There are some people for who this is the opportunity of a lifetime.
PSAR volunteers are also called Trailhead Stewards and people who care a lot about the environment and the health and safety of people flock to these positions. You get training, accommodation that is impossible to obtain otherwise, and experience. There is almost always a waiting list for trailhead stewards.
I’m a watershed steward so I spend a ludicrous number of hours poking around storm drains, parking lots, and streams, writing and giving presentations, compiling reports, and wrangling volunteers for cleanup and drainage projects all in exchange for $0.00.
I like sailing and swimming and fishing and I want my local rivers and bays to be clean. If I liked hiking in the mountains I’d probably be a trailhead steward.
I'm not a libertarian so I live in the real world, in what world are you not allowed to fly without an ID?
I've flown, yes, post-9/11, yes, post-shoe-bomber, yes, post-RealID, without an ID on multiple occasions.
You walk up to the counter and say "I've forgotten my ID and need to make this flight" and they type on their computer, hand you a slip of paper, and then you show that slip of paper to the TSA staffer at the podium checking IDs and they ask you some questions, and you're waved through.
>In the event you arrive at the airport without valid identification, because it is lost or at home, you may still be allowed to fly. The TSA officer may ask you to complete an identity verification process which includes collecting information such as your name, current address, and other personal information to confirm your identity. If your identity is confirmed, you will be allowed to enter the screening checkpoint. You will be subject to additional screening, to include a patdown and screening of carry-on property.
> You walk up to the counter and say "I've forgotten my ID and need to make this flight" and they type on their computer, hand you a slip of paper, and then you show that slip of paper to the TSA staffer at the podium checking IDs and they ask you some questions, and you're waved through.
This still requires you to identify yourself verbally to the TSA, and participate in a verbal interrogation. The legal pleadings referenced in the article claim that there's an option to not identify yourself and be subjected to "a search that is more exacting than the routine search" instead. That option does not exist in reality.
Also, if you try to follow the process you described, and tell them that you did not forget your ID, but deliberately chose not to bring it because you're not required to, they will deny you access to your flight.
>In a REAL capitalistic economy, a small shipping provider would have raised the capital immediately to capitalize on the strikes, advertised their services to UPSs customers and eaten the company away.
In the real world it takes weeks if not months to purchase a delivery vehicle. There are no delivery van lots that you go to in order to browse a wide variety of Morgan Olson and Utilimaster vans and then plop down a million dollars for 20 of them, not that 20 of them would allow you to run a parcel shipping service. You need thousands. Which means a production run at a manufacturer who is already booked through next year.
Hell, it would take weeks just to figure out WHERE to advertise much less actually inking deals, unless you like throwing money away.
It doesn't matter if you apparate a trillion dollars, time is immovable. It took a decade of conceptualizing and two years of actualizing to start FedEx.
If a rationally-acting rational actor rationalizes ten quadrillion dollars of gold into his pocket, it doesn't matter one fucking bit.
They can't buy the facilities, systems, equipment, and experience needed to do shit. They can't use their iron capitalist will to pour concrete faster.
This is one, of many, fundamental blind spot concerning reality that capitalists or pseudo-capitalists used to working in the fake online venture capitalist world have.
> In the real world it takes weeks if not months to purchase a delivery vehicle.
But you are looking at it from the perspective of someone sitting behind a keyboard, starting from scratch.
In the real world with thriving economies, there will be smaller, underdog players already operating. Maybe they are regional, or maybe they have a slower/smaller fleet.
Whatever the reason, these smaller players rise up to eat the big one because they already have something to leverage. Facilities, workers etc. They just need to raise capital to expand rapidly.
The steps in the parent post are not meant for someone starting from scratch.
There are regional parcel carriers. Two of the largest just merged (OnTrac and LaserShip).
Neither of them, nor the combined, has the assets (physical vehicles/aircraft, drivers, pilots, package handlers, terminals/hubs) to take over a substantial fraction of UPS volume on a few days’ notice. And they won’t scale up ahead of obvious opportunity because if UPS settles, they’ve got a ton of previous capital stranded and employees to fire with no associated business to pay for them.
The original post bemoaned the fact that the economy has become too concentrated to a handful of companies and is too protective of large corporations.
I took this to mean that capitalism would better work as intended if UPS was not allowed to grow to be as big as they are. They would then be a regional player themselves, one of many, and it would be easier for one or more other similarly sized companies to take over their business if they drop the ball. There would be a real competitive market.
The scenario you mentioned is the current state of affairs, where such a large company cannot be replaced, and can hold the economy hostage.
>In the real world with thriving economies, there will be smaller, underdog players already operating. Maybe they are regional, or maybe they have a slower/smaller fleet.
Yes. I use them every day. I send million of dollars of aerospace equipment to and fro every year using 3PL, none of which are UPS or FedEx or the USPS.
There are thousands of 3PL firms, each competing with each other.
If you search "full truck" and/or "intermodal" and "logistics" I guarangoddamntee there are a dozen within 50 miles of your zip code.
> They just need to raise capital to expand rapidly.
LOL
If my preferred smaller logistics firm (Polaris) was given eleventy-billion hexaseptillion dollars it would take two years at a minimum just to lease the aircraft, airport slots, and facilities needed to compete with a single-digit percentage of UPS's network.
Again, the fact that people think that smaller underdog competitors to UPS don't exist is a glaring, supermassive-black-hole-sized blind spot that pseudo-capitalists have.
Once again, your understanding of this is based on single anecdotal experiences.
