[chipsambos]

Agree it's incalculable, I don't mean that in the "it's too big of a number" sort of way but in the "we can't possibly know" kind of way:

1) The scale and depth of the disruption makes it impractical to figure in any kind of accurate way and

2) The disruption will have introduced hypotheticals that nay spiral out themselves (butterfly effect style) e.g. some retailer may have lost a customer who went elsewhere, some supplier may have lost a retailer who went elsewhere, etc

[throwawayfire]

> The disruption will have introduced hypotheticals

In general, temporary disruption has some long-term positive economic effects (which is directly why 'disruption' is valued in Silicon Valley).

For example, during London Tube Strikes, commuters find different and more efficient routes and 5% ended up permanently changing their route on public transport: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/tube-strike...

[gt565k]

This happened with the bridge collapse on I-85 in Atlanta [1]

I used to take the access road parallel to the bridge and avoid a lot of traffic that was south bound. When the bridge collapsed and I-85 was blocked off, everyone learned about the parallel access road, and it now became a cluster of a traffic hot zone too.

Prior to that, a lot of people were not aware of the alternate route.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_85_bridge_collapse

[playingchanges]

I’ve seen this happen to a lot of my favorite shortcuts in the east bay since the introduction of waze.

[andechs]

The discovery of the alternate route by "everyone else" means that the roads are now in more usage.

Unless the bridge collapse resulted in increased traffic levels afterwards, the same traffic that used to go over I85 is now distributed over 2 routes.

While there's a net negative to you, it's likely that a lot of people ended up saving time on their routes.

[throwawayfire]

> it's likely that a lot of people ended up saving time on their routes.

It's theoretically possible this describes a Braess paradox, whereby everybody loses: https://image.slideserve.com/280060/braess-s-paradox-l.jpg

[sidpatil]

This reminds me of annealing, and why it's implemented as a technique for finding optima.

[piyh]

I'm not blocking the canal, I'm testing robustness!

Also in the big picture with covid not being as deadly as it could have been, could serve as a nice dress rehearsal for a captain trips.

[djhn]

We theoretically may have avoided, for the next few decades, the risk of a truly dangerous infectious disease being underestimated, something halfway between Covid and extinction-level threat.

[sellyme]

Given the sheer quantity of idiots underestimating it right now, I'm not too sure that things will have improved a few decades down the line.

[ehnto]

I think it's hopeful humanity would prevail a more deadly pandemic, many countries closed borders very quickly and there are island nations with understandably quick responses. Civilization as we know it could definitely still get wiped out though.

[unixhero]

That's a great tshirt slogan "I'm not blocking the canal, I'm testing robustness!"

[SkipperCat]

Think of the EverGiven as global shipping's chaos monkey....

[mgfist]

Yup, just think of covid. It has accelerated digitization of the world in an unprecedented way, amongst the many other world changes it has caused.

[ErikVandeWater]

That article doesn't link to the study and leaves out major questions about the methodology:

1. How did they decide that the benefits would continue over the course of 4 years?

2. How did they determine what "time lost" was? I imagine it's greater than just extra time waiting at the station. People probably also got lost trying to find a new way around, and were late to things important to them. Unexpectedly being late to a job interview is a very different kind of time lost than saving 3 minutes on your regular daily commute.

[lisper]

You can get a rough idea by thinking of this as if it were a natural disaster, and from that perspective I think the toll is probably not too bad. No casualties, very little property damage, and a week is not really all that long.

However... that is no excuse to shrug this off. We were very, very lucky that it was only a week. The ship could easily have broken in two, which would have been a catastrophe of the first order and likely shut the canal down for a year. The world dodged a major bullet here.

[DVk6dqsfyx5i3ii]

After Egypt intentionally blocked the Suez Canal during the Six Day War and an operation was taken to reopen it after the Yom Kippur War it took around 7 months to clear the ships that were scuttled to block it[1]. I would think a cleanup with more modern technology dealing with a ship that wasn't scuttled for the purpose of blockage would take less time.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1974_Suez_Canal_Clearance_Oper...

[lisper]

The 1974 operation involved ten ships, the largest of which was 6700 tons. The Ever Given displaces 220,000 tons. It's an entirely different beast.

[fiedzia]

Its large, but its size is limited by sues canal. Ships could be much larger if they were designed for a different route.

[notyourday]

Only Qmax and Chinamax are higher.

[perl4ever]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinamax

This has a rather odd diagram, and I'm not sure if it supports your comment or not.

