[HN Gopher] The story behind Flexport founder's supply chain tweets
___________________________________________________________________
The story behind Flexport founder's supply chain tweets
Author : robbybaron
Score : 82 points
Date : 2021-11-02 16:28 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (finance.yahoo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (finance.yahoo.com)
| justinator wrote:
| This is the third article I've commented about this, but it just
| confirms my belief that Ryan Peterson's tweets were all smoke and
| mirrors. I'm very sure he's a very nice - and very rich man, but
| I could do less with his crapola.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| How is that the takeaway you got from his tweets?
|
| He is admittedly very embedded in the logistics space and has a
| unique perspective that has made him (and his company) very
| successful in the space.
|
| He pointed out an idea that could be impactful and it was
| quickly adopted by at least one city. The impact is lower than
| the media overhyped it to be and he was the first to admit it
| is a very complex situation but here are a few ideas to help
| make small adjustments.
|
| Not every person commenting on a difficult problem has to come
| up with a HUGE improvement. Even if he makes a 0.5-2%
| improvement in shipping issues with the ideas, it would be
| admirable progress in a multi-billion dollar issue.
|
| If you want to hate on him being rich go for it, but you are
| shooting down someone who came up with a few interesting ideas
| out of what seems like spite.
| mountainb wrote:
| The larger issue is that there is no "supply shortage."
| Supply, whether we define it as quantity of goods or quantity
| of goods imported, has never been higher. Oil production has
| never been higher. Multiple countries set oil production
| records. Increasing supply means setting more world records.
|
| Supply will always be short if you compare it to something
| that expands infinitely, which is phantom demand generated by
| monetary printing press chicanery. Meeting the 'demand' of
| infinite money would require infinite truck drivers, infinite
| ports, etc.: it's an absurdity.
| csee wrote:
| It's not infinite demand. That's something you came up with
| to prove your point. It's highly elevated demand, and
| supply isn't keeping up with that elevated demand. You
| can't separate out demand and supply insofar as causal
| attribution of price changes goes. It's the interaction of
| both that makes the price.
| mountainb wrote:
| >It's not infinite demand. That's something you came up
| with to prove your point.
|
| Yes, it is a piece of rhetoric used to imply that a
| problem caused by overly loose monetary and fiscal policy
| cannot be solved by just having supply rise to meet the
| natural consequences of that policy.
|
| In any market, price goes up when demand outpaces supply.
| You can visually perceive that in any chart software that
| visualizes the buy side and the sell side on a given
| asset.
|
| You're repeating an axiom, which is that price results
| from the interaction between supply and demand, without
| addressing the point that it is the demand side which is
| not merely 'elevated,' but is being manipulated upwards
| by policy above what it would be absent the strange
| monetary state of affairs combined with the lasting
| effects of the various relief bills that suspended many
| controls on lending standards. It is easier for the
| government to conjure demand on command, indeed at the
| 'press of a button,' but it is much more complex to have
| supply meet that conjured demand. But solving the so-
| called supply issues would just be met with more
| stimulus, which would create more supply issues due to
| the physical limitations of reality.
|
| A better argument against what I said would be to try to
| portray this record demand, which is outpacing world-
| record supply, as a consequence of a roaring economic
| boom occurring due to fundamental factors. You could say
| that the stimulus is irrelevant and that growth might
| even continue with tighter monetary policy and more
| stringent lending standards.
| csee wrote:
| I agree with most of this. I just don't accept the
| original claim that there isn't a supply shortage. There
| is a supply shortage. If supply isn't keeping up with
| demand, that is by definition a supply shortage.
|
| Whether the demand increase is organic or through
| stimulus is largely immaterial to the question of whether
| there's a supply shortage. Whether it's easier/better to
| reduce stimulus or increase supply is also immaterial to
| that question. Whether the supply can't increase quickly
| enough because of physical limitations is also
| immaterial.
|
| Also, are you sure that the immediate cause of this is
| all fiscal/monetary policy influencing demand. How have
| lockdowns impacted on supply?
| skybrian wrote:
| The crapola comes from overconfident takes by various writers
| who turned this into a simplistic narrative. I'm glad to see a
| reporter following up.
| WaxProlix wrote:
| They magnified the crapola, and I agree that it's great to
| see someone following up with on the ground anecdotes and
| even some real data, but I think there's some truth to the
| notion that he (Petersen) bears some responsibility for a
| reductive and savior-y analysis broadcast publicly.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| Really? Cause he also admits in TFA that it's a very
| complex situation and hopefully some of the ideas help even
| a little. He never claimed to solve the whole thing lol
| WaxProlix wrote:
| All I was saying is that that wasn't the tone of his
| original tweet session, though it does look like he's
| walked that back a bit.
| justinator wrote:
| > I'm glad to see a reporter following up.
|
| Me too.
| dang wrote:
| " _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other
| people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something._"
|
| " _Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of
| what someone says, not a weaker one that 's easier to
| criticize. Assume good faith._"
|
| " _When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of
| calling names. 'That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be
| shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| justinator wrote:
| I think whatpeo9's post succinctly captures my opinion:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29085647
| dang wrote:
| Without any substantiating information, that's just another
| shallow dismissal. I don't know what happened either, but
| "someone told me", from a random internet account, doesn't
| count as substantiation.
| refurb wrote:
| Agree. His first set of tweets was "we bought dinner for the
| longshoreman and asked what the problem was and they said it
| wasn't them"
|
| Guy is a consummate self-promoter.
| moron4hire wrote:
| If you don't promote yourself, who is going to promote you?
| The "marketplace of ideas"? LOL.
| justinator wrote:
| You can promote yourself without being disingenuous.
| smileysteve wrote:
| > "People ask me what I think the answer is," he said, "and I
| tell them: Move Christmas to April, because that's when you're
| gonna get your stuff."
|
| Alternatively, shop locally; Buy less stuff that is going to be
| thrown out. Celebrate Christmas on time.
| contingencies wrote:
| Alternatively, move Christmas to China!
| dqv wrote:
| >Buy less stuff that is going to be thrown out.
