Re:Bad government policy is fueling the infant formula shortage
by sokoloff on Saturday May 14, 2022 @06:13PM
(#31383162)
In 1, what's the product that you're considering the market share of? An iphone 13 mini? All iPhones? All smartphones? Or any phone? Or any portable computing device?
A Macbook? Or a laptop? Or a computer? Or a computing device (to include laptops, desktops, tablets, and smartphones)?
Re:Bad government policy is fueling the infant formula shortage
by ipsin on Saturday May 14, 2022 @06:27PM
(#31383278)
I don't understand what the two have to do with each other.
You say there's already a monopoly but if we'd bought a stockpile from the monopoly at market prices, we'd... still have a stockpile.
Re:Bad government policy is fueling the infant formula shortage
by bsder on Saturday May 14, 2022 @08:53PM
(#31384237)
The point is that you don't need a stockpile if you have supply diversity.
If you have two suppliers, one going down clobbers half of the market and the other company has to ramp up 100% to take over. That's simply not feasible.
If you have five suppliers and one goes down, the remaining four companies only have to increase 20% each to take over the load. That's not easy, but it's actually in the realm of being possible.
Because the real issue is that we have no diversity of supply.
1) We have allowed everything to become monopolized such that losing a single supplier knocks out large chunks of supply. At this point, it is quite clear that for economic robustness, any company found to control more than 25% of the market for any product should be repeatedly broken in two until that is no longer true. But that would require robust anti-trust enforcement.
2) The suppliers are Always-Late(tm) Inventory optimized such that they can't absorb a significant uptick in demand without a long wind up time. Covid comprehensively demonstrated that industrial producers no longer have the ability to "retool". By removing as many humans from production and replacing them with automation, the productions lines have traded any flexibility for maximum profit.