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Why billions of dollars of goods are stuck at sea

economist.com

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Re: Why billions of dollars of goods are stuck at sea

#181

Post by zrail »

chii wrote: post #165
GavinMcG wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The officers, at the very least, would be criminally liable.

how can it be criminal when it's not you who instigated the issue in the first place? It should be criminal on the upper management imho.

There's nothing a captain can do about a bankrupt company. There is definitely a lot a captain can do about a ship that they've been given exclusive control over. That's part of being a captain: your sole responsibility is to get the ship where it's supposed to go without running into things or sinking or injuring the crew.

Re: Why billions of dollars of goods are stuck at sea

#182

Post by butbroski »

bbcbasic wrote: post #149
CamperBob2 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus, free boat! Nothing free about boats. Best two days of your life: the day you buy a boat, and the day you sell it.

If it flies or floats, better to rent it.

You missed another f word in that list.

Paying a prostitute can be cheaper than marrying and then divorcing.

Re: Why billions of dollars of goods are stuck at sea

#183

Post by butbroski »

PeterisP wrote: post #179
foobarian wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But suppose they ran out of food. And suppose there was no shuttle from the ship due to owner going bankrupt. I think they could probably call a mayday signal and get rescued by some other vessel.

They can and will obtain supplies and food at no cost (essentially, with the ship and cargo as collateral) but they can't really abandon it. Do note that calling mayday gives the rescuing vessel significant rights to the ship and cargo. If your ship is not at risk of sinking, that would be a really expensive way to solve a comparably minor problem, ordering a daily helicopter delivery from the closest McDonalds would…

What happens to the ship isn't really the crew's problem.

Eating? Paying rent? These are the crew's problem. You can't seriously expect them to prioritize the employer that isn't paying/feeding them over their own well-being.

Re: Why billions of dollars of goods are stuck at sea

#184

Post by PeterisP »

butbroski wrote: post #183
PeterisP wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can and will obtain supplies and food at no cost (essentially, with the ship and cargo as collateral) but they can't really abandon it. Do note that calling mayday gives the rescuing vessel significant rights to the ship and cargo. If your ship is not at risk of sinking, that would be a really expensive way to solve a comparably minor problem, ordering a daily helicopter delivery from the closest McDonalds would…

What happens to the ship isn't really the crew's problem. Eating? Paying rent? These are the crew's problem. You can't seriously expect them to prioritize the employer that isn't paying/feeding them over their own well-being.

It is their problem; they will get paid in full by staying on ship (no matter what happens to their employer) but will forfeit that pay by abandoning the ship, and for the officers, there is the abovementioned criminal liability if the abandoned ship causes any harm (e.g. by leaking chemicals from cargo).

Re: Why billions of dollars of goods are stuck at sea

#185

Post by michaelt »

mjevans wrote: post #175
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Business X has ten containers on a ship. The ship has 4000 containers on it. Should Business X pay to unload the whole ship? That seems rather burdensome. Should Business X pay to just unload their own containers? But containers are in large stacks on the ship; it is improbable that the containers they want are all on top. They'd have to unload at least some others to get the ones they want. Should Business X join wi…

The obvious solution is to agree that any receiving containers from the ship owe an equitable sized fee based on their fraction of all the containers. Also to charge creditors that 'arrest' a ship the mooring fee for the port (since they're the ones demanding it stays there). The ship, any unclaimed cargo, and any unclaimed containers, would then be fire-sold with the base price of the remaining debt for that ship an…

If it's allowed to sell unclaimed cargo, doesn't that create an incentive to jack up all the unloading fees?

I mean, if I pay $1,000 to ship my $30,000 car, what's stopping the port from saying they want $20,000 to give it to me?

Re: Why billions of dollars of goods are stuck at sea

#186

Post by fennecfoxen »

vit05 wrote: post #77

We have overcapacity that could lead to the formation of cartels if profit margins remain small. We need more companies in this game, not less, but with overcapacity, who would like to join?

> We need more companies in this game, not less

Unsupported assertion. There are both positive and negative aspects to more companies. Consolidation isn't just profitable because it turns an industry into a cartel, but because there are real economies of scales in some industries, especially logistics. This could go either way.

> with overcapacity, who would like to join?

No one needs to join until the overcapacity goes away, do they?

Re: Why billions of dollars of goods are stuck at sea

#187

Post by fennecfoxen »

gbin wrote: post #131

What about this idea of a business plan ? buy 5 of those ships very cheap, get rid of/deliver the goods, merge them in international waters nearby San Francisco, make a top notch/self sustaining mix of offices and Corp housing on top of them. Anybody could work there waiting for their H1B or just simply contracting or bootstrapping their companies.

You know what would probably be both cheaper (in terms of capex and opex) and also more convenient than welding a few old cargo boats together? Building this office park on land, in Gilroy. There's a train line down there and everything - bet it'd be cheaper to bribe Caltrain to beef up the service than to set up transportation to the open ocean.

Re: Why billions of dollars of goods are stuck at sea

#189

Post by lmm »

aninhumer wrote: post #174
Animats wrote: post #59

This is a mess because Hanjin's top management was in denial about the possibility of bankruptcy. Just like the typical startup. They've been trying for months to get a bailout deal from somebody, anybody - a merger, loans, their parent chaebol, their stockholders (Korean Air is the largest), or the S. Korean government. Everybody turned them down. There's too much container ship capacity right now; nobody needed Han…

I don't know that much about accounting, but isn't this the exact kind of situation insurance is supposed to smooth over? I'd imagine in many cases, the cost of solving the problems caused by not being able to pay fees is going to be higher than the fees themselves. So are there not insurers who benefit from paying these fees, rather than paying out larger claims later?

It's a classic tragedy of the commons. If all their creditors let them unload in an orderly fashion, they'll get a better return on what they're owed (making a complete guess at some numbers, maybe 30% instead of 20%). But if one creditor can sieze a ship they might be able to get back 100% of what they were owed, and screw the other guys.

The way this is supposed to be solved is bankruptcy protection; no-one can claim their specific debts, the administrator will figure out the best way to get as much money as possible and distribute it equally. I suspect the problems in this case are mostly caused by the international aspect: Korea may recognize a bankruptcy but that doesn't necessarily mean all the ports around the world do. I'd guess that international bankruptcies are probably rare enough that the system hasn't really been ironed out yet.

I'm not sure where insurance comes into it?

Re: Why billions of dollars of goods are stuck at sea

#190

Post by dredmorbius »

grapehut wrote: post #143

FWIW the person you're replying to represents everything that is bad about HN. If you read his post history you'd be lead to believe he's an industry insider in: Shipping, Irrigation, Crypto Currencies, Genetics, Nano Technology, Manufacturing, Microkernels and a lot more if you keep going back. There was a time I believed his posts, until I read one of his mini-essays on a topic I happened to know about (cryptograph…

Animats (John Nagle) is a long-time SV type, bright (founded his own company, has a few patents), and has interests in a bunch of areas. Apparently reads and thinks a fair bit.

He's not representing himself as an insider. Most of what I've seen checks out fairly well, and he's got a maturity and insight I wish were more frequently found here. He's not infallible, and doesn't portray himself as such. Few of us are.

Some background from earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9048947

Your comments are quite uncharitable.

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