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I'd say this is a defective system. Commerce and industry embraced JIT sourcing and long supply chains while either being ignorant of, or worse, willfully igno

by hakfoo 6y ago

I'd say this is a defective system. Commerce and industry embraced JIT sourcing and long supply chains while either being ignorant of, or worse, willfully ignoring the fact it falls apart if every link in the chain before you doesn't execute reliably. They may not have pictured a global pandemic when they did the numbers, but anyone with any length of hands on experience would have said "we've had some (industry-specific) situation which caused a 3-month supply kink before, and it nearly broke us..." Honestly, I'd love to hear from businesses/economic planners in places where inconsistent supply chains are the norm. Would someone from, say, Iran, or who grew up in postwar Europe, look at a business plan that said "when we close the store at night, there should be nothing left on the shelves, and we expect the trucks to come overnight with replacements" and cringe or laugh?

Analemma_ 6y ago
> Commerce and industry embraced JIT sourcing and long supply chains while either being ignorant of, or worse, willfully ignoring the fact it falls apart if every link in the chain before you doesn't execute reliably. No, they embraced JIT sourcing because if they didn't, they would've been outcompeted by the companies which did. It's comforting to believe that this situation is a result of human ignorance that could've been fixed by installing smarter humans, but actually everyone in this process was following the rational incentives erected by capitalism. If you want to change the behavior, you have to change the incentives.
chrismcb 6y ago
Defective system? What system sour have worked when it lost its entire work force? Many things were short because no one saw the need for such a large amount (think hand sanitizer) or that the ingredients serious be required for something else. Toilet paper is an interesting issue. There wasn't exactly a shortage of TP, there was a shortage of consumer tp. It took a few weeks to shift the supply chain.

by hakfoo 6y ago

Analemma_ 6y ago

> Commerce and industry embraced JIT sourcing and long supply chains while either being ignorant of, or worse, willfully ignoring the fact it falls apart if every link in the chain before you doesn't execute reliably. No, they embraced JIT sourcing because if they didn't, they would've been outcompeted by the companies which did. It's comforting to believe that this situation is a result of human ignorance that could've been fixed by installing smarter humans, but actually everyone in this process was following the rational incentives erected by capitalism. If you want to change the behavior, you have to change the incentives.

chrismcb 6y ago

Defective system? What system sour have worked when it lost its entire work force? Many things were short because no one saw the need for such a large amount (think hand sanitizer) or that the ingredients serious be required for something else. Toilet paper is an interesting issue. There wasn't exactly a shortage of TP, there was a shortage of consumer tp. It took a few weeks to shift the supply chain.