Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 690 posts

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#271

Post by Swenrekcah »

xyzzyz wrote: post #262
lupire wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Billionaires have massive personal loans (compared to human needs, not compatrd do their owned equity) collateralized by their business equity.

Yes, they are “massive” by normal people’s standard, but they are usually minuscule relative to their equity holdings.

Which is kind of to the point, they have more money on hand than a small country’s budget and even if they lose it all it almost doesn’t make a dent in their net worth.

In this situation it is almost reasonable to want a small crisis to shake out your upcoming competitors and buy some more land or other things of real value at a discount.

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#272

Post by munificent »

gruez wrote: post #258
xmprt wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question: 2020 feels like the biggest shock to the economy in a while yet it was one of the best years for most big businesses. If Jeff Bezos didn't feel the shock from 2020 then when will he feel the shock?

>2020 feels like the biggest shock to the economy in a while yet it was one of the best years for most big businesses. by what metric?

The millions of people who lost their jobs and had to rely on emergency cash payments from the government to pay for food and rent?

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#274

Post by DevKoala »

xmprt wrote: post #250
gruez wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Yep, the capital owning class just doesn't care if their businesses go into shock because they already have their cash in hand. You do realize when we talk about jeff bezos being a billionaire, it doesn't mean he has his billions in gold/cash in a vault somewhere? The overwhelming majority of his wealth is tied in various financial assets (eg. equities) that certainly do get affected when "businesses go into shock".…

Genuine question: 2020 feels like the biggest shock to the economy in a while yet it was one of the best years for most big businesses. If Jeff Bezos didn't feel the shock from 2020 then when will he feel the shock?

This shock benefitted the particular industry in which he invested. A different kind of shock such a total internet meltdown for anything but basic services, would render his wealth down to just a couple billion while other billionaires would win the top position.

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#275

Post by advael »

I make my living predicated on the assumption that digital optimizers over loss functions have practical value, but seeing a pretty terrifying meta-pattern where defining and then subsequently obsessively optimizing and inevitably gaming metrics will burn away basically all of the useful parts of most human institutions, as we see in nearly every kind of business as noted here, as well as government endeavors like education, I'm pretty close to genuinely believing that quantifying success and trying to optimize over a metric is something human institution should literally never do, which is a weird place to be

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#276

Post by gruez »

revolvingocelot wrote: post #255
gruez wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Yep, the capital owning class just doesn't care if their businesses go into shock because they already have their cash in hand. You do realize when we talk about jeff bezos being a billionaire, it doesn't mean he has his billions in gold/cash in a vault somewhere? The overwhelming majority of his wealth is tied in various financial assets (eg. equities) that certainly do get affected when "businesses go into shock".…

>it's still in his best interest to ensure that the economy doesn't crash Technically, yeah! Functionally, though, if the Even Greater Depression arrived tomorrow? He'd still be the richest man alive, and probably even more powerful than he already is right now thanks to how Amazon and AWS would get to take over more failing social institutions. Sure, a falling tide lowers all boats, but Bezos will still comfortably…

>He'd still be the richest man alive

if you're measuring outcomes by relative income/wealth, then you can also argue that the "Even Greater Depression" wouldn't affect the average person either, because everyone would stay in the same place (on average).

>probably even more powerful than he already is right now thanks to how Amazon and AWS would get to take over more failing social institutions.

We just had a huge pandemic and recession. Did he take over "failing social institutions" did he "take over"?

>It's a setback for Bezos, and maybe he wants to avoid it in order to maximize profit and utility and whatever, but it's an existential threat to him in the same way spilling a glass of milk or losing a round in a video game are. Even extreme social unrest has been priced in, at however much a bunker in New Zealand costs.

Surely he'd prefer to be the leader of a global megacorp, travel anywhere in the world, partake in various space-related adventures, and not be trapped in a bunker? You're right he won't ever have to worry about his basic needs, but I wouldn't characterize it as "spilling a glass of milk or losing a round in a video game". I'd be pretty pissed if the US government somehow revoked by right to leave the country.

