7 ms·

My hope is that supply chain issues will make clear the downsides to execs (not just the workers) and governments of externalizing all manufacturing abroad and

My hope is that supply chain issues will make clear the downsides to execs (not just the workers) and governments of externalizing all manufacturing abroad and out of reach. Look at the chaos caused by a pandemic, now imagine war or purposefully using supply chain as leverage.

coliveira 5y ago
This is all momentary situation caused by the pandemic. In one year, people will not even remember this. Companies will not spend billions of dollars unless they have no other option.
- mywittyname 5y ago
  I disagree. People will remember this and make irrational decisions based on these memories for years. For comparison, the Great Financial Crisis still looms over us so much that people still anticipate another huge housing burst. And when companies like Ford announce that they aren't using FICO scores to determine if a person qualifies for a loan, people on websites start fearmongering about another sub prime lending crisis.
  - duped 5y ago
    Bold to predict that the supply shortages will be over in one year
- joe_the_user 5y ago
  Companies will not spend billions of dollars unless they have no other option. I don't think you're necessarily right this is temporary. But companies always have the option of just not producing. If no one has blue paint, for most uses, the consumer just buys another color and grumbles. And the things that are most likely to have a shortage would be those things that are cheapest produce a large scale in just one part of the world, so they're things that would be hardest to replace.
- gremloni 5y ago
  I wish it gets to that point. A country that doesn’t manufacture is a huge loser in the long run. I hope it comes back to America in a heavily automated, sustainable fashion.
  - coliveira 5y ago
    I get the point, but corporations care more about their own profits. They will continue manufacturing in Asia for the foreseeable future, since it is too costly to open manufacturing plants in the US. The government would need to do something momentous to change this, which I don't see happening.
    - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
      As it seems, they are already unable to manufacture in asia.
      - coliveira 5y ago
        You don't seem to understand that there is a shortage of workers here, and we're not even producing anything! The labor is not available even to transport and sell the products. Imagine if this country tried to manufacture things... Unfortunately, for the foreseeable future the market has no choice other than continue to buy from Asia.
        ajsnigrutin 5y ago
        If you raise wages, the workers will come.
        JanisL 5y ago
        There is absolutely no shortage of workers at the lower end of the skills range, there is however a big monetary issue at play that prevents people from hiring people locally in a number of different situations. On top of this there are regulatory and taxation imbalances that make certain industries unable to compete with foreign firms that don't have those issues. The problems are frequently the price of labor not the raw availability of labor, people certainly will take on jobs if there is enough pay to make those jobs worth taking.
- verisimi 5y ago
  Do you remember 3 weeks to 'flatten the curve'? And its not over yet but we're 18 months in! The virus, the treatment are transformational. They are the catalysts to technocratic governance.
  - labster 5y ago
    You make it sound like a bad thing. The curve was flattened, millions of lives were saved, and life goes on mostly as before.
    - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
      Except that you cannot buy a graphics card anymore.. or a car.. and food is expensive.. and fuel too.. and blue paint also.
      - tjr225 5y ago
        I have a home, two cars, food, and blue paint. I’m not rich by any means, but my life has never been more abundant. A coworker gave me a graphics card, too!
        skhr0680 5y ago
        Gas is getting to 2008 levels where I live, surely you would notice that if you have two vehicles
        omgwtfbyobbq 5y ago
        It's getting up there, but still has a way to go before it hits the high ($4.05) from 2008. https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/gasdiesel/xls/pswrgvwall.xls https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/gasdiesel/xls/pswrgvwall.xls Adjusted for inflation that's about $5.15/gallon.
        labster 5y ago
        Nope, haven’t noticed since everyone is WFH now.
- anticodon 5y ago
  > This is all momentary situation caused by the pandemic Very unlikely. 2020 was beginning of a super crisis caused by several reasons: 1) Depletion of fossil fuels which are used to produce consumer goods, e.g. to heat factories and provide electricity for the factory machines. Also fossil fuels are used to transport produced goods around half of the world. It was all possible due to abundant and cheap energy. But that energy source is no longer there. 2) Inability of capitalist economy to grow more. Capitalist economy must constantly expand to new markets but there're no more new markets as amount of markets on planet Earth is finite. Last huge market was created by destroying USSR and USSR industry: it postponed the super crisis by 30 years by giving capitalist system more space to expand to. But there's no longer any place for further expansion. All will be going downhill from now on. Also, rising economic problems will prompt governments to start wars to exterminate "superfluous" population that cannot be fed in the new dark ages. There're other reasons for new war also. If you capture the country with still remaining fossil fuel resources and exterminate its population, you'll have more time to prepare for the inevitable.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    What evidence is there that fossil fuels were suddenly depleted for cause 1? Isn’t cause 2 basically agreeing “it was the pandemic”?
