Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations • Hacker News Board

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#141

Post by djbebs » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 8:55 PM UTC

sushsjsuauahab wrote: post #13

burlesona wrote: post #4

Zoning laws prevent stacking containers more than 2 high. FFS. Zoning as practiced in the US may be the most pervasive, banal evil in the country. It kills our GDP[1], is a major driver of racial inequity[2], increases wealth inequality[3], and creates car-dependency which has horrible public health impacts[4]. Yet somehow nearly no one in America is aware of this or concerned about it. I wish I understood why that i…

Well, I would be pretty angry if someone built a gigantic apartment complex next to my normal house, since I bought it on the impression I would not have that as a neighbor

Well, if you want to control what can be built in the land around you, you have a very simple solution.

Buy the land around you.

No need to restrict what others can do on their land or you on yours

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#142

Post by Robotbeat » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 8:56 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #132

destitude wrote: post #61

Why wasn't the federal government doing this? How hard would it have been for the new "shipping czar" to have gone down there and seen what at least one simple issue was and get it fixed?

Because US ports are run by private companies and not the federal government. The "Port of Long Beach" run by the local port authority is primarily a landlord. It's called capitalism.

I think the Port of Virginia is run by the State of Virginia and actually did pretty well. East Coast longshoreman unions are less insane than those on the West Coast.

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#143

Post by bobthepanda » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 8:57 PM UTC

codezero wrote: post #84

A little off topic, but these ports don’t usually store so many empty crates, so why do we have them now? Are we not exporting at the same rate? Is that even what empty crates are used for? I’m assuming they aren’t sent back to (mostly?) China empty. I read something about the prices to ship out of the US being very high, but isn’t the price coming in also similarly proportionally high, yet we still have a backlog of…

The demand became a lot more lopsided for several reasons:

* consumers were shifting spending from experiences that would've been COVID impacted (holiday travel, entertainment venues, restaurants) to online shopping

* industrial supply chains in Asia were the least impacted by COVID due to the relative lack of explosion in cases there compared to the rest of the world, so we are legitimately shipping more from there and exporting less

* a good chunk of the medical equipment that has been necessitated by COVID (e.g. masks) is made in Asia and that has made demand even more lopsided

* there was a ship backlog because COVID impacted how ships were getting unloaded, and at one point they weren't sending back ships with empty containers to reduce turnaround times, and now there are not enough containers in China and too many in the US.

Wendover Productions video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1JlYZQG3lI

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#144

Post by lumost » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 8:57 PM UTC

geoduck14 wrote: post #129

richwater wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are waking up and realizing that government is pretty useless for specific action. Our representatives would rather pontificate about vague niceties.

>People are waking up and realizing that government is pretty useless for specific action. Well, sure. The higher up you go, the less tactical (and more strategic) you become. You wouldn't want your CTO to launch code to production. You want her to make sure there is a plan to utilize CICD practices- that the ICs implement.

This comes in cycles, there are many famous ceos who made their name from rolling up their sleeves and working the lines.

If you have too many strategic thinkers you lose the ability to execute tactically, too many executors and you start building well optimized versions of the wrong thing.

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#145

Post by manquer » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 8:57 PM UTC

jdkee wrote: post #59

spothedog1 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine 2 empty parcels of land in downtown Manhattan, one can have a giant skyscraper of any height built on it and the other has to be a single family home. The parcel of land with no restrictions is going to be worth exponentially more because you can built a massively profitable structure on it, the other one is so regulated that it isn't worth any where near as much. The more profit you could derive from a parce…

So the opening scene to the Pixar movie, "Up"?

Yes it sucks for that guy, with one of best opening scenes of any cinema we cannot help feel bad for that guy. However economically it is bad for that city/country that he does not move.

We can of course choose to say we want quality of life over economic comforts modern economy offers, until our holiday shopping is stuck in the ports because of viewshed(!) regulations.

