[hypertele-Xii]

> It’s cheaper for Britain to send its shellfish to China to be de-shelled by hand, then send it back than it is to pay some folks to do it in the UK

This is a tiny fraction of a much bigger picture. The shellfish do not get their own private ship. It's cheap because the UK is already importing so much that when the ships return to China empty, they might as well pick up some shellfish on their way home. Then, the de-shelled shellfish is valuable enough to get a spot on the next full ship heading out again.

Not nearly as crazy sounding.

[iforgotpassword]

I think it's still as crazy sounding! We send shellfish around the globe and back to get them de-shelled. Not because they do it better, but cheaper. And for the company doing it it makes sense, since they benefit, and the now unemployed countrymen get compensated by the government, ie. taxes, ie. everyone.

And yes, of course there's always one more step that leads you to where you got in the end. Nobody established a new shipping route and built a new dedicated ship just to start de-shelling in China.

It's like when you look at some complex software that has a batshit crazy architecture, spaghetti code, 5 different code styles, hacks and is half procedural half OOP, and whatever else you consider a crime. But then you look at its history, how it's almost 30 years old, started procedural on a different OS, how its requirements vastly changed and extended over the decades in ways nobody could possibly anticipate, and suddenly, most of the crazy things don't seem so crazy anymore if you know the story behind the individual "crimes" committed. But thst still doesn't mean that looking at the whole picture can't reveal a batshit crazy codebase that you wouldn't touch with a 5ft pole if you can avoid it.

[dijit]

> The shellfish do not get their own private ship. It's cheap because the UK is already importing so much that when the ships return to China empty, they might as well pick up some shellfish on their way home

Is the implication then that the space would be completely vacant?

How can you be certain that there's never been a ship commissioned because the demand became too great and thus more ships needed?

Even if it wasn't just shellfish, there's a million different things that ship back and forth and it shouldn't be necessary, it's enabled by cheap freight and cheap labour: but those things are an equivalent burden to the planet and our sum-total of ecological resources. So it's very wasteful when you think in those terms and not in our faux-scarcity monetary terms.