Video games explain the supply chain crisis
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- Опубликовано: 19 май 2024
- THE SUPPLY CHAIN. It got majorly screwed up during recent events, but what if we could fix it! What if we could fix it by making it more efficient, more comprehensive, more... logistical!? What if the supply chain could be more like a video game? What if ... it already is? Games like Satisfactory, Factorio, Infinifactory... they're all about creating supply chains, gathering resources and moving them from step to step in a massive system, resulting in the creation of capital, or simply the creation of a bigger system. Our real-life supply chain is already more like these games than you might expect. Polygon's Clayton Ashley unleashes all his logistical abilities to explain how this happened and why.
Video games by order of appearance:
Factorio
OpenTTD
Satisfactory
Railgrade
Infinifactory
Dyson Sphere Program
Captain of Industry
Valheim
The Forest
Per Aspera
Age of Empires 2 HD
Civilization 5
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Guys...
Guys I don't know if you know this, but...
T H E B I G B O A T G O T S T U C K
holy shit no way I had no idea
Considering how many microplastics i have in me, i think at this point i might mostly be made in a factory
all of your organs. are made. in a factory.
@@polygonwomen are factories, and men are liquid suppliers confirmed
@@polygonplease read People's Republic of Walmart
Snake told you you have nanomachines in you too? I thought I was the special one…
That raises a much more personal Ship of Theseus question.
An argument I saw long ago that sticks with me is, "It's a damning indictment of our system that new labor-saving technology needs to be met not with joy at all the work people don't have to do, but with fear at how people are going to earn a living without those jobs." Automating warehouse work seems great to me--warehouse work sucks and is dangerous for humans, let the robots do it. But it puts people out of jobs. One would think that over two hundred years of industrialization, we'd have developed a good system for "you got automated out of your job, let's find a way for you to get a new job, or just build our system so that you don't have to have a job to get by." But nooooooope.
We have perfectly good systems for that. We just don't use them.
There is a group of people who are terrified that someone somewhere is getting something they don't deserve. And that group is making things worse for everything and making almost all our social programs cost far more. But something amazing happens when you just ignore them. They tend to get used to it and just move on very quickly. It's a shame we don't do it more.
we did! unfortunately capitalists work very hard to dismantle those systems as soon as they appear
Warehouse automation is not the same as factory automation - that said, no one making the automation is trying to eliminate someone elses job; they're trying to mkae it so the humans can focus on things non-monotonous that programs or computers cannot. We're looking to create more time for our users, rather than outdate them. Our best service is our people - let them make their focus on the highest priorities
I cannot recommend enough "Automation and the Future of Work" by Aaron Benanav
A key takeaway is that people losing their jobs to automation is not an unintended consequence that the people in charge are just too incompetent to have figured out a solution to.
Workers being made precarious and forced to accept more immiserating conditions on threat of starvation and homelessness is the point. And it happens even without huge technological breakthroughs, those are just another way to achieve it.
Thus, full automation is neither sufficient, nor necessary, to a world where we all work less and live free.
If you would prefer to listen rather than read the book, there are two streams on the Sophie From Mars channel, where Nat reads through it, also adding her own interpretations and reading from chat.
@@Kinbats Why does this sound like it was written by an HR department?
There are two types of viewers: Those that laugh or otherwise reject the idea, and those that APPLAUD THE ALLMIGHTY CONTAINER. Also, Thank you so much for making this, the perfect explanation as to why this is the logistics genre, not factory genre
Wow, Clayton's a real Fact-ory!
hey
@@polygonthat's for horses
UBI was the promise of labour automation. Which really presents the labour reduction for automation WITHOUT UBI concerning.
Exactly! The issue is not that we're reducing the need for dangerous, repetitive, exhausting labor in manufacturing and the supply chain. The issue is that all the benefits of that reduced labor are not going to the laborers. If it's getting cheaper and easier to produce things, why aren't things getting cheaper? (I know it's not that simple, but on some level it really kinda is)
it would make sense if all the money saved in automating was distributed evenly but those at the top just add it as a bonus to themselves
@@FlutterSwag It's funny to reduce greed to a hoarding problem but it kind of is lol
I think the promise was always more leisure time. It elided the need to work to live.
@@JRiddelle i forget where i heard it but someone said if a roman came to our time and saw all the innovation and automation theyd ask "why we still work ourselves to the bone and not have feasts and orgies every day"
+12 points for use of the pear wiggler
I too signed up to a watch a man lose his mind over a fedex commercial today too
Clayton's editing is always S tier, and I feel like he has gone even farther into the realms of the style with this. It's so compelling. I am logistically required to View This Content
Gives me major Unraveled vibes and I love it!
