The price increase in graphics cards isn't related to this.

GMs trouble selling cars because they don't have enough chips to finish off the cars is a problem related to the pandemic and planning like the posts on Twitter note. The lack of new cars available has driven up prices on used cars. This is all supply chain driven.

> how unprecedented the issue is.

How unprecedented is it? In the last 130 years there have been two world wars and two global pandemics.

The US has now outsourced most of the production of goods to places in other countries. So, if something changes there (like the mask issues we had early in the pandemic) we have limitations here. And then there is the changes in posture of China where many of our things are manufactured. It wouldn't be unheard of, historically speaking, for that to impact businesses in the future.

One rationale behind the push for global integration after WW2 and later on with China and the former Soviet Bloc was the idea that such integration would create incentives against a resurgence of war between great powers. It is precisely because another world war would be so disruptive in light of global economic integration that global integration was promoted and pursued in the first place by many policy makers—in order to make such wars less likely to occur.

I suppose the thinking was that the obvious downside—that if a great-power war were to occur, the global economy would be in shambles—was irrelevant given that another world war would likely amount to Armageddon.

In other words, preparing for the contingency of a world war is worse than useless, because the only viable path (both from a utilitarian and from a moral perspective) is to do what is most effective to prevent the occurrence of such a war (which pursuant to this line of thinking includes, of course, making significant investments in defense).

> One rationale behind the push for global integration after WW2 and later on with China and the former Soviet Bloc was the idea that such integration would create incentives against a resurgence of war between great powers. It is precisely because another world war would be so disruptive in light of global economic integration that global integration was promoted and pursued in the first place by many policy makers—in order to make such wars less likely to occur.

That's a topic explored a bit in The Interdependency Series by John Scalzi. I found it am amusing read (and actually liked Wil Wheaton as a narrator for it... though not everyone agrees on that point).

The teaser for the first book of the series:

> Our universe is ruled by physics, and faster-than-light travel is not possible - until the discovery of The Flow, an extradimensional field we can access at certain points in space-time that transports us to other worlds, around other stars.

> Humanity flows away from Earth, into space, and in time forgets our home world and creates a new empire, the Interdependency, whose ethos requires that no one human outpost can survive without the others. It's a hedge against interstellar war - and a system of control for the rulers of the empire.

  > One rationale behind the push for global integration after WW2 and later on with China and the former Soviet Bloc was the idea that such integration would create incentives against a resurgence of war between great powers.

is it possible that our global economic system, international relations etc are not yet evolved enough to keep such a system functioning stably (in geo-political terms)?

The US has clearly emerged as the one superpower in the aftermath of the soviet dissolution. But China has now emerged as a potential competitor to the superpower status (they've basically replaced the soviets in this model). They haven't yet reached the same level, but will soon according to all modeling and prediction.

I do believe that it is the US's hope, in the clinton administration, to have china's market economy open up, and thus, allow western "democratic" culture seep in (ala, like japan and korea - but without having a war to start with). This certainly, and clearly has failed now. China do not want to be "subservient" to the US superpower like the other westernized asian nations.

I think that is the point (or one of the points): it's not just logistics and spare capacity - it's a much more complex set of issues.

This isn't something accounting practices or "less greed" would solve, as seems to be implied in the Twitter thread.

Would you have voted for a party that spent $1b annually on mask manufacturing subsidies for masks nobody even bought? Who could have foreseen that demand spike?

I would have voted for a party with a program of "bring the manufacture of strategically crucial items back to the US and make it robust". This seems like it would even be Republican "bread and butter" and I don't see why either party had an issue with it.

i think a lot of people would not want such a subsidy.

Are you seriously trying to say that production being moved to China, et al. is not because of greed generally, and ROE specifically?

There is only so much discrepancy in prices that global markets will allow before buyers start rewarding the lower priced sellers for taking advantage of the arbitrage.

