Supply Chain Crisis: Christmas canceled due to no inventory

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Supply Chain Crisis: Christmas canceled due to no inventory

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Toebone: Jul 1, 2002; Start remembering what you hear.

My Aldi had a freezer full of Butterballs for $0.79/lb

# ? Nov 23, 2021 23:59

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# ? Apr 26, 2024 13:02

Bottom Liner: Feb 15, 2006; a specific vein of lasagna

mmm deep fried butter balls

# ? Nov 24, 2021 00:03

Owlofcreamcheese: May 22, 2005; Can't post for 9 years!; Buglord

Freakazoid_ posted:

I went out of my way to get a local sourced turkey and it still only cost me $1.99lb.

I've eaten a lot of wild turkey and I'll say that there is a lot of meat I'll go to bat for the "real" version (store-bought chicken tastes like wet cardboard) but turkey is the one where the weird factory mutants are just superior in every way.

# ? Nov 24, 2021 00:39

KillHour: Oct 28, 2007

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

I've eaten a lot of wild turkey and I'll say that there is a lot of meat I'll go to bat for the "real" version (store-bought chicken tastes like wet cardboard) but turkey is the one where the weird factory mutants are just superior in every way.

I don't know how you could be more wrong. White meat sucks. Wild turkey is where it's at.

# ? Nov 24, 2021 01:25

sinburger: Sep 10, 2006; *hurk*

So chiming in from BC, Canada. I'm in the lower mainland region that got completely cut off from the rest of the country due to flooding taking out every highway, railway, and road out of here.

We have a non mandatory 30L limit on pumping gas in some areas, ground beef is in short supply, and I cannot find Hawkins brand Cheesies anywhere in town. That's all so far in terms of impacts.

# ? Nov 24, 2021 03:19

IT BURNS: Nov 19, 2012

sinburger posted:

So chiming in from BC, Canada. I'm in the lower mainland region that got completely cut off from the rest of the country due to flooding taking out every highway, railway, and road out of here.

We have a non mandatory 30L limit on pumping gas in some areas, ground beef is in short supply, and I cannot find Hawkins brand Cheesies anywhere in town. That's all so far in terms of impacts.

Have a friend in Vancouver I need to check on, apparently the city is cut off from the rest of Canada, gently caress.

# ? Nov 24, 2021 13:29

Owlofcreamcheese: May 22, 2005; Can't post for 9 years!; Buglord

IT BURNS posted:

Have a friend in Vancouver I need to check on, apparently the city is cut off from the rest of Canada, gently caress.

Vancouver is canada's largest port. So it's vancouver that is cut off but for stuff it's more the rest of canada saying "how the heck am I supposed to get stuff now?"

# ? Nov 24, 2021 13:33

Toebone: Jul 1, 2002; Start remembering what you hear.

I go through a lot of Wild Turkey whenever my family visits for the holidays as well

# ? Nov 24, 2021 14:54

sinburger: Sep 10, 2006; *hurk*

IT BURNS posted:

Have a friend in Vancouver I need to check on, apparently the city is cut off from the rest of Canada, gently caress.

Yea, I live just north up the highway from Vancouver, and am in the same isolation zone as your friend. The Lower Mainland is Vancouver + the surrounding cities and towns for around 50-100 km.

We're fine. We have one of the biggest ports in the country, and road access to the US required minimal repairs so we can still get goods from you guys.

It's interesting because where we do see shortages indicates what we were getting produced in country and trucked in from the east. Like those drat Cheesies.

# ? Nov 24, 2021 16:50

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

quote:

Thirty-thousand high-end snow globes are trapped in San Pedro Bay, split between two shipping containers on two ships in the idle flotilla offshore.

One ship arrived in late September; the other in late October. They�ve been stuck at anchor ever since.

Liz Ross, co-founder of CoolSnowGlobes, says that at this point in the season, all is lost. Her snow globes � representing $1.5 million in sales � needed to get to customers before the holidays.

