[HN Gopher] Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stack...
___________________________________________________________________
Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations
Author : yblu
Score : 656 points
Date : 2021-10-23 18:57 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| ConcernedCoder wrote:
| Roads, bridges, are already overwhelmed with traffic, and we have
| 1/2 of congress preventing federal spending on infrastructure --
| this will be the next bottleneck... I keep hearing about a 60,000
| trucker shortage, but with us "long haul" trucker count @ around
| 1/2 a million, that will only add another 10% capacity... from
| what I've seen traveling the USA on interstates, 10% more trucks
| would be INSANE overload... these same highways are saturated and
| this doesn't even address the countless construction zones on all
| of them... there's a whole lot more "problems" than containers
| IMHO
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| Remember than the vast majority of the "infrastructure" bill is
| for "social infrastructure" and that the lesser amount of
| funding for the physical infrastructure is still subject to the
| contracting, procurement, environmental, safety, and other
| regulations at the federal, state, and local levels - all of
| which needs to be navigated before any actual work begins. By
| the time that is done, there won't be much left for materials
| and labor.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| aakkaarr wrote:
| Sounds like the best time to start your container-house building
| company
| micro_cam wrote:
| Does this mean it is a cheap time to buy empty shipping
| containers?
| [deleted]
| mastax wrote:
| No. Shipping container prices have risen threefold. The
| transshipment companies who have to deal with the containers
| piling up don't own the containers, and can't sell them to you.
| hedora wrote:
| They should switch to a model where the slot the empty
| container occupies is sold at auction.
|
| I'd wager the difference between the current price of the
| slot and the value of the container is less than I'd be
| willing to pay for the container.
|
| Alternatively, institute two simple rule: "No ship may leave
| the port with fewer containers than it entered with." or even
| "no non-full ship may leave the port".
|
| If that leads to a shortage of movable empty containers (but
| the port is still full of immovable empty containers), add a
| second temporary rule: "any empty container stored at the
| port for more than N days may be 'towed' (by a cargo ship of
| the port's choosing) to some other port."
| mastax wrote:
| Containers increase the potential wind load on the ship,
| which needs to be balanced by additional weight. Ships do
| have ballast tanks, but you can't just load a ship up with
| empty containers and send it off. If you want a full load
| of containers, you need to put something in the containers.
| foota wrote:
| Could someone feasibly charge for storage of them offsite?
| mdorazio wrote:
| Yes, and they do. But remember this is in the middle of Los
| Angeles where property is insanely expensive and ordinances
| limit how high you can stack your containers. So in order
| to make any kind of real dent you either need an
| astronomical capital outlay or you need to get a bunch of
| containers to emptier land outside the city (i.e. 40+ miles
| away), and you need to do it without violating customer
| contracts on where their stuff (goods or the containers
| themselves) is stored.
| foota wrote:
| So like... is it just really hard for an outsider to come
| in and arrange contracts to do this right now?
| bart_spoon wrote:
| On the contrary, they are insanely expensive right now. Too
| many empty shipping containers in on particular area means too
| few everywhere else that wants them. Shipping containers prices
| have skyrocketed.
| algorias wrote:
| Just as a rule of thumb, a container is easily worth 10-20x
| what it costs to ship it from the US to China (under normal
| circumstances).
|
| There's a reason they're reusable: these are quite sturdy boxes
| built out of high quality materials (steel frame, corrugated
| steel walls, thick hardwood floors), otherwise you couldn't
| stack them 10 high with 28 tons of goods in each of them.
| reilly3000 wrote:
| There is a huge parking lot near the Queen Mary / Cruise Terminal
| in my recollection. Perhaps that could be appropriated for a
| time. It's far easier to relocate cars/shuttle passengers than to
| move shipping containers a great distance.
| thoughty wrote:
| Out of curiosity, what started this supply chain and container
| issue?
|
| PS: I am not based in the US
| jandrese wrote:
| COVID mostly. Disruptions in supply and demand caused
| imbalances, and in places where there is not enough buffer
| space to handle the imbalances (like container storage in
| California) the buffers filled up and the whole thing stalled.
| destitude wrote:
| Why wasn't the federal government doing this? How hard would it
| have been for the new "shipping czar" to have gone down there and
| seen what at least one simple issue was and get it fixed?
| richwater wrote:
| People are waking up and realizing that government is pretty
| useless for specific action. Our representatives would rather
| pontificate about vague niceties.
| geoduck14 wrote:
| >People are waking up and realizing that government is pretty
| useless for specific action.
|
| Well, sure. The higher up you go, the less tactical (and more
| strategic) you become. You wouldn't want your CTO to launch
| code to production. You want her to make sure there is a plan
| to utilize CICD practices- that the ICs implement.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| I mean, good leaders actually DO dig into the tactical
| details if a massive bottleneck occurs. Because they're
| often the only ones with the authority to solve it.
| lumost wrote:
| This comes in cycles, there are many famous ceos who made
| their name from rolling up their sleeves and working the
| lines.
|
| If you have too many strategic thinkers you lose the
| ability to execute tactically, too many executors and you
| start building well optimized versions of the wrong thing.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| I mean, you have to have law and order. That means laws.
| Someone has to be able to take specific action regarding
| those laws, and that means a government. We just have to
| expect competency and responsiveness from the government.
| There's no alternative (get rid of the government and a power
| vacuum would develop and then be filled within seconds and
| you'd have a new "government" with a warlord or whatever).
|
| This story actually had a good ending so far as the
| government actually responded about a day after the Flexport
| CEO's Twitter thread. Sure, we wish the problem was solved
| earlier, but this is a good thing and should be celebrated!
| [deleted]
| coredog64 wrote:
| One would think that a former McKinsey consultant would
| understand constraint theory.
| [deleted]
| whymauri wrote:
| Who does this refer to?
| Upgrayyed_U wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Buttigieg
| gfosco wrote:
| The guy in charge took a paternity leave for 2 months and no
| one in the media even noticed.
| geoduck14 wrote:
| >The guy in charge took a paternity leave for 2 months and no
| one in the media even noticed.
|
| Don't worry, once people did notice, it did take long before
| they started ridiculing him for spending time with his
| family.
| h2odragon wrote:
| Many people manage to spend time with their family _and_
| respond to work emergencies. They don 't get paid as much
| or as much media attention, tho. So they don't really
| count.
| hecatoncheires wrote:
| It's more the abdication of critical gov't leadership
| during a global shipping crisis that people are unhappy
| with.
| gfosco wrote:
| I didn't get appointed by the President to a Secretary
| position overseeing government resources.
|
| I work at a tech company. I have responsibilities that I
| actually care about, and they are important to me and many
| others, so I could not possibly just disappear for 2
| months. I can barely take a weekend off without feeling
| guilty.
|
| It's not about why he wasn't there... it's that he wasn't
| there, for any reason. It shows that he doesn't care, and
| the people who picked him and allowed that to happen, also
| don't care.
| geoduck14 wrote:
| My comment seemed to be a little too subtle. Let me lay it
| out:
|
| Our willingness to shame this guy (and other guys, by
| extension) for spending time with his family reflects our
| willingness to shame women for taking the same time off.
|
| Our acceptance that he should put work over his family
| forces SOMEONE to put his family over THEIR work. In a
| male-female marriage (yes, I know he is gay), this means
| that men should work and women should stay at home. This
| attitude contributes to the gender pay divide and
| stereotypes that men shouldn't be great fathers.
|
| It hurts our wives and our strength as husbands and
| fathers.
| ckall101 wrote:
| The government prioritizes family over work (and the economy).
| I believe the transport secretary is "chest feeding":
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/23/pete-b...
| Animats wrote:
| Because US ports are run by private companies and not the
| federal government. The "Port of Long Beach" run by the local
| port authority is primarily a landlord. It's called capitalism.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| I think the Port of Virginia is run by the State of Virginia
| and actually did pretty well. East Coast longshoreman unions
| are less insane than those on the West Coast.
| dang wrote:
| Recent and related:
|
| _Flexport CEO on how to fix the US supply chain crisis_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28957379 - Oct 2021 (225
| comments)
| unethical_ban wrote:
| * Own the bottleneck of your business.
|
| * The most capital intensive process of your business should be
| the bottleneck.
|
| * When you find a bottleneck not of your making, overwhelm it.
| yblu wrote:
| > The most capital intensive process of your business should be
| the bottleneck.
|
| Can you explain what this means? You find the bottleneck, then
| invest the most capital to improve it? Or whatever you're
| investing the most is the bottleneck? Or something else?
| krisoft wrote:
| Cool. Now we have more space to store the empty containers
| temporaly. Is this going to solve the problem or only save us a
| few days?
| kevingadd wrote:
| It doesn't fix anything, but it creates buffer space that can
| potentially be used to fix things that otherwise can't be fixed
| robocat wrote:
| Real-time 3D bufferbloat visualisation!
| https://netduma.com/blog/beginners-guide-to-bufferbloat/ uses
| traffic as the metaphor, but future articles will use
| shipping containers.
| lxgr wrote:
| How is bufferbloat related to the situation at hand?
| tialaramex wrote:
| Larger stacks is a larger buffer.
|
| Just as the network can only have a relatively small
| amount of traffic actually "in flight" but lots can be
| stuck in buffers - so likewise only a relatively modest
| amount of containers can be on ships in the ocean.
|
| You need a buffer or every little inconsistency
| reverberates and it gets out of hand, but bufferbloat
| shows how _too much_ buffering makes things worse not
| better. If your metrics say (and some trivial metrics do)
| that the huge buffer is better, your actual _experience_
| contradicts that as everything feels like you 're wading
| through molasses.
|
| I don't have any relevant expertise to judge what the
| right metrics are for international shipping, but it
| certainly raised my eyebrows that "Let's make the buffer
| bigger" is seen as automatically a good idea.
|
| Of course, a network buffer is very different from a
| container port's stacks, maybe this genuinely is going to
| make a huge difference. I think more likely it turns out
| to make no real difference, but can be _portrayed_ as a
| genius idea that just wasn 't embraced wholeheartedly
| enough to be effective.
| salawat wrote:
| Mmmm. Doesn't necessarily hold as packets don't exist
| sans payload. You'd have to add an extra layer on top of
| the TCP logic to represent the logistical processes
| involved with moving packets to be filled with payload
| which are themselves not payload to places they are to be
| filled.
|
| In a way, it sets off more token ring-ish bells for me
| for some reason.
| robocat wrote:
| The metaphor is that a container is data.
|
| "Bufferbloat is the undesirable latency that comes from a
| router or other network equipment buffering too much
| data. It is a huge drag on Internet performance created,
| ironically, by previous attempts to make it work better.
| The one-sentence summary is 'Bloated buffers lead to
| network-crippling latency spikes.'".
|
| Increasing buffer sizes (increasing the number of
| containers stored) can have perverse effects that make
| the situation worse - although it is obviously unclear
| what the effects in this particular situation could be.
|
| Hopefully the Flexport CEO has read the situation and
| consequences correctly and his suggestion helps, although
| chances are it won't help much. Alternatively it could
| exacerbate the problem e.g. stacking more than two high
| could slow down retrieval enough that it ends up being
| net negative because truckers are deadlocked.
|
| Destroying empty containers is one type of dropped
| packet. Destroying or discarding container contents (e.g.
| food gone off, end manufacturer gone out of business,
| parts sourced elsewhere) is another kind of dropped
| packet.
|
| Quite a few comments here seem to imply this is some
| obvious silver bullet to fix the problem, when clearly
| the problem is far more complicated than that.
| lxgr wrote:
| Hm, I think that analogy is too much of a stretch to
| yield interesting results, to be honest.
|
| I suspect that global supply chain actors follow very
| different dynamics from naive TCP congestion control
| implementations (i.e. additive increase, multiplicative
| decrease), of which Bufferbloat is an emergent
| phenomenon.
|
| Also, the solution to bufferbloat isn't making the
| buffers smaller again (there is no generic "correct"
| buffer size as that depends on the end-to-end RTT, but
| this can vary across flows at a given choke point). What
| works is to either make buffers or the endpoints'
| congestion control algorithms aware of the phenomenon.
| hadlock wrote:
| The thing is, we're trying to solve a 90 day problem,
| where the packets have an 18 day round trip. And once an
| empty container is parked in a parking lot (without the
| trailer it's sitting on) you can just leave it there for
| years with close to zero consequences.
|
| The downside at this point is that all the retail items
| for this holiday season won't be on shelves for
| christmas, so the damage done to brick and mortar sales
| industry has already been done
| [deleted]
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Your comment seems to imply that you know what the underlying
| cause is that lead to this pile up in the first place. What
| is it?
| rcpt wrote:
| surprised that the local busybodies responsible for the height
| limit haven't shown up and decried the new stacks as "luxury
| containers"
| Kye wrote:
| I hope those limitations didn't serve a vital safety purpose.
| jonas21 wrote:
| Nope. Unless you consider having to look at shipping containers
| to be a vital safety issue. From the City of Long Beach's
| announcement [1]:
|
| > _These provisions, which have been in effect for many years,
| were established to address the visual impact to surrounding
| areas of sites with excessive storage._
|
| [1] https://longbeach.gov/press-releases/city-of-long-beach-
| stat...
| hk1337 wrote:
| Since this is HackerNews, I thought Long Beach was a new up and
| coming Docker alternative.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| When a YC company's valuation is under assault, people will
| mountains, er containers.
| synaesthesisx wrote:
| They should've used Kubernetes
| [deleted]
| dboreham wrote:
| "Do not stack more than N high"
| aerosmile wrote:
| Everyone's focused on Ryan's comments about stacking, and the
| subsequent win there. Amazing job, Ryan, and thank you Robert
| Garcia for being a man to take one on the chin (for this solution
| not coming from your team) and for then doing the right thing. I
| am seriously impressed by not seeing any NIH (not invented here)
| behavior here.
|
| But why stop there? Ryan suggested 5 courses of actions, and made
| it clear that we need to act on all of them at the same time. So
| far only the first of those 5 steps have been acted on. The rest
| of the steps are likely either bad or the people needed to act on
| them are doing that NIH bullshit (which I can understand to some
| extent given how much negativity is being directed at Robert
| Garcia). But negativity or not, if those are good suggestions, we
| need to act on them. Would love to hear any thoughts on how to
| mobilize support for quickly validating/invalidating those
| suggestions, and then acting accordingly.
|
| If it's possible to cancel brands and individuals, it should be
| possible to do the same with politicians as well. I hope it
| doesn't turn out that we care more about certain individuals'
| views than the prevention of a nationwide and potentially even
| global crisis [1].
|
| [1] From Ryan's tweet:
|
| > I can't stress enough how bad it is for the world economy if
| the ports don't work. Every company selling physical goods bought
| or sold internationally will fail. The circulatory system our
| globalized economy depends has collapsed. And thanks to the
| negative feedback loops involved, it's getting worse not better
| every day that goes by..
| mkl wrote:
| Does he mean negative feedback loops or positive feedback
| loops? Getting worse every day sounds like positive feedback,
| whereas negative feedback would keep things steady.
| wrycoder wrote:
| I'd recommend that he just say "feedback" and skip the
| adjective.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| He means a vicious cycle, which is technically a positive
| feedback loop: The worse things get, the more they get worse.
| Negative feedback means when the system is working properly,
| an unexpected perturbation will cause the system to correct
| itself automatically.
|
| But since the general public thinks of positive as good and
| negative as bad, he's using the word "negative" to describe a
| bad situation. This kind of thing bugs me because I know
| control theory, but it's really in the same category as "Is
| Program X an X11 client or an X11 server?"
| ThrustVectoring wrote:
| People without a controls background typically mean "positive
| feedback" at all times, regardless of what words they use.
| whoopdedo wrote:
| In a steady system the output energy scales based on the
| input energy. When there is feedback, the output
| adds/subtracts to the input, making it difficult to control
| the output with your inputs. Positive feedback adds to the
| input, making the output increase even as you attempt to
| reduce the input energy. Negative feedback subtracts from the
| input and forces you to increase your input energy to prevent
| the output from diminishing.
|
| Uncontrollable positive feedback explodes. Uncontrollable
| negative feedback freezes.
| analog31 wrote:
| Doesn't matter, real feedback loops are complex. ;-)
| jerry1979 wrote:
| For those who didn't see the 5 points, I've copied them below
| from here
| https://twitter.com/typesfast/status/1451543776992845834
|
| <snip>
|
| 1) Executive order effective immediately over riding the zoning
| rules in Long Beach and Los Angeles to allow truck yards to
| store empty containers up to six high instead of the current
| limit of 2. Make it temporary for ~120 days.
|
| This will free up tens of thousands of chassis that right now
| are just storing containers on wheels. Those chassis can
| immediately be taken to the ports to haul away the containers
|
| 2) Bring every container chassis owned by the national guard
| and the military anywhere in the US to the ports and loan them
| to the terminals for 180 days.
|
| 3) Create a new temporary container yard at a large (need 500+
| acres) piece of government land adjacent to an inland rail head
| within 100 miles of the port complex.
|
| 4) Force the railroads to haul all containers to this new site,
| turn around and come back. No more 1500 mile train journeys to
| Dallas. We're doing 100 mile shuttles, turning around and doing
| it again. Truckers will go to this site to get containers
| instead of the port.
|
| 5) Bring in barges and small container ships and start hauling
| containers out of long beach to other smaller ports that aren't
| backed up.
|
| This is not a comprehensive list. Please add to it. We don't
| need to do the best ideas. We need to do ALL the ideas.
|
| We must OVERWHELM THE BOTTLENECK and get these ports working
| again. I can't stress enough how bad it is for the world
| economy if the ports don't work. Every company selling physical
| goods bought or sold internationally will fail.
|
| </snip>
| wrycoder wrote:
| Make it a port rule that container ships must be fully loaded
| with containers (full ones or empty ones) before leaving
| port, or they will be banned.
| bombcar wrote:
| Make it fun as we've already got the military involved in
| step 2 - ships leaving without empties will be sunk.
| eecc wrote:
| Funny how free-market, small-government, deregulation,
| rhetoric flies out of the window when own profit maximization
| short-terminism falls apart and everyone starts invoking
| centrally coordinated state intervention.
|
| I wonder if some governmental bureau tasked with coordinating
| this market hasn't been shuttered in the last couple years to
| some lobbyist great success...
| 5560675260 wrote:
| But we don't live in a world of small governments and
| deregulated free markets. Without a regulation on stacking
| LA might not be at a point where any of those other
| measures are needed. A funny thing would be limiting
| yourself to approaches relevant in a system that doesn't
| exist.
| eecc wrote:
| Might, would... look, I don't want to come up with a True
| Scotsman counter argument, but it does sound like one:
| blaming this mess on the single one restriction that
| seemed to exist.
|
| Are we going to blame driving time restrictions next?
| 5560675260 wrote:
| Next I'd blame environment regulations that banned older
| short-haul trucks from operating in the state, but that's
| besides that point. The point being: there is no
| contradiction between wanting smaller government and less
| regulations and wanting a mess caused by heavy handed
| regulations to be fixed by heavy handed mobilisation of
| resources.
