[jonrimmer]

The price advantages of globalised supply chains vs. the relative rarity of an event like this means that, during normal periods, firms using them will enjoy a significant advantage over those doing the "right" thing and market forces will weed out the latter. So I don't expect management to be taking a lead on this.

[ardy42]

> The price advantages of globalised supply chains vs. the relative rarity of an event like this means that, during normal periods, firms using them will enjoy a significant advantage over those doing the "right" thing and market forces will weed out the latter. So I don't expect management to be taking a lead on this.

That's correct. It's a market failure that needs to be remedied through law and regulation.

Hyper-specialist species can amazingly exploit their niche, but they're the first suffer and go extinct when things get disrupted. It's the generalists that survive.

[robocat]

> law and regulation

In industries where innovation matters, how do you regulate for producing a good enough product?

Could you regulate Intel to fix their 10nm process?

Do you want a laptop with the reliability of a Fiat, or the reliability of a Toyota?

Not saying it is impossible, but countries quickly run inito problems when their home produced goods are strictly inferior to the imported goods on price or quality or other metrics.

[fermienrico]

Would you agree with Trump’s stance on reducing American reliance on Chinese manufactured goods? Trump has been doing that since his election.

[tomp]

Obviously. It needs to be enshrined in law. Stress tests, like for banks. It would also be more efficient / profitable for banks to keep lower capital reserves...

Edit: alternatively, countries could be much more trigger-happy when it comes to banning flights from potentially infected areas where some kind of virus starts - basically a lot of false alarms. Companies would simply have to adapt.

[whatshisface]

Another possibility: don't do any industrial bailouts and let high-risk investors take their medicine. Next time, risky businesses will find it more expensive to get capital, as investors realize some things they weren't thinking about before.

[ssivark]

Well, the flip side is that during times of crisis, one would expect market forces to weed out the former kind of companies (leaner, and with globalized supply chains). So which ones survive, and which ones are out-competed are a consequence of which set of market forces we soften and which set we allow to play out.

[TeMPOraL]

And the edge of that coin is: once we're past this crisis, the same market forces that created this peril will start cutting the redundancies from the survivors, setting us up for the next crisis couple decades down the line.

[syshum]

not when governments around the world bailout the bad companies because they are "too Big to fail"

[jobu]

Yeah, not only is this a once in 100years event, it's also staggered in such a way that the Chinese manufacturing will likely be caught up by the time the European and North American economies are coming back to life.

[TeMPOraL]

> it's also staggered in such a way that the Chinese manufacturing will likely be caught up by the time the European and North American economies are coming back to life.

It's more difficult than that. Links in the supply chain aren't independent. Supply and demand must balance. Chinese manufacturing is spinning back up just as European and US demand is dropping. This will cause further damage to the companies on the supply side. And as Europe and US spin their economies back up, China may not be able to meet the growing demand in full. It'll take a while before this reaches something resembling an equilibrium.

[dv_dt]

SARS in 2003 and H1N1 in 2011(?) - in the age of increasing globalization and population it seems like odds of this are increasing, we have skirted and now had pandemics more than 1 in 100 years.

[cmurf]

Global Viral Outbreaks Like Coronavirus, Once Rare, Will Become More Common: Urbanization, globalization and increased human consumption of animal proteins are driving a rise in epidemics

https://www.wsj.com/articles/viral-outbreaks-once-rare-becom...

[the_reformation]

Can you quantify the human suffering avoided by lower prices borne out of supply chains?

[alkibiades]

yep. if we wanted it to happen we need protectionism and tarrifs.