Speaker 1: Well, today's a holiday that we don't really acknowledge. I'll
Speaker 1: just say happy hang out with your family and friends day.
Speaker 2: And tomorrow is the most American of holidays. This is
Speaker 2: a celebration of consumerism, yes, aka Black Friday. But some
Speaker 2: of y'all are going to be in for quite the surprise.
Speaker 2: Do you know just how many packages are going to
Speaker 2: be in the mix with everybody ordering stuff online?
Speaker 1: I don't even want to try and conceptualize it because
Speaker 1: I know that I can't because Black Friday, when we
Speaker 1: were younger, it was just, you know, one day there
Speaker 1: was all these sales.
Speaker 3: Now it extends.
Speaker 1: Where it's like you got Black Friday, but the Black
Speaker 1: Friday deals start on Wednesday and Cyber Monday. There's Cyber Monday.
Speaker 1: So it's really a full calendar week of hurry.
Speaker 3: Up and buy all this stuff.
Speaker 2: But the real gag is if you didn't place your
Speaker 2: order in July, it won't be here by Christmas. We'll
Speaker 2: tell you why.
Speaker 1: The whole shipping from purchasing to getting the product at
Speaker 1: your door is a very complex system that I feel.
Speaker 3: Like none of us know much about.
Speaker 2: I know, I don't understand how I'm placing an order
Speaker 2: and it's here within sixteen hours.
Speaker 1: Honestly, And I feel like as technology advances, and some
Speaker 1: of this technology that we know nothing about advances, we're
Speaker 1: expecting things to show up sooner and sooner and sooner.
Speaker 1: But with every great thing, you know that there's some
Speaker 1: not so great things happening behind the scenes.
Speaker 2: Yes, the dark side of shipping.
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm TT and I'm Zachiah and from Spotify. This
Speaker 1: is Dope Labs. Welcome to Dope Labs, a weekly podcast
Speaker 1: that mixes hardcore science, pop culture, and a healthy dose
Speaker 1: of friendship.
Speaker 2: This week, we're diving into the world of commerce, supply chains,
Speaker 2: and transportation. Specifically, we want to know how a product
Speaker 2: goes from click to ship, away from the factory and
Speaker 2: to your front door.
Speaker 1: All right, let's get into the recitation. What do we know, TT, Well,
Speaker 1: we know that shipping is usually really really fast, and
Speaker 1: there have been some shipping delays.
Speaker 2: There's so many industries involved in getting products to your door, manufacturing, routing, weather, economics,
Speaker 2: and today we're focusing on shipping more specifically, how issues
Speaker 2: in the trucking industry are affecting shipping logistics and the
Speaker 2: shipping delays don't make sense to me. It's specific things
Speaker 2: missing from the grocery store. There's no bug spray like
Speaker 2: the chemical killer bug spray, only essential old buck spray
Speaker 2: at my grocery store.
Speaker 3: That's not good enough for my friend. Let me tell you.
Speaker 2: Lemon grass everywhere, okay, citronella everywhere.
Speaker 1: Anybody's citronella. And I'm like, that does not work for me.
Speaker 1: And the sindos will come. And what we also know
Speaker 1: is that demand for delivery is increasing across the board,
Speaker 1: like delivery of the past, where it's just like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, you might get a TV delivered, you might
Speaker 1: get a computer delivered. Now we're like, okay, I need
Speaker 1: my vitamins delivered, I need my groceries delivered. Everything is
Speaker 1: being delivered at this point, and I feel like that
Speaker 1: was enhanced because we were all working from home or
Speaker 1: staying at home because of the pandemic.
Speaker 2: Also, that demand for delivery and shipping things across this
Speaker 2: country has been exacerbated by the trucker shortage. You know,
Speaker 2: I saw some signs. I don't know if it was
Speaker 2: a bad sheet or whatever. I was going down eighty
Speaker 2: five and it said trucker strike and it had a date,
Speaker 2: and I said I don't want to cross the line.
Speaker 2: I don't even know what it means, because I mean,
Speaker 2: I don't drive on the highway too with them. I mean,
Speaker 2: I want to know what's going on. I've been seeing
Speaker 2: this happen in the.
Speaker 1: UK, but it's also happening here too, Right, we did
Speaker 1: see that the UK was having petro shortages and other
Speaker 1: things that. So there's something happening that we don't understand. Yes,
Speaker 1: so what do we want to know considering all that stuff.
Speaker 1: I know it's somehow tied together, but how what are
Speaker 1: the specifics? And I want to understand the trucker shortage.
Speaker 1: I didn't even know what was going on. My friend
Speaker 1: should be hitting the road and so she told me
Speaker 1: what she saw, and I had no idea what is
Speaker 1: going on with this trucker shortage?
Speaker 2: And then how does the gig economy play into this?
Speaker 2: You know, now you can send a package across town
Speaker 2: with Uber and also just the use of all these
Speaker 2: like subcontracting services to get things from point A to
Speaker 2: point B. How does that work into the big picture
Speaker 2: of shipping?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then for me, I want to know what
Speaker 1: we can do as consumers to like alleviate or to
Speaker 1: get rid of some of the problems that are cropping
Speaker 1: up because of this increased shipping world that we're in.
