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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

#191

Post by emaginniss »

sophacles wrote: post #137
golergka wrote: post #126

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…

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.

Robert Kennedy Jr is a crazy anti-vax nutjob, therefore, all of his work on environmentalism is invalid and the entire cause of environmentalism is suspect. Is that how this works?

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

#192

Post by plemer »

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.

*too dumb

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

#193

Post by AnimalMuppet »

plemer wrote: post #190
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you’re conflating “partisan” with “political”.

All right, how about if I say that society is messed up in some real ways (including politically), and the solution is not going to come from politics, because the problem fundamentally is not a political one?

That's not a political statement (unless you have a very expansive definition of "political"[1]), but it's still not "I am fine with the way things are now".

[1] And if literally everything is political... then nothing is.

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

#194

Post by Animats »

seymore_12 wrote: post #108
Animats wrote: post #70

What's the current price to move a container from Shenzhen to LA?

Excellent question to which there is no easy answer. There is no site available that can give a price for which you are sufficiently sure you are getting competitive rate for which the shipment will be actually performed in the time needed. None. Closest you can get is inquire via some of the ocean carriers, 4PL sites, but you have to do this carrier by carrier and yet often you don't get comprehensive number. Pricin…

Huh.

There's a YC startup, "Flexport", which was supposed to disrupt that. Their pitch: "Flexport is the end-to-end platform for global trade. Book, track and deliver freight shipments from factory floor to customer door." But if you go to their site, you don't see a price list. You get "Hi there ! Click here for a quote or to chat with sales." Same as other freight forwarders.

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

#195

Post by sophacles »

emaginniss wrote: post #191
sophacles wrote: post #137

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.

Robert Kennedy Jr is a crazy anti-vax nutjob, therefore, all of his work on environmentalism is invalid and the entire cause of environmentalism is suspect. Is that how this works?

Of course not, don't be silly:

1. Saying a person founded a group is not an attack, insulting them is.

2. The relationship between a vaccine stance and an environmental stance is weak, if existent at all. The relationship of a political advocacy group and a media outlet is pretty strong - that is "i have something to say and the tools to say it loudly and widely" is a common pattern among those with the means (religions, wealthy folks, political fringe groups, etc). It's not ad-hominem to say "this new MLM Bernie Madoff is promoting is very similar to the ponzi scheme he was previously convicted of" either.

3. It's not ad-hominem to declare that a persons actions are consistent with their stated goals - it's not an attack, nor is it an attempt at discrediting (or supporting) their position. It is ad-hominem to say "unrelated opinions about vaccines discredit this environmental opinion".

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

#196

Post by maratc »

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #150
maratc wrote: 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…

You might look into a completely a-political media outlets, like Discovery Channel on TV, or Tom's Hardware on the net. Is it a complete and utter crap compared to what it was 10-20 years ago? Absolutely. Was there any "government-corporate-media complex" involved in running them to the ground? Absolutely not. It's just that the "aliens at Nazis' service"/"best LED mice for gaming" — respectively — somehow generate more revenue (in TV/Google Ads sales) than the content these outlets ran in the past.

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

#197

Post by rchaud »

lynx23 wrote: post #61
somethoughts wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely feels like there should be a "law of headlines" coined to effect of - something must always either be surging catastrophically or plummeting disatrously.

The truth is, journalism has cratered. However, most are not ready to accept the truth, since they still believe the media are an essential part of democracy.

Are you taking issue with the facts reported in this article, or just taking a generalized swipe at outlets you don't like, and lumping it all under 'journalism'?

Without the reporters at the WSJ, your doctors could be making decisions on your care on the basis of Theranos blood tests.

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

#198

Post by rchaud »

refurb wrote: post #38
dalyons wrote: post #6

That’s a pretty manipulative graph. Show the pre pandemic spot rates! From the article “ Box-ship operators were among the biggest pandemic winners. Orders for imported goods began to climb in 2020 …” so why doesn’t it show 2020 then?

Nobody is interested to read an article an article that says “Container rates have returned to pre-pandemic numbers”. BORING So you just reduce your time scale and talk about the massive drop. I’m shocked they didn’t have a headline that said “If current price drops continue, by 2025 container rates will be negative!!”

The medium is the message. If you were reading the print version, it likely wouldn't have an editorialized headline. Those are often changed in the 24 hours after publication. But ink is forever.

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

#199

Post by lost_tourist »

Arkhaine_kupo wrote: post #121
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…

> 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…

That's a lot of accusations without even a small blurb article of support? Fox news has always been a profitable disaster since it's earliest days.

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

#200

Post by lost_tourist »

nonethewiser wrote: post #122
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.

Im not sure I follow… rates are the same as 4 years ago but operating costs are significantly higher. That seems genuinely difficult - if their rates dont keep up with inflation then its not a sustainable trend.

What were their rates 5, 6, and 7 years ago? what was their inflation adjust costs and profits over a decade? Did they just pluck out one year of data and say "that's what the profits we want to be making" if that year was a particularly prosperous year.
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