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There are no empties in the ports because all the spots to put containers are filled with full ones. In order to get empties back into the ports and onto ships

There are no empties in the ports because all the spots to put containers are filled with full ones. In order to get empties back into the ports and onto ships you need to do three things. 1. Get full containers out of ports to make room for empties 2. Bring empties back to port and queue them up 3. Unload a bunch of fulls and reload a bunch of empties onto every ship that comes into port Right now there's no room to store empties do they're being stored on trailers. Which means there are no trailers to unload full containers onto. So nothing is being unloaded. Deadlock.

thephyber 5y ago
I’ve also heard that ships are rushing back to Asia to chase high profits after unloading at US ports before they allow empty containers on the ship. I think we have mismatched incentives that allow something like Tragedy of the Commons.
- ta988 5y ago
  There are some systems that don't have a capacity for self-regulation, and this is not solved by believing really hard that if left alone they would. This will need intervention if we don't want to just burn money to let time solve it.
  - drak0n1c 5y ago
    Given that the described root cause is city port regulations and zoning ordinances, I don't see how such a deeply regulated and forcefully handicapped system is an argument against self-regulation. If anything, the opposite. Yes, the current mess of conflicting piecemeal regulations and dissonant incentives will need additional state intervention and reform to untangle ASAP - but that does not rule out the possibility of a future unencumbered self-regulated alternative potentially working better than the current route of incrementally adding context/dynamism-aware patches to the heavily and archaically regulated status quo.
    - lkbm 5y ago
      It doesn't sound like there's a single root cause. Yes, allowing for higher stacking expands the buffer, but proper coordination could have kept the buffer from hitting capacity in the first place, and is necessary to prevent the new, bigger buffer from filling up as well. As best I can tell, there's a memory leak, and we've "solved" it by doubling our RAM. We need to fix the leak before we hit deadlock again.
  - thephyber 5y ago
    Sorry. I didn’t mean to give off the vibe that I think this solves itself quickly. I see this as we are quickly approaching deadlock conditions. People are used to restarting a Windows box, but I’m pretty sure that only fixes deadlocks because RAM is (mostly) volatile. The physical containers (whether at ports or lots or warehouses or on ships or on rail cars) don’t disappear after we “restart” any part of the system. Without actively adjusting incentives, this looks like a downward spiral to me.

thephyber 5y ago

I’ve also heard that ships are rushing back to Asia to chase high profits after unloading at US ports before they allow empty containers on the ship. I think we have mismatched incentives that allow something like Tragedy of the Commons.

ta988 5y ago
There are some systems that don't have a capacity for self-regulation, and this is not solved by believing really hard that if left alone they would. This will need intervention if we don't want to just burn money to let time solve it.
- drak0n1c 5y ago
  Given that the described root cause is city port regulations and zoning ordinances, I don't see how such a deeply regulated and forcefully handicapped system is an argument against self-regulation. If anything, the opposite. Yes, the current mess of conflicting piecemeal regulations and dissonant incentives will need additional state intervention and reform to untangle ASAP - but that does not rule out the possibility of a future unencumbered self-regulated alternative potentially working better than the current route of incrementally adding context/dynamism-aware patches to the heavily and archaically regulated status quo.
  - lkbm 5y ago
    It doesn't sound like there's a single root cause. Yes, allowing for higher stacking expands the buffer, but proper coordination could have kept the buffer from hitting capacity in the first place, and is necessary to prevent the new, bigger buffer from filling up as well. As best I can tell, there's a memory leak, and we've "solved" it by doubling our RAM. We need to fix the leak before we hit deadlock again.
- thephyber 5y ago
  Sorry. I didn’t mean to give off the vibe that I think this solves itself quickly. I see this as we are quickly approaching deadlock conditions. People are used to restarting a Windows box, but I’m pretty sure that only fixes deadlocks because RAM is (mostly) volatile. The physical containers (whether at ports or lots or warehouses or on ships or on rail cars) don’t disappear after we “restart” any part of the system. Without actively adjusting incentives, this looks like a downward spiral to me.