All this article highlights is that you can't run the government as a business.
The GOP has convinced their voters that running the government as a business is a great idea, it's not. The GOP have convinced scared white, Christian, racist, xenophobic people that all the government does is waste their hard earned money paying benefits to poor, non-working, non-white, non-Christian, non-citizen, LGBTQ's.
I ran Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity for a very large Financial Institution.
I would say we were world class in our preparedness, but there is NO WAY that a business could be prepared for a real disaster. I had to fight tooth and nail for every penny I got, and every time I heard the same line from all the board members, "This is a waste of resources, for something that will probably never happen in our lifetime, if ever."
A Business can't stockpile, cash, products, buildings, capacity, extra remote employees, etc. in order to sustain an event lasting 6-12 months, that MIGHT NEVER HAPPEN.
Yes, we all knew this could happen, but there was no way to predict when it would happen.
Only a government can and should be preparing for really bad things that might never happen.
Frankly running DR & BC wrecked my career at that firm because I was seen as Don Quixote, "Tilting at Windmills." I was assigned the job and did my best, assuming it was a stepping stone, and it was, but they expected me to just put on a show. Instead I took the job seriously, and it eroded their confidence in me, they expected that I should have recognized it as a fluff job, used only to get me exposure to the BOD, justifying the next step up in my career, instead I was "sent down" and had no choice but to leave.
It's pretty obvious that the wast majority of people in power right now are not very good at preparedness planning or rapid crisis response. This includes both parties. This also includes many state and local governments, not just feds.
People using this crisis to blame "the other side" and spout their usual talking points (now with even more hysteria) is getting really old, really fast.
Do you have any evidence to back up this "both sides" argument? The responses executed by each party are starkly different, and the results are in some cases are already measurable. To give just one exapmle:
I think that you can blame both parties for the overall lack of preparedness, yes, we've had more proactive responses in crisis situations by Democrats - but we've seen several decades of bipartisan cuts to the CDC, and other disaster preparedness agencies for decades.
Terri Gross interviewed Max Brooks yesterday, an author and disaster preparedness expert
"MAX BROOKS: I think there are massive gaps in our systems that are being exposed right now, which - by the way - this is not news to the experts. Anybody who works in these fields could have told you years ago that we were vulnerable to this. It's going to rip through our prisons. It's going to rip through our homeless population. God willing it doesn't rip through our nursing homes.
But what no one is talking about, what terrifies me, what keeps me up at night are the secondary casualties that will occur because of hospital overflow. What I mean is we're only talking about now how many people are going to die if the coronavirus really rips through our country; what is not being talked about enough or what needs to be talked about are the people who are still going to die of cancer, of accidents, of other diseases because they simply can't get into the hospitals because the hospitals are choked with coronavirus patients.
GROSS: So that's a flaw in the system that you think is being revealed.
MAX BROOKS: That is a tremendous flaw in the system right now. And we used to be very good at this. I can tell you that one of the gut-wrenching moments I had years and years ago was during the homeland nuclear disaster scenario called Vibrant Response. And I spoke to someone from the Defense Logistics Agency. And what the DLA does is they're responsible for all the bottled water and bandages and everything that FEMA uses in a crisis - the military as well. They - if there's something out there that we need, that the government needs, they buy it.
What he told me was, up until the end of the Cold War, we had prepositioned stockpiles of emergency supplies all over the country, and that was in case we got nuked, so we could pull from these warehouses. Now, the peacetime dividend was, even though we never got nuked, we still had hurricanes and floods and other disasters, and there they were, ready to go. After the Cold War, somebody got the idea that this was inefficient, it was expensive - get rid of them and buy what you need on Day 1 of a crisis from the big box stores.
Here's the problem - the big box stores don't have warehouses, either, because they know it's inefficient. So these huge stores need to turn over their stock every 24 hours. So what if you have a crisis at the very moment that these stores are reshelving. And I witnessed that firsthand during Superstorm Sandy. We're watching TV here on the West Coast about what's happening to New York. And my wife says to me, you know what? We've always talked about getting a generator. What if we have an earthquake while this is happening? Go get it now. I got in the car. I go to Home Depot - generators gone. FEMA had taken them all.
So we don't have stockpiling anymore on a national level. We're seeing on TV the stockpiles of masks right now that the federal government is distributing; that is nothing compared to what we used to have.
GROSS: I'm even thinking about things that we're supposed to have at home to protect ourselves. Hand sanitizer - OK, local distilleries are starting to make that now. Things like Lysol or Clorox wipes, you can't find them anyplace, at least not as we record this. Vinyl gloves or rubber gloves, those are really hard to find, too. So we're being told to protect ourselves with supplies we can't get access to.
MAX BROOKS: No. And this is the problem, is in this country, we used to have these stockpiles, and it was called civil defense because we knew when the bombs were dropped and the cities were nuked, that we would need all of this, and it was all the lessons of World War II. So if this pandemic, let's say, happened in 1965, there would be no shortages; it would be ready to go. But post-Cold War, it's all become about the bottom line. And that trickles down to us, like you said, the individual citizens.
I see panic buying in LA and I'm shocked because how does everyone in Los Angeles not already have an earthquake kit? Which, by the way, the earthquake kit is supposed to be much more extensive than a pandemic kit because, at least in a pandemic, the lights are on and the water is running. In an earthquake, you're camping out. So why are my fellow Angelenos caught so desperately unprepared?"
'Bi-partisan' just means that both groups came to a compromise to get some of the things they want. You then have to look into how the bills and rules evolved to figure out how it came to be. My guess (non-researched) is that the party that has cutting government budgets as a priority was the one injecting a lessening of resources into the process.
Both major parties dramatically increase spending more often than they reduce it. Bureaucracy and waste are incentivized at every level given how budgeting works in practice. They both prop up corporate welfare and military expansion.
