Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The unsustainable growth of the container ship industry

prospect.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 61 posts

Re: The unsustainable growth of the container ship industry

#11

Post by notpachet »

briffle wrote: post #8

I guess I have not understood why the port in Long Beach is the one all these ships pile into? Aren't there large ports in San Francisco/Oakland? and the entire Puget Sound? Or are they, but the media doesn't talk about them as much? Portland's old container terminals are empty last I drove by them (although its been a while). I know the Portland terminal is limited on how large of a ship by how deep the water is dre…

It's a good question without a simple clear answer. The shortest answer, which elides a lot of nuance, is that the shipping conglomerates (like so much in the current global supply chain) have been overly-optimizing for profit, at the expense of resiliency. That means consolidating business operations in fewer ports in order to drive up efficiency.

Long term I definitely would not be surprised if some of the bigger shipping players recognize the need to diversify and invest in operations facilities across more ports. But that takes time and money.

Re: The unsustainable growth of the container ship industry

#14

Post by topkai22 »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #4

monopoly power, except effectively extranational so no antitrust Faaaantastic. Of course the entire "make 5000 miles away, ship it over the pacific" was enabled by the lack of a proper carbon tax. If monopolies perform the same "service" then more power to them.

Ocean shipping is extremely carbon/energy efficient and would likely be advantaged with a carbon tax. It’s emissions are concentrated in sulfur from the low grade oil it burns, which is harmful to humans and the environment in other ways.

You could potentially argue that a carbon tax's impact on transportation generally would increase local manufacturing, but I kind of doubt it- it would advantage those manufacturers best concentration of raw materials and suppliers as those get transported multiple times in the production cycle, whereas the finished production only moves once.

Re: The unsustainable growth of the container ship industry

#15

Post by mistrial9 »

notpachet wrote: post #11
briffle wrote: post #8

I guess I have not understood why the port in Long Beach is the one all these ships pile into? Aren't there large ports in San Francisco/Oakland? and the entire Puget Sound? Or are they, but the media doesn't talk about them as much? Portland's old container terminals are empty last I drove by them (although its been a while). I know the Portland terminal is limited on how large of a ship by how deep the water is dre…

It's a good question without a simple clear answer. The shortest answer, which elides a lot of nuance, is that the shipping conglomerates (like so much in the current global supply chain) have been overly-optimizing for profit, at the expense of resiliency. That means consolidating business operations in fewer ports in order to drive up efficiency. Long term I definitely would not be surprised if some of the bigger s…

> have been overly-optimizing for profit

profit, and continuity of control authority

Re: The unsustainable growth of the container ship industry

#16

Post by theginger »

umvi wrote: post #6

Containerization has a specific meaning in the context of computers so maybe the title should be changed to "The Hidden Costs of [Shipping Containers]" to reduce confusion for people clicking the link thinking it is going to be an article about the drawbacks of docker

Even the real life container ship imagery doesn't give it away because often containerization articles are full of that too

Re: The unsustainable growth of the container ship industry

#18

Post by WJW »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #4

monopoly power, except effectively extranational so no antitrust Faaaantastic. Of course the entire "make 5000 miles away, ship it over the pacific" was enabled by the lack of a proper carbon tax. If monopolies perform the same "service" then more power to them.

> ship it over the pacific" was enabled by the lack of a proper carbon tax.

This is just demonstrably false. For a typical household product, more carbon is emitted trucking it from the port to the store than is emitted shipping it across the ocean. Cargo ships are extremely energy efficient. And of course for a great many products the raw materials are not actually produced locally, so if you shift manufacturing back home you now have to ship the raw materials instead.

A "proper carbon tax" would increase oversea production since economies of scale are real and huge.

Re: The unsustainable growth of the container ship industry

#20

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

> No upstart carrier could possibly compete with the alliances; they couldn’t afford the massive startup costs to build or lease their own mega-ship.

This is such a common pattern with optimization. Something starts small-ish, but gets optimized and optimized to the point that newcomers aren’t viable and everything gets locked in. It happens all over the economy, and the unprecedented scale of everything only makes the effect stronger. What’s the way out?

Post reply on HN