How we broke the supply chain
prospect.org
How we broke the supply chain
1–10 of 113 posts
Re: How we broke the supply chain
#2[deleted]
Re: How we broke the supply chain
#3No post body was provided.
Re: How we broke the supply chain
#4This is a great article.
Rabbitholed a tiny bit on this part:
> Big companies got the law changed to enable ocean carriers to offer secret discounts in exchange for volume guarantees.
To an article linked in the first article: https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2018/12/congr...
> The last amendment to the Shipping Act occurred in 1998 as the Ocean Shipping Reform Act of 1998, following a five-year study of the effect of the Shipping Act on maritime trade and commerce. The 1998 amendment allowed carriers and shippers to enter confidential rate agreements providing discounted rates in exchange for cargo volume commitments. In 2005, the FMC issued a regulatory ruling extending authority to non-vessel operating common carriers (NVOCCs) to enter such confidential rate agreements with shippers.
> After the 1998 amendment, the maritime industry experienced significant and widespread consolidation. In addition to carrier mergers and acquisitions concentrating the bulk of containership capacity in U.S. trades to fewer than a dozen large carriers, the formation of vessel carrier alliances caused further substantial consolidation. Currently, there are three major carrier alliances representing 80 percent of all container trade. Within the alliances, there has been further consolidation, e.g., the creation of Ocean Network Express (ONE) by the merger of Japanese carriers.
Damn.
Re: How we broke the supply chain
#5> Only deviating from free-market fundamentalism—giving everyone health care, for example—could lead to shortages
This is true, the symptoms the article is looking at are strong signals of non-free-market policies. Under capitalism, the failure mode is going to be very high prices. If the failure mode isn't high prices then the market probably isn't being run as a free market.
Like when there is a crisis and the government steps in to ration or fix prices and a breadline forms - that breadline isn't a capitalist problem! Capitalism was suspended because the government didn't like what would happen under capitalism (which, I think we all agree, would have been high prices to the point where there was still bread on the shelf that people could buy). The capitalist outcome isn't a utopia, and isn't even pleasant, but it also isn't a breadline.
Re: How we broke the supply chain
#6No post body was provided.
Re: How we broke the supply chain
#7Quoted post unavailable.
Your comment does nothing to talk of the substance of the article.
Re: How we broke the supply chain
#8When I first opened the site, I wondered if it was a more technical/wonkish dive, or whether it was a political take.
Looking at the root site prospect.org made it clear it's the latter.
Don't get me wrong, their thesis can still be right and their fact presented are still valuable, but this is like reading about "is free trade good" in the Economist. I would take away the facts, not the conclusion.
Re: How we broke the supply chain
#9Quoted post unavailable.
No post body was provided.
Re: How we broke the supply chain
#10Inflation (money printing) is the cause of increased demand in goods, not the result of supply problems. If the government sends checks of money to people, they will compete for the same amount of produced goods, and realize that they have to spend the money faster if they want it to preserve its value better.