|
| There has to be a word, maybe from a different language, that
| describes the feeling/fear of giving someone a gift they will
| throw out. It's a feeling that is intertwined with the anxiety
| of getting rid of a gift someone has given me. I've resorted to
| giving people edibles (the regular kind, not the psychoactive
| kind), but it feels thoughtless.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _I 've resorted to giving people edibles (the regular kind,
| not the psychoactive kind), but it feels thoughtless._
|
| Please don't think this is thoughtless! I personally much
| prefer consumables (or experiences) as gifts over "stuff".
| missedthecue wrote:
| Lottery tickets are a fun and inexpensive gift. I always get
| my nephews scratchers. The surprise is fun, the chances of
| them winning _something_ are high, and everybody likes money.
| robocat wrote:
| The word is obligation.
|
| If you are giving obligations, then find something else to
| give that has no obligation attached but is still desirable.
| Consumable items or experiences that are desirable due to
| high quality or rarity or other specialness are a good
| default.
|
| If people are giving you obligations, then gently ask for
| gifts that don't need any ongoing future commitment from you.
| fknorangesite wrote:
| > I've resorted to giving people edibles (the regular kind,
| not the psychoactive kind), but it feels thoughtless.
|
| But...it's the thought that counts.
|
| Why would a gift of food/drink/whatever be less thoughtful?
| Particularly if it's homemade, isn't it _more_ so?
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I used to bring a giant package of toilet paper to
| housewarming parties, just so I knew it would be used. Also,
| not everyone buys enough to last the whole party.
|
| Been a while since I got invited to one, but I'm sure that's
| unrelated.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Although I don't care, I will point some people have very
| strong brand attachments to toilet paper. And maybe you
| were a psycho who brought single-ply to a house with a
| sewer or ultra-stuffed to a house with a septic.
| smnrchrds wrote:
| You must have been very popular in Q2 2020.
| reidjs wrote:
| I like this attitude: "I let him know I'm here as a resource, I'm
| not an activist, I'm not trying to be a pain in his ass,"
| Petersen added. "I think it's a feature that government moves
| slowly; you don't want them to do rash things with taxpayer
| money. But it's a problem in the middle of a crisis."
|
| Most people see potholes on their street and publicly complain
| that the government is terrible and works too slowly, instead of
| helping their local government become less terrible by working
| with them.
| frgtpsswrdlame wrote:
| >Most people see potholes on their street and publicly complain
| that the government is terrible and works too slowly, instead
| of helping their local government become less terrible by
| working with them.
|
| The story here is that a CEO with 80k followers on social media
| tweeted about a problem, got it echoed by other prominent
| people with large followings and the government _called him_ to
| talk about how to fix it.
|
| I'm a normal guy with an average job and wage w/ no real social
| media following. There is essentially nothing I can do to get
| local government to repair the potholes on my street - so I
| complain.
| donarb wrote:
| Seattle has a phone app called "Find it, Fix it" as well as a
| dedicated phone number for reporting potholes and other
| problems. You take a picture of a pothole, maybe a description
| and send it off. The city promises most potholes get fixed
| within 3 days of receiving a report. They even have a website
| map showing all requests and the potholes that have been filled
| within the last 90 days.
|
| https://seattlecitygis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/ind...
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Oakland has a crew of Pothole Vigilantes that fix potholes,
| Batman style: https://www.potholevigilantes.com/
|
| Motto: "IT WOULD BE GREAT IF THE GOVERNMENT DID ITS JOB. UNTIL
| THEN, WE ARE HERE TO FIX OAKLAND'S STREETS"
|
| What "helping their local government become less terrible"
| might mean in this case I have no idea.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| ... and gun shots regularly in many neighborhoods, too..
| while the city workers, managers and managers-of-managers are
| being paid _top salary_ , _retirement package_ and _medical
| benefits_ for themselves and _their family_ .. how can you
| think this is cool?? dystopian
| edmundsauto wrote:
| Your complaint is that people working on difficult problems
| receive a decent salary and medical coverage? That seems...
| misplaced.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| no actually, many people do work on "difficult problems"
| and do their work, while the City described, has an army
| of workers who are well paid, yet do not keep up with
| basic tasks. It seems that fixing roads is one of the
| oldest jobs in the civilized world, and that the city
| workers have found a way to get paid, and also do less
| and less. Their pay is quite good compared to other forms
| of work, while "gig work" and other abuses increase.
| Medical coverage is a massive shortcoming in the current
| US system and very much in California, so the medical
| benefits paid to the very same workers are an obvious
| sore point. What part of that is not clear?
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Wait until you hear what people think about programmers.
| Bunch of lazy entitled #$#@$ADF getting paid 6 figures to
| make yet another social media website or regulatory
| arbitrage play. And they get health care, free food, and
| unlimited vacation on top of that, even though their app
| is buggy most of the time! The nerve of those guys, who
| do they think they are!?
|
| Fixing roads isn't as easy as you think it is. Oakland's
| roads are heavily used, which means that a pothole fix
| isn't just a matter of pouring some asphalt into the
| pothole. That's a temporary fix that will only last a few
| weeks before the patch fails. You need to clean the
| pothole and surrounding surface, lay in tack, lay in and
| roll the asphalt to make a clean patch, and you need to
| keep the asphalt blocked off for a day for it to cure.
| Oh, and you need to use the proper type of asphalt to
| handle the level of road traffic, and you can't get this
| type of asphalt at Lowes or Home Depot.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| When I hear about a job function that used to be good,
| but are now crap, and are embedded in a bureaucracy... I
| wonder what it is about the system that has changed to
| incentivize worse work.
|
| Unless you have some inside knowledge that these
| individuals are to blame, it seems to me that approaching
| it as a systems problem, with curiosity, would result in
| being closer to the root cause.
|
| Workers being well paid and having health care should be
| the norm. Gig workers being exploited doesn't mean we
| should spit vitriol at workers who aren't exploited -
| even if they are exploiting the system (which is not
| clear in this case).
| mistrial9 wrote:
| > approaching it as a systems problem, with curiosity,
| would result in ....