In a thriving economy, there will be multiple underdogs, all competing for different segments of the market. Each one of them will eat market share - which will lead to UPS losing some customers at first. Then, if they can keep nibbling at the market share until they keep acquiring more customers.
My gut tells me that the number of fatal incidents that would be prevented by complete "takeoff to landing" automation vastly exceeds the number of incidents prevented by a human correcting a computer or recovering from a failed instrument or system.
I'm willing to bet that for every "miracle on the Hudson" there are ten or more "the pilots should have just let go of the controls and let the computer handle things, or trusted their artificial horizon after getting disoriented".
The number of FAA accident investigations that mention spatial disorientation is too great to be otherwise.
Autopilots disconnect all the time. They can have a pretty low threshold for the conditions they’ll tolerate. Autoland can handle moderate surface winds, but pilots can handle much more. Turbulence and autopilot function is more variable. Some autopilots disconnect prematurely, others need intervention. Pilots train for these idiosyncrasies.
The computer needs reliable data. When the data is faulty, the logic fails. This happened with AF 447. One annoying aspect of that event for me is the obtuse ways the system communicated what alternate law was in effect. Two of three pilots became confused by the computers’ confusion. The computer itself had given up. The plane stalled all the way into the ocean, one of the more simple conditions to recognize and recover from. The captain quicky recognized the condition and solution, but he had arrived in the cockpit too late to compel corrective action.
You are probably like me. To me there is no medical information of any kind that could embarrass or "stigmatize" me or anyone else.
But the vast majority of people are paralyzed by fear that someone might find out they have hemorrhoids.
Others live in a delusional state of paranoia where "duh gubmint" will use the info against them not realizing that any entity, governmental or otherwise, willing to do so will just ignore privacy laws anyways.
> To me there is no medical information of any kind that could embarrass or "stigmatize" me or anyone else.
The problem isn't being embarrassed. The problem is suffering real world consequences for certain types of medical treatment, such as problems getting work, renting housing, etc.
> I keep hearing about all of these nightmare scenarios, dreamed up by paranoiacs.
Not at all. These are all things that used to be pretty common. That's why medical privacy laws were enacted.
> Fix THOSE problems instead of killing people.
That would be ideal, yes. But nobody has figured out a way to do that.
BTW, I don't think your phrasing is helpful to your cause. It implies it's a black-and-white issue when in reality it's a very complex issue with a ton of nuance.
People die as a result of the lack of medical privacy too, after all.
> the entities inflicting these consequences don't care about medical privacy anyways, right?
No, they don't. But they do care about the huge fines and other legal consequences they risk by not adhering to the law.
But it's not a sexy tech company. We build actual physical products that do things-- we're not a Matryoshka doll of web services hiding an advertising service in the middle whose only purpose is to trick users into giving up private information so that dick pill ads can be served more efficiently to them.
Nor are we trying to figure out how to use AI to serve you ads better.
It's slow, boring, work that pays well and is easy (mandatory) to leave behind after you clock out at 5pm every day. PTO flows like water, and the benefits are platinum-plated.
Of course, since we don't sell dick pill ads like Google, Meta, and the others there's no chance that our stock will erupt and leave us all multi-millionaires, so it's not "sexy".
I started out as a tech writer, part time while going to school, in 2007 and am now a Senior Principal Engineer.
Because we work on slow, actually real, physical, projects there is a lot of stability-- schedules are made in five year increments.
That, to me, is a "tech" company.
Internet firms whose only purpose is the sale of ads are just ad companies masquerading as a tech companies and I imagine such an environment might be somewhat volatile.
Allow me to introduce you to the concept of a "lateral move".
Plenty of tech-adjacent people like QAs (and tech writers) are self-teaching or going to school for CS. After a year or two they move into junior development jobs at the same company, provided management doesn't pigeonhole them. The rest of this person's 16 year tenure is plenty to climb the ranks from junior to PE.
>The site is only good for finding reviews on products but companies figured that out and game it now as well.
You're using it wrong. Reddit is the only place, in the history of the entire internet, that has successfully collected all of my interests into one location.
Astrophotography, Astronomy, Art Deco, Scuba, Amateur Radio, Radio Astronomy, Motorcycling (specifically Moto Guzzi bikes), EMS/Firefighting, Vintage Computing, Maps, Woodworking, and most importantly of all, Yoga-- all in one place.
There were fora for all of these "back in the good old days" but the user base is 100x more active and knowledgable, they're all in one place, and there are super-niches.
If you go to reddit and only see companies hawking a product, you're the problem.
Like the people who go on TikTok and only see chicks. What the fuck are you doing? I go on TikTok and only see astronomy and scuba diving videos. It's great!
It also had collected my interests in one location but i found the communities grew into toxic for lack of a better term “circle jerks”. It honestly just because a place to go to see people conforming to the majorities opinion on any sub reddit over 20k.
PSAR volunteers are also called Trailhead Stewards and people who care a lot about the environment and the health and safety of people flock to these positions. You get training, accommodation that is impossible to obtain otherwise, and experience. There is almost always a waiting list for trailhead stewards.
I’m a watershed steward so I spend a ludicrous number of hours poking around storm drains, parking lots, and streams, writing and giving presentations, compiling reports, and wrangling volunteers for cleanup and drainage projects all in exchange for $0.00.
I like sailing and swimming and fishing and I want my local rivers and bays to be clean. If I liked hiking in the mountains I’d probably be a trailhead steward.
Here’s a video with some psar volunteers: https://www.flickr.com/photos/grand_canyon_nps/51252679717/i...