[HN Gopher] Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stack...
___________________________________________________________________
Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations
Author : yblu
Score : 315 points
Date : 2021-10-23 18:57 UTC (4 hours 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]
| 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.
| 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.
| 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.
| 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.
| 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)
| 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.
| 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.
| [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?
| 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...
| 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..
| 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>
| 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.
| 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.
| 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!
| 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.
| 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.
| 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...
| 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...
| 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.
| 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.
| 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.
| 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.
| 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
| [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.
| 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?
| 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 stacked in order
| to free up the truck and its chassis for another load. The
| equipment doing that 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
| 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.
| 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.
| jpindar wrote:
| They don't own the empties, and it's in their contracts to
| return them.
| [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
| 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.
| 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.
| 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 rate at which new containers are being received is going
| down 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.
| 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...
| 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.
| 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.
| 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...
| itsthecourier wrote:
| oh god thank you
| 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.
| 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?
| 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.
| 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.
| [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.
| 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.
| 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.
| 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.
| 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."
| 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
| 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).
| 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?)
| 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.
| 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?
| 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?
| 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?
| 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
| 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).
| 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
| _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.
| 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!"
| 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.
| 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.
| 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
| 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.
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| Please expand on what you mean by "culture war"
| 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.
| mkl95 wrote:
| Why is it temporary? What are the negative effects of suspending
| the limitations?
| 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.
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