Rational thought

There is a great line in Pride and Prejudice that goes something like, “And you are not to stir out of doors until you can show that you have spent ten minutes each day in a rational manner.”

I think this is a brilliant idea and wish it were required for everyone. Just ten minutes every day spent rationally. That’s not too much to ask, is it? It might start to build on itself and people might like it and then it might snowball out of control into like three hours of rational thought each and every day. Wow. What if some of this new-found rationality even leaked into our Government? Can you even imagine it? How things might change?

Let’s look at an example from trucking. Here’s the set-up. Shippers and receivers set the pick-up and delivery appointment times for their own convenience. So the truck drivers’ schedule are mostly dictated by the needs of their customers, which is as it should be in any service industry. But truckers are required by the Hours of Service to shut down for a ten hour break after driving a maximum of eleven hours.  The problem is that there aren’t enough truck parking spots in the East. So every day countless truckers reach a point where they must stop driving or they will be illegal, but they can find no place to park.

For years truckers have appealed to the Feds for help. We have begged for more parking. And what is the wisdom that rolls down from on high? Plan your trip better, driver. That’s what they tell us. Never mind that we don’t set the appointment times. Never mind that we can’t control traffic delays. Never mind that company drivers often can’t even control their route. Its worse than that. Lets look at the logic of their argument.

The whole point of plan your trip better is that its your own fault that you didn’t get a parking spot because you should have gotten there earlier. But think about that logically for a minute. Doesn’t plan your trip better prove that there aren’t enough parking spots?

Let’s say Fred shuts down at 6:00 pm and gets the last available parking spot. Bill shows up at 6:30 and is screwed. His government and the truck-stop owners tell him he should have planned his trip better. So the next night Bill shows up at 5:30 pm and he gets the last spot. Fred shows up again at 6:00 but this time he’s the one screwed. Fred should have planned his trip better. So on night three Fred shows up at 5:00 pm and he gets the last spot….

Do you see the problem here? There aren’t enough spots. If there were enough parking spots it wouldn’t matter how you “planned your trip” or when you showed up, there would be a place you could shut down. I mean how hard is it to see this? Its just very simple logic. It would be easy to figure this out in just ten minutes of rational thought.