Where are all the containers? The global shortage explained

I was referring to an article I read about this Reno office - and they specifically said that - that they were investing, but they ALSO had a crap ton of cash in the bank...

They closed that office and now I cant find that article.

And mine used to be as well, but in retrospect I think it's clear that I wasn't being fair. Judging any movement by their extreme fringe is gonna make them look silly.

I would wager that the majority people, at least in liberal / urban centers, would look down even on “a few months of food and water” preppers, though that may have changed a bit in the past year.

The state of the "news" media is truly sad to behold. They lie, sensationalize and have become political activists for one side or the other. I do not believe the rights they are afforded in the US Constitution were intended to be used in this manner at all. In that sense I agree with the statement that they have become the enemy of the people. They don't provide information, they publish ideology and lies.

And, yes, we have to be fair and clearly state that Trump was a complete moron in the way he handled some aspects of this. As an example, I cannot understand why he had such a problem with masks.

I can't even imagine the reasons other than to look at it from my background in manufacturing. This is what I think could have happened: The administration quickly understood we don't even make the cloth necessary to make masks. The US and Europe could not manufacture ANY of the safety equipment we needed for this pandemic at scale back in January of last year. We didn't even make the machines that make the masks.

Telling the public to go get masks would have resulted in a mess and panic. I get that possibility. Here's what they should have done: Figure out how people could DIY some level of protection and widely publish this. Trump should have gone on TV and told people the truth: We can't make enough masks. They are important. This is what you have to do while we sort this out. Instead he engaged in stupid battles with the media. That was dumb, unnecessary, and, yes, it likely cost lives too.

All that said, we are vaccinating at a rate of over a million people per day today because of what the Trump administration set in motion a year ago. They pushed for and succeeded at having multiple vaccines developed in the span of eight months. Something never before done in the history of humanity. And yet he/they were vilified for the stupid shit he did in front of the cameras and, to some extent, rightly so in my opinion.

This was a year in which both our politicians and our news media failed us in monumental ways. Both of these groups lied to us. And the consequences were deadly. I hope historians get this one right.

Which makes my point even stronger and these politicians almost criminally liable for what they did. Telling people to go on the subway? Go to festivals? Unbelievable.

I think the greater point is that we all watched nearly all of US government and all of US media take the opposite side to the Trump administration on this purely on a political basis.

At this time they were trying to eject him from office on the most ridiculous of basis. Nearly all of the media and all of government was focused on damaging him. Because of this they could not bring themselves to line up behind him and follow his lead.

Think about that for a moment. Love or hate Trump, in that moment, early next year, the right move for the nation --not for politicians and the media-- would have been to say: "Mr. President, what do you want us to do. We are 100% with you."

The media, in particular, could have been far more useful to the nation and the world. Instead of focusing on their usual nonsense and web of lies they could have engaged in real journalism and delivered actionable information.

Instead of NY and San Francisco politicians saying things like "everything is OK, it's just the flu, go to festivals, get in the subway, etc." they should have contacted the White house for actionable intelligence on why they were sounding the alarm as they did.

Remember that at the same time Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx where on TV telling us a tsunami was coming, New York officials (and our current President and VP) were saying this was racist, xenophobic and nothing to worry about.

Like I said, I hope historians paint the entire picture and do so with the truth.

What's sad is that politicians who were likely responsible for thousands of deaths never seem to pay the political price for their actions.

For this and other reasons, I am a strong supporter or term limits. Politicians who stay in office for decades lead to dysfunction and rot.

I know it sounds a bit dramatic, but I would really like it if people took at least "a bit" of the underlying meaning of a specific phrase used in the ancap community. "Tax Cattle". It's been a really good way for me to conceptually explain quite a few of the actions taken by governments around the world during this pandemic. It's a sort of weird hybrid relationship between "protector" and "farmer". More leaning to the latter judging by how willing officials are to take "calculated risks" with people's lives so as to maintain business, work and normal day to day functioning of the cities/countries. "Freedom" of the people only being an afterthought and something we still don't quite have back yet.

I don't think that's a tangent. I think you are exactly right.

The virus uncovered political dysfunction in ways nothing else could have achieved.

