The reasons should be obvious. Coronavirus would not be the issue it is in economic terms if we did not have such an interconnected world, where supply lines are stretched to their limits so that many companies are at risk from the slightest disruption to their systems, which coronavirus is already creating, and which could get much worse.
Far better to have entirely local economies. So that when the local farmer drops dead then all starve in that area.
Hmm, what’s that? Security comes from having multiple suppliers? Gosh, that’s right! So, having all the world as a potential supplier is safer then, right?
‘where supply lines are stretched to their limits’
Wut?
Ha! You won’t say that when –insert hysterical fantasy number of your choosing– people in Britain have died of the Bat Plague!
What do we do when we end up with a single supplier in a globalised world?
Several drug shortages recently have been due to near-monopoly manufacturers in Chindia having production problems.
The Fukushima disaster famously took out the world’s only supplier of metallic shiny stuff for car paints.
So how do we retain diversification of supply of things that globalisation tends to concentrate suppliers of?
@BiG
So you’re more likely to get multiple suppliers in a non-globalised world? How do you access them?
BiS
Via Amazon!
🙂
Incidentally, the material you’re talking about first came out of California in the 70s. California was the centre of the hot-rodding scene. And were horrendously expensive. No doubt there’s still the capability to produce them. If Japan has a monopoly it’s going to be on price & capacity. You could likely still buy them in LA if you were willing to pay.
I think the good Prof might have been reading some military history recently.
Tim
Will reply on this idiocy shortly – have you seen his post on the IFS – this one made me chuckle. Apparently, Tax is democratic – People who pay tax vote therefore everyone should pay tax. Also the IFS is ‘neoliberal’, apparently….
Truly the man is beyond parody
Maybe he should reduce the global reach of his drivel. By keeping it to himself.
BiG,
It’s the sort of thing that lots of businesses try and plan for, like most companies have a disaster recovery site for their computer systems. One goes down, the other kicks in. Or what happens if the supplier of a certain type of widget goes bankrupt. Who do you go to. The switch from mainframes to X86 server clusters had the benefit of being easy to switch supplier.
For drugs, it’s the sort of thing where you really need some sort of national or international contingency system. Maybe we even subsidise suppliers just to make sure there’s another factory or set the market up to keep multiple suppliers in business. It’s hard to expect one doctor to pay for that.
Nice straw man you knocked over there, bis!
In fairness Tim, there’s an element of consistency here. Even before his falling out with Mcdonnell he had clashed with Labour during the Brown and Miliband years. The one party he has always expressed firm support for is Caroline Lucas and the Greens, who bemoan the internationalisation of the economy and are confirmed misanthropes who really want 50% (at least) of humanity to die and for whom the Corona virus is like Manna from heaven. Combine that with his self-declaration as a terrorist sympathiser by openly supporting Extinction rebellion and we see his true agenda. On this (at least) you can’t accuse him of inconsistency or of trying to cloak his evil intentions in benign rhetoric. He genuinely believes we need to reduce population to medieval levels and the economy needs to be returned to the Stone Age.
I’m surprised Capt. Potato has time to blog rather than addressing an exciting proposal to Richard Burgon for his “Tony Benn School of Political Education” which will boast a department of “alternative economics”, or Elynomics.
Masses of fun for the masses.
Doesn’t this put the knife in the heart of that daft theory of..what was it?..gravity of trade? And the EU’s contention that we in the UK need special treatment because we are geographically close?
Thanxs for standing him up, BiG
The Black Death managed OK without ‘such an interconnected World’… when it had finished there wasn’t much of the World left.
History is not taught anymore.
So how do we retain diversification of supply of things that globalisation tends to concentrate suppliers of?
A bit of common sense contingency planning, keeping lines open with multiple suppliers, and identifying ready substitutes?
@Van_Patten
There’s a school of thought says he just pitching this spiel at an audience’ll pass him a few crusts. But always hoping he’ll attract the big money. It’s better than working for a living. Behind it he’s the usual moneygrabby opportunist socialist they all are
It’s amazing, all those MBAs with a specialisation in logistics and you can even do a Masters in logistics, I know someone who did one in the military, and here’s Spud lecturing them on their speciality. Once again he demonstrates no beginning to his talents.
Tomorrow’s Spud Lecture: How to develop a cornavirus vaccine in half an hour using only a household cleaning products, a cocktail shaker, two juice glasses and a Bunsen burner and why Neoliberalism is to blame for it not being developed already (Tim Worstall stole my Bunsen burner).
