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Huh? The Jones Act was supposed to help American shipbuilding. It's a requirement that vessels which operate between US ports must be made in the US, crewed by

Huh? The Jones Act was supposed to help American shipbuilding. It's a requirement that vessels which operate between US ports must be made in the US, crewed by the US, and flagged to the US. It didn't help much, but that was the plan. China's shipbuilding industry is so big that their aircraft carriers are being constructed by shipyards that make large cargo ships. Aerial photos show shipyards with drydocks full of cargo ships, with an warship or two mixed in. US warships are mostly built by Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock, and the Bath Iron Works, which don't make civilian ships. There's little economy of scale in US warship construction. Some years ago, the head of Newport News told Congress that if they'd order two carriers at the same time, the company would throw in a third one for free. Congress declined the offer. The PLAN now has more warships than the US Navy. Fewer carriers, but that's being fixed. China's carriers are getting better. The type 001 carrier was a refurbished Russian carrier. The type 002 was a smaller ski-jump carrier. The type 003 was comparable to the US Kitty Hawk class. Whether the next carrier will be nuclear powered hasn't been announced.

rm445 2y ago
> It's a requirement that vessels which operate between US ports must be made in the US, crewed by the US, and flagged to the US. The everything-bagel approach. One of those requirements incentivises US shipbuilding, the other two incentivise other things. Seems like the net effect was less US shipbuilding and a smaller US-flagged fleet. Given those effects, it doesn't seem likely to have increased the number of US merchant seamen either.
- lesuorac 2y ago
  I don't see much reason to believe that any ship built because of the Jones Act would've been built in the US in absence of the Jones Act. So, you really need to show that without the Jones Act that more ships would've been built in the US as opposed to showing that shipbuilding in the US has decreased. It's like betting on Black for a roulette wheel versus betting on a specific number. You're still going to lose money but you lose the money slower by betting on black than a specific number. You need to show that betting on black loses money faster than a specific number to demonstrate that the Jones Act isn't furthering it's goal.
  - rm445 2y ago
    Fair enough, I'm not able to evaluate counterfactuals in American maritime law. But on the roulette analogy, I reckon the everything-bagel approach gives you a healthy edge against the house and is well worth betting against.
  - jjk166 2y ago
    > I don't see much reason to believe that any ship built because of the Jones Act would've been built in the US in absence of the Jones Act. No ships were built because of the jones act, that's the problem. The jones act required people to do B if they wanted to do A, so they stopped doing A. A is intercoastal shipping. Nothing in the jones act encouraged B besides the opportunity to do A. In your roulette example, the example isn't between a specific number and black. It's the jones act is playing roulette versus the non-jones act where you don't. Are you guaranteed to not have lost money by some other means if you never played roulette? No. But roulette is a game that provably loses over the long run, and so we should stop playing it.
raverbashing 2y ago
> The Jones Act was supposed to help American shipbuilding Yes And this is what happens. Naive protectionism 101
- poisonarena 2y ago
  chuckling to myself in my bed while reading this comment after working 12 hours on my oil tanker today. I am an OS in the SIU and i spend every night reading a little HN to motivate me to finish my software hobby projects so i can escape this hell
  - walthamstow 2y ago
    More power to you mate. I knew nothing when I first came here, now I've been a working SWE for 5 years.
  - themaninthedark 2y ago
    Good luck! My brother is a Merchant Mariner, I think he is a First Mate now...he gets way better pay than I do but the working hours sound terrible. The shit that you guys went through with COVID with the extended rotations was hell.
themaninthedark 2y ago
There is a group of people who are convinced that the Jones Act is bad, either they have been mislead or another reason. From that, there is a shortcut to the reasoning that occurs: Intercostal shipping is expensive : Jones Act's fault Can't build ships fast enough : Jones Act's fault Ships are expensive ; Jones Act's fault The things that the Jones Act mandates are that: Shipping between American ports must be done on American built, owned and crewed. For example, they will claim that foreign ships can't deliver to Hawaii or Porto Rico and that is why things are expensive there. However: ...although ships can offload cargo and proceed to the contiguous U.S. without picking up any additional cargo intended for delivery to another U.S. location... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Marine_Act_of_1920#Effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Marine_Act_of_1920#Ef... So it is possible for a ship from say China to deliver to Hawaii or Porto Rico, they are just not allowed to pick up cargo to deliver to the US from there. They will claim with one breath, American labor is too expensive and then turn around and say that we would have a ship building boom if only we didn't mandate that we build ships. I would agree that American labor is expensive, it is easy to lower costs when you have a LCOL area, don't care about worker protections and don't care about environmental effects.
- spacemanspiff01 2y ago
  My impression was that most opposition to the jones act was that it has not really worked, and as a side effect drastically reduced the intra-us shipping industry. Without the jones act, we would not have a ship building boom, but we probably would have more intra-US shipping via ship/rivers/etc.
  - themaninthedark 2y ago
    I agree, without the Jones Act we would have much more inter-coastal shipping but that was not what the grandparent was claiming: >This will never succeed because the economies of scale are nonexistent without >dominance in the commercial shipbuilding market. War planners should have >pushed to repeal the Jones Act decades ago, From another discussion on the topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33263176 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33263176 >>The Jones Act, and the reduction in demand that it triggered, hasn’t prevented >>and in fact probably caused—the closure of 300 domestic shipyards since the >>early 1980s. and from comments: >The problem is, the Jones Act has harmed our shipbuilding capacity as well. >According to the artcle our ship building capacity is 1% of China's and US >built ships cost 6-8 times as much. That's not helpful. So there is this narrative that if we just get rid of the restrictions, suddenly we will become competitive. In another thread, someone mentioned that we just had an election between a TV personality and the other a fake persona : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42931904 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42931904 and how we need to stop electing elites. That in a nutshell is why Trump was able to win, he is not viewed as an elite and everything he sets out to do, the elites are screaming "THAT WON"T WORK!!!". 3 years ago, the same establishment types were saying "No inflation", "Well...transitory inflation" to "Well, the rate of inflation is back to where we set our targets" and "GDP is at the highest levels ever!" while everyone is asking if we are stepping into a recession. I don't agree with a lot of what he is doing, however I do agree that we need to do something different. Our previous leaders and policy makers set us on a path where labor is not valued, unions are despised and greed is good. You can't run a society without labor and protections(both for workers and environmental) and a strict focus on wealth alone leads you to a desolate place.