But Wan Hai Lines Ltd., the Taiwanese shipping corporation that owns those vessels, is making a record profit this year. So is every major ocean shipping company, trucking company and warehouse company, as consumer demand has led to a 20% jump in imports.

The supply chain, defined as the system of moving goods from factories and farms to end consumers, is tied into knots and failing to deliver. But supply chain companies, each a private entity that hopes to make as much money as possible out of the surge in consumer demand, are having their best year ever. At the moment, that means there�s little financial incentive to resolve the supply chain crisis quickly.

�Right now consumers are screaming because they don�t have the product and the price is going up,� said Christopher S. Tang, a distinguished professor at the UCLA Anderson School of Management who studies supply chains, �but the big players are quietly happy.�

This begins on the boat.

Most imports come to the U.S. in shipping containers, and just nine shipping companies control 80% of all global container shipping. Those companies have further consolidated into three major alliances � 2M, Transport High Efficiency Alliance and the Ocean Alliance � in the last decade, giving them unprecedented power in the market.

�To a certain extent they�ve become a cartel,� Tang said. �There�s not that much competition, so they can jack up the price more.�

A look at San Pedro Bay, where dozens of ships have been idling for weeks, might give the impression that these companies are under duress. How can having $100-million ships tied up at anchor be good for the bottom line?

The shipping companies� financial reports show that they�re finding a way. A.P. Moller-Maersk, the Copenhagen-based shipping giant, is on track to make more than $16 billion in profit in 2021 � three times as much money as its previous best year ever in 2014, and the most profit ever booked by any company in Danish history. Cosco Shipping, the Shanghai-based company that competes with Maersk for the top spot in the industry, made $12.6 billion in profit from container shipping in the first nine months of 2021, and reported that its revenue had doubled since 2020, thanks to the supply chain squeeze.

Wan Hai Lines, which is not in one of the major alliances, booked $2.48 billion in profit in the first nine months of 2021, 19 times what it made in the same period last year. Taken as a whole, the ocean shipping industry is on track to make more profit in 2021 than it has in the last decade.

The main source of this skyrocketing revenue is freight fees. In 2019, shipping a container from China to the West Coast cost less than $2,000, on average. At the height of the logistics crunch this summer, rates soared above $20,000 for that same container, before falling below $15,000 in the latter half of November. Demand went up, supply went down as backlogs grew, and prices surged.

Customers such as Liz Ross pay the shipping companies upfront. In previous years, those companies had a financial incentive to unload their ships as quickly as possible to free up capacity for more voyages. But the eight- to tenfold increase in prices means that a carrier can double its revenue even at 20% capacity. With that amount of money coming in, idle ships at ports such as those in Los Angeles and Long Beach barely scratch the bottom line � and in fact might prove good for business, if they mean that the companies can keep prices high, Tang said.

The ocean carriers also make money from the pileup of containers on the docks. After a container sits at the terminal for a certain number of days, shipping companies begin charging end customers a rental fee for using their box, a charge called demurrage in the industry. On the other side, once a trucker picks up a container and delivers its contents to a customer, the shipping companies also start charging the trucker a late fee, known as detention, if the trucker fails to return the empty container within a certain time frame.

At the ports of L.A. and Long Beach, so many empty containers have piled up that the shipping companies often won�t allow truckers to return their empty containers but continue to charge detention fees. Truckers are then stuck with a rising detention tab and an empty container on their trailer, which means they can�t go pick up a new import container and get paid for a new job. So the pile of import containers grows, and the only players with the power to remove the empty shipping containers to free up space � the shipping companies � have little incentive to do so expediently.

The ports themselves are owned by the cities of L.A. and Long Beach, respectively, but local governments have few levers at their disposal to change the behavior of private multinational shipping companies. The ports only serve as landlords to the private terminal companies that operate the docks, many of which are partly or wholly owned by the shipping companies and rely on them for their income.

