Which will lead to massive layoffs, starting with the most vulnerable (small businesses, hourly workers, etc)
Which will lead to an explosion of available labour, ready for hiring when things pick back up. The issue is whether governments will step in to provide sufficient unemployment / welfare benefits to bridge the gap.
Hopefully this will lead to the realization that most labour is in fact useless, and a normalization of that fact would be an incredible step forward, which will enable us to increase our quality of life by working less while sparing the environment.
Assuming that this travels into the country wouldn't the same impact be observed as areas of the country with particular specializations were affected? I don't know how one could prevent supply chain disruptions, they'd just come a little later than sooner.
But if most industrialized countries had retained their mfg expertise some factories would be active while some idle and there could be some kind of staggered affect as the interruption courses it’s way in and out.
So wouldn't the answer to this also be to just move the industrial base to various other developing countries? If we split our manufacturing between more of South East Asia, South America, and Africa, wouldn't that have the same effect?
This is the cruel and predictable result of a society that has meticulously and senselessly offshored/outsourced most its industrial capacity. If your country can't manufacture, from raw materials , all the electrical/electronic/mechanical components, the tooling, the equipment, and the chemicals (industrial and pharmaceutical alike) it needs to keep everything running, you're dependent on these hyper-fragile and con…
The supply chains that you rail against have successfully delivered the greatest levels of prosperity to the largest number of humans in all of history. They were created not by some mysterious force, but by individuals making rational choices about how they want to allocate their time, their energy and their resources. The "suicidal deindustrialization" you refer to is the result of people making informed choices th…
The optimization from a hypothetical $400 sweater to $40 is completely blind to growing unaddressed externalities both in number and scale. Claiming this is the most prosperity for humans ignores the backsliding in prosperity for Americans - especially outside of financially quantified measures.
And I honestly do want a $400 sweater if we have a prospering manufacturing business. How many people stuff their house with clothes that they wear only once? How many people buy toys that their kids play only a few times? How many people hav a whole closet of shoes? Why do we have twice as large of closet room compared with people living in the 50s? Why do people just have to buy clothes every quarter, every month,…
A lot of people can't afford a $400 sweater. What are they supposed to do? Local manufacturing is for rich people who can afford it.
See the second paragraph "If people around me can get decent jobs because of local manufacturing", and I'm not making that up. People used to buy $300 snickers (or loafer? I forgot) back in the late 80s.
Here in Canada we had nation-wide disruptions for weeks due to rail service being blocked by First Nations (American Indian) people protesting a pipeline. The covid-19 virus just compounded that problem. I'm in an isolated rural town and even Walmart has bare shelves.
Honestly, in a worst-case scenario, I would hope for the government to be rounding up able-bodied people who aren't sick and draft them into the Grocery Corps or similar to keep things moving. I really don't think it's going to come to that, but I pray that if it does, the people in charge are ready for that kind of task. Damn knows I'll happily stop coding and go work wherever I am told to help with this.
I imagine a fair number of people would voluntarily agree to do that if it really came down to it. That said, I imagine nation guard, etc would be mobilized first.
But if most industrialized countries had retained their mfg expertise some factories would be active while some idle and there could be some kind of staggered affect as the interruption courses it’s way in and out.
So wouldn't the answer to this also be to just move the industrial base to various other developing countries? If we split our manufacturing between more of South East Asia, South America, and Africa, wouldn't that have the same effect?
I don’t see why they should not attain that capability as well and I also don’t see why we should shed our capability to mfg either.
This is the cruel and predictable result of a society that has meticulously and senselessly offshored/outsourced most its industrial capacity. If your country can't manufacture, from raw materials , all the electrical/electronic/mechanical components, the tooling, the equipment, and the chemicals (industrial and pharmaceutical alike) it needs to keep everything running, you're dependent on these hyper-fragile and con…
> you're dependent on these hyper-fragile and convoluted supply chains that are optimized for cost above everything. I'd argue that this is a feature. Economic codependence is a much safer and effective deterrent to war than mutually assured destruction.
I'd argue it is currently assuring interlinked global mutual assured destruction in the form of climate change (while yes maybe it reduces the chance of mutual destruction in the form of nuclear war, at least at the moment while the exponential effects of climate change are still in the lower order distruptiveness)
This is the cruel and predictable result of a society that has meticulously and senselessly offshored/outsourced most its industrial capacity. If your country can't manufacture, from raw materials , all the electrical/electronic/mechanical components, the tooling, the equipment, and the chemicals (industrial and pharmaceutical alike) it needs to keep everything running, you're dependent on these hyper-fragile and con…
The supply chains that you rail against have successfully delivered the greatest levels of prosperity to the largest number of humans in all of history. They were created not by some mysterious force, but by individuals making rational choices about how they want to allocate their time, their energy and their resources. The "suicidal deindustrialization" you refer to is the result of people making informed choices th…
What prosperity does work off-shored to 3rd world sweatshops deliver? Greater profit for a tiny fraction of the population, and increased financial insecurity for the rest? Creating a tshirt doesn't take any extra effort in the US, the offshoring just adds overhead such as transportation of the goods and raw materials. Yes, labour costs and labour protection is higher in the US, but sidestepping these things does not create prosperity for US workers.