"Ronald Reagan devoted his Labor Day in 1980 to two marvelous photo ops. The first captured him delivering a major speech on freedom and opportunity in Jersey City, N.J., the Statue of Liberty standing in the haze behind him. Then he flew to Allen Park, Mich., one of Detroit’s ubiquitous blue-collar suburbs, for an afternoon cookout at the modest home of a laid-off steelworker. There he got his second shot: the soon-to-be president of the United States standing over a grill packed with kielbasa, barbecue tongs in one hand, a beer in the other. The free market revolutionary as an average Joe, chatting up the workingman.
It was a marker of one of the two political transformations that drive Gary Gerstle’s enlightening new book, “The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order.” For almost half a century families like those that lived in Allen Park had backed what Gerstle, the Paul Mellon professor emeritus of American history at Cambridge, calls “the New Deal order.” At its core lay Franklin Roosevelt’s commitment to using government power to counter capitalism’s instability and inequality. From that principle emerged an array of public policies, some meant to regulate troublesome sectors of the economy, others to assure the aged and the poor a minimal standard of living, still others to give working people the income they needed to buy the goods their factories produced and the homes they dreamed of owning. As the programs flowed out, the support flooded in: By 1936 Roosevelt had added a huge bloc of blue-collar voters in the urban North to the Democrats’ traditional base in the white South, a combination so powerful it gave the party almost unassailable control of national politics for two generations.
Gerstle carefully recreates the new order Reagan wanted to put in its place. It had its origins, he says, in classical liberalism’s faith in the free market as the guarantor of both individual liberty and the common good. In the mid-20th century a handful of European intellectuals and their American acolytes gave that faith a new name — neoliberalism — and an institutional home in a scattering of generously funded research institutions and iconoclastic university economics departments. From there it seeped into the right wing of the Republican Party, where Reagan embraced it as the revelation he believed it to be. But Reagan was no intellectual. He was a popularizer, skilled at turning neoliberalism’s abstractions into sound bites that in the dire circumstances of the late 1970s managed to seem simultaneously common-sensical and inspirational.
There the neoliberal order remained, all but untouchable in its orthodoxy, until the crash of 2008.
„Wing ketvirtadienį pradėjo teikti bepiločių orlaivių pristatymo paslaugą Dalaso-Fort Verto vietovėje. Tai bus didžiausias Alphabet Inc. antrinės įmonės pristatymas JAV ir pirmoji bepiločių orlaivių iniciatyva, kurią valdys klientas.
„Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc.“, didžiausias „Wing“ klientas JAV, pristatys prekes iš parduotuvės automobilių stovėjimo aikštelės Little Elm mieste, Teksase. Naudodamiesi „Wing“ dronų pristatymo programėle, klientai galės pasirinkti iš 100 prekių, įskaitant nereceptinius vaistus ir būtiniausius buities reikmenis, sakė „Walgreens“ atstovas.
Produktai, pristatyti per kitus Wing klientus, įskaitant ledus iš „Blue Bell Creameries“, pirmosios pagalbos rinkinius iš „Texas Health Resources“ ir „Easyvet“ veterinarijos klinikų receptinius vaistus augintiniams, bus tvarkomi mišrios paskirties pastato Frisco mieste, Teksase, sustojimo vietoje. Laikui bėgant „Wing“ planuoja, kad klientai patys pristatys dronus. Wingas teigė, kad pristatymas bus apribotas „dešimtimis tūkstančių priemiesčių namų“ Frisco ir Little Guobose.
„Šis trečiosios šalies pristatymo modelis suteiks įmonėms galimybę pasiekti savo klientus greičiau ir pigiau, nei bet kada anksčiau“, – sakė „Wing“ komunikacijos vadovė Alexa Dennett.
Wing taip pat teikia komercines dronų paslaugas Christiansburge, Va., Suomijoje ir Australijoje. Pasak bendrovės, dauguma iš 200 000 komercinių dronų buvo pristatyti Australijoje.
Tobulėjant oro pristatymo technologijoms, bepiločių orlaivių įmonėms vis dažniau leidžiama plėsti savo veiklą JAV.
„Wing“ dronai skraido 65 mylias per valandą ir gali gabenti iki 3,3 svaro prekių. Pasak Wingo, kelionės į paskirties vietą laikas paprastai yra trumpesnis nei 10 minučių, o bepiločių orlaivių nuotolis yra 12 mylių. Pasak bendrovės, dronai yra maždaug 4 pėdų ilgio, o sparnų plotis didesnis, nei 3 pėdos, o sveria apie 10 svarų.
„Little Elm“ operacijoje „Walgreens“ komandos nariai stovės ir pritvirtins pristatomas prekes prie skraidančių dronų numestų linijų. Tada dronas susuka valą ir skrenda pristatyti gaminį klientui, sakė „Walgreens“ atstovas.
Paketai nuleidžiami ant žemės, kad klientas galėtų juos pasiimti tokiu pačiu būdu. Paketas automatiškai atsikabina ir dronas nuskrenda atgal į pastatymo stotį, kur bus įkraunamas, sakė Wing.