rm445 2y ago

> It's a requirement that vessels which operate between US ports must be made in the US, crewed by the US, and flagged to the US. The everything-bagel approach. One of those requirements incentivises US shipbuilding, the other two incentivise other things. Seems like the net effect was less US shipbuilding and a smaller US-flagged fleet. Given those effects, it doesn't seem likely to have increased the number of US merchant seamen either.

lesuorac 2y ago
I don't see much reason to believe that any ship built because of the Jones Act would've been built in the US in absence of the Jones Act. So, you really need to show that without the Jones Act that more ships would've been built in the US as opposed to showing that shipbuilding in the US has decreased. It's like betting on Black for a roulette wheel versus betting on a specific number. You're still going to lose money but you lose the money slower by betting on black than a specific number. You need to show that betting on black loses money faster than a specific number to demonstrate that the Jones Act isn't furthering it's goal.
- rm445 2y ago
  Fair enough, I'm not able to evaluate counterfactuals in American maritime law. But on the roulette analogy, I reckon the everything-bagel approach gives you a healthy edge against the house and is well worth betting against.
- jjk166 2y ago
  > I don't see much reason to believe that any ship built because of the Jones Act would've been built in the US in absence of the Jones Act. No ships were built because of the jones act, that's the problem. The jones act required people to do B if they wanted to do A, so they stopped doing A. A is intercoastal shipping. Nothing in the jones act encouraged B besides the opportunity to do A. In your roulette example, the example isn't between a specific number and black. It's the jones act is playing roulette versus the non-jones act where you don't. Are you guaranteed to not have lost money by some other means if you never played roulette? No. But roulette is a game that provably loses over the long run, and so we should stop playing it.