It also showed the world the state of decimation of the industrial bases of the US, Europe and nearly every nation on the planet. The fact that the US and Europe could not make masks and protective equipment because we don't even make the cloth or the machinery required to manufacture these things at scale was a shocking revelation for anyone not in manufacturing.

I think this is one of the reasons for which I reacted so quickly. Aside from having the means, I have been manufacturing things for three decades and have see exactly how badly our supply chain and capabilities have eroded. I want to say that I instinctively knew that a pandemic would likely cause massive shortages due to our lack of mass manufacturing capacity. It also helps that I spent a good deal of my life in Latin America. I remember my parents buying huge sacks of flour, sugar and other things as the economy faltered around them.

I don't disagree with your comment at all.

That said, on the point about Trump and his relationship with China. I simply don't see it as xenophobic. And, BTW, I have never supported Trump or vote for him. I am a strongly independent classical liberal, with the caveat that I actively seek the truth and will never align myself with any political party by default because that implies they are 100% correct 100% of the time, which is impossible.

And, BTW #2, I don't hate China at all. While I disagree with their social and political stances, on the business front, the job they have done during the last 50 years is nothing less than outstanding. I have experience manufacturing in China and can tell you from that first hand experience that the US almost has no hope of regaining most of the industrial base it lost. While we focus on growing a society with a victim-mentality and growing division they have been growing what might already be the most entrepreneurial society in history. It's hard to describe the difference other than: If you want to get shit done, you go to China, not the US, not Europe. Sorry.

Trump has been talking about China for decades. He has been watching the erosion of our industrial base for a long time. And he rightly points at Chinese practices and the idiocy of our own politicians as some (not all) of the root causes. The popular "corporate greed" cause is nonsense. Go try and manufacture almost anything at scale in the US or Europe and see how far you get. There's no greed involved, we can't even make N95 masks at scale.

The problem with the Trump/China relationship, in my opinion, has many facets.

One of them is that he turned out to be perhaps the worst communicator who has ever inhabited the White House. I mean, his lack of ability to deliver well constructed messages in front of a camera was just unbelievable. In politics and leadership you have to be able to communicate. Every single one of his press briefings and speeches was an absolute train wreck.

The second issue had to do with the all-out warfare the entire Left and the media engaged in for four years. You can't run a country when at least half of your government is engaged in a war against the other half. It's impossible. I don't care who you are.

A simple example of this is Trump's attempt to rescind the postal treaty, dating back to 1874 (yes!) that made it so the US taxpayers subsidize nearly every Chinese package travelling within the US. In other words, once certain class of packages lands on US soil delivery of Chinese goods within the US is FREE. The intention behind this treaty was good. It was meant to help developing nations have access to our markets. Well, it isn't 1874 and China is the second largest economy in the world.

What that treaty means is that, as a US-based business, it costs me more to ship a package to New York than it costs a Chinese competitor. Even if my product cost exactly the same to manufacture, I lose.

That treaty should have been rescinded decades ago. Trump was the only US President (or politician) to speak about this and point out just how badly we were getting screwed and how much damage we are causing our own businesses. And for that his attempt to rescind this ridiculous treaty was labelled as xenophobic and racially motivated. Again, the entire Democratic party and the media were at war with him and could not care less about the absolute fact that this treaty has been damaging our nation for decades. In their ideologically twisted world they could not bring themselves into alignment with him at all, even if that meant damaging every single business in the US.

How do we fix this? Don't know. Other than, perhaps, strong term limits. On the media side, we do not benefit at all from having 95% of the media in political alignment with an ideological side. Imagine if 95% of our media were aligned with the right. That would be horrible. Well, it isn't any different when the tables are turned. This isn't good for anyone.

The WHO said many things...and didn't say enough...they too are responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths around the world.

I'm sorry, the conclusion that the travel ban was racially motivated is just laughable.

I am singling out NY politicians because they likely seeded the entire nation with this virus at a massive scale when they took political sides rather than come into alignment with what the Trump administration was saying.