The reason so many companies were affected so negatively by "Just In Time" (JIT) logistics was because it was poorly implemented to make a quick buck and that the failures of leadership were subsequently blamed on the supply chain because it was an easy scapegoat.
Stay in the auto industry for the perfect example. In 2021, for the first time in 90 years, General Motors was outsold in the United States by Toyota. How could Toyota, a much smaller manufacturer, achieve this during the "supply chain crisis" ? As the inventor of JIT, Toyota implemented it properly by including forecasting. They looked ahead and identified that chips would be short, so they stockpiled (even though stockpiling seems counterintuitive to a base-level understanding of JIT).
The narrative surrounding the supply chain crisis has done some serious lifting - being used to cover-up poorly implemented cost-cutting/profit-generating schemes and also as a scapegoat to cover greedy price increases in tandem with the idea of inflation (just look at the record profits).
This video is a great analog and does a decent job of talking about real factors that affected manufacturing, but plows ahead with common wisdom that's not terribly wise when you consider the poor planning that led to many of the factors that exacerbated the "supply chain crisis".
also see: "precision-scheduled railroading"
Thank you for highlighting this. The history of the thing helps explain the thing. "Lean" or "pull manufacturing" or "just in time" whatever modern name you like to slap on it arose during a very specific time in Japanese history. It intentionally trades resiliency for lower overhead costs. If you as a future implementer of your own logistical system only see the "lower overhead" and ignore either the historical context that necessitated it or the very real reduction in resiliency and do nothing to counteract it, you will eventually suffer the consequences.
@@jacobeden2083 really well said. Not only will what you said happen, but the reason will also be shifted to whatever is most convenient for those creating the narrative. We're all subject to the zeitgeist, so those things often repeated and seldom challenged can become "common wisdom"
Clayton laughing his way through some of these line reads brightened my whole day. Perfect icing on a very informative and fascinating cake! That’s Logistics™ 📈
I think he might be tone deaf
factorio's amazing, capitalism is dooming us all, and clayton's performance chops are strong in this one
This is so unhinged. I love it.
I get Clayton’s enthusiasm. Systems are cool, trains are objectively cool, controlling and growing those networks of systems is cool. It just sucks when growth and development come at the expense of the humans that live between the gears.
and the humans that die between the gears. them too.
Wow Clayton was in a MOOD while he made/edited this, huh?
Now That's What I Call Edu-tainment Volume: May frontline supply chain workers get the wage, treatment, respect, acknowledgement that they deserve by any means necessary from their cartoonishly inhuman plutocratic oligrachic shareholders (derogatory)
Also thank you Polygon team for continuing to make secretly (or not so secretly) incisive journalism adjacent video-game pieces like these.
I have a degree in supply chain management. Our final project was a to partake in a program that had been written to simulate a market. We had to build an efficient supply chain within the simulation to react to the simulation.
Basically my capstone project was to beat the logistics video game
I put quite a lot of time into Satisfactory... and one day I looked at everything I'd built and felt overwhelmingly depressed. I don't play satisfactory anymore.
Thank you for this. During covid i worked at home depot, and i felt like/was treated like a crazy person for trying to explain why the shelves were empty on and off, it was so frustrating on both sides, for everybody.
7:56 the FedEx roast gives me joy as someone who has several times had problems with FedEx shipments.
Thanks for the historical materialism lesson, I'm a Marxist now.
Who could have known Polygon of all things would actually dog whistle for communists and Marxists in their videos?! This is great.
Big boats are kind of like big wet trains, but sometimes the rail runs directly into the shore in Egypt
What is a canal but wet railroad
I recently moved into a place with a VERY loud AC unit so it’s given me new appreciation for y’all’s captioning team. I can also only describe that outro nonsense as “cheesy vacation music,” 10/10 thanks y’all ❤ (& also thanks for everything)
I think people put too much importance on employment, when the thing that actually matters is the money someone needs to survive in society. Automating out jobs is actually a good thing IMO, but only if you also have universal basic income to go with it. We'll probably never truly reach a Star Trek TNG-esque post scarcity society, but making it so that people are no longer required to undertake especially physically or mentally demanding jobs like farming, or factory work just to survive does get us one step closer to that post-scarcity socialist economy.
i freaking LOVE clayton’s energy in this!!
