Dont' discount the value of learning a skilled trade.

[*TheLeonardLeap*]

(09-01-2017, 01:09 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: Yeah, don't use truckers as an example. Those jobs will be gone soon, gone the way of self-driving vehicles.

(09-01-2017, 01:19 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: Yeah, but that ain't stopping them. Those long haul routes will be automated as soon as they can. They'll stage drivers outside of cities and everything because navigating urban traffic and roads will be more difficult to solve for, but those long hauls will be the first driverless vehicles we see in this country. As soon as it happens, all the big box stores will switch to it immediately.

Except that then there will be an enormous demand for armed guards after tons of driverless semis get hijacked or broken into mid-drive, and the cost of those armed guards to ride in them would more or less make the automation savings vanish.

Same thing will happen if that whole drone delivery thing comes to fruition. There will be a lot of stolen drones and packages.

[SunsetBengal]

(09-01-2017, 01:29 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: Except that then there will be an enormous demand for armed guards after tons of driverless semis get hijacked or broken into mid-drive, and the cost of those armed guards to ride in them would more or less make the automation savings vanish.

Same thing will happen if that whole drone delivery thing comes to fruition. There will be a lot of stolen drones and packages.

C'mon man, you can't rob Optimus Prime.

[Belsnickel]

(09-01-2017, 01:29 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: Except that then there will be an enormous demand for armed guards after tons of driverless semis get hijacked or broken into mid-drive, and the cost of those armed guards to ride in them would more or less make the automation savings vanish.

Same thing will happen if that whole drone delivery thing comes to fruition. There will be a lot of stolen drones and packages.

That's an interesting take, and not something I had heard when there have been discussions about this I have been involved in. My guess is that there would be other attempts at infrastructure being put in place to prevent this that would negate the need for security on board each vehicle.

[*TheLeonardLeap*]

(09-01-2017, 01:38 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: That's an interesting take, and not something I had heard when there have been discussions about this I have been involved in. My guess is that there would be other attempts at infrastructure being put in place to prevent this that would negate the need for security on board each vehicle.

You're going to have trucks going through the mountains of West Virginia, going through the relatively uninhabited plains states, through the West coast deserts, Rockies, etc...

There will be a lot of instances of times where an automated semi will be hours from any meaningful response. Even ignoring things like electronics, meats, cheeses, alcohol, etc... a semi full of even something like undershirts or socks would be worth at least a couple hundred thousand.

If a semi gets spike stripped or tire netted on a Wyoming mountain road or barren Nevada desert road, even if you throw in alert sensors that feed to something like a home alarm system-style center who forward it to the police, they aren't going to be there soon.

The infrastructure to maintain a quick response time for ~2.700,000 miles of roads (2008 number, so there's undoubtedly more now) would absolutely destroy any cost savings by automation. It's a big country.

So I think that automation for shorter trips.. like a company in Cincinnati would be able to make automated semis have a trip to Indy or Lousiville or something, but if we're talking long haul? I see too many problems for that.

- - - - - -- -

EDIT: I didn't even touch on automated semis in places like Detroit. Lol

[Belsnickel]

(09-01-2017, 01:57 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: You're going to have trucks going through the mountains of West Virginia, going through the relatively uninhabited plains states, through the West coast deserts, Rockies, etc...

There will be a lot of instances of times where an automated semi will be hours from any meaningful response. Even ignoring things like electronics, meats, cheeses, alcohol, etc... a semi full of even something like undershirts or socks would be worth at least a couple hundred thousand.

If a semi gets spike stripped or tire netted on a Wyoming mountain road or barren Nevada desert road, even if you throw in alert sensors that feed to something like a home alarm system-style center who forward it to the police, they aren't going to be there soon.

The infrastructure to maintain a quick response time for ~2.700,000 miles of roads (2008 number, so there's undoubtedly more now) would absolutely destroy any cost savings by automation. It's a big country.

So I think that automation for shorter trips.. like a company in Cincinnati would be able to make automated semis have a trip to Indy or Lousiville or something, but if we're talking long haul? I see too many problems for that.

Definitely some interesting things to keep in mind. In all seriousness, this could be something I work on in the future regarding putting public policies in place for these sorts of things. I've had discussions about the future of driverless semis, but this has not been brought up in any extended way.

(09-01-2017, 01:57 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: EDIT: I didn't even touch on automated semis in places like Detroit. Lol

Yeah, we won't see the driverless trucks in cities for a long time. Not just for security, but because navigation would be trickier and would cause higher liability issues.

[GMDino]

(09-01-2017, 02:16 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: Definitely some interesting things to keep in mind. In all seriousness, this could be something I work on in the future regarding putting public policies in place for these sorts of things. I've had discussions about the future of driverless semis, but this has not been brought up in any extended way.


Yeah, we won't see the driverless trucks in cities for a long time. Not just for security, but because navigation would be trickier and would cause higher liability issues.

