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

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171–180 of 220 posts

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

#171
post #128
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you see the chicken and egg problem here. News outlets have deteriorated because they can't make money. If people actually paid for them they might have a chance to hire competent people and do investigative journalism. But now they're being paid mostly by ad revenue and a handful of subscribers. So they have to publish trash to optimize for clicks.

> News outlets have deteriorated because they can't make money. There are taxpayer-supported, nonprofit news sources. They are not any better, spewing the same type of opinionated stuff (propaganda, really). The need to make money is not the culprit there.

That's still the need to make money. It's just that they're making it from the government, and therefore have to publish what their real customer wants.

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

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of economic fluid, here's a fun fact: Value of assets on the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve in 2007: 0.9 trillion Value of assets on the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve in 2022: 9 trillion

I don't really understand what this implies?

Some people reflexively blame everything bad that happens in the economy on the Fed's QE, usually because they're outraged by it though they have no reasoned justification for feeling that way.

It's like a conspiracy theory, except the "conspiracy" part is actually true (the Fed was exactly trying to create inflation), but the consequences are fanciful and legion.

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

#173
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here the government gives the media companies money all year every year. And its not even the government's money (from taxes) but my money that I am forced to pay for a contract that I never agreed to or want and can't opt out of.

Are you both Germans? What is here? >And its not even the government's money (from taxes) but my money If you're a tax payer the government's money is your money, no?

> Are you both Germans? What is here?

In my case here is Germany, yes.

> If you're a tax payer the government's money is your money, no?

Indirectly, yes but the details are very different.

With taxes the government decides on how much tax you pay for various things and then the money goes into the general budget from which the government again allocates funds for various things. Allocating more money towards overpaid entertainment personalities and greedy sports organizations in this model would mean less money the government has to pay for other things so you'd hope they would put some thought in what expenditures are really needed. The budget is also periodically re-evaluated. Taxes are also generally either based on something you choose to do or based on income, meaning they are means tested and usually increase progressively in order to put less of a burden on those that already have less. Taxes are also collected by government institutions which means whatever organizatons are involved in providing the services the taxes pay for won't need to know my banking details or place of residence.

The TV fees are very different. Here the legacy media companies get a flat sum from everyone (with some exceptions) without consideration for either what burden this places on the individual payer or what funds are really needed to provide the respective services. Politicians only ever have to think about the amount when the companies involved ask for bigger handouts. Instead of considering of these legacy media companies are still needed with the internet and available, or if we need the current excess (with a separate TV station per state plus two for the country overall), these media companies and the politicans that enable them have decided that making their services available online means that everyone is a potential user and must pay. Unlike taxes these fees are not collected by the finace ministry but by a separate organization representing the media companies which automatically receives the place of residence for everyone registered in Germany.

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

#174

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…

> Vice News used to be great and essentially apolitical. One of the founders founded the proud boys. >They went to interesting, dangerous places and reported what they saw by showing you what they saw. They were rich nepo kids going into places and doing a ton of poverty porn. Seeing the inside of a favela on the eyes of a brooklyn kids whose dad makes pharma patents was edgy in 2000s but boy does it not hold up. > A…

The Proud Boys started as a joke by a former Punk Singer. Punks ideology was based on anti-racist and anti-sexist beliefs, They didn't realize that there was a real audience for their satire and the group was Co-opted by actual racists.

A similar thing happened to the Tea Party which was anti-1%'res which is now controlled by their corporate donors. It's new name is the House Freedom Caucus and they want to default on US debt.

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

#175

The shipping companies should be fine because they were prudent and kept some of that pandemic windfall in reserve to cover for this scenario…right?

Most of them will be fine, but probably a couple will consolidate or collapse. They'll start to delay or cancel new ships because who knows how long this will last, and we'll probably end up in an other crisis eventually if they all cut back too much.

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

#176
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not ad hominem in the context of discussing bias to point out that a person who founded one biased organization also founded a political advocacy group (aka another by-definion biased organaization), it is describing a pattern.

Taking one data point and extrapolating a quality onto the other isn't a "pattern".

Bad extrapolation is not ad hominem either.

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

#177
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The truth is, journalism has cratered. There's an old quote addressing exactly that: "When you’re young, you look at television and think, There’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That’s a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the…

Willing to consume? That sounds like it is the consumers fault that the population is not getting acceptable trustworthy news, because they are not willing to consume it on some level. Very strange business model. Personally i am not willing to consume anything that is even remotely forced upon to me. I will not watch the news when companies think i should watch it. I will watch it whenever and however i want. I will…

there is no fault; there is no guilt trip. There is no "cannot publish acceptable trustworthy etc.". These are observations and a proposed explanation that the causes described are resulting in the observed phenomena. You are not an island, or else the rest of society is your sea. You may be uninterested in your milieu, but your milieu is in[terested in] you.

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

#178

> 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.

How is no one talking about the sanctions war? Either here or in the article. Part of the sanctions war has made it extremely hard for insurers to know whether or not they are violating sanctions by insuring vessels. Navigating the current legal landscape is a nightmare for shipping companies, which leads a lot of companies to not not accept cargo if they can't be certain about the legal situation.

Because it’s completely irrelevant, even after your comment, it’s not clear at all what the relevancy is

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

#179
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The truth is, journalism has cratered. There's an old quote addressing exactly that: "When you’re young, you look at television and think, There’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That’s a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the…

Maybe superficially (as the market molds tastes as much as it caters to them), but there's a third option between conspiracy and a bad market, and it comes straight out of Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent"[0]. According to Chomsky, there are five filters "that determine what information and ideas tend to be conveyed through mass media and how they are presented": 1. "the ownership of the media"; 2. "advertising as th…

If Chomsky is right(), then what is to be done? () I am inclined to think he is fwiw

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

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One of the founders founded the proud boys. That's ad hominem, not a counter argument about Vice's content. > They were rich nepo kids going into places and doing a ton of poverty porn. Seeing the inside of a favela on the eyes of a brooklyn kids whose dad makes pharma patents was edgy in 2000s but boy does it not hold up. Yes, so? This description is good journalism. You're just trying to come up with derogatory t…

> That's ad hominem Pointing out overt political activism by the founders is pretty important context when discussing the "apolitical" nature of their ventures. > Yes, so? Edgy != good. The journalistic value of interviewing a "cartel" member with 0 verifcation, sources or journalistic codes is not good journalism. It is just titilating porn for middle class people. The person being interviewed might just be a kid wi…

The bulk of your comment was just a strawman...

Yes, interviewing a faceless "cartel" member with zero verification would be poor journalism, which isn't the same as bringing a camera into XYZ location and recording/describing the conditions, which classifies as journalism in the same way that war journalists who go into warzones and describe situations are journalists.

I think ironically enough your personal feelings regarding the founders of Vice are coloring your perspective on their earlier work which meets the textbook definition of journalism.

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