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 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
There’s definitely a balance.

The economic argument for outsourcing, much as I’m a lefty, is strong. Lower production costs should become lower consumer prices.

But, to outsource everything and to leave your production facilities to rot is now shown to be foolish.

I mean, what’s more important overall? Item A being as cheap as possible, or Item A being continuously available.

I was thinking about this earlier; let’s face it, in normal times you’re not going to need to be buying new ventilators in large numbers, so we probably still wouldn’t have local production of those in each country. But face masks? A high volume medical consumable? Surely something like that would justify local production. Even the might manufacturer that is Germany have been caught short, because their masks are (at least in part) supplied from the US.

In this scenario are we talking post peak Virus or post recession that IS going to happen post virus or arguably is happening concurrently?











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 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
T

I mean, what’s more important overall? Item A being as cheap as possible, or Item A being continuously available.

I'll stake my house that consumers would prefer a staple item being continuously available and be as cheap as possible.....

 Mr. Burning wrote:
I'll stake my house that consumers would prefer a staple item being continuously available and be as cheap as possible.....

I'll take that action, and add that when forced to choose between the two they will choose cheap as possible because people most of the time have no idea where the stuff they buy comes from anyway.

I’d counter argue that people had no idea or concern.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I’d counter argue that people had no idea or concern.

I mean, they still don't know.

People act like this is as simple as "masks are made in singapore but we need them here."

They don't realize that parts for the masks are manufactured in China, Canada, Singapore, and Thailand by firms in five different countries and then shipped by another firm to a factory in Singapore where they are put together into an end product. And that's for something simple, like a mask. I think people being aware than manufacturing is done overseas has little effect on how poorly they understand supply chains. Jesus, just watch one of the daily press briefings we have right now and the people in charge of crisis response don't seem to understand supply chains, with every country enacting inane lock downs on exports in complete ignorance of how other countries are needed to manufacturing the equipment in the first place. And that's in a crisis, when it's really obvious. Five years from now when all this is a 'thing that happened' and people will go back to not knowing/caring because it's a peripheral thing when you're picking between the $5 box of 10 and the $5 box of 25.

Taiwan responded on *January 1st*. However, part of that response was a result of their experience with SARS. Unfortunately, too many people and countries need to experience a crisis firsthand before they will plan for it. I dunno if a large country with borders to other countries can implement a plan against an epidemic as well as Taiwan, an island with a small population, can. EDIT: Will Taiwan pull a popularity contest over China? I mean, Taiwanese masks work, for one thing... : https://www.scmp.com/print/news/china/diplomacy/article/3078448/taiwan-looks-play-leading-international-role-battle-against

Mexico, Canada, and China each have 15% of USA's trade. USA has recently signed a trading agreement with Mexico. In addition to the article, I've been reading how China's slowly no longer the cheapest country to manufacture stuff in. I can't find good info about other countries trading with Mexico, but, hopefully, it will increasingly compete with China. : https://themazatlanpost.com/2020/03/02/mexico-to-take-over-as-a-global-manufacturing-hub-due-to-coronavirus/



I'm too cynical to think the virus will have a lasting effect longer than a generation / fifty years. 1955 was the year a vaccine was discovered for the polio epidemic. Pretty much no coronavirus article I've read mentioned its similarity to today, and many posters on various forums, in fact, think it's acceptable that those who lived in 1950 die from the coronavirus. Will you live past 80? : https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/the-deadly-polio-epidemic-and-why-it-matters-for-coronavirus

 godardc wrote:
Nothing will change as capitalism is the peak economic system and cannot be broken. As always, it will adapt and overcome and make it's weaknesses a new strength. Maybe it will lower Trump's chances of victory though (you tell me ?) and be used as propaganda by the evil Communist Party of China (as it's already the case) despite them being responsible for this but otherwise, soon everything will be back to normal with some more unemployment.

Sure, capitalism can be broken. We've broken it now, quite deliberately, in an attempt to save lives.

Remember that capitalism, PURE capitalism as we experienced in the late 19th century, cares nothing for lives. Only profit matters. Every time we put another concern ahead of pure profit - be it lives, quality of life, or environmental concerns - that's breaking away from pure capitalism, and often takes baby steps into socialism, in the idea that social rights are more important that property rights.