Even in our small town GPS would be awful.  There's a road to go the home of one of my son's friend.  GPS tells you to make a right on the street and his house is on the left.  And it is...but that is a one way street.  You have to go down and make the next left and another left.

And everyone who uses GPS to find our place of business ends up two towns over.  Out mailing zip code and business zip code are different than the actual zip code for the town we are in.  

Plus sometimes our shop is closed and gates are locked.  I wonder if a truck would just plow through it!! 

[Benton]

(09-01-2017, 10:16 AM)BmorePat87 Wrote: You seem to think that the only majors are library science (which is a lot more than putting books on a shelf) and teaching. 

According to the census, the plurality of Americans earn science related degrees (44%), followed by business (20%), education (14%). Of the remaining 22%, 13% are liberal arts, 4% are communications, and the remaining 5% is "other". 

The reality is that the issue doesn't lie with people who go to college and get degrees, it's with those who are pushed into college and never get a degree but keep the debt. Part of my job is finding alternative post secondary routes for my students. This includes jobs, job training programs, apprenticeships, internships, and community college programs that provide life skills training or certifications. 

Yeah, but how many of those science related degrees are in junk sciences like sociology, psychology, biology, ecology, astronomy (really? a degree in astronomy? look up, BOOM, you're an astronomer), oceanography, botany, geology (really? it's a friggin rock, and you spent $30k studying to know it's a friggin rock?), etc?

When i was a kid, we had one science class. it was called gym. All you needed to know about science -- fungal infections, fight or flight, puberty -- you learned in gym class. Maybe if these colleges got back to having more dodgeball and less botany (really? it's a damn flower, stick it in a book) we would get back to making cars in Detroit again.




Seriously, though, I'm a big advocate of bringing the trades to more schools. If a guy can learn to operate a dozer or repair HVAC equipment and make a decent living, that guy is probably going to find a higher job fulfillment than someone who gets a masters degree and stamps paperwork. Maybe the paperwork guy makes more money, but he's always biting off a lot more debt.

We sometimes have a stigma that the guy who cleans out your septic tank is lesser of respect than someone who appraises your loan just because one guy wears a tie and the other wears coveralls. That's unfortunate.

[oncemoreuntothejimbreech]

(09-01-2017, 10:09 AM)SunsetBengal Wrote: Not sure what point you are trying to lead up to, but I'm not really seeing much of a correlation to anything in the article I posted in the OP.  The article claims a serious need for people in skilled trades.  I agreed, and stated that it was something that I have known for years.  Even went so far as to say that if I had to do things over again, I might have went straight to that path, rather than the one that led me where I am.

So, what point are you leading up to?  Are you trying to disprove the premise of the article?  Are you trying to show that I have no business supporting it, as I do possess a bachelor's degree?

The point I get from this thread and the meme i quoted is college degrees are stupid. And how many times have you heard people claim colleges degrees are just a piece of paper?

But, the reality is you went to school for the education and training necessary to enter a new career because it offered better pay and job opportunities. Pay and opportunities which wouldn't be available to you without the additional education. An Associate's or Bachelor's degree aren't just silly pieces of paper you need to get a job as some people try to portray. Rather they represent the entire process you had to complete in your field and it should help indicate your qualifications in a field to a potential employer. And so a land surveyor technologist makes more than your average construction worker and a civil engineer makes more than a land surveyor technologist. Not because of a piece of paper, but because of what they learn to get that piece of paper. Instead of blaming the people who pushed you to go to college where you chose to study communications, maybe you should have chosen to study civil engineering instead of communications.

Long story short; you are where you are career wise because of advanced education, not because of a lack of it.

[Nebuchadnezzar]

(09-01-2017, 10:00 AM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: Lol, any time Pat. 

Nah, I just feel like almost anything good for you, too much of it is poisonous. You need water to survive, but if you drink too much, you can die. The same with Iron, or Vitamin D, or really much of anything. Our society has simply been overdosing on college.

College was good when it was actually about getting people advanced education for things that you generally just can't learn with OTJ Training, but now it's just become a massive expected requirement for things that have no business requiring it, and causing tons of people to fall into large amounts of debt.

Funny story, when P&G was hiring for their new sweetener plant (or was it a fat substitute plant?) down on Spring Grover, I went down and applied for their Shipping and Recieving job they had posted. I walk in, fill out an application and handed it back in. The guy I handed it to asked if I had a college degree. I told him no and he said "Unfortunately, you need at least two years in college." I said "To drive a forklift?" and he said "Unfortunately, yes."

I just walked out dumbfounded.

What most likely happened was the guy saw I was young and thought I didn't know anything or something, lol.

[SunsetBengal]

(09-01-2017, 03:00 PM)oncemoreuntothejimbreech Wrote: The point I get from this thread and the meme i quoted is college degrees are stupid. And how many times have you heard people claim colleges degrees are just a piece of paper?