    - anticodon 5y ago
      They were not depleted suddenly. Cost of extracting oil and gas is steadily rising. This will soon lead to a situation where there's still enough oil in the Earth, but it's unviable to extract it because you have to invest more energy to extract it than you can receive from burning the extracted oil. We're almost there. E.g. in Russia all new oil deposits found in recent years are in polar areas where extracting is difficult and expensive. 2. It is amazing how beginning of the super crisis coincided with the pandemia. I remember that in the beginning of the 2019 I said to several of my friends that huge crisis will hit the world at the end of the year. But I couldn't even imagine what would happen in the beginning of 2020. Anyway, governments would want to get rid of extra mouths, especially young people with lots of energy but no way to put it into something productive. It's especially clear when you start noticing that NATO forces are concentrating near Russian borders and amount of NATO military exercises on Russian borders has increased several times. Russia has a big population and huge amounts of mineral resources. If NATO manages to capture Russian territory and exterminate most of the population in the process, it would give maybe 10-50 more years for Europe to adapt (e.g. build thermonuclear or some viable green energy sources), because currently Russia uses much of oil and gas and other resources for its own consumption. There're other countries that could be the next potential targets. Two birds with one stone: turn young people who can't find a place in life into war into cannon fodder and potentially capture resources to extend the agony of the over-consuming economy.
beebmam 5y ago
War would lead to much worse than supply chain issues. Mass global death is what war between any powerful nation means now. Which is why it should be unthinkable, and why every nation that is serious about a future for humanity should take every action necessary to keep peace and to prevent crimes of aggression.
dgemm 5y ago
That is actually partly the point, interdependent economies have stronger incentives to get along and not go to war with each other. It's one of the reasons the EU exists, for example: https://eeas.europa.eu/archives/delegations/iceland/evropustofa/en/what-would-you-like-to-know/what-would-you-like-to-know/article/why-was-the-eu-created.html https://eeas.europa.eu/archives/delegations/iceland/evropust...
- Mountain_Skies 5y ago
  That's great for equal powers. When one power is weaker than the other, it's a recipe for exploitation.
  - aidenn0 5y ago
    When one power is weaker than the other, the weaker side is gonna suffer in war too
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  Yeah, I get the theory -- it's not a particularly deep theory -- but does it really work? Consider that when nations go to war, they will bomb the hell out of each other's industries. So if they are willing to risk that when they go to war, why would the loss of mutual trade be enough of a threat to avert war? I don't see how the cost is increased between a bombed out factory that used to trade with you, and a bombed out factor that traded with someone else. Similarly in wars, nations embargo each other and sink each other's shipping, so again not sure why loss of mutual trade makes the cost of war unacceptable, if this higher cost is already acceptable? This reminds me of the Olympic games that were founded at the end of the 19th C in order to promote peace among nations. The theory was that if nations could compete on the field, they wouldn't compete in war. I think that theory turned out to be as robust as the trade-makes-peace theory, which itself did not fare well in WW1. At the same time, the EU has created an enormous amount of resentment and animosity between nations, as Italy and Greece are forced to adopt the same currency as Germany, which hurts their economies but subsidizes the German economy. The Germans, in turn, feel resentful for bailing out the South (by buying up so many assets in the South), apparently not realizing that purchasing all these assets is what allows the trade imbalances to continue. If anything we know that these types of asymmetric cross border capital flows are highly destabilizing, and do not promote peace at all. My guess is what keeps Europe from going to war is that it remains under the US sphere of influence, at least militarily, and so the irritations and rivalries created by the EU do not spill out into war. Basically the domestic populations hate each other much more, but the states themselves are too crippled to act with much autonomy, and so they don't really have the agency to even start a war. They are just left seething, as their capital stock is sold off to their neighbors, but there is nothing they can do about it. This will not end well.
gremloni 5y ago
To a certain extent. I think machinery, tech and anything that is highly skilled work needs to happen in country. I’m definitely a globalist otherwise.
ngc248 5y ago
In addition to outsourcing ... its primarily the "Just In Time" way of Inventory management which is the problem. Now at least all governments need to wake up, bring back critical manufacturing back and also maintain strategic inventory.