In an attempt to change the financial incentives at play, port officials in October voted in a new fee on containers idling at terminals that could amount to millions in extra charges for the ocean carriers. Port leaders have delayed the fee�s implementation, but cargo has been moving off the docks more quickly in recent weeks.

The federal government has turned its attention to the ocean carriers but has not taken any regulatory action as of yet. The Biden administration signed an executive order in July encouraging the U.S. Federal Maritime Commission to investigate �exorbitant fees� charged by the ocean carriers. A recent White House blog post raised the idea of using antitrust laws to regulate the industry and called on Congress to support expanding the commission�s budget to meet the regulatory task.

While port truckers, many of whom are independent contractors, have been suffering under the fees and container logjam at the docks, other major players along the supply chain have been reaping profit bonanzas in the supply chain crisis.

DHL�s supply chain business and Kuehne & Nagel, two of the world�s largest freight-forwarding companies, have both more than doubled their profits this year in their core businesses. Profits at major truckers such as Saia Inc., Schneider National Inc., Old Dominion Freight Line Inc. and J.B. Hunt Transport Inc. have soared in 2021, even with fuel and labor costs on the rise, with many on track to earn nearly double the pre-pandemic profits of 2019. C.H. Robinson Worldwide Inc., one of the country�s largest warehouse and logistics companies, booked $614 million in profit in the first nine months of 2021, up from $477 million in the same period in 2019, a nearly 30% jump.

Big companies have always had the advantage of scale, said Senthil Veeraraghavan, a professor of operations, information and decisions at the University of Pennsylvania�s Wharton business school. But now that capacity across the supply chain is stretched to the limit, �the first guys to get squeezed are people who put in small orders.�

The last 20 years have seen an explosion of online direct-to-consumer brands and small e-commerce businesses, such as Ross� snow globe company, that rely on imports, while the back end of the supply chain has tended toward consolidation. �These aren�t centralized systems, there�s thousands of companies with millions of people doing their own things,� Veeraraghavan said, and it worked to a point, with small importers placing orders more than six months out to get deliveries in time for the holidays. �Then it all collapsed at the same time.�

�Year after year we talk about how a little bit of variation in the supply chain propagates all over the spectrum,� Veeraraghavan said, �and unlike financial volatility, where stocks move up and down almost instantaneously, this is like a ripple in molasses.�

As the demand for imports ebbs in early 2022, freight prices are likely to continue to fall. Companies that tried to expand to meet demand will find themselves with excess capacity on their hands and suffer the financial consequences. The companies that embraced the crunch, delivered goods late and charged high prices can settle into a soft landing at pre-crisis rates.

That�s little solace to Ross. She spent 20 years building up her snow globe company from a hobby to a $2.5-million-a-year business, making custom products for clients such as Yves St. Laurent and the Museum of Modern Art. She spent the last three months anxiously watching the bulk of her orders � and it was a strong year for orders � sit stranded a mile offshore.

�We�ll be here next year,� she said, hoping to break even on her inventory over the course of 2022. �But it�s a smack in the face.�

From the LA Times

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-11-26/the-supply-chain-crisis-is-great-news-for-logistics-companies

# ? Nov 30, 2021 01:07

Goatse James Bond: Mar 28, 2010; If you see me posting please remind me that I have Charlie Work in the reports forum to do instead

That's goddamn appalling for everybody except the big shipping companies. Snowglobe lady is the human interest centerpiece but honestly I'm more horrified about the truckers.

# ? Nov 30, 2021 01:10

Bar Ran Dun: Jan 22, 2006

GreyjoyBastard posted:

That's goddamn appalling for everybody except the big shipping companies. Snowglobe lady is the human interest centerpiece but honestly I'm more horrified about the truckers.

It�s been a couple decades since they really made any money at all (the big container lines) basically they had been staying afloat by merging.

They also haven�t become a cartel to a certain extent, they are a cartel.

