• blakenong
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      2 days ago

      Maybe we need empty shelves for a while.

    • I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Just in Time shipping and manufacturing only serves one purpose, making quarterly reports look good. Managers and equity firms LOVE JiT because keeping inventory on hand doesn’t balance well on their spreadsheets. They can not quantify inventory getting used over the course of a few years because they can’t see past the next quarter. To them, it’s lost profit; even if it doesn’t lose its value and is all but guaranteed to get used/sold eventually.

      You would think more companies would have learned the merits of Just in Case manufacturing. Those that did absolutely thrived under COVID as they were the only ones still able to produce.

      But no. The COVID crisis “ended” and companies went “Well something like that will certainly never happen again! Back to the old ways!”

      • barneypiccolo@lemm.ee
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        1 day ago

        Conservatives (and businesses are generally conservative) are great at deluding themselves into adopting any strategy that puts money in their pocket over intelligent strategies that would lead to better long-term outcomes, but cost a little more and/or make slightly less profit.

        That’s why they stick with Trickle Down Economics, which have poor long-term outcomes for all but the rich, instead of Trickle Up Economics, which helps everyone, even though the inevitable outcome of Trickle Down is a catastrophic shift (for the rich) to Robin Hood Economics (Take from the rich, Give to the poor).

        • immutable@lemm.ee
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          1 day ago

          It’s extremely interesting to watch them give trump leeway here. I saw polling recently that many of the trump faithful believe that the tariffs will bring short term pain but it will be worth it for the long term benefits.

          What’s going to turbo suck is that they will take the exact wrong lesson from this. It will enforce their short term thinking because they will remember this time that they experienced short term pain for long term gain and the gain never materialized.

          I just wish we had the ability as a society to have a more nuanced conversation than sound bites. Ok we disagree about tariffs, one side thinks they are real fucking dumb and the other thinks they are great and will have long term benefits. It would be amazing if we could have an adult conversation about this, how it’s expected to work, how likely that is, what issues might be in the way, etc.

          Perhaps it’s decades of being an engineer, but I propose designs that are meant to achieve goals and other engineers check my work, ask questions about things I might not have considered, help play out scenarios that aren’t accounted for and at the end of that we have a better design. As a nation we now seem so incapable of having an honest dialogue between the two major parties that not only are we advancing ideas that obviously won’t work but it’s clear we have no feedback mechanisms to correct course. So now we will just blow up the economy because a group of people think it might, somehow, using mechanisms no one can identify, lead to a future that is “better” where no one can meaningfully define “better.”

          And that’s the state of discourse.

          • cyphear@lemm.ee
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            21 hours ago

            But that would mean questioning the authority of the government and providing verifiable facts. The regime we currently have doesn’t want the betterment of society. They want mindless puppets who will go along with whatever is presented. Historically, people who question authoritative policies are labeled as traitors and enemies of the state, and are silenced so that the poison they spout can’t spread. Fact-checking is now seen as personal attacks and are met with imprisonment and are downplayed, if covered at all.