Speaker 2: Let's jump into the dissection.
Speaker 3: Dissect Sean dissect Sean. Our guest for today's lab is
Speaker 3: Christopher Mems.
Speaker 4: My name is Christopher Mems, and I am a technology
Speaker 4: columnist at the Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 2: Christopher is talking to us about his new book Arriving Today,
Speaker 2: which is about how products get from the factory to
Speaker 2: our front door. So first we wanted to know how
Speaker 2: and where things are produced before they're sold. We know
Speaker 2: that most things we buy today are not produced in
Speaker 2: the US, and that's.
Speaker 3: Because of globalization.
Speaker 1: Globalization allows people to buy goods cheaply from all over
Speaker 1: the world.
Speaker 3: But how is this possible logistically?
Speaker 2: According to Christopher, we can trace the history of globalization
Speaker 2: back to the shipping container and the Vietnam War.
Speaker 4: What happened during the Vietnam War was the American military
Speaker 4: machine needed so much material that they needed a new
Speaker 4: way to move goods into the country.
Speaker 1: And this is where American businessman Malcolm MacLean steps in,
Speaker 1: who since the nineteen fifties had been developing the world's
Speaker 1: first modern shipping container.
Speaker 2: And the shipping container is really critical. It's this intermodal
Speaker 2: part of globalization that means it's going from a ship
Speaker 2: to a truck to a train, and so those dimensions
Speaker 2: have to be the same in every place, basically making
Speaker 2: it universal.
Speaker 4: The shipping contator was a classic chicken and egg problem
Speaker 4: because you needed everybody to agree on the dimensions and
Speaker 4: the specifications for a shipping container so that all the
Speaker 4: ships could carry all the shipping containers, and also the
Speaker 4: trains could accommodate them and trucks.
Speaker 3: So how big are these shipping containers?
Speaker 2: Well, ISO, which is the International Organization for Standardization, has
Speaker 2: determined that a standard container is eight feet wide about
Speaker 2: eight and a half feet high, and then they can
Speaker 2: either be twenty feet long or forty feet long. So
Speaker 2: big big, And so when you think about that, I
Speaker 2: don't know about you, but once we started moving into
Speaker 2: cubic feet, I'm out of there.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: I had you at eight feet wide, Okay, I had
Speaker 1: you at eight feet tall, but then twenty feet I
Speaker 1: was like a right.
Speaker 2: So if you think about a twenty foot container, m hmm,
Speaker 2: that's enough room for almost one hundred washing machines or so,
Speaker 2: and some of these containers can be refrigerated or insulated.
Speaker 2: Some of them have an open top. You ever see
Speaker 2: those trains that have the shipping containers on them and
Speaker 2: you can see the stuff on the top.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: Isn't that stuff gonna blow out? Don't they need to
Speaker 2: cover over there?
Speaker 3: I guess they've thought about what to do.
Speaker 4: And so the American military saw this idea and said,
Speaker 4: all right, we're gonna break the log jam. Malcolm McLean,
Speaker 4: we like your idea, we like your specifications, and they
Speaker 4: created such a large demand on their own.
Speaker 1: The demand for shipping containers was so high from the
Speaker 1: Department of Defense that Malcolm McLean's design became the international standard.
Speaker 4: And very soon after you had bigger and bigger ships
Speaker 4: to carry all of these shipping containers, and that meant
Speaker 4: bigger cranes and ports to accommodate them. And it was
Speaker 4: just billions and billions of dollars of investment, and that
Speaker 4: created the global infrastructure which allowed globalization to happen and
Speaker 4: is the reason that we can buy goods from everywhere.
Speaker 2: So basically, the shipping container was a game changer.
Speaker 1: Once the shipping container arrived, this basically made it so
Speaker 1: that the idea of really having a global economy was
Speaker 1: right in front of us, like it became possible, and
Speaker 1: there was a need for a whole new level of
Speaker 1: worker productivity. And that's when we get into scientific management.
Speaker 2: So what is scientific management?
Speaker 4: Any place you have software or an algorithm that can
Speaker 4: watch how people work and then dictate to them the
Speaker 4: pace and the manner of that work. That's scientific management,
Speaker 4: even though we don't call it by that name.
Speaker 1: The concept of scientific management was invented by Frederick Taylor,
Speaker 1: and he published a book that was titled The Principles
Speaker 1: of Scientific Management in nineteen oh nine. And it was
Speaker 1: around this time that Henry Ford, you know like the car,
Speaker 1: invented the assembly line, which reduced the time it took
Speaker 1: to build an automobile from twelve hours to one hour
Speaker 1: and thirty three minutes.
Speaker 2: That's crazy gains.
Speaker 4: It was just this notion that if you could measure
Speaker 4: the amount of time that it took for a worker
Speaker 4: to complete every single action, if they were working in
Speaker 4: a factory, which remember we're still kind of new at
Speaker 4: the time, or if they were working on an assembly line,
Speaker 4: which at the time was brand new, then you could
Speaker 4: use these techniques to manage people scientifically and speed up work.