And drayage truckers... life has sucked hard for them for decades too.

Also snow globe lady probably won�t get anything. No compensation from the lines (which is extremely limited under COGAS anyway ) and likely unless her cargo was physically damaged no insurance either.

We need a national port authority because small city based ones even for big terminals don�t have the size to deal with the lines, they can always just go somewhere else.

# ? Nov 30, 2021 04:58

Mr. Fall Down Terror: Jan 24, 2018; by Fluffdaddy

to go into a bit, drayage or port trucking is one of the trucking jobs most people don't know about

the popular idea of a trucker is long haul, that is driving a load very long distance, from one end of america to another or across half the countries in europe. this is actually one of the smaller segments of the market, as anything which needs to go long distance could also viably go by aircraft (faster) or train (cheaper). but if you need your load to go thousands of distance at a medium but not too expensive speed, long haul trucking is there

the complete opposite of this is drayage aka port aka container trucking. it is very boring and repetitive, because you basically drive into a port (or rail) terminal over and over to pick up containers and take them somewhere nearby. sometimes you'll go from the terminal to a warehouse across the state, sometimes you'll just go on a loop between the terminal and the container yard down the street eight times a day. all you're doing is just taking full containers out and bringing empties back, more or less

from a labor standpoint long haul can be well paid, but you basically give up on family life because your job is 100% travel. on the other hand, port trucking lets you go home every day and you can make decent money as long as nothing weird is happening, but its hard work and long hours for the money

trucking as an industry is massively decentralized. this is part of why "just raise wages and hire more truckers" doesn't work, there are tons of people who get a CDL and a loan for a shiny new kenworth and set themselves up in business as an owner/operator (o/o for short). the largest trucking company in america is JB Hunt and they've got something ridiculously small like 4% of the entire trucking market, as the biggest player in the game. even companies like UPS or FedEx barely crack 1% of the market. nearly all long haul or port drivers out there are independent contractors, driving for a company is what you do when you want to make steady if smaller paychecks and get benefits. the tradeoff for an o/o is that you keep all the profits you make, so long as you can find them. its kind of like driving for uber, but instead of a single tech company you've got a series of freight brokers offering short term jobs. uber tried branching out into freight and it is a thing that exists, but instead of usurping the market of taxi companies it just became yet another freight broker of which there are many (it may be better to think of uber as introducing the concept of drayage trucking to passenger travel). anyway, as long as nothing weird is happening and you can keep your earnings above the costs of running your truck, then you'll make decent money

in terms of weird stuff happening, there's a lot that can happen. here's a video from 2014, when the trucker shortage was already well underway, describing the steps involved in a single visit to a typical port

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9IJN1yIIJ4

the really critical thing here as the article pointed out is dropping off empty containers. those containers have to go somewhere, and at most ports the empty box stack is already overflowing. big disruptions in the flow of trade, like a global pandemic, create weird imbalances in the system! im not sure what the expedient solution here is, the obvious one that comes to mind is finding an alternate place to set up a container yard but that is a process which would take a year at least even if you completely bullied your way through all of the local land use and environmental laws prohibiting the overnight establishment of container yards. the warehouses and company distribution centers at the other end of this supply chain link have neither the equipment nor space nor inclination to store empty containers either - turns out there's not really a good short term solution for what to do if the economy generates a huge pile of empty 20x10x10 steel boxes that weigh a couple tons even when empty

so, all these additional delays eat into the available time and money of drayage o/o and it sucks. but these problems have existed for years, its a tough industry, the problems are just amplified right now because just in time supply chains kinda fall apart when all the national economies of the world start dry heaving at the same time

Mr. Fall Down Terror fucked around with this message at 05:43 on Nov 30, 2021

# ? Nov 30, 2021 05:40

Solkanar512: Dec 28, 2006; by the sex ghost

That�s a great intro video, thanks for posting it!

# ? Nov 30, 2021 07:02

Bar Ran Dun: Jan 22, 2006

Every single thing in that post is spot on.

