5 ms·

After COVID, I would prefer a robust, fault tolerant supply chain.

• dehrmann 4y ago
  That's a fair ask, but are you prepared to pay for it?
  • stingraycharles 4y ago
    Didn’t a lot of businesses get into a lot of problems (and as such costs) precisely because of these supply chain problems?
    • andreareina 4y ago
      There's a lot of will now. What about in ten years, how much carrying cost are companies going to be willing to sustain?
      • SQueeeeeL 4y ago
        Ya, if you can optimize this quaters earnings by 6% at the expense of your business literally potentially collapsing in 3-5 years, that is considered optimal under our present system of shareholder ownership. Shareholders by their very nature don't need to care about stewardship or longevity of a business because they own a small portion of a company for a short time.
        • dehrmann 4y ago
          > literally potentially collapsing in 3-5 years 3-5 is pessimistic. This was a p99 event. You can count on some level of government bailout for those.
          • stingraycharles 4y ago
            There are other types of p99 events that have similar results.
    • xboxnolifes 4y ago
      The costs needs to be measured against all the gains over the last decades without the robustness.
      • dehrmann 4y ago
        Outside of critical supplies (food, energy, medicine), I suspect the answer is the ROI of robustness is negative. People can wait an extra year for their Xbox and stretch a few more years out of their car if it's once a generation.
        • trashtester 4y ago
          Black swan events can be a lot worse than the current one, though....
    • SkyPuncher 4y ago
      Yes, but it's all relative. For example, nearly the entire car industry is impacted by supply chain problems. The result has been fewer cars sold for higher prices.
• trashtester 4y ago
  During the first weeks of covid, the shortage of simple things such as face masks and disinfectants (even when the authorities were still saying such masks were useless), made me anticipate the following: - Countries will start to move away from a JIT supply chain over country borders, and move towards a setup where they can ensure their more important goods/components can be produced either domestically or with their most trusted allies. - As the pandemic was not likely to end until good vaccines were available, and flock immunity reached, the economic direct effects would be likely to last for 1-3 years. - During this time period, global lockdowns and limitations in transportation would lead to devestated supply chains, globally. - During that period, governments would be likely to start WW2-level public spending to ensure the basic needs of the population were met, and not worry so much about what comes after. - For the US, I expected this to be true, even if Trump would win the election, but if he didn't, I predicted that Democrats would be obligated to spend even more than Trump would have. - Eventually, these factors would all contribute to severly constrain the supply side of the economy, while government spending/money printing would ensure the demand side remained strong - This imbalance would trigger a massive increase to inflation, and most probably stagflation. - These changes would in turn lead to increased conflict levels both within nations and between them. Basically, increased frequencies of wars, strikes, mercantilism, tarrifs and trade wars/sanctions. - These actions would in turn ensure that the economic crisis would drag out for years after the economy could otherwise be returned to something close to normal. According to this timeline, what remains is primarily more conflict, and perhaps in particular massive strikes in many countries that will weaken the supply side further, and prolong the ongoing stagflation, perhaps 10 years or more, before we come to our senses. (Especially if China invades Taiwan).