Why the future isn't all that bleak

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

This entire enterprise is dependent on cheap air shipping. Take that out of the equation and is it viable?

He said that some of it goes via UPS and Fedex, which I presume includes ground shipping sometimes. Most big online shippers provide a variety of shipping options, air or ground, depending on one's price versus time preferences.

My guess is that online shopping, shipped via UPS and Fedex, is about as energy efficient as local store shopping if one chooses the 2 or 3 day ground shipping and orders in large enough quantity to make a single decent sized box. The boxes move in big trucks, automatically directed hither and yon, with just the last mile being done by a delivery truck that can make a stop every few minutes, probably using less petro on the portion of its trip specific to any one single delivery than a typical consumers trip to a local store.

For bulk common goods, like my years supply of toilet paper, rice and beans, the local big box store wins. For fresh farm goods, such as good raw milk, the local farm wins. For all manner of less common goods, shopping online wins, in variety, price and I claim efficiency (for sufficiently large or unusual orders.) The electricity bill of your local supermarket is not cheap either.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

where do think the world is heading regarding productivity? Where do you think the world should head with regards to productivity?

The context of your replies, to whom and to which post you are responding, is not immediately obvious to the rest of us, unless you quote a snippet of what you're replying to. So ... I rather skipped over your several replies, likely missing your good points. Sorry.

[chr5648]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

I'm surprised no one asked the real question here: Are they profitable? They are funded by some venture capital on their website, but no financial statements. They can make all the fancy videos with music they want but, I find it hard to believe this business model is substantially profitable to be worth the risk, I'd like to see some financial statements.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

See also this talk by Jeremy Rifkin ...

Something about what Rifkin is saying seems wrong, confused, or misguided to me, but I am unclear what.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

I'm surprised no one asked the real question here: Are they profitable?

Diapers.com may or may not be profitable; certainly many dot.com businesses flame out. But some dot.com businesses have done well and I expect to continue to do well, even in the hard times that my doomer predictions forecast.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

This [McDonald's] could all be done much better with a vending machine.

I doubt that. My guess would be that the present state of automation is cost affective only at higher volumes and production rates than your local McDonald's sustains, on average over all the hours in a day and week. Fast food may have the nutritional value of cardboard, but it is "freshly" prepared. The shelf-life of a McDonald's french fry or milkshake is in the tens of minutes. Capital equipment costs and reprogramming costs for a robotic burger flipper or fry cook would not justify using one for the hundreds of orders served a day at one location.

The thing that defines fast food is this ( arguably ) irrelevant labor to create cardboard food.

The labor is not irrelevant, just not demanding of much. The food is cardboard, yes.

We've gone from dying of trauma (the "cave" man) to dying of infectious diseases (earlier generations of agricultural and industrial workers and poorer nations even now) to dying of chronic illnesses (wealthier nations now.) Fast foods and store bought processed foods are major contributors to chronic illnesses.

[marvenger]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

The context of your replies, to whom and to which post you are responding, is not immediately obvious to the rest of us, unless you quote a snippet of what you're replying to. So ... I rather skipped over your several replies, likely missing your good points. Sorry.

TPC, isn't the context and whom i'm responding to obvious from the flow shown in the hybrid view. I'm not sure how you are reading these posts - as piecemeal bits or as flows as shown in the hybrid view - I would have thought that this is the point of hybrid view to allow the efficiency of not having to give the context of everything.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

TPC, isn't the context and whom i'm responding to obvious from the flow shown in the hybrid view.

Some of us read in "linear mode", so as to see posts in time order (all posts since the last time we visited a thread.)

Even the "Hybrid Mode" is not that easy to decipher, as best as I can tell. There's a scrolling window near the top, showing the nesting threaded structure, and a linear presentation of the posts below. I have to match the time stamps on the scolling threaded structure with the time stamps on individual posts to see just which posts responds to which post. ... or am I missing something here? Unless a particular reply looks especially enticing, I don't usually bother figuring out to which post it responds if the post doesn't have a quoted context to show that.

I tend to recommend the poster spend several units of effort to save their readers each one unit of effort, on the presumption that there are many readers for each post. The goal is to reduce total (one poster plus many readers) effort.

[marvenger]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

Some of us read in "linear mode", so as to see posts in time order (all posts since the last time we visited a thread.)
I have to match the time stamps on the scolling threaded structure with the time stamps on individual posts to see just which posts responds to which post. ... or am I missing something here?