We are the only major country in the world that doesn't have a fist fight on their congressional floor now and then... to me, it just indicates that most don't mean what they say.
Exactly correct, consent and agreement aren't the same thing, PoliSci 101. The idea that one party consents to a policy (or lack thereof) promoted by another party, does not mean it is bipartisan approval of that policy. And in fact, a unified vote against a policy cannot be seen as being opposed to that policy.
Example of the latter is PPACA. That legislation came straight out of the conservative Heritage Foundation, and had substantial Republican agreement and modifications incorporated into it at the committee level by compromise. In every way how it was produced into a final product, on the record, it is bipartisan. And yet in the final vote, zero Republicans voted aye, in either house. That's politics. And they took advantage of this with plausible deniability for a decade, invariably claiming Democrats had jammed it down everyone's throats.
Further, effectively opposing policies depends on arguments being provable or convincing in relative real-time. A party needs to expend political capital when in opposition of a thing, and there is an opportunity cost: there's simply less ability to oppose or promote other policies.
Also in political science, the Republican vs Democrat distinction that always seems to rile up people on HN, using the "partisan" label as a smear to stop conversations, is not even that significant of a consideration. Ideology, expertise, personal interest, and individual campaign contributions are more predictive. There are parties within those parties. Most people have no idea to what degree actions are individually motivated or to what degree the party holds power over the individual politician.
According to the article, the stockpile of masks was depleted in 2009. Is that sufficient evidence that "both sides" had the opportunity to replenish the stockpile?
As for the decline of American manufacturing capability: the Trump administration is trying to address that problem, while the Democrats typically attack efforts to protect American manufacturing as racist and xenophobic.
Refusing to make distinctions between the parties just muddies the waters. There are real differences in their approaches and ability to govern competently.
Simply not true. There are over 400 pieces of legislation passed by the Democratic controlled House of Representatives, that are stalled by the Republican controlled Senate. It's 80% opposition right now.
To me, even just-in-time vs stockpiling isn't even as big as allowing almost the entire production of many sectors of goods (such as medication) to be produced overseas...
How does the FDA not require dual sourcing and at least 50% domestic production as requirements is beyond me.
the problem there is that our drug sector is so bloated that we'd need to pay 10x-1000x for every drug produced domestically. the government can't just mandate a production number and a price, as then that's essentially state control (and susceptible to corruption).
we really need drugs to move more rapidly through the cycle of being novel and experimental to patent-unencumbered commodities, and open up competition in hospitals (i.e., don't let them charge $400 a pop for their monopoly tylenol). in fact, we need a more vigilant and active FTC and a high-functioning commerce department to stamp out monopoly behavior and encouurage competition across the board.
i'm also ok with setting up tariffs, with mandatory sunset provisions, to allow time for international price equalization of all sorts of outsourced industries. global markets aren't yet competitive and equitable (for instance, pricing in pollution externalities on manufacturing and shipping), and we won't get a structural move to re-industrialization without it.
Dual sourcing as a requirement would mean having to license patents at a reasonable rate in order to even sell their product. In practice, it would largely sort itself out.
Dual sourcing would largely offset the protections of patents in the system... of course there should also be patent reform, but at least with a dual sourcing requirement it would largely allow for self-correcting.
In addition to my prior comment. U.S. manufacturing would not cost anything resembling 10x production cost vs. China. And even then, it's only a very small part of drug company expenses, and pricing is largely market driven, not based on a a true cost + markup equation anyway.
>All this article highlights is that you can't run the government as a business.
To me it seems even worse than that...they are running it like a bunch of wantrepreneurs without a business idea or model. In fact they are completely treating this like the goal is the funding (in this case bailout/stimulus) rather than looking at the real work to come to make a successful business after securing funding.
Not to mention they are hiding the fact the proposed $2T is actually $6T, and $4T is going to be taxpayer debt that is given to the Fed, so the Fed can loan it out to businesses that do everything in their power to avoid paying US taxes.
What is the point of record profits and markets, when the average worker can't handle an emergency $400 expense? Any company that touches any of this money should be mandated to pay all profits as taxes until such time as the national debt is paid in full.
"The GOP has convinced their voters that running the government as a business is a great idea, it's not. The GOP have convinced scared white, Christian, racist, xenophobic people that all the government does is waste their hard earned money paying benefits to poor, non-working, non-white, non-Christian, non-citizen, LGBTQ's."
By characterizing it like that, you implicitly provide evidence to them that they are correct in that assumption. You create a binary situation where EITHER the government is doing a good job but they are "white, Christian, racist, [and] xenophobic" OR the government really is wasting their hard-earned money paying benefits to a bunch of "not my folk" and they aren't in fact racist/xenophobic/other bad things.
You aren't encouraging people to be less of those bad things; you're encouraging people to implicitly choose the side of the dilemma where they're already not bad, because of course they know themselves and they aren't bad, so we must be on the second branch.
I'm not talking about Aristotelian logic here, I'm talking about human intuitionist and tribal logic, and of course by extension, if I'm talking about that, I'm not talking about anything like actual facts.
"Running the government like a business" has always been a completely meaningless idea. Kevin Williamson does a better job of explaining this than I could, and I recommend you check out his essay:
"Businesses measure their success in profit. Governments don’t. Businesses offer products and services in exchange for money in voluntary transactions. Governments don’t. Businesses that fail go bankrupt and are disbanded (except for politically sensitive banks, automobile companies, steel producers, farmers . . .) while failed governments keep right on misgoverning in the city and state of New York, in Illinois, in New Jersey, in California, in Connecticut, in the District of Columbia, in Austin, and abroad. Businesses have customers. Governments don’t. Those who profess their desire to “run government like a business” most often mean that they seek to achieve a higher degree of administrative excellence and bureaucratic accountability than Americans are used to seeing from their governments. But that isn’t running government like a business — that’s running government like . . . Swiss government."