# ? Nov 30, 2021 07:06

ANIME AKBAR: Jan 25, 2007; afu~

I'm a professional Electrical Engineer, and over my past few meetings with our parts distributors it's become clear that they are very happy about the current state of affairs and don't want it to change. Not that it's something they can resolve. Their only advice has been "buy components as early as possible, even if you're not sure you'll need them. Better safe than sorry!" Just buy, buy, buy and maybe you'll end up ok. Which is exactly the mentality that leads to supply shocks. Literally doing everything they can to keep the stampede moving.

Basically just venting here, because it's making my work twice as stressful as normal. Makes me wish I worked at a tier-one manufacturer, then vendors will trip over themselves to take orders from you. Everyone else gets crumbs.

ANIME AKBAR fucked around with this message at 07:44 on Nov 30, 2021

# ? Nov 30, 2021 07:41

Bar Ran Dun: Jan 22, 2006

Well yeah. If transit slows down and becomes more expensive more inventory needs to be carried.

There will eventually be a point where firms are carrying adequate inventory for the delays and increased costs. Then those costs and delays will go away.

# ? Nov 30, 2021 07:50

Qtotonibudinibudet: Nov 7, 2011; Omich poluyobok, skazhi ty narkoman? ya prosto tozhe gde to tam zhivu, mogli by vmeste uyobyvat' narkotiki

Bar Ran Dun posted:

Every single thing in that post is spot on.

CBP really does have a dedicated radiation scanner in case someone sneaks a ton of plutonium into a container, or did i mishear things?

idk i feel like people smuggling random blobs of radioactive material into the US is... uncommon, at best

# ? Nov 30, 2021 09:02

Booourns: Jan 20, 2004; Please send a report when you see me complain about other posters and threads outside of QCS

~thanks!

Jaxyon posted:

From the LA Times

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-11-26/the-supply-chain-crisis-is-great-news-for-logistics-companies

quote:

The ocean carriers also make money from the pileup of containers on the docks. After a container sits at the terminal for a certain number of days, shipping companies begin charging end customers a rental fee for using their box, a charge called demurrage in the industry. On the other side, once a trucker picks up a container and delivers its contents to a customer, the shipping companies also start charging the trucker a late fee, known as detention, if the trucker fails to return the empty container within a certain time frame.

At the ports of L.A. and Long Beach, so many empty containers have piled up that the shipping companies often won�t allow truckers to return their empty containers but continue to charge detention fees. Truckers are then stuck with a rising detention tab and an empty container on their trailer, which means they can�t go pick up a new import container and get paid for a new job. So the pile of import containers grows, and the only players with the power to remove the empty shipping containers to free up space � the shipping companies � have little incentive to do so expediently.

Aw yeah there's that wonderful capitalism

# ? Nov 30, 2021 09:42

Mr. Fall Down Terror: Jan 24, 2018; by Fluffdaddy

CMYK BLYAT! posted:

CBP really does have a dedicated radiation scanner in case someone sneaks a ton of plutonium into a container, or did i mishear things?

idk i feel like people smuggling random blobs of radioactive material into the US is... uncommon, at best

its the safety check for the "what if someone puts a nuke in a container?" scenario which, while unlikely, isn't implausible. if you wanted to deliver a nuclear bomb into america and detonate it at a critical point, "in a TEU container" and "near a port" are both pretty good options

# ? Nov 30, 2021 16:26

Hellblazer187: Oct 12, 2003

quote:

The main source of this skyrocketing revenue is freight fees. In 2019, shipping a container from China to the West Coast cost less than $2,000, on average. At the height of the logistics crunch this summer, rates soared above $20,000 for that same container, before falling below $15,000 in the latter half of November. Demand went up, supply went down as backlogs grew, and prices surged.