>Other people, when the Big Crash arrives, will -- in a totally economically rational way! -- commit suicide in order to ensure their spouses and children aren't bankrupted by their medical bills. Uh, in greater numbers than they already do.

I'm not sure why this is being brought up, other than for the shock value.

>I mean. Should be a good time for the owner class to buy up all the housing stock for cheap, too.

Similar to your fears about amazon taking over, this seems to be unsupported by the data. The great recession lasted from Q1 2008 to Q3 2009, according to the fed. However, this doesn't seem to correlate with institutions buying up houses?

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22647043/S...

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#277

Post by tharkun__ »

Swenrekcah wrote: post #253
xyzzyz wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yep, the capital owning class just doesn't care if their businesses go into shock because they already have their cash in hand. Billionaires have relatively very little cash in hand. Their billions typically are in form of business equity, and so they very much care of the businesses go into shock.

Relatively little can apparently be $10B: “ In 2014, for example, Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison disclosed he had used 250 million of his Oracle shares as collateral to secure a $9.7 billion personal line of credit.” Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/american-billionaires-tax-av...

I would not call that 'cash in hand'. I get why you see it that way but to compare it to the little guy:

A credit card with a $5000 limit is not $5000 cash in hand. It's a 'line of credit' for $5000 and whether I actually have the cash to pay that back is a different story. I might actually have $0 cash in hand to pay that back and many people don't until their next paycheck arrives.

Any guesses how far the Oracle share price (of ~$100) has to drop before the bank will actually use that collateral to get their cash?

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#278

Post by gruez »

munificent wrote: post #272
gruez wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>2020 feels like the biggest shock to the economy in a while yet it was one of the best years for most big businesses. by what metric?

The millions of people who lost their jobs and had to rely on emergency cash payments from the government to pay for food and rent?

How does this have anything to do with the claim that it was "best years for most big businesses"? Do "most big businesses" do better when that happens?

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#279

Post by philwelch »

gruez wrote: post #227
philwelch wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the last 130 years there have been two world wars and two global pandemics. I count 13 global pandemics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics#Chronology

what's your methodology? The linked section includes stuff like the "2015–2016 Zika virus epidemic", which was "worldwide" but had a death toll of 53 people. Should that be considered a pandemic? If we go with the "Epidemics and pandemics with at least 1 million deaths" table, there's only 6 worldwide pandemics.

If you're counting pandemics since 1891, I think any number between 6 and 13 is more defensible than the number 2.

Let me count again, while leaving out relatively minor pandemics like Zika:

* Fifth cholera pandemic

* Third plague pandemic (multiple outbreaks are listed)

* Sixth cholera pandemic

* 1915 encephalitis lethargica pandemic

* Spanish flu

* 1957-58 "Asian flu"

* Seventh cholera pandemic

* 1968-70 "Hong Kong flu"

* 1977 Russian flu

* HIV/AIDS pandemic

* 2009-10 swine flu

* COVID-19

That's 12 and doesn't count stuff like Zika, SARS, or MERS. It also doesn't count any of the Ebola epidemics.

I don't know if cases or deaths are a good proxy for expected supply chain impact. SARS, for instance, had relatively few cases and deaths because it mostly broke out in well-functioning developed East Asian countries that were capable of responding to it effectively, but those same countries have outsized effects on global supply chains.

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#280

Post by AnimalMuppet »

caethan wrote: post #112
cmenge wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US has now outsourced most of the production of goods to places in other countries. I think that is the point (or one of the points): it's not just logistics and spare capacity - it's a much more complex set of issues. This isn't something accounting practices or "less greed" would solve, as seems to be implied in the Twitter thread. Would you have voted for a party that spent $1b annually on mask manufacturing…

Plenty of people foresaw it. California spent ~$200m on building up a stockpile of PPE and other medical supplies back in 2006, before Brown cut funding for the program in 2011.

Being right too early leaves room for the people who come after you to be wrong in a way that makes it useless that you were right.
Post reply on HN