61–70 of 166 posts
Is this the new “China can’t manufacture a ball point pen”? (Which I strongly suspect they can do at this point. :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You gotta optimize everything for the market man! It's magic! Everything will work out if we only make number go up! Who cares about silly stuff like health emergencies, the climate catastrophe or war. Number must go up!
Well, for the most part this is actually true. Taking care of the exceptions is the hard part. Also, "climate catastrophe" is not a thing.
It takes a deep ideological commitment to close ones eyes to the reality in front of us.
Our planet is literally dying.
The oceans are boiling [0], marine life is dying [1]. Land close to the water will be land under water soon [2]. The ice caps are melting and setting free all sorts of diseases. [3]
Large parts of our planet on fire all the time now, here's one from Australia from this year [4], but I'm sure you've read about wildfires in Australia last year, California every year, Greece last year etc etc.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jan/09/profound...
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-026-03013-5
[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-025-02299-w
[3] https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/could-microbes-l...
[4] https://phys.org/news/2026-01-australia-declares-state-disas...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Shouldn't free market reward companies that go the other way and where people don't "fail upwards"? It is kind of demoralising to think otherwise, but it seems it is true. We see it everywhere. Bad companies making bad decisions keep surviving, and actually the vast majority of companies are like this. One implication is that MBAs in suits that make bad decisions are actually right and their decisions are not bad. Th…
I agree, a free market would work that way... Yet 'fail upwards' and zombie companies seem to be the default. Personally I don't believe that what we have in the west is a free market. I think these days, it's probably less free than the one in China. The market here is completely smothered by regulations. For example, about a month ago, I saw a video about people farming frogs in China... To collect secretions for m…
My brother had a neighbour build a crematorium next door in NZ; not an industrial or rural area, just the suburbs, no permits, no consultation, no notification. Very entrepreneurial. They got shut down but the flip side of "you can just do things" is surprises like a plume of smoke and the smell of burning corpses when you step outside.
How are these types of awards usually structured? Are they just grants? If so, doesn't that create a perverse incentive to take the money even if you never intend to deliver the result?
Interestingly govspending says only $8.7 million of the $10 million award has been outlayed but I guess it's possible it just doesn't have the outlay info for the $123 million contract?
I think the contract type is a 'firm fixed-price definitive contract' but what happens when the contractor doesn't manage to create the production capability in the contract?
I found a FOIA request on muckrock[3] but it didn't seem to have anything related to the contract in terms of penalties.
[1][$123.1 million] https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_FA850521C0005_970...
https://www.highergov.com/contract/FA850521C0005/
https://g2xchange.com/app/awards/contracts/CONT_AWD_FA850521...
[2][$10 million] https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_75A50525C00001_75...
[3] https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/con...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Asking this question only a handful of years after a global pandemic... If the next pandemic is 50% deadly, not being able to make gloves is surely the canary in the coal mine proving we wouldn't be able to make any other PPE. And no country can rely on another if it's do or die. Other blocs will keep to themselves.
It's amazing how much those spreadsheet heads know nothing about how the actual world works
I always see catastrophizing and autarkist-coded takes like this which imply the US is a house of cards because we don't manufacture everything under the sun at all times. You have to realize that preparing for a doomsday scenario like 50% fatality rate pandemic has a cost that someone foots the bill for. Even in 2020 with a buffoon running the country, we still reacted very quickly and developed multiple vaccines to combat a novel virus (yes, the response was bungled in other ways but I digress)... people, markets, etc. are adaptable and we will figure it out.
The article mentions access to NBR latex being an issue, but doesn’t explain that this is less commonly produced in America because they produces much more shale gas these days which doesn’t result in enough butadiene needed. So the most important supply chain to build the product is mostly coming out of Asian and European crackers. Giving an advantage to the Malaysian factories on top of the other lower costs of bus…
A very important question to ask. Should the US make medical gloves?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. Next question
Why is it so simple? Instead of investing billions, perhaps a stockpile is a better strategy.
The article headline makes it seem like the factories couldn't make the gloves. But further down it says that the cost was double and factories couldn't get buyers. These are very different failure modes, and speak to very different solutions.
The article headline makes it seem like the factories couldn't make the gloves. But further down it says that the cost was double and factories couldn't get buyers. These are very different failure modes, and speak to very different solutions.