Re:It’s Time to Repeal the Jones Act
by dsfyu404ed on Wednesday October 19, 2022 @03:29PM
(#33266810)
The free market absolutely does value stability and risk mitigation because they have direct implications for the cost of financing which directly tacks onto the cost of any given capital investment.
They value it in the same way that I nebulously value the environment but still buy things wrapped in single use plastics. The free market has shown that they currently value efficiency over stability which has led to the rise of JIT logistics and manufacturers being unable to produce goods after a hiccup of a few months on their supply chain.
There is no equivalent section of the free market that is looking on multi decade long horizons for risk mitigation in the same way that governments do.[1]There are industries that care about risk mitigation on 30-50 year schedules for individual pieces of heavy industrial capital but there aren’t any that will actively run or subsidize factories building parts for a market they don’t participate in for decades on the off chance they might need to spin that up ASAP.
[1]generalizing here. I’m sure you can find a handful of companies who do this but unless they represent double digit percentages of the entire economy I’m not going to be convinced that it’s a sign of the free market valuing stability
Nation states have goals that the free market doesn’t value like stability or risk mitigation. Keeping an industry that can become critical around in a reduced capacity so that you don’t need to bootstrap from scratch is to governments like purchasing insurance on a car is for an individual who relies on one for their income.