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I suspect we're seeing more and more of these issues due to corner cutting in various industries. Air travel has already been a tight margin industry and take a

I suspect we're seeing more and more of these issues due to corner cutting in various industries. Air travel has already been a tight margin industry and take at look at all the air related issues we've seen recently, from FAA systems down to mass cancelations due to infrastructure to the recent runway conflicts and accidents we've seen. Speaking from anecdotal experience, over the years this constant push for more complex and efficient work from individuals has lead to me cutting more corners than I ever wanted to and producing more questionable products and services in the name of efficiency. Hiring contract workers for some household work I've done seems to be a lot of the same as well. I think we as a society need to come to the realization that growth demands can't always be met by piling more costs and work on people. Much of that rock has been squeezed dry, we need to start looking and managing expectations based on growth from new innovative process changes, technology, or shifts in cultural expectations as far as growth goes, at least that's my opinion for whatever it's worth.

dsfyu404ed 4y ago
Industries like airlines and railroad have the problem where you can't cut the corners that can be tastefully and carefully cut because once upon a time someone went overboard, hands were wrung, and a law or rule was made. So then when you're squeezed you cut some corner no sane person would cut with predictable results. It wouldn't surprise me to hear that the railroad had implemented the XKCD 28hr day or something dumb like that because that was their only way to squeeze more man hours out of the month without violating the law or violating their union contracts. Edit: not to say the 28hr day is dumb
- ruined 4y ago
  it's hard to find good news coverage of the actual details of the dispute, but it seems to be fairly basic staff reductions intended to increase margin (already historically massive) the keyword to search is "precision scheduled railroading" as that's the management term recent nymag from last year's attempted strike https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/11/rail-strike-why-the-railroads-wont-give-in-on-paid-leave-psr-precision-scheduled-railroading.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/11/rail-strike-why-the-... wsws coverage has labor complaint details https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/02/19/prec-f19.html https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/02/19/prec-f19.html https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/08/01/rail-a01.html https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/08/01/rail-a01.html ttd, a union publication https://ttd.org/policy/precision-scheduled-railroading-threatens-to-gut-americas-freight-rail-system/ https://ttd.org/policy/precision-scheduled-railroading-threa... https://ttd.org/policy/ttd-president-greg-regan-testifies-at-fra-hearing-in-support-of-two-person-crews/ https://ttd.org/policy/ttd-president-greg-regan-testifies-at... notably, workers are forbidden from calling in sick, and are complaining about scheduling that disregards sleep, reduced maintenance, and dangerously increased train length. railroads have laid off about 30% of staff in the last few years, and unions have struggled to achieve rules as basic as forbidding single-person crews.
  - sclarisse 4y ago
    PSR is worth some controversy but the big problem here was ordering the train to proceed after a hot-box detector found a hot axle (saying that if it’s really a problem the next one will detect it, which it did, but it was too late to stop). That’s just bypassing the safeties deliberately.
    - iinnPP 4y ago
      And nobody will even go to jail for that. Maybe a adult summer camp, but probably not. Guess what will happen again?
    - ruined 4y ago
      yes, there seems to be a lot of management pressure to disregard risks in order to keep schedule.
    - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
      Those were line level employees, not fat cat MBAs. It'll be real interesting to see what sort of incentives those people were and weren't subject to. You don't just order a train that might be on fire to keep going unless your equipment is chronically faulty or you are really, really, really sure it won't be your ass. Sounds like a "when everyone is responsible nobody is" situation.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  So you cut corner A because that has results in disaster, now they've cut corner B and that resulted in disaster? Do they have an Obsessive Compulsive Corner Cutting Disorder? Sounds like the 'problem' is irresponsible management and investors that never suffer the consequences of their actions.
- dotancohen 4y ago
  Slightly OT, but the XKCD 28 hour week is terrific. I've twice tan a test week using it, and I was more refreshed, and got more work done, than any other week. I also enjoyed more sunshine too. I'm sure that it's not for everybody, but it is a terrific solution to _some_ lifestyle issues. Not to mention the drop in peak resource usage (electric, roads, etc) if people were to stagger it in three shifts.
  - paulmd 4y ago
    I used to run the 28 hour week in grad school and really enjoyed it personally as well. The problem is keeping contact with everyone else when your schedule is rolling all across the calendar. I gotta pick the car up at 3 and call the dentist after they open at 10, and I have a class monday-wednesday-friday at 10am. 28 hour week would work a lot better in a city where everything is open 24h than a rural area where the grocery store closes at 8.
    - dotancohen 4y ago
      Yes, agreed. It does present scheduling challenges. It would certainly work better in a society that had other people on 28 hour days.
candiddevmike 4y ago