"Americans do not care much for bureaucracy, to the extent that the word bureaucracy itself functions as a pejorative. But an excellent bureaucracy is a wonder to behold. It was a first-rate bureaucracy that put a man on the moon and brought him back safely. Dwight Eisenhower was one of the outstanding bureaucrats of his generation, a man who did a long and dreary apprenticeship as an administrative functionary before being anointed “supreme commander.” Bureaucracy matters in the business world, too: Administrative excellence and not technological innovation is what distinguishes Amazon from its would-be competitors, whereas dealing with your health-insurance company or your mobile-phone provider is in most cases a lot like a trip to the department of motor vehicles."
Thank you for this... stated much better than I ever could as well. I also find the corporate protectionist policies and spending combined with a lack of requirements for domestic production and sourcing are a pretty big problem, especially in certain sectors (medical supplies, etc).
How is this attack on the GOP a rational response to the article?
From the article:
> But about 100 million masks in the stockpile were deployed in 2009 in the fight against the H1N1 flu pandemic, and the government never bothered to replace them.
My point was that the GOP have been working really hard to make every part of the government as inefficient as possible so that everything can be turned over to private business.
The GOP has put the government and every possible group they can brand as "negative" on one side and the white, Christian, pro-life, straight people on the other side and has forced them to choose. It's not an attack, it's a fact and it's plain to see every day.
The Post office is just one example. In the early 1970s, Congress passed legislation that create a half-public half-corporate governing structure forcing it to operate as a business
In 2006, Congress required that the Postal Service pre-fund its health benefit obligations at least fifty years into the future, this rule has created over 90% of the Post Office's losses.
The GOP have been behind all the changes, you can argue that the Postal Service is wasteful and needs to be privatized unless it's losing money hand over first, so the GOP set it up so that's the case.
The only saving grace for the Post Office is that no private business would deliver any mail to the rural areas of the country, because a business could never justify the cost vs the pay back.
It's the same with Internet Service. My sister lives less than 90 miles from NYC and can't get anything other than satellite or dial up service.
I realize that your question is rhetorical, but I'm not sure the facts supports your point. Democrats controlled both the House and Senate from 2009-2011 and controlled the Senate all the way up through 2015. All the while controlling the Presidency as well.
And yet Republicans controlled the White House, Senate, House, and the Courts from 2016-2018 and only managed to pass a $1 trillion taxpayer-funded giveaway to the largest corporations and a few rule changes to make it easier to dump toxic waste into drinking water.
I don't think the facts agree with your statement here.
The left wing of the Senate blocked the confirmation of Secretary Azar until January 29, 2018. That leaves the Department in control of the DNC.
I do not think it is fair for you to call one base deluded. And I consider it highly ironic that you would use the phrase "art of obstruction" in this circumstance.
The cache is overseen by the Department of Heath and Human Services. The Senate was not able to confirm a new secretary until January 29, 2018. By all accounts, this was in the wheelhouse of the DNC, and they chose to kick the can down the road.
Agreed. Was thinking how our Internet infrastructure has built in redundancy, chaos monkey for services, etc...
Engineers understand that things can and will fail.
If we build the Internet like the "just in time" supply chain - we'd all be screwed.
What's also sad is that people could see in January that this would be a global issue. Domestic production should have ramped up - at least buy us more time, translating to more flattening of the curve, less deaths...
We should be looking at strategic sourcing, just like we do with oil. Not all manufacturing should be allowed offshore. The SEC evaluates mergers, as part of HomeLand Security we need offshoring evaluated.
If you want to move your rubber dog bone production offshore, or if an industry wants to move ALL rubber dog bone production offshore, go for it. Critical items like ventilators. NOPE. Or Computing equipment, NOPE. There needs to be a list.
> If you want to move your rubber dog bone production offshore, or if an industry wants to move ALL rubber dog bone production offshore, go for it. Critical items like ventilators. NOPE. Or Computing equipment, NOPE. There needs to be a list.
I think most people would agree with you, to some degree anyways.
So let's say we put you in charge as "dictator for a year" for the USA, and your first task is doing a completely policy rewrite on how offshoring of any kind is handled.
What methodology would you use to generate the list, with the goal being "optimizing for the well being of all Americans" (interpret that phrase to your liking)?
This list will be decried as excessive regulation, and we know which party will claim this. And in the name of profits and jobs, that list will get cut below the bare minimum once they have the votes to do so. It's not a majoritarian democracy, rather it's a system still biased toward landed elite, same as since the founding days, today these are corporations.
Not even one minute after a pandemic, they will restate their position as: the disaster just happened thus can be ignored as impossible to happen again in our next two lifetimes, do you want to be the one to cost jobs and profits with your wild speculation?! You are leaving money on the table with your fantasies!
For the past decade or so, the Republicans have generally been the ones who've worried about America's industries being offshored to China and the Democrats have been the ones who've downplayed those concerns as xenophobic nationalism from people who're stuck in the 50s. I've no doubt there'll be an attempt to rewrite history on this, but insofar as this has been a partisan divide it's been the other way around.
It's nonsense to say Republicans worry about offshoring. They consistently oppose amendments and bills trying to stop it. They consistently support tax policies that incentivize it.
Republicans have been pro-global free trade for decades, until Donald Trump won the presidency on a protectionist platform. Republicans in Congress were opposed to Trump's tariffs before rolling over and at least not fighting him on them. But as most of their campaign contributions come from pro-global free trade and not domestic labor, they still consistently oppose amendments trying to reign in offshoring. Their "worry" is only that they'd get caught having a public message that's different than their actual votes on legislation.