Speaker 2: So in order to employ scientific management, you really need
Speaker 2: some method of surveillance or tracking. And before the age
Speaker 2: of digital surveillance, there were stop watches.
Speaker 1: So what Frederick Taylor was doing was that he would
Speaker 1: go into a factory, you say, who's the best worker here,
Speaker 1: and they would point to that person, and then he
Speaker 1: would say, work as hard as you can, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to time you using this stopwatch. And then he
Speaker 1: was able to determine the productivity of the most productive person,
Speaker 1: and based off of that information, they were able to
Speaker 1: simplify and optimize jobs so that workers could be as
Speaker 1: productive as possible.
Speaker 2: This doesn't really sound like a fulfilling or satisfying work environment.
Speaker 3: Now, this sounds awful.
Speaker 4: It ended up being this way that workers were pushed
Speaker 4: to their limits and beyond. Of course, the irony is
Speaker 4: that scientific management is how work, especially work in factories
Speaker 4: and warehouses and ports many other places call centers fast food.
Speaker 4: This is how all of work is organized.
Speaker 3: That's so true.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of us can think about our
Speaker 1: jobs and listening to what scientific management is, see how
Speaker 1: some of those things are in all of our workspaces,
Speaker 1: and scientific management isn't only happening in the workplace now.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of tools that can be used to
Speaker 1: monitor employees' productivity when they're working from home, which a
Speaker 1: lot of us are right now.
Speaker 4: With the advent of remote work, more and more companies
Speaker 4: are surveilling their employees when they're working at home right
Speaker 4: because they don't have FaceTime. You know, managers can't manage
Speaker 4: by walking around anymore. Companies will give you a company
Speaker 4: issue laptop or mobile device, and then they're watching the
Speaker 4: hours that you're actually doing your work.
Speaker 2: This reminds me of that TikTok where the girl has
Speaker 2: a fan and it's like an oscillating fan and it's
Speaker 2: to something and it's moving the mouse around, so it
Speaker 2: seems like she's working genius.
Speaker 3: Genius. She was like, scientific management, I'll.
Speaker 2: Do I'll manage you. But you know what's also really interesting,
Speaker 2: it's not always the manager imposing this type of system
Speaker 2: on the workers. Sometimes workers elect to use different productivity
Speaker 2: tools to help improve their own output and their own focus.
Speaker 2: I know, I do, so do I I use one note,
Speaker 2: we use airtable slack.
Speaker 3: Lots of folks are using slack.
Speaker 1: All types of stuff I used to use ASNA to
Speaker 1: improve our productivity or make us more efficient, work faster,
Speaker 1: get more done in a shorter amount of time. So
Speaker 1: we are enforcing these scientific management concepts on ourselves.
Speaker 2: Staff punking ourselves right on into the nine to five.
Speaker 2: So these tools can be good. You know, we use
Speaker 2: airtable that helps us stay on track with our episodes,
Speaker 2: know what's happening. It also can help us move projects forward.
Speaker 2: We can collaborate better with our team.
Speaker 1: But that said, all of that can be a slippery
Speaker 1: slope and we're going to get into that right after
Speaker 1: the break.
Speaker 2: All right, we're back.
Speaker 1: Yes, And as we're talking about all of the shipping
Speaker 1: and everything like that, it really makes me think about
Speaker 1: how we're going to be purchasing. Everybody's going to be
Speaker 1: online shopping from their phones mostly. I think I think
Speaker 1: everybody shops on their phones these days.
Speaker 2: And watching the notifications from my banking.
Speaker 3: Gap saying girl, what is you doing?
Speaker 2: Dot do transaction.
Speaker 1: But there's so many apps out there, and our next
Speaker 1: lab is going to be all about fintech. So these
Speaker 1: are apps that help you organize your finances and get
Speaker 1: financially healthy.
Speaker 2: Yes, and I'm excited about it because our guest is
Speaker 2: Natalia Razinski, the head of strategy at Klarna. Oh yes,
Speaker 2: this is the perfect person to talk to about helping us.
Speaker 2: All right, let's get back to today's lab. We're talking
Speaker 2: to Wall Street Journal reporter Christopher Mims about his new book,
Speaker 2: arriving today.
Speaker 1: In the first half of the dissection, we focus mostly
Speaker 1: on how goods and products are being made using tools
Speaker 1: like scientific management to produce things efficiently for the global market.
Speaker 2: But Christopher's book also focuses on the transport of those items.
Speaker 2: And before you even click add tokar, that product has
Speaker 2: already been on a very long journey, a journey that
Speaker 2: starts at the factory.
Speaker 4: Generally, the way a lot of finished goods, and especially
Speaker 4: consumer electronics get to us is you know, they are
Speaker 4: first made increasingly in Southeast Asia. A lot of things
Speaker 4: we think are made in China are actually made Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia,
Speaker 4: places like that.
Speaker 1: From the factory, it goes to a small port, put
Speaker 1: into a shipping container.
Speaker 2: Shout out to Malcolm maclain.
Speaker 1: Then the shipping container gets put onto a barge where
Speaker 1: it gets taken to a much larger.
Speaker 4: Port where it stays for a couple of days after
Speaker 4: being lifted off by a giant crane. Then that big
Speaker 4: crane puts it onto a really big ship.
