Strong Towns on "what the pandemic reveals about the fragility of our institutions."

As the economy "reopens," think there might be time to squeeze in a revolution or three?

Designer masks, designer pitchforks.

Not a Black Swan: Nassim Taleb on What the Coronavirus Teaches Us About Our Institutions

... Not only have epidemiologists been sounding the alarm and urging pandemic preparedness for many years, but so have many scholars who study risk, randomness, and uncertainty. This includes our era's veritable prophet of risk and uncertainty: Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who co-authored a January 26th paper warning that the spread of COVID-19 would be "nonlinear" and potentially severe.

Tell me more.

Taleb's interest is in what the pandemic reveals about the fragility of our institutions. The story historians tell about COVID-19 may prove to be less about the disease and more about its rapidly cascading effects on governmental and financial systems that have, for years, been more or less rigged to blow.

How do we build systems of governance and distribution (of food, medicines, energy, and other essential products of civilization) that can handle mounting random events like a global disease outbreak? Taleb is critical of "just-in-time" supply chains and production schedules, of "too big to fail" institutions, and of the hubris of those in power who attempt to manage risk without adequate contingency plans, believing that the future can be predicted from the average circumstances we've experienced so far (a delusion Taleb calls "naive empiricism").

The correct response, according to Taleb, is to decentralize power and flatten hierarchies, creating institutions that more closely mimic the redundancy of organic, natural systems. This allows pieces of a complex system to fail without endangering the whole.

To repeat, the toilet paper shortage is about capitalist "efficiency," but hey, Joe Biden will fix it, right?

Whenever I think about Joe Biden as the standard bearer for the DemoDisneyDixiecrats, defecation springs to mind -- and with it, the need for toilet paper amid the rigors of the pandemic.

Here's another explanation of the same fundamental lesson: an economic system organized for maximum profit on the part of the producers isn't necessarily built to be resilient in times of crisis.

What Everyone’s Getting Wrong About the Toilet Paper Shortage, Will Oremus (Medium)

It isn’t really about hoarding. And there isn’t an easy fix.

Georgia-Pacific, a leading toilet paper manufacturer based in Atlanta, estimates that the average household will use 40% more toilet paper than usual if all of its members are staying home around the clock. That’s a huge leap in demand for a product whose supply chain is predicated on the assumption that demand is essentially constant. It’s one that won’t fully subside even when people stop hoarding or panic-buying.

And this repeat from last week:

COVID-19 and the “Just-in-Time” Supply Chain: Why Hospitals Ran Out of Ventilators and Grocery Stores Ran Out of Toilet Paper, by Louis Proyect (CounterPunch)

"Hospitals began to run out of masks for the same reason that supermarkets ran out of toilet paper — because their “just-in-time” supply chains, which call for holding as little inventory as possible to meet demand, are built to optimize efficiency, not resiliency."

"COVID-19 and the “just-in-time” supply chain" ... um, which "ism" is it?

Eureka!

Serendipity is the motive force in life, and I knew there was a reason why I've held onto this roll of East German toilet paper since 1989. Just in the nick of time, too.

Meanwhile, for everyone out there equating empty (sections of) store shelves, depleted masks and missing ventilators with socialism, communism or other "isms" of which accurate definitions are lamentably lacking, have a nice read.

Spoiler alert: It's about capitalism, not those pesky other-isms. 

COVID-19 and the “Just-in-Time” Supply Chain: Why Hospitals Ran Out of Ventilators and Grocery Stores Ran Out of Toilet Paper, by Louis Proyect (CounterPunch)

On March 25th, N.Y. Times op-ed columnist Farhad Manjoo wrote about “How the World’s Richest Country Ran Out of a 75-Cent Face Mask.” The subtitle certainly went against the grain of what you’d read from a page dominated by Thomas Friedman: “A very American story about capitalism consuming our national preparedness and resiliency.”

Manjoo identified just one of many failures of the Trump administration to be prepared for the epidemic. Alex Azar, the HHS Secretary had testified that there were only about 40 million masks in our domestic stockpiles, around 1 percent of what would be required. Like much else, mask manufacturing had migrated to China in the same way as all other textile industries had long ago.

Manjoo put this into context:

Hospitals began to run out of masks for the same reason that supermarkets ran out of toilet paper — because their “just-in-time” supply chains, which call for holding as little inventory as possible to meet demand, are built to optimize efficiency, not resiliency.

I remember first hearing about just-in-time inventory techniques in the 1990s in the aftermath of the collapse of the USSR. Just-in-time was also called “lean manufacturing” or “stockless production.” Management gurus saw it as a way to eliminate waste and continuously boost productivity ...