I recently read Economics In One Virus, by Ryan Bourne of the CATO Institute in the US, and an excellent account it is. (It was published in 2021.) It is a good overview of how people should think about the economic issues involved in a pandemic.
The current farcical “inquiry” into the UK government’s handling of COVID-19 (see my recent posting here) got me thinking about some of the more admirable things I noticed during the nightmare. One of them was the way that the supermarket industry, and associated logistics sector (warehouses, lorry drivers, ports, shipping, stock inventory platforms, etc), worked. Suddenly, everyone became familiar with the term “supply chain”. I recall a few years ago meeting a person who introduced himself as a “supply chain specialist”, and others in the room made rude comments about how “dull” this sounded. (I make a point of avoiding jerks like them, by the way.) Well, his field of expertise came into a very bright spotlight, and to an extent, there it remains. Getting supplies right is about as non-dull as you can imagine.
Global capitalism gets a lot of silly criticism, and yet those who presume to champion it often fail to note the triumphs when they occur. They would do well to point out how much better the bottom-up, entrepreneurial, market-based way of doing things is than the top-down, government approach.
I recall that when the news first broke of a virus in Wuhan and what to do about it, the conventional (ie, wrong) wisdom seemed to be that we should copy the Chinese in their lockdowns and restrictions, and this was seized upon, it seemed, by those itching for these controls for various other reasons, such as harsh “Green” policy. What got drowned out was the case for how enterprise could provide solutions, from rapid development of ICU unit technology through to better management of supplies, treatments, vaccines, etc.
In the months since lockdowns ended, we have forgotten these lessons, and I fear that the wrong ones have been learned. Not enough is being done to point out how inventiveness, enterprise, intelligent risk-taking and experimentation are what’s wanted, not the often oafish fist of the state.
I recall a few years ago meeting a person who introduced himself as a “supply chain specialist”, and others in the room made rude comments about how “dull” this sounded.
“Amateurs study strategy, professionals study logistics”
US Army General Omar Bradley.
But the State and its minions doesn’t think it has an oafish fist. It believes it has a firm hand when necessary or offers unquestionable guidance otherwise. Or perhaps bread and circuses.
The State has forgotten to fear the electorate punishing the Party that over-reaches. Indeed much political activity is aimed at achieving a ‘no blame’ regime to ensure it is not exposed. Think of the political farce of the COVID inquiry.
No party is going to depart this comfortable script. Except when the public reaction is too great to allow unacknowledged, such as the Brexit referendum, and even that has been watered down.
Perhaps a big vote for Reform will send a big enough message? It’s worth a try.
Not enough is being done to point out how inventiveness, enterprise, intelligent risk-taking and experimentation are what’s wanted, not the often oafish fist of the state.
Definitely. I always thought is was instructive that the Soviet Union could manage a solid “D minus” for production, but regularly turned in an “F double minus, see me afterwards” for distribution.
I think it derives from basic commie propaganda (echoed in Nazi propaganda) – wholesalers and other folk in the quick on your feet distributive trades were always used as examples of parasites on the honest folk reaping corn or bashing things with hammers. Distribution is, as you say, quintessentially a zone for inventiveness, enterprise, intelligent risk-taking and experimentation and therefore a complete closed book to those who think central plannning makes sense. Which, sadly, includes the state apparat in most Western countries.
You just had to get it in there.
The problem is that we are so used to it running with perfect smoothness we take it for granted. A supermarket is an amazing place really. I can get bananas from Costa Rica in the middle of the winter, I can get ice in the middle of the summer, I can get vanilla from the Madagascar, and rice from China. And it is really no big deal. But it is a big deal. So huge that no human mind can hold it all in. I have these two red bowls that I bought for cooking from Amazon for a couple of bucks each. They were made in Israel, a fact that, to this day makes my jaw drop in awe. When you think about the logistics involved in getting it here… and it is a piece of plastic. I can’t imagine how perishables like the bananas reached me.