The Democratic party, for decades, have been pro-labor and pro-union platform. And it's fair to say in the past decade they are split between moderate free trade and weak support of domestic labor and unions. This weakness no doubt cost them votes in 2016.
I don't think that most, today, would see a requirement like dual sourcing + at least 50% domestic production for all medical equipment, devices and prescription medications would be excessive. It's about security and always has been.
For that matter, I think similar requirements for all communications equipment, and this would include computers, cell phones and mobile devices would not be out of line as well at this point. Most of this crap happened roughly a century ago, including collapsed markets more than once.
The above limitations as well as putting US banking closer to post-depression and canadian requirements would be a good idea as well.
I'm very libertarian leaning... that said, I'm pragmatic, there's definitely room for having restrictions in place in leiu of the limited liability given to corporations. It's supposed to be a trade-off, not a give away.
It's funny you mention that... part of why I'm a minimist in terms of what I want from govt. That said, corporate welfare combined with a lack of dual sourcing and domestic production requirements are frightening.
I think we definitely need to identify sectors, and specifically medical supplies, prescribed medications and prescribed medical devices should have dual sourcing requirements in addition to require at least 50% domestic production as requirements to sell in the US market.
I am amazed at how well the logistics in terms of groceries and supply chains has held up. I wouldn't say that just-in-time has failed, it's worked surprisingly well. That isn't to say that all things should work that way, only countering expectations vs. results.
> "This is a waste of resources, for something that will probably never happen in our lifetime, if ever."
Well, whether they were right or not largely depends on what you prepared for and how you did it I assume. How does a bank prepare for a pandemic? Stockpile hand sanitizer and toilet paper?
Mostly by business continuity planning. For example: Having a spare, idle, fully equipped trading room into which they can split off half of the traders and, by having more space, distance them better. Traders can't really do home office, after all.
Expensive? Sure, but much cheaper then having to cease trading due to a pandemie.
Banks are in the business of managing risks. And I can assure you that a hell of a lot of thought and planning goes into such events.
And a pandemie is actually an event, which is not that unlikely, that a serious, responsible risk planner wouldn't consider it.
The European bank actually has 2 data centers (Rome and Amsterdam) connected via 2 different intranets going through opposite sides of the Mediterranean and they switch the main DC every 6 months to know that the backup works at all times.
This is often why individuals in DR/BC and security (a CISO for example) leave a company. They do their jobs and come up with recommendations and other steps that need to be taken to implement best practices in this area. When these recommendations and steps aren't taken they don't want to be the one taking the blame if something goes wrong, and rightly so, they leave. It is not uncommon for an organization to do "theater" that makes it look like all the best practices are being followed when in reality it's just a pretty checklist that doesn't actually follow the intent. The only way to know if an organization is taking DR/BC seriously is if they're willing to literally kill a server or other infrastructure element of high-importance and see how effective the roll over is. There are lots of horror stories about organizations that did DR/BC only to find that one or more critical elements of their process were so flawed that it was impossible to get back to operational.
This Jedi Mind Trick didn't begin with modern day GOP: it goes back at least as far as Mrs Thatcher and Milton Friedman and Ronald Reagan. Looking back, presumably what happened was the two wars led to adoption of more government intervention in society which was welcomed while the population still had a good memory of those crises. But over time memories faded.
The Century of the Self is a 2002 British television documentary series by filmmaker Adam Curtis. It focuses on the work of psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Anna Freud, and PR consultant Edward Bernays.[1] In episode one, Curtis says, "This series is about how those in power have used Freud's theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy."
Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, changed our perception of the mind and its workings. The documentary explores the various ways that governments and corporations have used Freud's theories. Freud and his nephew Edward Bernays, who was the first to use psychological techniques in public relations, are discussed in part one. His daughter Anna Freud, a pioneer of child psychology, is mentioned in part two. Wilhelm Reich, an opponent of Freud's theories, is discussed in part three.
Along these lines, The Century of the Self asks deeper questions about the roots and methods of consumerism and commodification and their implications. It also questions the modern way people see themselves, the attitudes to fashion, and superficiality.
The business and political worlds use psychological techniques to read, create and fulfill the desires of the public, and to make their products and speeches as pleasing as possible to consumers and voters. Curtis questions the intentions and origins of this relatively new approach to engaging the public.
Where once the political process was about engaging people's rational, conscious minds, as well as facilitating their needs as a group, Stuart Ewen, a historian of public relations, argues that politicians now appeal to primitive impulses that have little bearing on issues outside the narrow self-interests of a consumer society.
The words of Paul Mazur, a leading Wall Street banker working for Lehman Brothers in 1927, are cited: "We must shift America from a needs- to a desires-culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things, even before the old have been entirely consumed. [...] Man's desires must overshadow his needs."[7]
In part four the main subjects are Philip Gould, a political strategist, and Matthew Freud, a PR consultant and the great-grandson of Sigmund Freud. In the 1990s, they were instrumental to bringing the Democratic Party in the US and New Labour in the United Kingdom back into power through use of the focus group, originally invented by psychoanalysts employed by US corporations to allow consumers to express their feelings and needs, just as patients do in psychotherapy.
Curtis ends by saying that, "Although we feel we are free, in reality, we—like the politicians—have become the slaves of our own desires," and compares Britain and America to 'Democracity', an exhibit at the 1939 New York World's Fair created by Edward Bernays.
---------------------------------------------
It "seems" like an outlandish thought, but if the claims Curtis makes in this documentary are even partially truthful, might it be that this psychological manipulation of the public is actually still going on, and might it then also explain some of the inexplicable human behavior we see all around us?
