I was encouraged to read an article with specific data that fit into a complex systemic portrayal of interwoven challenges and encouraged to see a sizable number of responses that were complimentary about the article. I was also encouraged to hear proposed solutions (much more helpful than just head in hands “oh woe are we, it’s bad”).

I’m skeptical of ideological/philosophical agenda bias blame, fix or rescue. It’s more of the “gang” based mentality that contributed to getting to a condition of complex systemic loss of quality and process in the 1st place.

I’m skeptical that capitalism free market, elimination of capitalism forces, government, lack of government, technology, lack of technology, etc., — anything — is a simple “silver bullet” that heroically solves the problem in 110 minutes like a Hollywood movie (with glorious vindication of some archetype belief bias). Pain is part of the evolution process. We could just respect each other (especially a front line experienced operator such as yourself) and acknowledge probably no one “knows it all” and start a collaborative process using your suggestions as a “straw document” to build from and hammer out actions in series of consensus steps that was by nature reiterative to improvement. Compromise/collaboration intrinsically is multi-step with “working/not-working” data feedback because it embraces so many variations and experiences and being ok to “fail quick”/“adopt quick”. That is a long way of saying we have a cultural problem that is fear and selfishness based and it will probably take awhile (if ever) to solve for an issue that is fundamental to a healthy society/nation-state (logistics, distribution, trades, wages, process, markets).

Thanks for an article that was “matter of fact” without rancor, overt simplistic blame, included some solution ideas and left the door open for how to address the issues. Of course I have bias the same as all my fellow humans — for example, I am inclined to think increasing the influence and putting your union at the solution table would be helpful but in typing that I can feel the emotional schism of suggesting “da teamsters” might be a viable and positive part of the input to solution. Oh well, I thought it was cheap of me to make generalizations and not put forth a specific idea that was particular enough to draw abuse and criticism.