• Infamousblt [any]@hexbear.net
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    10 months ago

    Libs: The only thing we can do to make a positive impact on the world is to vote in federal elections once every 4 years.

    Houthis: Oh yeah? Watch this

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

        The situation where all naval shipping between China and Europe is blocked is literally what the Belt and Road Initiative was made for (land trade route from China to Europe)

        China has planned exactly for this situation

    • citrussy_capybara [ze/hir]@hexbear.net
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      10 months ago

      Screenwriters are furiously typing away. A captain whose partner just left and took the kids. Offered a big score to deliver cargo through the blockade. Calls in favours from the best ship crew in the world, including their ex. Can they make it? The trailer has the container ship accelerating and using a partially submerged second ship as a ramp to jump over the Houthis blockade. Cuts to title. Evergiven 2: Redemption ever-given

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

    Its a cascade effect. As more ships leave the straight, the ships that remain become bigger targets. If you were one ship in a thousand, its a numbers game. But once you’re the only guy to fire at…

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

    Waiting until a major company says fuck israel and fully complies with the sanctions and starts making a killing since they don’t have to go all the way around Africa

    • GaryLeChat@lemmygrad.ml
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      10 months ago

      Isn’t that what COSCO did? They basically just announced they weren’t shipping to the Zionist colony anymore.

      Edit: nvm it’s only a rumor as of now, the source is Reuters ass.

  • kristina [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    10 months ago

    took a look at the maps, looks like most of the ships still going through are from muslim countries, singapore, hong kong, and china

    occasionally a ship from an african country or polynesia

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

    This really does have the potential to be devastating to global capitalism. It’s not just the additional fuel et al costs that get passed on to suppliers and customers. It’s the slowdown of turnover. The time a commodity spends between when it is manufactured and when it is consumed is considered dead time that creates no value. Capital needs to minimize that time as much as possible. Slowing it down means the capitalist is less able reinvest capital as rapidly and is no different from say, seeing your costs increase (so a slowdown in distribution, even if in itself doesn’t “cost” the capitalist anything, still can lead to significant reductions of surplus value being created).

    David Harvey defines capitalism as “value in motion”. Slow down the motion and you slow down capitalism. There’s a reason capital needed the COVID “lockdowns” to end after a couple weeks (and I firmly believe the US would never have done even the meagre actions they did take if Target, Amazon, et al weren’t all allowed to stay open). There’s a reason there was a big push to “get back to normal and go out and buy things” just a couple days after 9/11. Capitalism cannot abide anything that slows down its motion.

    I also am of the opinion that just-in-time production has actually been able to somewhat mitigate the crises of overproduction that Marx talks about (emphasis on somewhat). However, that comes at a cost that capitalism has never really had to pay until COVID came around: it makes the entire system much more fragile. That’s the trade off. I’m curious to see what happens if this goes on - I imagine we’ll start to see big slowdowns in production as factories simply don’t have the inputs they need (because supply chains have been managed on such tight timelines).