|
| yes, agree
| gadders wrote:
| They took a slightly different approach to getting potholes
| fixed here in the UK:
|
| Middlesbrough Council fills potholes after penis graffiti
| protest
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tees-48068866
| mistrial9 wrote:
| > Most people see potholes on their street and publicly
| complain that the government is terrible
|
| yet the 320,000 person city next door here has a TWO YEAR
| backlog of street fixes, I was told. Property taxes are as high
| as any place in the USA. There is no shortage of money,
| retirement 401k and medical care for city workers. Of course
| they also play the sub-contractor game a bit, not as bad as
| corporate on that one.
| ohples wrote:
| One of the reasons might be because a lot cities in america
| are going bankrupt just trying to maintain all the car
| centric infrastructure that has been built: https://www.youtu
| be.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6...
| mperham wrote:
| We can't afford it. Roads are a massive treadmill of
| maintenance.
|
| To step back, why do we have so many square feet of road
| space? Why do we keep expanding highways when it is proven
| that it does not help? The automobile and its inefficient
| infrastructure is bankrupting this country. We keep building
| more roads rather than investing in transportation
| infrastructure which is far cheaper in the long run.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM
| toast0 wrote:
| > Why do we keep expanding highways when it is proven that
| it does not help?
|
| Expanding highways increases throughput almost everytime.
| Certainly, it rarely ends congestion. It often reduces
| congestion, but that depends on how far the capacity is
| behind the actual demand.
|
| In most places I've lived, road expansion is a response to
| increased demand from increased population, either through
| density or sprawl (but usually both). If you let population
| increase without increasing tranport capacity, you get
| congestion. That's true for roads and mass transit.
| Ideally, as the population grows, you expand both. But,
| expanding roads is often simpler, as you can do it in
| parts, addressing bottlenecks one at a time, whereas mass
| transit isn't very effective with piece-wise solutions; I
| can't easily drive to a highway transit station, take that
| 10 miles, then drive to my final destination, I need at
| least one of the local trips to be on transit/walkable and
| have parking available or have favorable conditions for
| biking (weather, physical ability, room on transit,
| managable hills).
| avianlyric wrote:
| > That's true for roads and mass transit. Ideally, as the
| population grows, you expand both
|
| Difference is that mass transit benefits substantially
| from scale, with cost per rider dropping with ridership
| increases. Road networks, not so much.
|
| Kickstarting the process is a little tricky. But just
| about every other developed country has managed it, I'm
| sure the US can figure it out too.
| spothedog1 wrote:
| You could design cities so people could walk to local
| neighborhood shops instead of ripping coal on a highway
| to get to Walmart. Skip public transit, just a local
| bodega in a lot of neighborhoods would cut car trips by a
| ton.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| > road expansion is a response to increased demand from
| increased population, either through density or sprawl
|
| Though it's the road expansion itself that often leads to
| more sprawl.
|
| It's worth noting that congestion in mass transit leads
| to better service. (Well, if you have a halfway competent
| transit agency, anyway.) More riders leads to more fares
| leads to more frequent service leads to getting you where
| you need to be more quickly.
|
| Road congestion doesn't have the same effect. _Maybe_ it
| 's a toll road in which case you have some increased
| revenue, but often it isn't - so congestion is typically
| net negative for drivers.
| amurthy1 wrote:
| Increased ridership on roads does increase revenues via
| gas taxes.
| nitrogen wrote:
| _Though it 's the road expansion itself that often leads
| to more sprawl._
|
| Every trip taken is an economic activity that would not
| have otherwise occurred. Traffic is commerce. Sprawl
| allows the middle class to continue to exist. More
| people, more property taxes, more fuel taxes, more money
| for roads.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| Sprawl allows the middle class to continue to exist?
| There are plenty of places that don't have nearly the
| level of sprawl that we have in the US; does the middle
| class not exist there? (Japan, for example.)
|
| More money for roads? If the population increases but is
| pushed to the periphery, requiring new roads to support
| them, aren't we just digging ourselves in deeper? How
| does that pay for the existing roads?
| mcguire wrote:
| " _Sprawl allows the middle class to continue to exist?
| There are plenty of places that don 't have nearly the
| level of sprawl that we have in the US; does the middle
| class not exist there? (Japan, for example.)_"
|
| I can't really speak to the existence of the middle class
| but I'll just leave this here: " _An astonishing fact: 92
| percent of Japanese_ [like many countries including the
| US] _consider themselves middle-class, according to a
| labor ministry report published in 2019. That seems to
| clash with another fact: that nearly 40 percent of
| Japan's work force is employed on a part-time or
| temporary basis, earning less and more vulnerable to
| layoffs than regular company employees._ "
|
| Anyway, this is interesting:
| https://resources.realestate.co.jp/rent/what-is-the-
| average-... A 1K/1DK (1 bedroom) apartment in the Central
| Six wards of Tokyo averages 106,000Y per month. The other
| 17 wards average 72,000Y. A 1K/1DK apartment in Saitama
| (https://resources.realestate.co.jp/rent/what-is-the-
| average-...) is 49,000Y. That's ~30-45 min by car or 40
| min to 1hr by train (according to Google); i.e. kinda
| sprawly.
|
| I can't find a median wage for Japan, but the average
| seems to be about 300,000Y per month, meaning that
| apartment in the Central Six is out of reach, the other
| wards would be doable, and outside Tokyo proper would be
| very doable.
| modriano wrote:
| But the reason Japan doesn't have this kind of sprawl is
| that buildings are depreciating assets in Japan with an
| expected lifespan between 20 and 40 years, which both
| creates regular opportunities to build higher occupancy
| buildings and eliminates the paralyzing financial
| incentives for restricting housing supply [0].
|
| In the US, real estate is the dominant store of wealth
| for a plurality of Americans, which is why we see such
| fierce opposition to development. Dense accumulations of
| people affords great economic opportunities which attract
| more people, but people need somewhere to live, and if
| the supply of housing is held far below the demand,
| prices rise and push out people who can't afford said
| prices. So people who can't afford sufficient housing
| within commuting range of economic opportunities within
| their abilities can either A) forgo the benefits of
| metropolitan living, B) search the fringes of the
| metropolitan area for places they can afford/are allowed
| to build, or C) become homeless.
