comment><USER2> The trouble w/ USB is that it wants to serve everybody.

At the very beginning there was a low speed for mice and keyboards and then a high speed for more demanding devices. That way input devices could be cheap but still plugged into the same port as other devices.

At that time there was FireWire as a competitor, also external SCSI, etc.

For a long time USB has been the low-end mass-market serial connector but now that USB is converging with Thunderbolt, you're left with awful compromises to support both low cost and high performance on the same port.</comment>


Show HN: Animations/simulations about spacecraft instruments - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGKe6VmbFOX-3C30JjEsV-g/ <comment><USER2> It is ussually much better here to submit one of the videos instead of the channel. With one video the discussion is more specific and perhaps someone here that works in that are can make an interesting comment. With the whole channel the discussion get diluted.

Which one one of the videos is the one that you prefer? (I liked the animations in the video about mars. They start at the 4 minute mark.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. I prefer the one about the Viking lander since it still fresh in my mind. It's interesting that no other lander/rover has carried out experiments to test for life on mars since Viking in 1976. It seems like the only people that are promoting life on mars are the scientist that worked on the experiment that did detect evidence of life

<comment><USER2> I think they only detected some inorganic reactive material, produced by sunlight. But until we carry more detailed experiments it's difficult to be sure.

Anyway, since you have a few old videos, I recommend to post once per week so people don't complain that you post too much. And then post the new videos when they are published.

Also, people here is sometimes interested in how things are made. What program are you using to create the animations? What program are you using to create the videos?

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool. I use Hitfilm Pro for editing and animation. Blender for 3d rendering. Godot game engine for simulation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I have a channel that goes into moderate detail about how various instruments of a spacecraft works. Each video has some basic simulation of the device being discussed. There are also other videos discussing other aspects of space.</comment>