| gm3dmo wrote:
| Indeed:
|
| 2) Bring every container chassis owned by the national
| guard and the military anywhere in the US to the ports and
| loan them to the terminals for 180 days.
|
| Loan them sounds like they want them for free.
|
| What's the plan for the military to move containers during
| the 180 days if all their kit is loaned out?
| maxharris wrote:
| Wasn't this mess made by the government's regulations in
| the first place?
| IkmoIkmo wrote:
| I agree with you, but this isn't necessarily the best
| example. In this case, frankly part of this issue had to be
| resolved by relaxing strict zoning laws that weren't
| allowing space to be used in a way that the market demanded
| (offloading empty chassis). Such a measure falls under
| deregulation/free-market/small-government.
|
| The other measures proposed (forcing railroads, national
| guards etc) are of course of a different order, but it's
| not clear they'd be necessary if the build-up of empty
| chassis at the port (because offloading in the nearby area
| wasn't allowed) never materialised into a massive
| bottleneck, because zoning laws were deregulated.
| myself248 wrote:
| Those 2-high zoning laws aren't new, are they?
|
| Presumably the port would've architected its systems to
| work within all sorts of constraints, come they from
| physics, or business, or regulation. The fact that one of
| them can easily be relaxed is immaterial to their failure
| to account for it in the first place.
| smileysteve wrote:
| Presumably, the regulation had reasoning. Likely
| unsightfulness. But also likely danger.
|
| Will the port's insurer cover damages when a 3 or 4 high
| stack falls?
| booleangate wrote:
| Unsightliness maybe, but also California is no stranger
| to earthquakes. Stacking up to 6 high sounds like a
| deadly and expensive game of dominos.
| eecc wrote:
| Sure, although most of the measures proposed are about a
| massive mobilization subsidized by government.
|
| One could also argue that it's still a brittle, overly
| lean organization if a landscape regulation tipped it
| into service disruption.
| empthought wrote:
| It was the international demand imbalance that tipped it
| into service disruption; the landscape regulation just
| set the conditions for the existing bottleneck.
| twunde wrote:
| The reason why the focus was on the first one is because that
| was the easiest and fastest to do (You only need local
| officials to sign off on it because its a temporary order and
| its also the simplest). 2 and 3 need the federal government to
| organize it, which as a large organization takes some time. 4
| and 5 requires figuring out contract terms (who's paying whom,
| etc). These are much more complex and therefore will take more
| time. Oh and the tweetstorm was done on a Friday on the West
| Coast, so it takes some time to get the attention of decision
| makers on the east coast.
| Natsu wrote:
| Also, isn't someone from the government supposed to be in
| charge of this? Shouldn't they be out there finding out what's
| happening?
|
| It seems odd that no one has tried this, yet as someone who has
| worked in a factory, I can easily believe that the absentee
| managers have no idea what the hell actually goes on among the
| workers.
|
| You need to spend significant actual time, to the point of
| working actual shifts, to get a clear picture of things
| sometimes. People have weird and wrong notions of what
| efficiencies matter sometimes, for example. Shaving a second
| off an action repeated thousands of times daily matters,
| shaving a minute off of a rare task that's not even done every
| day matters far less in comparison.
| Camillo wrote:
| Let's not forget the media. Renting a boat and talking to
| people at the port to see what's going on should be right up
| an investigative journalist's alley. The Silicon Valley guy
| is doing the job of not just one power center, but two.
| Kye wrote:
| Perhaps the fourth estate needs the microphones currently
| stuck on a ship somewhere.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| The MSM largely is a coverup for the Biden administration,
| so you're not going to see much in the way of investigative
| journalism until after the 2022 mid-terms. :)
|
| Proof of this is that Pelosi made a mistake recently and
| publicly asked the MSM "to sell the budget bills."
|
| Note that cnn.com is half-accurate since Sept. 1 because
| the Afghanistan debacle and plunging ratings jarred them
| into some factual reporting.
|
| In the meantime, you can watch Fox and Sky Australia, and
| NTD media (all on YT.)
| AvocadoPanic wrote:
| He's been on maternity leave.
| aerosmile wrote:
| I am sure you noticed that Ryan gently exposed those in
| charge of not doing enough by repeating the ship captain's
| comments that Ryan's team was the first to ask to get a tour
| of the port from the ocean side. Granted, perhaps those in
| charge have their own boats or are using helicopters, but the
| lack of action does make me wonder.
| labster wrote:
| Ryan probably understands freight and logistics better than
| the government decision-makers. Regulatory bodies don't
| often think in terms of changing the laws, and have
| narrower scopes. I bet the Long Beach zoning commission
| never even realized that they could be causing the backup,
| because the 2-high policy has worked fine for years.
|
| In a democracy, we are the government. People who know how
| to fix problems need to engage with their representatives,
| not just hope they'll figure out freight logistics problems
| because they have a law degree.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Funny enough this is supposed to be the good side for
| lobbying. Politicians need input from people on the
| ground in industry.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Temporary logistics czar. 1 year term, with the second half
| being transition to normal.
| icelancer wrote:
| I am no defender of government bureaucracy, but the fact we got
| the stacking rules changed in 48 hours is pretty crazy. I
| suspect more changes will come, but it may take some time. I'd
| let it play out over 1-2 weeks and re-evaluate.
|
| Can't believe I am giving government delays a pass here... but
| I try not to look a gift horse in the mouth when we get near-
| immediate action from people who aren't known for solving
| problems with any sort of urgency.
|
| EDIT: And I'm even a customer of Flexport!
| cube00 wrote:
| The pandemic has shown the bureaucracy can move quickly when
| they want to. Although I'd argue the politicians share some
| of the blame for slow legislation when they want to avoid
| something. It's not always the behind the scenes bureaucrats
| that are the bottle neck.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > I can't stress enough how bad it is for the world economy if
| the ports don't work.
|
| Not for the world economy, but for Chinese economy, as it's
| what US companies make the most of their money.
|
| What the current crisis shows the most is that just how close
| the US economy coming to a sever crisis, from well.... just
| missing the shipment of holiday toys from China.
|
| If China can inadvertently _move US markets through just
| messing up with shipping toys_ , imagine how bad a deliberate
| economic sabotage action would be.
| aerosmile wrote:
| You're missing an important point here - if US customers
| cannot get their Xmas gifts on time, they won't buy them
| (nobody is going to order Xmas gifts if they will likely only
| arrive in January of later). Facebook has about 5 million
| advertisers, and a material percentage of them relies on the
| Xmas season for their financials to work out on an annual
| basis. Millions of US business have deposited 7+ figures each
| in inventory deposits a few months ago, with the
| understanding that they will convert those deposits into
| profit by December at the latest. If that doesn't happen, how
| many of them will get bank loans to get them out of this
| mess? And how many people will lose their jobs with or
| without those loans? We truly are talking about a Lehman
| Brothers scale of a problem, and as Ryan pointed out, the
| only way to fix this is to unblock the ports. So if you're
| eventually going to have to do it, why not do it before
| millions of companies go out of business as opposed to only
| after that's happened?
|
| So this is not just a matter of Chinese factories not being
| able to sell their goods (in which case their government will
| take care of them as they have done in the past). This is
| about US e-commerce businesses who can only fall back on
| their banks (and which are far more unpredictable in their
| generosity).
|
| Ryan's idea to mobilize the military resources would have
| been a no-brainer and would have already happened in at least
| two countries I have lived in before.
|
| One final detail - this may seem like a recent issue, and
| most of us only heard about the problem sometime in early
| October. In reality, the industry press has been covering
| this since at least March [1], when the backlog of cargo
| ships at LAX started exceeding 20 (it's supposed to be well
| below that). Now it's at over 70. So it's been 7 months with
| practically no action until a week ago. I am a Democrat, but
| this is not going to bode well for Biden.
|
| [1] https://edisonreport.com/latest-update-on-the-global-
| shippin...
| baybal2 wrote:
| > If that doesn't happen, how many of them will get bank
| loans to get them out of this mess?
|
| I think you have just affirmed what I have said.
|
| USA is world's biggest, but an extremely fragile economy
| which is full of businesspeople too used to bailouts from a
| caring government. It's a bigger miracle it never seen
| major crisises from "encounter with reality" before.
|
| > We truly are talking about a Lehman Brothers scale of a
| problem, and as Ryan pointed out, the only way to fix this
| is to unblock the ports. So if you're eventually going to
| have to do it, why not do it before millions of companies
| go out of business as opposed to only after that's
| happened?
|
| I think it's essential in a capitalist market economy to
| let the market forces to do their job, and for Lehmans to
| pop from time to time. USA faces such a big crisis during
| every new "Lehman Brothers moment" exactly because it never
| lets its Lehmans fail.
|
| Now, imagine China will embargo USA next time... Trade with
| USA is just a few percent of China's GDP today.
|
| I did intern in BestBuy 10 years ago, and I know what
| insane portion of profit comes from around Xmass. I
| honestly want the US to really fail here, and fail hard,
| and have a Lehman moment again. It's vitally important for
| the US to finally have such crisis to turn the ship around,
| pun intended.
|
| Or the next time, spoiled US kids will find out that there
| are way worse things in life than missing their new iphone
| 15 for christmas.
| turbinerneiter wrote:
| If you know there is a problem, why not fix it before the
| crash happens?
|
| If the US fails really hard here, many innocent people
| will lose their jobs, homes and lives.
| aerosmile wrote:
| I don't disagree that the US made a huge mistake when it
| outsourced its production (for all the reasons you
| mentioned). But the solution is not to rip off the
| bandaid and view millions of businesses as collateral
| damage. You'll notice that the Chinese government is
| great at playing a long game, eg: Taiwan. We need to do
| the same.
|
| The only way we can get better at long games is to
| examine what's driving our current weakness in that area.
| My guess is that it has to do with the dynamics of
| presidential terms. To get re-elected, you have to
| achieve something big in the first four years, and
| anything big will piss off the other half of the country
| and will make you lose the congressional elections at the
| end of your second year. So the solution is to either do
| something big that buys you favors with both political
| parties (literally nothing comes to mind), or to get it
| done in the first two years. China, in comparison, has
| been plotting the takeover of Taiwan for decades, and is
| very strategically, step by step, moving in that
| direction. If this was the US, the only option would have
| been a quick invasion or a start-stop effort every 4-8
| years.
| greedo wrote:
| This isn't just Xmas gifts, it's servers, routers, hard
| drives, you name it, stuff that's vital for businesses.
| We have long delays for much of our IT infrastructure at
| my company due to this.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Well, bad for you to place trust in these people!
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I laugh at the idea that the US military might be engaged
| domestically in helping Amazon and Ebay drop-shippers get
| cheap chinese crap to 5 year olds who will play with it for
| maybe a week before it breaks or they lose interest.
| aerosmile wrote:
| This comment explains all I needed to know about why so
| few people in this country are taking this crisis
| seriously. The understanding is that this is the Amazon
| drop shippers who are whining, so why bother? There are
| countless counter arguments provided by other commenters,
| so I will just add this - the analogy with Lehman
| Brothers is a gift that keeps on giving; when they
| failed, there were also people saying "it's just the rich
| folks who will lose their money."
|
| So the idea that this is all about the drop shippers is
| laughably wrong. But throwawayboise does bring up a point
| that's worth discussing - what kind of crises are
| "beneath" the role and purpose of the US military? Is
| their role just to blow shit up, or is there an economic
| and humanitarian angle there as well? For example, if an
| earthquake took out an entire metropolitan area, would it
| be beneath all those soldiers to dig for human remains,
| or would they leave that to whatever the more appropriate
| branch of public service that would be (even with the
| understanding that joining forces would save more lives)?
| I know that in the other two countries I've lived in this
| would be a silly question - of course the military would
| roll up their sleeves. In the US, I genuinely don't know.
| The author of the above comment is obviously ignorant
| when it comes to economic matters, but when it comes to
| military matters, I wouldn't be surprised if his tone
| resonated with many others.
|
| FWIW, Ryan proves that not everyone in the US thinks like
| that, and certainly all the people from the international
| community I've met wouldn't agree with throwawayboise
| either.
| destitude wrote:
| Would be nice to see a follow-up of exactly what this fixed. He
| mentioned only 7 of 100 cranes were in operation, does that mean
| more cranes will soon be able to operate because they have room
| to put containers?
| Jolter wrote:
| Well, assuming enough truck terminals have stacking equipment
| that can actually pile more than 2 high, it should free up some
| more wheels to start pulling full containers out of the port.
| But who knows? And it's hardly going to solve this problem by
| itself.
| honksillet wrote:
| Build stuff here! I can't imagine how much fossil fuel is being
| wasted in this process.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| @Animats said > A place that just stacks empty containers 2 high
| probably only has large forklifts. The special equipment for high
| stacking is far more expensive, and only bought if you need
| it.[2]
|
| Some facts:
|
| 1) Container Height: 8'6". Add approx 4" for the lift slots on
| the bottom.
|
| 2) Forklift with 22' lift available from Sunbelt = 3 Container
| Height / 50% increase in yard capacity
| https://www.sunbeltrentals.com/equipment/detail/1044/0550320...
|
| 3) Common "construction" type forklift with 39' lift from United
| Rentals = 4 Container Height / 100% increase in yard capacity.
| https://www.unitedrentals.com/marketplace/equipment/forklift...
|
| And United has forklifts with even higher reach available.
| Ichthypresbyter wrote:
| Those don't look like they can lift a shipping container.
| ilwu_member wrote:
| I am a member of ILWU 13. A couple thoughts after reading the
| comments:
|
| The zoning change is for TEU storage outside the port. The port
| itself was not subject to that rule.
|
| The Port of Los Angeles is a landlord and is not directly
| involved in operations.
|
| Private companies, such as APM, EverPort, and others, rent
| piers/berths and are responsible for the actual operations and
| logistics.
|
| Some speculation: recently I've heard of some ships not even
| waiting to load empty TEU's as they normally would and instead
| they are immediately leaving for China, literally empty. I
| suspect this behavior is what turned the congestion we had before
| into the quasi deadlock we have now.
| anonymouse008 wrote:
| Question: who is paying demurrage on these containers? Has that
| practice been suspended?
| aazaa wrote:
| > ... recently I've heard of some ships not even waiting to
| load empty TEU's as they normally would and instead they are
| immediately leaving for China, literally empty.
|
| If this is happening, what would be the consequences of
| allowing even more TEUs to be stored on the US side?
| Veliladon wrote:
| Shit is going to take longer and be more expensive to come
| from China because when there isn't a TEU available you have
| to wait for one to be fabbed and pay for it.
| rdtwo wrote:
| Yeah but the ship operators don't pay for this so everyone
| is optimized for personal profit not system efficiency
| rossjudson wrote:
| Seems like more of a tragedy of the commons, with each ship (A)
| assuming it's fine to leave empty because some _other_ ship (B)
| will grab the empty containers. That 's all well and good until
| (A) comes back, and then it sits there waiting like everyone
| else.
|
| Going back empty works _once_. Or more times if you 're headed
| to a different market, I suppose.
| singularity2001 wrote:
| I thought the price for containers had more than quadrupled.
| How can leaving them behind be economic?
| native_samples wrote:
| I believe that's not the price for the physical box but
| rather "a container's worth of shipping". Empty containers
| are probably going up in price a lot now too - I don't
| really see why Ryan thinks there needs to be military
| intervention here. A shortage of empties in China and a
| surplus in the USA will get resolved real quick by people
| on the ground (=within the latencies afforded by the slow
| speed of ships themselves) as there's money to be made
| there.
| schainks wrote:
| Is someone paying for ships to do this or are they doing their
| own calculations and realizing it's cheaper for them to leave
| fast?
| rdtwo wrote:
| If a single extra trip is lucrative enough and at current
| rates it's 5-10 regular prices that would make sense to forgo
| loading in the us and just hurry home
| bombcar wrote:
| For awhile that's beneficial to the shipper until all
| containers are empty in LA and none exist in China to fill.
| hansel_der wrote:
| pretty sure chinese companies will be happy to produce
| new containers for a small fee
| anonymouse008 wrote:
| This is the question that ties into mine -- if the economic
| incentives have changed (i.e. there is no penalty for renters
| of containers to not get containers back to their primary
| shipper) then this is a perfectly reasonable response to the
| change from Covid to today -- i.e. the new game is moving the
| ship as fast as possible with no downtime. If the demurrage
| is still incurred, then there's some other alternatives that
| do not appear to be completely without nefarious intent.
| antman wrote:
| And what is the delay time if the ships decide to wait to
| load containers for the return?
| Kye wrote:
| TEU, for people like me who don't know shipping lingo:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-foot_equivalent_unit
| SimonVeith2021 wrote:
| Good Night
| https://neo.bet/de/Sportwetten?affiliateId=friends5-7412910#...
| jussy wrote:
| I'm not sure on the USA but I know that to clear such a logjam
| will require a lot of workers who might be casual workers. What's
| the expected impact on these workers?
| asplake wrote:
| And in the middle of all that, Theory of Constraints in a tweet:
|
| "When you're designing an operation you must choose your
| bottleneck. If the bottleneck appears somewhere that you didn't
| choose it, you aren't running an operation. It's running you."
|
| https://twitter.com/typesfast/status/1451543795045183490?s=2...
| Kinrany wrote:
| It's often said that ToC is a popularization of operations
| management knowledge that already existed at the time. Is there
| a better textbook that is more technical and not too dry?
| chowndown wrote:
| I studied industrial engineering and don't recall "ToC" being
| covered outside of The Goal
| orangesite wrote:
| Eli would have loved that thread...
| jes wrote:
| Eli was a great man and mentor. I miss him almost every day.
| csee wrote:
| If true, it's extremely depressing that it required a viral post
| on social media.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| How is crisis management supposed to go? What would have been a
| preferable source of this change?
| csee wrote:
| If it was a high leverage decision, you would have hoped one
| of the officials appointed to fix the situation would have
| already noticed and fixed it. So either they are completely
| incompetent or the decision didn't matter much.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| > _one of the officials appointed to fix the situation_
|
| Genuine question: Are there actual officials appointed to
| fix the situation? If so, who are they?
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| At the highest level, Pete Buttigieg as the DOT
| Secretary. Unfortunately his qualifications for the role
| are... not great... https://www.npr.org/sections/biden-
| transition-updates/2020/1...