|
| It would be great if we could just nationally eradicate
| the regulations, ordinances, zoning codes, etc that
| cities and towns use to prevent development, but I don't
| think the 10th amendment allows for that kind of law. And
| without more housing, there will be sprawl.
|
| [0] https://www.rethinktokyo.com/2018/06/06/depreciate-
| limited-l...
| wombatpm wrote:
| If you want to see no zoning in action go to Houston, TX.
| You can build anything anywhere. You will find a stately
| mansion next door to a gas station and a titty bar. The
| result has been the rise of MasterPlan communities and
| developments. See SugarLand, TX. Imagine your homeowners
| association with the power to regulate and control
| businesses in it's area as well.
| modriano wrote:
| That's not true. It's correct that Houston's building
| restrictions aren't referred to as "zoning", but Houston
| absolutely has regulations and ordinances that produce
| the same effect [0][1].
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/TaU1UH_3B5k [1]
| https://www.houstontx.gov/planning/DevelopRegs/
| klyrs wrote:
| A tale of two cities:
|
| In city A, I walk from my apartment to the corner store
|
| In city B, there's no corner stores in my subdivision.
| There's a gas station 5 miles away, about half a mile
| within the subdivision, but mostly on a major road or
| highway.
|
| Both trips are "economic activity," but one is extremely
| inefficient. What should be a painless transaction is
| full of friction and is detrimental to other users of the
| major road.
| nitrogen wrote:
| In city B, you have a private backyard, an outdoor
| kitchen with grill, a private pool, and you only have to
| drive to the store once a month because you have room for
| a real freezer and pantry. And you pay less per month
| than city A.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| And you have a much greater environmental impact with all
| that driving, detached homes being worse at retaining
| heat than attached ones, etc. How many years do we have
| left to slash our emissions again?
|
| > And you pay less per month than city A.
|
| That's a consequence of us basically not building
| anything like city A for the last several decades.
| nitrogen wrote:
| _How many years do we have left to slash our emissions
| again?_
|
| How many years to we have to keep listening to the "stop
| living your ugly human lives" rhetoric before we realize
| that the "save the trees" activists caused insane amounts
| of pollution and death through uncontrolled wildfires,
| the "anti-nuke" activists directly caused global warming,
| and the idea of an individual carbon footprint was a
| creation of oil companies to distract from systemic
| solutions to systemic problems?
|
| You solve problems of scale at scale. If people want
| something en masse, you figure out how to make that thing
| efficient. If people want something that is currently
| bad, figure out how to make it good. The more energy we
| can consume sustainably per capita, the better. Now make
| that energy carbon-free, _at the system level_.
|
| If you want people to pack into cities like sardines,
| make it actually better, quieter, cleaner, and cheaper,
| even for people with kids and dogs and hobbies and
| kayaks. My years lived in various parts of supposedly
| good cities have been noisier, dirtier, tinier, slower
| (it takes up to two hours to go a few miles by any mode
| of transportation -- that's a lot of wasted fuel) and
| more expensive than elsewhere.
|
| You don't tell people to lower their energy, you build
| desirable technologies that use less energy
| automatically, and most importantly, raise the energy
| consumption level that is sustainable by building more
| carbon-free power ASAP.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| > You solve problems of scale at scale.
|
| Yes. One good step would be to allow density _everywhere_
| so more people who want to live in dense environments can
| afford to do so. After all, there 's more demand for
| walkable places than there are walkable places:
| https://cityobservatory.org/the-myth-of-revealed-
| preference-...
|
| > make it actually better, quieter, cleaner, and cheaper
|
| Trying over here. My local government is not very
| amenable to this, unfortunately.
|
| > it takes up to two hours to go a few miles by any mode
| of transportation
|
| In a city that actually cares about efficiently moving
| people seriously, that'd be absurdly slow. It takes far
| less time than that to bike a few miles. Yes, most
| American cities don't have the infrastructure for that.
| Again: trying.
|
| But all that aside:
|
| > You don't tell people to lower their energy, you build
| desirable technologies that use less energy
| automatically, and most importantly, raise the energy
| consumption level that is sustainable by building more
| carbon-free power ASAP.
|
| This is an important part of the solution, yes, but time
| is not on our side here. I think it's foolish to think
| that we can reduce our emissions as much as we need to
| while maintaining our lifestyles exactly as they are.
| Maybe if we'd taken the problem seriously decades ago
| that would have been the case, but now it's going to
| involve at least some level of inconvenience.
|
| An example: it takes a long time for all the cars on the
| road to turn over. Even if we assume that electric cars
| will become massively more popular and available in the
| next decade, and even if we assume that 100% of the
| electricity to power those comes from green energy, we
| still wouldn't be on track to halve emissions from
| passenger vehicles by 2030, because a significant
| percentage on the vehicles on the road would still be gas
| powered. Some element of this is going to have to involve
| _less driving_. And that 's just one source of emissions.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _Certainly, it rarely ends congestion._
|
| It _never_ ends congestion.