Make these companies government owned and operate them like the post office.
- sclarisse 4y ago
  Not sure if adding sovereign immunity to the situation would help. Managers take shortcuts to get ahead in a lot of situations; consider, for instance, Chernobyl. It’s one of the reasons I think the “prioritizing profits” narrative rings hollow. Any profits they would have preserved by not-stopping for the first hotbox detector? Already burned by the costs of the closure and the response so far. If anything, chasing profits better would have prevented this.
  - Macha 4y ago
    It's more so chasing short term profits. How many of the executives and decision makers responsible for the issues of the rail workers have moved on and don't need to deal with the consequences of this? Sure, it sucks for the final set of shareholders and execs holding the bill, but capitalism rewarded all their predecessors.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    > Not sure if adding sovereign immunity to the situation would help. It would help me rationalise why no decisions maker ever goes to jail after their decisions kill people, even when they are private companies
  - Spooky23 4y ago
    Remember the profit gets realized upfront and benefits the leadership. The disaster is the future guy‘a problem.
    - iinnPP 4y ago
      Surely related to another story on HN right now about long term and short term estimates. Like these powerful people can't look through history at what comes when the line is finally crossed for enough people.
88913527 4y ago
Not that I disagree with you, but me and many others are planning our retirements accounts around assumptions of 8-9% growth. Stock market returns and real economic productivity aren't the same thing, but I think it would be deeply challenging for us to change course. Low growth creates a lot of new issues which are debatably worse than the axles-on-fire problem, but this is a conterfactual argument.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  > Not that I disagree with you, but me and many others are planning our retirements accounts around assumptions of 8-9% growth. Actions have consequences. When the entire retirement plan of everyone in the country able to set money aside in a 401k (which isn't applicable for a lot of low-wage employees) is tied to the stock markets, politics is effectively held hostage by the companies in the S&P 500 - politicians simply can't risk enacting any policy that could send these stocks tanking. The US is in for a really, really wild ride for the next decades as a lot of things that have to be done simply to keep the planet able to support human life will be things that massively complicate or, in the case of anything fossil fuel related, make impossible the business of a lot of large companies, which will send their stocks tanking.
  - quacked 4y ago
    When I was young, I assumed the 401k had been around forever. But it was introduced in 1978! We're nearing the end of the 50-year period that the guys who invented it would really need to get staggeringly rich off of the concept, and now that they're getting ready to die everyone's overreliance on the system they set up is causing total gridlock in American life. You can't do ANYTHING that threatens the stock market. The President can't give good advice like "save your money and don't go into debt on new cars" because if people stop spending, everyone's retirement accounts stagnate. (Edit: as a matter of fact, recently the President has been actually advertising going into debt for new cars. And it works! My poor-with-finances brother wants to buy a $38,000 truck, and he's got less than $500 in savings and rents an apartment.) I'm between 25-30 and I'm not even remotely planning on having enough money when I retire. My plan is to have kids, teach them to be clever and resourceful, and then live with them. If they won't have me, I'll live as a pauper in the grand new order when I have to retire. Greater men than I have died penniless.
CPLX 4y ago
Maybe they can be met by reducing the massive siphoning off of wealth from the business sector that happens when monopoly profits accrue.
rinze 4y ago
> Speaking from anecdotal experience, over the years this constant push for more complex and efficient work from individuals has lead to me cutting more corners than I ever wanted to and producing more questionable products and services in the name of efficiency. I read a while ago a perfect word to describe this world we're living in: crapitalism.
- goalieca 4y ago
  You’re kidding yourself if you don’t think the soviets or Chinese also don’t cut corners under their economic systems.
  - cptskippy 4y ago
    You're kidding yourself if you think the op was suggesting we abandon capitalism. This absolutist mindset has to stop. We can acknowledge our current system is flawed without suggested we abandon it entirely for something else. The reality is that our regulation of our system could be better. Your binary thinking is lazy and closes you off to the possibility that we could improve our system.
    - goalieca 4y ago
      I gave two counter-examples of different economic systems. It’s clear capitalism isn’t the problem if you think about why those other systems failed.
      - cptskippy 4y ago
        If you think about what you just said, it makes no sense: > I've given two examples of different economic systems that I've deemed failures that prove our specific implementation of an economic system isn't problematic. That's like saying: > In my opinion bikes and trains are failures that prove my gas guzzling SUV is the best vehicle in the world and there's absolutely no room for improvement in any way.
      - akiselev 4y ago
conductr 4y ago
While I don’t disagree, The assumption you’re making is that high margins would increase spending/investment versus being cash flow for shareholders (or some similar non infrastructure investment). I don’t necessarily believe this is the best or most likely assumption given modern management priorities.

