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0 pointsrob745y ago0 comments

Yay, that's exactly the thinking that got us into this mess - trying to squeeze every bit of efficiency out of the supply chain has spread every step of production far and wide (I already mentioned the global journey a pair of jeans is going on before being sold for next-to-nothing in a mall near you: http://competendo.net/en/A_Pair_of_Jeans) - which was possible until now because of cheap logistics, but the current situation reveals how fragile this really is. Maybe what we need is not more efficiency, but more common sense...

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10 comments · 4 top-level

devmunchies5y ago· 6 in thread

> trying to squeeze every bit of efficiency out of the supply chain has spread every step of production far and wide

efficiency did that? not price?

why would American companies have moved manufacturing overseas if it were cheaper at home?

Nothing efficient about catching fish in alaska, sending them to china for canning, and then shipping them back to a california grocery store.

if expensive shipping becomes the norm, I would then expect local manufacturing to boom.

brudgers5y ago

I watched the dismantling of the textile industry during the 00’s. The companies were bought with leverage. The mill equipment packed up and shipped to China. The mill buildings torn apart for recycled heavy timber and brick and the land offered for redevelopment.

It had nothing to do with the costs of running a textile mill. Nothing to do with economic competition. There was simply an opportunity to make money by selling off the assets. It was about the financial industry not manufacturing.

devmunchies5y ago

i have a theory that this is a result of the civil war. the north was run by bankers and lawyers, the south was farmers.

The domination of the north led to domination of services/finance over labor.

Had the south broken off, they would have preserved a labor centric economy.

Even back to the founding fathers, you have Adams (Mass., Lawyer) and Hamilton (NY, Banker) from the north and in the south you had Washington (Virginia, Career Military Leader), Jefferson (Virginia, Farmer), etc...

skrtskrt5y ago

I think the commenter is more referring to just-in-time supply chain management where companies run on much thinner buffers of time and physical stock.

djrogers5y ago

> efficiency did that? not price?

You're looking at the wrong resources if you don't think lowest cost is analogous to most efficient. Time, labor, etc. all take a back seat to the bottom line when retail goods are in play.

pjc505y ago

Economically price and efficiency are supposed to be the same thing. It's very expensive to have Westerners do things.

vagrantJin5y ago

So we need some people to either be unemployed or paid dirt for the system to work? And you question why the world is moving towards communism and not against it?

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sokoloff5y ago

Many consumers will buy from a more efficient supply chain because the price to them (for goods in stock) is a few percent lower. They don’t have nearly as powerful incentive to overpay for years in hopes of having more stable supply after a pandemic-induced global disruption event (especially since there’s no guarantee that those excess costs would actually deliver the stability; they might just be paid as wages, profits, additional advertising, and/or business expansion).

colechristensen5y ago

But there’s always some potential mess and fragility regardless of your model... robustness comes from the ability to react to failure i.e. to take advantage of an opportunity like this shipping crunch.

xwdv5y ago

What we need is to not have events that disrupt our supply chains.

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