America may need to finally institute an across the board cut to military funding to deal with the corona crisis, which is long overdue. Look at this chart of global military spending to see why.

https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/wolrd_military_spending_barchart_large.png

Prepare yourself for longer term trouble. This crisis will lead to others.

I think it's a bit early to say.

My concern is that people seem to be counting on this to cause big changes and put an end to whatever their disliked -ism is.

And when things don't change that much those people will feel like taking things into their own hands, which considering the rising climate of right-wing violence in the US, is going to be a bad time.

I fear that mostly what will happen in the post Corona world (hopefully we see this soon) is that governments are going to decide it's now too expensive to do anything substantial about climate change as they've all got mountains more debt from bailing out their economies

Granted it will come back and bite them, but not within the time frame of an election cycle,

it's going to be hard enough to tell voters all this extra stimulus has to be paid for by more taxes and/or lower spending on everything else, but to also say they've going to be spending big on climate change too?

The odd politician may offer the option, but they'll loose the election badly and their successor will quietly forget about it for another 20 years

damn i'm in a gloomy mood tonight

Matt Swain wrote:
America may need to finally institute an across the board cut to military funding to deal with the corona crisis, which is long overdue. Look at this chart of global military spending to see why.

https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/wolrd_military_spending_barchart_large.png

If you think those first two bars are accurate apples to apples comparisons you are sadly mistaken.

As anyone paying attention to whats going on right now should know, China blatantly lies, in addition there able to get more capability for less since A they steal development and B they have an advantage in negotiations called the barrel of a gun (plus the military owns alot of the companies), and C as we've been discussing manufacturing is cheaper there. Its not about what you're spending its about what capability you have on the other side of spending and China is coming hard.


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 ScarletRose wrote:
My concern is that people seem to be counting on this to cause big changes and put an end to whatever their disliked -ism is.

And when things don't change that much those people will feel like taking things into their own hands,

Well this parts accurate, look at all the wishlisting in this thread

In a nutshell, the black plague broke the lords and serfs socioeconomic model and created a world of opportunity for the majority, and lead to increases standards of living for most people, in technological advancement as cheap labor was no longer plentiful and education as people had to work smarter instead of harder. It also broke the near absolute power of the churn in europe. This lead to the rise of what used to be peasants and serfs into what we might call a middle class today, and essentially lifted europe out of the dark ages and into the Renaissance.

Those were short-term effects at best. While serfdom never became as widespread again as before, the power of feudal lords and monarchs actually saw a massive increase in the longer term (because due the power of the low nobility being broken because of the depopulation of their domains, the high nobility were able to centralize their power), and the living standards for most people drastically declined as population levels recovered. By the time the early modern era comes around living standards for most people were significantly worse than they had been in the Medieval period. Overall, the sociopolitical system after the Black Death was largely the same as that before the Black Death. The power of the feudal system isn't broken until he French Revolution. A middle class of craftsmen, artisans, merchants and related professions had always been around in the cities of Europe (and they often already were highly influential even before the Black Death), but the Black Death did not lead to a substantial increase in their numbers (peasants don't suddenly become artisans or merchants, especially not since such positions were controlled by guilds). A sizeable middle class only forms with the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century. Finally, the development of the Renaissance was already well under way when the Black Death struck and happened because of the culture of the Italian city-states at the time, not because of the Black Death (if that were so, we would have seen something similar in the city-states in other parts of the Holy Roman Empire, not just in Italy). And the importance of the Renaissance has been vastly overstated by early modern historians anyways.

What I am trying to say is that if a pandemic that killed 25-60% of the total population of Europe did not lead to much in the way of long-term change in European society, then I highly doubt that a much less serious pandemic will accomplish much. Certainly, I think that in the short term after Corona we will see some effects with people becoming more wary of globalism and capitalism and more aware of the importance (and fragility) of healthcare and disaster management. But on the long term it will gradually all go back to business as usual. 10-20 years from now it will be as if Corona never happened at all. Social and economical institutions are just too stubborn to change, and people forget quickly.

The main change I see coming here in America is a dramatic RISE in identity politics and political divisiveness as each side races to pin all the blame for the large number of deaths we're about to experience on the other side.

Government gridlock is probable; violent protests quite possible, and full-bore civil war is not out of the question.

Another economic benefit in my area (pretty well to do, lots of commuters on solid salaries) is the discovery of smaller, local food suppliers.

