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Comment by eecc | Hacker News Reader

Funny how free-market, small-government, deregulation, rhetoric flies out of the window when own profit maximization short-terminism falls apart and everyone starts invoking centrally coordinated state intervention.

I wonder if some governmental bureau tasked with coordinating this market hasn’t been shuttered in the last couple years to some lobbyist great success…

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I agree with you, but this isn't necessarily the best example. In this case, frankly part of this issue had to be resolved by relaxing strict zoning laws that weren't allowing space to be used in a way that the market demanded (offloading empty chassis). Such a measure falls under deregulation/free-market/small-government.

The other measures proposed (forcing railroads, national guards etc) are of course of a different order, but it's not clear they'd be necessary if the build-up of empty chassis at the port (because offloading in the nearby area wasn't allowed) never materialised into a massive bottleneck, because zoning laws were deregulated.

Sure, although most of the measures proposed are about a massive mobilization subsidized by government.

One could also argue that it’s still a brittle, overly lean organization if a landscape regulation tipped it into service disruption.

It was the international demand imbalance that tipped it into service disruption; the landscape regulation just set the conditions for the existing bottleneck.

Those 2-high zoning laws aren't new, are they?

Presumably the port would've architected its systems to work within all sorts of constraints, come they from physics, or business, or regulation. The fact that one of them can easily be relaxed is immaterial to their failure to account for it in the first place.

Presumably, the regulation had reasoning. Likely unsightfulness. But also likely danger.

Will the port's insurer cover damages when a 3 or 4 high stack falls?

Unsightliness maybe, but also California is no stranger to earthquakes. Stacking up to 6 high sounds like a deadly and expensive game of dominos.

They can be stacked higher on a container ship when full. And ships are subjected to what someone could think of as a "quake" - waves.

for sure, but the harmonic characteristics of sea waves are rather different.

But yeah, you do have a point.

Indeed:

2) Bring every container chassis owned by the national guard and the military anywhere in the US to the ports and loan them to the terminals for 180 days.

Loan them sounds like they want them for free.

What's the plan for the military to move containers during the 180 days if all their kit is loaned out?

But we don't live in a world of small governments and deregulated free markets. Without a regulation on stacking LA might not be at a point where any of those other measures are needed. A funny thing would be limiting yourself to approaches relevant in a system that doesn't exist.

Might, would… look, I don’t want to come up with a True Scotsman counter argument, but it does sound like one: blaming this mess on the single one restriction that seemed to exist.

Are we going to blame driving time restrictions next?

Next I'd blame environment regulations that banned older short-haul trucks from operating in the state, but that's besides that point. The point being: there is no contradiction between wanting smaller government and less regulations and wanting a mess caused by heavy handed regulations to be fixed by heavy handed mobilisation of resources.

Wasn't this mess made by the government's regulations in the first place?

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