Take a look at the record-breaking port congestion from 10,000 feet above...

Full headline:

Take a look at the record-breaking port congestion from 10,000 feet above, as 70 hulking cargo ships park off the LA coast

• Every day last week key ports in Southern California hit a new record backlog of cargo ships.
  
  
• An aerial view shows how the coast has turned into a parking lot for container ships.
  
  
• Prior to the pandemic, the ports typically had zero to one ships waiting to dock and unload.
  

... Take a look at the record-breaking port congestion from 10,000 feet above, as 70 hulking cargo ships park off the LA coast (yahoo.com)​

Hopefully the image will link OK. You can see a few of them with the rest of the story at the link, anyway.

Anyone wondering about recent "inflation" in prices, here you go. You can see, quite literally, why goods can be hard to come by and why prices are up. Supply chains are a wee bit messed up right now.

 

The same for Vancouver, the major West Coast port for Canada. Even though this doesn't relate to the situation, it reminds me of why having modern infrastructure improves economic output and productivity. Investing in infrastructure is how we can compete. The public part of it can pay off even if we borrow to do it. Private investment comes when someone can make money off their investment.

We're writing off rural cities and downs, all the infrastructure (roads, sewers, schools, medical facilities), business and residential real estate, and it's in part because the towns lack high-speed internet services. I wonder how many city high-rise dwellers raising children in an apartment hallway would rather work from single-family home in a small community.

 

Yeah, the concentration of people and infrastructure in large urban areas is unfortunate, for sure. That's putting all of our eggs in a few baskets, a risky move where national and even global security is concerned. It's also pretty risky relying on one or a few foreign countries to manufacture just about everything we consume. A good infrastructure plan should definitely address these issues and put more of the country to work where possible. It's a tough problem to solve, though, since there are a lot of catch-22s involved. Can't have fast internet without the people and businesses there to support it financially, can't have the people and businesses there without the fast internet and other infrastructure there to support them. We also don't want to build a bunch of stuff that will end up being unused and going to waste, which is a problem that China and its central planners have had.

 

This is what happens when dumbass lefty governors shut down businesses over the china flu.

 

That’s a whole lot of Chinese junk headed for America

 

We built the national highway system before it was fully utilized. We can bring internet to rural communities.

Why I like to see private enterprise put some skin in the game. We can perhaps avoid government making bad decisions if business is involved.

 

Capitalism doesn't that way. It's the lowest cost and most productive ways that win out.
Risks are a 2ndary thought.

 

Covid deaths USA - 42,000,000 infections and 677,000 deaths last time I checked.
In my state of South Australia we have had two people die.

 

True, though one thing about the national highway system is that it's tax-funded, whereas telecom infrastructure is mostly if not entirely privately funded, if I'm not mistaken. Not really sure how that works, to be honest, but internet at least seems to be entirely the financial burden of ISPs. Small wonder I'm paying $100 per month for phone and internet service.

 

All those ships could carry nukes... and we'd never know. Believe me, I Commanded a nuke capable artillery battery in the 80's. Shielding would make it impossible to know,

 

Anyone can decentralise. It's personal choice, and up to the individual.

The only infrastructure which needs work is fast internet. Everything else can be managed by individuals (ie, housing, food chains, commerce, etc).

 

That's what Einstein said. A ship could sail into NY harbor and detonate a nuke.
Given the spread of terrorism across the Middle East and northern Africa this
will become a distinct possibility in the future.

btw, what yield would a nuclear artillary shell have on average?

 

It's not really up to the individual when circumstances don't really allow for it.

 

But those 'circumstances' are personal, are they not? Or are you talking about some kind of laws preventing decentralisation?

 

Individuals and individual businesses only have so much power. It's like trying to fight the tide. Accomplishing this would realistically require leadership, organization and major investments, and that's where big government comes in.

 

It really doesn't though. People decentralise all the time - and in fact it's become a lot more popular since COVID. Individuals simply choose whatever iteration of that suits their personal circumstances and preferences.

 

Nuke artillery runs from 1.5kt to 15 kt. 15kt is Hiroshima... small by today's standards

 

They call it a "global shipping crises", which is fueled by
- shortage of containers, which is due to trade war with China which goes back to 2019, and Covid in 2020
- hot economy causing imbalance in supply / demand (more demand than supply)


Why experts say the shipping crisis won’t end until 2022—at the earliest
https://businessofhome.com/articles...g-crisis-won-t-end-until-2022-at-the-earliest
The flip side of the boom in the home and design industry over the past year and half is the global shipping crisis. Demand has never been higher, and wait times never longer. There was a preliminary hope that the rollout of vaccines would help ease the logistical nightmare as consumers began spending less on goods and more on services and experiences and ports and manufacturers started to return to a pre-pandemic staffing levels. But the tangled web that was woven last year is not coming undone so easily. Experts are now saying that it will be at least the first quarter of 2022 before shipping lead times will stabilize.

Why will it take so long? There are three major reasons, says journalist Rachel Premack, who has reported extensively on the crisis for Business Insider. “We’re continuing to see a remarkable increase in demand, coupled with a shortage of shipping containers and massive congestion at ports,” she explains. “The reason we’re seeing 2022 as the point when this calms down a bit is that people are expecting that demand will continually decrease as society goes back to normal. Once that happens, ports can work through the existing backlog of containers.”

 

Yes, Operation Covid has been brilliantly successful in crushing world economies.

We were brought to our knees by a phantom virus with a 99% survival rate. More accurately, by the wicked actions of world leaders in concert with the World Economic Forum.

 

Time to send some of those illegal immigrants to the docks to unload these ships.

 

Word has it that this is planned in order to make things look like there is a crisis in supply of basic commodities.....

 

Yes, yes. It's all a conspiracy. Things can't go wrong and there can be no disorder in the world without a cabal somewhere to make it happen.

 

Nah, most people understand the issue.

 

Agreed.

Trump telling America that Covid was no big deal while at the same time telling Woodward how dangerous the virus was, created quite an economic problem...which was quite "wicked".

On the bright side he did eventually
come to his senses and realize how tragic it would be to potentially have 1 percent of 330 million Americans die.

Because of this, he then orchestrated a socialist handout to private companies to fascilitate a vaccine; so there is that.

I guess since a mortality rate of 99 percent sounds low from a numbers perspective, some may think Trump made the wrong decision.

I am guessing you didn't vote for Trump in 2020?

 

A few years ago I was involved in introducing a new product that enhanced cargo security. In my travels I talked with the "Cargo Cats" that inspected incoming cargo in Los Angeles. They told me that only about 3% of incoming cargo is actually inspected. Now, with this backlog you describe, I'm sure its less. It makes me wonder how many nukes... how much rycin and similar is sitting waiting in warehouses in our nation...