Of course one thing worth noting is price gouging. Whenever there is a natural disaster we all throw up our hands in horror at price gouging. In fact it is just incorporating the extra costs of the disaster and if we would leave well alone these disaster ridden folks would have all the supplies they need. Hands up here everyone who thinks FEMA is better at logistics than Walmart? Hands up everyone who’d rather be able to buy what they need (even at elevated prices) than take government charity?
With regards to price gouging people suffer unimaginable horrors so that we can feel self righteous about our price control efforts.
BTW, the one that makes be laugh is that “Tahiti Water” you see all the hipsters and celebrities drinking. Can you imagine how much it costs to transport a bottle of water from Tahiti, what a waste of energy? I have to apparently turn up my thermostat in the summer but they are ok transporting their bottled water ten thousand miles across the ocean?
It often struck me that what they should do is dehydrate the water in Tahiti, and send it here to be reconstituted with local distilled water…
On this topic, here is some bed time reading: https://nationalcitizensinquiry.ca/commissioners-report/
The virus came from the Chinese lab, the lab backed by various American government agencies and by Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance and the World Health Organisation.
The “lockdowns” were pushed by People’s Republic of China and World Health Organisation lies and propaganda – they did not “save lives” they have done terrible harm which will cost (not save – cost) many lives.
Early Treatments that could have saved many lives, were systematically smeared.
The cloth masks were useless – if not harmful.
And the Covid “vaccines” did not prevent contraction or transmission of the virus (so the injections were not vaccines by the traditional definition of that word) and injured or killed many people.
The “inquiry” will reveal none of the above – indeed its predetermined (yes – predetermined) conclusion is that the lockdowns should have been even more insane – which fits the totalitarian agenda of the World Health Organisation and other international Corporate State bodies.
The system is institutionally corrupt, the international establishment is despicable.
Many people in the U.S. got their first lesson in the importance of logistics with the Port of Los Angeles debacle. Some sectors are still trying to recover from that.
That’s when we all discovered that “Just In Time” is a very brittle strategy.
The wrong people in charge making the wrong decisions for the wrong reasons, with zero oversight or pushback from anyone with common sense.
The decisions made by Fauci and his crew about doing gain-of-function work in China never made a damn bit of sense to me, as a layperson. Precisely how does that whole line of work pay off, pray tell? You take a microbe or virus that is currently not harmful, and then… Make it harmful? Then what? You’ve got something to work on, to create a vaccine against, on the severely limited chance that random evolution will somehow make the same “gains of function” down the line, and you’ll be ready for that?
I dunno about the stats on that, but it seems seriously unlikely to me. Hell, they can’t even accurately predict which varieties of flu are going to be prevalent this season, let alone have the vaccines ready in sufficient quantity.
It does strike me that “gain-of-function” is a near-perfect way to produce usable biowarfare agents, which you can then be prepared for… Which then boggles the mind that you’d be doing the work inside the territory of one of your number-one economic and military rivals.
Precisely none of this makes any sense, so why’d they do it? Because they could? What’s the end-goal? Reduce a world population that’s already on the decline, and will likely be the disaster of the late 21st Century? South Korea, with it’s .78 fertility rate? Is that our future? And, if it is, WTF are these idiots doing trying to run down the population artificially?
You rather get the impression that the WEF and the rest are reacting to something that’s already fundamentally changed, and are doing things to make the decline far worse than it would have been, naturally. Kinda the same as China did to itself with the draconian “One Child” policy of the late 1970s forward.
You want to try and run the world? You’d better have a line in omniscience, because the one lesson anyone should be taking from the last 150 years is that human imagination and mental capacity don’t cut it for playing God with the economy or much of anything else. Man proposes; God disposes.
I’m just waiting for some government to get sick of the WEF and sic it’s intelligence services on Klaus and friends. If he thinks he’s a mover and shaker now, wait until his G5 gets hit with a MANPAD and nobody saw a thing.
Nothing to do with the current topic – though I agree with JP’s analysis – but I’d just like to thank all who regularly contribute to Samizdata and make it such an invaluable refuge of common sense in a desert of vacuous nonsense. I don’t post but for many years have enjoyed reading the broad range of opinions and arguments expressed in such a respectful and articulate manner.