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Buttigieg is broadly responsible for this sector on a
| national federal level.
|
| My question is if anyone is specifically working to solve
| the current acute port clogging situation, ideally
| someone who has authority to implement solutions.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Ideally, yes. But that assumes people are looking into the
| right places at the right time, with the knowledge to
| understand what they are looking at. That's a pretty tall
| order for any large system.
| csee wrote:
| If the POTUS personally commits to resolving the issue,
| it is concerning that an outsider can literally sail
| through and identify a high leverage solution. Like what
| the hell is going on with our institutions. There might
| be an explanation but it looks really bad from the
| outside.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Do you know who Ryan Peterson is? He's not an "outsider",
| he is the CEO of a digital supply chain company. He's a
| "foremost expert", to be sure.
| csee wrote:
| A large team under POTUS has been working on this for two
| weeks and the Flexport CEO can sail through and come up
| with this within 24 hours of doing that? That's
| embarrassing and concerning.
|
| EDIT yes he's not an outsider to the industry, I mean
| he's an outsider to the group of officials who were
| tasked with solving this problem.
| quotemstr wrote:
| Same thing happened with healthcare.gov, yes?
| TameAntelope wrote:
| If you believe that A) you can't have literally everyone
| in the industry on POTUS's team and B) private industry
| often has some of the best expertise, I'm not sure I
| understand why you would be upset about this outcome.
| OnlineGladiator wrote:
| He's upset that the government is (seemingly)
| incompetent. Defending their incompetence does not change
| the fact that they were incompetent as someone was so
| easily able to propose a solution while we have little
| reason to believe the government had a plan. It doesn't
| matter if that someone is the world's foremost expert
| (he's not, by the way) - what good is the government if
| they can't solve problems they're in charge of fixing?
| csee wrote:
| I would be sympathetic to that if this fix was something
| highly complicated or requiring significant expertise to
| come up with. Then I could understand this oversight. And
| perhaps that's the case here, and it's just my ignorance
| speaking, but "relax stifling zoning restrictions to
| immediately double capacity" doesn't seem like it fits
| into that category of things.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Think of it like a designer giving you a design in 5
| minutes. It wasn't the time it took to do the thing that
| was important, it was the thousands of hours of training
| that allowed the design to only take 5 minutes.
|
| Ryan Peterson has been doing this for a long time at a
| high level, it's _very_ hard to get someone like him into
| civil service.
| orhmeh09 wrote:
| No, he isn't an expert, and people in logistics consider
| him an outsider who is a CEO of a startup that makes
| software that is helpful for a certain set of concerns
| within supply chain management. Making software for an
| industry does not make you a foremost expert.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| > Making software for an industry does not make you a
| foremost expert.
|
| I think it does, if your company is valued at 3.2
| billion, does $830m in revenue, and has 10k+ customers
| (as of 2019) [1]. You probably know what you're doing at
| that point.
|
| [1] https://getlatka.com/companies/flexport#:~:text=Flexp
| ort%20h....
| cowsandmilk wrote:
| Is there any evidence this is a high leverage solution.
| Right now, it is an idea being tried. We dont have the
| results...
| Misdicorl wrote:
| > So either they are completely incompetent or the decision
| didn't matter much.
|
| Or the field always wins. Every year a large team of highly
| paid professionals is responsible for selecting the best
| professional sports prospects to join their team. The team
| that goes first (almost) never gets the best player. Its
| not because they're incompetent. And its not because the
| decision doesn't matter- these are multi billion dollar
| organizations, and the decision is very much a high
| leverage one that will directly impact their fortunes.
|
| Sometimes finding the best path is extremely difficult.
| Sometimes even when someone does see the best path, its
| still hard to recognize it as such. So I don't think its
| surprising _at all_ for the best idea to come from outside
| a team devoted to solving a problem. _Especially_ in today
| 's age when more people than ever can propose solutions and
| more people than ever can _see_ those proposals and bubble
| up the ones that sound good to them.
| slv77 wrote:
| Or there are one or more groups with hidden agendas that
| profit from the failure of the system.
| notatoad wrote:
| At the very simplest, the CEO of a large shipping company
| should have better contacts to suggest these things to than
| posting them to the world on twitter and hoping the tweet
| goes viral enough that somebody in charge notices.
|
| Somebody in the mayor's office should have been getting in
| contact with people at the major shipping companies, asking
| for suggestions like this, rather than waiting until a
| twitter thread got viral enough to embarass them into taking
| action.
| Factorium wrote:
| I think 'we' (as in high-intelligence individual technical
| people) need to be more vocal on social media. Look at the
| effect that small vocal minorities have on politicians and the
| media...
|
| The problem is that technical people are usually too busy
| working or raising a family to frequent those channels.
| Unemployed or childless activists however have plenty of time
| for their causes. The 'vocal minority'.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Or maybe it's a success of social media?
|
| If we didn't have social media cutting across the usual lines
| of communication, this problem may not have gotten fixed
| because no one had both the right information and the ability
| to act in it.
| curiousgal wrote:
| One could argue that if we didn't have social media there
| wouldn't have been a supply chain crisis.
|
| Not drawing a direct causality link, more of a butterfly
| effect type.
| rektide wrote:
| indeed. society often has trouble reaching for good.
|
| that these democratic open communication means allowed sense
| to unjam & flow was awesome. an unstrucutred, unplanned,
| unpredicted ability to grasp at success.
|
| reciprocally, i do want to acknowledge that access is still
| lolsided. if this was a random jie or nancy it would have
| taken pretty extreme circumstances to get their accurate &
| powerful suggestion raised & having an impact.
|
| there's a lot of interesting examples in history of
| suggestion boxes for governance. this one isnt perfect but it
| still stands, to me, as an interesting positive example.
| poorjohnmacafee wrote:
| It is is depressing, that clear and obvious solutions were
| missing at economy-critical supply chain infra.
|
| Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by
| stupidity.
|
| But also it's 2021 where people are the most cynical we've ever
| been, it's almost like there's interest groups in the US that
| want a fanning of inflation or delayed recovery through
| shortages.
| jayd16 wrote:
| What's clear and obvious about temporarily suspending rules
| that were presumably in place for a reason? Seems more like a
| non-obvius value call was made.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| It's clear and obvious that in a crisis, one questions all
| of the possible causes of the problems, and evaluates all
| possible solutions available.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| The "reason" is that stacked containers spoil resident
| views, just to put it in perspective.
| intricatedetail wrote:
| > Never attribute to malice that which is adequately
| explained by stupidity.
|
| It could be both e.g. foreign actor using administration's
| stupidity to probe country's weak points. It seems like the
| US is probed from all angles.
| poorjohnmacafee wrote:
| Probing or partnering? The US is wide open for business,
| and foreign actors certainly invest billions buying
| influence in US politics.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| I can see why you might see it that way, but I'd very much
| prefer an outside perspective being able to bubble up and
| present a solution rather than ma alternatives. This is
| certainly better than the way governments in the US usually try
| to use consultants to find inefficiencies.
| codezero wrote:
| A little off topic, but these ports don't usually store so many
| empty crates, so why do we have them now? Are we not exporting at
| the same rate? Is that even what empty crates are used for? I'm
| assuming they aren't sent back to (mostly?) China empty. I read
| something about the prices to ship out of the US being very high,
| but isn't the price coming in also similarly proportionally high,
| yet we still have a backlog of ships waiting to unload.
| skeletal88 wrote:
| This is very bad for the rest of the world, and also for the
| US, since all the empty containers are stacking up there, then
| there aren't any empty containers available in China or
| anywhere else for exporters, so even getting your hands on an
| empty container can be very difficult or almost impossible, or
| they cost 2-3x more than usually.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Our container price went from $1,500 to $10,000.
| kmonsen wrote:
| If that is true the rates for empty containers should
| increase making it worthwhile for ships to bring them back
| again?
| kiklion wrote:
| Elsewhere someone mentioned it's cheaper to build a new
| container in China than to ship and empty one over from the
| US. Even if you are already sending the boat.
|
| This sort of implies that it's incredibly cheap to make the
| container, and/or it's expensive to add that weight to the
| ship, and/or our ports are incredibly slow at loading empty
| containers onto ships.
| wrycoder wrote:
| Jack up the daily ground rate for empty containers until
| the market solves the problem and clears them out.
|
| Edit: e.g. chop them, pack the result into containers,
| and ship it to Asia to use as raw materials for new
| containers.
| rdtwo wrote:
| Right it seems like if a ship leaves empty you might as
| well flatten all the containers because they won't go
| back anytime soon. The solution is to make the ship pay
| for all that as a precondition to leaving empty
| kmonsen wrote:
| That would actually maybe be a good solution? If you
| leave empty next time port fee is double or whatever.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| Is it possible China is subsidizing creating the new
| containers exacerbating this problem?
| jpgvm wrote:
| Nope. China has the steel. China has cheaper labour.
| China has more efficient logistics systems to move
| container from place it's constructed to a port.
|
| The answer to China being better at 99% of manufacturing
| isn't subsidies, it's efficiencies.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| But this isn't manufacturing vs manufacturing. It's
| putting an empty container on a ship that is already
| going somewhere vs clawing tons of raw material out of
| the Earth, processing the raw material, manufacturing a
| container, transporting the container.
| jpgvm wrote:
| Sure but you asked if they are subsidizing them, the
| answer is no. Is it cheaper than waiting to load empty
| containers? It could be depending on the incentives, even
| if those short-term incentives are damaging to long term
| prospects you would be surprised how short-term most
| businesses think. Biggest influencing factor I can think
| of right now is that many importers/exporters are willing
| to pay exorbitant fees to get product from China to the
| US. This is specifically acute in areas/industries that
| there are no other viable source, say for instance
| LiFePO4 batteries. These are absolutely key to a huge
| number of things happening in the world right now and are
| outside of a few very isolated plants (CATL has one in
| California) made entirely in China.
|
| There are so many insane distortions happening because of
| supply crunch that subsidies and trade nonsense are
| actually starting to become irrelevant. (though I really
| do hope USA sorts their shit out, their China policy is
| fucking up the world for zero reason).
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| You've hinted at what I'm trying to understand. What
| incentives are actually in place that are impacting this
| behavior? My hypothesis was that the CCP decided it's
| going to flood the world market with containers by
| subsidizing them. Maybe that's not what is going on,
| fine. But what specifically is happening? It sounds like
| maybe you don't know either.
| skzv wrote:
| > Are we not exporting at the same rate?
|
| Yes. To quote JP Morgan's recent article "Dude, where's my
| stuff?"[0]:
|
| > The surge in US import demand has led to a sharp rise in
| eastbound freight rates (see charts for Shanghai->LA and
| Shanghai->Rotterdam). However, westbound freight rates have not
| risen nearly as much, leading to an odd and problematic
| phenomenon: incentives for container owners to move them back
| to China empty to accelerate receipt of eastbound freight
| rates, instead of waiting for containers to be refilled to earn
| westbound freight rates as well. This further exacerbates
| supply chain issues, since US goods (i.e., grains) that were
| supposed to depart US railcars and warehouses for export remain
| in place, occupying space that US imported goods were destined
| for.
|
| [0] https://am.jpmorgan.com/us/en/asset-
| management/institutional...
| gruez wrote:
| That explains why we're sending them empty, but why are ports
| clogged with them? Shouldn't it be pretty straightforward to
| load them onto the next ship?
| snypher wrote:
| I think the next ship hasn't been unloaded yet.
| algorias wrote:
| It is completely standard in the shipping industry to have
| lopsided routes, where one direction has 100% full containers,
| and the return direction a much lower percentage, like 50%. The
| shipping cost of different routes takes this into account.
| Jolter wrote:
| And hence the extreme explosion in shipping prices, I assume.
| Anyone buying freight from China to LA now has to also pay
| for returning the empty. What I've been told is the price for
| shipping one container has increased 10-fold because of this.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Yes, it's cheaper to dump the container, and buy new one in
| China.
|
| Sounds absurd, but that's how it is.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Hmm. If anybody is sitting on an idea that needs used
| shipping containers, now might be the time to pick some
| up.
| test6554 wrote:
| This would make a great "have a heart" trap for large
| animals.
| 908087 wrote:
| Might be a good time to build a shipping container home.
| [deleted]
| crooked-v wrote:
| Shipping containers are very useful for shipping and not
| very useful for much else.
| Jolter wrote:
| I've seen businesses use them for stationary storage.
| I've assumed they use discarded containers that can no
| longer take the stress of freight. But yeah in general
| you're right.
| fy20 wrote:
| I looked into using them for construction as I am
| building a office / workshop, roughly the size of two
| 20ft shipping containers. As much as it may be
| glamourised on social media, it has a lot of limitations.
|
| In my case it's actually cheaper and much more flexible
| to build it as you would a traditional building. I live
| 300 miles from the nearest port, so that doesn't help. I
| also looked into the container sized temporary buildings
| used on construction site, and they are made from scratch
| (not from old shipping containers).
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The demand became a lot more lopsided for several reasons:
|
| * consumers were shifting spending from experiences that
| would've been COVID impacted (holiday travel, entertainment
| venues, restaurants) to online shopping
|
| * industrial supply chains in Asia were the least impacted by
| COVID due to the relative lack of explosion in cases there
| compared to the rest of the world, so we are legitimately
| shipping more from there and exporting less
|
| * a good chunk of the medical equipment that has been
| necessitated by COVID (e.g. masks) is made in Asia and that has
| made demand even more lopsided
|
| * there was a ship backlog because COVID impacted how ships
| were getting unloaded, and at one point they weren't sending
| back ships with empty containers to reduce turnaround times,
| and now there are not enough containers in China and too many
| in the US.
|
| Wendover Productions video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1JlYZQG3lI
| codezero wrote:
| Thanks a bunch, I think others have said it was the increased
| demand and I didn't quite get it, or the scale of the
| lopsidedness it caused, until the way you described it!
| phkahler wrote:
| Another poster said ships that would normally take empty
| containers back to China are now just unloading and leaving
| empty. If that's the case, it seems like it's trading short
| term gain for a longer term problem. Make them take the
| empties?
| native_samples wrote:
| Nobody has to "make" anyone do anything in that situation.
| It's a classic supply/demand imbalance. Governments can't
| do anything here - even just getting them to pay attention
| to their own zoning rules required some random CEO in a
| boat talking to local workers then posting on Twitter. They
| aren't in a position to do anything better than the workers
| themselves can do.
| [deleted]
| jldugger wrote:
| > A little off topic, but these ports don't usually store so
| many empty crates, so why do we have them now? Are we not
| exporting at the same rate? Is that even what empty crates are
| used for? I'm assuming they aren't sent back to (mostly?) China
| empty.
|
| My understanding is that the us doesn't send all that much back
| to china, and that it was a problem for a while but wasn't the
| bottleneck until recently.
| pc86 wrote:
| I'm surprised it isn't worth it at some level to send a boat
| load (literally) of empty containers back? I know not every
| ship will just do the round trip China<->LA but presumably at
| least some number of them would.
| rdtwo wrote:
| It is worth it in the grand scheme of things but there
| appears to be no mechanism to charge all the benefitting
| parties. There is cost shifting going on that's creating
| bottlenecks
| jldugger wrote:
| The same podcast included a story about an entrepeneur
| _trying_ to ship empty containers but none of the shipping
| lines would eliminate the part of the lading contract that
| says they own the containers when you're done with it.
|
| Anyways, right now the bottleneck isn't shipping containers
| in China, that was an early pandemic logistics story.
| Animats wrote:
| Truckers are leaving containers all over Los Angeles.[1]
|
| Allowing stacking over 2 high is only useful if you have the
| equipment to stack over 2 high. A place that just stacks empty
| containers 2 high probably only has large forklifts. The special
| equipment for high stacking is far more expensive, and only
| bought if you need it.[2]
|
| A more useful proposal is a "peel pile".[3] This is a system
| which assigns outgoing trucks an easily accessible container to
| deliver, rather than a specific container that has to be
| retrieved. There's an app for that. This is being implemented by
| IMC, the largest marine drayage company in the US. They say
| they're already up to 8 high stacks in the LA area. The higher
| the stack, the longer the retrieval time.
|
| "This keeps drivers moving and productive, even if they don't
| know the exact load they're getting or the delivery location." So
| it's really dumping the sorting problem on drivers. They have no
| idea where they're going next. There has to be some way to
| separate containers by approximate location to make this work, so
| a driver knows how far they're going to be asked to take the
| thing.
|
| How well this all works depends on how well the software
| organizing the stacking works.
|
| [1] https://jalopnik.com/the-streets-of-los-angeles-are-
| overflow...
|
| [2] https://www.bison-jacks.com/why-bison/blog/how-to-lift-a-
| shi...
|
| [3] https://www.peelpile.com/
| twic wrote:
| What if they stood the containers up on end?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Then you have the problem of picking it back up again. When
| it's right-side-up, you can get under it. When it's on end,
| you can't.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| The ends aren't flat and the containers aren't structurally
| designed for that. You're putting twice the designed load for
| the bottom of the container on an end that wasn't made to
| support that. I'd imagine it would do a fair amount of
| damage.
| wbl wrote:
| The driver has a cellphone no?
| jasonhansel wrote:
| Though efficient, this sounds incredibly stress-inducing for
| drivers, since it makes them even less able to plan ahead and
| know their future work schedule.
| CalChris wrote:
| > Allowing stacking over 2 high is only useful if you have the
| equipment to stack over 2 high.
|
| These are _empty_ containers that are getting unloaded and
| stacked in order to free up the truck and its chassis for
| another load. The equipment for doing that stacking /unstacking
| is called an Empty Container Stacker [1]. These are different
| from a Reach Stacker [2] which will have much less vertical
| reach and are also different from Container Cranes [3].
|
| [1] https://www.goldbell.my/material-handling-equipment/port-
| han...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reach_stacker
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_crane
| sbierwagen wrote:
| Okay, how many empty container stackers are there in LA
| county?
| samstave wrote:
| 17.
|
| and does 7,500 container moves a day usually, but not in
| this environment, they are doing like 60% usual capacity.
|
| https://www.presstelegram.com/2019/09/11/sale-of-long-
| beach-...
|
| How many cranes does the Port of Long Beach have? The
| berths at the Port of Long Beach's Pier G International
| Transportation Service terminal are equipped with 17 gantry
| cranes. Of those cranes, six have outreach of 19 containers
| across, seven have outreach of 16 containers across, and
| four have outreach of 13 containers across.
| CalChris wrote:
| Plenty. That isn't actually the important question or
| rather important problem. The storage yards are currently
| stacked X x Y x 2 and now they need to be re-stacked into
| something like X x (Y / 2) x 4 to free up space for more
| empties but that re-stacking has to happen from the edges.
| That will take a little time.
| test6554 wrote:
| A couple strategic gaps between the stacks could make
| this process go much faster. The short-sighted lack of
| these gaps could make things slow going.
| ars wrote:
| You only need a single lane free. You start on one side
| of the yard, and stack it to 6, then work your way across
| the yard building rows.
| intricatedetail wrote:
| > This is a system which assigns outgoing trucks an easily
| accessible container to deliver, rather than a specific
| container that has to be retrieved.
|
| This is such an obvious thing. Do they really have people so
| incompetent they didn't think of that? Wow
| bobthepanda wrote:
| my understanding is that not all containers pay the same
| (since they are different weights, have different
| destinations, etc.) and so this mostly screws over the driver
| who loses the ability to select the best offer.
| SteveGerencser wrote:
| Not only do containers not pay the same, but containers to
| the same location often don't pay the same. So many
| variables and often the driver is the one that ends up
| getting screwed in the process. I completely understand why
| so many simply refuse certain loads. And getting assigned a
| load you know nothing about before it's on your truck is a
| no go for most drivers.