I mean...how the hell would a person even guess at what the long term (decades) effects might be of simultaneous, multi-vector psychological manipulation of people at massive scale? Just look through history at the atrocities that people have been persuaded to commit, motivated by a fundamental belief system that is inconsistent with actual reality? We know these things have happened in the past, is there a logical reason why something similar cannot be happening now? There is no shortage of people (some even here) who believe with absolute sincerity that a significant percentage of Trump supporters are hold beliefs extremely consistent with literal Nazis. Ok, fair enough. But if significant numbers of people can and do believe such obviously outlandish things as this, does it seem all that outlandish that something is causing large numbers of people to believe other things that are literally not true?
In a sense, the specific belief is largely irrelevant - to me, the fundamental question seems like something along that lines of:
> Is it technically possible (or at least plausible) to modify the beliefs of the general public via psychological means, using various communication vectors (distorted / ambiguous/ misleading news broadcasting, TV, talk shows, statistics, internet, radio, podcasts, forum "trolls" (not sure the word) or state of the art bots in internet forums, etc) - and if so, is this happening today, and if so, to what degree.
All things considered, this is one of the more logical explanations I can come up with. "People are just idiots" stopped being believable to me over a year ago. The magnitude of obvious mass delusion (in the literal sense of the word) is just too large. If "people are idiots" is the explanation, one then has to explain why so many people have simultaneously become so increasingly idiotic, and we're right back where we started.
But then, as depressing as that sounds, if this theory actually holds some legitimate truth, therein also lies the solution (partial, at least) to what currently ails society in this regard.
Here's a perfect example of the United States government running as a business (and completely failing its job to protect its citizens):
You know our emergency grain reserves? The reserves that hold up to 4 million metric tons of wheat, corn, sorghum, and rice, in case food supplies are interrupted?
Yeah. They sold everything in the reserves back in 2008. Since then, the trust is solely a cash reserve, invested in low-risk, short-term securities or instruments.
How the hell is cash supposed to save us, if there isn't actually any physical grain to be had?
When I see things like this I like to consider perhaps I know less about these things than the people in charge.
So I wonder, what where the sequence of events and decisions that lead to this outcome? and who were the people that made those decisions, and who are the people who continue to maintain that state of affairs and what is their rationale?
I also wonder exactly these same things. I'm not sure how to find out the answers though?
I would assume that the emergency reserves would have been expensive to maintain, with high amounts of spoilage.
I'm guessing that someone involved simply said, "Hey, you know, the free market has millions of tons of grain for sale right now. If there was an emergency, we could just buy what we need! Let's sell this pile of spoiling grain and just hang onto the cash! Cash will only increase in value, while grain is a depreciating asset."
But what they failed to realize (in my opinion) is that in times of famine (due to things like global warming or whatever), the free market's grain prices will skyrocket, and the grain reserves on the free market will most likely dwindle before we even realize there is an emergency.
I would like to see them stockpiling a constantly rotating reserve of grain, with old grain being constantly sold off, and new grain constantly being bought (to limit spoilage waste). If they did that, they could isolate our grain reserves and ensure the army had food to distribute even when times were tough and grain prices were extremely high.
I'm in Australia. My initial internet searches for Australian strategic food reserves / stockpiles don't seem to turn up anything.
Thinking about climate change here in Australia, and how some areas have been subject to quite persistent drought, it doesn't seem completely inconceivable that the whole continent could have a bad season.
Having said that, we do export a lot of grain, so you'd think if we'd be able to reduce / halt exports and still feed the nation maybe?
>The GOP have convinced scared white, Christian, racist, xenophobic people that all the government does is waste their hard earned money paying benefits to poor, non-working, non-white, non-Christian, non-citizen, LGBTQ's.
It pains me to see something like this in a highly up-voted comment. The point about businesses never preparing for disaster is a good one, and one does not need to claim a party has scummy voters to make it. Adding such flamebait does not strengthen the point being made.
> It pains me to see something like this in a highly up-voted comment. The point about businesses never preparing for disaster is a good one, and one does not need to imply a party's voters are the scum of the earth to make it. Adding such flamebait does not strengthen the point being made.
HN, like the rest of the internet and greater overall world, is losing its grasp on reality. Considering the average quality and truthfulness of reporting and public discourse, I don't think one should really be all that surprised. I have pointed this out to @dang a few times but he seems to be unable to see what I am talking about.
I mean think about it guys - HN is overwhelming populated by tech folks, for whom disciplined, logical thinking is practically second nature due to decades of practice.
And yet...look at the actual content of people's comments. We are ~all smart and logical, yet if a hyper-intelligent alien with zero context was to observe this discussion, would they not come away thinking that human consciousness runs on some sort of weird reality that is not consistent for all people, despite reality itself being right in front of our eyes?
How is it possible that this is happening? What is going on here? This whole situation stopped making any sense to me a long time ago...am I the only one that feels like they may be literally going insane?
I think you are reading too much into his comment. You are taking it as saying X = Y when I think it was meant as X ⊂ Y, where X = "scared white, Christian, racist, xenophobic people" and Y = GOP voters.
We are in effect a two party system, at least for national offices and major state offices. Someone who falls under "scared white, Christian, racist, xenophobic people" has a choice: Democrat or Republican.
They probably dislike many things in the platform of both parties, but they almost certainly find far more they dislike in the Democrat platform than the Republican one. Hence, they tend to vote GOP if they vote.
The point that is valuable to the discussion is this: businesses don't worry about disaster preparedness, so the responsibility falls on government, and government run like a business won't prepare either.
Which party racists vote for doesn't improve a discussion about governments buying medical supplies.
There's more than one way to lessen effective resources being given towards something - inefficient allocation and cronyism isn't exactly a partisan issue. Perhaps we could leave behind the rhetoric about this being the fault of one side, and focus on how literally the entire country has been caught out as woefully unprepared? People used to have savings in this country, and it's not because corporations have squeezed it all out of them that they don't now - it's because people choose not to save anymore.
