Comment by IkmoIkmo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by IkmoIkmo | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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.

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.

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