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

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

#201

Post by plemer »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #193
plemer wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Would you say there is a psychological dimension to all human behavior?

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

#202

Post by lkrubner »

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.

Journalism is essential to democracy. Without journalism, democracy must die. See here for details:

https://demodexio.substack.com/p/the-dangers-of-an-illiberal...

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

#203

Post by eru »

dandellion wrote: post #181
eru wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know how that index works? Is it inflation adjusted? (Does it even include price components that would need to be inflation adjusted?) https://www.balticexchange.com/en/data-services/market-infor... ostensibly has some information on the index, but it's hard to tell. If it's not inflation adjusted, then being on the 30 year nominal average is actually a substantial decline in real costs over time.

If the chart is not inflation adjusted it means it had been declining in real costs for the 27 previous years, so why is it only a problem now?

Oh, shippers complain from time to time about cost pressures. It's not a problem only now as far as I can tell.

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

#204

Post by eru »

nologic01 wrote: post #84
eru wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Contrary to popular opinion, investors are rather long sighted and forward looking Contrary to popular opinion investors are a very inhomogeneous crowd: From real economy investors, like the shipping company that tries to anticipate long-term global economic supply and demand patterns and orders massively expensive ships that will only be delivered years down the line, to bloomberg types or crypto speculators or HF…

Yes, there's all kinds of people in the market.

But those that anticipate the future correctly get rewarded with more money, so that over time the average dollar belongs to a smarter investor.

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

#205

Post by eru »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #167
eru wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 an…

Markets are 'anti-inductive'. See eg https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/h24JGbmweNpWZfBkM/markets-ar... for an explanation.

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

#206

Post by cj »

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…

I used to watch Vice News Tonight religiously and (at the time, at least) the quality on journalism was miles above CNN, Fox News, etc.

The main thing I remember about it (which may still be true today) is it was the only daily TV source of relatively unbiased reporting that includes world issues and isn't 100% focused on reporting within the USA.

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

#207

Post by mortify »

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.

This reminds me of people so religious that they cannot eat a hamburger without somehow referring to the Bible. It's not that everything cannot be political or religious. It's that some people insist that it be so.

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

#208

Post by eru »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #172
gambiting wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, I blame a lot of bad things that happened, specifically the slow recovery from the 2008 recession, on the Fed not doing enough QE!

(Seemingly) paradoxically, the big Fed balance sheet is also a consequence of not doing enough QE fast enough.

Of course, the Fed isn't responsible for everything. For example, the Fed has nothing to do with the Jones Act.

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

#209

Post by eru »

atomicnumber3 wrote: post #47
gambiting wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really understand what this implies?

It's a combination of the federal reserve both having bought lots of assets and also made a lot of money on the assets it's holding. It's a bit weird. The federal reserve made money on the assets it held in the 2008 crisis. (Buy low, sell high!)

Though more properly, you would need to look at the risk adjusted returns, instead of just the absolute returns.

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

#210

Post by lynx23 »

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, thats just wrong. "What I say is always relevant to you, no matter what you do" seems to be a new game in society, but that doesn't make it any more true. If I don't talk about politics, then my position is "I am totally unable to change anything, so I keep my mouth shut and save the energy for something positive."
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