I've filled my garden with plastic buckets so I can sell water once the reservoir is empty. I'm on a meter, otherwise I'd just fill them from the tap.
Why America Is Choking Under An Everything Shortage
- Thread starter hanselthecaretaker
- Start date
The U.S. trade deficit with China says otherwise. It's true they might not be the cheapest supplier anymore but industrial output of Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam are only a fraction of China's. It's not easy to relocate a plant and most companies don't take the risk. Espescially in unsafe countries with volatile political climates.
The situation in the E.U. is the exact same as in the U.S. A global shortage of raw materials and disruptions in the supply chain due to stupid lockdowns now leading to a surge in demand. The reasons you mention are correct like companies not storing an inventory/reserve b/c it costs money, truck shortage and a supply chain that only works under optimal conditions. But none of these things would be insurmountable if everything from consumer goods to cars to confection to raw pharmaceutical and industrial ingredients etc didn't solely rely on either Chinese imports or Chinese ocean carriers and port terminals or both. Like, literally everything from manufacture to shipping to maintenance is outsourced. Companies like Amazon have elevated optimization of their supply chain to an artform with Kafka-esque tendencies but they are no less dependent on their overseas suppliers and it's a question if huge investments in carriers and port terminals will pay themselves out over time considering the labor shortages(also the reason why there are too few truck drivers) and the high cost of operating a fleet of carriers while keeping prices for the consumer low. To be honest I don't see them do it b/c their business model only works when everything except boxing the product to the end consumer is outsourced.
There is really no alternative for outsourcing. Companies can't even attract truck drivers let alone man entire plants and production sites. Who's gonna do it? Living costs(espescially housing) is also ridiculously expensive so even wages covering the most basic expenses are still way too high to ever compete on price with overseas suppliers. The infrastructure in the U.S. in particular is about on par with the third world. It's just never going to happen. The only way forward is talks with Xi about supply guarantees concerning their port terminals and other related reliability issues. If you can't beat them, join them like they say. China already owns the dollar anyway. Interdependence between these two countries is also good for the world at large. With the U.S. no longer being the dominant superpower that can do as it pleases(espescially in the pacific) and the importance of exports to economic growth keeping China's worst authoritarian tendencies in check.
The situation would be little different, save the bottleneck being truck yards and not cargo ports. The US could have infinitely many cargo ports right now, and the problem would be the same because there are multiple bottlenecks in the domestic supply chain, in which sea transport is but one.
If anything, the problem would likely be worse thanks to the shift of infrastructural and logistical burden onto fewer networks (in this case, predominantly road and rail), as opposed to distributed among several (sea, river, air, road, and rail). "Domestic production" doesn't mean goods materialize from the ether and teleport to their terminus. This ain't Star Trek.
[I mean, we haven't even started talking about rail car, locomotive, and rail worker shortages, and emergent problems with deficiencies in the US freight rail network, yet.]
The problem is in no way related to people across the Pacific ocean, because the level you're looking at is entirely within the realm of effect rather than cause. The problem is late-stage capitalism, specifically prioritizing efficiency, speed, and overhead reduction across every conceivable level of business at the cost of proper risk assessment, management, and mitigation.
If the root cause of the problem is indeed international trade, don't hesitate to explain why economic sectors that are almost entirely domestic and have inelastic demand unlike most luxuries and consumer goods (most notably, agricultural production) have suffered as much, if not more from emergent supply chain challenges.
And a closing thought, "we're having problems now because we didn't impoverish people enough during the pandemic" is...one hell of a take, I'll give you that.
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All of those things *should be* true of manufacturing in Thailand though. All that's happening is that we're outsourcing injuries and pollution to populations too poor to say no.
This is why I crap all over the "green" energy industry in its current state -- externalizing environmental destruction, atmospheric carbon release, and massive human cost to the economic south. All to appease fad-chasing, low-info liberal populations, who are predominantly white, urbanite, and bourgeois.
I dunno that china is too poor to say no. The CCP keeps the population poor because thats how socialism and communism works. So they take everything from the people and leave the people the bare minimum. Meanwhile the people in charge and the government hoard the money like a bunch of fucking dragons. And if you dont like it, they just kill you.