Unhinged and terrifying (affectionate)
My 'I applauded for the standard cargo container' t-shirt has a lot of people asking questions like "Where can I get one of those?"
The subtitles appear to have been all copy-pasted as one un-synced block, would love to see that fixed
This is a known issue with RUclips's language settings, nothing we can fix on our end unfortunately! www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/14tt96v/this_bug_that_shows_all_of_the_videos_subtitles/
All those years of non-automation-themed video games were solely for the purpose of training my reaction time so I could applaud in time at 7:23
Clayton laughing at big boat got stuck brought me so much joy and idk why
obsessed with the style of this video
I really appreciate the default google slides background 2 minutes in
lol the big boat got stuck 😂
she got stuck
This is some unhinged energy and I dig it
There are dozens of us Luddites. Dozens.
the default google slides layout absolutely got me, excellent work
The intro hits harder when you work in a factory making things
Thanks for sharing these games and creating space to ponder the joys of their design and play while maintaining awareness of the same, more harmful applications in reality.
I was overjoyed to hear the "that's logistics" ad! It is an important part of my soul and shamefully few people in my life know what I'm talking about when I reference it
Clayton's videos never disappoint! Actually learning something is just a neat side effect lol
Clayton videos manage to out-do every equivalent educational vox video EVER made. 😂
Fantastic video. Also Clayton pronouncing it “ERUUUUDITE” killed me hahaha
Workers and Resources is the one true "how supply chains actually tend to fail in real life" simulator
Hurray another Clayton video! I LOVE this! The first Rollercoaster Tycoon was one of the first computer games I ever played as a tiny kiddo and over time it taught me all sorts of stuff! Oh, I need more mechanics, I need more garbage bins, these paths are too crowded, need more paths, need to optimize routes and ride placement and ride entry cost... and I was like, 7? Lol!
Anyway I'm buying like every single game you showed. It isn't even a choice. Thanks Clayton. 😂
Clayton, I really need to know if you have watched Callum’s video on the standard shipping container.
Good job. Your presentation has improved a lot over the years
I love that you mentioned Captain of Industry when mentioning complex chains :D
Me at 7:24 realizing my hands are moving: Wait, why am I clapping for a standard cargo container? That's the power of Clayton Ashley
Amazing timing for this video, given the Factorio expansion announcement this morning. The high-energy editing style is always great too :D
This was such a cool video Clayton. Also when are we doing this fourth logistics revolution? I’m ready
This's been my fav video polygon's done in ages - good job Clayton :D
How dare you secretly educate me... how dare you!
My favorite is when rail companies destroy rail lines to reduce supply and drive up prices, while moving more cargo onto trucks that destroy the fragile roads paid for with public taxes. The fact that many truck drivers are independent contractors who can take a job that ends up paying less than minimum wage is a nice bonus
While I feel like this script needed editing, I’m LOVING new unhinged Clayton.
New series: Unhinged
thanks Clayton
I’m a simple person. I see a Clayton vid, I click.
Good video. The part about appeasing shareholders made me think that journalists should stop posting headlines about losses without digging into what the company has potentially sacrificed in order to invest in their employees, which could be seen as an investment in the company.
Liking logistics games doesn’t make you a bad person but it should definitely get you put on a watch list.
Source: 200 hours in Factorio
Yeah that’s fair
Phenomenal video essay, wow! I'm amazed how engaging it was
As a gamer who works in logistics I have never felt more like the exact audience for a video
So, maybe the final boss battle in Satisfactory is going to be a stay-home decree? So much for the food court theory...
The editing on this video is wild lol
Shout out to the ever given. It was a great day
best week of my dang life - simone
Great stuff. I am mildly sad that the video description doesn't have a list of the games depicted with store links though.
Added a list of games!
The DS9 mention is SO apt for this subject, immaculate taste Clayton
This was incredibly entertaining and incredibly informative, thank you so much
As a person who worked supply chain for a giant international company pre and during COVID....this is ridiculously accurate
if you get hit by an automated truck do you go to an automated isekai?
This is actually a problem when we talk about sustainable fashion or "buying from the US only". The thing is, when textile moved away from the US, it took textile mills with it. Everyone sold their equipment. It's not here. So if you are actually trying to mill fabric in the US you either have to re-make/build textile machines (expensive), or try to buy them back (also expensive). It's one of many things that frankly, is gone, and is not easily coming back. So we are either stuck with a prohibitively expensive start-up culture or trying to advocate for better working conditions in other countries.