It shows Suezmax as having "unlimited length", while Chinamax is given as 360 meters, which I think is smaller than Ever Given.

Obviously unlimited length can't be literal, if the Suez isn't perfectly straight, right?

On the other hand the Chinamax diagram says "unlimited air draft" which again, can't be literal since at some point it would be impossible to keep upright?

The Chinamax designation seems to imply a greater draft, which does make sense, but it's only 20% greater than the greatest stated for Suezmax.

[pixl97]

While our ships have grown greatly, so has our ability to salvage them at the same time.

[Animats]

Worldwide salvage capacity isn't up much. Mammoet Salvage and Titan Salvage exited the business a few years ago. Smit is one of the few salvors with worldwide reach and their own heavy equipment. The business requires huge equipment on standby, and trained people waiting for the next crisis.

Smit is now part of Boskalis, which is a big marine engineering firm. They have dredgers, heavy lift ships, tugs, and barges, which are useful both for marine construction and for salvage. So the fleet can do other things between crises.

[Uehreka]

That feels like the kind of non-obvious claim that should come with a source (even just a blog post by an analyst that lays out the relevant vocab terms and the general theory).

[nowandlater]

That's no joke. Salvage operations is such a fascinating topic, which I'm sure many (me included) found themselves quickly obsessed with. The sagging and hogging threshold of this ship is the critical key here. I'm curious how close/or not the hull came to being compromised.

[Animats]

That's why Smit has naval architects on staff, and the program Hecsalv.[1] They will have calculated the limits of how much the stern could be pushed without damaging the bow before pushing it.

[1] https://www.herbert-abs.com/hecsalv

[iso1210]

The canal revenues were down about $15m/day. If it really cost $7b a day, then Egypt is massively undercharging.

[Taek]

Not necessarily. I pay only $1 a day for water, but if you stop giving me water for 7 days the damages are going to be a lot more than $7. That doesn't mean it's reasonable to charge me more than $1 per day for water.

Obviously an extreme example, but the situation with this ship is likely similar. The damages probably far exceed the $15m/day in revenue (though I suspect they are far lower than $7b per day).

[OscarCunningham]

The reason water is cheap is because it's plentiful; there's a lot of competition to supply it. But there's only one Suez canal and sailing around Africa is much worse. So you would expect Egypt to be extracting a significant portion of the value the Suez canal adds.

[mywittyname]

You're forgetting about the stick, namely, the literally armies backing these massive shipping companies.

If you're going to run an extortion racket, you need the power to secure yourself against the inevitable challenges to your station. Egypt is in no position to handle and armed threat from the US, China, or even most European nations. Their government would be toppled and a sympathetic one would be installed who would lower shipping prices to something on the cheap side of fair.

[goatinaboat]

Egypt is in no position to handle and armed threat from the US, China, or even most European nations

A little history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis

[wizzwizz4]

So… if somebody gets a monopoly on the water supply to an area, you think a price hike is reasonable?

Oh, wait, water's already a monopoly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly

[Dylan16807]

1. We're not talking about what's reasonable, but what's expected.

2. This isn't like a monopoly on water supply, because the ships don't have to go this way. To make the analogy work you'd have to add something like "everybody already has a well, but supplying tap water is cheaper than using a well". In such a situation, a water company that's maximizing profits would charge just a little bit less than using a well, and while it would annoy people it wouldn't harm them.

3. The government stops water companies from gouging for the good of the citizens, which isn't a factor here.

[OscarCunningham]

The subject was predicting the cost of the boat getting stuck by comparing to the known cost to Egypt. The moral aspects of the water situation don't transfer across the analogy unless you also think that Egypt are charging less than they could because they think they have a moral obligation to shipping companies.

[lizknope]

The houses just 100 yards away from me have wells for water. There is a large upfront cost of making the well but after that you have "free" water other than the electricity for the pump.

[perl4ever]

Yes, but you said it yourself, the value the Suez canal adds, compared to going the long way. It's much smaller than the value of being able to ship from A to B at all.

[ClumsyPilot]

There is no major city with two independant water supplies, with their own sets of pips, purification systems and suers. Thays what water supply means. So no, there is no competition, and a supermarket water bottle is not competition.

[Sohcahtoa82]

> That doesn't mean it's reasonable to charge me more than $1 per day for water.

This is where someone steps in and says something to the tune of "Whatever price you're willing to pay is by definition reasonable" and completely ignore the ethical/moral issues with essentially holding someone's life for ransom by charging the maximum price they can get for something they need to survive.