I dont even think it is the polution either. The reason why the polution is so bad in China is because they have a high concentration of factory output. If other countries could do the same manufacturing then that would spread out the concentration of emissions.
The problem is, building factories for low eco-friendly emissions is very expensive and the cost isnt something any company wants to foot the bill for. What should happen in the US at least is that instead of given billions to foreign countries for no fucking reason, they should be using that money to create eco-manufacturing here.
California is fucking stupid. They are banning all gas powered engines entire including lawnmowers and chainsaws. The problem is they are making these laws without viable solutions. So without non gas alternatives, people and gardening businesses are fucked because they cant use their tools. There are very few battery powered options.
Additionally when batteries go bad, lithium is really fucking bad for the planet and hard to get rid of so what are they going to do with all these dead batteries? Electric power is incredibly expensive in California and it is a band aid solution to fossil fuel. It doesnt change anything, you swap one hazzard for another and when all these batteries and dead vechicles starting piling up, then what?
Me: *direct critisim of your company's situation in Thailand regarding pollution, safety regulations, and labor compensation*
You: "Chinese communism bad!"
It's like a meme
It's the way the economics are set up, we have to ignore the fundamental building blocks so that we can rush the output to "viable" production.
Which I get: ignoring problems for decades left us in a position where we need to dramatically change our power generation methods and we don't have a strictly viable alternative. But all we're doing is focusing on the end result of megawatts per dollar while investing paltry amounts mitigating the problems involved in basic production.
But we aren't gonna Free Market our way out of this and people really need to come to terms with the fact that this is a global problem. Fucking over the southern hemisphere will not save the northern hemisphere and reducing labor protections, safety regulations, and wages in "wealthy" countries to make manufacturing "viable" in northern countries is so ass backwards that I can't believe I see people advocating it.
...anyone else gonna tell 'em lithium's one of the most common elements on the planet and isn't actually that toxic? The cobalt in Li-ion batteries is the bad news. Which is why the race is on to produce Li-ion batteries that replace cobalt in the cathode, without sacrificing energy density or life span.
[At least as long as you're not a nuclear physicist that didn't notice Li-7 fissions into deuterium and helium. Then, as it turns out, it's pretty fuckin' toxic.]
Li-ion battery reprocessing, otherwise, is just tech that needs to mature to become more commercially available.
Renewables are actually one of the areas in which "traditional" logic gets turned on its head, paradoxically. The most economically-viable routes, with the most mature and cheapest technologies, are actually those being neglected thanks to largely socially-constructed market trends. Compare photovoltaic to solar thermal; the latter is cheaper, more mature, and proven tech that is more energy-efficient with higher output and built-in storage options that don't rely on rare-earth metals, that is applicable in more regions with lower insolation and secondary function (whether that's as solar furnace, or environment control).
Most people, even technologically-literate folks who keep up to date on renewable energy, don't even realize how efficient and widely-applicable solar thermal is, if they're aware of it at all. No, practically all attention is to much dirtier, less efficient, and more expensive PV.
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Why research lithium battery processing when you can just dump the waste in an African country and them blame them for the toxic waste? Worked for plastic
That is because those sectors make use of the exact same distribution network. When there is a shortage of shipping containers b/c trade with China is a one way street it doesn't matter what goes in them. That is why I said the long supply lines themselves aren't necessarily the problem but rather the lack of competition in that supply line. Every company is dependent on them. And this won't change b/c our economic model only works under outsourcing. Without it loses it's competitve edge and costs would balloon exponentially leading to a dramatic increase in prices. Just look at the abomination that is the housing market; the one example that can't be outsourced or imported.
That there are economic sectors with 'inelastic demands' also simply isn't true. More access to capital means more orders don't matter which sector. It's like healthcare; the more money you put into it the more demand you create. And that is another factor that really aggravates the problem; inflation. Negative interest rates and central banks printing money like it's toilet paper means savings are expensive and banks needing to get rid of all that excess money so they are lining up to finance investments in any market. The surge in demand that disrupts the supply chain is solely due to debt created by easy access to cheap credit. The economy is like a pyramid scheme at this point where one debt is paid with another.
I think you misinterpret my comment about dumb lockdowns. It was completely pointless to shut down ports or production sites which contributed to the shortages we see now.
The problem with these new technologies that could viably replace existing systems is the cost or the restructure.