Of course, this is different from the "just in time" logistics model, which obviously breaks down when the world as a whole doesn't function the ways it's supposed to. It's a problem with tight margins, and should be a lesson in why we shouldn't be scraping every part of the supply chain (especially....worker salary) to the bone, but I'm pretty sure no one learned a thing from Covid.
(Oh, and railway workers got paid sick days back in June, so I'm hoping this video isn't posthumous.)
this was such a good video! informative and entertaining. I enjoyed it so much i wanted to send yall kudos💚
I absolutely adore these types of videos :)
now i really want to play a factory making game...
Ah yes, Factorio, the logistics to pollution pipeline simulator and how it pisses off the native species.
I hope you appreciate that I had to drop my phone to applaud standardised shipping crates on cue.
This was very good. More, please.
As always, I bloody love your captions
I LOVE Clayton videos! Polygon videos totally fulfill my weird niche nerd enthusiasm
Shout out to Universal Paperclips: the only game where you consume ALL. THE. RESOURCES.
"The Suez Canal, finished in 1869, ..."
Nice.
Just pay this guy to make videos all the time. Give him a team and just let him make these. If Polygon was just this guy and gun expert, I doubt you'd see a drop in your numbers. They would probably go up.
My favorite type of Polygon video ❤️
I’m an Amazon delivery driver and in my experience, the trucks in the morning are ALMOST just on time most days, often about 15 minutes late. So then they make us rush extra hard to load up our vans. Then we take the packages to 150ish customers per day and we get to choose in which order we do them. Amazon’s algorithmic route sequences are almost always nonsense. And That’s why your estimated delivery time is always wrong. 🤙
Leave candy bars on your porch for us ok thanks
Oh man, that Satisfactory spaghetti is traumatizing.
love the energy in this one
Unhinged. Educational. Perfect.
Automation/technology should be an inherently good thing. Production with less labor should, as a whole, help humanity.
Inventing farming tools used to mean the farmer does less work.
Now it means the worker gets set on some other work, or loses a job.
An economics issue in the end. The benefits of automation/technology no longer benefit the working class.
These games rock btw.
Man this was a good video. Distressing, but good.
YES to this kinda content
The video I didn’t know I needed - Clayton is a fucking treasure
imagine if we lived in a world where automation was something exciting that would make our lives better and give us more time to enjoy life instead of doing the work now done automatically, instead of having discourse about whether automation will decimate the working class even further.
During the feudal era when nobody who worked the land owned the land they worked and most of what they made went to many levels above them before reaching the royals who owned the land, 80% of citizens were farmers. In some places, it's now 2%. Arguing against automating these kinds of jobs is like arguing against making it so less people are farmers.
Question, how much of your computer or phones cost to produce is due to human wages? Like, facilities need cleaning, materials need mining and refining, energy needs to be paid for from power sources that also require mining, drilling, and so on. If you were to take every step of the process and every source of fuel and resource and automate it, how much would the same computer or phone now cost to make? The new cost would be set by the value of the land it all takes place on, nothing else. Repairs are automated, replacement parts for all the automation is automated, we create the cost through our labor at every step of the process.
Sure, companies could charge money for something they make for free, but once all the process is automated you really don't need the people at the top to run things anymore, you just need the repair factory to build a new factory and then allow people to use the new one for free. A bit like internet piracy, but for production chains that can make more of themselves.
A-train deserves mention. It was Japanese answer to Railroad Tycoon with its own ideas. The two games on PC are a good start.
Love your stuff, though this time it could use less hard jumpcuts 😅
So happy to see a game I worked on is on the list
who knew a video about logistic could be so logisticool!
Only 207 hours on Dyson Sphere Program? Amateur
I loved this one! 10/10
Business execs spend all day, every day cutting "waste" and "trimming the fat."
But talk to any engineer, and they'll tell you that some redundancy is efficient, because it flattens down production troughs. Statistically, the Bad Thing WILL happen, on a long enough timeline. What's the plan when it does?
i miss the week when the big boat got stuck :(
boy have i got news for you!
another one got stucked and a second crashed into it, like yesterday
This could potentially bring a new wave of addicts to Factorio.
I feel like Clayton finally lost it and I'm totally here from it
I understood and internalised every point made. More importantly, what were the games in the background?
satisfactory, factorio, per aspera, captain of industry, dyson sphere program, transport tycoon(likely openTTD), infinifactory(briefly), railgrade