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What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

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Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#301
post #60
post #11

Hm, seems like a monocausal 'explanation' of a complex problem - or let's say a mere opinion with little background information. Given the 'hundred year crisis', I think we have fared relatively well from a purely economic point of view... So, yes, some problems may exist but I think we have witnessed a surprisingly resilient system, given how optimized everything is and how unprecedented the issue is. I don't know i…

> I don't know if a slight price increase in graphics cards is the key issue to worry about at this point. The price increase in graphics cards isn't related to this. GMs trouble selling cars because they don't have enough chips to finish off the cars is a problem related to the pandemic and planning like the posts on Twitter note. The lack of new cars available has driven up prices on used cars. This is all supply c…

The pandemic didn’t kick the machine, the lockdowns and other unprecedented interventions did.

So this was a once ever event.

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#302

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. They'll never go back to pre-ROE days because they'd have to live with less money and worse less control. While they still have personal reserves in the billions they can decide the fate of their ventures but if say 20% of their current cash was on the balance sheets of corporations with boa…

> Yep, the capital owning class just doesn't care if their businesses go into shock because they already have their cash in hand. What if there was inflation?

Inflation generally helps big business and its owners. They get to raise prices, and they usually get to raise prices more than the average firm does because they have little competition. You're seeing this now with record-high corporate earnings.

As long as the capital-owning class is holding equity (stocks, real estate) they benefit from inflation.

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#303
post #94

Absolutely shocked that a founder of a new company believes that founder led companies are the simplistic solution to our complex problems.

On one hand, people say what benefits the position they're in.

On the other hand, people enter positions they believe will benefit them.

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#304
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know if a slight price increase in graphics cards is the key issue to worry about at this point. The price increase in graphics cards isn't related to this. GMs trouble selling cars because they don't have enough chips to finish off the cars is a problem related to the pandemic and planning like the posts on Twitter note. The lack of new cars available has driven up prices on used cars. This is all supply c…

The pandemic didn’t kick the machine, the lockdowns and other unprecedented interventions did. So this was a once ever event.

But this was known, and why many people (such as myself) opposed lockdowns.

It's stunning how much knowledge and wisdom has been lost about simple things like how to deal with plagues. This is not a new thing facing humanity.

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I specifically said "death rate" and "per capita". Your source here is comparing two countries, one of which has 67 million people and the other which has 10 million and showing totals and not per capita , which is a worthless comparison. Additionally, I don't consider Great Britain a neighbor of Sweden.

https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths Compare cumulative for Sweden and UK. It's two countries away.

Great. Now compare Sweden, Norway, and Finland.

The UK is culturally different and not a neighbor.

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#306
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not suggesting stockpiling, he's suggested increasing the amount of RAM in the system (to us a computer analogy).

What exactly is the "RAM" if not inventory?

I think they do mean inventory, just not sitting around in a forgotten storage room. To try other computer analogies, it might be increasing the queue size or using a capacitor.

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#308
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the 'hundred year crisis', I think we have fared relatively well from a purely economic point of view... Covid was essentially "Sars II". If Sars1 had had the qualities needed to be a world wide epidemic, we'd be looking 10-100x the casualties. Sars1 happened a decade ago. Calling this a "hundred year crisis" seems wholly disingenuous. This event was forecast by quite a few people, the world was terribly unprep…

The original SARS didn't have the qualities needed to be a world-wide pandemic, though, and one of the big obstacles to that was that it was just too deadly. Not only do people who are so sick they have to be hospitalized not go out and socialize and spread the disease, all the hospitalizations and deaths gives a whole bunch of really obvious starting points for contact tracers - instead of only knowing about a tiny…

The UK test and trace program cost £37 billion, which was handed solely over to a company that has a long history of delivering projects poorly. By all good measures it wasn't effective in tracking COVID or preventing cases. In my opinion the government were rightly attacked over this issue.

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#309
Isn't sort of foolish to expect companies to do anything but play by the rules of the game which are defined by their stakeholders(customers, partners, suppliers) and the government? You can rant all you want about things companies should do, but if they're rewarded or incentivized towards bad behavior then that's what you'll get.

Companies may increase their buffers for a while, but the market will punish them and they'll move back towards their pre-covid behavior in short order. You can write all the blog posts you want about it, but without incentives and rules nothing changes.

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#310

The interconnected supply chain is a headache right now, but on balance it’s still a good thing for the world if it prevents some country from starting a global war.

The global interconnected supply chain is a relatively recent phenomenon. It's far too early to make any claims about its ability to prevent physical war and so far seems to have created the necessity for fiscal and cyber war.
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