| eecc wrote:
| Isn't that a market failure?
|
| I mean the rhetoric of free unregulated market is that
| the "homo economicus" would use total information and
| make fully conscious decisions.
|
| Seems like some are withholding information to push other
| actors to make bad deals, externalize losses and
| generally speaking skirt from supply/demand dynamics.
| SteveGerencser wrote:
| No, it isn't. Most, or at least a very high percentage of
| independent truckers bid for cargo runs. Your cargo needs
| to get from point A to point B and weighs X amount and
| needs pickup and delivery at certain times. Truckers bid
| on the those routes and the the winning bidder gets the
| route.
|
| If you don't want a delivery you don't bid on it or you
| set your bid high enough to make you want to take it. If
| no one bids on a delivery then the shipper raises the
| maximum they will pay and the process starts all over.
| Delivery location or pickup location a horrible place?
| Again, don't bid or bid high.
|
| This is exactly the definition of a free market. Telling
| an independent that they must take the next load
| available without letting them decide if they even want
| it is not. That's being an employee. And shipping
| companies have spent years getting rid of their own
| fleets and drivers to push the cost to the individual
| drivers. And yes, there are a LOT of apps for this.
| [deleted]
| lumost wrote:
| There are truck driver shortages too. It's a crappy deal for
| a truck driver to take a load which they don't know it's
| risks/payout or how long of a drive they will be taking, what
| they'll do at destination, or if they'll have a return trip.
|
| Odds are you could offer truckers a special premium flat rate
| to clear the blockage - but it wouldn't be sustainable.
| rdtwo wrote:
| They don't get paid if they are waiting too so it makes the
| job even less lucrative
| nrmitchi wrote:
| This is literally the same argument for why
| Uber/Lyft/Doordash drivers need to know the details of a
| fare before accepting, but a couple of orders-of-magnitude
| higher.
| jandrese wrote:
| The Twitter thread said that the crackdown on illegal
| immigrants hit the California trucking industry hard since
| so many companies were using undocumented drivers to cut
| down on their costs.
| eecc wrote:
| Ah well, I guess that's a nice opportunity to quote and
| paraphrase the meme: if you can't make a profit while
| paying a living wage, the problem is not with minimum
| wage but with your business model.
| lumost wrote:
| Arguably this is more true in shipping than other
| disciplines. There are great economies of scale in
| shipping, and drivers/operators will be required
| regardless of wage. importing goods from low-cost areas,
| transporting goods with underpaid workers, and selling
| them in minimum wage stores doesn't seem like a great
| business model.
|
| Do shoes need to cost $20 or do the workers need to be
| paid $20/hr to afford $60 locally produced shoes?
| prostoalex wrote:
| California emission standards also disallow a decent
| portion of truck fleets from operating in the state. Source
| is an extended family member who owns a small trucking
| company in Midwest.
| wcarss wrote:
| That's neat, but isn't this whole thing about stacking
| restrictions on _empty_ containers?
|
| My understanding of what the Flexport CEO said in their twitter
| thread was that the best example of the problem is the haulage
| company that's keeping its driver count * 3 empty containers
| around on-chassis (which I think means on wheels), just sitting
| in their parking lot, because they have nowhere to put their
| empties, because they empty-storage is maxed out at the
| 2-height capacity. All/most of the haulage company's chassis
| are now tied up with empty containers, which prevents them from
| being able to go pick up filled containers to ship, which stops
| the full containers from getting picked, etc.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| If they are getting paid per delivery, it seems they could
| find a quarry or an unused airstrip to dump empties on for a
| small price.
|
| When Tesla needs space urgently, they put up a tent. When the
| military needs to start a war they manage somehow to unload
| their tanks.
|
| Come on, USA, we still know how to do stuff...
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| All places I have done real estate development require
| permits for putting containers on your land, and it is not
| a quick process to get one. At the least, you usually have
| to justify why you need the container space and for how
| long.
|
| And I cannot imagine a local zoning board wanting to go out
| on a limb to do something novel like approving containers
| just because a port is backed up.
| lostapathy wrote:
| As this is a short term problem and part of a national
| crisis ... just stack them up, and get them removed in
| the near future. Any place big enough to stack up enough
| containers to matter (stadium parking lot, dead airport,
| etc) isn't going to have neighbors that raise a huge
| stink immediately, and the wheels of zoning disputes take
| times.
|
| Heck, budget the possible fines into your business plan
| for holding the containers. Delivery firms already budget
| for tickets from parking illegally to make deliveries.
| This isn't so far removed from that.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| Exactly. Fix the problem, then ask for permission to do
| so afterwards.
|
| If you can honestly say, "we fixed the problem and didn't
| hurt anything with our temporary fix" then the permission
| people who come along afterwards to fine you are going to
| have to think seriously about suspending the fine that
| your solution drew. Don't do anything criminal, but
| accrue a bit of civil liability: it will either be a cost
| of business, or will be forgiven.
|
| As for contracts: If I am obligated to return the
| containers, but I dump them for a few weeks on a disused
| airstrip, I'm still going to, eventually, fulfill my
| contract, when the port allows me to.
|
| No excuses. Fix problems, don't brainstorm reasons not to
| fix then.
| blip54321 wrote:
| > And I cannot imagine a local zoning board wanting to go
| out on a limb to do something novel like approving
| containers just because a port is backed up.
|
| I can, if they get paid for it. Rent should be reasonable
| for short-term storage and unreasonable for long-term.
| jpindar wrote:
| They don't own the empties, and it's in their contracts to
| return them.
| [deleted]
| jeffrallen wrote:
| From a quick Google map look, I'd ask the National Guard to
| take over runway 8R of LGB. That would still leave plenty
| of runways there, including 8L, usable under the same wind
| conditions.
|
| There is also a huge amount of land at Palmdale airport,
| 1h30 north of Long Beach.
|
| A glut of empty containers is a stupid problem, but the
| solution can be stupid easy, if we choose to make it so.
| jtbayly wrote:
| Without a permit? In California? lol
| toast0 wrote:
| > That's neat, but isn't this whole thing about stacking
| restrictions on empty containers?
|
| It's stacking restrictions for empty containers in lots that
| are not at the port, I believe.
|
| > on-chassis (which I think means on wheels)
|
| In container shipping, a chassis is basically a trailer that
| accepts a container and can be pulled by a semi-truck or one
| of the utility vehicles they've got at the port to move
| things around.
|
| If a chassis comes back with an empty container on it, and
| the port isn't accepting empties, you've got to leave it
| somewhere before you can grab one of the many containers
| sitting at the dock that have goods waiting to be delivered.
| If the dock yard is full of containers, they can't unload the
| boats. If the can't unload the boats, they can't load
| outgoing cargo including outgoing empties.
|
| Stacking empties higher, especially away from the dock may
| free up chassis that frees up dock space, etc, that gets
| things moving and then the empties can come back. But, that
| only works if the storage yards have the equipment to stack
| higher; which probably they don't all have. The thread
| mentions a limit on stacking empty containers, but the zoning
| limitation is for stacking any containers, it's just that
| outside of the yards at the port, you tend not to store full
| containers. Once you get those on a chassis, you want to get
| them delivered either to the final destination or a storage
| yard at another port or a train depot, etc. Empties are a bit
| different; you'd prefer to load filled containers most of the
| time, so it makes sense to stack some empties from time to
| time; also a trucking company may want to have some empties
| to take to an exporter, etc.
|
| Honestly, I had thought that both chassis and empties were
| fungible, kind of like with rail wagons. You count what goes
| where and if things are uneven over time, make some transfers
| to bring it back, but otherwise no big deal. But the thread
| says otherwise.
| Animats wrote:
| For US railroads, railroad cars may seem to be fungible,
| but someone owns each one and there's a settlements system
| running behind the scenes. The Association of American
| Railroads, via their Railinc subsidiary, is behind that,
| and all railroads that interchange traffic are members.
| There are standard rates.
|
| How does that work for containers?
| toast0 wrote:
| > How does that work for containers?
|
| Apparently, it doesn't. I would have thought at least
| some shipping lines would have gotten together to allow
| for offsets and settlements and all that to ease
| logistics. Maybe the lines don't want to coordinate or
| enjoy the semi-lockin that returning a container to the
| line's yard means it's most convenient to pick up an
| outgoing container from that yard, or don't trust their
| inventory with each other.
| [deleted]
| btown wrote:
| It sounds like these are complementary solutions, no? Some
| yards have stacking equipment, some don't. It seems far more
| reasonable to let them become "sinks" for containers, which
| they'd gladly do and which would require nothing other than
| removing red tape, rather than requiring adoption of a more
| complex routing system.
| polote wrote:
| > Truckers are leaving containers all over Los Angeles.[1]
|
| There are so many of them, that they couldn't find a picture of
| one of them to illustrate the article
| GuB-42 wrote:
| G/O media is particularly terrible with illustrations. They
| once had an article abut the ISS with a picture of Mir as an
| illustration.
|
| I think they have a contract with a stock image provider, no
| photographer, and no one to seek out and license original
| pictures. Writer are probably asked to select an illustration
| in their stock image library.
|
| I think it is a disgrace to journalism. The front picture is,
| with the title, the most important part of the article, do
| some effort FFS, or don't put a picture at all.
| irrational wrote:
| What is G/O media?
| dangrossman wrote:
| > G/O Media Inc. is an American media holding company
| that runs Gizmodo, Kotaku, Jalopnik, Deadspin,
| Lifehacker, Jezebel, The Root, The A.V. Club, The
| Takeout, The Onion, and The Inventory
|
| - Wikipedia
| saagarjha wrote:
| > G/O was formed in April 2019 when Great Hill Partners,
| a private equity firm, purchased the websites from
| Univision for $20.6 million.
|
| Is it just me or is that a shockingly low amount for
| those websites?
| x0x0 wrote:
| It is -- the sites sold for $135m in 2016 (out of the
| gawker bankruptcy) to Univision. Gawker media group was
| famously operationally well run and threw off lots of
| cash.
|
| After Great Hill bought them for $20m -- presumably with
| a ton of debt, or something -- they then put an idiot
| named Jim Spanfeller in charge. Jim managed to get the
| entire staff of deadspin -- also a profitable, well run
| site -- to quit en masse. Said staff later started
| Defector and are running it as a coop, basically.
| Defector has survived a full year running on subscription
| fees and largely without advertising (or maybe entirely
| without?).
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Online advertising nuked most media company revenues.
| prostoalex wrote:
| Over the past decade advertisers shifted spending onto
| deep targeting (benefitting primarily FB and GOOG) and
| re-targeting (benefitting any rando site with lots of
| pageviews) away from interest-based publishers.
| jrockway wrote:
| That's the name of the company that publishes Jalopnik.
| Scroll down to the bottom, "Copyright 2021 G/O Media
| Inc".
| mechanical_bear wrote:
| You could have left it at the first five words.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Couldn't large forklifts that have enough weight capacity to
| lift one full container and enough height capacity to lift an
| empty container on top of another simply pick up a stack of two
| containers from the bottom at the same time and put the two on
| top of a third, making a three-high stack?
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| the top one will fall off in the process, and most of the
| forklifts aren't meant for that angle of leverage
| maxk42 wrote:
| > Allowing stacking over 2 high is only useful if you have the
| equipment to stack over 2 high. A place that just stacks empty
| containers 2 high probably only has large forklifts. The
| special equipment for high stacking is far more expensive, and
| only bought if you need it.
|
| This begs the question: If container storage were the only
| bottleneck, wouldn't operators merely lease space further
| afield? There's plenty of space in Corona, San Bernardino, and
| environs that wouldn't take more than a 30 minute commute each
| way.
|
| I can't help but feel like there are other confounding factors
| at play.
| gpspake wrote:
| Sidenote... I think this might be the first time I've
| personally heard "There's an app for that" to essentially
| indicate "this is a solved problem" - even if in this case it
| does kind of mean "software exists to solve this problem" in a
| literal sense. We're only a decade or so out from when "there's
| an app for that" represented this cool new novel idea that you
| could install an app on your fancy new smartphone to do
| something useful. Now it's trivial and commonplace but I could
| see this slogan sticking around in our vernacular outside of
| its original context kinda like the save icon. Neat.
| Animats wrote:
| I wrote "there's an app for that" because IMC _does_ have an
| app for that.[1] Also a web site.[2] Drivers need to be able
| to talk to the container dispatching system.
|
| That's a side issue, though. As the number of containers in
| temporary storage increases, system throughput drops. So,
| once you get into overload, you're stuck there until you
| somehow reduce traffic or get more capacity. That seems to be
| the current situation.
|
| It's not just at the US end. Shipify reports about 200 ships
| stuck waiting to get into Chinese ports.[3] (That article has
| a good overview of the situation.) At the China end, there's
| an empty shipping container _shortage_.
|
| Back in July, US farmers were also complaining about an empty
| shipping container shortage.[4] Ship lines wanted to load up
| and get out, because the China->US rate is currently much,
| much higher than the US->China rate. So loading up containers
| at the US end apparently cost time and profits. The way
| empties are handled is driven by a system of economic
| incentives to not hold onto empties, and apparently that's
| not working well enough to get containers back to someplace
| useful. Someone has to pay to ship the containers back.
|
| [1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/imcs-mydriver/id1299727364
|
| [2] https://www.imcsmartstacks.com/
|
| [3] https://www.shiplilly.com/blog/container-ships-now-
| piling-up...
|
| [4] https://www.farmprogress.com/trade/shipping-container-
| shorta...
| potiuper wrote:
| Most of the stacks are already at 6 high
| https://www.tiktok.com/@stanimal18/video/7019310183545376006.
| The automated storage & retrieval system cannot go higher. Peel
| pile would be great if the empty containers did not have to be
| taken to Dallas. It is questionable if this is a government
| failure to zone empty buffer yards out in desert as there would
| be even less of an incentive to return the empty containers;
| changing the zoning at the secondary yards does not fix the
| underlying incentive issue and should only be put in place once
| the ratio of the rate at which new containers are being
| received to the rate at which containers are leaving begins to
| decline to accelerate the removal of the bottleneck. The
| storage fee needs to be raised to a point at which it is
| justifiable to move the empty containers out over processing
| fully loaded containers until the storage bottleneck is
| removed. Changing the zoning before figuring out the rate
| problem almost surely will just make the bottleneck worse. It
| would also be interesting to know if it would be feasible to
| make the containers able to be disassembled and multi-packed
| into an empty container.
| toast0 wrote:
| Those 6 high stacks are the ones at the port. From the
| thread, there are plenty of smaller secondary lots outside
| the ports where empties are being stacked, because the ports
| won't accept them, and there's room. The zoning based
| stacking limit affects those secondary yards, but not the
| port yards. A real question is if the secondary yards have
| equipment to stack higher or if they can really only go two
| high, because they were limited by zoning anyway.
|
| > It would also be interesting to know if it would be
| feasible to make the containers able to be disassembled and
| multi-packed into an empty container.
|
| Not really; everything's welded together, and if you unweld
| and reweld, it's not going to be as strong. Plus that's a lot
| of labor. There are some collapsible containers, but those
| tend not to have sides or a top, which is not ideal for ocean
| shipping.
| potiuper wrote:
| Each of the yards have unique constraints. Hopefully, the 2
| to 4 increase is to be some sort of test such that the
| ability to stack 6/9 high is still within reason given it
| as the limit of the higher end stackers. Additionally,
| these https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSn-dT4EMcM do not
| require welding to transform; are quoted with the same
| strength, a quarter of the original size, and 20% more
| expensive in early 2017.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Okay, but fancy collapsible containers does nothing to
| solve the problem with all the containers piling up right
| now. That's a longer term solution at best.
| rdeboo wrote:
| It's definitely a long term thing. Some guys from my
| university founded a company around foldable containers
| in 2008 (https://4foldcontainers.com/). It's still not
| common.
| Jolter wrote:
| The way I read the linked article, the idea is to use peel
| piles for drayage only. That is, for goods that is due for
| shorter trips within the same urban area, not for long-haul
| freight. I think it seems like a part of the solution by
| virtue of having some potential for lowering drivers' waiting
| time and maximizing the speed of emptying out a fully stacked
| terminal.
| orangepurple wrote:
| Why are these blocked ships not diverting to other US ports? We
| have plenty!
| mdorazio wrote:
| Generally speaking, it's not allowed. The supply chain has a
| very long tail and there are all kinds of steps and contracts
| that are based on the destination specified when goods are
| first loaded on a ship. Unloading at a completely different
| port far away would be a nightmare. As for why ships aren't
| utilizing other ports more, see [1].
|
| [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-container-ships-cant-
| sail-a...
| e12e wrote:
| > Also containers are not fungible between carriers, so the
| truckers have to drop their empty off at the right terminal. This
| is causing empty containers to pile up.
|
| What does this mean? The individual containers are owned by
| carriers?
|
| Could this be allieveted also by agreements between carriers (or
| a merger)?
|
| Or is there some other reason containers are "sticky" to
| carriers?
| Ekaros wrote:
| If problem is too many empty containers. Wouldn't actually
| subsidising shipping them off make sense? That is make it
| worthwhile for ships to load them on.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Something to recognize.
|
| Logistics can be somewhat thought of as a flow problem.
|
| If demand far exceeds supply, and both supply and demand stay
| constant, the backlog will continue to get worse in severity over
| time.
|
| For the problem to get better, either demand has to decline, or
| supply has to increase. However, the ability to expand supply
| seems limited in the short term. E.g. how long does it take to
| improve port throughput, or build new container ships?
|
| Translating to the real world, think every ship stuck at the port
| removes another ship/containers from being able to pick up new
| goods which creates a self reinforcing problem.
|
| Or thought another way, if the port can only unload 10,000
| containers a day, and 20,000 containers a day are showing up, the
| number of backlogged containers will increase linearly with time.
|
| Just yesterday we hit a record number of ships backlogged at the
| CA port, so I suspect this is exactly the situation we're in.
|
| The free market will eventually solve by either supply throughput
| breakthroughs, or prices continuing to rise until demand
| destruction kicks in.
|
| I want to lay a few stats out here. Retail sales has been ~20%
| elevated from 2019 levels since the pandemic started, primarily
| due to government benefits/stimulus checks.
|
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RSXFS
|
| Some is due to spending habits changing, but that's likely a
| smaller portion.
|
| Check real personal income over the course of the pandemic.
|
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RPI
|
| Enhanced UI has ended, but it seems consumers are relying on
| credit now to maintain the same level of spending. It's not clear
| how long this will last, but it could be months, judging by the
| consumer loan data here.
|
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CONSUMER
|
| Note that many consumers paid off debts with the stimulus, is why
| this chart dips at the end. But we're quickly climbing back.
| Given lower interest rates, it's likely this can persist a few
| more months at current trend.
|
| I suspect this will end organically whenever consumer credit is
| maxed out, and demand falls. But at the same time, wages are
| increasing fairly rapidly now... Is it possible higher wages can
| continue to support this new level of demand?
