No need to insinuate that I’m part of a mob.

Your mob are those you elect to tell me how to run my business. At the point of a gun.

 

As a young man, I started my career as a Process Control Engineer automating the controls in a 75 year old chemical refinery of a large corporation. We had over 1400 employees to run the plant when I started and I did such a good job we had reduced that number to less than 400 when I left. We moved from pneumatic controls and steam powered pumps to computerized 4-20mA distributed control systems with Graphics Display Monitors and digital operator interfaces, PLCs, and variable speed electric motors. There was attrition, folks retiring, early retirement incentives, and multiple "Reductions In Force". Then after 30 years they told me my services were no longer needed and that they would just call in a contractor if need be to do my job... I just laughed at them and shook my head in wonderment after years of being "On Call" and coming into the plant at all hours and on Holidays to resolve control problems. The company went from being the darling of Wall Street with stock at $16 a share when I started, splitting 3 ways, reaching over $180 a share after splitting and then down to nothing and in bankruptcy. A Large worldwide corporation with hundreds of thousands of employees that was broken up and sold off piecemeal and eventually dying. The plant is still there. It no longer produces 25 million dollars of product yearly for it's new owners and has maybe 200 employees with more than half of the production facility in ruins. All in the name of that great god "Automation".

 

As a young man, I started my career as a Process Control Engineer automating the controls in a 75 year old chemical refinery of a large corporation. We had over 1400 employees to run the plant when I started and I did such a good job we had reduced that number to less than 400 when I left. We moved from pneumatic controls and steam powered pumps to computerized 4-20mA distributed control systems with Graphics Display Monitors and digital operator interfaces, PLCs, and variable speed electric motors. There was attrition, folks retiring, early retirement incentives, and multiple "Reductions In Force". Then after 30 years they told me my services were no longer needed and that they would just call in a contractor if need be to do my job... I just laughed at them and shook my head in wonderment after years of being "On Call" and coming into the plant at all hours and on Holidays to resolve control problems. The company went from being the darling of Wall Street with stock at $16 a share when I started, splitting 3 ways, reaching over $180 a share after splitting and then down to nothing and in bankruptcy. A Large worldwide corporation with a couple hundred thousand employees that was broken up and sold off piecemeal and eventually dying. The plant is still there. It no longer produces 25 million dollars of product yearly for it's new owners and has maybe 200 employees with more than half of the production facility in ruins. All in the name of that great god "Automation".

Is there a shortage of the chemicals you used to produce?

 

Why do you require some mystical third party to tell you what your -- or someone else's -- value is?

I can make an offer, and it can be freely accepted or rejected by a job candidate. If we come to an agreement, the value of the work -- and therefore of the candidate's skills and labor -- will have been discovered.

Obviously, you have a reading comprehension disability. What mystical third party? I explicitly stated that I don’t believe in anyone - telling you what anyone’s value is. If anything, I stated that is your responsibility only. You and only you should make that decision.

So, I belong to no mob. I believe it’s your responsibility to make that decision. What may be rankling you, is I believe that you will make the wrong decision. In my perspective only. I have a right to my opinion, particularly in light of my statements that no one should tell you what to do.

 

Your mob are those you elect to tell me how to run my business. At the point of a gun.

Who did I elect?

 

Is there a shortage of the chemicals you used to produce?

What that plant made went into other products formulations. Some are no longer made and the buyers have had to find other sources. So in the end, no it's just been moved around to another source. 3M, Avery, adhesives, citrus drinks, food thickening, asphalt, wet strength paper products, household cleaning products, perfumes and many many others all used our products in their formulations. We harvested or (after gutting our Forest Resources department) had contractors deliver old growth long leaf pine "fat lightered" stumps to us. We disintegrated the stumps and extracted the oils and resins and produced steam and electricty from the spent wood chips. Refined it, bleached it, esterified it, hydrogenated some and sold it. We produced a very unique and not easily replaceable product. A lot was food grade and the FDA requires significant testing before approval and the finished product being approved for sale to consumers. We even brought the Rabbis in from Israel to certify some products as Kosher. We were also buying limonene byproduct from the citrus processors and terpinol byproduct from paper mills to refine into high end fragrance cuts in our distillation columns along with our pine oils. I think the pine stumps are mostly gone now and they were moving into Chinese gum rosin feedstock when I left.

 

I believe it’s your responsibility to make that decision.

I believe that you will make the wrong decision.

Why on God's green earth would you leave the decision up to the guy who's going to decide wrong?

 

Why on God's green earth would you leave the decision up to the guy who's going to decide wrong?

You’re trolling me now. To reply, because I believe it’s his right to make his own decisions. You can’t have it both ways, Joey. Either you accept the decisions of some unnamed third party or you stand by your original statements.

 

I don’t get why this is some new crisis. Ever since the steam engine jobs have been lost to automation. People need to take on new jobs. Just do it.

I used to work in the elevator business which in the 1950s and 60s was one of the leading fields for industrial automation.

