EhForumUser @ EhForumUser @lemmy.ca

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2 yr. ago

I can’t think of any. Again.

But, again, I ask... It doesn't have to come from you. This service is a multi-user system.

If the local supermarket decides to provide that service at no extra cost, I’ll use it.

Even if the experience is worse?

But I don’t see how that changes anything.

It changes my understanding. If I can't learn from discussion, what's the point?

for some people in some situations, there is more value in using the cashier even if it takes longer.

Right, but what's the value which isn't also found in the picker? If you want to sit back and relax while the work gets done, as posited earlier, why is that not true for the entire process?

They won’t, those plans are exclusive for business users.

They do. It is true that businesses are less likely to be emotionally driven, and more likely to have people on staff calculating exactly what a service is worth to their business. If you tried to charge them $80 they'd laugh and walk away.

There are better plans you can get as ‘retention plans’ per say

Yes, similarly the consumer who refuses to pay top dollar will see a lower rate come their way.

Granted, it is unlikely a consumer will put on as much pressure as a business. If the operator says: "Nope. It's $80 or nothing" the business will, again, laugh and go use two-way radio or something else instead. A regular consumer is more likely to find value in having such service – their friends don't have two way radios or some such – thus will be willing to pay more.

Also, no one is begging to pay $80.

They are. While the number was arbitrarily selected, it is pretty clear that lots of people are keen to pay an amount in that ballpark, if not more. The price is set by what the customer is willing to pay. Why would you charge them less?

Sure, but the question asks what value a cashier brings that a picker doesn't bring?

Perhaps the value is in simply not having to accept change? All of us here likely grew up when walking in the warehouse was already commonplace. While there are still some stores out there that keep the warehouse off-limits to the customer, it's not a common practice anymore. If we were, instead, in the transition towards pushing the warehouse work off onto the customer, rather than the cashier work, maybe we'd be hearing the same thing?

On the flip side, the only reason you have to go through the check out process at all is because you accepted the job as warehouse worker and picked the items off the shelf yourself. Historically, business would have someone do that work for you too.

Imagine the things you could do while the employee is in the back pulling the items you need. What is it about working in a warehouse that you like, that you don't like about being a cashier?

you are effectively being an employee for free for the store.

You already accepted being an employee of the store when you decided to enter the warehouse to pick the items off the shelf yourself.

The only question is: Can you clock out faster if your co-worker helps you process the items you picked or will it be faster if you do it all by yourself?

They clearly will. Assuming you are not lying, your claim is demonstrative of it.

They just don't usually have to because most people are more than happy give up more. If someone is begging to pay you $80 per month, why would you only charge them $45?

It is a misconception that work has value. Time is what has value.

If it takes longer for a cashier to ring you through, you are giving up more to the business than you would using the self-checkout. If you are worried about working for the company, this is what you want to avoid.

Granted, in practice, self-checkout is rarely implemented well and can often be slower than meeting with the cashier.

Do we have lower construction workers per capita than the US, UK ect.?

We have more than the USA per capita. The UK has more than both. Of course, if the construction workers in Canada are building nuclear power plants, that doesn't mean much with respect to home construction.

Residential construction figures, while out there, seem a little suspect. BLS suggests around one million Americans work in residential construction (_{1/10 of all construction workers). The Canadian Home Builders Association suggests 500,000 Canadians (}1/2 of all construction workers).

Given the situation, and the US backing away from building homes after 2008, that might not be hard to believe on the surface. But what really calls those figures into question is that the US had 1.4 million new housing starts in June. Canada, just shy of 300,000. 2x more workers are able to build 5x more houses?

If the numbers are accurate and meaningful, it seems we're really, really lazy. Canadian construction workers are much, much more likely to belong to a union. Perhaps the old trope about leaning on a broom is true?