For example let's say you have a new technology that can trans port good cross country easily and cheaply. But in order to put this technology in place, a complete overhaul of the railway system news to be done. So that adds a huge upfront cost to setting up your new system even if the operational costs in the future will pay for it over time. Then you have to deal with putting existing railway companies either out of business or getting them on board.
There is a lot more involved and a lot of infrastructure built in place with these things that make swapping over far more complicated than it sounds.
One of the biggest things holding electric cars back in the US now is a few things:
1. The range on the cars is limited.
2. There is no infrastructure what-so-ever that will allow people to charge their car where ever they go. And unlike simply filling the gas tank and off you go, charging your car takes a lot more time. Even if there was a fast charging system you'd still need an hour or more for the car to get enough charge to really get anywhere.
3. Banning fossil fuels means what for Air travel and railroad travel? We are decades away from international air travel via electric planes. So are we going to ban flight? Or are we going to have to allow fossil fuel transport to still be in place for mass travel?
The problem is a lot more complex and right now there are no viable solutions. That doesn't mean we can't work on those, but until that happens I think the clamor and banning of fuel powered machines is WAY premature.
And medical treatment. Which showcases the crazy prices on health care.
People say that raising wages and making goods domestically wont raise prices needs only look at the cost of medication and health care in general.
China is the most powerful country in the world, because they don't give two fucks about regulations and will make things on the cheap. And cheap goods literally made every country hand over everything to China on a silver platter for profit margins. And because the WEstern worker kept demanding more and more from the workplace that they literally priced themselves out of jobs.
This couldn't be further from the truth. China's economic growth lifted millions out of poverty and created vibrant cities and an entire middle-class that didn't exist before. They went from a country completely impoverished to millions of people living modern lives in prosperous cities with all it's amenities. Even the people who moved from the rural areas to the factories are able to put their kids into college who are guaranteed to have a better life so even the upward mobility is better in China than the U.S.
What you describe sounds more like the U.S. where a handful of billionaires are hoarding all the money and don't have to pay taxes while average people are squeezed for all their worth. Not to say China is perfect. The people are less free than in the west but I wouldn't put American economic policies where billionaires get to decide over everything above that of China's.
Yeah, but the thing is none of those examples have to do with wages but rather excessive profit margins on patent rights or in the case of the housing market disastrous monetary policy from the federal reserve; ie the same reason that inflates the stock market.
It are those parasites at the top of the financial and investment markets that balloon the costs not the average worker that can hardly pay the rent of his/her shitty appartment.
Yeah, strange, huh? Imagine that.
...and you can whinge about China in regards to this, when you show me which parts of the US interstate highway and freight rail systems go exclusively to and from China. Sparing that, literally every word you have to say about this is irrelevant, distracting, claptrap.
Protip: people aren't tardigrades, they don't need to stop eating when they don't have food.
Side note: how -- in the world -- is it the people who claim to be "supply siders", "libertarians", "capitalist", "business-friendly", and/or "Hayekian" strongly tend towards knowing the least about how businesses and the economy actually works, and more often than not personify the Dunning-Kruger effect?
I mean, good God. I remember the day Arthur fuckin' Laffer gave a guest lecture at my university, which I attended. During Q&A asked him how the Laffer curve holds water when, over the past thirty (then) years of consistent tax rate reduction beginning with Reagan, federal receipts remained consistently between 15-20% of US GDP. Or, how the post-Bush II tax cuts could be justified by the Laffer curve, when federal receipts as percentage of GDP trended downward year-over-year, because if anything that indicates we're on the left side of it. Dude couldn't even give a coherent answer, let alone one that would stand up to even the simplest scrutiny.
And it was the day I was given very polite notice my presence would no longer be welcomed at events and guest lectures hosted by the economics and business departments.
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Could he use that same device or power that grants him clairvoyance to tell me a set of winning lotto numbers? Nothing big, a nice $5,000 bit of pre-Christmas spending cash will be fine.
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And that's actually a problem. Consumer goods actually need a lot of regulation. It would be pretty bad if the Chinese factory that was making your mugs suddenly started painting them with lead paint because it was cheaper and "lol what regulations?"
There's a reason you shouldn't buy dog food (or really any food) from China. It's unregulated trash that can and does poison people and animals.