The cold truth is if only very rich do that it won't affect much, if however everyone also starts, the economy will suffer and eventually as a result of that quality of life will also drop, everything becomes expensive and industry/jobs go to places that don't restrict as much.

Look at Healthcare in U.S. for stark example, insurance(tied to employment!) or proper care is a luxury is out of reach of for many people, that on average citizens here actually may be getting poorer care than many other countries with poorer per capita GDP . The best in world research or care is possible in the U.S. what is the use if people cannot afford it ?

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#146

Post by orangesite » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 8:58 PM UTC

asplake wrote: post #83

And in the middle of all that, Theory of Constraints in a tweet: “When you're designing an operation you must choose your bottleneck. If the bottleneck appears somewhere that you didn't choose it, you aren't running an operation. It's running you.” https://twitter.com/typesfast/status/1451543795045183490?s=2...

Eli would have loved that thread…

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#147

Post by colinmhayes » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 8:58 PM UTC

stackedinserter wrote: post #86

throwaway984393 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yet somehow nearly no one in America is aware of this or concerned about it. I wish I understood why that is. Because people love zoning! NIMBY is the rallying cry at zoning board hearings, where whiny people who only care about themselves make sure those Chinese people don't put their stinky laundromats near our nice rich white neighborhood. It's the main reason zoning exists! Particularly the wealthy people who h…

> NIMBY is the rallying cry at zoning board hearings, where whiny people who only care about themselves make sure those Chinese people don't put their stinky laundromats near our nice rich white neighborhood. Yes some of prefer zoning to "mixed" and "diverse" neighborhoods. What's wrong with me not willing to see a laundromat or an office building next to my house? Or what's wrong with me willing to live in quiet fam…

Excessive zoning makes everyone poorer and is implemented by a local political elite who have power because they can afford to spend the most time on politics.

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#148

Post by Aunche » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 8:59 PM UTC

throwaway984393 wrote: post #32

spothedog1 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone built a gigantic apartment complex next to your house it would mean that the demand for housing in your neighborhood was massive and restricted by zoning. Your land value would skyrocket by allowing apartment buildings and you could take a huge pay day and move somewhere farther out from the city. You shouldn't get to halt US GDP growth in its tracks because you want to dictate what your neighbors do with…

In practice, people are pushed out of their homes because they can't afford to live in the neighborhood full of high rise apartments anymore, and they then struggle to make a living (much less find another place to live). It's funny that the GDP itself is prized over the people who are supposed to be the beneficiaries of an economy with a high GDP.

>It's funny that the GDP itself is prized over the people who are supposed to be the beneficiaries of an economy with a high GDP.

The GDP isn't a magical number that rises by making people suffer. It rises because NIMBYs are unable to force others to struggle by keeping them out of their economically advantageous land.

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#149

Post by lxgr » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 9:00 PM UTC

robocat wrote: post #124

kevingadd wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't fix anything, but it creates buffer space that can potentially be used to fix things that otherwise can't be fixed

Real-time 3D bufferbloat visualisation! https://netduma.com/blog/beginners-guide-to-bufferbloat/ uses traffic as the metaphor, but future articles will use shipping containers.

How is bufferbloat related to the situation at hand?

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#150

Post by twunde » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 9:00 PM UTC

aerosmile wrote: post #72

Everyone's focused on Ryan's comments about stacking, and the subsequent win there. Amazing job, Ryan, and thank you Robert Garcia for being a man to take one on the chin (for this solution not coming from your team) and for then doing the right thing. I am seriously impressed by not seeing any NIH (not invented here) behavior here. But why stop there? Ryan suggested 5 courses of actions, and made it clear that we ne…

The reason why the focus was on the first one is because that was the easiest and fastest to do (You only need local officials to sign off on it because its a temporary order and its also the simplest). 2 and 3 need the federal government to organize it, which as a large organization takes some time. 4 and 5 requires figuring out contract terms (who's paying whom, etc). These are much more complex and therefore will take more time. Oh and the tweetstorm was done on a Friday on the West Coast, so it takes some time to get the attention of decision makers on the east coast.