Customers such as Liz Ross pay the shipping companies upfront. In previous years, those companies had a financial incentive to unload their ships as quickly as possible to free up capacity for more voyages. But the eight- to tenfold increase in prices means that a carrier can double its revenue even at 20% capacity. With that amount of money coming in, idle ships at ports such as those in Los Angeles and Long Beach barely scratch the bottom line � and in fact might prove good for business, if they mean that the companies can keep prices high, Tang said.

This seems almost like a manufactured scarcity, no? The shipping companies are incentivized to be as slow as possible unloading poo poo, because as the supply of space on ocean liners goes down, they can charge more money. Am I reading this anywhere close to correct?

# ? Nov 30, 2021 16:51

Mercury_Storm: Jun 12, 2003; *chomp chomp chomp*

Sounds like the kind of system you get with unregulated capitalism, similar to our healthcare system: absolute garbage.

# ? Nov 30, 2021 16:57

Bar Ran Dun: Jan 22, 2006

CMYK BLYAT! posted:

CBP really does have a dedicated radiation scanner in case someone sneaks a ton of plutonium into a container, or did i mishear things?

Yes, and they definitely work. I used to do a lot of high consequence work, which I�ll not be going into.

They also check imported yachts occasionally for this.

# ? Nov 30, 2021 17:03

Mr. Fall Down Terror: Jan 24, 2018; by Fluffdaddy

Hellblazer187 posted:

This seems almost like a manufactured scarcity, no? The shipping companies are incentivized to be as slow as possible unloading poo poo, because as the supply of space on ocean liners goes down, they can charge more money.

not exactly - the shipping companies want to unload and process their ships and keep everything moving, because thats what gets them paid. playing delay games to nickel and dime their customers over late fees is a bit like saying that UPS and FedEx collectively instructs their drivers to just drive in circles with full vans without delivering anything to justify increases in shipping rates. sure, you'd get more money per box in the short term, but in the medium term you're going to move less boxes as people find alternatives

there are some lawsuits alleging collusion to manipulate the market so we'll have to see how that pans out, but it depends on how much agency you invest in the shipping lines as being able to influence the market vs what they're trying to do to cope with larger pressures within the market. for example, china's quarantine regs alone are enough to gently caress with shipping worldwide. like, if you've got a boat on the way to guangzhou and get news that the chinese government now requires three extra weeks of quarantine for sailors... welp, thats three extra weeks minimum added on to this boat's trip

i'm not saying they're blameless here in terms of price gouging or making lovely decisions, but it depends on if you view them as cackling overlords squatting on piles of money or just as confused and desperately scrambling as anyone else has been in the last 24 months. i dont really think the large companies are capable of the level of collusion necessary to manipulate the market, versus the price shocks being the result of a global pandemic kicking the poo poo out of established supply chains

e: its also worth pointing out the supply of space on ocean liners is very inflexible, it takes a while to build new container ships. you don't actively have to do much to make the supply of space go 'down' in this sense, as any kind of delay will reduce the supply of container ships/time, thus hiking prices, without you having to lift a jewel-laden finger

Mr. Fall Down Terror fucked around with this message at 17:26 on Nov 30, 2021

# ? Nov 30, 2021 17:20

Bar Ran Dun: Jan 22, 2006

And every container is scanned.

CBP also has VACIS and mobile VACIS which basically let them look inside containers. Various agencies and not for profit also inspect a percentage of containers.

# ? Nov 30, 2021 17:20

Bar Ran Dun: Jan 22, 2006

Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:

. i dont really think the large companies are capable of the level of collusion necessary to manipulate the market, versus the price shocks being the result of a global pandemic kicking the poo poo out of established supply chains

Maersk and MSC colluded for a long time to contribute to keeping rates low to capture more market share eventually MSC pulled back on that. But it all contributed to Hanjin failing and the formation of THEA.

They�re definitely capable and have in the past in the other direction.

