Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations • Hacker News Board

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#211

Post by pessimizer » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 9:48 PM UTC

bcrl wrote: post #99

zzzeek wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Maybe companies shouldn't be allowed to spew toxic carcinogens into the atmosphere so that wouldn't matter?

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.

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#212

Post by Jolter » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 9:48 PM UTC

pixl97 wrote: post #135

adam_arthur wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tre…

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?

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.

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#213

Post by karaterobot » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 9:48 PM UTC

spenczar5 wrote: post #165

karaterobot wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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?

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.

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#214

Post by 8note » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 9:52 PM UTC

epistasis wrote: post #87

throwaway984393 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 unjustl…

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

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#215

Post by pessimizer » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 9:53 PM UTC

spenczar5 wrote: post #165

karaterobot wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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?

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."

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#216

Post by 8note » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 9:55 PM UTC

spothedog1 wrote: post #40

ergocoder wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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 parce…

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.

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#217

Post by geofft » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 9:56 PM UTC

mlindner wrote: post #33

throwaway984393 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 h…

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 indust…

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.

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#218

Post by maxk42 » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 9:56 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #85

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 truc…

> 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.

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#219

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 9:57 PM UTC

ConcernedCoder wrote: post #110

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... th…

[deleted]

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#220

Post by joecool1029 » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 9:57 PM UTC

aerosmile wrote: post #157

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #54

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.

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…

>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/spring/h... [2] https://smile.amazon.com/Hoover-Extraordinary-Life-Times/dp/...