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downs%E2%80%93Thomson_par
| adox
|
| Want to reduce congestion? Improve transit, build higher
| density communities, and demolish highways.
| Domenic_S wrote:
| The answer has to be more nuanced than that. Before 2004
| the Cuesta Grade near SLO was 4 lanes and permanently
| congested at commute time. After widening to 6 lanes in
| 2004, I've rarely noticed congestion at typical
| congestion times.
| maccam94 wrote:
| It's possible to overbuild roads where there isn't demand
| for them. But for major metropolitan areas, there are
| large numbers of people who want to go to similar
| categories of destinations, and their choice of specific
| destination is constrained by convenience. If expanding a
| road reduces congestion (and thus time to reach
| somewhere), more people will travel farther distances to
| get there until a new congestion equilibrium is reached.
| cinntaile wrote:
| You can afford it, but you don't want to. Increase the
| taxes on vehicles and on fuel and earmark these taxes for
| transportation infrastructure. If too many people would
| just fill up their tanks in a neighboring state require a
| miles logger instead. Technically it's easy to fix but this
| is a people's problem.
| nitrogen wrote:
| _require a miles logger instead_
|
| That's a huge non-starter warranting much harsher
| language than is reasonable for HN.
| gumby wrote:
| Why? It ties taxation to usage and is uniform between
| dino-burners and electrics. Every street-legal vehicle
| already has one, so the question is really how to get an
| authenticated reading once per year/period.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I assume you are talking about annual mileage charge
| (based on odometer readings) and it was read as constant
| GPS tracking to charge continuously based on mileage.
| nitrogen wrote:
| Annual odometer reporting is totally fine, of course. I
| read "logger" as "continuous data logger." That's never
| going to be acceptable.
| cinntaile wrote:
| I assume you already carry a continuous data logger in
| your pocket. At least it's voluntary. ;)
|
| I don't know what the most practical solution is while
| still being respectful of people's privacy. It could be a
| combination of GPS and an odometer or just one of these
| or something else. It doesn't have to leave the car and
| only the total number each year is important. You just
| need to somehow make sure the results weren't tampered
| with.
| conductr wrote:
| > Why do we keep expanding highways when it is proven that
| it does not help?
|
| We're stuck inside of a ponzi scheme
| criddell wrote:
| > why do we have so many square feet of road space?
|
| Because that's what voters want. If true self-driving cars
| ever become a reality, there's going to be a big demand
| spike for more and bigger roads.
| winkeltripel wrote:
| > If true self-driving cars ever become a reality,
| there's going to be a big demand spike for more and
| bigger roads
|
| Why would there be a need for more roads? It seems like
| the opposite would be true: self-driving cars don't need
| safe following distance to each other. They could form a
| massive train (the more you look at self driving cars,
| the more they look like trains), with 1 inch of space
| between each vehicle. Highway lanes are so wide, that
| small self-driving vehicles could sit 2-across, with an
| inch of space between them. On-demand self-driving-cars
| could cut the total number of cars on the road by a big
| factor. Self-driving cars might never crash, so they
| won't need all those tons of safety equipment that each
| car lugs about, saving a pile of net energy.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| > They could form a massive train ... with 1 inch of
| space between each vehicle.
|
| Okay, now a deer or a moose runs onto that road during a
| short gap in traffic. What happens next?
|
| > the more you look at self driving cars, the more they
| look like trains
|
| Sure, really big trains, with a tiny fraction of the
| carrying capacity.
| criddell wrote:
| Self driving cars will eventually be significantly less
| expensive than current vehicles. They will be small and
| electric inexpensive to operate and trips will be very
| cheap.
|
| When the cost of a trip drops, more trips will be made.
| If self-driving succeeds to the point where I can send my
| car to pick up my dry cleaning or food without needing to
| be in the car, then expect the number of vehicles on the
| road to go up a lot.
|
| We might be able to pack two times as many cars on the
| road and make intersections way more efficient, but that
| won't be enough.
| tqi wrote:
| I don't think most people conceptualize commutes in terms
| of distance, but rather time. So if commutes are now
| faster, people will move further out into areas that
| previously were less developed ie require new/more roads.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The real cause is that we sell road access for $0.
|
| So the same thing happens as when you sell bread for $0.
| Supply runs out, you have long lines, and everyone is
| unhappy.
|
| Road pricing would make driving enormously much better, but
| it's counterintuitive and radical, so I doubt we'll see it
| in my lifetime.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Toll roads?
| kelnos wrote:
| The worse problem is that road pricing is effectively a
| regressive tax. It most hurts the people who need it
| most, and are least able to afford it.
|
| Although, with electronic toll devices, you could at
| least potentially give toll credits to low-income folks.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| So would you favor selling bread and other necessities
| for $0 by the same argument?
| dublinben wrote:
| The current system of promoting cars above all other
| forms of transportation is more regressive than road
| pricing would be. Vehicle ownership and miles traveled
| are positively correlated with income. People with lower
| income are more likely to be reliant on underfunded
| public transportation that gets stuck in traffic (i.e.
| busses) caused by higher income drivers. Not to mention
| all the other externalities like pollution that cars
| cause, which disproportionately affect lower income
| neighborhoods.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| > We can't afford it. Roads are a massive treadmill of
| maintenance.
|
| They are not. They are less than 10% of budget of most
| municipalities. We can easily afford the road, even at
| today's highly inflated construction costs.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| Okay, what percentage of the budget would they be if we
| were fixing them fast enough that we _didn 't_ have a
| constantly growing backlog of repairs?
| xyzzyz wrote:
| That depends on the the practices in that place. Many
| places have little no significant backlog and low
| expenditures. It's all a matter of how the municipality
| contracts out the work, who gets the work and how, what
| work is prioritized etc.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| Got an example? I'd like to see a low-density city that's
| actually been consistently able to pay for its road
| maintenance.
|
| And not a place that only has relatively new roads, mind
| you: somewhere that's already had to go through the
| process of repaving them as they deteriorate at least
| once or twice.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Sure. For example, consider the municipality of
| Wenatchee, in eastern Washington. In 2021, street
| maintenance is 3.5% of entire municipal budget. Another
| 6% is for capital improvements for road infrastructure
| (e.g. installing new traffic lights, new sidewalks, etc),
| but capital improvements do reduce maintenance in areas
| where capital improvements were done, so let's say that
| 5% of entire municipal budget goes for road
| infrastructure maintenance. That's hardly a large
| maintenance burden.
|
| As it happens, most places that are not having some
| unrelated problems, like eg. being depopulated after
| industrial collapse, can easily cover the road
| maintenance, considering how little they spend on it,
| compared to other items in the budget. If you don't
| believe me, now it's your turn to look at the data: pick
| a municipality with terribly maintained road, and tell me
| what percentage of their budget is spent on road
| maintenance.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Narrow gauge railway siding for every house! ;-)
|
| (And I'm just half joking, that would be insanely cool!)