There's an outrage at people buyings masks and basic preparedness items now, but where's the outrage at hospitals who haven't even stockpiled trivially inexpensive (at the time) items like masks and gloves in preparation for a crisis? Did Trump force them to sell their stockpiles when he was elected? The blame game is a waste of enough time and resources when there isn't an international emergency - those politicians playing it now are practically criminal.
> The GOP have convinced scared white, Christian, racist, xenophobic people that all the government does is waste their hard earned money paying benefits to poor, non-working, non-white, non-Christian, non-citizen, LGBTQ's.
Call me a conspiracy theorist if you like, but this feels a bit off to me.
I mean, no doubt this is a popular meme, but is it actually true? And if so, how true?
When you say GOP supporters consist of people with specific attributes (Christian, racist, etc), I am very unclear on the details of the representation of reality that your are projecting. For example, two obvious followup questions that immediately come to my mind are:
- what percentage of GOP supporters possess all of these attributes?
- what percentage of GOP supporters possess at least one of these attributes?
If you could provide this level of detail (including a link to your data source), I think it might add a lot of clarity to the thread, in turn improving the quality of discourse.
> I would say we were world class in our preparedness, but there is NO WAY that a business could be prepared for a real disaster. I had to fight tooth and nail for every penny I got, and every time I heard the same line from all the board members, "This is a waste of resources, for something that will probably never happen in our lifetime, if ever."
Excuse me if I'm taking an excessively negative interpretation of your sentence, but to me this sounds something like "because you had an experience of difficulty securing sufficient funding for adequate disaster preparation, it therefore logically follows that all businesses will act in this same manner".
Now, "surely" that can't be what you really mean (if we were conversing on, say, /r/politics, I'd likely just assume that it was meant literally - but we're not, we're on HN)....and yet, I see no other way to interpret the words that you have written.
Or maybe you didn't mean it to be taken literally. Ok, fair enough, but if that's the case, then what meaning should I take from what you've said? That "some" (the specific number, be it 1% or 99%, matters not at all) GOP supporters are "racist"? Ummmm....ok? And?
> A Business can't stockpile, cash, products, buildings, capacity, extra remote employees, etc. in order to sustain an event lasting 6-12 months, that MIGHT NEVER HAPPEN.
This can't possibly be true, can it? I mean, take Google, Apple, Microsoft, any of the high flyers of the day. Are you actually saying that they couldn't survive for 12 months with zero revenue while maintaining current levels of expenses? My intuition informs me that these companies could survive for years. I guess I'd have to go check the actual financials to formally rebut you....but gosh, could my intuition really be that far off?
I can't shake this feeling that something weird is going on here. Something....almost unearthly. It is getting harder every day for me to believe that we aren't living in a simulation of some kind. Everywhere I look I see insanity. Black is white (but while simultaneously also being black), up is down, everything is possible, but also nothing is possible.
Am I the only one that feels like something very, very strange is going on right now? Like...you can almost feel it? Like....something is about to happen?
I know "conspiracy theories" aren't popular around here, but this thread came up on /r/conspiracy the other day, and regardless of whether it's "true" (I'm not even sure what that means anymore), I for one found it to be quite interesting. I mean, when the mainstream narrative stops making any sense, perhaps turning to people who have vast expertise in that domain (and they do) isn't all that crazy.
I know it's almost certainly just some random edgy teenage girl (she has others that look similar: https://www.tiktok.com/@zoesc00chiejuice?)...but in times like these, I'm not sure it's such a good idea to completely disregard the warnings one's intuition provides.
I used to lean very socialist... until I actually worked in a few organizations in and around government. There is so much wastefulness it isn't funny. And all government operations seem to incentivize this waste. I lean much more libertarian now... I mean I'm pragmatic about it, but I feel that maximizing personal freedom and liberty and minimizing bureaucracy are far better approaches overall.
I do feel that allowing the level of foreign production and limiting the amount of preparedness we have had are big issues. It's a matter of national security as far as I am concerned. To me, it should be an FDA requirement for dual sourcing and at least 50% domestic production for the US market for prescribed medications and devices. Similar constraints should probably be true of most products sold in the US.
To me some of the biggest sources of waste are in terms of the subsidy programs that should be reigned in as well as military spending and foreign operations spending. I do feel infrastructure spending should probably be re-prioritized higher. All in all, we could probably cut half of the government's budget without too much effort... it would suck for some areas, but in general lead to a healthier outcome for the government holistically.
Making assumptions about motive is really poor form. Most people are mostly good, and generally have the best of intentions.
As to businesses being unable to stockpile resources or operational capital, there are MANY companies that are over-provisioned and have plenty of operational capital set aside. I'm sorry for your poor experience in the space. I have a friend that is in a similar position, and seeing similar frustrations in terms of security.
I find that most politicians are leaning into an ideology, that they may or may not believe in, for the purpose of expanding power. They whip up both support and dissent in the rank and file citizens and are dividing everyone into tribes (such as your assumptions of xenophobia, etc as motivation). I don't fit cleanly into either the D or R side, though I find the spread on the D side so wide that most D's don't fit into their own frames well at all.
As to big business, too many generations of MBAs running companies without those of domain knowledge and experience to counter them. They are driven in a way to optimize that are a poor fit for the humanity that should be included. Much like politicians, they often don't even believe in what they are doing and are more concerned with power, influence and monetary gain.
I'm definitely against corporate protectionism, as many libertarians are... there is a difference between capitalism and corporatism. Corporate rights are wholly granted by the government and there should be less of them, not more. The limited liability should definitely be an offset to certain restrictions, that doesn't mean choking companies in red tape, so much as limiting their collective rights. A company should not have a freedom of speech right... individuals have freedom of speech... and an organization of people can as well. For a company, that "right" should be limited in the same way their collective liability is limited. Companies should also be allowed to die.