Speaker 2: And we mean big. Some of these cargo ships are
Speaker 2: as big as the Empire State Building being laid on
Speaker 2: its side. We're talking the length of three football fields.
Speaker 2: This is not the boat that Megan thee Stallion was
Speaker 2: talking about driving.
Speaker 3: You can't drive that vote.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: Each container ship can hold up to ten thousand forty
Speaker 1: foot containers or about sixty thousand pounds of goods, and
Speaker 1: then it.
Speaker 4: Can travel all the way across the Pacific Ocean, and
Speaker 4: that's going to take weeks because it's actually moving kind
Speaker 4: of slow in order to save on fuel.
Speaker 2: Finally, the ship arrives Stateside, most often at the ports
Speaker 2: of la and Long Beach, and that's where about forty
Speaker 2: to fifty percent of all goods from Asia arrive in
Speaker 2: the US.
Speaker 4: Then those containers get put onto a truck for the
Speaker 4: first time, and that's called drayage, and the container gets
Speaker 4: taken to a warehouse in the Inland Empire.
Speaker 2: That's a region in southern California.
Speaker 4: All the goods are emptied out of the container put
Speaker 4: onto a long haul truck. It might drive halfway across
Speaker 4: the country. Then all of those cardboard boxes full of
Speaker 4: goods go into what's known as a fulfillment if you're
Speaker 4: talking about Amazon, and human beings have to open up
Speaker 4: every single one of those boxes, take every item out,
Speaker 4: scan it, put it into a bin. The bin goes
Speaker 4: onto a conveyor, which goes to another human being which
Speaker 4: takes all the goods stows it on a robot shelf,
Speaker 4: which then scoots away like R two D two.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, this is a lot. I am exhausted.
Speaker 1: And that's just.
Speaker 3: The first part of the product's journey.
Speaker 1: Okay, So now that the item is on the shelf
Speaker 1: waiting for someone to buy it, what happens next?
Speaker 4: And then when you order that good which has been
Speaker 4: on a fourteen thousand mile two month minimum journey, when
Speaker 4: you order it for delivery the next day, within forty
Speaker 4: five minutes, someone has picked that item off of the
Speaker 4: robot's shelf, goes into a bin. The bin is carried
Speaker 4: on a conveyor down to the pack station. A person
Speaker 4: puts the items in a box, tapes up the box.
Speaker 4: Box goes down another conveyor into the back of a truck,
Speaker 4: which goes to another warehouse where it's sorted, and then
Speaker 4: the final warehouse, which is called the delivery station, where
Speaker 4: all the boxes get stacked up about like you know,
Speaker 4: two three in the morning for delivery on a truck
Speaker 4: to your home the next day, you know it's next
Speaker 4: day or two day delivery.
Speaker 2: Most people are not thinking about all of this when
Speaker 2: they add to cart, especially with things like two day delivery,
Speaker 2: one click ordering overnight shipping.
Speaker 1: Yes, I am ordering my goods by the light of
Speaker 1: the moon. Most likely I'm in my bed and I'm
Speaker 1: just like click, everything just starts getting ship.
Speaker 3: I don't even think about it. I just keep swiping.
Speaker 2: This just also feels like so many steps for me
Speaker 2: to get the few little things that I'm adding to cart.
Speaker 2: This is kind of changing things for.
Speaker 1: Me, honestly, because you think about every single step and
Speaker 1: all the ships and shipping containers and cranes and people
Speaker 1: and trucks. This is a lot for me to be saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: I just need this new cell phone case that I
Speaker 1: found on this website that's six ninety nine.
Speaker 2: That's a lot exactly it. Every time I get ready
Speaker 2: to order something online, now I'm gonna say, am I
Speaker 2: ready to turn on the crane to pick up my items,
Speaker 2: you know, like it might not be worth it.
Speaker 3: It might not be worth the crane movement.
Speaker 2: And there's all this automation, but then there's all this
Speaker 2: on the ground stuff too, And one of them that
Speaker 2: we really should zero in on is the truck.
Speaker 1: Even though the trucker shortage has reached crisis levels this
Speaker 1: year and been on the front page of Labor News,
Speaker 1: the trucker shortage isn't really new.
Speaker 2: Trucks are an essential part of the global economy. In
Speaker 2: the United States, seventy percent of all freight is transported
Speaker 2: by trucks. And it may feel like a cliche, but
Speaker 2: America really does run on trucks, not duncan. Yeah you
Speaker 2: thought it was duncan, but it's actually trucks. So when
Speaker 2: we don't have enough people to drive those trucks, it
Speaker 2: can cause some pretty big problems for the economy.
Speaker 4: It's affecting everything from what appears on stores at the
Speaker 4: grocery store, to getting school's school lunches, to people talking
Speaker 4: about why they can't get their couch delivered.
Speaker 1: And with so many items being shipped to people and
Speaker 1: they're being a trucker shortage that can lead to trucker
Speaker 1: burnout for the truckers that are now left to carry
Speaker 1: the load. We wanted to know what's really driving this shortage.
Speaker 1: Why don't we have enough truckers to handle the shipping demand.