Many people did (only at the $450MM level/annually). It was considered standard practice to have the federal government purchase large quantities of N95 masks to have in case of an emergency. GWB started the program, and Obama distributed 100,000,000 masks during the H1N1 crisis from the stockpile. I will say that restocking the pile took a cut after 2010, Congress cut its funding and Obama's team didn't fight for it. And what funding they did get didn't seem to get prioritized into masks.

The entire industrial capacity of USA, country of 300 million people, could produce zero Meltblown, so it could make zero masks. Do you think it's acceptable?

People talk about conflict with China while we depent on them for toilet paper to wipe out butts, it's like a mentall ilness.

Delays on intercontinental shipping and lack of availability of a few durable goods is a perfectly fine price to pay on that frequency. Optimizing to surviving a global pandemics without any problem would be ridiculous expensive.

Yes, specifically on the subject of cars, the manufacturers seem to be accepting way more risk than what is sensible. But that's their decision to make. If they were just left to face the costs of their decisions, they would stop making bad ones quite quickly.

(By the way, there were 2 flu pandemics similar or worse than this one on the last 100 years. That's one more than you are counting.)

China & Co. did a big over-correction during the start of the pandemic, and that put a lot of things into chaos.

You now have chip speculators entering the foray, jacking up prices, not very helpful in letting the market clear.

10% padding in US operations I don't think would have made up for anything, the problems exist in shipping and on key/acute issues from the suppliers in Asia really.

I don't think it's reasonable to imply 'We should build all the stuff here to avoid delays during 1 in 50 years pandemics'.

I'm not blaming so much as pointing out that's where the underlying issues are.

Of course exacerbated by other things.

I think working out solutions to transportation, buyers paying for things like guarantees, plant and supply chain risk analysis etc. will become a thing now.

CEOs will hire consultants and firms to measure the likelihood in supply chain failure and make ammends.

I actually think we'll get adapt past most of this.

It is not deadly global pandemics that are unprecedented, it’s the lockdown response to them that is.

I count 13 global pandemics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics#Chronology

Let me count again, while leaving out relatively minor pandemics like Zika:

* Fifth cholera pandemic

* Third plague pandemic (multiple outbreaks are listed)

* Sixth cholera pandemic

* 1915 encephalitis lethargica pandemic

* Spanish flu

* 1957-58 "Asian flu"

* Seventh cholera pandemic

* 1968-70 "Hong Kong flu"

* 1977 Russian flu

* HIV/AIDS pandemic

* 2009-10 swine flu

* COVID-19

That's 12 and doesn't count stuff like Zika, SARS, or MERS. It also doesn't count any of the Ebola epidemics.

I don't know if cases or deaths are a good proxy for expected supply chain impact. SARS, for instance, had relatively few cases and deaths because it mostly broke out in well-functioning developed East Asian countries that were capable of responding to it effectively, but those same countries have outsized effects on global supply chains.

An epidemic usually starts within a particular country and if it becomes a pandemic it will grow rapidly and spread to other countries, but the WHO definitions are only based on the number of cases compared to normal and how fast the number of cases is rising.

So this was a once ever event.

It's stunning how much knowledge and wisdom has been lost about simple things like how to deal with plagues. This is not a new thing facing humanity.

Nuclear war is also a once-ever event, so wr shouldn't worry about it,right?

Sure, it affects everything and given the complex interconnections and dependencies within production chains / networks, the cause-and-effect relationships are hard to understand and cause for concern. But given how complex and decentralized things are, I am still amazed we haven't seen worse effects (yet). I doubt that spare capacity in logistics alone would make a huge difference, because you'd also need spare parts, materials and manufacturing capacity, all of which are part of the same network.

The spiral is in its early innings right now. Hold on tight!

They check real-time shipping costs and choose the cheaper option. It takes a few dollars worth of cardboard to turn a shipping container into a suitable container for corn or soybean shipping (really!).

or more likely, it happens, but because of prior experience, the event is no longer as calamitous as the first time.

Looking at the GFC in 2008, the monetary policy back then was too tight (hindsight 20/20 and all that of course), causing the recession to be extended longer than it would've.

