It seems like we have lots of easily accessible public data about the pandemic and relatively little about supply chain issues. The supply chain articles I’ve read have lots of anecdotes but little in the way of charts and graphs.
J.P. Morgan put out a really great and fairly detailed article on supply chains and just the general state of the world from a financier's perspective a couple of weeks ago.
Prove? Ehhhh, probably not, but maybe. Provides support for the idea that a true UBI (meaning an actual living wage substitute) will not be generally beneficial to society until we have much higher levels of automation all up and down the production stack, but especially the service sector.
I don't think it really shows us anything about a flat subsidy to everyone though.
There is no labor shortage, that would imply we have too little (skilled) workers, but there has never been as many.
If you think workers having some leverage is bad of course you'll be against UBI.
Notion that supply chains are "old technology" is frankly part of the problem. That combined with the author's point of supply chains being emergent and not designed has made companies invest less and less in understanding and reacting to supply chain issues. It works fine during periods of slow growth and decline as that ensures enough time for supply chains to reach new equilibriums but we pay the price in disruptive situations like the one we see now. Hopefully, it motivates companies to invest in understanding the impact of uncertainties on their supply chains.
> [sic] Notion that supply chains are "old technology" is frankly part of the problem.
That is exactly it's fundamental problem, everything from bills of ladiing, to invoices to AR/AP is archaic and rigid, thus it's prone to severe strain under non-ideal conditions: couple this with the need for JIT everything to idealized forecasting and you can see why shortages are becoming the norm in a country run by an executive class that has benefited from making the World it's manufacture de jure via outsourcing for decades.
As a person that worked in supply chain for mega corps, I was lured back into the industry earlier this year, as some incredibly well paid jobs responded without solicitation as I applied to other non SC positions and to be honest SC management was never an 'easy gig' but swing shifts and 20-30 days with no days off are the norm now to catch up and I don't feel like burning out over something I tried to resolve in my own capacity.
Surprisingly, this is following Naomi Klien's shock doctrine fairly well and if this (in addition to it's egregious and belligerent behaviour in Xianjing, Tibet, Macau, Hong Kong, Taiwan) is what it takes for the World to decouple manufacturing from the CCP then so be it.
I'm fairly certain I'm past the consumerist phase of my life as I find it entirely unfulfilling so I have no need for their trinkets, and I hope I can keep a stock of used computers and laptops around long enough to see the transition, phones are always going to fall victim to planned obsolescence so I keep that in mind and reduce my dependence on them when ever possible.
All in all, yes it's old, but only because it was made to remain as such and a certain contingent of people vastly benefited from this system as a result; I'm recalling the gas shortage in 2016 when oil tankers were anchored out at Sea waiting for the price to correct to make a profit, and this article of Seamen left and cast aside [1] with no pay shows just how remarkably foolish things have gotten during COVID for those hapless enough to need to be in the trenches when it comes to large scale logistics under this scenario.
Globalization gave us many benefits, a robust and anti-fragile logistics and supply chain network was not one of them, if anything it showed why vertical integration (or at least as much as possible) is a highly desired albeit costly expense, which won't always be seen as a priority to quarterly earning fixated execs and board members.
As energy prices spike acrossed the world we quickly understand how the current Agricultural system is not fit as greenhouses in the Netherlands are forced to reduce operations due to the parabolic inflation in natural gas.
The money printers go brrrrrrr in all countries, and having already dropped interest rates its clear by that isn't going to stop prices from rising stagflation from sliding in. The people who need money don't have enough, and there isn't anything to buy anyways, hence stocks go up.
China refuses to trade with Australia for coal and has had black outs across the country which stop animal feed processing. Pair all that with a poor couple years of harvests and it's no surprise prices on everything including food is rocketing up.
With Just-in-time supply chains jammed at most ports and empty containers in the wrong place many do not see a gentle resolution without some form of potential crisis. We must REBUILD WITH PERMACULTURE!
My video goes into more about how producing closer to consumption helps all parts of the equation.
China produces a lot of coal, it is nearly the world's largest coal producer by an order of magnitude [0]. Although supply chains are complex things and their ... whatever they think they are doing ... with Australia might be a contributing factor, it also might not be.
That being said Australia appears to be the world's largest producer of bituminous coal which is considered "higher-quality" than brown coal. Low ash, sulphur, and carbonate coal is ideal for power generation as it results in less boiler slag. My guess is power generation plants require consistent quality of coal, and therefore if China power plants have only access to brown coal, that could pose a problem.
There is also a minor point to highlight: the risk of over-regulation. Something that was notable in the early days of the COVID pandemic was that supply chains react poorly to shocks when they were not allowed to respond. Shelves bare of food while farmers smashed eggs, style of thing. And of course the CDC blocking any working COVID tests in early 2020 will be remembered for a long time.