dsfyu404ed 4y ago

Industries like airlines and railroad have the problem where you can't cut the corners that can be tastefully and carefully cut because once upon a time someone went overboard, hands were wrung, and a law or rule was made. So then when you're squeezed you cut some corner no sane person would cut with predictable results. It wouldn't surprise me to hear that the railroad had implemented the XKCD 28hr day or something dumb like that because that was their only way to squeeze more man hours out of the month without violating the law or violating their union contracts. Edit: not to say the 28hr day is dumb

ruined 4y ago
it's hard to find good news coverage of the actual details of the dispute, but it seems to be fairly basic staff reductions intended to increase margin (already historically massive) the keyword to search is "precision scheduled railroading" as that's the management term recent nymag from last year's attempted strike https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/11/rail-strike-why-the-railroads-wont-give-in-on-paid-leave-psr-precision-scheduled-railroading.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/11/rail-strike-why-the-... wsws coverage has labor complaint details https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/02/19/prec-f19.html https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/02/19/prec-f19.html https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/08/01/rail-a01.html https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/08/01/rail-a01.html ttd, a union publication https://ttd.org/policy/precision-scheduled-railroading-threatens-to-gut-americas-freight-rail-system/ https://ttd.org/policy/precision-scheduled-railroading-threa... https://ttd.org/policy/ttd-president-greg-regan-testifies-at-fra-hearing-in-support-of-two-person-crews/ https://ttd.org/policy/ttd-president-greg-regan-testifies-at... notably, workers are forbidden from calling in sick, and are complaining about scheduling that disregards sleep, reduced maintenance, and dangerously increased train length. railroads have laid off about 30% of staff in the last few years, and unions have struggled to achieve rules as basic as forbidding single-person crews.
- sclarisse 4y ago
  PSR is worth some controversy but the big problem here was ordering the train to proceed after a hot-box detector found a hot axle (saying that if it’s really a problem the next one will detect it, which it did, but it was too late to stop). That’s just bypassing the safeties deliberately.
  - iinnPP 4y ago
    And nobody will even go to jail for that. Maybe a adult summer camp, but probably not. Guess what will happen again?
  - ruined 4y ago
    yes, there seems to be a lot of management pressure to disregard risks in order to keep schedule.
  - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
    Those were line level employees, not fat cat MBAs. It'll be real interesting to see what sort of incentives those people were and weren't subject to. You don't just order a train that might be on fire to keep going unless your equipment is chronically faulty or you are really, really, really sure it won't be your ass. Sounds like a "when everyone is responsible nobody is" situation.
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
So you cut corner A because that has results in disaster, now they've cut corner B and that resulted in disaster? Do they have an Obsessive Compulsive Corner Cutting Disorder? Sounds like the 'problem' is irresponsible management and investors that never suffer the consequences of their actions.
dotancohen 4y ago
Slightly OT, but the XKCD 28 hour week is terrific. I've twice tan a test week using it, and I was more refreshed, and got more work done, than any other week. I also enjoyed more sunshine too. I'm sure that it's not for everybody, but it is a terrific solution to _some_ lifestyle issues. Not to mention the drop in peak resource usage (electric, roads, etc) if people were to stagger it in three shifts.
- paulmd 4y ago
  I used to run the 28 hour week in grad school and really enjoyed it personally as well. The problem is keeping contact with everyone else when your schedule is rolling all across the calendar. I gotta pick the car up at 3 and call the dentist after they open at 10, and I have a class monday-wednesday-friday at 10am. 28 hour week would work a lot better in a city where everything is open 24h than a rural area where the grocery store closes at 8.
  - dotancohen 4y ago
    Yes, agreed. It does present scheduling challenges. It would certainly work better in a society that had other people on 28 hour days.

candiddevmike 4y ago

Make these companies government owned and operate them like the post office.