The sort of stuff that normally shows up at Farmer’s Markets. It’s not especially cheap, but is reasonable value, and many have found ways to deliver.

Local butchers, greengrocers, fishmongers etc are seeing an increase in trade. And given how money spent in local businesses is said to be of greater economic benefit than spent online or in supermarkets, it’s all a Good Thing.

There’s also the argument the quality is better. Fewer preservatives, less food miles, a need to trade on quality over quantity. That of course is kinda subjective. And sadly for many, the price may be prohibitive (I’m only feeding me).

But it’s still benefitting my immediate local economy, and I’m all for that.

So, to avoid wish listing, things I definitely think are going to happen?

1) there is going to be a major baby boom in early 2021. Locking people in there houses with nothing much to do and a real “we might not live to see tomorrow” vibe? Yeah, that only really has one outcome...

2) we’re going to see at least one major airline go to the wall, even despite all of the government interventions, probably because the government support will stop before international air travel gets back to normal.

3) certainly in the UK they’re predicting that we will lose about 20% of businesses. That’s going to have a hell of a short term impact, but might actually be somewhat helpful in the long run. A lot of the problems we’ve been having with online competition are due to over supply and shops and businesses being in the wrong place for current markets (i.e. the infrastructure is still in the same places and geared up for the pre-internet market). A sharp shock may be preferable to the slow decline we've had for the last ten years or so and may buy some breathing space for the survivors to stabilise and redefine themselves.

Perhaps, my worry is that a lot of those which we lose are going to be niche ones. Wargaming in itself might well lose many of the small time shops and outlets. We could even lose some smaller time manufacturing operations too because they can't run their factories; or if they can they might not be able to get materials in etc...


Companies that make things like brushes etc... could all come under threat even with the government payouts taking the most harsh edge off things.



So my concern would be we'd not just lose stores that we were going to lose eventually, but also lose a lot that weren't going to go under and which served smaller markets and niche interests.



Of course in theory if those smaller markets are viable then newer companies should replace them; the risk will be new blood not "seeing" the markets/potential to invest into them; or where investment in start up is considerably higher than is healthy/desirable for new investment. Ergo where if you've got everything running (perhaps started when the niche was more mainstream) its profitable; but not if you've got to start from the bottom.





As for airlines I'd wager we see more than one collapse. However because of their very nature I would imagine new ones will start up in their place or existing ones will expand to replace them. The infrastructure wont' vanish overnight and the resources will all be there for buying out. Plus its a market that's well known and publicised so there's less chance that an airline just "vanishes" and all its resources lost in the system or disposed of.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:

It's not going to bring in the s word, even if the government pays people's wage for a little while.

If anything, people will hopefully be more aware of the risks of rampant globalism.

For what it's worth, I think the opposite, we will realise the value of community, closer community, those immediately around us. You're already seeing it now, people offering to help their neighbours however they can. The importance of family etc.

I agree with you as to the results, but I suspect we'd have serious disagreements on what exactly to call that kind of reorientation.

But, maybe that's a positive in terms of the whole politics ban - we can talk consequences and details without labels getting eachothers hackles up.

I can tell you my personal hope, is that the new kinds of grassroots safety nets we see cropping up within communities remain post-crisis. The community surrounding me at least, I've seen tremendous organizing by local communities to help provide food, secure necessary supplies, identify those at risk and help them stay safe, and find people whose educations have been disrupted and get them what they need to continue their schooling. People are building really excellent communication structures and online info hubs to abide by social distancing requirements, and all those structures are going to remain after the pandemic dies down, making collective community action easier to organize and more effective.

I also hope that the feeling of loneliness and alienation caused by not being ABLE to physically congregate sticks in peoples' psyches, and that leads more people to gather and participate in activities in person where they can. I know personally a lot of folks who seem to be having a bit of an awakening to the fact that the kinds of antisocial, purely consumptive activities they were losing a lot of their time to before the pandemic feel INCREDIBLY hollow now that they're the only thing they have to put their time into. If anything, my social life is more full than its ever been, because before this I always gravitated towards activities where I was either directly interacting with someone, listening to their voice and if possible meeting them in person, or activities where I was directly creating something to later share with others, and many of my friends after just a week or two with nothing to do but sit inside and consume media have started cropping up, asking if they can get in on virtual RPG games, online games, and creative hobby groups. My regular crew of people who play Civilization on steam has gone from 3 to 12, and I've gone from 1 in person DnD group with 4 people to 3 with totally different groups that we run through Roll20.