coliveira 5y ago

This is all momentary situation caused by the pandemic. In one year, people will not even remember this. Companies will not spend billions of dollars unless they have no other option.

mywittyname 5y ago
I disagree. People will remember this and make irrational decisions based on these memories for years. For comparison, the Great Financial Crisis still looms over us so much that people still anticipate another huge housing burst. And when companies like Ford announce that they aren't using FICO scores to determine if a person qualifies for a loan, people on websites start fearmongering about another sub prime lending crisis.
- duped 5y ago
  Bold to predict that the supply shortages will be over in one year
joe_the_user 5y ago
Companies will not spend billions of dollars unless they have no other option. I don't think you're necessarily right this is temporary. But companies always have the option of just not producing. If no one has blue paint, for most uses, the consumer just buys another color and grumbles. And the things that are most likely to have a shortage would be those things that are cheapest produce a large scale in just one part of the world, so they're things that would be hardest to replace.
gremloni 5y ago
I wish it gets to that point. A country that doesn’t manufacture is a huge loser in the long run. I hope it comes back to America in a heavily automated, sustainable fashion.
- coliveira 5y ago
  I get the point, but corporations care more about their own profits. They will continue manufacturing in Asia for the foreseeable future, since it is too costly to open manufacturing plants in the US. The government would need to do something momentous to change this, which I don't see happening.
  - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
    As it seems, they are already unable to manufacture in asia.
    - coliveira 5y ago
      You don't seem to understand that there is a shortage of workers here, and we're not even producing anything! The labor is not available even to transport and sell the products. Imagine if this country tried to manufacture things... Unfortunately, for the foreseeable future the market has no choice other than continue to buy from Asia.
      - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
        If you raise wages, the workers will come.
      - JanisL 5y ago
        There is absolutely no shortage of workers at the lower end of the skills range, there is however a big monetary issue at play that prevents people from hiring people locally in a number of different situations. On top of this there are regulatory and taxation imbalances that make certain industries unable to compete with foreign firms that don't have those issues. The problems are frequently the price of labor not the raw availability of labor, people certainly will take on jobs if there is enough pay to make those jobs worth taking.
verisimi 5y ago
Do you remember 3 weeks to 'flatten the curve'? And its not over yet but we're 18 months in! The virus, the treatment are transformational. They are the catalysts to technocratic governance.
- labster 5y ago
  You make it sound like a bad thing. The curve was flattened, millions of lives were saved, and life goes on mostly as before.
  - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
    Except that you cannot buy a graphics card anymore.. or a car.. and food is expensive.. and fuel too.. and blue paint also.
    - tjr225 5y ago
      I have a home, two cars, food, and blue paint. I’m not rich by any means, but my life has never been more abundant. A coworker gave me a graphics card, too!
      - skhr0680 5y ago
        Gas is getting to 2008 levels where I live, surely you would notice that if you have two vehicles
        omgwtfbyobbq 5y ago
        It's getting up there, but still has a way to go before it hits the high ($4.05) from 2008. https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/gasdiesel/xls/pswrgvwall.xls https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/gasdiesel/xls/pswrgvwall.xls Adjusted for inflation that's about $5.15/gallon.
        labster 5y ago
        Nope, haven’t noticed since everyone is WFH now.
anticodon 5y ago
> This is all momentary situation caused by the pandemic Very unlikely. 2020 was beginning of a super crisis caused by several reasons: 1) Depletion of fossil fuels which are used to produce consumer goods, e.g. to heat factories and provide electricity for the factory machines. Also fossil fuels are used to transport produced goods around half of the world. It was all possible due to abundant and cheap energy. But that energy source is no longer there. 2) Inability of capitalist economy to grow more. Capitalist economy must constantly expand to new markets but there're no more new markets as amount of markets on planet Earth is finite. Last huge market was created by destroying USSR and USSR industry: it postponed the super crisis by 30 years by giving capitalist system more space to expand to. But there's no longer any place for further expansion. All will be going downhill from now on. Also, rising economic problems will prompt governments to start wars to exterminate "superfluous" population that cannot be fed in the new dark ages. There're other reasons for new war also. If you capture the country with still remaining fossil fuel resources and exterminate its population, you'll have more time to prepare for the inevitable.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  What evidence is there that fossil fuels were suddenly depleted for cause 1? Isn’t cause 2 basically agreeing “it was the pandemic”?
  - anticodon 5y ago
    They were not depleted suddenly. Cost of extracting oil and gas is steadily rising. This will soon lead to a situation where there's still enough oil in the Earth, but it's unviable to extract it because you have to invest more energy to extract it than you can receive from burning the extracted oil. We're almost there. E.g. in Russia all new oil deposits found in recent years are in polar areas where extracting is difficult and expensive. 2. It is amazing how beginning of the super crisis coincided with the pandemia. I remember that in the beginning of the 2019 I said to several of my friends that huge crisis will hit the world at the end of the year. But I couldn't even imagine what would happen in the beginning of 2020. Anyway, governments would want to get rid of extra mouths, especially young people with lots of energy but no way to put it into something productive. It's especially clear when you start noticing that NATO forces are concentrating near Russian borders and amount of NATO military exercises on Russian borders has increased several times. Russia has a big population and huge amounts of mineral resources. If NATO manages to capture Russian territory and exterminate most of the population in the process, it would give maybe 10-50 more years for Europe to adapt (e.g. build thermonuclear or some viable green energy sources), because currently Russia uses much of oil and gas and other resources for its own consumption. There're other countries that could be the next potential targets. Two birds with one stone: turn young people who can't find a place in life into war into cannon fodder and potentially capture resources to extend the agony of the over-consuming economy.