[ksdale]

Looks like you stepped in to say it!

[tehjoker]

The suez is the site of massive imperial intervention. The Suez crisis was precipitated when Egypt nationalized the canal. Western militaries and economic leverage are deployed to keep the prices low for the benefit of those governments.

It's a huge mistake to regard any international trade in the middle east as regulated by simple supply and demand curves. This is a site of world geostrategic focus, usually at the expense of the people that live there.

[azernik]

It's not 100% negative - clever Egyptian governments have managed to charge an extra "price" in diplomatic and geopolitical advantage. e.g. using selective closures as a weapon, selective opening to military traffic as an incentive. You just have to be careful not to take actions that affects everyone, like a massive and "unreasonable" price hike; these invite the kind of great-power consensus against you that is very dangerous.

(Interestingly, both have been practiced towards Israel at different times, as the countries have gone from bitter enemies to cautiously aligned against both Iran and Sunni Islamism of the Brotherhood/Hamas flavor.)

[creato]

Someone else in one of these canal threads said that Egypt charges slightly less than it would cost to sail around Africa. If that's true, that Egypt is probably capturing around as much value as is possible from the canal.

[CalChris]

Quite a bit less.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iwOZOb90fM

[creato]

That example was pretty idealized, starting and ending very close to the canal. Most voyages are probably not affected quite as starkly by the canal, and I doubt the canal can or does charge ships based on their overall itinerary.

[pitaa]

> I doubt the canal can or does charge ships based on their overall itinerary

You'd be wrong there! They actually have a rebate system[0] based on a number of factors including origin and destination. Basically, they try to make it so that its always cheaper to go through the canal, rather than sail around.

[0] https://www.wilhelmsen.com/ships-agency/suez-canal/suez-cana...

[plaidfuji]

Depends.. their fees are likely based on the saved time/cost of circling Africa, and calculated so as not to encourage other nations to construct workarounds themselves (if that’s even geographically feasible).. not on the cost of their service being down once people are already committed to it.

[rswail]

The cost to traverse the canal is likely to be as close as possible to the cost of the alternative routes (eg Cape of Good Hope) that Egypt can make them, while still providing the advantages of saved time and operational cost.

The cost here was for the interruption to the schedules, not the daily cost of operations normally.

[Spooky23]

I doubt it. It’s a significant source of revenue for a country with limited revenue sources.

End of the day, the big shippers can price in the two week delay to round Africa, and higher tolls could make a competing railway feasible. As it is China will probably have built a rail corridor in a few decades.

[throwaway1777]

Pretty sure there are literal treaties in place. It’s not simple supply and demand.

[iudqnolq]

Ha! I never thought I'd see a patio-style charge more to a govt. Only on hn...

[andi999]

There is no major bullet here. Nowadays the alternative route around Africa takes 10 days only.

[lisper]

10 days is not a big deal if it's just one shipment. It's a huge deal if it affects every ship that would otherwise have gone through the canal, i.e. 50 ships a day, 18,000+ ships a year. That's 180,000 extra ship-days per year. That's a pretty major bullet in an economy built on just-in-time inventory control.

[bkor]

Aside from the additional ships, you need additional containers, employees, etc. It also costs more in bunkers, etc. For JIT it wouldn't matter too much though. As long as it arrives on schedule it would be ok.

[iso1210]

> 2) The disruption will have introduced hypotheticals that nay spiral out themselves (butterfly effect style) e.g. some retailer may have lost a customer who went elsewhere, some supplier may have lost a retailer who went elsewhere, etc

And some retailers and suppliers may have gained customers

[908B64B197]

> some retailer may have lost a customer who went elsewhere, some supplier may have lost a retailer who went elsewhere, etc

But then that also created profits for another supplier!

[slg]

And the increase in profits of that second supplier might surpass the losses of the first supplier if the customer made their original decision based on cost. You can frame this as increasing economic output. Let's break all the canals[1].

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

[908B64B197]

But the customer will end up paying more! It's a never-ending problem!

(Increasing economic outputs by breaking all canals is the perfect example of why I'm always worried about gradient descent)

[ozim]

That is why most of the people are fine with $XXX million per day as it is not practical to narrow it down to thousands of dollars.

We lost $100 millions, so it does not matter if it was $10k or $20k more or less because that is less than 1% of the total. There is no meaningful decision you can make based on that 1% difference.