Speaker 4: There was this amazing piece in the New York Times
Speaker 4: in twenty seventeen, and there was this heartbreaking quote in
Speaker 4: it where this trucker said, you know, we feel like
Speaker 4: throw away people. There's all these small injustices in the industry,
Speaker 4: which the net effect is that, you know, there's about
Speaker 4: three and a half million truckers in America, there's ten
Speaker 4: million people who have a commercial driver's license. Those are
Speaker 4: all the people who went into the industry and burned
Speaker 4: out and are just like, I'm not going to be
Speaker 4: a truck driver anymore.
Speaker 2: Those numbers are staggering, honestly, and it makes sense when
Speaker 2: you understand the experiences that a lot of truckers have.
Speaker 4: The challenge in trucking is that even as rates go
Speaker 4: up and wages go up, the quality of life is low.
Speaker 4: So the average truck driver is on the road twenty
Speaker 4: one days out of every month. They're working fourteen hours
Speaker 4: a day.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you something I can't do anything for
Speaker 1: that long and that many consecutive days, maybe sleep, maybe sleep,
Speaker 1: and even then, you know, you get tired.
Speaker 3: You still get tired of sleeping.
Speaker 1: And so I can't imagine having to be alert at
Speaker 1: the wheel of this huge machine that's carrying all these goods.
Speaker 1: And it's not always like a perfect sunny day out
Speaker 1: in the rain, in the snow and a hurricane. We're
Speaker 1: still expecting our packages. So they can't call out, they
Speaker 1: can't say, oh no, there's a storm, I'm not coming.
Speaker 1: They have to hit the road. And when you really
Speaker 1: look at it, there's also the issue of stagnating wages.
Speaker 1: So if you look at what the average trucker made
Speaker 1: in the United States in around the eighties, it was
Speaker 1: about thirty six thousand dollars a year, and in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty bucks that's about one hundred and twenty thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: But by twenty nineteen the average wage was only forty
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars. So when you normalize all that out
Speaker 1: for like inflation and all that, what you're looking at
Speaker 1: is actually a sixty three percent decrease in wages over
Speaker 1: a forty year time period. Christopher explained that sometimes big
Speaker 1: trucking companies will cover the upfront costs for a commercial
Speaker 1: driver's license or a CDL, which could be seven thousand
Speaker 1: dollars or more, but that has to be paid back.
Speaker 4: So they got to work like a year just to
Speaker 4: pay that off. They're getting paid by the mile, and
Speaker 4: when you're a trucker and you stop at a warehouse,
Speaker 4: you're not getting paid for that time.
Speaker 2: That's a lot of unpaid labor. So what we're seeing
Speaker 2: is the cost of shipping going down while the cost
Speaker 2: of living has only gone up.
Speaker 1: Okay, so only getting paid by the mail or during
Speaker 1: quote unquote productive time sounds like scientific management to me.
Speaker 1: And this really doesn't take into account that people like
Speaker 1: machines need maintenance.
Speaker 3: People have to go to the.
Speaker 1: Bathroom, they have to shower, they have to eat, and
Speaker 1: they have to sleep and that's just basic survival. So
Speaker 1: it's no wonder that all these truckers are burning out
Speaker 1: and choosing to have other.
Speaker 3: Types of jobs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it feels like all of this is also coming
Speaker 2: to a head during the pandemic, and so you have
Speaker 2: to kind of ask why, now, how do we get
Speaker 2: to this place where the trucking industry has become unsustainable
Speaker 2: for the folks who are driving it, for the truckers.
Speaker 4: At the beginning of the pandemic, all the companies thought
Speaker 4: this is gonna be like the Great Recession. Demand's gonna
Speaker 4: go down. So they're like, Okay, I'm going to book
Speaker 4: fewer shipping containers, less trucks, I'm gonna buy less stuff.
Speaker 4: But then the opposite happened. America went shopping and demand
Speaker 4: is now so much higher for everything than it was before.
Speaker 3: This is very true.
Speaker 1: We all got sent home and we just started buying
Speaker 1: and buying and buying. I remember early on in the
Speaker 1: pandemic when there was no paper towels, no toilet paper,
Speaker 1: no flour, no eggs, no nothing in the grocery store.
Speaker 1: I was trying to buy paper towels offline, and the
Speaker 1: shipping cost was like ninety dollars to ship a few
Speaker 1: rolls of paper calculus.
Speaker 3: I couldn't believe it. I really couldn't believe it. I
Speaker 3: did not purchase them.