|
| Probably in part, but not entirely.
| samstave wrote:
| Super-hyper-inflation is said to be coming by Jack Dorsey.
|
| Alex Jones was quoted as saying that he knows "high up elites"
| who told him war is coming ~February (don't kill me I am just
| quoting what he just said this week.
|
| ---
|
| So, with this backlog, inflation, war... and china's
| shenanigans all around...
|
| I am pessimistic on the next 8 months.
| beebmam wrote:
| Alex Jones, thank you for that insight, I'm sure it's not a
| lie
| samstave wrote:
| Im sure it is... I was just saying all three of these bad
| omens will make for a very bad time...
| ec109685 wrote:
| You can't flat out say the rise in retail sales is due to
| stimulus. There are a lot of disruptions over the last year
| that have shifted spend from things like dining out and travel.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| This chart tells you most of what you need to know.
|
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RPI
|
| This shows the insane increase in personal income over the
| course of the pandemic.
|
| Many made more money on enhanced UI benefits than in their
| line of work. This is a known fact.
|
| People in this situation have more propensity to spend the
| marginal dollar than higher income earners. Spending as a
| percentage of income inversely trends with level of income.
|
| It's true that some percentage of retail spending is spending
| shifted from other categories, but given personal income
| data, I doubt that's the primary cause.
|
| Also keep in mind, there was mortgage forbearance, rent
| forgiveness, and student loan moratorium (which is still
| ongoing I believe).
|
| Those factors don't show up in income, but will shift
| expenses from loan interest to goods most likely.
| 8note wrote:
| I do know something else not specified by the chart.
|
| Everyone's been stuck at home and purchasing consumer items
| that would usually be bought in bulk and supplied by
| employers, restaurants, etc.
|
| Claiming it's government spending as the cause and not
| covid as the cause seems silly
| adam_arthur wrote:
| The ability to spend is constrained by aggregate income
| and available credit in society.
|
| Shifts in spending from services to goods can only alter
| consumption patterns so much.
|
| Here is the Fed data on services spending:
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PCESV
|
| As you can see, services spending is equivalent to 2019
| levels today, while goods spending is 20% higher.
|
| Consider the level of fiscal stimulus, monetary stimulus
| through lower rates (cheaper credit), and expense
| reduction (moratoriums, forbearance).
|
| The sheer magnitude of demand stimulation is frankly
| obvious, even without digging into the data. Of course,
| the data backs up this theory as well.
|
| Saying it's "covid" isn't saying anything at all. You
| have to quantify what you're suggesting. What is the
| mechanism that can explain persistently higher goods
| spending? The data doesn't bear out substitution as the
| primary mechanism, either way.
| ec109685 wrote:
| There's a backlog of savings from limited service
| spending that is being worked through right now.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Do you disagree that aggregate personal income was
| massively enhanced through stimulus spending? The facts
| show this.
|
| You seem very intent on not considering that fact when
| it's the most obvious factor by a wide margin, with all
| of the data supporting it.
|
| Are you aware of the size of federal deficit spending in
| 2020/2021? The level of monetary policy easing leading to
| more credit availability to consumers?
|
| It's intellectually dishonest to attribute elevated
| retail sales solely, or even primarily to the
| substitution effect
| ec109685 wrote:
| You can see here that the trend line for imports is
| consistent for the past 4 years:
| https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/imports
|
| So you could say that it's the deficit (e.g. the big tax
| cut from 4 years ago) that precipitated to this.
|
| My point is that "stimulus equals problems at the ports"
| is likely an overly simplistic answer.
| pixl97 wrote:
| How much upshifting in jobs has occurred?
|
| Before the pandemic we talked about unfilled jobs looking
| for computer programmers and other higher paid positions.
| How many people moved from 'social' jobs to ones that
| required more skills but pay more?
| Jolter wrote:
| You mean all those underemployed software engineers and
| all the trained programmers forced to wait tables because
| they couldn't get a programming job?
|
| That is not how I remember the world in 2019.
| pixl97 wrote:
| You took that the wrong way. Software engineers moved up.
| I've gotten 2 promotions since the pandemic started. I'm
| talking about people shifting industries in to ones that
| have been short staffed, like programming, and leaving
| the crap jobs behind.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| Stimulus is a small part. The 6 Trillion dollar deficit
| spending over the last two years increases disposable income
| whether it consists of checks being mailed out to households
| or Pfizer or Boeing. It ends up in people's pockets and is
| not matched by a corresponding increase in taxes.
|
| https://datalab.usaspending.gov/americas-finance-
| guide/defic...
| eecc wrote:
| Seems like all these tweets are about emptying ports so they -
| and the author's startup - can go back to their business.
|
| The rest of the systems' profits and sustainability seem to be
| secondary.
|
| Perhaps it might make sense to ponder if this super-lean truck-
| centric infrastructure wasn't running too close to its breaking
| point?
|
| Might be a good idea for big-gov to lend a hand but also impose
| some top-down decisions like: long term you will be rebasing your
| logistics onto a railroad based backbone.
|
| There, and you've magically created a couple thousands well
| paying jobs in infrastructure build and maintenance...
|
| Also call some operations researcher to copypaste a couple tiered
| caching algorithms onto this mess.
| antoinebalaine wrote:
| This. This right here is the voice of common sense. With fossil
| fuel-supply contracting in the coming decades and over-spread
| cities' infrastructures being impossible to navigate without
| transportation, the US will have no choice but to turn to rail.
| It's just a matter of "when", not "if".
| noirbot wrote:
| Isn't the problem with rail that it's nearly impossible to
| build new rail lines? Especially in a way that isn't
| destructive to the environment? I'm all for rail in general,
| but it feels like the same environmentalist push that wants
| to get away from trucks is also the force that's going to
| block putting fairly environmentally damaging train lines all
| over the American west.
| eecc wrote:
| Yeah, you won't get animals randomly wandering on the
| tracks if you lay them over concrete bridge structures,
| costs a tad more also in terms of concrete production
| emissions but you can offset that by running the trains on
| renewables throughout their lifetime
| noirbot wrote:
| Sure - there's answers to a lot of it, but you're still
| talking about having to acquire a ton of land that's
| likely in the middle of nowhere and putting in a big
| construction project. It's not too dissimilar to the sort
| of work that's required, and the risks associated with,
| adding new oil pipelines, and those have been a complete
| mess of corruption and environmental and land-rights
| protests.
| m0zg wrote:
| Why has this obvious solution taken 3 months and a boat tour from
| a startup CEO to implement? Do not elect incompetent mouth
| breathers into local governments, folks. When such people run
| unopposed (or when all the alternatives suck about as hard) I
| write in Mickey Mouse. If this was a trend, Mickey would hold
| most of the elected offices in this country.
| itsthecourier wrote:
| oh god thank you
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| I love how these commenters think they know something about
| shipping that the CEO of Flexport doesn't (I'm referring to the
| person you replied to, BTW).
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| True. But let's also note that being CEO of a company in the
| industry doesn't automatically make you right, nor does it mean
| that when you speak to a reporter or send out a tweet thread
| like this you don't have some sort of agenda. There's almost
| always an agenda. Maybe that agenda is honest and in line with
| public interest, maybe it isn't. And twitter is less reliable
| than a news story, because usually reporters seek more than one
| source and try to verify what they can, how they can. They're
| by no means perfect, but this dude can write whatever he wants.
|
| I suspect that this measure just delays the inevitable. I'm
| also wondering why the limit of 2-high stacks exists (I'm
| guessing safety related in event of an earthquake?)
|
| He has a lot of ideas in his other tweet thread, but I noticed
| that in his long list of ideas nowhere to be found was "offer
| better pay and working conditions for truckers."
|
| The core issue is not too many containers. It's not enough
| truckers picking up the new containers, so there's no room for
| the old ones. And because the ships can't be unloaded, nobody
| can take the containers back to other ports.
|
| It doesn't help that the full-in-union longshoremen (not the
| part-timer union guys) get way, way over $100k a year, some of
| them making $300k...and with zero requirements to meet any sort
| of metrics. They shouldn't be incentivized to where safety is
| compromised, but surely there is a balance. Right now they have
| zero incentive to do anything about the problem. The port sits
| doing nothing...and they sit too, getting paid.
| IanCal wrote:
| > The core issue is not too many containers. It's not enough
| truckers picking up the new containers,
|
| This doesn't make sense to me unless the truckers are
| currently extremely busy. And if they are, why is there _now_
| a problem? Are there suddenly far fewer truckers?
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Trucking is not an easy job. The working conditions are
| poor, you have to pay a fair amount of any benefits out of
| pocket, and like most "gig" economy stuff the logistics
| companies are driving a relentless rate towards the bottom.
|
| According to the American Trucking Association, turnover
| rates for drivers have been at about 90% for a decade. http
| s://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/05/25/999784202/is-t...
|
| I would assume that the tight job market is making things
| worse.
| native_samples wrote:
| It's a knock-on effect from lockdowns. Governments got it
| in their heads that they could partition the economy into
| "essential" and "non-essential" and could make massive
| interventions without any side effects. So everyone has to
| work from home, not go to restaurants anymore, port rules
| are constantly changing in ways that screw over shipping
| firms, the economy tanks, everything including logistics is
| thrown into chaos. Meanwhile people who are ideologically
| blind to the costs of government intervention sit around
| and say "why now?! what's happened to cause this?",
| ignoring the ocean-sized elephant in the room.
|
| https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/cave-man-capitalism
| bb88 wrote:
| The best HN commenters seem to speak only when it concerns
| their expertise, or do so after fully understanding the issues
| at play.
| deadmutex wrote:
| Unfortunately, many comments are not from "best HN
| commenters", so signal/noise ratio perhaps lower than
| expected.
| _3u10 wrote:
| How do you think the CEO of flexport became CEO?
| spicybright wrote:
| By simply saying they're an expert at shipping on hacker news
| comments, obviously.
| hbworn77 wrote:
| Most of them are usually the top comment on a thread like this,
| too, because there are a large number of people who consider
| them authoritative (or like what they say, or dogpile, or who
| knows). When it's my industry being discussed here, I can
| usually predict who will be in the top spot (it's only a few),
| and how wrong they'll be. It's a real problem but it's also the
| immediate amnesia thing whoever-that-was talked about.
|
| For the record that is one common prediction up there, in my
| experience, but I'm trying not to make it personal. There is
| very often a sense of reciting recent research into whatever
| the hot topic is, and little depth or mastery of any of those
| topics. But they score well, so here we are debating what is
| said instead of what is substantive.
| rdtwo wrote:
| If you have subject mastery often you aren't allowed to talk
| it because you might get fired or make your company look bad
| catlikesshrimp wrote:
| This
| amcoastal wrote:
| Its a comment on hackernews. Reciting recent research on a
| topic is a top tier internet comment. You can't really expect
| much more nowadays.
| variaga wrote:
| The immediate amnesia thing:
| https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/
| nuerow wrote:
| > _But they score well, so here we are debating what is said
| instead of what is substantive._
|
| Blanket dismissals of everything any commenter mentions
| without providing any basis or reason or counterpoint besides
| empty appeals to authority is no way to conduct a discussion.
| In fact, doesn't your criticism also applies to you and your
| dismissal of everyone else's comments?
|
| But taking your criticism at face value, the only way that
| the scenario you've depicted becomes possible is if those in
| the know do not step in to point out misconceptions and clear
| up doubts. Nevertheless, even so experience does not grant
| omniscience or infallibility, not to mention that the expert
| beginner problem is also a thing. In that case, an inability
| to refute points or offer counter-evidence, accompanied by
| this need to fallback to various types of appeals to
| authority and seniority, might actually indicate a
| discrepancy between actual and perceived competence and
| insightfulness.
|
| The point is that if you happen to believe some posts are not
| right or fail to take into account critical aspects, why not
| call it out? I mea, you're already taking your time to write
| relatively lengthy posts complaining and vaguely casting
| doubts on how fellow posters are contributing. If you have
| the means and opportunity to right what you believe are
| wrong, why aren't you doing so and instead opt to waste your
| time posting messages that aren't constructive or contribute
| positively to a discussion?
| ehnto wrote:
| > but it's also the immediate amnesia thing whoever-that-was
| talked about.
|
| That gave me a chuckle.
| dang wrote:
| " _Please don 't sneer, including at the rest of the
| community._" It's a particularly low-quality, low-information
| sort of post, which reliably leads to worse subthreads, which
| is why we added that guideline.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| (We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28972094.)
|
| p.s. Animats is a great HN commenter who knows a lot about a
| lot of stuff (not everything, of course). I don't know how much
| he knows about shipping but if you know more, a much better way
| to contribute to HN would be to share some of what you know, so
| the rest of us can learn. Supercilious putdowns of other
| commenters just degrade the community.
| [deleted]
| bsder wrote:
| The Flexport CEO may know more, but the Flexport CEO _also_ has
| an agenda of being profitable for the Flexport CEO.
|
| This may, or may not, align with being solutions and advice
| that benefits the public at large. In fact, it is becoming
| increasingly clear that things are currently "optimized"
| strongly enough that squeezing more profit out of the system
| generally corresponds to finding a sucker to take advantage of
| --normally the public at large.
|
| Startups and their leaders have a "move fast and break things"
| attitude that is no big deal when imaginary things like
| software is involved that becomes a _big_ deal when non-
| imaginary things like people become impacted.
|
| Stacking 6-high triples storage space, sure. But it doesn't
| stop container ships from running back to Asia empty.
|
| So, that storage space will fill up quickly, and we're back
| where we started only _now_ we have dangerously stacked high
| center-of-mass (because empty) containers (this is an active
| seismic zone, you know) that nobody wants to pay to get rid of
| until somebody dies and their insurance rates shoot up enough
| to make it necessary to dump the containers.
|
| At which point, the shipping companies will magically make the
| shipping containers go away--probably illegally to somewhere
| you don't want them to go to.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| I mean, storage containers are made of structural steel. It's
| not like they're radioactive waste. They're valuable, and
| there's an active secondary market for used containers. There
| is absolutely no situation where empty containers would get
| dumped at sea or whatever.
| weyland108 wrote:
| " The Flexport CEO may know more, but the Flexport CEO also
| has an agenda of being profitable for the Flexport CEO"
|
| These are all for profit companies. It's a bit utopian to
| suggest anything else would be better without providing any
| specific alternatives.
| [deleted]
| bsder wrote:
| If you want me to believe that "profit motive" is aligned
| with "public interest", why is everybody running to the
| regulators to clear this instead of spending money?
|
| It's a bit disingenuous to suggest that "profit motive" is
| aligned with "public interest" in the face of all the
| current evidence we have in other sectors that is quite to
| the contrary.
|
| To start, it is not at all clear that super low cost, super
| low friction shipping from China is, in fact, in the
| general US public interest. But it is in the interest of
| WalMart. And it is in the interest of Amazon.
|
| For example, from the standpoint of the public interest,
| consuming fewer Christmas goods (which are mostly
| disposable garbage and which is what the Asian shippers are
| all rushing to get transported) is probably preferable. A
| great deal of Asian garbage which is destined to be US
| garbage is currently clogging out the shipping of goods
| which have a steady demand and are far more necessary to
| the functioning of the economy.
|
| You will note that "increased foreign shipping friction
| causing goods to be manufactured locally again" is _not_ on
| the discussion table because it is _not_ part of an agenda
| that people in the shipping industry wish to countenance.
| marderfarker2 wrote:
| Ironically the US the largest exporter of unrecyclable
| garbage to Asia.
| weyland108 wrote:
| I never suggested profit motive was good for public
| interest. Your argument in fact suggests that profit
| motive is never good for public interest without
| suggesting any good alternatives either. It's easy to
| make an argument that everything should be produced
| locally... what happens when there are no trucks or
| truckers to ship it from one state to another ? Should
| each state be responsible to produce everything
| locally....should each county be then responsible to
| produce everything locally ....at what point does it stop
| ? The point about "let's just consume fewer goods" sounds
| pretty utopian to me. That's not a plan it's a hope and
| hope is not a plan.
| rdtwo wrote:
| When is the ceo of a company the real expert on anything? The
| ceo is the celebrity that makes the big decisions but rarely
| ever the actual ground level expert
| ameister14 wrote:
| A lot of the time when they found the company I find the CEO
| knows a lot about it
| rdtwo wrote:
| Even if they were once the expert and know a lot about the
| area they just have too many other responsibilities to be
| the ground level expert and be ceo at the same time. A good
| ceo will delegate to folks that understand the details
| because details are the difference between success and
| failure.
| taneq wrote:
| What do you mean by "ground level expert"? In my experience
| the true expertise tends to hover a couple of levels above
| 'ground level' and get called in for the curly questions. The
| actual boots-on-the-ground-100%-of-the-time people are
| usually at a fairly basic level of competence (or rapidly get
| promoted) and do the simple 'grunt work'.
|
| I occasionally run into the higher levels these days and let
| me tell you, most of them are whip smart.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| That is the case with companies not started by the CEO.
| Flexport is a startup (YC, I think).
| 0x0nyandesu wrote:
| This is the kind of dumbass comment I see on HN that makes me
| roll my eyes. You sound like you're 3 years into your tech
| career and you can't help but comment on everything as if
| you're an expert but in reality you show your ignorance.
| burlesona wrote:
| Zoning laws prevent stacking containers more than 2 high. FFS.
|
| Zoning as practiced in the US may be the most pervasive, banal
| evil in the country. It kills our GDP[1], is a major driver of
| racial inequity[2], increases wealth inequality[3], and creates
| car-dependency which has horrible public health impacts[4].
|
| Yet somehow nearly no one in America is aware of this or
| concerned about it. I wish I understood why that is.
|
| But I'm not surprised to learn that LA area land use regulation
| is a major contributor to the dysfunction at the port.
|
| 1. https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/mac.20170388
|
| 2. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/9/18/the-local-
| case...
|
| 3. https://www.cato.org/blog/housing-wealth-inequality
|
| 4. https://vtpi.org/autodep.pdf
| throwaway984393 wrote:
| > Yet somehow nearly no one in America is aware of this or
| concerned about it. I wish I understood why that is.
|
| Because people love zoning! NIMBY is the rallying cry at zoning
| board hearings, where whiny people who only care about
| themselves make sure those Chinese people don't put their
| stinky laundromats near our nice rich white neighborhood. It's
| the main reason zoning exists! Particularly the wealthy people
| who have the influence to make it happen, but the casual
| racists of the past century, and middle class yuppies of the
| past half century, have plenty to answer for.
|
| But it's also clear that bad zoning (like the 2-stack rule) is
| also an artifact of poor system maintenance. When you design a
| system, you may put in certain constraints for safety. Over
| time the system changes, but the entire design and its
| constraints are not re-evaluated for each change. So eventually
| you have constraints that are completely out of whack with the
| current state. Doesn't matter if it's zoning or a microservice
| architecture, you're going to end up with crappy legacy rules
| that only get re-evaluated when things break.