# ? Nov 30, 2021 17:29

Cpt_Obvious: Jun 18, 2007

Hellblazer187 posted:

This seems almost like a manufactured scarcity, no? The shipping companies are incentivized to be as slow as possible unloading poo poo, because as the supply of space on ocean liners goes down, they can charge more money. Am I reading this anywhere close to correct?

That's what I was talking about when I said raising prices is more profitable than raising production rates. Why ship more stuff for less money when you can ship less stuff for more money? From the shipping-business owners perspective there's no additional cost to raising shipping prices, but if you increase the amount of shipping you need more boats and staff etc. so why bother spending that money when you can just charge more?

# ? Nov 30, 2021 17:30

Mr. Fall Down Terror: Jan 24, 2018; by Fluffdaddy

Bar Ran Dun posted:

Maersk and MSC colluded for a long time to contribute to keeping rates low to capture more market share eventually MSC pulled back on that. But it all contributed to Hanjin failing and the formation of THEA.

They�re definitely capable and have in the past in the other direction.

thats the thing, collusion within an alliance to lower prices is an order of magnitude less complicated than collusion between alliances to raise prices, knowing that whoever breaks first and betrays the trust of the other players gets to reap a windfall. its easier to assume they're all working together if your default perspective is "they're all the same, fat capitalist bastards" instead of large companies which have been knifing each other for years to compete on lower prices suddenly forming a thieves guild for reasons?

i've got a buddy who works at hapag-lloyd and some of the stories he tells about organizational chaos are hair raising

# ? Nov 30, 2021 17:39

Hellblazer187: Oct 12, 2003

The reason I bring up the "manufactured scarcity" is because that's in part what Richard Wolff was talking about in the video that got posted earlier in the thread. That comment might not have applied to consumer goods directly, but seems like at least in part it applies to the shipping industry itself.

Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:

thats the thing, collusion within an alliance to lower prices is an order of magnitude less complicated than collusion between alliances to raise prices, knowing that whoever breaks first and betrays the trust of the other players gets to reap a windfall.

There's no collusion required if the incentives in place at the moment make going slow more profitable for everyone involved. Demand is so high and supply is so low, that lowering your prices as an individual shipping company isn't necessarily going to bring in a windfall.

Hellblazer187 fucked around with this message at 18:24 on Nov 30, 2021

# ? Nov 30, 2021 18:21

Bar Ran Dun: Jan 22, 2006

Cpt_Obvious posted:

From the shipping-business owners perspective there's no additional cost to raising shipping prices,

�Shipping-business� owners is not a particular useful phrase that conflates many many different groups being affected very differently by this all.

# ? Nov 30, 2021 18:22

Mr. Fall Down Terror: Jan 24, 2018; by Fluffdaddy

Hellblazer187 posted:

The reason I bring up the "manufactured scarcity" is because that's in part what Richard Wolff was talking about in the video that got posted earlier in the thread. That comment might not have applied to consumer goods directly, but seems like at least in part it applies to the shipping industry itself.

that video is dubiously argued at best and makes more sense as a perspective viewed through an ideological lens rather than a factual lens. he's asserting manufactured scarcity exists and works backwards from there to demonstrate it, which is an argument that has more merit if you don't need much persuading to believe in manufactured scarcity in the first place

e: rewatching the video, in the first half he asserts manufactured scarcity exists without proof except capitalists are bad. this is a dumb argument. his analysis is more correct and marxist in the second half, when he says covid hosed up international supply lines (true) which exist in the first place because of moving manufacturing overseas to save money (true) but this has nothing to do with manufactured scarcity, just corporate cost cutting making supply chains exposed to disruption. so wolff isn't even blaming manufactured scarcity for high shipping prices, he's blaming manufacturers for cutting labor costs at the expense of long, vulnerable supply chains, which is a complaint people have been making for decades

Hellblazer187 posted:

There's no collusion required if the incentives in place at the moment make going slow more profitable for everyone involved. Demand is so high and supply is so low, that lowering your prices as an individual shipping company isn't necessarily going to bring in a windfall.

