What’s The Secret Behind Diapers.com Success? A Kiva Robot Warehouse

Exactly right.

The reason I'm replying, though, is that I wanted to opine that a Social Safety Net != Socialism.

Two of the largest vectors of wealth redistriubution in the last couple years are extended UIC and subsidized health/COBRA benefits. I think it's quite difficult to argue that we'd be better of having these 30MM unemployed people without ANY income or ANY health coverage.

If for no other reason than that's 30 MM fewer consumers.

That's not what this is, though. This is just factory workers that put a box on a cart for 70 hours a week losing their jobs because a robot can do it more efficiently. We're far off from robots creating robots that do things like that, so there are always going to be other jobs until then. They can find other jobs that are actually productive and worthwhile. This is why I find redistribution of wealth so ridiculous; there has to be someone working to generate wealth for himself, so why can't others just work like he is so they can generate their own wealth rather than stealing his?

Most people were illiterate in the past because they didn't go to school. I don't think it makes sense to assume that some magical force will make people useful for non-automatable tasks in the future. Unless we achieve major breakthroughs in education, a large portion of society will be less capable than cheaper robots, and will therefore be unemployable.

Somebody will own those robots and their output. Either robot owners will have to give away goods, or the government will have to forcibly redistribute it for your conclusion to hold. I actually don't think either of those are very unlikely, but it's still going to be a major change that makes the current political discourse about "socialism" seem quite trivial.

>cloth diapers cause more rashes.

I'd heard the contrary (we use both cloth and compostable disposables), any citations?

I can see how those using strong washing detergents could have problems, we use ecover and haven't had nappy rash problems (anecdotal I know).

From http://publications.environment-agency.gov.uk/pdf/SCHO0808BO...

>The average 2006 disposable nappy would result in a global warming impact of approximately 550kg of carbon dioxide equivalents used over the two and a half years a child is typically in nappies. The global warming impact from disposable nappies use has decreased since the previous study due to manufacturing changes and a 13.5 per cent reduction in the weight of nappies.

and then for cloth nappies

>For reusable nappies, the baseline scenario based on average washer and drier use produced a global warming impact of approximately 570kg of carbon dioxide equivalents. However, the study showed that the impacts for reusable nappies are highly dependent on the way they are laundered. Washing the nappies in fuller loads or line-drying them outdoors all the time (ignoring UK climatic conditions for the purposes of illustration) was found to reduce this figure by 16 per cent. Combining three of the beneficial scenarios (washing nappies in a fuller load, outdoor line drying all of the time, and reusing nappies on a second child) would lower the global warming impact by 40 per cent from the baseline scenario, or some 200kg of carbon dioxide equivalents over the two and a half years, equal to driving a car approximately 1,000 km.

FWIW we buy compostable disposables to limit landfill impact (contrary to another comment landfill area is not infinite) and bought our "real" nappies on ebay and have then reused them. We don't tumble dry nappies (UK) and practice what's considered early potty training which reduces cleaning requirements¹.

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¹Clearly reducing nappy changing as much as possible and reducing the period of nappy wearing has a great impact.

>And I found it - they assumed a load factor of 100% for trains, but 72% for airplanes. When actually in the real world airplanes are pretty full and trains are not - but they run them anyway. And trains will probably use more fuel if they were full, so their entire study is worthless.

Fair enough, I can't be bothered to check your analysis, just like I cherry picked the citation. However assuming that the trains are full and aeroplanes aren't isn't really a problem here. Most long distance trains I've been on here are standing room only (except in 1st class). I've been on a few half full flights though most of the budget airlines are pretty good at getting full capacity.

There is a lot of competition in internal flight routes here but none on train routes. Train routes are monopolies. They do very strange things with train pricing - sometimes my MiL can get to us cheaper (via London, about 750km as the crow flies, 1 ticket) than we can visit the next town (about 20km, 4 tickets). Flights are priced using a scarcity model that makes early bookings almost the same as the taxes and later bookings as much as traditionally priced airlines.