Gongol.com Archives: March 2021
March 27, 2021
Just-in-time gets stuck in the Suez Canal
New York Times journalist Peter Goodman wrote an analysis of the global trade crunch being caused by the Ever Given -- the cargo ship blocking the Suez Canal. Goodman describes the analysis as "the latest warning about excessive reliance on just in time manufacturing". Peculiarly, though, someone at the Times made the headline "In Suez Canal, Stuck Ship Is a Warning About Excessive Globalization". ■ The simplest explanation is that some editor carelessly thought "globalization" was a more economical way to say "just in time manufacturing". Occam's Razor and Hanlon's Razor would both tell us to accept that explanation, so we probably should. ■ Yet it's still a bit odd that someone at such a venerable publication as the Times would have taken that kind of shortcut. "Excessive reliance on just in time manufacturing" is a much narrower critique than "excessive globalization". The narrow critique is defensible. The broad one just...isn't. Someone should ask why the editor involved felt the need to put a Juche spin on it. Was it just for clickbait? ■ We're living through an extraordinary event: A pandemic that raced across the world like a wildfire, and one that has massively disrupted life and commerce for billions. Yet the path out of the pandemic is indisputably through a globalized path. It's one thing to say, for instance, that America found itself at the mercy of fragile supply chains for tools like PPE that failed the stress test of the onset of the pandemic. That's a valid critique of just-in-time manufacturing. Critical thought and attention should go into redeeming those failures. ■ But we're also seeing a truly revolutionary effort that is producing amazingly effective vaccines in totally unprecedented time. The development process has absolutely been facilitated by "globalization", international teamwork is the only way to produce and distribute enough of the vaccine to stop the disease, and long-term international cooperation and coordination are going to be indispensable. ■ A ship got stuck in the Suez Canal. That probably was the result of some combination of human error and mechanical failure. It's been disruptive. It highlights several issues that ought to be fixed. But there's a big difference between casting a critical eye on just-in-time networks and disclaiming globalization generally. Nobody needs to be rooting for the pirates.
Behold, the most under-appreciated test in all of politics. There are plenty of ways to dislike what is -- but it's crazy not to imagine how something else might be worse.
What's up with "Austrian economics"?
Everyone should start by reading Hayek and Mises. They just shouldn't stop there.
How do nerdy obsessions start?
Markets beget division of labor. Division of labor begets comparative advantage. Comparative advantage begets specialization. Specialization begets efficiency. Efficiency begets leisure time. Leisure time begets nerdy obsessions. Nerdy obsessions beget new markets. That's how.
Derecho-related mulch pile catches fire
Anyone who's ever seen the heat that can come off a compost pile can understand how this could have led to spontaneous combustion, which is what appears to have happened in Hiawatha, Iowa. Linn County lost an astonishing half of its tree cover in the August derecho, so there's just a stupefying amount of vegetation that is still being processed and disposed of. Weird incidents like this are going to be inevitable for a while.
