The global supply chain is hitting a wall of human and technical limitations. From German tracks to Italian streets, the market is brutally verifying the real costs of services.
A salary offer of 10,000 PLN net is not enough to find someone willing to drive a truck. This is not a typo in an advertisement, but a market warning signal with the strength of an air-raid siren.
The paradox of Polish transport, where high earnings lose to the lack of access to a toilet, exposes a fundamental error in the valuation of the modern economy. The thesis is clear: the era of growth based on undercutting labor costs and exploiting outdated infrastructure is coming to an end.
Accounting vs. Reality. The German carrier DB Cargo has just admitted that the old industrial model is bankrupt. CEO Bernhard Osburg announced the elimination of 6,200 jobs, which represents 44% of the staff in Germany alone. The cuts will cover administration, planning, and sales, with the goal of achieving the mythical „black zeros” by 2026.
This decision stems from the fact that traditional demand from the steel and chemical industries is systematically declining. DB Cargo is trying to save itself by escaping into a European scale, reducing employment to a target of 8,000 employees. It is a cold calculation: the company has been generating losses for a decade, and the state-funded IV drip, questioned by the European Commission, must be disconnected.
Meanwhile, in Poland, the transport industry is colliding with a demographic and social barrier. The average age of a driver exceeds 50 years. Young people are rejecting this profession not because of wages, but because of conditions that insult human dignity.
Well-known industry figure Iwona Blecharczyk points this out with brutal precision: „You pay for the toilet, you pay for the shower, you pay for everything” — Iwona Blecharczyk. The driver pays for basic physiological needs while living in a cabin under the pressure of a tachograph. The labor market is sending a clear message: the price of transport must rise to cover the costs of civilized sanitary conditions.
Job reductions at DB Cargo (Germany): Current status: 14000, Planned reduction: 6200, Target status: 7800
The Prosecutor Values the Delivery. Where the market fails in valuing dignity, the prosecutor steps in. The Italian justice system has placed the Deliveroo branch under judicial control, revealing the mechanism of caporalato. Investigators found that 20,000 couriers were working for rates of around 3.77 euros per delivery.
This amount is 90% lower than the poverty threshold. The Milan Prosecutor's Office is not stopping at the intermediary. It is demanding documentation from giants such as McDonald's, Burger King, and Esselunga. This is a precedent that strikes at the foundation of „cheap delivery.”
A business model based on working 13 hours a day without insurance is being recognized as a crime, not an innovation. Companies will have to revise their price lists, taking into account the real cost of human labor, not just an algorithm.
Since 2016, Italy has been systematically tightening regulations aimed at labor exploitation. Extending criminal liability to companies that outsource services to entities using exploitation is changing the balance of power across the entire platform economy.
Physical Limits of the Cloud. The illusion of infinite resources is also ending in energy and digital infrastructure. In 2025, Energa Operator issued connection conditions for 2.5 GW of new renewable energy capacity. This is a 190% increase compared to 2023.
CEO Robert Świerzyński announces investments of 40 billion PLN by 2035. The distribution network, designed decades ago, must accommodate energy from thousands of dispersed sources. This cannot be done through „optimization” – cables must be laid.
A similar verification is affecting digital giants. The Japan Fair Trade Commission conducted a raid on the offices of Microsoft Japan. Investigators are examining whether the corporation blocked competition on the Azure platform.
Even in the virtual cloud, where three American entities compete, regulators are setting boundaries for monopolies. Japan, the world's third-largest economy, shows that technological dominance does not exempt one from the rules of the market game.
40 billion PLN — Energa Operator's investment plan until 2035
Costs That Cannot Be Hidden. One could argue that automation and digitalization will offset rising labor and infrastructure costs. Proponents of this view will point to DB Cargo's plans to „integrate digital processes” at the European level, or the development of energy storage (over 3.3 GW of connection capacity at Energa).
Technology is supposedly meant to allow for doing „more for less.” However, this argument ignores the physical nature of the problem. No algorithm can replace a toilet for a driver, and artificial intelligence cannot transmit electricity without a copper cable.
Digitalization at DB Cargo involves a painful reduction of living people, not a painless increase in efficiency. Technology shifts costs, but it does not eliminate them – as seen in Energa's need to spend 40 billion PLN just on network modernization.
We are on the threshold of a great price realization. The cheap courier, the free highway, and the subsidized railway are becoming things of the past. We will all pay for the „black zeros” in company balance sheets – through higher prices for services and goods.
CEO Osburg cuts jobs to save the company, and prosecutors in Milan sue corporations to save people. In both cases, the conclusion is the same: the free lunch in the global economy has just been canceled.