One of my favorite podcasts, "Gone South", did a two part feature about this phenomena in July of 2025. Well worth the listen. Pt. 1: https://pca.st/1clncbd7
New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy
61–70 of 92 posts
Re: New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do not buy this. There is plenty of money in “traditional” work, and immigrants from all over the world find it and do it. If uneducated people, who may speak English as a second language at best, can move around the US and find their footing, then surely almost all who grew up here with access to the language and public schools can. And the people in this article are born in the 1960s and 1970s, in the decades tha…
America might have been booming, but wages were dropping in real terms throughout that period. And the heroes are the people who buck the system and made a fortune quickly. Not the people who toil away consistently at a job and incrementally build a modest living over decades. So of course everyone wants to be a hero. Add in Crypto, and Day Trading, and more recently the prediction markets. All of whom specifically t…
Median real wages: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
Re: New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
People will do anything but work for a living. > Tt was surprisingly easy to find locals willing to risk their lives for money. Nearly a quarter of New Orleans residents live in poverty, and the prospect of a substantial windfall for a few hours’ work apparently outweighed any fear of getting into a car that was about to take part in a high-speed accident.
> People will do anything but work for a living. It's just engrained in certain cultures. In fact, the lengths to which some people will go to avoid working for a living is stupendous. I've heard tell of organized crime in my area that sure sounds like a lot of work for not that much pay, i.e. no different than a low-end job. Like that old quote about entrepreneurs being people who work 100 hours a week to avoid work…
There are a lot of perks to drug dealing for low pay versus working fast food or customer service in a store for low pay. If you work at Macy's you always gotta look decent and be smiley and friendly, if you sell cocaine you can tell bad customers to go fuck themselves and do your work hungover and wearing dirty sweat pants. If you deal near or out of your house you don't have a real commute, can work any schedule you like, don't have to ask permission for any decisions, basically the same as many 1-2 person businesses except with unusually high demand.
Re: New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
America might have been booming, but wages were dropping in real terms throughout that period. And the heroes are the people who buck the system and made a fortune quickly. Not the people who toil away consistently at a job and incrementally build a modest living over decades. So of course everyone wants to be a hero. Add in Crypto, and Day Trading, and more recently the prediction markets. All of whom specifically t…
Median real wages: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
Now adjust it for inflation.
Re: New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes this jumped out at me too. It isn't remotely true. The opposite is more accurate: I'd wager that at least half the trucks on the road are built more like small planes from the 60s WRT to operational systems.
Mixing and matching local-ish trucking vs OTR is like mix and matching "shootings that happen at schools" with "shootings that target a school". You lose resolution on both issues and it's counterproductive if your goal is to understand either. The commercial (i.e. CDL requiring 26k+) fleet is fairly bimodal, two fleets if you will. You've got local and local-ish small carriers operating bottom dollar box trucks and…
> "shootings that happen at schools" with "shootings that target a school".
I don't understand this analogy or distinction at all?
Re: New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy
#66> and today’s large trucks are so computerized that they operate almost like airplanes Nonsense. Almost no vehicle even comes with anything like this installed. Some carriers will add driver monitoring computers, and they will emit tones under certain conditions, hard breaking, lane departure, too little following distance; however, to compare these simple alerts to the level of automation in an aircraft is just daff…
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Re: New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy
#67It sure would be nice if we had an actual economy around here. That being said, I have definitely been given a speeding ticket by state police on that stretch of I-10 well before this all happened, and when I had a car crash under the Claiborne expressway on the Sundays when people drag race under the bridge I assure you these "runners" were nowhere to be found. Possibly because the local biker gang whose bikes the o…
People will do anything but work for a living. > Tt was surprisingly easy to find locals willing to risk their lives for money. Nearly a quarter of New Orleans residents live in poverty, and the prospect of a substantial windfall for a few hours’ work apparently outweighed any fear of getting into a car that was about to take part in a high-speed accident.
I'm not defending criminal activity here, but you seem to be completely brushing off the fact that unemployment among African Americans in New Orleans hit a peak of 52% in 2011.
Re: New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy
#68Re: New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People will do anything but work for a living. It's just engrained in certain cultures. In fact, the lengths to which some people will go to avoid working for a living is stupendous. I've heard tell of organized crime in my area that sure sounds like a lot of work for not that much pay, i.e. no different than a low-end job. Like that old quote about entrepreneurs being people who work 100 hours a week to avoid work…
There are a lot of perks to drug dealing for low pay versus working fast food or customer service in a store for low pay. If you work at Macy's you always gotta look decent and be smiley and friendly, if you sell cocaine you can tell bad customers to go fuck themselves and do your work hungover and wearing dirty sweat pants. If you deal near or out of your house you don't have a real commute, can work any schedule yo…
Often car washes or clothing stores are fronts for you know what.
Re: New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy
#70[deleted]