beebmam 5y ago

War would lead to much worse than supply chain issues. Mass global death is what war between any powerful nation means now. Which is why it should be unthinkable, and why every nation that is serious about a future for humanity should take every action necessary to keep peace and to prevent crimes of aggression.

dgemm 5y ago

That is actually partly the point, interdependent economies have stronger incentives to get along and not go to war with each other. It's one of the reasons the EU exists, for example: https://eeas.europa.eu/archives/delegations/iceland/evropustofa/en/what-would-you-like-to-know/what-would-you-like-to-know/article/why-was-the-eu-created.html https://eeas.europa.eu/archives/delegations/iceland/evropust...

Mountain_Skies 5y ago
That's great for equal powers. When one power is weaker than the other, it's a recipe for exploitation.
- aidenn0 5y ago
  When one power is weaker than the other, the weaker side is gonna suffer in war too
rsj_hn 5y ago
Yeah, I get the theory -- it's not a particularly deep theory -- but does it really work? Consider that when nations go to war, they will bomb the hell out of each other's industries. So if they are willing to risk that when they go to war, why would the loss of mutual trade be enough of a threat to avert war? I don't see how the cost is increased between a bombed out factory that used to trade with you, and a bombed out factor that traded with someone else. Similarly in wars, nations embargo each other and sink each other's shipping, so again not sure why loss of mutual trade makes the cost of war unacceptable, if this higher cost is already acceptable? This reminds me of the Olympic games that were founded at the end of the 19th C in order to promote peace among nations. The theory was that if nations could compete on the field, they wouldn't compete in war. I think that theory turned out to be as robust as the trade-makes-peace theory, which itself did not fare well in WW1. At the same time, the EU has created an enormous amount of resentment and animosity between nations, as Italy and Greece are forced to adopt the same currency as Germany, which hurts their economies but subsidizes the German economy. The Germans, in turn, feel resentful for bailing out the South (by buying up so many assets in the South), apparently not realizing that purchasing all these assets is what allows the trade imbalances to continue. If anything we know that these types of asymmetric cross border capital flows are highly destabilizing, and do not promote peace at all. My guess is what keeps Europe from going to war is that it remains under the US sphere of influence, at least militarily, and so the irritations and rivalries created by the EU do not spill out into war. Basically the domestic populations hate each other much more, but the states themselves are too crippled to act with much autonomy, and so they don't really have the agency to even start a war. They are just left seething, as their capital stock is sold off to their neighbors, but there is nothing they can do about it. This will not end well.

gremloni 5y ago

To a certain extent. I think machinery, tech and anything that is highly skilled work needs to happen in country. I’m definitely a globalist otherwise.

ngc248 5y ago

In addition to outsourcing ... its primarily the "Just In Time" way of Inventory management which is the problem. Now at least all governments need to wake up, bring back critical manufacturing back and also maintain strategic inventory.