People have a tendency not to break laws, even in an emergency. Regulations need to let these businesses move quickly in the event of a supply chain crisis.
All true. NOBODY has or had any clue about the dynamics of JIT supply chains.
If you are an engineer: the assumptions were that they were linear and time-invariant when in fact they are highly nonlinear and time-variant.
NOBODY with an MBA (unless they are engineers first) has ANY CLUE about dynamical systems, Lyanpunov stability, differential equations, etc. that actually describe how JIT supply chains work when you vary volume greater than ~1%-5%.
BTW the same can be said of financial networks, electronic bourses/markets and high frequency trading. Same problems. Same ignorance. Same risks nobody understands or sees.
14 comments
[ 1.4 ms ] story [ 29.6 ms ] threadMaybe that’s part of the problem?
https://am.jpmorgan.com/us/en/asset-management/institutional...
I had feeling, does this years' labor shortage prove that UBI is generally bad in a globalized world?
I don't think it really shows us anything about a flat subsidy to everyone though.
That is exactly it's fundamental problem, everything from bills of ladiing, to invoices to AR/AP is archaic and rigid, thus it's prone to severe strain under non-ideal conditions: couple this with the need for JIT everything to idealized forecasting and you can see why shortages are becoming the norm in a country run by an executive class that has benefited from making the World it's manufacture de jure via outsourcing for decades.
As a person that worked in supply chain for mega corps, I was lured back into the industry earlier this year, as some incredibly well paid jobs responded without solicitation as I applied to other non SC positions and to be honest SC management was never an 'easy gig' but swing shifts and 20-30 days with no days off are the norm now to catch up and I don't feel like burning out over something I tried to resolve in my own capacity.
Surprisingly, this is following Naomi Klien's shock doctrine fairly well and if this (in addition to it's egregious and belligerent behaviour in Xianjing, Tibet, Macau, Hong Kong, Taiwan) is what it takes for the World to decouple manufacturing from the CCP then so be it.
I'm fairly certain I'm past the consumerist phase of my life as I find it entirely unfulfilling so I have no need for their trinkets, and I hope I can keep a stock of used computers and laptops around long enough to see the transition, phones are always going to fall victim to planned obsolescence so I keep that in mind and reduce my dependence on them when ever possible.
All in all, yes it's old, but only because it was made to remain as such and a certain contingent of people vastly benefited from this system as a result; I'm recalling the gas shortage in 2016 when oil tankers were anchored out at Sea waiting for the price to correct to make a profit, and this article of Seamen left and cast aside [1] with no pay shows just how remarkably foolish things have gotten during COVID for those hapless enough to need to be in the trenches when it comes to large scale logistics under this scenario.
Globalization gave us many benefits, a robust and anti-fragile logistics and supply chain network was not one of them, if anything it showed why vertical integration (or at least as much as possible) is a highly desired albeit costly expense, which won't always be seen as a priority to quarterly earning fixated execs and board members.
0: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-...
1: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/09/imagine-being-strande...
https://youtu.be/MoH7S_qLlIg
As energy prices spike acrossed the world we quickly understand how the current Agricultural system is not fit as greenhouses in the Netherlands are forced to reduce operations due to the parabolic inflation in natural gas.
The money printers go brrrrrrr in all countries, and having already dropped interest rates its clear by that isn't going to stop prices from rising stagflation from sliding in. The people who need money don't have enough, and there isn't anything to buy anyways, hence stocks go up.
China refuses to trade with Australia for coal and has had black outs across the country which stop animal feed processing. Pair all that with a poor couple years of harvests and it's no surprise prices on everything including food is rocketing up.
With Just-in-time supply chains jammed at most ports and empty containers in the wrong place many do not see a gentle resolution without some form of potential crisis. We must REBUILD WITH PERMACULTURE!
My video goes into more about how producing closer to consumption helps all parts of the equation.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_coal_prod...
Statistics (Blocked behind paywall, but can inspect element and remove blur filter) https://knoema.com/atlas/topics/Energy/Coal/Production-of-bi...
People have a tendency not to break laws, even in an emergency. Regulations need to let these businesses move quickly in the event of a supply chain crisis.
If you are an engineer: the assumptions were that they were linear and time-invariant when in fact they are highly nonlinear and time-variant.
NOBODY with an MBA (unless they are engineers first) has ANY CLUE about dynamical systems, Lyanpunov stability, differential equations, etc. that actually describe how JIT supply chains work when you vary volume greater than ~1%-5%.
BTW the same can be said of financial networks, electronic bourses/markets and high frequency trading. Same problems. Same ignorance. Same risks nobody understands or sees.