I tend to recommend the poster spend several units of effort to save their readers each one unit of effort, on the presumption that there are many readers for each post. The goal is to reduce total (one poster plus many readers) effort.

in Hybrid mode, posts you haven't read before are highlighted in orange. If you click on a post in the hybrid mode, that post and subsequent posts in chronological tree below it are displayed for viewing below the hybrid view. Don't know if that helps.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

in Hybrid mode, posts you haven't read before are highlighted in orange. If you click on a post in the hybrid mode, that post and subsequent posts in chronological tree below it are displayed for viewing below the hybrid view. Don't know if that helps.

Ah - I did not know that. I almost never see a thread in hybrid mode except just after viewing in my usual linear mode and switching momentarily to hybrid to decipher the threading structure of a particularly interesting (but reference quote challenged) post. So I don't recall ever seeing an orange post (I just read them all, or at least displayed them all, a minute earlier in linear mode.)

I guess this is further confirmation that switching modes has its rough edges. Hmm...

[marvenger]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

[QUOTE=ThePythonicCow;163721]Ah - I did not know that. QUOTE]

I was struggling to understand why you thought the linear mode was easier, which I haven't even looked at yet but will at stage. Well hope that helps.

[ggirod]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

A quick view of http://diapers.com reveals that it is like every other Internet site, Amazon being the best example, except that they sell diapers at a loss to attract business for their high markup baby products.

Being somewhat an expert in automation I started instead thinking of fleets of jets taking off in formation from NJ carrying diapers, paper towels, and toilet paper overnight to customers around the world. The value and volume of product made no sense. Same problem for soap that is very heavy. The robots are cute, but this is just a gimmick to sell baby products at high markups through "normal" distribution channels. If you noticed in the video, the whole thing was staged in a minimally stocked test lab with robots that were not minimally capable of retrieving product from shelves and could at most navigate the aisles. The workers of the retail world need not worry about being displaced very soon by these little critters.

The difficulty of automating a warehouse is not in the robots or carriers, it is in structuring the facility so that automation can handle the product from incoming to outgoing without excess assistance. In general that means that every item is located precisely at x,y,z coordinates and in packaging that allows for automated handling. For example, I would like to see those robots handling the dresses, cribs, car seats, toys, nipples, and baby rattles featured on the site ... including selecting them off the shelves, packing them into boxes, and shipping them.

The excitement of high tech and automation selling baby/soap products is just a promotional scheme to get buzz. It is just like toys.com, drugstore.com, and lots of other sites that preceded them. What is pretty sad, however, is that energy costs are still so low and retail markups so high that anyone seriously considers delivering a bottle of soap, etc. to your door having expended a gallon or more of oil in the process. My bet is that it won't last long because bricks and mortar stores just need to put items on sale to subvert the whole business model.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

My bet is that it won't last long because bricks and mortar stores just need to put items on sale to subvert the whole business model.

For commodity items, especially bulky ones (such as diapers) in which a modest number of SKU's are sufficient for a large customer base, I agree with your comments. Delivery via local stores is more efficient.

As soon as you get into stuff that doesn't reliably sell in decent quantity (relative to shelf life, inventory cost and floor space required) wherever it's offered, then on-line ordering and UPS/Fedex start to gain the upper hand quickly.

Now that financing of inventory is more difficult than it was up until a couple of years ago, the advantage may swing more to the on-line shops.

P.S. -- I did not post this response at 05:48 CST, despite what the forum software claims. I posted it at 10:48 CST, three hours after Raviv's 07:25 CST post. This forum software sometimes gets confused as to the hour.

[Rajiv]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

Perhaps Seabright's talk may clarify and add to Rifkin's presentation

Economist Paul Seabright shows how an awareness of the fragility of our social institutions and their roots in our evolutionary past can help us deal with the challenges of today's globally networked world.

[ViC78]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

Capital equipment costs and reprogramming costs for a robotic burger flipper or fry cook would not justify using one for the hundreds of orders served a day at one location.
The labor is not irrelevant, just not demanding of much. The food is cardboard, yes.

We already have a fully automated fast food vending machine in NYC - http://www.bamnfood.com/how_it_works.html

Have never eaten there, but do see people eating there.