Decline and Fall of the American Empire https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/decline-and-fall-of-the-a... On the other hand the US is still very good at bombing small, poor countries...
That time is coming to an end…
Why it's so difficult to produce American-made medical gloves
141–150 of 166 posts
Re: Why it's so difficult to produce American-made medical gloves
#142Earlier 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!
You don't need to optimise for the market. The market is the optimising machine. Get in its way with slow regulators or subsidies or bailouts and you get all the problems.
And yet somehow we had no toilet paper in the pandemic. The manufacturers all simultaneously refused to retool.
This proves that the market does not inherently work magic.
Re: Why it's so difficult to produce American-made medical gloves
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
More like the new "America can't manufacture a grill scrubber" [1]. For those who haven't seen the video, YouTuber Destin Sandlin ("Smarter every day") tried to build a grill scrubber using 100% materials from the US and failed. [1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTGwcHQfLY
You have to separate the YouTube clickbait from the real learning content in there. US manufacturing is expensive because wages are high, but also because we focus on the high end work that pays more . Even the small machine shops I used 10 years ago for small scale production runs are no longer interested in doing any small batch work. They have more contract work from big companies than they can handle, and the big…
> Everyone is going to turn that order down because there’s no money or future in it, but there’s plenty of better work that pays better from companies who want to keep using your services in the future.
Until there isn't, and you go bankrupt because you didn't generate new independent business.
Maximally efficient is minimally robust. Or, perhaps you prefer: efficiency is the reciprocal of resilience.
And, by the way, China somehow manages to support these small manufacturers. For example: Chitu Systems supplies the small volumes of LCD screens for 3d resin printers.
Re: Why it's so difficult to produce American-made medical gloves
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
Heh sure, it's great at optimizing. The problem is it's an optimizing function for the rich getting richer, not for the good of society, not for reducing human suffering, not even, y'know, the survival of the human race.
This is just silliness. Rich people got rich under capitalism by providing things people want for the best price. They're rich because they owns shares in valuable businesses that people want to buy the products of. Some people get rich, on average by merit. And everyone gets the products they want at a low price. Can you imagine if the only cars available were made in the USSR, like Ladas? They were terrible because…
Sure!
Like the Sacklers who got rich by... providing the best opiates. Or Zuck, who got rich by... destroying the fabric of our society. Or Big Oil, which got rich by... destroying ecosystems and dooming us all. Or United Fruit Company which got rich by... brutally colonizing Latin America.
It's almost as if the profit motive optimized for profit, not any other outcome that was in any way beneficial to anyone but the ones... profiting.
Re: Why it's so difficult to produce American-made medical gloves
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's amazing how much those spreadsheet heads know nothing about how the actual world works
Doing basic math makes someone a "spreadsheet head"? If the "actual world" wanted American-made gloves then this cash injection from the government would've resulted in a boom in glove manufacturing here, no? 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…
There are examples of species encountering such species decimating pathogens and we are in a worse position than 2020.
Any investment in such is likely to pay dividends in much less dramatic ordinary catastrophes which have occurred repeatedly and constantly.
It's probably a better investment than our military.
Re: Why it's so difficult to produce American-made medical gloves
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gloves are sterile wouldn't this tend to embed whatever is on the hands in the surface as it dries?
Which is fine - when you put on gloves, they just cover up whatever is on your skin in the same way.
On the outside of the surface as well which is not fine. Goo would tend to irritate the skin stick in your pores and be challenging to quickly change when you contaminated one exterior which happens a lot
Re: Why it's so difficult to produce American-made medical gloves
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who’s paying to bring online a factory that sites idle just in case? Are you also paying workers to sit there idle?
The logical thing is that the government buys them continually at the higher price which justifies the existence of the factory with the requirement that it is made here and if this is not sufficient motivation you make buying something more buying something profitable contingent
Like the Jones act but for gloves
Re: Why it's so difficult to produce American-made medical gloves
#148Needs an orthogonal approach. Perhaps Elmer's glue that physician’s can dip their hands in and rinse off?
Gloves are sterile wouldn't this tend to embed whatever is on the hands in the surface as it dries?
Medical gloves are not sterile (outside maybe of ones specifically packaged for use in an OR).
Re: Why it's so difficult to produce American-made medical gloves
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Republicans didn't see the need to be precise
Seems the decision to deprioritize n95s was done by the Obama administration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_National_Stockpile
This is a congressional decision not a presidential obe and it was done after the dems lost the majority because of the incllination towards austerity that always develops when a dem is president. Would you like to go over exactly what republican votes led to this?
Re: Why it's so difficult to produce American-made medical gloves
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the price is too high you aren’t skilled enough to make them cheaper
Or free enough. All that civil engineering, permitting, compliance checkbox BS has to be amortized over the stuff the factory makes.
Foreign made medical gloves have the same compliance to fulfill