| mlindner wrote:
| Why blame the rich people rather than the system that allows
| them to abuse it? Rich people will always exist. The solution
| is to make it so that abuse is not possible. One possibility:
| create a state system for zoning and override every local
| zoning system. Let local zoning boards decide how to zone but
| make zoning be based on a tiered zoning system. Namely every
| zoning is a superset of the previous zoning. So industrial
| areas also allow every other type of zoning.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfm2xCKOCNk
| mulmen wrote:
| If you disagree with current zoning laws why would you want
| to weaken your ability to influence them by moving the
| decision to the state?
|
| Delegation of power to local authority is a central concept
| of American democracy. Do not throw that baby out with the
| zoning bathwater.
| mlindner wrote:
| My post was actually about defining a system of zoning
| and forcing localities (if they want to allow zoning for
| industry at all) to also allow high rise housing and
| commercial in the same area as well. And anywhere that's
| zoned commercial also has to automatically allow
| residential. Localities can still choose how they zone,
| but the state sets the types of zoning possible.
| newsclues wrote:
| Rich people own and control the system.
|
| Rich people have the power to change the system but they
| want to maintain the status quo because they are rich and
| powerful.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Why would you assume a state system would be better and not
| even worse?
| markdown wrote:
| Because local government represents just that locality...
| meaning a wealthy neighbourhood only has politicians
| elected and controlled by the wealthy.
|
| State govts have to appeal to a much wider demographic.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| >65% of voters are home owners.
| geofft wrote:
| I don't know about your state, but in my state, rich people
| have influence at the state level too.
|
| It doesn't seem axiomatic to me that rich people will
| always exist (I'm not sure I even agree that _poor_ people
| will always exist, despite believing that the guy who most
| famously said it was divine), and one of the things I have
| learned from working in an industry with very rich people
| is that merely being rich is enough to let you influence
| the rules of the game. If someone was able to argue for
| tiered zoning, you can pay people to argue for un-tiered
| zoning. If there 's a law preventing you from influencing
| local zoning, and you're rich, you can go change that law
| just as easily as it got created. If there's a law
| requiring certain representation on zoning boards, you can
| go lobby that representation. If there's a law moving
| zoning to an "apolitical" government agency, you can fund
| candidates willing to politicize it. And so forth.
|
| Making people not have that level of influence/leverage in
| the first place, hard as it might be, seems like the only
| viable solution.
| stackedinserter wrote:
| > NIMBY is the rallying cry at zoning board hearings, where
| whiny people who only care about themselves make sure those
| Chinese people don't put their stinky laundromats near our
| nice rich white neighborhood.
|
| Yes some of prefer zoning to "mixed" and "diverse"
| neighborhoods. What's wrong with me not willing to see a
| laundromat or an office building next to my house? Or what's
| wrong with me willing to live in quiet family-oriented
| neighborhood, where I can let children go outside alone since
| age of 6-7?
| coolso wrote:
| > What's wrong with me not willing Misery loves company.
| City-dwellers have to deal with crime, dodging homeless
| excrement, noise, and general unpleasantness? So should
| you.
| djbebs wrote:
| Nothings wrong with that. Nothing is stopping you from
| buying up the land around you, or agreeing with you
| neighbors to make a HOA that has those characteristics.
|
| The problem with zoning, is that it isn't voluntary.
| pessimizer wrote:
| It's certainly as voluntary as a HOA, which were
| originally called _White Homeowners Associations._
|
| Zoning is assigned by democratically elected
| administrations. HOAs are restrictive covenants that are
| required for the purchase of a house. Every single thing
| identified as NIMBYism could be enforced by covenants,
| and keeping blacks and Jews out was literally their
| original purpose.
| throwaway984393 wrote:
| Because the wording of such restrictions are often just
| window-dressing on the true motive, which is racial
| segregation.
|
| The first zoning law in the country was in Los Angeles in
| 1908. Part of the law was crafted to force certain
| businesses to relocate retroactively. It was crafted
| specifically to target the Chinese businesses, which were
| the laundromats. White people just did not want to live
| alongside Chinese people.
|
| Redlining was a further practice of both bankers and zoning
| having restrictions which were explicitly racially
| motivated. Levittown, the first planned community in the
| United States, was very explicitly "not mixed" - it had
| racial covenants that restricted blacks or jews from moving
| in. The intent was to sell more homes, as they presumed
| white people would not want to live in "mixed" areas with
| neighbors of an undesireable race. That practice continued
| throughout planned communities and zoning laws all over the
| country. Many of those racial covenants are still in place
| today.
|
| As an aside: you can let your children go outside in most
| cities. The moral panic over children getting kidnapped or
| abused if they step foot outside the house has been
| overblown for decades, and at this point is just a bizarre
| psychological trope of America.
| chasil wrote:
| Here is another zoning related video, referencing home-
| based business fronts in upscale neighborhoods.
|
| https://youtu.be/wzBL85kTwwo
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Excessive zoning makes everyone poorer and is implemented
| by a local political elite who have power because they can
| afford to spend the most time on politics.
| NineStarPoint wrote:
| What's wrong is everything the top comment mentioned.
| Zoning in the US is an albatross on our GDP, increases
| wealth inequality and racial segregation, and is forcing
| the car-centric culture that we currently live in. In the
| broadest sense, it's making it close to impossible to
| modernize our cities and will be a major factor in the US's
| fall from being the biggest economy in the world.
|
| If you're okay with all of that as the price of you getting
| to live in an eternally quiet neighborhood (that your
| children will never have a similar opportunity to live in
| themselves due to zoning-driven real estate prices going
| far beyond what standard wages can afford), then sure. As
| long as you acknowledge what consequences your desires have
| on wider society, then you can say you think the price is
| worth it or that you don't really care.
| [deleted]
| cracell wrote:
| Just no.
|
| Zoning is extremely important. You should not be allowed to
| build a factory in the middle of a neighborhood next to a
| school.
|
| There are certainly bad zoning laws but to say they are all bad
| is just ignorant nonsense.
| rcpt wrote:
| This is Long Beach, where we literally drill for oil right in
| the middle of residential neighborhoods.
| mrfusion wrote:
| I suppose a compromise could be laws that restrict pollution,
| toxins, noise, and odors from residential areas but otherwise
| anything goes.
| spenczar5 wrote:
| Why not? It sounds like you think this is obvious, but it
| isn't to me.
|
| I live in an area with occasional grandfathered-in exceptions
| to zoning rules. There's a cafe run out of a house, and a
| butcher shop run on a residential street corner between
| houses. And its absolutely lovely!
|
| I would have no problem with people making things ("a
| factory") next to a school.
| kiklion wrote:
| Even if there are businesses that you don't want, it can be
| solved outside of broad strokes zoning.
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| _> I would have no problem with people making things ("a
| factory") next to a school._
|
| A factory isn't just "making things", though. There might
| be semi's coming and going making traffic more dangerous,
| there could be materials left out that are dangerous to
| kids if they wander through the wrong fence, maybe there'll
| be loud noises that are detrimental to kids' concentration
| during tests.
|
| There's plenty of reasons industry is usually put outside
| of towns.
| zzzeek wrote:
| > I would have no problem with people making things ("a
| factory") next to a school.
|
| yes you would, if it were a large plastics manufacturer
| bringing large amounts of truck traffic and noise pollution
| and spewing carcinogenic PCB compounds into local
| atmosphere.
| bcrl wrote:
| Maybe companies shouldn't be allowed to spew toxic
| carcinogens into the atmosphere so that wouldn't matter?
| pessimizer wrote:
| You should live next to a dog food factory or a bunch of
| chicken houses. Things don't have to be dangerous to
| create a situation that you don't want to be living next
| to.
| bcrl wrote:
| Zoning mistakes have also resulted in the death of
| vibrant neighborhoods. Having mixed residential and
| commercial zoning enables things like grocery, corner and
| hardware stores that make a good place to live even
| better.
|
| Zoning shouldn't be able to limit how high containers are
| stacked. If the facility operates in a safe way
| consistent with OHSA laws, the municipality should come
| in with a half baked zoning law that prohibits an
| otherwise reasonable operation from working effectively.
|
| In my travels I have found that many communities across
| the US seem to generally fear use of height. I've always
| found this odd compared to rest of the world. Maybe it's
| just because land is cheap, but it does tend to mean that
| zoning laws, which try to codify standard practice, do
| end up overreaching on this particular issue.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Or a farm using natural fertilisers... They do look
| lovely part of the year, others not so much.
| F35Machinist wrote:
| The net result of relaxing zoning would be more
| residential housing built, not industrial. Industrial
| parks around the united states are sitting fallow while
| housing is being bid up to the moon. Demolishing houses
| to build a dog food factory would be very unprofitable
| since you would be replacing high value land use with low
| value land use. What you are saying is not a good
| argument for strict zoning, because your hypothetical
| scenario isn't realistic.
| zzzeek wrote:
| how about a landfill. ever been to one? they smell quite
| awful. nothing illegal about them, and they would pretty
| much ruin a junior high school right next door.
| bcrl wrote:
| And they're a horrible mistake of history that was a bad
| idea. The planet is a closed loop system with limited
| resources. Our use of those limited resources should be
| closed loop as well.
| zzzeek wrote:
| unfortunately there is no means for that to happen right
| away. but of course if there weren't any landfills, we
| would no longer need them to be mentioned in zoning
| regulations.
| spenczar5 wrote:
| Zoning is not the same as regulation. We shouldn't be
| spewing carcinogenic PCBs _anywhere_.
|
| Gigantic factories don't want to be on small residential
| streets anyway because they cant fit the trucks in, so I
| think that argument cuts the other way - there are
| natural forces that deter that stuff.
| blondin wrote:
| the GP made a valid point for zoning: a safe environment
| for schools. but this comment and the other one are
| veering away from that main point.
|
| of course we don't want anything carcinogenic or that
| dangerous anywhere where people live.
|
| that doesn't invalidate GP's main point that schools need
| safe and calm environments.
| zzzeek wrote:
| yet commercial zoning regulations exist for some reason.
| if "natural forces" prevent all negative outcomes, why do
| they exist ?
| spenczar5 wrote:
| I don't see how I claimed that natural forces prevent all
| negative outcomes. Sorry, you don't seem interested in
| understanding each others' views here...
| pessimizer wrote:
| If you think your example was an exception, what was the
| use of it? It seemed like evidence to support the claim
| that there are "natural forces that deter that stuff."
| zzzeek wrote:
| your view seemed to be pretty clearly, "commercial zoning
| is unnecessary for the problem of building factories next
| to schools", based on your phrase "Gigantic factories
| don't want to be on small residential streets anyway
| because they cant fit the trucks in, so I think that
| argument cuts the other way - there are natural forces
| that deter that stuff. ", meaning, "natural forces" would
| "deter" "that stuff", in this case "that stuff" being
| building factories next to schools. Sorry to be pedantic
| but I'm not quite sure what it is I'm not understanding.
|
| if you're saying, "I was just arguing that one exact
| example, i didnt say natural forces help for all kinds of
| other problems that commercial zoning is meant to help",
| well OK, so I think commercial zoning is necessary for
| even a less-than-gigantic, but nevertheless distruptive,
| noisy, and polluting manufacturing facilities being built
| inappropriately close to schools and residential areas
| which may nevertheless still be on roads that are fairly
| or fully accessible by truck traffic". After all the
| truck traffic could enter in the front of the building's
| property and the back and sides of the building's
| property abut said schools and homes in any case. just go
| look at any commercial property with a lot of trucking
| and movement going on, it doesn't take much imagination
| to see how such a thing can and quite often does abut
| residential areas in any case.
| spenczar5 wrote:
| Thanks for explaining more fully, this is helpful.
|
| Yeah, I was trying to say that factories specifically
| want good road access, so zones aren't necessary for that
| one exact example - your second paragraph. Sorry for
| being unclear with the phrase "that stuff," which seems
| to have sent us in the wrong direction.
|
| You say they may be constructed in residential areas
| anyway - like, maybe the roads are good enough in a
| neighborhood. I agree with this, but then I'm not seeing
| what the problem with the factory is. If it's noisy,
| impose noise restrictions. If it's polluting, impose
| pollution restrictions. But I don't have any beef with
| people making stuff as a matter of course.
|
| My position is mostly that zones are the wrong tool for
| the job. I wish we were more forgiving of mixed-use
| neighborhoods. If someone wants to run a 3D printing shop
| next door to a school, more power to 'em.
| kmbfjr wrote:
| Zoning exists as a common protection of property values.
| You may have no problem living next to a solid waste
| disposal site, but if they built one next to a home you
| owned for twenty years, you might come to appreciate
| zoning.
|
| Make no mistake, the protection is more often than not
| for the local tax base. There more than enough examples
| of zoning changes approved because the change offers a
| multiple of new tax revenue.
| karaterobot wrote:
| That must be so, since you said it. Do you acknowledge,
| though, that many people would _not_ like a factory next to
| their house? How about a foundry? How about an airport? And
| do you think that people 's preferences ought to be taken
| into account by their local government? If so, there's no
| argument here, you just have your own opinion.
| spenczar5 wrote:
| I am asking to be convinced ("why not?"). I'm not trying
| to convince you myself :)
|
| There are alternative mechanisms for getting peoples'
| local preferences. City- or county-wide zoning maps
| rarely change, and - at least in Seattle - don't seem to
| respond to individual citizens desires or concerns in the
| way you imply. Are zones really the right tool for the
| job?
| karaterobot wrote:
| Well, you did say you wouldn't mind if there was a
| factory next to a school. My point is that most people
| probably wouldn't want that, because it would be
| dangerous at worst and disruptive at best, and it's
| generally considered the job of governments to prevent
| that kind of thing. Whether that happens _in practice_ in
| specific locations is another issue completely, as is
| what individual citizens want to happen.
|
| If you think that there are situations where preventing
| some kinds of things (say, a toxic landfill) from being
| constructed next to other kinds of things (say, a
| preschool) is desirable, and that there should be rules
| around that, and that _most people_ want an elected
| government to make and enforce those rules, that ought to
| explain why the commenter you responded to said zoning is
| important. Even if you disagree with any of those
| clauses, I think you 'd understand why they felt that
| way.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The massive administrative burden of making every piece
| of property a special case where everyone nearby has to
| be interviewed, then their interests quantified and
| compared and a final judgment made sounds like a lawyer's
| wet dream.
|
| Instead, we have zoning, where we can say "build your
| factory here if you don't want to worry about residential
| complaints" or "build your house here if you don't want a
| noxious odor, noise, and constant semi traffic bothering
| you."
| 8note wrote:
| Industrial processes have a large surface area of different
| risks and hazards, and physical distance from where people
| live is a good way to mitigate all of them. Eg. Explosions,
| toxic chemical spills, electrical noise, air pollution etc.
|
| They also need heavy transport, which wears out road
| infrastructure much more quickly than light vehicles.
| Keeping residential streets largely clear of heavy traffic
| means you can focus repairs and replacements of road
| surfaces in the industrial areas.
|
| Zoning isnt the _only_ way to solve these problems, but it
| 's a good one
| andbberger wrote:
| Zoning is a terrible terrible way to solve the heavy
| goods transport problem the states have. Fines
| proportional to vehicle wear would be a better way to do
| it, incentivizing use of industrial rail spurs.
| Switzerland is the place to look for inspiration on this.
| spenczar5 wrote:
| It seems like this would depend a lot on the industry,
| and on scale. If somebody is, I don't know, assembling
| board games, I think that sounds fine next to a school.
| If they're refining crude oil, well, that sounds more
| likely to have the problems you describe.
|
| But "zoning" attempts to resolve those issues by carving
| territory up, not by requiring a particular physical
| distance. Zoning maps have boundaries which still have
| the problems you describe, right?
|
| It seems a lot more reasonable to target the specific
| issues (noise, air pollution, etc - the stuff you
| descibed) rather than attack this via zones.
|
| Of course, you said a similar thing too, so we probably
| 80% agree. But can you explain the remaining 20% - when
| is zoning ever a good way to solve these problems?
|
| Further - is there a case to be made for zoning aside
| from moving really heavy industry away from really
| residential neighborhoods? My city has dozens of zones,
| carefully segregating walkable retail regions from
| single-family homes, which doesn't seem so defensible.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| This is a perfect reason why most zoning sucks - but not
| all zoning sucks. Current zoning prevents most
| neighborhoods from being walkable. You can't have cafes and
| grocery stores near most houses.
|
| But replace cute cafe in your example with a landfill or a
| cement plant and see if it's still awesome.
|
| This is why some zoning is good.
| spenczar5 wrote:
| I previously lived next to a cement plant, actually, in
| Brooklyn - the Ferrara Brothers one, now shut down. It
| was literally adjacent to my apartment, out the back
| window. And you know what? I didn't mind one bit. I
| really loved that neighborhood.
| stackedinserter wrote:
| You can have a little park between grocery stores and
| houses. I live in a neighborhood like this and have all
| necessary amenities in 5-10 minutes of walk.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| You don't need zoning laws for that. The UK doesn't have
| them, yet still has pretty stringent controls ("planning
| permission") on what you can build. Explanation:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoning#United_Kingdom
|
| Each area - typically a district, which is a sub-unit of a
| county or city - has a "local plan" which is decided
| democratically by the local government. "The plan does not
| provide specific guidance on what type of buildings will be
| allowed in a given location, rather it provides general
| principles for development and goals for the management of
| urban change."
|
| All of this sits under a National Planning Policy Framework
| set by central Government.
| SilasX wrote:
| That's zoning with a different name.
| dpratt wrote:
| "We don't have speed limits, but instead a system where
| different classes of roads have a preset range of overall
| maximum velocity."
|
| Does a zoning law by any other name smell as sweet?
| avianlyric wrote:
| Not quite. UK planning isn't highly prescriptive, and
| made up extremely narrow and limited classes of building
| (like single unit family home).
|
| Instead the plans set out browser goals, such as
| designating a area as being primarily residential with an
| objective of reducing traffic and increasing walking.
|
| If you can submit a plan that show what you want to build
| fits with outline, you can probably get permission. That
| means it's perfectly possible to build a shop, or an
| office, or restaurant in the middle of a residential
| area. All of those things would increase the walk ability
| of the area, and reduce the need for residents to own
| cars.
|
| Equally just because a plan doesn't indicate you can
| build a specific type of building, doesn't mean you can't
| get permission for. But you would have an uphill battle
| to convince planners that deviating from the local plan
| is necessary.
|
| The result is that pretty much all of the UK has mixed
| use development. You find residential area right next to
| light industrial districts. You find shops and
| restaurants scattered through neighbourhoods, and find
| flat in the centre of commercial districts (just don't
| complain about the noise).
| Ichthypresbyter wrote:
| The difference between zoning and planning is like the
| difference between a speed limit and the old "Reasonable
| and Prudent" law in Montana or the _Richtgeschwindigkeit_
| in Germany.
| willyt wrote:
| The UK's planning system is very slow, unpredictable and
| inefficient. It also is not great at preventing suburban
| sprawl either. Probably Spain, the Netherlands or Japan
| would be more interesting to look at.
