This is known as the Broken Window Fallacy.

Getting food for starving dogs??

 

Getting food for starving dogs??

Has my absence made the Pavlovians hungry?

 

Yup, a gift for sure. People don't drink them, they sell them at $5 each to beer can collectors.

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_od...water.TRS0&_nkw=anheuser+busch+water&_sacat=0

Oh buy exactly what I want. A memento of one of the worst disasters in US history.

 

The flooding in Houston was a mix of storm surge plus an enormous rain. Anyone know which was the bigger problem? Just curious if most of that water is brackish. I suspect it is but there must be some freshwater flooded areas also.

 

The flooding in Houston was a mix of storm surge plus an enormous rain. Anyone know which was the bigger problem? Just curious if most of that water is brackish. I suspect it is but there must be some freshwater flooded areas also.

The rainfall was the vast majority of the problem. Storm surge only affected those living on the coast.

 

Huge??? Depends on your definition I guess.

Ask the reporter who called it 'Huge'. Is it huge to you or are you just someone who thinks the rich should contribute more?

Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots also donated 1 million. His team won their last superbowl there.

 

No demonic actors are needed to explain this.

Yeah, your right, there were less than a million people talking about the gas shortage sending thousands to wait in line.

Gas here went from 2.199 to 2.659. It would have been raised most of that because of the holiday weekend. Social media was in a panic. I filled up the next morning, waited about 5 minutes at a gas station at the junction of two highways. There was no "crisis" in the directly affected area.

Did you see how the DFW news reported this story? Did you read facebook accounts? If you didn't, you have no idea the contributions made by them towards this "crisis."

 

Yeah, your right, there were less than a million people talking about the gas shortage sending thousands to wait in line.

Gas here went from 2.199 to 2.659. It would have been raised most of that because of the holiday weekend. Social media was in a panic. I filled up the next morning, waited about 5 minutes at a gas station at the junction of two highways. There was no "crisis" in the directly affected area.

Did you see how the DFW news reported this story? Did you read facebook accounts? If you didn't, you have no idea the contributions made by them towards this "crisis."

What you see at the pump, both price and activity, does not tell much of a story except that you've never worked in manufacturing at a level to understand the phrases, "continuity of supply" and "force majeure".

The price isn't higher today because there is a shortage today. The price is high because the station owners were notified of a Force Majeure. One of the contingency plans to deal with a supply issue of a fungible commodity is to buy material from a competitor (usually through a "swap agreement"). Unfortunately, not only Exxon is down but Phillips, Shell, BP and several smaller companies are down too. If the gasoline supplier believes they cannot meet their obligation to refill the station's tanks on schedule, they must notify them of an impending shortage and the plan to allocate material to the various stations - including when the tank will be refilled (and by how much) - and when they will be back to regular production.

So, if the station owner was expecting a refill on Sept 7 and now told they will not get any until Sept 21, and they know from the trade journals that their competitors are in the same situation, they will raise their prices.

- Some will raise to outrageous levels and not sell any between now and the day their competitors run out.
- Some owners know they make 20 cents per gallon and their current tank has to generate enough profit to last them three weeks instead of one week. They raise the price to give themselves 60 cents per gallon of profit.

So, sitting at a gas station for 5-minutes and watching a pump on Sept 1 will not look like a shortage of unusual demand. It is not the demand that is the issue today, it is the impending lack of supply. Look again next week or the week after. The stations with the lower prices will be out and those that held the higher prices will be raising prices even higher as you wait in line to fill your tank at their pumps.

Good luck.

 

force majeure

Force majeure ... interesting phrase. Last time I heard or used it was in accordance with the 1883 usage.

Are you assuming there is no storage at the local level? There were delays for some deliveries because of the people IN LINE. I didn't see any lines at the station a quarter mile from me or the one about two miles from me. Now, there are some stations who are waiting on their normal delivery because of the mass hysteria and people loading up on gasoline.

I told the girl behind the counter yesterday that they will see how their business model for the convenience store side is working and I'm glad they stayed open and have everyone on the job.

You forgot to mention they raised their prices like they do every Labor Day weekend.

One station restricts people to $25 fill ups, to manage their supply, and they were 15 cents cheaper than some of the others.

 

Force majeure ... interesting phrase. Last time I heard or used it was in accordance with the 1883 usage.

You must not read many contracts. Allowances for force majeure are standard boilerplate. A contract that fails to mention force majeure is to be ignored as not serious.

 

Force majeure ... interesting phrase. Last time I heard or used it was in accordance with the 1883 usage.

Are you assuming there is no storage at the local level? There were delays for some deliveries because of the people IN LINE. I didn't see any lines at the station a quarter mile from me or the one about two miles from me. Now, there are some stations who are waiting on their normal delivery because of the mass hysteria and people loading up on gasoline.