We've even gained new players in our previously in-person 40k group since we had to temporarily move to a virtual escalation league on discord. We've got 4 or 5 brand new people who previously only ever played on TTS painting their first minis and getting excited about meeting up physically after this is all done.

What would be nice if it happened- people aware just how swindled they got by the current system, how crucial basic jobs like cashiers are, and how unprepared for any disruption the profit-based civilization has become. We could all learn to consume less, enjoy more free time, and where possible, work from home, cutting down on oil consumption and wasteful managerial fancy that commute is.

What will most likely happen is the rich will stay rich and the poor will scrabble for any opening in the depression economy. Because a system like that has no more self-correcting safeguards in place.

I think we're going to see this accelerating the decline of America's international influence. this is the first global crisis EVER where I've not felt like America is in a leadership role

Paranoia will grow. Probably violence towards anyone oriental.
But we've got years of carona to deal with first to fester these feelings.

 ValentineGames wrote:
Paranoia will grow. Probably violence towards anyone oriental.
But we've got years of carona to deal with first to fester these feelings.

They'll probably use the same imperialist language as you.

edit, wrong thread.

Working a t a supermarket, I do think some of the distance markers probably should remain on deli counters and checkout lanes. It just makes things much easier for us to maneuver the stores, often unloading Uboats and product drops. People have a habit of just leaving their carts anywhere, blocking our movement and movement of other customers.

Its almost a running joke that no matter where I'm supposed to be working, there will be someone just standing right there in the way.

 ced1106 wrote:
Taiwan responded on *January 1st*. However, part of that response was a result of their experience with SARS. Unfortunately, too many people and countries need to experience a crisis firsthand before they will plan for it. I dunno if a large country with borders to other countries can implement a plan against an epidemic as well as Taiwan, an island with a small population, can. EDIT: Will Taiwan pull a popularity contest over China? I mean, Taiwanese masks work, for one thing... :

Plans don't do good if you let them rot. Uk used to have good plans and good preparations in case something like this happens. Ranked top2 in fact for being prepared for epidemia. Then tories came and let plans to rot and get outdated

The problem is when you have affluent and then depression phases. When a country is on the up and is earning money (which china certainly is in buckets) its easy to have lots of great plans because you've the spare money to devote to plans for the future and things that you don't need "right now."

When things are on the down and you've more debt a lot of schemes "for tomorrow" get put to one side. If that happens for long enough they get outdated, forgotten, missplaced etc...


Furthermore I'd argue that plans are only part of the battle, the other is the population itself. Many western nations haven't had a major disease outbreak in a very long time. There's multiple generations who have grown up with never having experienced such a thing; nor anything on the scale like Corona.

So its no surprise that countries who have had the same experience before are doing better; they've not just got plans they've got experience and mistakes from the first to work with; plus the population itself has the experience within recent memory.

You can bet when china tells its population to self isolate they do - many because they remember the last time. The western nations have had trouble adopting isolation when segments of the population keep trying to have parties and gatherings or going about normal life (eg isolating all week then going out for a mothersday part/meal etc...).

 Nightlord1987 wrote:
Working a t a supermarket, I do think some of the distance markers probably should remain on deli counters and checkout lanes. It just makes things much easier for us to maneuver the stores, often unloading Uboats and product drops. People have a habit of just leaving their carts anywhere, blocking our movement and movement of other customers.

Its almost a running joke that no matter where I'm supposed to be working, there will be someone just standing right there in the way.

If the queues I experienced at the nex in california are anything to go by, they didn't even need to introduce queue markers.. People would be standing about 15 feet away from the person in front.. Was weird.

Perhaps this will be the trigger that will end the second Gilded Age in America, but I doubt it.

BrianDavion wrote:
I think we're going to see this accelerating the decline of America's international influence. this is the first global crisis EVER where I've not felt like America is in a leadership role

Its been rare that a 'global crisis' actually affects America directly. Its easy to lead when the fight is 'over there' some place. Less so when its in your base, wrecking your stuff.
Its easy to help when you've got untouched industrial production to share. Its much more difficult when production is behind just to meet your own needs. Same with specialists (healthcare workers in this case)