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A real reason for gravel bikes?



 
 
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  #81  
Old February 22nd 20, 01:15 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
jOHN b.
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Posts: 2,421
Default A real reason for gravel bikes?

On Fri, 21 Feb 2020 07:54:55 -0600, AMuzi wrote:

On 2/20/2020 9:49 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 2/20/2020 10:38 PM, AMuzi wrote:

When I was young, one might easily travel the country,
always confident of finding a day or two of work
everywhere and anywhere (As I did. Everywhere.) .


Interesting. I did some of that too, when I was young. I
also did it while not traveling, just to get spending money.

But my success rate while on the road was pretty low. It
seemed I'd have to spend many hours waiting inside a
Manpower office to have a chance at getting anything at all.


This is no longer true, to the greater loss of the
nation's wealth and productivity, no more painfully felt
than at the bottom of society, those who suffer most.


I really am sympathetic to those people. Say what you will,
many have very high barriers in front of them.


And changes in work itself. It was once possible to show up
at any truck terminal around midnight and to transfers
(truck-to-truck, dock-to-truck) which was badly paid
unskilled manual labor. Now, almost everything is palletized
and moved (more efficiently) by machines. There are no
mason's helpers (really crappy job and very hard work). Even
dishwashing has a much lower labor content. In the larger
sense these are improvements but, again, a closed door to
the marginal human.


Certainly true, and of course those who can't find work, for one
reason or another, are paid, in essence, not to work, by "the
government".

I remember reading about a program, in Detroit before the decline, to
find work for the unemployed. The car factories joined in by making
unskilled work available but the program failed, simply because the
3nd and 3rd generation of unemployed couldn't imagine a relationship
between work and income.
--
cheers,

John B.

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  #82  
Old February 22nd 20, 02:10 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
jOHN b.
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,421
Default A real reason for gravel bikes?

On Fri, 21 Feb 2020 15:06:44 -0800, sms
wrote:

On 2/20/2020 4:55 PM, John B. wrote:

snip

Or perhaps the "Prison Farm" solution as was used in Mississippi,
among other states. That could, if managed properly, turn out to be a
profit making establishment.

Or is working now deemed to be a cruel and unusual punishment?


A lot of the high cost is in medical care, personnel, and food. Highly
unlikely that enough money would be generated to offset those costs.
Plus it would take jobs away from non-criminals.

The Mississippi State Penitentiary farm used 600,000 man-hours in
fiscal 2012, planting over 5,700 acres in vegetables, rice, corn,
wheat, and soybeans and producing over two tons of vegetables worth
more than $1.3 million and almost half a million eggs.

Oklahoma's highly organized prison farm system, Agri-Services,
produces or processes some 723,000 pounds of beef, 115,000 pounds of
pork, 1,445,000 pounds of processed meat, and 568,000 gallons of milk,
along with 7,500 tons of hay and 4,500 tons of livestock feed, in a
typical year.

In the late 1990s the Georgia Department of Corrections enjoyed a
per-inmate food cost that was 30 percent below the national average
thanks to its 10,000-acre farm system and food processing and
distribution network.

Traditionally, in the East,prisons have manufactured things like auto
number plates and mail bags.


The root cause will be unlikely to be addressed. Used to be a lot of
living wage union jobs in auto manufacturing, large appliance
manufacturing, ship building, etc.. Those jobs have been shipped to
China, Mexico, etc.. California's been especially hard hit in that
regard, the only automobile factory left is Tesla. Used to have multiple
Ford and GM plants, as well as the shared GM/Toyota factory that Tesla
took over.


Well, yes. You inflate your living and salary costs and are amazed
that developing countries can "make it cheaper".

But this shouldn't come as a surprise, after all this is exactly what
Japan was did after WW II. Lots of people out of work, created
businesses that used this cheap labor, sold stuff to the U.S. cheaper
than the U.S. could make it.

But then, as they old saying goes, "those who ignore history are
doomed to repeat it".


Manufacturing continues to be hard hit under Trump, partly because of
tariffs. In just the four months following Trump’s swearing-in nearly
12,000 American jobs were moved abroad. On top of GM’s layoffs, Ford
recently announced that about 24,000 out of 202,000 workers, may lose
their jobs.


It probably goes a bit deeper than just Trump, not that I want to
extol his virtues, as the Chevrolet plant here in Thailand has been
closed and sold. Said to be because the poor sales for Chevy pickups
in Asia.
--
cheers,

John B.

  #83  
Old February 23rd 20, 11:48 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Tom Kunich[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,318
Default A real reason for gravel bikes?

On Friday, February 21, 2020 at 4:04:11 PM UTC-8, John B. wrote:
On Fri, 21 Feb 2020 11:14:17 -0500, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 2/21/2020 8:54 AM, AMuzi wrote:
On 2/20/2020 9:49 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 2/20/2020 10:38 PM, AMuzi wrote:

When I was young, one might easily travel the country,
always confident of finding a day or two of work
everywhere and anywhere (As I did. Everywhere.) .

Interesting. I did some of that too, when I was young. I
also did it while not traveling, just to get spending money.

But my success rate while on the road was pretty low. It
seemed I'd have to spend many hours waiting inside a
Manpower office to have a chance at getting anything at all.


This is no longer true, to the greater loss of the
nation's wealth and productivity, no more painfully felt
than at the bottom of society, those who suffer most.

