However, one thing that is easily missed is how shipping lines have been operating at a loss/narrow margins for years, e.g., Hanjin bankruptcy: https://www.wsj.com/articles/south-koreas-hanjin-shipping-fi.... Many of the major shippers are not interested in building out capacity right now (e.g., Maersk CEO has consistently messaged this: https://splash247.com/if-msc-ends-up-having-more-capacity-th... ). It makes sense: why would they when they know that inevitably shipping rates will fall and they will have excess capacity on their hands.
Instead, they are essentially adopting a wait and see approach. In the meantime, shipping customers pay more, the shipping companies strengthen their balance sheets and reward shareholders with fat dividends, and finally demand will settle down naturally.
What some fail to realize is that this will take a decent amount of time. In particular, no one expects easing of the shipping situation until 2022: https://www.joc.com/maritime-news/container-lines/hapag-lloy...
My company does test hardware for manufacturers. We have multiple project we're working on currently but we can't finish some of them simply because we can't get all of the components we need. Because of that these manufactures, can't produce their widget, because they can't test them before shipping. They are some of the biggest corporations in the world and even they can't help us get some of the stuff we need. If they can't get their widgets produced, companies that depend on them can't produce their widgets. If you go deep enough you will find out how everything depends on everything else.
Widget 1 is not being produced because it's missing Widget 2. Widget 2 is not being produced because it's missing Widget 3. Widget 3 is not being produced because it's missing Widget 1.
Catch-22
For instance, maybe Alice wants $5 worth of some resource, and if she gets it she'll be happy. Bob wants $5 of the same resource, and when he gets it he'll put some plan into action that makes $100 worth of some different resource available to Charlie. But there's a shortage, so Alice and Bob are in competition, and neither is willing to pay $6 for it.
The price system doesn't give a reason to favor selling the resource to Bob. It's up to Charlie to notice the hazard before the transaction occurs and give Bob $1 to tip the scales in his favor--which is a challenging trick to pull off in a world that thinks that price alone should do the trick.
That said, my solution is equally unsatisfying. Saying that we should reconsider our assumptions about markets isn't the same as providing an improved set of assumptions.
If there is only demand for 10 machines but you need 11 machines in case of an emergency then the 11th machine will have to recoup all of its costs during the emergency. That's extremely expensive but consider this: the machine is paid off and ready to deal with a second emergency.
And for all we know, shipping companies are taking measures like this, but making more container ships doesn't just happen. I don't know nearly enough about ships to know if it's even possible to convert a cruise ship to a container ship, but at bare minimum, you'd need to remove all of the above-deck amenities and cabin space, and maybe that requires less time than building a ship from scratch, but it still requires time. It requires hiring people who live near your dock to do it. It requires getting trucks to haul off all the waste you're generating. It requires metal recycling or waste facilities to have the capacity. It requires space at the dock to park a ship while you disassemble it. How much time does it take to get all that in place? How much expense? At least in the short run (but short possibly meaning a few years here), this would cause more shortages, as existing capital, space, and labor was repurposed to building new capacity rather than keeping the existing pipes moving.