Granted, it is hard to tell exactly what those numbers mean. The US figure includes jobs like architect. Presumably the Canadian figure does too, but is not broken down in detail. If, hypothetically speaking, 450,000 of the 500,000 in Canada are architects, then that doesn't leave many boots on the ground. The numbers could be valid, and, at the same time, it is possible that we have comparatively few workers where it counts.

I’m more wondering why we got into this situation in the first place.

There are a lot of factors, but a big one is simply that the millennials – who are a huge generation rivalling the boomers in size – left the nest. If you recall, the colleges and universities had to go on dorm building frenzies in the late 90s/early 2000s just to accommodate them all. Once they left those dorms, they wanted houses. Before that time you could barely give your house away, so we didn't think much about building ahead of time.

And we've never had a sufficient labour force to fully recover from that event. We offer more and more money to attract more workers into the industry, which appears to working as the industry is growing, but then, of course, that drives the cost of housing higher and higher.

The same thing is largely happening around the world, and notably in the US where they went, at one time, overboard with building to try catch up, leading to the infamous housing crash (which lead to them halting new construction almost entirely, soon bringing them back to square one, but anyway...). I guess the question is why were Americans able to build – to the point of excess – while we couldn't?

1. They were quicker to dump money into the system to try and correct it. We were still hesitant to spend on homes even through much of the 2000s. By that point the need was starting to become more and more apparent, but Canadians are much more conservative than our friends to the south when it comes to trying new things. We're approximately now where they were a over decade ago with respect to willingness to spend.
2. Perhaps also, which plays into the same conservatism, because Canadian culture is very much go to university, get a good office job, else you will be considered a compete failure in life. We're the most educated nation in the world, according the OECD, and of those who put time into school they see jobs like construction as being a "waste of their education" and would rather do almost anything else to save face. The kids these days are being taught that the trades are cool, but that wasn't the case not so long ago.

As you point out, increasing the skilled labour force would be a priority

Yes, and why do you think the labour force is so comparatively small right now? That's right, because it isn't lucrative enough for most people to bother with. There are so many other jobs the people can do instead.

So, to attract more workers, you need to offer them more money, and to pay them more money you are going to increase the cost of building a house. And if the cost of building a house increases, the next best alternative (used housing) is going to go up in price too.

That's how we got here in the first place. If we could pay homebuilders $1 per hour, housing would be quite affordable (to anyone not building houses, at least). But you can't. They won't show up if you try. It costs serious amounts of money to compel what homebuilding workers we have to show up, and will cost even more if you want to convince more to join them.

If the BoC manages to kill the job market like they say they will, that will change things. Building homes starts to look more attractive when you're unemployed. Taking a huge pay cut starts to look more attractive when you have no other jobs options in front of you. But, until then...

Rather, if you’re using the money to offer multiple contracts to build houses, there’s more opportunity for people to enter the industry since there’s more income available.

Exactly. More offers competing for vendors means price will rise to attract vendors, either to win over existing vendors who will otherwise build a house for the next guy instead, or to compel new vendors into the marketplace who find the current rate not sufficient enough to bother with the industry. The going rate today is not enough to see more housing construction than what is already happening. Again, anyone who works on building houses today is booked up for years to come. Price has to rise to see something change.

At every point we mentioned raising the price of housing as it is fundamentally baked into the discussion. I don't know, maybe you just forgot to read the discussion taking place?

If you throw money at an industry, it grows.

Of course. Money brings out the people.

But then you've compounded the cost of constructing homes, which will also drive up the cost of used homes. That's how we got here in the first place.

Not really solving the problem.

Imagine all the social housing we could’ve built with that money instead.

Depends on how well pipeline building skills translate to home building skills, I guess. There isn't anyone accustomed to building houses that is free to build more. They are booked up for years to come. Money only helps if what you want to buy is available for purchase.

If a sealed tube will suffice as a home then you may be on to something!

but the misguided rhetoric you are advocating is commonly used to justify violent, psychopathic, and misogynistic behaviour.

I am afraid that doesn't stand up to reason.