| burlesona wrote:
| You don't need zoning to stop that. You can regulate against
| nuisances directly - for example: no industrial noise levels
| within 2000' of an existing neighborhood. You also don't even
| _need_ to do that because it's uneconomical: land in a
| neighborhood is worth too much per square foot to be used for
| industrial development.
| 8note wrote:
| Unless it's a black neighborhood, in which case it's cheap
| enough to bring in big polluters?
|
| A default assumption that industrial processes are safe
| unless specifically regulated to say they're dangerous
| sounds like a shell game. The industry will chge between
| dangerous pollutants fast enough to be one step ahead of
| regulators, or pay regulators off to allow their
| pollutants.
|
| It's right to assume all industrial work is dangerous
| convolvatron wrote:
| i work in a light industrial area...there is a place next
| door that burns the crap off of commercial restaurant
| pans and recoats them with teflon.
|
| their smokestack blew over last year, and now i get
| headaches all the time since they haven't bothered to
| rebuild it.
|
| even in san francisco, purported leftie paradise - there
| really isn't anything i can do about it.
|
| assume that _every_ shop is cutting corners
| jfk13 wrote:
| So, have you sued them yet? (Isn't that the American
| Way?)
| rsync wrote:
| "Yet somehow nearly no one in America is aware of this or
| concerned about it. I wish I understood why that is."
|
| I can't speak for everyone _but in my case_ it is because I
| grew up in an impoverished community that had little to no
| zoning.
|
| I experienced first-hand what the built environment is and the
| emergent behaviors of people are when there are no rules.
|
| See, you live in a place that is nicely organized and,
| presumably, _zoned_ and you think if we got rid of the zoning
| then everything would be _just like it is now_ but with a few
| more housing units and maybe some delightful mixed light-
| commercial interspersed and _wouldn 't that be great_!
|
| In reality what you get is a welding shop next to your house.
| And llamas. And people disconnecting from city sewer because by
| god they're not paying for that when their home-built septic
| works just as well. And Grandma died and what do we do with her
| horse I know we'll keep it in the front yard.
|
| If you had any exposure to _anything other than nicely zoned
| locales_ you wouldn 't romanticize the absence of rules.
| trinovantes wrote:
| I think the bigger issue is that our culture sees housing as an
| investment vehicle rather than a commodity like food. You
| wouldn't stockpile a warehouse full of non perishables with the
| expectation that they will skyrocket in price. Likewise, nobody
| _should_ buy multiple houses with the expectation that they
| will skyrocket in price.
|
| Without this mindset, I doubt anyone would be so opposed to
| change zoning laws as cities grow/change
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Arcane zoning rules are absolutely strangling society.
| [deleted]
| Asooka wrote:
| Some form of zoning must exist because you don't want people
| living next to an incinerator power plant for instance, but
| like any good thing, it can be taken to an extreme and
| micromanaged into evil.
| burlesona wrote:
| That's not really true. It's perfectly possible to directly
| regulate, prohibit and/or tax nuisances and externalities
| directly without zoning.
| downut wrote:
| But the key is _who_ regulates, prohibits, etc.
|
| If that power is local, NIMBY always wins. These decisions
| must be made at the state level. Cities are way too
| fractured into myriad municipalities competing for jobs and
| "quality" housing.
| 8note wrote:
| The power is with rich locals.
|
| I'd assume state power is with the same rich folks, so
| it's still NIMBY, but the state can force it on poor
| locals. Woooo
| bbarnett wrote:
| If you tax unequally, depending upon location, then that's
| just zoning with another name, except the rich can ignore
| it.
| cracell wrote:
| Ok.
|
| So basically zoning but pretending it's not called zoning.
| Symbiote wrote:
| No, since this alternative allows for an apartment
| building with a couple of shops on the ground floor
| (normal in most of the world), and any other reasonable
| mixed development.
|
| No one is suggesting heavy industry should be allowed in
| a residential area.
| seoaeu wrote:
| A set of local laws that says "heavy industry isn't
| allowed in residential areas" _is a zoning code_
| burlesona wrote:
| Zoning means central planners literally draw a map saying
| what goes where, and generally make all kinds of
| aesthetic decisions to go along with it. There is a big
| gap between that level of micromanaging land use and
| regulating against nuisances.
| mlindner wrote:
| Why? If people choose to live next to the incinerator that's
| their choice. You can also have "industrial only" zones for
| stuff that's pollution emitting, but most things don't need
| that zoning. Example Japan:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfm2xCKOCNk
| snowwrestler wrote:
| This is not a zoning problem, because the zoning laws have been
| in place for decades, while the port worked fine.
|
| There is another root cause at work here. Temporarily
| suspending the zoning is just one of many short-term treatments
| to resolve a backlog.
| sushsjsuauahab wrote:
| Well, I would be pretty angry if someone built a gigantic
| apartment complex next to my normal house, since I bought it on
| the impression I would not have that as a neighbor
| gtirloni wrote:
| You should have bought a considerable amount of land next to
| your property too then. Just like Bill Gates and Mark
| Zuckerberg. I'm sure no one would complain about that since,
| you know, it'd be yours and not someone else's.
| nrmitchi wrote:
| I'm not here to defend unnecessary zoning restrictions, but
| your argument here is that the right to not be affected by
| the externalities of someone else's decisions should be
| limited to the uber-wealthy?.
|
| It's completely reasonable to believe that a given person
| should be capable of quiet enjoyment of their property
| without having to purchase everything remotely close to it.
| ladon86 wrote:
| If you want to live in a very desirable area and you also
| want to have very few neighbors, you should have to pay
| for that luxury. Right now that luxury is effectively
| subsidized for a few people who are "grandfathered in",
| thanks to the market distortion created by zoning.
| epistasis wrote:
| Why should somebody be allowed to keep others out of
| property that they are not paying for. I find your
| contention competent wrong on all counts.
| nrmitchi wrote:
| That cuts both ways; why should somebody be allowed to
| induce a negative impact on property that they are not
| paying for?
| epistasis wrote:
| Prohibiting others in an entire area is a far far bigger
| "negative externality."
| isoskeles wrote:
| "You should've been filthy rich like Bill Gates!"
|
| Really?
| epistasis wrote:
| If a lot of people want to be in an area, but you want an
| area with fewer people, why should your single vote
| override everybody else's desires? Simply move elsewhere,
| as nobody has the right to interfere with the free
| association of others.
| 8note wrote:
| Why should people who don't live there now get a vote?
| epistasis wrote:
| If I'm making a software product in a specific product
| area, do I get to keep out other people from ever making
| that product?
|
| If a ship sinks at sea, and there's a deserted island
| nearby, does the first passenger on the ship that arrives
| on the island get to claim it and prevent anybody else
| from stepping onto the island? Do all those other people
| on the ship get a vote on who can step onto the island
| even if they were not there first?
|
| Does owning a piece of property give you the right to
| veto a particular person purchasing the neighboring
| property because you don't want then next door?
|
| We as a society have set up a bunch of rules as for how
| much control people get when they "purchase" property.
| It's not a single thing, it's actually a bundle of
| rights, and we have chosen a particular bundle, and that
| bundle can be changed, and has changed, over time. Zoning
| is a century old invention.
|
| The idea that a single land owner in an area can block
| the sale of land to others is considered ridiculous by
| most. But how much more ridiculous is it then saying that
| somebody else can't build apartments on their land,
| particularly in areas where lack of housing has caused
| massive homelessness and and skyrocketing of housing
| prices.
| ergocoder wrote:
| > You should have bought a considerable amount of land next
| to your property too then.
|
| Your suggestion is much worse. It'd require millions of
| dollars.
|
| Doing this might also get yelled at by another activist
| group for buying up all the lands in the city.
|
| A better alternative: we could just join city council and
| vote to reject any new building.
|
| Not that I agree or disagree with NIMBY, it's just that
| your suggestion is much worse than the alternative for
| NIMBY-ists.
| spothedog1 wrote:
| If someone built a gigantic apartment complex next to your
| house it would mean that the demand for housing in your
| neighborhood was massive and restricted by zoning. Your land
| value would skyrocket by allowing apartment buildings and you
| could take a huge pay day and move somewhere farther out from
| the city. You shouldn't get to halt US GDP growth in its
| tracks because you want to dictate what your neighbors do
| with their property.
| ergocoder wrote:
| > Your land value would skyrocket by allowing apartment
| buildings
|
| That is too far away. That may or may not happen
|
| In the short term, the supply just increases significantly.
| Probably also the traffic and other infrastructure use.
|
| Not that I disagree or agree with nimby. Just pointing it
| out because you only point out one side.
| spothedog1 wrote:
| Imagine 2 empty parcels of land in downtown Manhattan,
| one can have a giant skyscraper of any height built on it
| and the other has to be a single family home. The parcel
| of land with no restrictions is going to be worth
| exponentially more because you can built a massively
| profitable structure on it, the other one is so regulated
| that it isn't worth any where near as much. The more
| profit you could derive from a parcel of land the more
| its worth. Now I used an extreme example just to get my
| point across but the same principle holds on a small
| scale. If your house was rezoned for apartment buildings
| and the demand existed, someone would come in and buy it
| off your hands for a huge premium. Since in our
| hypothetical someone had just built an apartment building
| next to your house, the value of the land is already
| high, simply allow your parcel of land to allow more
| structures would cause it to rise in value.
|
| On the infrastructure side, its a much better deal for
| you as well, the combined value of all the property taxes
| from the apartment buildings will be way more than if
| that lot had remained a house. Since the road, water,
| sewer and electric lines are already in place nothing new
| has to be built. You benefit from all those property
| taxes coming in from the apartment building while the
| liabilities to the government have barely increased. The
| local government can use this new surplus of taxes to
| build new amenities for you.
|
| For traffic, sure but that's why you want to build more
| pedestrian friendly neighborhoods and public transit so
| people don't have to drive everywhere. Once you have
| enough people in a place you could open small shops so
| they can hang out around the building rather than drive
| everywhere.
| jdkee wrote:
| So the opening scene to the Pixar movie, "Up"?
| manquer wrote:
| Yes it sucks for that guy, with one of best opening
| scenes of any cinema we cannot help feel bad for that
| guy. However economically it is bad for that city/country
| that he does not move.
|
| We can of course choose to say we want quality of life
| over economic comforts modern economy offers, until our
| holiday shopping is stuck in the ports because of
| viewshed(!) regulations.
|
| The cold truth is if only very rich do that it won't
| affect much, if however everyone also starts, the economy
| will suffer and eventually as a result of that quality of
| life will also drop, everything becomes expensive and
| industry/jobs go to places that don't restrict as much.
|
| Look at Healthcare in U.S. for stark example,
| insurance(tied to employment!) or proper care is a luxury
| is out of reach of for many people, that on average
| citizens here actually may be getting poorer care than
| many other countries with poorer per capita GDP . The
| best in world research or care is possible in the U.S.
| what is the use if people cannot afford it ?
| ergocoder wrote:
| Let's not imagine an unlikely scenario. None of this is
| likely true for US' cities.
|
| > someone would come in and buy it off your hands for a
| huge premium.
|
| This is still a far future.
|
| > If your house was rezoned for apartment buildings and
| the demand existed
|
| It's still better for you that only demand exists, but
| not supply.
|
| To be honest, I doubt nimbyists are even interested to
| move. They just want their neighborhood to stay
| relatively the same (quiet, fewer people, safe, less
| crowded).
|
| Either way we look at it, this kind of points are likely
| cons, not pros.
|
| > sure but that's why you want to build more pedestrian
| friendly neighborhoods and public transit so people don't
| have to drive everywhere.
|
| I laughed a little, assuming this is a US city.
|
| Again, I don't own a house, so it's not that I agree or
| disagree with nimby. But I can understand why nimby hates
| new buildings next to their houses. It's just a lot more
| cons than pros.
| 8note wrote:
| I don't think one would be worth more than the other.
|
| Extraordinarily wealthy people are going to be willing to
| pay a premium for a nice house in Manhattan, and
| extremely wealthy people are exponentially wealthier than
| moderately wealthy people, so you cant get that back in
| volume.
| throwaway984393 wrote:
| In practice, people are pushed out of their homes because
| they can't afford to live in the neighborhood full of high
| rise apartments anymore, and they then struggle to make a
| living (much less find another place to live). It's funny
| that the GDP itself is prized over the people who are
| supposed to be the beneficiaries of an economy with a high
| GDP.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| If such people are homeowners (after all, it is
| homeowners who are the one complaining about this on
| zoning boards), they'll become fantastically wealthy in
| such a scenario. They have nothing really to complain
| about except a wealth tax (of course, by limiting
| property tax increases, California's prop 13 is like a
| wealth SUBSIDY).
| 8note wrote:
| That's unless the government uses eminent domain to give
| your home to a developer as "slum clearance"
|
| Then, you're turned into a renter against your will, and
| also, everyone else needs to find new housing at the same
| time, so even before the new luxury units go up, the rent
| skyrockets.
|
| Poor people with expensive homes can't defend their
| ownership. That takes paying expensive lawyers
| pessimizer wrote:
| > they'll become fantastically wealthy in such a scenario
|
| If they leave immediately, rather than struggling to pay
| their massively increased property taxes, then mortgaging
| their house to keep up...
|
| > by limiting property tax increases, California's prop
| 13 is like a wealth SUBSIDY
|
| ...which apparently is a good outcome?
| Robotbeat wrote:
| More nominal wealth that reduces actual physical wealth
| (by slowing the improvement of land via adding denser
| housing) is not a good outcome. It's just redistribution
| of wealth from newcomers or renters to existing
| homeowners.
| avianlyric wrote:
| Out of interest what the mechanism that results in people
| being priced out of houses they own?
| 8note wrote:
| Everything else becoming more expensive, including taxes.
|
| Eminent domain is another.
|
| Why not worry about renters though? Are they not people?
| avianlyric wrote:
| I'm just asking about the mechanisms that force people
| out of their homes in US. Nothing more.
|
| Here in the U.K. taxes etc don't increase with property
| value, and eminent domain isn't frequently used. So I
| lack the context to understand why increasing property
| values mean people are forced to leave, especially when I
| look around London and see thousands of people who bought
| their council homes 50 years ago, and are now living in
| properties that are worth many orders of magnitude more
| than what they bought them for. Notably, none of them
| have been forced out.
|
| As for renters, well the mechanism is obvious, I don't
| need someone to explain that to me.
| Aunche wrote:
| >It's funny that the GDP itself is prized over the people
| who are supposed to be the beneficiaries of an economy
| with a high GDP.
|
| The GDP isn't a magical number that rises by making
| people suffer. It rises because NIMBYs are unable to
| force others to struggle by keeping them out of their
| economically advantageous land.
| 8note wrote:
| The economic advantage of that land _is_ that the nimbys
| are there.
|
| Similar land is all over the place
| spothedog1 wrote:
| If the demand exists to build high rises then those
| people would already be pushed out at an ever faster
| rate. If you take a plot of land that previously had 4
| units on it and turn it into a high rise with 100 units,
| then you can fit 96 higher income people onto that plot
| of land. In the scenario where you don't build that high
| rise, those 96 higher income people simply go into the
| existing housing stock and push those people out anyway.
| You can think of a high rise as a sponge soaking up
| demand. In our hypothetical with the high rise, the
| existing neighborhood's housing stock is in less demand
| (and cheaper) because all the wealthier people moved into
| the high rise.
| 8note wrote:
| Why are the higher income people wanting to live in the
| worse accommodations in the high rise?
|
| If they can push people out of houses regardless, theyre
| still going to go for the houses.
|
| It'd be better to redirect demand elsewhere, so the
| wealthy people can build their own infrastructure and
| community rather than co-opting an existing one
| spothedog1 wrote:
| Living in a newly built high rise in more attractive to
| some people than a decades old house that might not be in
| the best shape. You can't "redirect demand", that's just
| not how the world works. When a bunch of jobs are
| centered in a city, then people will move to that city to
| work. You need to have a solution that can accommodate
| the population growth. Just telling people to go away is
| xenophobic and denies the reality of the situation.
| throwaway984393 wrote:
| I think you might be missing the point, which is that the
| entire scenario should not be happening. If people are
| getting priced out of their houses, or people are
| building high-rises that inconvenience people, that needs
| to be solved, not ignored "because GDP". Making people's
| lives worse or uprooting them in service of general
| economic gain isn't a good strategy. I mean, we certainly
| have used that rationale in the past (genocide of the
| American Indian comes to mind) but it's probably not in
| the best interests of the nation.
| spothedog1 wrote:
| High rises are built because people want to move to
| places with better opportunity. Should we simply not
| allow anyone to move to places with high opportunity? Are
| people who were born in rural areas or small towns not
| allowed to seek a better life in a big city because some
| people already live there? If you think people people
| should be allowed to move to places with better
| opportunity, then you need a solution on how to house a
| growing urban population, and that solution is building
| denser and taller high rises and housing of all types.
| You seem to view the people moving into the high rises as
| some sort of evil gentrifier trying to make other people
| lives hell, but they simple want to live in a more
| prosperous location. How is your argument any different
| than American anti-immigration people saying no one can
| immigrate to the US because "its full". Simply put, you
| need to build more housing in places where people want to
| live and unless you want endless urban sprawl of low
| density houses then you need to build high rises where
| demand supports it.
|
| I'm not trying to argue in bad faith, but I genuinely
| don't see a solution where you allow people to move to
| areas of high opportunity without building more high
| rises (or just denser housing in general).
| throwaway984393 wrote:
| On the one hand, there's people with money who want to
| move to a new area. They have plenty of cash and
| resources, and they want to move primarily out of a
| lifestyle desire.
|
| On the other hand, there's people without money who live
| in a neighborhood, who can no longer afford to live
| there. But they usually cannot simply "move somewhere
| else". Remember: they're poor (since they can't afford to
| even pay a property tax increase). They may not have good
| credit, not qualify for a loan, or even have any savings.
| They may already be stretched to the limit in terms of
| transportation to a job, or rely on their neighbors for
| child care. If they were a homeowner, it may have been
| the last vestige of generational wealth in their family,
| and they may simply have no money for rent or a new home.
| If they can rent, it'll certainly be much more than they
| were paying before, which may have just been their
| property tax. And if they are one of the millions of
| Americans whose parents brought them to this country in
| search of migrant work, they might not even have a birth
| certificate or social security number, or perhaps have
| difficulty speaking English.
|
| For many disadvantaged Americans, being forced out of
| your home due to gentrification can leave you homeless,
| jobless, and broke, with no lifeline. No extended family
| to give you money or support, no savings to cushion
| rebooting your whole life. This has been a reality for
| decades, and I'm still surprised when people don't
| realize how much of a risk to human life there is here.
|
| So.... if the question is "When will you let people build
| high rises and gentrify out poor people?", my answer
| would be: "When those same people who want to build high
| rises are forced to reconcile with the people whose lives
| they might destroy." If you want to gentrify a
| neighborhood, it should be a requirement that every
| single person who will be negatively affected by that
| move should be supported such that their lives won't end
| up in shambles just so a developer can get rich and some
| hipsters can have an expensive loft.