I told the girl behind the counter yesterday that they will see how their business model for the convenience store side is working and I'm glad they stayed open and have everyone on the job.

You forgot to mention they raised their prices like they do every Labor Day weekend.

One station restricts people to $25 fill ups, to manage their supply, and they were 15 cents cheaper than some of the others.

Read an economics book, I am not going to argue such a well documented situation as a what-if scenario. Right now we are in a situation of supply uncertainty - prices go up slowly until a more certain direction is known (supply shortage because enough refineries have delayed startups vs. no issue because enough inventory is in the system until planned (successful) restart of most refineries. Nobody's response is "wrong" or "overreaction" or "manufactured", it is just their way of managing risk.

If you are expecting to see lines (or even talking about lines), you obviously didn't understand my earlier post.

 

Flood waters are still rising in my county. All that water draining from houston has to go somewhere. Our rivers haven't crested yet. I'm not going to be affected, but friends and friends of friends are. I cannot believe the magnitude of the ordeal still ongoing.

http://www.khou.com/mobile/article/...ill-underway-in-brazoria-county/285-470388853

 

Flood waters are still rising in my county. All that water draining from houston has to go somewhere. Our rivers haven't crested yet. I'm not going to be affected, but friends and friends of friends are. I cannot believe the magnitude of the ordeal still ongoing.

http://www.khou.com/mobile/article/...ill-underway-in-brazoria-county/285-470388853

It might be too soon for me to be saying this, but maybe some good will result from this disaster. Back when we were hit by hurricane Alex (2010), the city's road infrastructure was heavily damaged, two main arteries in particular. Traffic was hectic for a couple of years due to all the cleanup and repair work. But in the end, the most important avenues were completely overhauled and the result was a far better road system than previously existed.

Hang in there, things will get better soon, I'm sure.

 

Flood waters are still rising in my county. All that water draining from houston has to go somewhere. Our rivers haven't crested yet. I'm not going to be affected, but friends and friends of friends are. I cannot believe the magnitude of the ordeal still ongoing.

http://www.khou.com/mobile/article/...ill-underway-in-brazoria-county/285-470388853

Yeah, and the bitch is so many rivers which despite the stopped rain have yet to crest. It will be some time before the waters recede and even then a long, long time for reconstruction. Entire major highways were undermined and will need rebuilt just so reconstruction can begin on the rest of the infrastructure and homes.

Ron

 

It might be too soon for me to be saying this, but maybe some good will result from this disaster. Back when we were hit by hurricane Alex (2010), the city's road infrastructure was heavily damaged, two main arteries in particular. Traffic was hectic for a couple of years due to all the cleanup and repair work. But in the end, the most important avenues were completely overhauled and the result was a far better road system than previously existed.

Hang in there, things will get better soon, I'm sure.

Unfortunately the real fix is to have less roads not more. Along with less buildings, parking lots etc. The problem is what to do with all of those people.

 

The problem is what to do with all of those people.

And that's the elephant in the room - way too many people on the planet!

 

And that's the elephant in the room - way too many people on the planet!

Just too many all in one place.

 

Just too many all in one place.

Sounds like a logistical problem, similar to that faced by Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer. Seriously, urban sprawl gets to be a major issue with large numbers of people in a small area. Houston is the most populous city in the state of Texas and the fourth-most populous city in the US so we have a whole bunch of people in a relatively small space in square miles. We get a high population density in a small space so when a disaster like a hurricane, tornado, earthquake or other disaster strikes it affects more people.

Ron

 

Sounds like a logistical problem, similar to that faced by Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer. Seriously, urban sprawl gets to be a major issue with large numbers of people in a small area. Houston is the most populous city in the state of Texas and the fourth-most populous city in the US so we have a whole bunch of people in a relatively small space in square miles. We get a high population density in a small space so when a disaster like a hurricane, tornado, earthquake or other disaster strikes it affects more people.

Ron

More importantly, too much of an areas covered in concrete and asphalt where there should be open land and bayou.

 

More importantly, too much of an areas covered in concrete and asphalt where there should be open land and bayou.

Exactly. Way back in the 70s I lived in CA. Remember Joni Mitchell's Big Yellow Taxi? They paved paradise and put up a parking lot? We had an exceptionally bad rainy season one year and from my second floor apartment I watched cattle, mobile homes and all sorts of things head for the Pacific down the El Cajon river valley and it was a dry river bed right till... You would really think they would wise up but no. They cover tens of thousands of acres with asphalt and concrete so run off has nowhere to go. That was the mid to late 70s.

Ron