Right now, there are a lot of things that are not going well, and I think we'll be feeling the repercussions for a generation to come, much like the 1918 flu and the following market crash about a decade later. US banking policies would be better aligned closer to Canada's banking regulations imho. The number of people panicking in so many ways, in addition to the "orange man bad" assertions are a bit overkill and don't make anything better. I don't like about 30% of Trump's policy choices. I think that on a personal level, he's a pompous asshole. That said, sometimes you need an asshole in charge, you need a certain amount of friction for working systems.
You also need communication and compromise and many of the Democrats are as or more guilty of unwillingness to participate in good will as the Republicans. The stonewalling over the support proposals for example are childish and only demonstrated by a 1400 page proposal including things that, like the green new deal, have no place in the stated legislation's purpose.
That's what regulation is for. If the regulations "even the playing field" across the industry, then such planning isn't a cost that is actively reducing your competitive posture in the marketplace, although global markets make that really hard.
Of course regulation is a no-no to GOP libertarian UofChicago Ayn Rand cultists in charge of America.
Disasters, either at the personal level of home fires all the way up in scale to pandemics and civilization stuff really highlight how myopic libertarians are.
And they aren't even really against regulation. They are just against regulations that don't benefit them, while the vast majority won't protest regulations that benefit them.
This is all a byproduct of globalization, moving manufacturing overseas. I don't know why you have such a partisan view on this situation. Demonizing republican voters doesn't help anyone.
Blaming the "white man" for all the worlds ills is more racist than anything the GOP have legislated.
Tired and illogical argument to make this political. To do so is all emotion driven and not logic cause fast forward a few decades later the globe is experiencing a mass shortage of X due to X calamity. A calamity no one could've predicted cause humans can't predict the future. But, wait the liberal loonies are smarter then the GOP Tards and the loonies would have stockpiled up on X cause they can see the future (right).
It isn't emotion driven because it's an objective fact that the pandemic response team was disbanded by this adminstration. The same administration that wants to cut off food stamps and a bunch of other programs that are critical during times of crisis.
This was totally predictable. It was the fault of this adminstration on its horrible, science-denying management that it spun out of control to this degree.
Ok what about every other country who are now facing the same dire shortages? They were all run by similar GOP Tards or they are humans who cant predict the future?
What are you talking about ... how is Italy, Spain, France holding up in this pandemic???
Are you going to blame the fool for their lack of not being able to predict the future too; not stockpile up on millions of the medical equipment/supplies we now know that is needed?
The reason we don’t have enough face masks is because we have moved all our medical supply chain to China. The reason we were able to do that is because during the Clinton administration we allowed US businesses to destroy US manufacturing capability by granting permanent normal trade relation with China.
I like how the liberal/Democrats always ignore China/offshoring during their discussion of economic crisis. (Probably because they benefited from the slave labors in China more)
This isn't it. It has nothing to do with China, these could have been made in the USA over the course of years, and stockpiled in some giant DR warehouse somewhere in the USA that the USG runs currently for weapons designed to wipe out cities.
The USG doesn't because it isn't a priority to the people in power.
> It has nothing to do with China, these could have been made in the USA over the course of years...
This seems not true to me. Indeed, they could have been manufactured in the USA, as could essentially anything, yet the majority of manufacturing happens to have migrated to China over the past 20 or so years. Does it not seem reasonable, or at least possible, that the much lower cost of production in China had something to do with them being manufactured over there?
Of course, but the point is that proper preparation/intervention from the government would have led to maintaining enough domestic manufacturing capacity and stockpiles. Businesses have different incentives and won't do the same.
> Of course, but the point is that proper preparation/intervention from the government...
Pardon me for being obsessive about accuracy, and I hope you don't take this in a disrespectful way, but the point (topic) of this particular sub-thread (the comment to which I'm replying, which I excerpted, in turn defining the topic) is not that.
It is this: "It has nothing to do with China, these could have been made in the USA over the course of years..."
The media redefining reality is one thing (perhaps they are just doing their best) - but doing it on HN, when the truth is a few centimeters above, seems like taking it a bit too far, to my style of thinking anyways.
Nope that’s not it. Do you see China running out of masks right now? No of course not. They have so much they are “donating” to other countries. They have the world’s capability to make masks.
The U.S. is out of masks because the shelves were cleared in January and February by people buying for relatives back in China, and by local Chinese associations bulk buying and sending them there.
I have family in China. I watched this happen. I saw emails and chat posts organizing donations.
This is getting back to OP's point too, if the US government had actually prepared for this, there would be a stock of these types of items in a government DR warehouse somewhere not available to the public, but ready to be shipped around the USA when needed.
The thread's point is that the other way the US government could have prepared for this would have been to prevent the offshoring of mask production (and other national-security related items), thus keeping the necessary production capacity here instead of in China.
Offshoring isn't the issue, the issue is the GOP wanting to decimate all public health infrastructure and let companies step in and make money off of it instead. The capacity could be here if the USG wanted to make it a priority but it isn't a moneymaker so they are not.
The issue is that you either need a strategic stockpile OR domestic production capabilities, and ideally both. You seem to be ignoring the latter entirely.
(And it was Obama that depleted the strategic stockpile of N95 masks without replenishing them - a stockpile created by Republicans, mind. If you want to point fingers, please point them in the right direction)
They have been "donating" simply to get headlines so the American people complain until Trump apologizes for calling it a "Chinese virus", then China will agree to sell the US masks and price gouge the US. Trump apologized last night and wouldn't you know it, Beijing gave manufactures the go ahead to contact various State and City governments to start price wars internally.