| masklinn wrote:
| That was pretty much the standard in the late 19th and
| early 20th century. The lines were often economically
| non-viable and were shut down in the 30s, but on the eve
| of WWI you had villages of under 1000 people with their
| own train stations (as small as 20sqm), gauges so narrow
| you had to walk sideways to fit between the rails (https:
| //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_ft_and_600_mm_gauge_railways),
| and sometimes closer to trams than regular rails with the
| rails bolted straight onto road surface.
| m4rtink wrote:
| There were even dedicated estate railways!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_narrow-
| gauge_railways#...
|
| Not enough milk in the estate kitchen ? Send a maid with
| a train to the village to restock!
|
| Also on north Germany they have a 60 cm railway
| connecting an island at low tide:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%BCttmoorsiel-
| Nordstrandis...
|
| Or the famous Kurobe Gorge Railway in Japan at 762 mm
| that goes via hard moutain terrain and 40+ (!) tunnels:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurobe_Gorge_Railway
|
| (We travelled it once, can recommend, superb experience!)
|
| Still apparently even if you switch to electric cars
| and/or trolley buses tire and road surface abrasion is
| still apparently a significant pollution hazard.
|
| I guess metal wheels on metal rails are less of an
| issues, so it might make sense to use rail based wehicles
| more heavily, especially with modern technology
| improvements (automatic routing/switching, battery
| powered trains, etc.).
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Fixing a pothole is significantly more work than most people
| think it is.
|
| Process for fixing a pothole so that it stays fixed until the
| next time the road is resurfaced: 1) Identify the size and
| depth of the pothole; if it's more than just replacing
| asphalt (i.e., the subsurface is damaged) than it's a
| significantly more involved job, otherwise... 2) Identify the
| appropriate asphalt mixture for the road's wear and tear,
| since a busy road will need a different type of asphalt from
| a less-traveled road. 3) Get the crew out to the pothole. 4)
| Clean the pothole and surrounding road so that the new
| asphalt patch can stick to the existing asphalt. 5a) Apply
| the tack coat, which will help the asphalt stick to the
| existing asphalt and to the subsurface. 5) Lay in and roll
| the asphalt. To create a seamless patch with the existing
| road, it will be necessary to "creep up" on the proper amount
| of asphalt, so this step will be repeated a number of times.
| 7) Block out the patch for at least 24 hours so that the
| asphalt can properly cure. (More expensive asphalt mixtures
| can be driven on within a day) 8) Send a work crew back the
| next day to take down the traffic cones blocking out the
| patch.
| bingohbangoh wrote:
| California has roving black-outs [0], New Jersey can't have
| clean water [1], New York subways are disgusting. [2]
|
| But I'm told over and over again: "you get what you pay for."
|
| I just don't believe it anymore.
|
| Per your bit about roads, many have tried to decipher why the
| US has such expensive road construction and its not at all
| clear. We're a very bizarre outlier. It's more than just
| being affluent. [3,4]
|
| I'm venting a bit but its tragic that such a rich nation
| can't properly build anything anymore. Heck, Flint Michigan
| got hundreds of millions of dollars _and still doesn't have
| clean water_. [5] Most bizarre to me is that nobody seems
| that interested in where the money goes. NYC spent $1.25
| billion on a mental health outreach program that has had no
| publicly visible effects or milestones. [6] It was made
| permanent this year. [7]
|
| I'm told over and over again that the problem is "not enough
| money" but where the hell is it going to in the first place?
| Why does nobody care to answer this question?
|
| [0]: https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/08
| /18/...
|
| [1]: https://patch.com/new-jersey/newbrunswick/high-pfoa-
| levels-m...
|
| [2]: https://www.amny.com/transit/nyc-subway-stations-
| garbage-dum...
|
| [3]: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/0
| 8/wh...
|
| [4]: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/07/why-we-cant-
| figure-o...
|
| [5]: https://www.npr.org/2019/04/25/717104335/5-years-after-
| flint...
|
| [6]: https://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/too-much-money-
| chir...
|
| [7]: https://nypost.com/2021/05/06/de-blasio-rebrands-
| wifes-1b-th...
| gamblor956 wrote:
| California had roving blackouts because the electric
| companies turned off power to customers so that it could
| disable electric equipment in wildfire-prone areas. The
| blackout you noted from last year was the first one in two
| decades related to supply issues, and the 2020 supply
| issues were due to power companies deliberately delaying
| starting up gas-firing plants after the sun went down in an
| effort to blame renewables for the problem.
|
| Notably, after the CPUC threatened fines, the supply-
| related blackouts didn't happen again.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| The first part of your statement is "California has
| roving blackouts because transmission equipment isn't
| being upgraded to prevent fires". I don't think it's the
| condemnation avoider you think it is.
| Hermitian909 wrote:
| I'm having trouble tracking it down, but a few years ago
| congress set up an investigation into why costs are high.
| The investigation, which basically consisted of calling up
| various experts, asking them to talk for free, and
| compiling what they said, reported that the issue was so
| complicated it needed a better funded study. To my
| knowledge, that better funded study has not occurred.
|
| At a very broad I recall some of the items identified were:
|
| - Illegal collusion between contractors capable of
| expensive jobs
|
| - Illegal collusion between contractors and consultants
| hired by cities to help pick winning bids
|
| - No expertise in government due to cutbacks, so no ability
| to vet a proposal or understand the progress made (see
| above)
|
| - No accountability in government
|
| - No accountability for contractors in in contracts
|
| - Poorly thought out legislated process on choosing bidders
|
| - Inefficiencies in mandated working conditions (think
| multiple people sitting around watching a hole)
|
| - Government/private enterprise corruption
|
| These are all over simplified high level points. The
| dynamics here get quite complex. For example, local
| government often signs a contract with a local contractor
| wherein they are able to put in stop work orders as desired
| without owing payment for the time. This is very expensive
| for the contractors, they must pay to move heavy machinery
| to another job or wait while paying their workers. Delays
| can add millions in cost/lost revenue for the contractor.
| The contractor thus has to drastically increase prices to
| hedge against these delays.