You can literally search for and find videos from exactly the same dates going back to January, February and March to confirm this. The Trump Administration was sounding the alarm. Every time Trump or the team would go on TV politicians from New York, Pelosi and Schummer and others would get in front of a camera to oppose it and tell the public everything was fine.

I focus on NY officials because they are likely responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths across the nation. Someone would have to trace the path the virus took in the US. Based on the timeline I would not be surprised if almost every single outburst traces to New York and San Francisco, but mostly NY. That's certainly the case for adjoining states and, I believe, Florida.

I don't know what else to call it.

When the President of the United States goes on TV to effectively say: "Danger! Danger! We are Shutting down travel from China". Well, politicians ought to stop, think, call the White House, understand why such a drastic move was made and then fall in line and support the effort rather than fight it.

There is no doubt at all that telling people in NY to continue using the subways, go to festivals, etc. caused the virus to spread exponentially.

NY officials were on TV saying things like "we are ready for this", "we are prepared", "this is just like the flu", "we know how to treat this", etc. None of those things are true. They pulled that stuff out of their collective asses. The Trump administration went five standard deviations in the direction of caution and while the entire Democratic party (in particular NY) and the news media went five standard deviations in the direction of ignorant bullshit.

Look, it's clear that Trump made a mess of his public handling of this event which, rightly so, cost him the election. In public, he was a mess. Being under constant attack from his opponents and having to deal with a rabid media out for blood every second of every day sure didn't help.

Behind the scenes, it's hard to find anything they did wrong. In fact, the actual handling of this pandemic behind the scenes was an outstanding achievement and it should go down in history as such. That team gave us vaccines in eight months. They saved millions of lives around the world.

Of course. Yet, when the President of the US gets on TV and announces that the administration enacted a travel ban from all of China...well, politicians, regardless of their ideological alignment, should stop talking and consider why this "full tilt" move was necessary.

At the time this was going on they were trying to impeach Trump. This means that the entire Democratic party and nearly the entire media could not bring themselves into alignment with him at all. They were trying to kill the guy. How could they turn around and say: "Yes, sir. What do you need us to do?".

And so the nation paid the price.

This virus showed the US and the world just how dysfunctional our system of government has become. It has also demonstrated how dangerously partisan and politically-driven our mass media turns out to be. All to the detriment of the nation and the world.

Imagine what we could have accomplished if they actually worked together.

Of course, next time there's a disease that turns out to be a nothing-burger, the early incentive for politicians is going to be to overreact rather than underreact. If emergency-fatigue seems bad now, I don't think we've seen anything yet.

The Mount Hagen single instant coffee packets are pretty decent and light if you're boiling water on the trail.

I definitely think that's a case of throwing crappy over-priced offers onto the wall and seeing what sticks. Just like crappy blog-spam, you never know when some fluke of the search algorithm will redirect some poor unknowing fool to your page or product and they are desperate or uninformed enough to buy whatever it is you are selling.

100% the fault of Amazon or whatever marketplace this is. Right now we should be having a rich taxonomy and unique product database that links all versions of the same product together so that I can click: "Chewy Dog Food 5kg" and get all the sellers offering it. Then proceed to sort by price, filter out the suppliers that look dodgy, add said suppliers to a "fake chinese product spam list" personal black list, and proceed to buy the cheapest original version of the product.

Is it that easy? It seems, that only works if people can pay for the essentials. For example, look at the grain prices that sparked the protests of the arabian spring. People could everywhere not afford their bread anymore while Saudi Arabia bought the grain at ultra high prices.

Software engineer and a farmer here. distractions are overrated. i ditched mine and my life improved greatly. ive since learned that building and making things is much more fun than crappy electronics toys content or drugs. Passive entertainment is for the lazy and those that lack creativity. Try picking up a hobby like woodwork or blacksmithing. Having sampled all of those listed distractions extensively, i can say im qualified to make the assertion.

The vast majority even.

Not exactly sure that's how it works. I don't think there's any established correlation between low testosterone levels in males and comfortable lifestyles in society. I hope not, but it's possible the inverse maybe true. High testosterone drives males to compete for status, the by-product of which in human society is much of the complexity we see around us. Nobody really knows what happens to society when testosterone plummets - your warm meals and the roof over your head could be casualties of that.