An unexpected victory: container stacking at the port of Los Angeles • Hacker News Board

Re: An unexpected victory: container stacking at the port of Los Angeles

#51

Post by xxpor » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 4:24 PM UTC

conductr wrote: post #22

I followed this and from my understanding the changes while enacted quickly are still only temporary (rollback in 120 days). If that's the case, I'd like "them" to think about how this situation could have been avoided all together. I can't help but thinking about how all the Asian markets were having similar log jams due to economies reopening and the Suez issue months ago. Surely it was known (or, could have been k…

The problem is "them" in this case is the mayor of Long Beach. The people he worries about are the voters in Long Beach, who probably (given what we know about California...) complain very loudly about having to see container stacks. He has no incentive to care about things that the cities voters don't care about directly like... the global economy. I have to wonder if he got a very angry call from the White House telling him he'd better issue a suspension or he'd suddenly lose various federal funds.

The hyperlocalization of things like this in the US are the source of a lot of our problems IMO. We get stuck in local maxima that actually add up to terrible inefficiencies on the whole.

Re: An unexpected victory: container stacking at the port of Los Angeles

#52

Post by zitterbewegung » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 4:24 PM UTC

justinator wrote: post #39

OK so this is essentially a self-written news story that was manipulated to make it feel-good. That's bad . Also, now that I know I'm manipulated, I'm skeptical that the changes will have the outcome that they want. It could but it's not good that you've told me you've manipulated me. That's also bad .

Don’t worry you have joined the group. It is a right of passage on social networking and news sites. The next step is using what you have learned .

Re: An unexpected victory: container stacking at the port of Los Angeles

#53

Post by otterley » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 4:25 PM UTC

justinator wrote: post #39

OK so this is essentially a self-written news story that was manipulated to make it feel-good. That's bad . Also, now that I know I'm manipulated, I'm skeptical that the changes will have the outcome that they want. It could but it's not good that you've told me you've manipulated me. That's also bad .

If the solution proves effective, will you change your mind, or will you simply remain forever outraged that you didn't like how the story was told?

Re: An unexpected victory: container stacking at the port of Los Angeles

#54

Post by jkelleyrtp » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 4:25 PM UTC

aeternum wrote: post #29

parsimo2010 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were supposedly trucks that couldn’t be loaded because they had no place to get rid of the empty container they currently had. So truck loading rate was low, not because of the speed of the workers and cranes, but because of the availability of the trucks. So this is supposed to allow the truck loading rate to go up by making it easier for trucks to become available. I don’t know if that will happen, but this i…

Increasing a buffer size can also make it look like the problem is solved temporarily when you really have a rate issue. It seems that filled containers are coming in at a faster rate than empty containers are going out. We've increased the buffer for empty containers at the dock but did we address the outgoing rate problem? Why wouldn't the buffer just fill again? I wonder if we've reached a point where manufacturin…

The increased buffer size gives more time to solve the rate issue before a catastrophic meltdown with inflationary pricing, civil unrest, etc.

Re: An unexpected victory: container stacking at the port of Los Angeles

#55

Post by yunohn » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 4:25 PM UTC

justinator wrote: post #39

OK so this is essentially a self-written news story that was manipulated to make it feel-good. That's bad . Also, now that I know I'm manipulated, I'm skeptical that the changes will have the outcome that they want. It could but it's not good that you've told me you've manipulated me. That's also bad .

While you could argue that Flexport did this for their own benefit, I think the outcome is still incredibly useful to the general public. Further, nobody is faking the quick turnaround in removing the rule - that actually happened.

Re: An unexpected victory: container stacking at the port of Los Angeles

#56

Post by unethical_ban » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 4:26 PM UTC

ncmncm wrote: post #30

Two points: First, negative feedback is good . The problem here was a case of positive feedback, which are always bad . This Ryan person might be helping in the one crisis, but he has just installed a thousand new timebombs. Second, the reason NYT has nothing about this is that NYT editors tell its reporters to find stories that seem to illustrate what the editors want said. NYT is not really interested in what is ac…

If you're suggesting the NYTimes acts differently than other newspapers of record (i.e. decent sources of news) I would be interested in more details.

Re: An unexpected victory: container stacking at the port of Los Angeles

#57

Post by xxpor » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 4:27 PM UTC

_jal wrote: post #20

thrower123 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to think that if we declared a state of emergency, suspended all regulations and deployed a couple battalions of Seabees we could still build a port in a matter of months, rather than years. I'd like to think we still have those kinds of capabilities if they were needed, but I'm increasingly not sure that we actually do.

If you can develop the political will to treat the citizens of LA like we did the Iraqis in the second Gulf adventure, sure. Just suspend the rule of law and send in Bechtel behind a bunch of guns.

The feds wouldn't have to follow CEQA if they didn't want to. The whole supremacy clause and all that.

Re: An unexpected victory: container stacking at the port of Los Angeles

#58

Post by ncmncm » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 4:27 PM UTC

slobiwan wrote: post #31

bhy wrote: post #17

From what I heard, the real issue is the ships are not bringing these containers back, because: 1. there's not so much good for US to export (volume-wise); 2. shipping price is so high that to save time, ships do not wait to load empty containers. As long as US has a net import of containers, whatever buffer created will be filled up soon.

That's the popular consensus here in LA, it's cheaper to discard the containers than to ship them back empty (and nobody at the receiving end wants enough of what we have to make it worth sending them back full). However I drive through the port area frequently and always see containers stacked well above the 2-high limit. I suppose that means they are not empty containers? There definitely has to be some alternate u…

Make a rule that a ship is not allowed to leave with fewer containers than it drops. Containers may be full or empty, their choice.

Re: An unexpected victory: container stacking at the port of Los Angeles

#59

Post by Alex3917 » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 4:27 PM UTC

Great post. I more or less assumed this is what had happened, but great to see it written up.

On one hand, the fact that you need to go through this kind of song and dance to get anything done is probably yet another good indicator that America is deep into an irreversible decline. One the other hand, it's great to see this kind of well-document contemporaneous analysis of what good change making actually entails right now, something that's not only interesting and useful currently, and will surely be of interest to folks long into the future.

Like maybe being right was never enough to get things done at any point in history, but the amount of hoops you currently need to jump through in addition to being right seems deeply pathological.

Re: An unexpected victory: container stacking at the port of Los Angeles

#60

Post by joshgachnang » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 4:27 PM UTC

aeternum wrote: post #29

parsimo2010 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were supposedly trucks that couldn’t be loaded because they had no place to get rid of the empty container they currently had. So truck loading rate was low, not because of the speed of the workers and cranes, but because of the availability of the trucks. So this is supposed to allow the truck loading rate to go up by making it easier for trucks to become available. I don’t know if that will happen, but this i…

Increasing a buffer size can also make it look like the problem is solved temporarily when you really have a rate issue. It seems that filled containers are coming in at a faster rate than empty containers are going out. We've increased the buffer for empty containers at the dock but did we address the outgoing rate problem? Why wouldn't the buffer just fill again? I wonder if we've reached a point where manufacturin…

On a long enough timeframe and nothing else changing, yes it would just fill up. Realistically, it gives them breathing room to get the rest of the rate up.

I am curious what the costs of making a new container and recycling the old instead of shipping them back is. Trade isn't symmetrical. I assume shipping them back is cheap because otherwise the ships are going back nearly empty, so it's almost free to ship them back.