|
| These issue touch every level of government: city, county,
| state, and federal. Sadly we no longer have a functional
| body politic capable of addressing issues of that scale.
| bingohbangoh wrote:
| Thanks for the long reply!
|
| Money laundering through road construction is apparently
| _very popular_ but I can't see what changed and why its
| not as popular abroad. Shouldn't the same conditions for
| this exist elsewhere?
|
| Somebody direct me to a few papers on the subject but I
| frankly don't have the time to read them.
| Hermitian909 wrote:
| Hard to say, but I can at least speak to contributions
| from a lack of government expertise mixed with private
| corruption. I've seen this in my own local government.
|
| Generally no one employed by the city knows how to look
| at an expense report from a construction job and check it
| for plausibility; this allows some outrageous pricing for
| things like a few tons of bricks. Sometimes they'll hire
| a consultant to check the books, but often that
| consultant is chummy with the contractor.
|
| In other countries where government is trusted a bit
| more, it's much more normal to have an engineer and a
| construction project manager on staff to look at a report
| and tell you you're getting bilked.
| potamic wrote:
| Definitely not an expert in this field, but don't his solutions
| come off as a tad naive? Get the military to do this, get the
| railways to do that, build a temporary 500 acre yard, get ships
| to carry off containers somewhere. Surely he must understand that
| such large undertakings will have many consequences and cannot be
| "done" just like that. The solutions also seem to be sort of a
| band-aid, to create a temporary buffer until the situation
| somehow resolves on its own. But doesn't that only delay the
| inevitable as the buffers fill up again and they are left to deal
| with even greater number of empty containers, when the
| fundamental problem seems to be that nobody wants empty
| containers in the first place?
|
| It feels like there is some missing incentive in the system
| somewhere, to get empty containers go to where they are needed,
| but businesses operating with their pre-pandemic, highly
| optimized models are slow to adapt. The biggest question of all
| though is that, is the shipping crisis even that big an issue to
| warrant such dramatic reactions? If indeed and there is political
| will to tackle it, this might better channeled to ramp up local
| industries to fill the gaps and reduce dependency on shipping in
| the first place. There is no better time to do it. The pandemic
| has shown clearly the risks of a globally coupled economy, and
| the shipping crisis is nothing compared to the environmental
| crisis that is on its way. But you wouldn't catch the owner of a
| shipping company say that.
| [deleted]
| gamblor956 wrote:
| The LA Times covered this is an article about his tweets, but
| in a nutshell: the problem is the shipping companies. They
| wouldn't pick up empty containers coming back to the ports, so
| the containers were stuck in the container storage yards
| outside the ports. Because these storage yards were full,
| trucking companies couldn't pick up new (full) containers with
| rigs on location; they had to bring in new rigs. But their
| aren't enough drivers right now due to COVID and trucking being
| a generally crappy low-paying job.
|
| The first incentive implemented was to start fining the
| shipping companies for sitting on their (full) containers.
| However, this is an indirect incentive, intended to motivate
| the shipping companies to solve the container lifecycle problem
| in a market-efficient manner. If this incentive doesn't work,
| the next incentive will more directly address the problem:
| shipping companies will be fined for _empty_ containers left at
| the container storage facilities.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| But why don't the shipping companies want to pick up
| containers? Was this always the case, or what changed?
| colinmhayes wrote:
| It takes time to load them, and shipping rates from Asia to
| the US are at an all time high, so they want to hurry back.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Is it speculation or fact that the ships are heading back
| empty?
| potamic wrote:
| Sounds about right. Space is limited and must always be
| rented. It's surprising that's not already the case.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| Seems a little crazy that ships can charge truckers for the
| empties not being returned when they won't even take the empties
| back? I feel like that one stuck out to me as a bit odd
| anonymouse008 wrote:
| This right here is where I'm scratching my head. Demurrage
| sinks many an export/import-er -- and it feels rather brash to
| leave ports with no empties back on the ship.
|
| Something feels amiss in the long term business relationship
| ship liners are trying to foster at the moment.
|
| > The real issue, Schrap says, is just that the shipping
| companies won't take their empty containers back: "The ocean
| carriers need to come sweep out the empties." Adding insult to
| injury, the ocean carriers bill truckers a late fee every day
| for unreturned empty containers, Schrap said, even if they
| won't accept them at the port. "It makes you want to pick up
| your laptop and Frisbee it out into the backyard," Schrap said.
| "That's the frustration running through our veins."
|
| This is a financial bazooka aimed at small importers/exporters.
| Forget the empties stacking up as an eye sore, this is the
| crisis -- charging late fees on something the ship liners won't
| take back.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Demurrage is only an issue if logistics are badly managed.
| Easier said then done, especially now I know. And still the
| number of companies, especially in eCommerve just ignore how
| important logistics is mind boggling. People tend to ignore
| how much of Amazon's success is owed dud to worldclass supply
| chain and logistics management.
| anonymouse008 wrote:
| > Demurrage is only an issue if logistics are badly
| managed.
|
| Oh man, we could sit around the fire and tell stories all
| night on this topic.
|
| It's even better when your customer is the primary
| logistics on the other end, especially when they wanted a
| better price and they _forget_ to bring the container back
| for a couple days.
|
| That was our rookie mistake, not having logistics across
| the lake or not doing exworks.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Admitedly, containers were more fun back when you could
| get two weeks demurrage free. That stopped being athing
| long before covid, so, when they charged for unloading
| taking longer then 2 hours. I had a consulting gig where
| I tried to sell the cliwnt on using a cross dock facility
| near the port to get stuff out of boxes, on pallets and
| then on trucks. Failed to to disuade him from using some
| container railway yard, all of that managed by his
| tradituonal forwarder without much overaight, before the
| whole project broke down end of 2020.
| nradov wrote:
| Aren't those charges for container detention, not demurrage?
| thedogeye wrote:
| Detention is when you keep a container out too long.
| Demurrage is when you wait too long to pick it up.
| moron4hire wrote:
| If they won't take back the empties, what do they expect to be
| done with them? Where are they getting containers to fill in
| the first place? What is going on?!
| HWR_14 wrote:
| The demand for shipping throughput is so high that it is
| cheaper to have the Chinese build new containers and have
| them filled and waiting at the docks than pay the extra time
| to have the empties loaded in the US then unloaded in China.
| This will change at some point, but until then there's no
| point in bringing the empties back. It's literally not worth
| the hassle.
|
| Honestly, it might go on long enough that figuring how to
| smelt the containers might be viable given the high cost of
| metals.
| kansface wrote:
| A container must cost at least a couple thousand dollars...
| a ship carries, what, 1000 or so? That's roughly 2 million
| dollars being "thrown away". Maybe they can build them for
| half that in China? I suppose if the turnaround time is in
| months, this makes sense. Someone will make a tidy profit
| returning the containers at some point (although I have no
| idea what their lifecycle is like).