You are correct, China has the capacity to manufacture and supply the masks, but they haven't because they are politicizing this and otherwise price gouging. What they don't realize what they are actually doing is lending legitimacy to the Chinese-made virus conspiracy theories by doing these things...this will back fire against China in a very big way.
How are you oblivious to this blatant racism? Is there no cognitive dissonance in your head? Have you really accepted now that casual anti-white racism is totally fine?
Do you wonder why white nationalism is on the rise? What do you expect people to do when singling out white people as you're doing is totally socially acceptable now?
And your entire premise is bullshit. You can run a business to do anything, so long as the people in charge set appropriate goals - i.e. don't hire MBAs to optimize for quarterly profits.
The fact that this post hasn't been flagged is testament to the unbelievable self hatred of the left leaning white internet. Imagine if we replaced "white, Christian, racist, xenophobic" with an attack on any other race. You're also a fool if you think racism is limited to white people. Poor minorities are far worse on average.
Absolutely disgusting the amount of hate that white people get online, totally casually, and even moreso the self-hatred into which you've been indoctrinated by a left leaning media which plays on the same non-issues as Russian troll farms. Life has gotten so comfortable in the western world that people can literally spend 4-8 years of their lives on someone else's dollar studying to write about how "terrible" their privileged lives are. Totally absurd how far this country has fallen and the trash response to the virus does not surprise me in the least.
> Only a government can and should be preparing for really bad things that might never happen.
How can a govt predict and stock up all the unforeseen events. Wouldn't there be an opportunity cost to for these preparations just like to a private institution. Govt also has limited set of resources, ppl would probably probably choose to fund better roads than prepare for once in a lifetime event. I cannot imagine any politician being able to sell idea of making huge investments for things that might never happen.
Govt also runs on the idea of "profit" , profit in terms on demonstrable results. Otherwise ppl get voted out.
Stockpiling medical supplies is a pimple on the US federal budget. Its a strawman to suggest its 'huge investments'.
Its a decision to make, and the US decided to 'go commando' to save a few bucks. Because it was politically expedient. Because the politicians are gambling with our lives to advance their careers. Instead of, you know, doing the right thing.
Foolish folks who blindly label everything "huge investments" are the issue here. Yes its maybe $100,000,000. A big number to the rank and file. But its 100 miles of road for instance. America has a million miles - which was deemed worthwhile.
Labelling every public health and safety issue as a 'waste of money' is the tragedy here. Its shortsighted and stupid.
> Stockpiling medical supplies is a pimple on the US federal budget.
We aren't just lacking medical supplies though. We also lack hospital capacity.
> . Its a strawman to suggest its 'huge investments'.
I was responding to parent comment that said "really bad things that might never happen."
Surely just medical supplies don't cover all bad things that might ever happen?
> you know, doing the right thing.
You mean ppl don't have suffiencnt information to judge if a politician is doing the right thing?
also, whats with all the name calling. Ok maybe its not "huge" investment, I don't know what the level of investment is to prepare for all things, but neither do you. "stupid people" vote too.
What's most likely to deprive other people of life at large scales: famine, disease, war, weather the biggest 4? Govt has plenty of contingency plans, but those three should be towards the top of the list.
Yup, I am surprised at the numebr of people here who think government should have stocked up on ventilators. Ventilators are not such a common requirement to defeat a virus. How do we know what virus will emerge next? COVID-19 needs a ventilator to mitigate side effects. But does it really make sense to stock up on hundreds of thousands of ventilators, when you only really need a few thousand in any given year? What if the next virus is an hemmorhagic fever, or something completely novel? How do you prepare reasonably and with finite resources for something we do not know? No one can answer these questions.
The fact is that if we had bought hundreds of thousands of ventilators and not enough fluid replacement (for Ebola for example) and Ebola was the pandemic, not COVID-19, then everyone would blame the government for preparing the wrong thing. How can anyone know?
We are not prepared for anything right now, though. We have literally closed the government agency focused on things like Ebola or COVID-19, and we lack even the stockpiles of general supplies we had in 2009.
To have prepared for the wrong thing would be unfortunate. To be prepared for nothing should be criminal.
> We have literally closed the government agency focused on things like Ebola or COVID-19, and we lack even the stockpiles of general supplies we had in 2009.
Can you please cite what you are talking about? Neither the CDC nor FDA are closed.
W.r.t the masks, I completely agree. This has been a decade's worth of failure. Why weren't the masks replaced in 2010? There should be an investigation for sure.
The GOP has convinced their voters that running the government as a business is a great idea, it's not. The GOP have convinced scared white, Christian, racist, xenophobic people that all the government does is waste their hard earned money paying benefits to poor, non-working, non-white, non-Christian, non-citizen, LGBTQ's.
I ran Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity for a very large Financial Institution.
I would say we were world class in our preparedness, but there is NO WAY that a business could be prepared for a real disaster. I had to fight tooth and nail for every penny I got, and every time I heard the same line from all the board members, "This is a waste of resources, for something that will probably never happen in our lifetime, if ever."
A Business can't stockpile, cash, products, buildings, capacity, extra remote employees, etc. in order to sustain an event lasting 6-12 months, that MIGHT NEVER HAPPEN.
Yes, we all knew this could happen, but there was no way to predict when it would happen.
Only a government can and should be preparing for really bad things that might never happen.
Frankly running DR & BC wrecked my career at that firm because I was seen as Don Quixote, "Tilting at Windmills." I was assigned the job and did my best, assuming it was a stepping stone, and it was, but they expected me to just put on a show. Instead I took the job seriously, and it eroded their confidence in me, they expected that I should have recognized it as a fluff job, used only to get me exposure to the BOD, justifying the next step up in my career, instead I was "sent down" and had no choice but to leave.