Thank you all and I wish you a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year
I’ve got to admit there was a moment when I thought it was going to be worse: that there would be serious problems buying basic things. As it was, there were a few weeks where I had to find alternative suppliers (wholesalers who started doing home deliveries) for pasta and loo roll, and had stuff delivered to my parents.
But supply chains, for all their supposed fragility, turned out to be robust.
@bobby b
That’s when we all discovered that “Just In Time” is a very brittle strategy.
An important part of JIT manufacturing is the concept of redundancy in the supply chain. It doesn’t take a global pandemic to cause problems, just a trucker strike in Indonesia, or a factory fire in China. Which is why well designed supply chains have multiple, redundant sources. However, choke points that can’t be made redundant arise mainly due to government action. In this particular case one choke point was the port of Los Angeles where the federal government had customs and other such controls that aren’t available or sufficiently abundant in other ports. And additionally the fact that the government forced everyone to stay home.
This was not at all a failure of the supply chain, but a massive overreach by the Federal Government, and many other world governments, to look good without any real consideration of the consequences. It allowed them to wrap themselves in a blanket of virtue to deflect all the blame, most likely to greedy capitalists.
As Rob Fisher points out, the fact that we didn’t all starve to death under such unbelievable government oppression is rather a testament to the robustness of supply chains and JIT manufacturing rather than its fragility.
I was raised to believe that a robust plan would take into account the vagaries of government along with the more natural issues. The fact that the chain did so poorly for so long after the LA Port problems leaves me considering that chain to be brittle. “Robust except for . . . ” isn’t robust.
(A lot of the problems in LA came from container mismanagement, container regulation, truck regulation, and labor regulation, none of which sprang from Covid issues. Covid didn’t help – but they were messed up even without it. A robust plan expects government to eff up.)
bobby b
I was raised to believe that a robust plan would take into account the vagaries of government along with the more natural issues.
That is a great point!
bobby b : I was raised to believe that a robust plan would take into account the vagaries of government along with the more natural issues.
Fraser : That is a great point!
I’m not sure it’s such a great point. The thing is, natural problems are somewhat predictable. But the government can come up with all sorts of nonsense that nature would never dream of. Moreover the government is more like enemy action – they really are trying to confound your best laid plans. Nature does it by accident.
What do you think would happen if you spotted that the Port of LA was tied up in red tape so tight that one little breath of wind and it would all fall over ? You’d raise a few billion and build alternative port facilities somewhere else, so that when the Port of LA fell over you’d not only be able to get your own stuff in, you’d make out like a bandit selling your port facilities to the foolish virgins who had not invested in an alternative.
Yeah right. Your alternative port would get tied up by the Feds, while those who benefit financially and politically from the Port of LA and its red tape ran blocking patterns through the federal courts. In the unlikely event that you got your port built, when the moment arrived to cash in (ie when the Port of LA failed) you wouldn’t cash in, because there’d be a great hue and cry about scalping and taking advanatge of emergencies. And since this is America it wouldn’t just be a hue and cry, it’d go directly to court where you would face criminal charges as well as yuuuuge civil damages.
If the government has a scam, you don’t make any money by working out how to defeat the scam. You make money by joining in the scam.
PS – who’s old enough to remember the National Dock Labour Scheme ?
Not to quibble with the underlying arguments, but I understood that a lot of the problems that choked the port of LA (and, far more seriously, the port of Long Beach, which is the more-important import hub) stemmed, not from Federal interference, but from a myriad of restrictive State and local regulations, from labor laws to emissions regulations to silly-ass NIMBY rules about how high containers could be stacked and so forth. There was never a bottleneck in the ports themselves – the bottleneck was in moving containers past the gates of the port complexes.
National Dock Labour Scheme? The idea that all dock workers were to have a ‘job for life’, based on the nature of dock labour in 1947? Yeah, that’s going to work, wouldn’t you think? The amazing part is that the docker’s unions managed to keep it alive until 1989, and made sure that the UK was permanently handicapped from ever being a serious shipping destination. The city fathers of Rotterdam must have just laughed their asses off every year this statist stupidity was extended.
llater,
llamas
The most important lesson from the pandemic was that (if you exclude people over 80), there was no pandemic.