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Ultralarge ships (top 161 in the world _edit: that number
| of ships is a decade old, sorry_ ) all carry at least
| 5,000 40' containers (and up to 10,000). That sounds like
| a lot, but right now the Chinese factories are cranking
| out about the 600,000 a _quarter_. (Note, I 'm talking
| about 40' containers, but the industry talks about 20' so
| you may find double my numbers on a search.)
|
| They seem to cost about 2,500-4,000 to purchase new, so
| theoretically they could make 20-28MM loading them with
| empties (if they were worth the same as new). I don't
| know how long it would take to load the ships with cargo,
| but there are currently $24MMM (that's 24 billion) in
| goods anchored outside the port of LA waiting to be
| unloaded. So 3 orders of magnitude higher. How much of a
| premium must load/unload capacity be at right now?
|
| If we weren't truck limited, we could just move all the
| empties far away and stockpile them until they can be
| profitably returned. But I know people who have tens-of-
| thousands of dollars in tons of raw materials (think
| universal inputs) stacked in a warehouse they have to
| vacate soon and they cannot even give it away because of
| transportation costs. They're going to have to pay
| someone to take away the things they (correctly assumed)
| they could buy for almost nothing last year and would be
| worth more today.
| jiveturkey wrote:
| More than anything else, this is marketing "done right".
| noisy_boy wrote:
| Considering the big issue as per the article seems to be empty
| containers, I wondered why the containers were not collapsible
| and whether that was a "thing". For those wondering about that,
| this article[0] seems to have some good information.
|
| I also feel so dumb to just realize: Container. Dock. Docker.
|
| [0]: https://piernext.portdebarcelona.cat/en/logistics/will-
| the-u...
| [deleted]
| mcguire wrote:
| " _The chief executive of the Harbor Trucking Assn., which
| represents the trucking companies dealing with these issues every
| day, says that any little bit helps, but the measure doesn 't
| change all that much. For one thing, allowing the stacks to climb
| higher doesn't guarantee they'll do so._
|
| " _"I applaud Mayor Garcia for taking some leadership in all
| this, but the challenge is procuring the equipment to stack that
| high," Matt Schrap said. Most yards don't have the top loaders
| necessary, let alone the skilled operator and space to safely and
| efficiently stack containers._
|
| " _The real issue, Schrap says, is just that the shipping
| companies won't take their empty containers back: "The ocean
| carriers need to come sweep out the empties." Adding insult to
| injury, the ocean carriers bill truckers a late fee every day for
| unreturned empty containers, Schrap said, even if they won't
| accept them at the port. "It makes you want to pick up your
| laptop and Frisbee it out into the backyard," Schrap said.
| "That's the frustration running through our veins."_ "
|
| But yes, "Bureaucracy and red tape abounds. We need to let the
| free market work".
|
| " _Local politicians are betting that a new fee on containers
| idling at the docks -- charged to the ocean shipping companies
| themselves -- will get some boxes moving. Starting in November,
| any container meant for a truck that sits at either port for more
| than nine days will incur a $100 fee, followed by escalating fees
| of $100 more each day. If a container is meant to go on a train,
| those fees kick in after just six days on the dock._
|
| " _But the new fee doesn 't apply to empty containers. Schrap,
| the Harbor Trucking Assn. chief executive, said that he was
| baffled by the omission. The reason that pickup slots are going
| unused is the empty containers taking up space on the back of
| trucks, he said. "This fee is a shot across the bow at the ocean
| carriers because they need them to be engaged," Schrap said, "but
| it's mind-boggling to me that this is not being applied to empty
| containers."_"
|
| So, ... yeah.
| omoikane wrote:
| The original tweets:
| https://twitter.com/typesfast/status/1451543776992845834
|
| (It was slightly buried in the article, ~2 links away)
| bob229 wrote:
| Dilbert guy is mad a coinbase guy is a useless chump
| whatpeo9 wrote:
| Someone I know in the industry told me these changes were being
| planned before his tweets went viral, and that it was going to
| happen soon anyway (like the height restrictions change). I think
| the press credits the Flexport CEO too much for this. He's
| popular so his tweets went viral but it sounds like they were
| planning it already. (And that's why it was included in his tweet
| in the first place - he probably heard this change being talked
| about too with the people he was talking with.) I mean I'm glad
| his tweets called attention to it but I think the press makes the
| story sound too simplistic, like his tweets caused the change,
| when really the causation is: 1) the changes were being planned,
| 2) the industry was talking about it, 3) the Flexport CEO heard
| about it, 4) the Flexport CEO tweeted about it and that went
| viral, 5) the changes were implemented.
| ergocoder wrote:
| This can be easily proven by disclosing the paper trail for
| this decision.
|
| The paper trail should be public anyway since it is a public
| policy.
|
| Until this is proven, we shall continue crediting the Flexport
| CEO for this change.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| You can credit whomever you like, but it seems quite
| unlikely. More likely is that the CEO is trying to get free
| advertising.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| The changes happened hours after the Tweets, after the crisis
| had been ongoing for months.
|
| Unless you think Ryan had amazing ability to time his virality,
| I think the obviously probable answer is that the mayor
| responded to a viral tweet.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-11-02 23:01 UTC)