This covid disaster would've caused a similar problem, imho, if the Feds did not loosen up like never before. It "solved" that same problem the GFC produced. Had the GFC not occured, the pandemic would cause a double wammy - a medical problem, and also a monetary problem.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigations_into_the_origin...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_HIV/AIDS

* There some things that are people simply need for survival. At a certain point, having no spare capacity and cascading failures means people die. Lack of masks last arguably killed people last year.

* It's quite possible to excess capacity and be good to the environment while present production is often terrible despite the lack of excess capacity.

* Sure, a complete lack of excess capacity is economical. Which is the OP's point in different words. Robustness to failure has been traded for immediate returns.

I think that was the least of the problem. At the beginning of the pandemic in the US, hospitals, nursing homes, and many other companies would not allow their workers to bring in their own PPE. This continued for upwards of six months. Several outbreaks occurred in my area because management refused to allow their workers to use PPE. Fast food operators also had several outbreaks because they were not testing their employees temperatures until it was far too late.

As late as April, we had dental offices across the country refusing to allow receptionists to wear masks. Same went for supermarkets and restaurants. Upwards of 30% of lives could have been saved if corporate and management hadn’t setup major roadblocks for worker protections. One of the most common arguments I heard was, “we don’t want the customer to see our people behind a mask”. For companies, this wasn’t a pandemic with real health risks, this was a front-facing visibility problem for the organization. These people should all lose their jobs for the suffering they caused.

Covid was essentially "Sars II". If Sars1 had had the qualities needed to be a world wide epidemic, we'd be looking 10-100x the casualties. Sars1 happened a decade ago. Calling this a "hundred year crisis" seems wholly disingenuous. This event was forecast by quite a few people, the world was terribly unprepared and there's every reason to think the same factors that created this virus will create others much sooner than a hundred years from now.

Also, a lot of governments did take suitable precautions in case Covid was more like the original SARS early on and just got flak for it. This was particularly visible here in the UK, where Public Health England and the government had already planned for another SARS or MERS-like virus and introduced really aggressive testing and contact tracing early on in case this was it. They just got attacked in the press for not continuing that once it became clear this wasn't like SARS and it wouldn't work - and then once they gave in and reintroduced testing and contact tracing as a measure, they were attacked again because (predicatably) it wasn't that effective and the media fuelled endless badly-informed conspiracy theories about the testing and contact tracing program only existing to funnel money to their pals.

Viruses conform to the distribution of deadliness-vs-reproduction rate. For Sars 1 to spread widely, it has to be less deadly. There are limits to how a virus can both be deadly and contagious.

But just a tidbit on this statement.

That leaves out the whole question of incubation time. The scary thing about COVID is that it gives you several days to a week or more to walk around spreading the infection before you even know you have it.

That's why the reaction in the public health sector was so dramatic. It was the sort of thing that could have easily been much worse than it has turned out to be.

And it's still only one or two mutations away from living up to the worst-case fears: a seriously-deadly virus that spreads all over the world before anyone knows what's happening. One that large sectors of the population have already been preconditioned to deprecate or ignore.

That's a fine rule of thumb but not something to literally bet your life on. When smallpox was introduced to North America, it wiped out a substantial percentage of the population of the continent (This [1] claims 90%, which might be much but it was a lot).

[1] https://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/variables/smallpox.html

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/pandemic-could-mean-260-mi...

I'm very confident the real numbers of starved people since then is vastly lower.

There's no reason to think this is over yet. We might just be getting started.

We know what the system looked like before, and post-pandemic, there's no reason to believe it wouldn't return to that state. Aside from some ongoing pandemic measures, by and large, we should see things mostly settle into the system that already works.

It's just going to take some time to clear. In the meantime, most things are working well enough.

Much of the inflation we are seeing is a function of 12 years of mass money printing and pandemic response, if it were not for that, the pricing issue wouldn't be so acute.

If there is a 'new normal' it will due to monetary issues - the adjustments in supply chains I think will be incremental, with a few strategic changes i.e. TSMC in Austin etc..

There go our semiconductors, this time for real.