is it more likely that the incentives in place naturally cause competitors to collude together, or is it more likely that the incentives in place simply cause higher shipping prices without any collusion at all? keep in mind that there are three alliances of multiple shipping companies each as well as a bunch of unaligned, smaller players who would be giddy to expand their market share at the expense of colluding big players

with supply constrained the only way for anyone to expand their market share right now is by lowering prices, which makes it pretty tough to believe in collusion to raise prices

Mr. Fall Down Terror fucked around with this message at 18:53 on Nov 30, 2021

# ? Nov 30, 2021 18:32

Mr. Fall Down Terror: Jan 24, 2018; by Fluffdaddy

anyway, we're all missing the real story here - joe biden is manufacturing scarcity to Destroy Christmas

https://twitter.com/owillis/status/1465732050758078464

# ? Nov 30, 2021 18:43

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:

anyway, we're all missing the real story here - joe biden is manufacturing scarcity to Destroy Christmas

https://twitter.com/owillis/status/1465732050758078464

NO SANTAS WANT TO WORK!

# ? Nov 30, 2021 19:02

Craig K: Nov 10, 2016; puck

Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:

anyway, we're all missing the real story here - joe biden is manufacturing scarcity to Destroy Christmas

https://twitter.com/owillis/status/1465732050758078464

hmm. did anything happen in the past 24 months that would be especially dangerous to fat old people, or what

# ? Nov 30, 2021 19:03

-Blackadder-: Jan 2, 2007; Game....Blouses.

Booourns posted:

Aw yeah there's that wonderful capitalism

Seriously. Stuff like that always reminds me of that Hoover Dam scene from Vegas Vacation., the way he just gives up and wanders off at the end is appropriate.

# ? Nov 30, 2021 19:15

Hellblazer187: Oct 12, 2003

Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:

with supply constrained the only way for anyone to expand their market share right now is by lowering prices

I don't think this actually follows. This would be the case if demand was constrained. There's only so many customers to go around, I cut prices and therefore get more customers. With supply constrained, how does lowering price help any single person in the market? They're already getting as many customers as they can (or want to) handle. If I'm already getting as many customers as I want, lowering prices does not except for lowering revenue.

# ? Nov 30, 2021 19:24

Cpt_Obvious: Jun 18, 2007

Bar Ran Dun posted:

�Shipping-business� owners is not a particular useful phrase that conflates many many different groups being affected very differently by this all.

Investors, then.

# ? Nov 30, 2021 19:25

Bottom Liner: Feb 15, 2006; a specific vein of lasagna

I currently have a Kickstarter campaign with about 100 international backers. How hosed am I when I have to ship these out around March? 4x6 bubble mailers <1 lb.

# ? Nov 30, 2021 19:47

Bar Ran Dun: Jan 22, 2006

Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:

i've got a buddy who works at hapag-lloyd and some of the stories he tells about organizational chaos are hair raising

They moved everything to Atlanta, after the merger. It was a poo poo show and they lost a lot of good people. They came real close to failing before the merger though much closer than they let on.

# ? Nov 30, 2021 20:02

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# ? Apr 26, 2024 13:02

Bar Ran Dun: Jan 22, 2006

Cpt_Obvious posted:

Investors, then.

Also not particularly useful. Let�s limit to thinking about only the steam ship lines. Who owns these companies? Who own the ships?

Take Cosco, until 2017 that was basically part of the Chinese Government, like as in it started as a government agency �An industrial enterprise owned by the whole people" now it�s a government owned limited that has listed subsidiaries

Cma Cgm is heavily subsidized by France. Maersk is a regular company. Other lines have strong ties to other governments. MSC is wholly owned by one family.

�Investors� is about worthless as a term here too, referencing anything from a few related individuals to uh all the people of China depending on the line.

# ? Nov 30, 2021 21:29

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Supply Chain Crisis: Christmas canceled due to no inventory

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