Nors maršruto planavimas ir skrydis yra savarankiški, pilotai prižiūri operacijas, sakė Wing. „Wing“ pilotai, prižiūrintys šią operaciją, bus įsikūrę Kalifornijoje ir Teksase, sakė „Wing“ atstovas.
Wing nekomentuoja, kiek dronų yra įtraukta, pažymėdamas, kad skaičius skiriasi priklausomai nuo užsakymų apimties.
„Texas Health Resources“, pelno nesiekiančių ligoninių tinklas, teigė, kad ankstyvosiose diskusijose ketinama išplėsti pirmosios pagalbos vaistinėlių pristatymo programos apimtį.
Viena iš galimybių yra naudoti dronus medicinos reikmenims gabenti iš vienos įstaigos į kitą.
„Kai galvojate apie tai, kaip paspartinti laboratorijų... žmonių, kuriems labai reikia tiekimo, kurį galime turėti vienoje, o ne kitoje įstaigoje, jums nereikia jaudintis dėl srauto“, – sakė Teksaso produktų plėtros vyresnysis viceprezidentas Bartas Ingramas.
Andrew Lipsmanas, tyrimų įmonės „eMarketer“ pagrindinis analitikas, sakė, kad receptiniai vaistai yra pagrindinis dronų pristatymo atvejis.
„Receptiniai vaistai yra lengvi, jie dažnai būna labai skubūs... vartotojams naudingumas tikrai didelis“, – sakė jis." [1]
1. Business News: Alphabet Unit Launches Drone Delivery in Texas
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"Wing launched a drone-delivery service in the Dallas-Fort Worth area Thursday in what will be the Alphabet Inc. subsidiary's largest U.S. rollout and its first drone initiative operated by a customer.
Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc., Wing's largest customer in the U.S., will stage deliveries from a store parking lot in the town of Little Elm, Texas. Using Wing's drone-delivery app, customers will be able to select from 100 items, including over-the-counter medicines and household essentials, a Walgreens spokesperson said.
Products delivered through other Wing customers, including ice cream from Blue Bell Creameries, first-aid kits from Texas Health Resources and pet prescriptions from easyvet veterinary clinics, will be handled at a staging area at a mixed-use development in Frisco, Texas, by Wing employees. Over time, Wing plans to have customers operate their own drone deliveries. Wing said deliveries will be limited to "tens of thousands of suburban homes" in Frisco and Little Elm for now.
"This third-party delivery model will give businesses the ability to reach their customers in faster and cheaper ways than ever before," said Alexa Dennett, head of communications for Wing.
Wing also operates commercial drone services in Christiansburg, Va., Finland and Australia. Most of its 200,000 commercial drone deliveries have been made in Australia, according to the company.
Drone companies increasingly have been cleared to expand their operations in the U.S. as technology underpinning air-delivery improves.
Wing's drones travel 65 miles an hour and can carry up to 3.3 pounds of goods. Travel time to a destination is typically under 10 minutes, according to Wing, and the drones have a range of 12 miles round trip. The drones are roughly 4 feet long with a wingspan of over 3 feet and weigh approximately 10 pounds, the company said.
At the Little Elm operation, Walgreens team members will stand by to attach delivery items to lines dropped by hovering drones. The drone then reels in the line and flies to deliver the product to the customer, a Walgreens spokesperson said.
Packages are lowered to the ground for customer pickup the same way. The package automatically unhooks itself and the drone flies back to the staging station where it will charge, Wing said.
While route planning and flight are autonomous, human pilots oversee the operations, Wing said. The Wing pilots overseeing this operation will be based in California and Texas, a Wing spokesperson said. Wing wouldn't comment on how many drones are involved, noting that the number varies based on the volume of orders.
Texas Health Resources, a network of nonprofit hospitals, said it is in early discussions to expand the scope of a program to deliver first-aid kits. One possibility is using drones to ship medical supplies between facilities.
"When you think about expediting labs . . . people in critical need of supplies that we might have at one facility and not another, you don't have to worry about traffic," said Bart Ingram, senior vice president of product development at Texas Health Resources.
Andrew Lipsman, principal analyst at research firm eMarketer, said prescriptions are a key use case for drone deliveries.
"Prescriptions are light, they are often of high urgency . . . the consumer utility is really high," he said." [1]
1. Business News: Alphabet Unit Launches Drone Delivery in Texas
Bhattacharyya, Suman.
Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 08 Apr 2022: B.3.
They would survive there perfectly. They need neither air, nor food, nor water, nor gravity. They don’t need money. They close trade with China for Lithuanian businesses. They close trade for Lithuanian companies with European Union companies that export something to China (most among the larger ones). All the more so, they are demanding that the lion's share of the gas and oil needed to run those businesses be taken away from European businesses. The rulers of dwarf Lithuania want to destroy all European business.
It is a pity that the asylum for people with limited abilities is not fashionable now.