• happybadger [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    11 months ago

    Thus far we’ve not seen any impact on air freight prices as it’s the post holiday low season without all the e-commerce demand that drove the high air prices in Q4. A 747 cargo plane can only carry around 7 ocean containers worth of cargo though compared to 10,000+ for the mega container ships, so it won’t take a lot of companies deciding to shift cargo from ocean to air for the air cargo market to become capacity constrained.

    What a wild difference between the cargo capacity of the two.

    • Sphere [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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      11 months ago

      Yeah and the broader point is an important one; it won’t be too long before the impacts of this shift are very obvious in the marketplace. The US is under enormous pressure to get things back to normal, but the guy in charge is more pro-:isntrael: than Reagan, so I don’t see any way that can happen.

      • zifnab25 [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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        11 months ago

        At some point, shipping magnets all along the Mediterranean are going to start pissing themselves in frustration.

        Also, can’t help but see the BRI guys feeling a little extra smug about their plane for overland transport through the Middle East.

        There’s a reason why Reagan wasn’t willing to tolerate Israeli bullshit, and it wasn’t because of his deep love and respect for the Lebanese people.

        • WayeeCool [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          11 months ago

          Also, can’t help but see the BRI guys feeling a little extra smug about their plane for overland transport through the Middle East.

          I had actually forgotten that China’s belt and road initiative involved electrified freight train routes from China up through Russia or the middle east into Europe proper. Iirc there is also work to build routes from China deep into Africa to allow reliable trade of resources and goods without ocean going freight.

          Years ago I was honestly surprised to learn that there wasn’t already a reliable freight train network connecting all of continental Asia, Africa, and Europe. That everyone was sending freight longer distances via ocean going freight traveling around continents rather than via rail in straight lines over land seemed so wasteful. Ocean going freight should only be necessary for oversized freight, island nations, or freight between the eastern and western global hemispheres.

          • zephyreks [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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            11 months ago

            Intuitively, boats are more scalable than trains so to some degree it makes sense. Today, ocean shipping is cheaper than over land.

            China’s feeling extra smug because their state-owned shipping can still transit the Red Sea lol

          • GaveUp [she/her]@hexbear.netOP
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            11 months ago

            There was probably too much conflict and war in Europe in the past for countries to build international networks like that

            • WayeeCool [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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              11 months ago

              Yeah. I remember something about everyone intentionally using incompatible rail gauges out of fear that other nations would use trains for military invasions. It’s only been in recent decades where we have started to see a globally adopted standard rail gauge for freight networks.

          • zifnab25 [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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            10 months ago

            They’re joined at the hip. The Israelis control a number of ports that load and unload cargo off the Suez. And some of the more notable Zionists are international shipping magnets.

            Israel exists, in no small part, as a dagger to the neck of the Egyptian government, to prevent another Nasser from taking office. It is a means by which western states exert diplomatic, economic, and military control over the canal.

            But the Yemenese aren’t threatening the Sinai Peninsula. They’re guarding the gates to the Red Sea all the way down by Djiabouti. That’s something Saudi Arabia was supposed to manage, and they’ve pooched it. So now the Americans are being forced to take a direct hand in a conflict that they’d invested trillions of dollars expecting proxies to handle.

        • Fontasia
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          10 months ago

          Props to him for being so on brand, if a war isn’t going to profitable, it’s not worth having the war.

    • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
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      11 months ago

      These ships are big. They are like the size of a skyscraper someone put on its side and attached a propeller to.

          • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
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            10 months ago

            Would that not be a bit slow and potentially dangerous in storms and things? I don’t know much about modern sailships.

            • wopazoo [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              10 months ago

              Cargo ships already run very slowly in order to save fuel. In a storm where the winds are so strong that the ship risks capsizing, the sails can simply be retracted. Also, if the time spent not moving when there is no wind is a concern, sails can be combined with diesel (or even nuclear) propulsion in a hybrid setup.

              Also see: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2021/05/how-to-design-a-sailing-ship-for-the-21st-century

              • huf [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                10 months ago

                eeeh, yeah but if you want to effectively use sails, you need to take specific routes with good reliable wind. modern cargo ships can go in a straighter line.

                so it’s not as easy as that, but yeah, they should bring back sailships even if that makes the transit times longer

            • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.net
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              10 months ago

              Nah, since the advent of compressed wood we’ve had the ability to build massive, lightweight and ultra strong sailing ships

              It’s just not profitable to do so

            • LeZero [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              10 months ago

              I know the standards of construction between civilian and military shipping are pretty different, but we have had nuclear powered ships for a while now (nuclear aircraft carrier notably) and they sail pretty fine

              Actually there are civilian nuclear powered ships, the USSR and the Russian Federation have built nuclear powered icebreakers (shoutout the Lenin ) which have had accidents but as far as I can tell, no human losses occurred

              So I’d say building nuclear cargo ships isn’t really in the realm of science fiction, as long as proper construction standards are applied

  • SexMachineStalin [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    10 months ago

    It would be cool if South Africa denied them permission to dock if they were bound for Isisrael, so they would be stranded, out of fuel as a form of karma and watch a city twice the size of Gaza - Durban, not be under siege and the dockworkers on the mainland once more relive their historic moments.

  • invo_rt [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    10 months ago

    I work in global logistics and the word just went out last week that container shipping prices have gone up from this.

  • star_wraith [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    10 months ago

    Fascinating to me that this all happening as I am reading the first few chapters of volume 2 of Capital. It’s all about the circulation of commodities i.e. what commodities do after they are produced, and then how the money from the sale of those commodities goes back into production. A key point Marx is hitting on in chapters 5 and 6 is that the faster you can circulate commodities, the more surplus value in total is created. So conversely, a slowdown in circulation - like the transportation of commodities taking a whole lot longer to get from A to B - can be a massive reduction of surplus value. Maybe firms aren’t feeling the pain yet but they will soon. Should get interesting.