[HN Gopher] Paintmakers are running out of the color blue
___________________________________________________________________
Paintmakers are running out of the color blue
Author : giuliomagnifico
Score : 78 points
Date : 2021-10-20 18:05 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloombergquint.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloombergquint.com)
| xenonite wrote:
| I am not so surprised as the new iPhone is colored blue.
|
| /irony off
| vitus wrote:
| https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ahmedabad/gujarats-...
| seems like it fills in several missing details that other
| commenters have asked about (what is it about blue? is this more
| than just a single paintmaker in the Netherlands?).
|
| (I have my own gripes about that website, like how it tries to
| prevent copy-pasting via JS, or that it links to arbitrary
| phrases that aren't common topics or other news articles like
| you'd expect. But at least it has more context about this
| situation.)
|
| > To put things in perspective, an estimated 59% of the annual
| 1.1 lakh tonne of global supply of blue pigment comes from
| Gujarat (India's share is 82%).
|
| > However, pigment manufacturers - small and large - in the state
| have been forced to reduce production by 25-50% due to the surge
| in prices of raw materials, their unavailability and working
| capital issues.
|
| > Rising energy costs - coal and crude - have pushed up prices of
| raw materials such as phthalic anhydride, cuprous chloride and
| urea. These are used to manufacture CPC Blue (Copper
| phthalocyanine blue) crude, a key ingredient of pigment blue,
| which in turn goes into the making of various shades of blue
| paints.
| h2odragon wrote:
| ..and the artists all cried out in woad
| burnafter182 wrote:
| The Greeks didn't have a word for the color blue.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| The Russians have two.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Like "Blue" and "Navy"? Or just two blues? If the latter,
| what's the reason?
| tetromino_ wrote:
| What's the reason why English and most other languages of
| Europe treat blue and green like distinct basic colors,
| while many languages of Asia have one word encompassing
| both? What's the reason why Hungarian has two basic words
| for different kinds of red? It's just a historical artifact
| of language evolution. Russian happened to the evolve two
| different distinct basic color words for blue; to an
| English speaker, both are different shades of blue, but in
| Russian, neither is a shade of the other; and Russian has
| no single color word encompassing the English concept of
| "blue".
| tigen wrote:
| Even in English, in certain contexts, blue-green middling
| shades are treated individually (turquoise, cyan). Of
| course there are many color names in paint/art, but even
| in everyday situations there is a pretty clear concept of
| turquoise being its own distinct color.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Azure, cobalt, sapphire, cerulean, indigo, aquamarine...
|
| Most languages probably have quite a few.
| tetromino_ wrote:
| Two basic color words for different types of blue. You
| might think of azure, cobalt, and sapphire as shades of
| blue. To a Russian speaker, sinii and goluboi are not
| shades of each other, they are different basic colors, like
| blue and green in English. And there is no one color word
| in Russian encompassing all blues.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| just as there is no word in English encompassing all
| blue-greens
| defanor wrote:
| > To a Russian speaker, sinii and goluboi are not shades
| of each other, they are different basic colors, like blue
| and green in English.
|
| As a native Russian speaker, I always understood
| "goluboi" as a light shade of "sinii" (blue), and that's
| how it's defined in dictionaries [1,2].
|
| [1] https://academic.ru/searchall.php?SWord=%D0%B3%D0%BE%
| D0%BB%D...
|
| [2] https://ru.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%BB%D1%
| 83%D0%B...
| jpindar wrote:
| Like pink and red? Technically pink is light red, but no
| one calls it that.
| defanor wrote:
| I think pink is less clearly a shade of red (it can go a
| bit into blue), while "goluboi" is simply light or pale
| blue: AFAICT it's used as an alias, and one may call it
| "light blue" as well.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Nah. https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/26918/could-
| peo...
|
| (Be sure to read the #2 answer, which I find more compelling
| than the first.)