But, the reality is you went to school for the education and training necessary to enter a new career because it offered better pay and job opportunities. Pay and opportunities which wouldn't be available to you without the additional education. An Associate's or Bachelor's degree aren't just silly pieces of paper you need to get a job as some people try to portray. Rather they represent the entire process you had to complete in your field and it should help indicate your qualifications in a field to a potential employer. And so a land surveyor technologist makes more than your average construction worker and a civil engineer makes more than a land surveyor technologist. Not because of a piece of paper, but because of what they learn to get that piece of paper. Instead of blaming the people who pushed you to go to college where you chose to study communications, maybe you should have chosen to study civil engineering instead of communications.

Long story short; you are where you are career wise because of advanced education, not because of a lack of it.

So then you are saying that skilled trades are a form of advanced education.  I can agree with that.  Now how or why we needed to go over my own personal experiences to come to that conclusion, I'm not really clear on.  

But what the premise of the article is saying is that there has been too much focus on encouraging students to attain bachelor's degrees, when there is a large demand for people with specialized training that requires less than a bachelor's degree.  I affirmed that assertion, and that is where our conversation began.  Simply because I possess a bachelor's degree does not disqualify me from being capable of agreeing that there is a big need for skilled trades.  Hell, if radio paid any real money (outside of advertising sales or station management) I would have stuck with it.  It was a fun and satisfying job.  

[Au165]

(09-01-2017, 01:29 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: Except that then there will be an enormous demand for armed guards after tons of driverless semis get hijacked or broken into mid-drive, and the cost of those armed guards to ride in them would more or less make the automation savings vanish.

Same thing will happen if that whole drone delivery thing comes to fruition. There will be a lot of stolen drones and packages.

You have watched way too much fast and furious haha.

[SunsetBengal]

(09-01-2017, 05:04 PM)Au165 Wrote: You have watched way too much fast and furious haha.

Yeah, or even Mad Max..

[SunsetBengal]

(09-01-2017, 01:57 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: You're going to have trucks going through the mountains of West Virginia, going through the relatively uninhabited plains states, through the West coast deserts, Rockies, etc...

There will be a lot of instances of times where an automated semi will be hours from any meaningful response. Even ignoring things like electronics, meats, cheeses, alcohol, etc... a semi full of even something like undershirts or socks would be worth at least a couple hundred thousand.

If a semi gets spike stripped or tire netted on a Wyoming mountain road or barren Nevada desert road, even if you throw in alert sensors that feed to something like a home alarm system-style center who forward it to the police, they aren't going to be there soon.

The infrastructure to maintain a quick response time for ~2.700,000 miles of roads (2008 number, so there's undoubtedly more now) would absolutely destroy any cost savings by automation. It's a big country.

So I think that automation for shorter trips.. like a company in Cincinnati would be able to make automated semis have a trip to Indy or Lousiville or something, but if we're talking long haul? I see too many problems for that.

- - - - - -- -

EDIT: I didn't even touch on automated semis in places like Detroit. Lol

Trucks already ride through all of those places, typically without incident.  You think that Law Enforcement would be slower to the scene of an automated response than to a truck driven by a human?  Most of the truck hijackings occur in the cities.

If we're going the way of automation, wouldn't rail be a smarter, more economical choice for unmanned transfer of goods? (besides the startup cost, or course)

[oncemoreuntothejimbreech]

(09-01-2017, 04:37 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: So then you are saying that skilled trades are a form of advanced education.  I can agree with that.  Now how or why we needed to go over my own personal experiences to come to that conclusion, I'm not really clear on.  

But what the premise of the article is saying is that there has been too much focus on encouraging students to attain bachelor's degrees, when there is a large demand for people with specialized training that requires less than a bachelor's degree.  I affirmed that assertion, and that is where our conversation began.  Simply because I possess a bachelor's degree does not disqualify me from being capable of agreeing that there is a big need for skilled trades.  Hell, if radio paid any real money (outside of advertising sales or station management) I would have stuck with it.  It was a fun and satisfying job.  

Yeah, it's additional education. I guess the part I have trouble with is the suggestion one path is better or worse than the other. One isn't necessarily better, just different. It really boils down to individual interests. Belittling a college education is just the other side of the coin to belittling vocational training.

With your personal experience I would think you would understand the pros and cons to each path. So how better to illustrate my point to you than by using your own experience?

[*TheLeonardLeap*]

(09-01-2017, 05:35 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: Trucks already ride through all of those places, typically without incident.  You think that Law Enforcement would be slower to the scene of an automated response than to a truck driven by a human?  Most of the truck hijackings occur in the cities.

If we're going the way of automation, wouldn't rail be a smarter, more economical choice for unmanned transfer of goods? (besides the startup cost, or course)

I'm saying a living human being who may or may not be armed is more of a natural deterrent from crime than nothing. They are also more capable of making decisions, and less likely to be hacked (believe it or not), glitch, or have some kind of exploitable feature. Just like a UPS guy is less likely to get a package stolen from him than a random robot rolling down a sidewalk is.

An unmanned semi carrying laptops for instance, could be worth millions of dollars.

Rails would be smarter, but they've gone the opposite direction of letting our existing train system deteriorate and go more highway shipping.