raverbashing 2y ago

> The Jones Act was supposed to help American shipbuilding Yes And this is what happens. Naive protectionism 101

poisonarena 2y ago
chuckling to myself in my bed while reading this comment after working 12 hours on my oil tanker today. I am an OS in the SIU and i spend every night reading a little HN to motivate me to finish my software hobby projects so i can escape this hell
- walthamstow 2y ago
  More power to you mate. I knew nothing when I first came here, now I've been a working SWE for 5 years.
- themaninthedark 2y ago
  Good luck! My brother is a Merchant Mariner, I think he is a First Mate now...he gets way better pay than I do but the working hours sound terrible. The shit that you guys went through with COVID with the extended rotations was hell.

themaninthedark 2y ago

There is a group of people who are convinced that the Jones Act is bad, either they have been mislead or another reason. From that, there is a shortcut to the reasoning that occurs: Intercostal shipping is expensive : Jones Act's fault Can't build ships fast enough : Jones Act's fault Ships are expensive ; Jones Act's fault The things that the Jones Act mandates are that: Shipping between American ports must be done on American built, owned and crewed. For example, they will claim that foreign ships can't deliver to Hawaii or Porto Rico and that is why things are expensive there. However: ...although ships can offload cargo and proceed to the contiguous U.S. without picking up any additional cargo intended for delivery to another U.S. location... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Marine_Act_of_1920#Effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Marine_Act_of_1920#Ef... So it is possible for a ship from say China to deliver to Hawaii or Porto Rico, they are just not allowed to pick up cargo to deliver to the US from there. They will claim with one breath, American labor is too expensive and then turn around and say that we would have a ship building boom if only we didn't mandate that we build ships. I would agree that American labor is expensive, it is easy to lower costs when you have a LCOL area, don't care about worker protections and don't care about environmental effects.

spacemanspiff01 2y ago
My impression was that most opposition to the jones act was that it has not really worked, and as a side effect drastically reduced the intra-us shipping industry. Without the jones act, we would not have a ship building boom, but we probably would have more intra-US shipping via ship/rivers/etc.
- themaninthedark 2y ago
  I agree, without the Jones Act we would have much more inter-coastal shipping but that was not what the grandparent was claiming: >This will never succeed because the economies of scale are nonexistent without >dominance in the commercial shipbuilding market. War planners should have >pushed to repeal the Jones Act decades ago, From another discussion on the topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33263176 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33263176 >>The Jones Act, and the reduction in demand that it triggered, hasn’t prevented >>and in fact probably caused—the closure of 300 domestic shipyards since the >>early 1980s. and from comments: >The problem is, the Jones Act has harmed our shipbuilding capacity as well. >According to the artcle our ship building capacity is 1% of China's and US >built ships cost 6-8 times as much. That's not helpful. So there is this narrative that if we just get rid of the restrictions, suddenly we will become competitive. In another thread, someone mentioned that we just had an election between a TV personality and the other a fake persona : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42931904 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42931904 and how we need to stop electing elites. That in a nutshell is why Trump was able to win, he is not viewed as an elite and everything he sets out to do, the elites are screaming "THAT WON"T WORK!!!". 3 years ago, the same establishment types were saying "No inflation", "Well...transitory inflation" to "Well, the rate of inflation is back to where we set our targets" and "GDP is at the highest levels ever!" while everyone is asking if we are stepping into a recession. I don't agree with a lot of what he is doing, however I do agree that we need to do something different. Our previous leaders and policy makers set us on a path where labor is not valued, unions are despised and greed is good. You can't run a society without labor and protections(both for workers and environmental) and a strict focus on wealth alone leads you to a desolate place.