I really am sympathetic to those people. Say what you will,
many have very high barriers in front of them.


And changes in work itself. It was once possible to show up at any truck
terminal around midnight and to transfers (truck-to-truck,
dock-to-truck) which was badly paid unskilled manual labor. Now, almost
everything is palletized and moved (more efficiently) by machines. There
are no mason's helpers (really crappy job and very hard work). Even
dishwashing has a much lower labor content. In the larger sense these
are improvements but, again, a closed door to the marginal human.


Another example: I was once doing robotics work at a large manufacturing
facility. A problem we were trying to solve was orienting components.
Injection molding machines were spitting out thousands of components,
but their orientation was random. The robotic assembly operation
downstream needed perfectly consistent orientation and location.
Vibratory bowl feeding is the most common solution, but couldn't work
with these parts. Oh, and there was a similar problem on a different
line, where the parts were larger but had to be consistently oriented to
pack them for shipping.

The company was trying all sorts of cutting edge technology, up to
multiple machine vision systems controlling multiple robots just to get
the parts oriented.

At one point, I asked why we couldn't just hire people from one of the
local "developmental disabilities" programs, and give them jobs
orienting things. It was my understanding that some such people welcome
work like that. It would give them fulfillment, pride of work, a bit
more independence, etc.

Nope. Not permitted. It would violate a union contract, and nobody had
any interest in wading into contract modifications.

When I left there, they were still wrestling with the orientation problem.


In contrast, Thailand has, effectively, more than 100% employment with
some 2 million registered foreign workers employed and probably nearly
another 2 million unregistered foreign workers. And, yes, some of the
largest factories have robots but work is essentially still done by
hand.

Of course, we don't have labor unions either. Minimum wages are set by
the central government and actual wages are set largely by supply and
demand.

For example, my wife's "woman who comes in to help with the heavy
work" (free translation) gets paid about 30% more than the minimum
rate simply because there is a large demand for her services and she
can charge that much. Which somehow seems pretty fair to me.
--
cheers,

John B.


That is what is known as a Free Market Economy John. This is what the Democrats hope to destroy in the USA.
  #84  
Old February 24th 20, 01:39 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
jOHN b.
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,421
Default A real reason for gravel bikes?

On Sun, 23 Feb 2020 14:48:59 -0800 (PST), Tom Kunich
wrote:

On Friday, February 21, 2020 at 4:04:11 PM UTC-8, John B. wrote:
On Fri, 21 Feb 2020 11:14:17 -0500, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 2/21/2020 8:54 AM, AMuzi wrote:
On 2/20/2020 9:49 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 2/20/2020 10:38 PM, AMuzi wrote:

When I was young, one might easily travel the country,
always confident of finding a day or two of work
everywhere and anywhere (As I did. Everywhere.) .

Interesting. I did some of that too, when I was young. I
also did it while not traveling, just to get spending money.

But my success rate while on the road was pretty low. It
seemed I'd have to spend many hours waiting inside a
Manpower office to have a chance at getting anything at all.


This is no longer true, to the greater loss of the
nation's wealth and productivity, no more painfully felt
than at the bottom of society, those who suffer most.

I really am sympathetic to those people. Say what you will,
many have very high barriers in front of them.


And changes in work itself. It was once possible to show up at any truck
terminal around midnight and to transfers (truck-to-truck,
dock-to-truck) which was badly paid unskilled manual labor. Now, almost
everything is palletized and moved (more efficiently) by machines. There
are no mason's helpers (really crappy job and very hard work). Even
dishwashing has a much lower labor content. In the larger sense these
are improvements but, again, a closed door to the marginal human.

Another example: I was once doing robotics work at a large manufacturing
facility. A problem we were trying to solve was orienting components.
Injection molding machines were spitting out thousands of components,
but their orientation was random. The robotic assembly operation
downstream needed perfectly consistent orientation and location.
Vibratory bowl feeding is the most common solution, but couldn't work
with these parts. Oh, and there was a similar problem on a different
line, where the parts were larger but had to be consistently oriented to
pack them for shipping.

The company was trying all sorts of cutting edge technology, up to
multiple machine vision systems controlling multiple robots just to get
the parts oriented.

At one point, I asked why we couldn't just hire people from one of the
local "developmental disabilities" programs, and give them jobs
orienting things. It was my understanding that some such people welcome
work like that. It would give them fulfillment, pride of work, a bit
more independence, etc.

Nope. Not permitted. It would violate a union contract, and nobody had
any interest in wading into contract modifications.

When I left there, they were still wrestling with the orientation problem.


In contrast, Thailand has, effectively, more than 100% employment with
some 2 million registered foreign workers employed and probably nearly
another 2 million unregistered foreign workers. And, yes, some of the
largest factories have robots but work is essentially still done by
hand.

Of course, we don't have labor unions either. Minimum wages are set by
the central government and actual wages are set largely by supply and
demand.

For example, my wife's "woman who comes in to help with the heavy
work" (free translation) gets paid about 30% more than the minimum
rate simply because there is a large demand for her services and she
can charge that much. Which somehow seems pretty fair to me.
--
cheers,

John B.


That is what is known as a Free Market Economy John. This is what the Democrats hope to destroy in the USA.


Goodness Gracious, such wisdom... and I live here and never realized
it.

And another thing I hadn't realized, that the Democrats were the cause
of the current world wide economic downturn?
--
cheers,

John B.

 




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