More Fun with Supply Chains

You’d think that over two years into the pandemic that our economic betters would have realized that siting most of our industrial production in one dictatorship is actually a very bad idea with enormous consequences if anything goes wrong. For example, in the early months of the pandemic, once the CDC finally gave solid advice about wearing masks, there was a huge rush to build mask production facilities in the United States. But they are all closed now because it’s just cheaper to make masks in China. One of the reasons for that is that it is a dictatorship that ensures labor remains cheap. Great for capitalists, not so good for those of us who need to buy masks when China shuts down its entire economy to stop a Covid outbreak. So yeah, we have learned nothing at all. And because Beijing is going all-in to stamp out Covid well after such a strategy makes a lot of sense given the potential of vaccines, our supply chains could be as screwed up this summer as they were in the summer of 2020.

I’d like to say that our economic elites were capable of learning, but they most clearly are not. After all, business school only taught them one thing, which is short-term profits rule and everything else is irrelevant.