|
| It's a choice between giving rich people a cozy pad, or
| letting poor people continue to have a livelihood and
| home. I just don't see that being much of a choice.
| spothedog1 wrote:
| Building new housing isn't about "giving rich people a
| cozy pad" its about allowing millions of people from
| geographically disadvantaged areas live in high
| opportunity areas. I grew up in a small farm town 3 hours
| from the nearest city so I'm just supposed to live there
| the rest of my life? I'm not allowed to move to a city
| cause I got a good job offer? Sorry but your attempts to
| dehumanize new arrivals isn't going to convince many
| people, what about the millions of immigrants who come to
| this country, are they just banned from living in areas
| with jobs under your scenario because some people already
| live there? You're still not providing a solution to this
| problem, you've just ignored it.
|
| You also must have completely ignored my comment from
| above, if you don't build new housing those existing
| people are just going to get kicked out at an even faster
| rate if you don't build new housing. New housing acts as
| a sponge to soak up demand. The entire reason housing is
| expensive is because we don't build enough housing units
| in places people want to live. Your solution to not build
| anymore only makes it worse. Their rents will go up at an
| even faster pace. If you made building fast, cheap and
| easy then housing units at all price points would sprout
| up. Do you think if you don't build a high rise then
| wealthier people just go away? No they just look at the
| existing housing stock and buy up and renovate whatever
| is there. Houston has one of the most deregulated housing
| markets in the country and for this reason the average
| home hasn't gone up in price despite a fast growing
| population. You have to build to keep up with demand.
|
| Renters and owners are different, in a gentrification
| scenario owners get very wealthy. Tons of poor families
| who own in poorer neighborhoods just received a massive
| cash infusion when a developer bought their parcels.
| Gentrification is one of the largest transfers of wealth
| from rich to poor in history. Your hypothetical of
| someone selling their house for a huge premium and then
| having nowhere to go doesn't bear out in reality, they've
| just become rich from selling. There are millions of
| stories of poor families buying cheap property on the
| outskirts of town decades ago only for that land to worth
| a fortune now due to development potential.
|
| Renters on the other hand suffer the most from lack of
| building, you say when they get kicked out they'll have
| to pay more in rent. That's because housing isn't being
| built fast enough so prices are skyrocketing. When you
| have increasing demand and fixed supply, prices go up.
| The only way to keep rents stable is too build as much as
| possible. As for neighborhoods, places change. You can't
| keep them stuck in time for ever. Families move,
| economies grow, people age and we need to have solutions
| that adapt, not ones that pretend no changes are
| happening and try to keep everything in place.
|
| So in short you still haven't provided a solution to
| people wanting to live in areas with jobs. These aren't
| rich people with vacation condos, these are people who
| come from areas without good jobs and want to live in
| areas with jobs. Please give me a solution that
| accommodates them or you're just plugging your ears.
| Trying to deny reality isn't a solution and will only
| make things worse.
| epistasis wrote:
| I think you are missing the point. When you say "priced
| out of their home" what you actually mean is that they
| have become so fabulously wealthy that they can no longer
| "afford" a 1% tax on that massive wealth. And even that
| is just a made up fabricated story, because nearly
| everywhere has abatement programs to delay taxes or
| decrease taxes for those who can't afford to pay their
| property taxes.
|
| Further, they unjustly accumulated that wealth by keeping
| people out of an area that is in huge demand. They are
| hoarding a scarce resource, to the detriment of sooooo
| many people. They didn't create that land, and they
| didn't create that wealth, and they are standing in the
| way of many many many times more people's right to take
| part in society.
|
| This sort of person you are idolizing is actually a
| greedy villian, working to make the world a worse place
| merely so they can avoid looking at apartments or meeting
| new people.
| throwaway984393 wrote:
| I'm talking about poor people who can no longer afford to
| live in their home or apartment due to gentrification. I
| don't know who you're talking about.
| 8note wrote:
| They did create the weath though.
|
| The land became valuable because they are there and have
| done a good job maintaining their community. It's
| collective action of the community that has made it a
| good place to be.
|
| Maintaining the community is what ensures that value
| remains. The rea question is why all these other people
| aren't willing to go build a valuable community
| zzzeek wrote:
| > If someone built a gigantic apartment complex next to
| your house it would mean that the demand for housing in
| your neighborhood was massive
|
| or it could mean a developer was very stupid to overbuild
| somewhere, or more likely it's a shell building used as a
| money laundering scheme for organized crime (See
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/17/trump-
| ocean-... for one such building built by Trump; such
| buildings are also often structurally unsafe such as the
| building in Florida that collapsed which was also started
| as a money laundering front). I'm not down with this "the
| free market will make sure everything is OK" idea.
| spothedog1 wrote:
| If a developer is stupid to overbuild, then let them take
| that risk and that loss. We don't have to zone away risk.
| As for money laundering, you're using an example of one
| Trump Tower out of millions of apartments buildings to
| say it's "more likely" that every apartment building
| built is just used for money laundering. That's just
| silly.
|
| As for structural safety, no one is arguing to reduce
| building codes or safety regulations so that's just a
| straw man argument. If an apartment building is built
| unsafe then the government should have done a better job
| inspecting and enforcing/expanding their regulations,
| it's not really an argument to not build.
| zzzeek wrote:
| i meant "more likely" than a developer who is stupid.
| There's lots of buildings that are built for cynical,
| non-market related reasons.
| blntechie wrote:
| That's ridiculous. I can understand concerns about a dump
| yard or a concert venue or an industrial plant coming next to
| a residential suburban house but concerns about an apartment
| ? There will be legitimate concerns like increased traffic,
| increased enrollments in school district etc. which need to
| be solved but not stopping an apartment coming up altogether.
|
| Also it's unfair to ask the outside world around your house
| to be frozen in time because you bought a house at a period
| of time and setting which you liked.
| 8note wrote:
| And when you cant solve those legitmate concerns?
|
| Then you're stuck with an apartment complex you cant
| afford, and people who live there still have to drive 20min
| to get to amenities.
|
| Source: I spent a hour in the morning, and an hour in the
| afternoon every day on the school bus, because development
| of apartments outpaced development of schools in my
| community.
|
| Also, 20min to drive out to parks, because development of
| apartments outpaced development of parks and play fields
| and gyms.
|
| Its just as unfair to force people to move because you
| don't like the way their community already is
| djbebs wrote:
| Well, if you want to control what can be built in the land
| around you, you have a very simple solution.
|
| Buy the land around you.
|
| No need to restrict what others can do on their land or you
| on yours
| specialist wrote:
| Is this related somehow to China refusing to take USA's recycling
| material?
|
| IIRC shipping recycled material was super cheap. So many empty
| containers. Might as well fill them with something.
|
| Why aren't empty containers shipped back to China? Boat has to go
| back anyway, right?
|
| Did the empty containers pile up because no one was willing to
| pay to ship them back?
| xuki wrote:
| As I understand the shipping fee from China to the US is very
| expensive right now, so ships don't want to wait for ports to
| load empty containers on. They turn around ASAP to catch
| another shipment from China, leaving all these empty containers
| at destination ports.
| rdtwo wrote:
| Yep but every time you do that you basically permanently
| leave extra containers state side. Might as well flatten them
| because they will never go back
| _3u10 wrote:
| Wrong move. The container problem is way more of an effective
| tariff on China than anything else we could think of.
|
| The best part is every container impounded in the US is a drain
| on destinations that aren't in the US like Europe.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| I guess this means you can't export either.
| _3u10 wrote:
| Nah, there's plenty of containers for that. If they want a
| container they'll have to buy something.
| CyanBird wrote:
| Literally wrecking the entirety of global supply lines in order
| to "spite" "Chyna"
|
| How petty can US citizens be?
| cinntaile wrote:
| Well now you can stack even more containers in Long Beach. Just
| sitting there. Doing nothing.
| karaterobot wrote:
| > This is not a comprehensive list. Please add to it. We don't
| need to do the best ideas. We need to do ALL the ideas.
|
| Had me up to this point. Let's not do ALL the ideas, let's have
| someone with authority and decision making skills make a judgment
| call with the best information available at the time. I assume he
| really means "all the best ideas", but it's worth saying that we
| shouldn't panic and just do anything someone yells loudly.
| Jolter wrote:
| "Don't just do something! Stand there!"
| peter_retief wrote:
| Wow this could be really serious, who could have predicted the
| world economy could crash on too many containers brought on by an
| epidemic.
| vallard wrote:
| Is this how Ready Player One started?
| marsven_422 wrote:
| Why is there a none saftey related stacking limit at all?
| throwaway9870 wrote:
| It is embarrassing for the country that a CEO from a company had
| to discover and report this rather than someone from the govt
| doing their job. When I see people write "late stage capitalism",
| I actually wonder if we aren't in "late stage US govt". They had
| it too easy for too long and have forgotten how to do their jobs.
| [deleted]
| sschueller wrote:
| What I would like to know is how it ever got to this breaking
| point? Is there no planning for such cases or continuous
| optimization? Or were plans presented to the government which
| just sat on it until it was too late?
| BurningFrog wrote:
| My mental model is that regulations are decided on through a
| political process, and then no one looks at them until it
| becomes a political issue again.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| zoning is very easy for local busybodies to capture, since
| normal people don't have time to give a crap (work to do,
| errands to run, kids to take care of, etc.). and those
| busybodies with the most time (older, wealthier) want very
| restrictive zoning. (see also: HOA regulations). the
| particular issue here is defined by local zoning.
|
| Japan managed to arrest housing prices by moving zoning
| definition to national rather than local level, where local
| busybodies do not have the critical mass needed to do
| regulatory capture. Local areas can still decide what zoning
| to put where, but it's not nearly as ridiculously specific as
| American zoning can be. (e.g. you can sell lemonade out of
| your driveway, but not craft beer; or you can't run a hair
| salon, but you can run a daycare from your house, but only if
| you watch a maximum of five kids. etc.) California is now
| trying a similar tack by loosening zoning regulations at the
| state level.
| tjr225 wrote:
| What does any of this have to do with zoning?
| derekdahmer wrote:
| The height that containers can be stacked on sites in
| Long Beach outside of the Port of Long Beach are governed
| by the city's zoning regulations. Until today the limit
| was 2 containers, and all of the sites were occupied so
| there was literally no more capacity in the entire city
| to store empty containers.
|
| Today the 2 container limit was temporarily suspended
| which essentially raises the limit to 6 containers - the
| max height at which most stackers operate. That's a 3x
| increase in empty container storage capacity which should
| give the system some wiggle room.
| [deleted]
| willmadden wrote:
| It seems like the Flexport CEO made this happen. Good on him.
| What an idiotic, self-inflicted wound. Regulation needs to crawl
| out of the stone ages.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I thought that Flexport CEO's tweet stream was really great - had
| a ton of insightful, first hand information and made the problem
| very clear. Especially import was the feedback loops showing how
| the system was essentially deadlocked, in the classical sense of
| the term.
| pchristensen wrote:
| I work at Flexport, Ryan is the real deal.
| presidentender wrote:
| At my last employer, we lost a ton of engineering candidates
| to Flexport - it was frustrating because we'd try to
| articulate the scope of the opportunity, but some combination
| of what Flexport is doing and the recruiting process meant
| you guys would win every time.
| pchristensen wrote:
| I wouldn't want to compete with Flexport on "scope of
| opportunity". It's like AWS 10 years ago.
|
| Happy hunting!
| quotemstr wrote:
| > Especially import was the feedback loops showing how the
| system was essentially deadlocked, in the classical sense of
| the term.
|
| This whole situation would make a great "systems design"-level
| tech interview question!
| aerosmile wrote:
| The guy is a bad ass. If he wanted to run for President, he
| would win. I am really not exaggerating - I had a chance to
| meet him a few years back, and at that time he was the most
| impressive person I had talked to in person for an extended
| amount of time (not based on credentials or achievement, but
| simply based on clarity of thought and new ways of thinking). I
| also know that PG rates him incredibly highly.
|
| To give you a taste, this is him 3 years ago:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjUs7o-TnjY. I remember
| watching that video the first time and being particularly
| struck by his insight on how entrepreneurial sales is different
| from regular sales [1], which I have been able to apply since
| then on a regular basis.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/hjUs7o-TnjY?t=2499
| jeffypoo wrote:
| I was an early customer of Flexport and got to talk to him on
| a number of occasions. I felt the same way about him. Total
| beast.
| quotemstr wrote:
| > If he wanted to run for President, he would win
|
| Yes. It would be great to have non-ideological leadership
| focused on solving practical problems instead of waging
| culture war.
| coolso wrote:
| > waging There's nothing wrong with pushing back, though.
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| Please expand on what you mean by "culture war"
| Cipater wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_war
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| As of late their has been a bit of a disturbing trend to
| ignore everything before the past 5 to 10 years, that is
| why I ask such questions.
| babypuncher wrote:
| Please no more CEOs running for president. The government is
| not a business.
| aerosmile wrote:
| After four years of Trump, I know where you're coming from.
| But you're projecting the moral and ethical values of one
| person to millions of people.
|
| Here's the thing - I've run startups that had a strong
| business, and those that haven't. While I would believe
| that my fundamental values never changed, I can tell you
| that I was far more tested in situations when we were
| running out of money than when we had 8 figures in our bank
| account. For example, how do you design a paid leave
| policy? With 8 figures in the bank, you really have to be a
| psychopath not to leaning on the generous side. But when
| you don't know if you can do the next payroll and the
| financial security of 100 people hinges on you hitting the
| next month's target... and then someone tells you about a
| family member who just passed away... Sometimes there are
| no good solutions, and you want to avoid getting yourself
| in those situations. So ironically, a hard-hitting CEO can
| sometimes lead to a better paid leave policy than a startup
| run by the most empathetic social worker in the world.
| baq wrote:
| who would you rather have? a politician...?
| The_Amp_Walrus wrote:
| The government is not a business, but people can adapt,
| learn and re-purpose their skills. I think that the key,
| mistaken, assumption that you're making in your pushback is
| that general competence does not exist: people who are good
| at business are hyper-specialised for that environment and
| their skills will not carry over to governance. I think
| some people are really good at very general, cross-domain
| skills and should be put in positions to use their skills
| effectively.
| csee wrote:
| Please no more lawyers running for president.
|
| A CEO who built or run an actual value-adding business (e.g
| Flexport) probably has more integrity, intelligence and
| aptitude than the average lawyer-who-seeks-politics who
| very often turn out to be snakes.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| >The guy is a bad ass. If he wanted to run for President, he
| would win.
|
| It's interesting to note that we _had_ a president like this,
| and that was Herbert Hoover. Hoover 's claim to fame before
| being elected president was saving Belgium from starvation
| during WWI[1], the dude deeply understood logistics and had
| lots of connections so was able to negotiate with all the
| parties to get humanitarian relief and set up his own NGO. I
| picked this up from reading this biography of him.[2]
| Unfortunately he's become only associated with fumbling the
| Great Depression.
|
| [1] https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1989/sprin
| g/h... [2] https://smile.amazon.com/Hoover-Extraordinary-
| Life-Times/dp/...
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| A very interesting guy, for sure. People respected his
| acumen, but no one seems to have liked the guy. Like a
| surprising number of presidents, he basically lucked into
| the job.
|
| I thought the humorous podcast American Presidents: Totalus
| Rankium had an excellent two-parter on him:
|
| Part 1: https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-64j34-f045e3 Part 2:
| https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-zsqhc-f1a4af
| jrumbut wrote:
| Jimmy Carter was the other engineer-president. His post-
| presidential career has burnished his image a bit but on
| the whole engineers who become president haven't been too
| popular.
|
| I've been meaning to read that Hoover biography forever.
| viburnum wrote:
| Hoover didn't just fumble it, he was absolutely committed
| to passivity. If only he had shown the same determination
| that he had for postwar relief.
| G3rn0ti wrote:
| > Hoover ... committed to passivity
|
| That's a legend that is in fact not true. He actually
| laid the ground for most of Roosevelt's ,,New Deal"
| policies. These policies were likely ill-conceived and
| turned a bad recession into decade long depression.
|
| https://www.history.com/news/great-depression-herbert-
| hoover...
|
| https://mises.org/library/great-depression
| mkl95 wrote:
| Why is it temporary? What are the negative effects of suspending
| the limitations?
| lostapathy wrote:
| Wind, earthquakes, or accidents knocking the stacks over is a
| concern, I don't know how real it is though.
| pasiaj wrote:
| I'm not an expert in this field but I know from experience that
| when converting buildings into logistics warehouses, the
| limiting variable most often is the carrying capacity of the
| floor.
|
| I assume this is be the biggest risk factor that relates to
| lifting these limitations. The ground might not have the
| carrying capacity required for the loads that stacked
| containers can create.
|
| Also, I'm sure nobody wants their view blocked by container
| stacks 5 high.
| IronWolve wrote:
| The ceo of flexport rented a boat and toured the area and
| reported on issues people saw and reported to him. Very
| informative.
|
| Tweet thread @
| https://twitter.com/typesfast/status/1451543776992845834
|
| Or threadreader
|
| https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1451543776992845834.html
| rdtwo wrote:
| The renting a boat thing seems like a show. Hes got experts
| that should already know these things from other data sources.
| The boat thing is for simpletons in media to understand and
| spin
| divbzero wrote:
| The boat tour seemed like much more than a PR show to me.
| There's a lot of power in (a) seeing things in person to add
| context to the understanding you've built remotely, and (b)
| talking to people on the ground who are first-hand experts on
| what's working and what's not.
| lm28469 wrote:
| There are a lot of broken industries/companies in which
| "experts" don't know shit besides what they learned in school
| from people with no actual hands on experience. Talking to
| the people on the job can be very efficient, I've seen it
| many times; people on top can be so full of themselves that
| they don't even want to accept they can be wrong.
|
| A collection of workers who know their shit will always be
| much more valuable than an expert looking at graphs from his
| office if you know how to interact with them
|
| Since it's on Twitter it's obviously partly a PR move but I
| wouldn't be surprised if it actually happened
| raegis wrote:
| It is interesting to see this up close, from a human
| perspective. I was on a boat to Long Beach from Catalina last
| month, and the container ships are just everywhere. I counted
| 25 in view from the just right side of the boat. Very spooky.
| burnished wrote:
| Taking time to stop and look at a problem is for simpletons?
| I don't think thats right.
| HenryKissinger wrote:
| Some of these comments make sense, but this guy loves
| hyperbole.
|
| > This is a negative feedback loop that is rapidly cycling out
| of control that if it continues unabated will destroy the
| global economy.
|
| No, the global economy won't be destroyed because of backed up
| cargo ships in LA/Long Beach. Don't be ridiculous Ryan.
| bart_spoon wrote:
| It's not just LA and Long Beach though. Similar problems are
| happening at a lot of major ports, at least in the US.
| rajacombinator wrote:
| No real cost, no real pain, for those making decisions - no
| proper decisions. No surprise.
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