Sunday, October 24, 2021

The Supply Chain is Fine; the Law is Not

In shocking news, it turns out economics works fine but is illegal.

"He can’t take the containers off the chassis because he’s not allowed by the city of Long Beach zoning code to store empty containers more than 2 high in his truck yard. If he violates this code they’ll shut down his yard altogether."
https://nitter.42l.fr/typesfast/status/1451543789169004551


By the way the fact there's a single huge port is also down to legal buggery. The fewer ports there are, the more legible it is to the Regime. If there's a bunch of ports, some of them might not e.g. know who needs to be bribed. We can't have that, now can we? The trash takes itself out, though: the ports that fail to bribe properly will be found to be violation of some code or another, and be shut down altogether. 

By contrast, those know who to bribe can chuck a post-it note or whatever into the container, and then it won't be "empty" anymore.

It's rather likely that the reason there's so much friction is because the hint-hint nudge-nudge way you have to tell folk about bribes is a slow system. These yards don't know who they need to bribe, nor how much. They can't just throw money around, because a) they'll run out (Kelly criterion) and because b) their competitor might work out who to bribe more cheaply, and undercut them. 


The system of bribes that keeps the economy even vaguely functional in the face of overwhelming regulation is not flexible enough to withstand even minor hiccups. This will only get worse as the parasite class infights ever more viciously over the ever-shrinking pie. 


P.S. Have you met your [impressive naivete] quota for today?
"I'd be happy to lead this effort for the federal or state government if asked. Leadership is the missing ingredient at this point."
No Timmy those toys aren't yours. You can't play with them.

3 comments:

Dave said...

A more prosaic reason why there are so few container ports today is that container ships have become absolutely gargantuan. Building a modern container port and keeping it dredged to the required depth is a massive undertaking, and most of the west coast has no coastal plain between mountains and ocean where new ports could be built.

BSRK Aditya said...

@Dave: "A more prosaic reason why there are so few container ports today is that container ships have become absolutely gargantuan. Building a modern container port and keeping it dredged to the required depth is a massive undertaking, and most of the west coast has no coastal plain between mountains and ocean where new ports could be built."

If there were many middle-range container ports, rather than few high-end container ports - container ships would have been mid sized rather than gargantuan. I.e, we are looking at concurrent evolution.

Option 1: Many mid range ships & ports.
Option 2: Few high end ships & ports.

@Alrenous: "If there's a bunch of ports, some of them might not e.g. know who needs to be bribed." - More ports will strengthen state governments, and if it goes far enough, local governments. Governments involvement probably will not go away.

Alrenous said...

Never said it would. Rather, to get smaller ports in the first place, the government must have already been cleared away by some independent force.