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We vote for the one we prefer every time we buy something. Supply chain resilience is incredibly expensive insurance for very rare and relatively short term di

We vote for the one we prefer every time we buy something. Supply chain resilience is incredibly expensive insurance for very rare and relatively short term disruptive events. Covid for instance is going to put things out of whack for two or three years, but is preventing that worth paying up for the redundancy and contingency plans over the previous 100 years? Probably not. Over the long term, efficiency wins out.

speedybird 5y ago
> We vote for the one we prefer every time we buy something. Not really, no. We can probably count on more resilient products being more expensive, but we can't count on more expensive products being more resilient. It doesn't work that way. There is really no way for an average consumer to know which expensive products are expensive because they are sold by resilient companies, and which are expensive for innumerable other reasons. Most purchases are made by people who lack the knowledge, experience or training that would be required to evaluate the resilience of a business. Voting for something without knowledge about that something is farcical. Ultimately this "voting" is little more than rhetoric used to push the blame onto those with the least insight into how the system works.
- dantheman 5y ago
  There is a clear difference between airlines like Delta, Air France, etc and value airlines like ryan air, jetblue, southwest.
  - speedybird 5y ago
    Delta is the airline that abandoned me for 40 hours in ATL of all places, while Southwest has never let me down. If you had asked me a week ago which of the two was more reliable, I would have told you Southwest and I would have meant it absolutely. How would you have me judge them? I don't know anything about how to run an airline and I wouldn't even know where to start if you asked me to look up which of the two had a more resilient business model. You can't really expect any random air traveler to have an opinion on airlines better informed than their personal experiences. I think most people would struggle to tell you something so basic as what sort of plane they were even sitting in.
r00fus 5y ago
> We vote for the one we prefer every time we buy something. This is actually not true. As a consumer my choices are constrained by retailers and suppliers (and government due to regulations). They choose based on price what to offer. If all retailers in my area don't want to supply organic food, I can't buy it. So I have limited power to alter the market. For extremely bad options, there's the choice not to buy, but for necessities, that option is precluded. Which is why a healthcare "free market" (hint: it's anything but free right now) is a chimera: when you or your family is dying or suffering, you are willing to pay "value based pricing". The real solution is to delink the "global" supply chain and build up local options. Resilience also increases jobs and tax base, but reduces megacorp profits. Since we actually live in an oligarchy, profits are all that are chased.
- Fricken 5y ago
  Your vote has limited power to alter the market because it's just one vote. America chose Wal-Mart over Main Street. It's tragic, but that's what American consumers chose.
  - r00fus 5y ago
    Amusing how the point is missed again. I wouldn't blame consumers for consolidation on the supplier side through unethical practices. Or perhaps unrestrained capitalism will always result in these conditions?
    - Fricken 5y ago
      I don't know if you recall the 90s, when WalMart was on a rampage, but there was considerable local resistance all over the place from groups who understood the hazards. The opportunity to be informed was there.
      - dwiel 5y ago
        There should be a name for the fallacy of expecting people to "vote" with their dollars on every single issue all of the time. It's like the opposite mistake that communists make. They expect a single centralized decision maker to balance all considerations to set a price, which is inevitably ineffective. This vote with your dollar argument expects every individual to balance all considerations to set their own personal price. There is an assumption of information symmetry and unlimited ability to analyze on the part of the individuals behind the vote with your feet argument that is just not remotely true.

speedybird 5y ago

> We vote for the one we prefer every time we buy something. Not really, no. We can probably count on more resilient products being more expensive, but we can't count on more expensive products being more resilient. It doesn't work that way. There is really no way for an average consumer to know which expensive products are expensive because they are sold by resilient companies, and which are expensive for innumerable other reasons. Most purchases are made by people who lack the knowledge, experience or training that would be required to evaluate the resilience of a business. Voting for something without knowledge about that something is farcical. Ultimately this "voting" is little more than rhetoric used to push the blame onto those with the least insight into how the system works.

dantheman 5y ago
There is a clear difference between airlines like Delta, Air France, etc and value airlines like ryan air, jetblue, southwest.
- speedybird 5y ago
  Delta is the airline that abandoned me for 40 hours in ATL of all places, while Southwest has never let me down. If you had asked me a week ago which of the two was more reliable, I would have told you Southwest and I would have meant it absolutely. How would you have me judge them? I don't know anything about how to run an airline and I wouldn't even know where to start if you asked me to look up which of the two had a more resilient business model. You can't really expect any random air traveler to have an opinion on airlines better informed than their personal experiences. I think most people would struggle to tell you something so basic as what sort of plane they were even sitting in.

r00fus 5y ago

> We vote for the one we prefer every time we buy something. This is actually not true. As a consumer my choices are constrained by retailers and suppliers (and government due to regulations). They choose based on price what to offer. If all retailers in my area don't want to supply organic food, I can't buy it. So I have limited power to alter the market. For extremely bad options, there's the choice not to buy, but for necessities, that option is precluded. Which is why a healthcare "free market" (hint: it's anything but free right now) is a chimera: when you or your family is dying or suffering, you are willing to pay "value based pricing". The real solution is to delink the "global" supply chain and build up local options. Resilience also increases jobs and tax base, but reduces megacorp profits. Since we actually live in an oligarchy, profits are all that are chased.

Fricken 5y ago
Your vote has limited power to alter the market because it's just one vote. America chose Wal-Mart over Main Street. It's tragic, but that's what American consumers chose.
- r00fus 5y ago
  Amusing how the point is missed again. I wouldn't blame consumers for consolidation on the supplier side through unethical practices. Or perhaps unrestrained capitalism will always result in these conditions?
  - Fricken 5y ago
    I don't know if you recall the 90s, when WalMart was on a rampage, but there was considerable local resistance all over the place from groups who understood the hazards. The opportunity to be informed was there.
    - dwiel 5y ago
      There should be a name for the fallacy of expecting people to "vote" with their dollars on every single issue all of the time. It's like the opposite mistake that communists make. They expect a single centralized decision maker to balance all considerations to set a price, which is inevitably ineffective. This vote with your dollar argument expects every individual to balance all considerations to set their own personal price. There is an assumption of information symmetry and unlimited ability to analyze on the part of the individuals behind the vote with your feet argument that is just not remotely true.