Speaker 2: To be clear, there's a baseline supply and demand in economics, right,
Speaker 2: so when there's a lot of supply for a product,
Speaker 2: the price goes down. Demand drives prices to increase, but
Speaker 2: Supply and demand don't exist in isolation. The supply has
Speaker 2: to get to you, right, and so even when there's
Speaker 2: a lot of supply, if we can't get it from
Speaker 2: one place to another. So if there's a supply and
Speaker 2: demand shortage for truckers, right, So if there are not
Speaker 2: a lot of truckers, the demand is no longer on
Speaker 2: the product, the demand is on the transportation. And so
Speaker 2: that's why TT saw that really high shipping costs. But
Speaker 2: when you go back and really think about it, if
Speaker 2: we look at the really big picture, I feel like
Speaker 2: there were some acute things that we felt from the
Speaker 2: pandemic and shipping and demand for online shopping, but when
Speaker 2: we zoom out, there had really been a major shift
Speaker 2: to online shopping even before the pandemic too. That's a
Speaker 2: really good point and we are going to talk about
Speaker 2: that later this season, So be on your p's and
Speaker 2: q's ready for that. And it makes sense too, because
Speaker 2: we are creatures of yes, habit, but more than habit convenience. Okay,
Speaker 2: we want to have what we want when we want it,
Speaker 2: end at our doorsteps, preach. So if there's an option
Speaker 2: for me to have to travel to the store, wait
Speaker 2: in line at the counter. Hope they have what I need,
Speaker 2: Especially for boring purchases. I'd rather add all that stuff
Speaker 2: to Kart and have it delivered to me.
Speaker 3: And with free shipping and free returns.
Speaker 1: At a lot of online retailers, it's so easy to
Speaker 1: add to KRT and check out. But maybe we need
Speaker 1: to start, you know, taking a beat mefore doing that,
Speaker 1: and ask ourselves if we can get by without that purchase.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe I don't need all these different Trani syrups
Speaker 2: to make, you know, cafe quality pumpkin spice lattes at home.
Speaker 2: I don't need it, You don't, I don't, I really don't.
Speaker 3: Oh, and this leads us to the elephant in the room. Amazon.
Speaker 1: It feels like you can get anything, literally anything delivered
Speaker 1: to your house in the maximum two days. I've gotten
Speaker 1: things off Amazon and gotten it just a few hours later.
Speaker 1: How are they able to do this?
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 4: Amazon, their whole modus operandi is that they're going to
Speaker 4: squeeze as much as they can out of workers using
Speaker 4: surveillance technology management by algorithm.
Speaker 2: Amazon famously employs the use of scientific management for all
Speaker 2: of its employees, specifically those working in the fulfillment centers, though,
Speaker 2: workers have to meet certain productivity quotas or face termination.
Speaker 2: And in twenty nineteen, Amazon warehouse workers went on strike
Speaker 2: to protest inhumane working conditions. At the end of October,
Speaker 2: warehouse workers from Amazon's Staten Island facility filed a petition
Speaker 2: for a union election and the request has to be
Speaker 2: approved by the National Labor Relations Board. And this would
Speaker 2: be the second unionization vote, after the workers in Bessemer, Alabama,
Speaker 2: failed to reach enough votes to unionize last April. And
Speaker 2: that's just the tip of the iceberg. We've seen many
Speaker 2: labor stories just like this in so many different sectors, restaurants,
Speaker 2: food delivery, riot sharing, and of course trucking.
Speaker 3: And this is not a good look.
Speaker 1: Amazon has not just been under fire by the media,
Speaker 1: They've also been scrutinized by regulating organizations.
Speaker 4: California just past a bill limiting the use of the
Speaker 4: kind of work quotas that Amazon relies on inside of
Speaker 4: its warehouses. But this whole system of scientific management, or
Speaker 4: as I call it, buzoicism, which is scientific management, plus
Speaker 4: all this technology impacts every other type of worker at Amazon,
Speaker 4: all the way down to the last mile truck drivers.
Speaker 4: Those drivers are subject to the same kind of surveillance
Speaker 4: as the workers in warehouses. There's cameras facing them, cameras
Speaker 4: watching the road, and Amazon says that's all about increasing safety,
Speaker 4: which I'm sure is true, but it's also about making
Speaker 4: sure that they work as quickly as possible.
Speaker 1: And we learn that those drivers don't even work for Amazon.
Speaker 1: They're subcontractors working for smaller trucking companies who work for Amazon.
Speaker 1: And this protects Amazon from any legal liability if.
Speaker 4: One of those trucks gets into an accident. Amazon's not
Speaker 4: directly responsible for that truck. If one of those workers
Speaker 4: gets harassed by their boss, Amazon doesn't have to get
Speaker 4: involve and they can't be sued for it.
Speaker 2: This is like a tefline coding, like a business version
Speaker 2: of it. And since the spring, Amazon has announced some
Speaker 2: changes to address some of the issues in their warehouses,
Speaker 2: so they know they're there. But that includes spending like
Speaker 2: three hundred million dollars on employee safety, but unfortunately it
Speaker 2: still doesn't include driver safety.
Speaker 3: So what's next.
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like all of this goes back
Speaker 1: to the rise in the gig economy, and Christopher calls
Speaker 1: this the fissured workplace.
Speaker 4: It just means there's more layers between the worker and
Speaker 4: the people who hire those workers.
Speaker 2: So companies like Uber, Lift, Door, Dash, they're all leveraging
Speaker 2: technology using principles of scientific management, but ultimately for profit.