sclarisse 4y ago
Not sure if adding sovereign immunity to the situation would help. Managers take shortcuts to get ahead in a lot of situations; consider, for instance, Chernobyl. It’s one of the reasons I think the “prioritizing profits” narrative rings hollow. Any profits they would have preserved by not-stopping for the first hotbox detector? Already burned by the costs of the closure and the response so far. If anything, chasing profits better would have prevented this.
- Macha 4y ago
  It's more so chasing short term profits. How many of the executives and decision makers responsible for the issues of the rail workers have moved on and don't need to deal with the consequences of this? Sure, it sucks for the final set of shareholders and execs holding the bill, but capitalism rewarded all their predecessors.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  > Not sure if adding sovereign immunity to the situation would help. It would help me rationalise why no decisions maker ever goes to jail after their decisions kill people, even when they are private companies
- Spooky23 4y ago
  Remember the profit gets realized upfront and benefits the leadership. The disaster is the future guy‘a problem.
  - iinnPP 4y ago
    Surely related to another story on HN right now about long term and short term estimates. Like these powerful people can't look through history at what comes when the line is finally crossed for enough people.

88913527 4y ago

Not that I disagree with you, but me and many others are planning our retirements accounts around assumptions of 8-9% growth. Stock market returns and real economic productivity aren't the same thing, but I think it would be deeply challenging for us to change course. Low growth creates a lot of new issues which are debatably worse than the axles-on-fire problem, but this is a conterfactual argument.

mschuster91 4y ago
> Not that I disagree with you, but me and many others are planning our retirements accounts around assumptions of 8-9% growth. Actions have consequences. When the entire retirement plan of everyone in the country able to set money aside in a 401k (which isn't applicable for a lot of low-wage employees) is tied to the stock markets, politics is effectively held hostage by the companies in the S&P 500 - politicians simply can't risk enacting any policy that could send these stocks tanking. The US is in for a really, really wild ride for the next decades as a lot of things that have to be done simply to keep the planet able to support human life will be things that massively complicate or, in the case of anything fossil fuel related, make impossible the business of a lot of large companies, which will send their stocks tanking.
- quacked 4y ago
  When I was young, I assumed the 401k had been around forever. But it was introduced in 1978! We're nearing the end of the 50-year period that the guys who invented it would really need to get staggeringly rich off of the concept, and now that they're getting ready to die everyone's overreliance on the system they set up is causing total gridlock in American life. You can't do ANYTHING that threatens the stock market. The President can't give good advice like "save your money and don't go into debt on new cars" because if people stop spending, everyone's retirement accounts stagnate. (Edit: as a matter of fact, recently the President has been actually advertising going into debt for new cars. And it works! My poor-with-finances brother wants to buy a $38,000 truck, and he's got less than $500 in savings and rents an apartment.) I'm between 25-30 and I'm not even remotely planning on having enough money when I retire. My plan is to have kids, teach them to be clever and resourceful, and then live with them. If they won't have me, I'll live as a pauper in the grand new order when I have to retire. Greater men than I have died penniless.

CPLX 4y ago

Maybe they can be met by reducing the massive siphoning off of wealth from the business sector that happens when monopoly profits accrue.

rinze 4y ago

> Speaking from anecdotal experience, over the years this constant push for more complex and efficient work from individuals has lead to me cutting more corners than I ever wanted to and producing more questionable products and services in the name of efficiency. I read a while ago a perfect word to describe this world we're living in: crapitalism.

goalieca 4y ago
You’re kidding yourself if you don’t think the soviets or Chinese also don’t cut corners under their economic systems.
- cptskippy 4y ago
  You're kidding yourself if you think the op was suggesting we abandon capitalism. This absolutist mindset has to stop. We can acknowledge our current system is flawed without suggested we abandon it entirely for something else. The reality is that our regulation of our system could be better. Your binary thinking is lazy and closes you off to the possibility that we could improve our system.
  - goalieca 4y ago
    I gave two counter-examples of different economic systems. It’s clear capitalism isn’t the problem if you think about why those other systems failed.
    - cptskippy 4y ago
      If you think about what you just said, it makes no sense: > I've given two examples of different economic systems that I've deemed failures that prove our specific implementation of an economic system isn't problematic. That's like saying: > In my opinion bikes and trains are failures that prove my gas guzzling SUV is the best vehicle in the world and there's absolutely no room for improvement in any way.
    - akiselev 4y ago

conductr 4y ago

While I don’t disagree, The assumption you’re making is that high margins would increase spending/investment versus being cash flow for shareholders (or some similar non infrastructure investment). I don’t necessarily believe this is the best or most likely assumption given modern management priorities.