However, the amount of technological advancement in elevators is now leading to a loss of jobs for elevator mechanics. Despite the number of new buildings going up, I've read that the number of elevator mechanics in the U.S. has declined by over 25,000 since 1980.

Over the past 200 years, mechanization/automation has been a major factor in job extinction and people must be constantly looking over their shoulder for that technological asteroid that might wipe out their career.

 

You’re trolling me now.

His biggest asset to the internet.

 

You’re trolling me now.

No, I am not. I am trying to make you realize that your basic premises are in contradiction to each other.

I believe it’s his right to make his own decisions.

I agree with this statement -- probably to a farther and deeper extent than you (though that would require a deep philosophical discussion to flesh out completely).

Either you accept the decisions of some unnamed third party or you stand by your original statements.

I don't believe any third party can make better decisions for me than I can -- but you do:

I believe that you will make the wrong decision.

Your "belief" -- and the similar beliefs of others -- is rhetorical ammunition against those of us who believe in freedom. And such arguments will be used against us ("even capitalists believe in some forms of regulation, etc...").

Choose a side -- and defend it! With logic and reason, hopefully.

...start thinking on a cultural level in addition to what your MBA taught you.

Hey, I only got a lowly BSEE. I got my "MBA" in the School of Hard Knocks. And it's got a far tougher curriculum -- with more and much longer -- semesters. And the penalty for failure is -- failure.

There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if only by accepting the responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth in order to pretend that no choice or values exist, who is willing to sit out the course of any battle, willing to cash in on the blood of the innocent or to crawl on his belly to the guilty, who dispenses justice by condemning both the robber and the robbed to jail, who solves conflicts by ordering the thinker and the fool to meet each other halfway. In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromiser is the transmitting rubber tube . . .

 

His biggest asset to the internet.

[/IGNORE]

Shortbus, the biggest reason why you have been the only AAC member on my ignore list for years is due to your incessant need to commit drive-by ad hominem attacks against me, regardless of topic -- never adding any value to the discussion itself.

Yes, I know you don't like me and my ideas. Fine. I don't like you either.

But stop acting like a child (I thought you were -- but you must have grown up by now!). If you have arguments that can logically refute any assertion that I make, post them and let's have a gentlemanly debate. Otherwise, why not just ignore me in return?

[IGNORE]

 

Walmart Is Rolling Out the Robots

This is good!

“It’s very hard for employers to get the workforce they need,” Mr. Duffy said. “None of the customers we’re working with are using our machines to reduce their labor costs; they’re using them to allow their teams, their janitorial teams, to perform higher-value tasks.”

Translation: The average job wage will increase due to higher productivity per employee. Of course, they will need fewer employees. But this keeps them competitive, especially with the likes of Amazon -- thus saving most of the 1.5 million US (and 2.2 million world-wide) jobs they currently offer.

Naturally, there are those who'd rather all those employees just lose their jobs. Good intentions, and all that.

 

Good ole two faced Walmart.

Walmart was one of the first retail chains to threaten American manufacturers to lower their prices or lose shelf space, forcing many companies to move production overseas.

 

Good ole two faced Walmart.

Walmart was one of the first retail chains to threaten American manufacturers to lower their prices or lose shelf space, forcing many companies to move production overseas.

No one has any right to any of Walmart's shelf space at any price.

Start your own store, and stock whatever you want. You are FREE to do so!

 

forcing many companies to move production overseas

Yes, Apple, Tektronics, and many many others... Working my way through college as a welder/fitter in Birmingham Alabama almost next door to a US Steel plant in the 70's. We were buying Japanese iron and steel to fabricate with. US Pipe, Chicago Bridge and Iron, Pullman Corporation, Avalon Mills, Birmingham Stove and Range along with many other large companies and smaller fabricators that were in that area are gone now due to cheap foreign labor. The steel and textile economy of that area has been supplanted by insurance and service industries. They are still mining coal and rolling thin plate steel, but don't know how much longer that will last.

 

No one has any right to any of Walmart's shelf space at any price.

Start your own store, and stock whatever you want. You are FREE to do so!

What you say is true, but it doesn’t change the fact that Walmart is a two face company that helped eliminate many jobs and then started to run several big “buy American” campaigns, when they lost business because of it.

Two faced company that has always placed profit above workers, yes this is their right in a “free” America.

 

Two faced company that has always placed profit above workers, yes this is their right in a “free” America.

You throw around the word "profit" as if it's a bad word. It isn't.

Without profit, there'd be no workers.

Edit: there is no profit in Venezuela. See any difference?

 

I was in business for 28 years…I know how to use the word.

 

I was in business for 28 years…I know how to use the word.

Excellent. Then you understand how hard it is to be profitable. And the consequences when you are not.

And you also recognize the requirement to have good employees in order to be profitable, and the difficulty in keeping them, and how it is necessary to treat them well to keep them from running off to a competitor.

Just FYI: I don't have an employee who hasn't worked for me for less than 10* years. But, somehow, I am just an evil profiteer.

*Edit: some of the chains are getting rusty.