Speaker 4: It's about using technology to take advantage of our existing
Speaker 4: systems of laws. We are going to use all this
Speaker 4: venture capitalists, dough and this technology to rush into the
Speaker 4: vacuum of inadequate regulation in a particular and just to
Speaker 4: try to extract as much profits and kind of mind
Speaker 4: them from the employees that we have. And to be clear,
Speaker 4: you know, I'm not against totally new models like Uber
Speaker 4: and left Like, I think it's cool, maybe there's some
Speaker 4: universe in which it could work, but making sure that
Speaker 4: there are sort of minimum protections for workers. Not only
Speaker 4: is it the humane thing to do, but in the
Speaker 4: long run, it's probably the most sustainable thing to do
Speaker 4: because it would mean less turnover.
Speaker 1: So what are the implication of today's use of scientific
Speaker 1: management more broadly for people working in the United States?
Speaker 4: The overall trend is if you look at like the
Speaker 4: distribution of income in America and the kind of jobs
Speaker 4: people go into, you have more and more people moving
Speaker 4: into more skilled jobs that demand more of them and
Speaker 4: pay them more, but also more and more people moving
Speaker 4: into low skilled jobs where if you have high school
Speaker 4: education or less, your options are very limited.
Speaker 2: That's called de skilling.
Speaker 4: So you kind of hollow out America's middle class and
Speaker 4: you create these two polarized classes of workers.
Speaker 2: Feels like you get to this place where there are
Speaker 2: engineers and developers who are creating the technology to replace
Speaker 2: the jobs that people used to do, and then there's
Speaker 2: just everybody else.
Speaker 4: Which frankly is the majority of American workers who then
Speaker 4: are forced to work alongside that automation or become a
Speaker 4: part of it. I kind of picture them like bugs
Speaker 4: and amber, and they're just trapped in this matrix that
Speaker 4: has been created that's all machines. And it's like, Okay,
Speaker 4: if you're going to function in this world, you have
Speaker 4: to operate like a machine. You have to operate at
Speaker 4: the pace of a machine. You have to do repetitive
Speaker 4: labor like a machine. And to be clear, it's not new, right,
Speaker 4: this is as old as the assembly line and industrialization,
Speaker 4: but this type of work has spread beyond the factory
Speaker 4: to so many other types of labor.
Speaker 1: So when workers are being exploited and their privacy is
Speaker 1: being infringed upon. Those are definitely signs that the scientific
Speaker 1: management practices that they're using have gone overboard. Humans are
Speaker 1: not robots, and we can't ignore our own humanity and
Speaker 1: the humanity of other people while we're in the workplace.
Speaker 2: That's so true, and it feels like this really big
Speaker 2: concept to wrestle with. Right. Yes, I understand these things
Speaker 2: at the different levels of the supply chain, but then
Speaker 2: we still have certain basic needs, right, And so then
Speaker 2: you begin to ask yourself, like, what can I do
Speaker 2: on an individual level to affect some type of change?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: Because we're just one consumer and this whole big consumer machine. Right,
Speaker 1: it doesn't feel like there's a lot that we can
Speaker 1: do to make any type of significant change.
Speaker 3: And what we know is a flawed system.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think of it like climate change in
Speaker 4: a way. I think we get really hung up on
Speaker 4: the individual choices that we make. And those individual choices
Speaker 4: are important because they change our mindset and that changes
Speaker 4: how we interact with the world. But in terms of
Speaker 4: having an impact beyond the individual choices that we make,
Speaker 4: you know, I think we all just have to vote
Speaker 4: and be involved civically and advocate for better policy. And
Speaker 4: it doesn't always have to happen at the federal level.
Speaker 4: I mean, California has this incredible power to set the
Speaker 4: gender for the whole country, whether it's emission standards or
Speaker 4: these new laws governing how work is done at Amazon warehouses.
Speaker 4: So sometimes individual states, even cities have the power to
Speaker 4: set a floor on how much money an Uber driver
Speaker 4: gets paid every hour. There's always these kind of opportunities
Speaker 4: to get engaged.
Speaker 2: I think I feeling a little bit more hopeful. I
Speaker 2: have a better understanding of what's going on.
Speaker 3: Yes, the more you know.
Speaker 2: In mid October, the President made a statement about all
Speaker 2: the supply chain issues, and they're talking about leaving the
Speaker 2: ports open, having them running twenty four to seven, shifting
Speaker 2: to some night work based on what we learned from Christopher.
Speaker 2: I don't know how much of a change that's going
Speaker 2: to make, because it seems like there's issues at many
Speaker 2: different steps. But I think if people can kind of
Speaker 2: know what's happening. I've seen it in the news a
Speaker 2: little bit more, we can kind of temper that rush
Speaker 2: when people feel like, Oh, something's happening. I didn't know
Speaker 2: this was going on. It's like when there's a shortage
Speaker 2: of gas and then everybody runs out to get gas
Speaker 2: and it makes it worse. You know. I feel like
Speaker 2: this could be a little bit better. Things could maybe
Speaker 2: be moving slow, but we know that things will come.
Speaker 1: So since tomorrow's Black Friday, how do we want to
Speaker 1: approach it? Now that we know all this stuff that
Speaker 1: we know from Christopher? I think for me, I've never
Speaker 1: gone out to the store and you know, stood in
Speaker 1: the lines for Black Friday.
Speaker 3: But I know a lot of people that do.