I accept that the mentally unwell can twist anything into justifying whatever anti-social act they please, but that is well beyond any relevance that exists with respect to the conversation here. Besides, their claimed justification isn't the real reason for the act anyway.

That said, at second glance, are trying to say that it is you are the one who is about to irrationally burst out in a fit of rage because you think you cannot appropriately process a set of words? I'll be happy to point the police in your direction if that is your concern. They can help protect whomever it is your think you are going to hurt.

You need to stop thinking of human social relationships as transactional.

Frankly, telling someone that they need stop thinking about something is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Funny, yes, but best to leave the comedy for the comedy club.

They are not.

Of course, they are. It is well understood that the brain operates on a reward system.

You could really hurt someone if this is genuinely what you believe.

Well, no, technically it would be you who ends up hurting someone if the above is what is going on. If that doesn't describe you, nobody will be hurt. There is nothing here that can cause hurt.

What will the budget overrun be to establish that new mechanism?

Standard practice already dictates that you double the estimate, and then double it again. Aside from the Opera House, there are no real surprises in the examples given. 90% accuracy is good enough, no? Cost starts to outweigh the benefit if you want to reach for 100%.

What's the risk? I get murdered by a madman because I uttered some insignificant words they weren't able to process appropriately? If that's the risk, I should be talking the police, not a psychologist or psychotherapist.

Why we have less houses is the interesting question, which I can’t yet answer.

That's easy to answer: There is nobody to build them.

Anyone who is willing to build homes is already building as many as they possibly can, and are booked up years in advance. If you want to hire someone to build a new home for you tomorrow – you can't – the people don't exist. –– Well, yes, technically, offer an exceptionally large sum to those committed to other projects and they'll drop everything they have going on and will wait on you hand and foot. Everyone has a price. But that does nothing to help with the cost of housing. Those wishing to build offering more and more money to people building houses to get their spot in line is what is driving the costs upward.

Realistically, the only real solution is high unemployment, forcing people currently doing pointless office jobs to start swinging hammers. More labourers in the labour pool means lower labour costs (drives wages down), which means less cost to build new homes and allows more homes to be built, which means used homes come down in price in kind.

The BoC is working on it, to be fair. They have made it clear that they plan to push this shift in the economy. It takes time, though. If you want to see results sooner, take up work in the home construction industry (if not already). Be the change you want to see, as they say.

Then we're back to needing technical knowhow. These are not approachable services to the common man. Lemmy is hilariously unusable. Us nerds are willing to put up with it because it is something to geek out on, but why would a small town CTV reporter who has better things to do than fumble around on a computer all day? I'm sure he gets paid the same whether or not he markets his work independently of CTV.

Moreover, what's the point? Even if he has the technical knowhow, or is willing to put in the effort to gain it, the rest of the population doesn't. And they are going to care even less. It is not like news is exactly seen as being valuable. If it were, we wouldn't be here talking about how the news industry is suffering. If it is just for me, he may as well give me a phone call when he has something new to share.

Price is what moderates demand. The higher the price, the less demand there is. Maybe you can eke out a million dollar home, but at a billion dollars I'm sure you are tapping out and moving to the forest to live under a pile of branches. Well, I certainly am!

So long as price is able to rise, rise it will, and demand will keep eroding until equilibrium with supply is found. And I think it is fair to say we have found equilibrium. If you are in the market, there is no trouble finding a home. If you have sufficient transactional value in hand, someone out there will sell you their home, guaranteed.

That's quite unlike the toilet paper situation we saw a few years ago, where even a million dollars in your pocket wouldn't necessarily secure you a roll, even though the lottery winners were paying dollars at most. That happened because price gouging laws prevented price from rising. That's a shortage.

If you ignore the price component then everything is in shortage. There is always someone who is happy to take more, more, more. Call it that if you want, but what's the point? What, exactly, are you communicating when there is nothing not in shortage? There is good reason why the formal definition is more succinct.