Additional thoughtful commentary will come from Newmania in the form of a follow-up lecture entitled: ;aapljb]TT yjhn’ lmdf gmy6y7 054p;aer
@BiG
We already know following an earthquake flattening a memory fab plant in Japan. It’s been a risk problem in IT for decades
Latest tech always most vulnerable:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flat_panel_display_manufacturers#List_of_MicroLED_panel_manufacturers
@rhoda klapp
+1 Gravity Model
I’ve pointed out a few times that EU & Barmier don’t seem to know giant container ships exist and think everything arrives by horse & cart
@Dennis
I’ve observed that among the ever expanding pantheon of Dennises, the question of whether Dennis might or might not be a Wog has been raised. The answer is unambiguous to those sufficiently eagle-eyed to pick up the clues.
Some short while ago, another Dennis made reference in his title to his todger and it is universally understood that this accoutrement of the male person (or as it may in certain circs be, god) is one that is incontrovertibly woggish.
While it must be conceded that readers of the guardian were invited by their newspaper some years ago to write to the citizenry of Ohio to canvas support for a candidate standing for elected office, it is doubtful whether linguistic pollution could have resulted since while the correspondents and the candidate might reasonably have been called todgers, it is doubtful whether the word would have been introduced in either context.
The inevitable conclusion, then, is that on the Mount Olympus of central Ohio, there is at least one foppish (Beau Brummell, indeed!) representative proudly flying the standard of Wogonia.
Global Trade Related
Despite Tim W’s support of AGW fallacy and “Carbon” Tax
Australians ‘care more about cost of living than climate change’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZCSmfbyAWo
Of course they care more about cost of living than “climate change”, since there is no man made climate change
The ‘hypocrisy’ of other nations on climate change ‘has got no end’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QwG0Azn1iY
Global warming climate change is the biggest hoax in the history of man kind
It is just another Tax the Poor to exclude them from what Elite do
Anyone watched last years C4 Docu on Aldi? Guardianistas rubbished Aldi/Lidl “I wouldn’t even park there” and intimated poor wouldn’t want or buy nice food.
Left seem to believe ‘the workers’ still live in a 1950s Britain
In other News
“To attend a sustainable travel conference” – sums up why Harry & Meghan are disliked
MB –
Jesus Christ, Bison, I had to read that post three times before I got it sorted out. Channeling your inner Bulwer-Lytton?
Anyway, the first post was a fake Dennis. That should be obvious from the lack of capitalization and a comma as well as incorrect syntax. Actually, I’d assumed it was either you or Lud.
As for the the term “todger”, well, there’s this thing called “Google” on the innertubes, and if you ask it a question such as, for example, “What the fuck is a todger?” It will give an answer such as, for example: A penis. A dick. A John Thomas. A prick. Your wife’s best friend. A one eyed trouser snake. A wang-doodle. And the ever popular skin flute. So figuring out what a todger is isn’t really much of an indication of anything.
And of course I’m a wog. I’m an ‘Merican wog, which is the only sort of wog to be. You wogs over there are a bunch of weenies.
Denis: That should be obvious from the lack of capitalization and a comma as well as incorrect syntax. Actually, I’d assumed it was either you or Lud.
I grant you that I can be sloppy with this stuff but m’Lud is very fastidious and this cruel jibe may cut him to the quick.
Do the synonym tubes mention ‘The Hamptons’ at all in this regard?
I doubt anything I say will cut him to the quick. But if I manage to annoy him (or you, for that matter) then my work here is done. For now.
“Global warming climate change is the biggest hoax in the history of man kind”
Jesus H Frederick Christ!
And Mohammedism.
Global warming climate change a distant third.
“Bloke in Germany
February 26, 2020 at 11:18 am
What do we do when we end up with a single supplier in a globalised world?
Several drug shortages recently have been due to near-monopoly manufacturers in Chindia having production problems.
The Fukushima disaster famously took out the world’s only supplier of metallic shiny stuff for car paints.
So how do we retain diversification of supply of things that globalisation tends to concentrate suppliers of?”
If you didn’t have a globalized economy, sure, there’d have been a supplier in every country. But that wouldn’t do you any good if the supplier in your country went belly-up – because your economy was not globalized so there’d be no infrastructure in place to order and get delivery from someone else.
So, you’d a hell of a lot of localized little disasters over time rather than one or two big ones.
And every global monopoly comes down to either ‘its really, really, really, really efficient for this one firm to do it’ or ‘the government won’t let anyone else do it’.
“Jesus Christ, Bison, I had to read that post three times before I got it sorted out. Channeling your inner Bulwer-Lytton?”
Did you really?
Oh.
Yep. At times wog-ese is hard for ‘Mericans to decipher.
I assume Coronavirus will be followed by Yuenglingvirus.