Speaker 1: And I think one thing that I might try and
Speaker 1: do is maybe buy locally, like go out to a
Speaker 1: local shop in my neighborhood and try and find, you know,
Speaker 1: gifts from there, or maybe just cut back on the
Speaker 1: amount of gifts that I feel like I need to buy.
Speaker 2: Folks, I'm right with you. I'm all for cutting back
Speaker 2: on the gifts. I feel like, you know, in the
Speaker 2: past couple of years, it really kind of got out
Speaker 2: of control. I'm also going to try to you know,
Speaker 2: when I am purchasing things, I don't need that stuff
Speaker 2: next day, I don't need that stuff in two days.
Speaker 2: Let it come whenever it comes, you know. I think
Speaker 2: if we could ease some of the demand in that
Speaker 2: space as well. I think that could be useful too.
Speaker 1: Or you know, maybe you don't need it at all,
Speaker 1: and that is a very removed from call good point.
Speaker 2: All right, we've been doing a lot of talking, but
Speaker 2: now it's time to hear from you. We're going to
Speaker 2: do a little pop quiz to see just how well
Speaker 2: you've been listening. So look at your Spotify app and
Speaker 2: you should see a poll pop up, ready for the
Speaker 2: question give it to them tt So the question.
Speaker 3: Is what event led to the creation of the shipping container?
Speaker 2: I wonder how many of them are going to get
Speaker 2: it right.
Speaker 3: They're smart. I think that all of them are gonna
Speaker 3: get it right.
Speaker 1: Don't be that guy where you're just gonna choose the
Speaker 1: wrong answer to be funny.
Speaker 2: Is there great?
Speaker 3: You're gonna fail to be funny? I feel like my
Speaker 3: mom has said that to me before.
Speaker 2: All right, it's time for our one thing.
Speaker 3: My one thing this week is the session. I know
Speaker 3: I'm late to the game.
Speaker 1: Most of you have already been watching it, but I
Speaker 1: had not even heard of the show.
Speaker 2: What happened?
Speaker 1: Why weren't y'all on my DM telling me? I think
Speaker 1: I told you about this, Yes, run, but you watch
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff and so sometimes I'm just like,
Speaker 1: you know, he's not going to be able to keep up.
Speaker 1: But I've been watching se session and I have been
Speaker 1: love being it. I'm y'all on at the screen every
Speaker 1: single day.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, I'm glad you like it. My one
Speaker 2: thing this week is a book called Good Morning, Monster
Speaker 2: and Baby. It is a profile of five different patients
Speaker 2: from a therapist. There's so much to learn in there.
Speaker 2: It's jam packed. I've been telling everybody all about it,
Speaker 2: Good Morning Monster. Check it out. See if it's at
Speaker 2: your local library, or if you can listen to it
Speaker 2: if you don't want to get a copy. There's something
Speaker 2: to learn for everybody.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm going to be on top of that.
Speaker 2: That's it for Lap thirty nine. We want to hear
Speaker 2: from you. Call us at two O two five six
Speaker 2: seven seven zero two eight and tell us what you thought,
Speaker 2: or if you have an idea for a lap we
Speaker 2: should do this semester. Tell us that too. We really
Speaker 2: love hearing from you. That's two O two five six
Speaker 2: seven seven zero two eight.
Speaker 1: And don't forget there's so much more for you to
Speaker 1: dig into on our website. There'll be a cheat cheat
Speaker 1: there for Today's lab and additional links and resources in
Speaker 1: the show notes. Plus, you can sign up for our newsletter,
Speaker 1: so check it out at Dope Last podcast dot com.
Speaker 2: And don't forget, Semester four is going to be exclusive
Speaker 2: to Spotify for free starting December sixteenth, So if you
Speaker 2: already listen to us on Spotify, keep doing what you're doing,
Speaker 2: and don't forget to follow Dope Labs and tap the
Speaker 2: bill icon so you never missed when an episode drops.
Speaker 2: Now after December sixteenth, you won't be able to hear
Speaker 2: new episodes of Dope Labs anywhere else, So if you
Speaker 2: don't listen to us on Spotify, be sure to follow
Speaker 2: us on over here, where you can listen to Dope
Speaker 2: Labs plus all of your other favorite shows for free.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Today's expert Christopher Memes.
Speaker 2: His new book Arriving Today is out now from HarperCollins.
Speaker 2: You can follow him on Twitter at mems m ims.
Speaker 1: Dope Labs is a Spotify original production from Mega Own
Speaker 1: Media Group.
Speaker 2: Our producers are Jenny Ratolck Mast and Lydia Smith of
Speaker 2: WaveRunner Studios.
Speaker 3: Editing in Sound design by Rob.
Speaker 2: Smerciak, mixing by Hannes Brown.
Speaker 1: Original music composed and produced by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex
Speaker 1: Sugier from Spotify. Our executive producer is Gina Delvack, and
Speaker 1: creative producers are Baron Farmer and Candace Manriquez RINN Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Shirley Ramo Yasmin of Fifi, Camu Elolia, Till
Speaker 1: krat Key and Brian Marquis. Executive producers from Mega Own
Speaker 1: Media Group r us T T Show Dia and Zekiah
Speaker 1: Wattley