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Container shipping has cratered, as ship owners try to avoid unprofitable trips

wsj.com

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Re: Container shipping has cratered, as ship owners try to avoid unprofitable trips

#161

Post by dmreedy »

beowulfey wrote: post #124
makeitdouble wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not that journalism has cratered, it only reached a level of what people are willing to consume. I've seen this in writing from journalists and writers, and feel like this is too easy of an out. It's as if readers were in a vacuum and journalism didn't affect them in any way shape or form. I don't buy that the press and media had no hand in creating the current public's lowered expectations. So perhaps it's wh…

When journalism decided to make a deal with the Devil, and ads became the main source of revenue, it was inevitable for writing to shift towards maximizing clicks. The dopamine pulses of this style cannot be ignored and so to compete all news eventually reached equilibrium in this same vein.

While I agree with your conclusion, for what it's worth I'm not sure journalism "decided" anything. The economic system it is embedded in did.

I say that because it's not like the pattern is unique to journalism.

Re: Container shipping has cratered, as ship owners try to avoid unprofitable trips

#162

Post by rossdavidh »

So, "Container shipping has cratered..." is a lot different in tone than the actual article headline's "Ocean Freight Rates Slump..."

It's a big shift from 2021, sure, but nobody is surprised by that. It is a slump from 2019, rather than "cratering".

Re: Container shipping has cratered, as ship owners try to avoid unprofitable trips

#163

Post by ToValueFunfetti »

otikik wrote: post #141
ehvatum wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vice News used to be great and essentially apolitical. They went to interesting, dangerous places and reported what they saw by showing you what they saw. Their viewership grew rapidly. Fast-forward. All new Vice productions are deeply and uniformly opinionated. Comparatively few people care to watch. Relative to their previous work, this later work received no significant attention and generated no revenue. There is…

Nothing is apolitical. If you don’t talk about politics then your position is “I am fine with the way things are now”, which is political.

Either your comment is apolitical or you're saying you're fine with everything happening in politics right now, and I somewhat doubt the latter.

Re: Container shipping has cratered, as ship owners try to avoid unprofitable trips

#164

Post by Robotbeat »

CGamesPlay wrote: post #8

> The rates for both trade lanes are hovering around 2019 levels, but fuel and labor expenses are higher now than before the pandemic. Hard to really feel like this is a crisis, since all of the reporting is how there was a brief, glorious period (for the companies) of 10x prices, and the crisis is that the period is ended.

The crisis is that their costs are now much higher but the going rate is the same so they’re now losing money.

A glut nearly always follows a shortage. Virtually every single time. So there is no contradiction at all in noting there was a severe shortage before but now there’s a glut.

Re: Container shipping has cratered, as ship owners try to avoid unprofitable trips

#165

Post by Robotbeat »

tedivm wrote: post #144
prng2021 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"fuel and labor expenses are higher now than before the pandemic. “Spot rates are at a level that in the long run are not sustainable, with costs up by 25% to 30% since 2019" We all speak English here and read the same article right? Shipping fees are back to prepandemic levels but operating costs are much higher. Why doesn't that count as a crisis or as something worth reporting?

Companies reach records profits: invisible hand of the market. Wages go up: crisis that could destroy our economy.

I wonder if the same folks asking for taxing away those profits are now saying these companies should be subsidized now that they’re losing money. (Kind of doubt it…)

Re: Container shipping has cratered, as ship owners try to avoid unprofitable trips

#166

Post by lukeramsden »

prng2021 wrote: post #143
CGamesPlay wrote: post #8

> The rates for both trade lanes are hovering around 2019 levels, but fuel and labor expenses are higher now than before the pandemic. Hard to really feel like this is a crisis, since all of the reporting is how there was a brief, glorious period (for the companies) of 10x prices, and the crisis is that the period is ended.

"fuel and labor expenses are higher now than before the pandemic. “Spot rates are at a level that in the long run are not sustainable, with costs up by 25% to 30% since 2019" We all speak English here and read the same article right? Shipping fees are back to prepandemic levels but operating costs are much higher. Why doesn't that count as a crisis or as something worth reporting?

Then the price has to go up. This sounds like… regular market dynamics? It’s still not clear why that’s a crisis?

Re: Container shipping has cratered, as ship owners try to avoid unprofitable trips

#167

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

eru wrote: post #52
nologic01 wrote: post #24

The shock of the onset and "anti"-shock of the fizzling of the pandemic must be the most dramatic economic experiment for some time. Its like throwing a stone in a stagnant pond and watching the waves go up and down. Except the economic fluid is far more complex, full of lags and hysteresis. E.g. shipping rates have gone down but not the costs (indicated as fuel and labor). Why not? Nobody wants to leave a crisis go…

> Except the economic fluid is far more complex, full of lags and hysteresis. E.g. shipping rates have gone down but not the costs (indicated as fuel and labor). Why not? It's much weirder. Economics is even fuller of anti-lags, ie clever economic actors are constantly planning for the future and anticipating. Eg if the Fed announces today, that they are going to run the printing presses red-hot next year, you'd alre…

I'm sure some are profiting handsomely, but as a whole the last 3 years has made business in general look pretty incompetent. They all seemed to zig when they should have zagged and vice versa. It makes you think the professionals are not all they're cracked up to be.

I know the pandemic was new and disorienting, but do these people have no contrarian instincts at all? They just look at what everyone else is doing and do that, lest they stand out and be singled out? If you're in a leadership position and you play the "everyone thought X so you can understand why I did too" card you should be fired.

Re: Container shipping has cratered, as ship owners try to avoid unprofitable trips

#168

Post by AnimalMuppet »

otikik wrote: post #141
ehvatum wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vice News used to be great and essentially apolitical. They went to interesting, dangerous places and reported what they saw by showing you what they saw. Their viewership grew rapidly. Fast-forward. All new Vice productions are deeply and uniformly opinionated. Comparatively few people care to watch. Relative to their previous work, this later work received no significant attention and generated no revenue. There is…

Nothing is apolitical. If you don’t talk about politics then your position is “I am fine with the way things are now”, which is political.

No.

I can say that Biden isn't up to the job, and that Trump is a wanna-be dictator who should not be given a second chance at pulling it off. That's apolitical, in that I'm not shilling for either side, but I'm sure not fine with the way things are now. I'm just also not fine with the other side's proposed solution.

Re: Container shipping has cratered, as ship owners try to avoid unprofitable trips

#170

Post by AnimalMuppet »

lynx23 wrote: post #96
maratc wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be mixing between "giving people what they want" and "giving you what you want". The media is in the former, not latter, business.

The average person is to dumb to deserve quality reporting is another way to put what you just said. Even if that might be true, it doesn't change anything about my perception of modern journalism.

"Deserve"? No.

"Seek"? Probably yes.

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