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| So much for future printings of House of Leaves.
| azinman2 wrote:
| My hope is that supply chain issues will make clear the downsides
| to execs (not just the workers) and governments of externalizing
| all manufacturing abroad and out of reach. Look at the chaos
| caused by a pandemic, now imagine war or purposefully using
| supply chain as leverage.
| coliveira wrote:
| This is all momentary situation caused by the pandemic. In one
| year, people will not even remember this. Companies will not
| spend billions of dollars unless they have no other option.
| mywittyname wrote:
| I disagree. People will remember this and make irrational
| decisions based on these memories for years.
|
| For comparison, the Great Financial Crisis still looms over
| us so much that people _still_ anticipate another huge
| housing burst. And when companies like Ford announce that
| they aren 't using FICO scores to determine if a person
| qualifies for a loan, people on websites start fearmongering
| about another sub prime lending crisis.
| duped wrote:
| Bold to predict that the supply shortages will be over in
| one year
| gremloni wrote:
| I wish it gets to that point. A country that doesn't
| manufacture is a _huge_ loser in the long run. I hope it
| comes back to America in a heavily automated, sustainable
| fashion.
| coliveira wrote:
| I get the point, but corporations care more about their own
| profits. They will continue manufacturing in Asia for the
| foreseeable future, since it is too costly to open
| manufacturing plants in the US. The government would need
| to do something momentous to change this, which I don't see
| happening.
| bluGill wrote:
| There is plenty of manufacturing to go around. Buying from
| specialists is a better deal for everyone than trying to do
| a little of everything.
|
| The only exceptions is war machines (guns, ships...) - you
| need to have that in your country just in case. Though the
| more trade you do with others the more nobody wants war
| with you because they lose both the goods you make and the
| market for goods you buy from them.
| bitwize wrote:
| It's all right. According to Hackernews, we need only change our
| languages to exclude a word for blue, then blue won't exist and
| we wonpt need blue paint.
| [deleted]
| Kluny wrote:
| Jazz musicians have started singing the yellows.
| aazaa wrote:
| That website is a catastrophe. The banner on the left prevents
| the intro text from being read. There's also a banner on the
| right which is similar in behavior. Neither can be dismissed.
| Text can't be copied without dragging along useless marketing
| material. There is no Reader view to nuke the bad design
| decisions.
|
| Strangely, the original story ran on Bloomberg itself, which
| isn't mentioned in the article. Fortunately, the archive.md trick
| works. https://archive.md
| kowlo wrote:
| An amazing display of the modern web:
| https://imgur.com/a/6a15t0U
| junon wrote:
| These sorts of comments are against HN guidelines. It's not
| conducive to complain about the site's poor UX, as aggravating
| as it is.
| aazaa wrote:
| You're right. Deleting...
|
| Oops, can't do that, it appears.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Paintmakers (plural)? Or paintmaker (singular)? Was this a
| proactively written article or a quick rehash of a press release?
| It mentions a single paint manufacturer. One.
|
| No doubt there are supply chain issues. Apparently there are
| journalism integrity issues as well. Yeah, it feels innoscent.
| But lazy and journalism are two words that do not belong
| together. Ever.
| TomAbel wrote:
| After the 2011 Japan earthquake automakers ran into a the same
| problem, they ran out of a pigment called Xirallic made by Merck
|
| >After the earthquake, automakers worldwide were forced to stop
| making cars of certain colors because they couldn't get the
| aluminum-flaked Xirallic pigment that makes the paint sparkle.
| Merck was making the pigment at only one plant worldwide -- its
| Onahama plant in the quake zone -- and kept significant stocks of
| the product only at the same factory. It took months to restart
| the plant and resume deliveries.[1]
|
| The Verge did a really good profile of the perils of just-in-time
| manufacturing in respect to Apple that highlights how highly
| efficient JIT in reducing costs but that it ultimately leads to
| more fragile supply chains.[2]
|
| >Just-in-time manufacturing is highly efficient, but it's not
| resilient.This style of manufacturing cuts costs -- but it also
| means that if the supply chain is disrupted, there will be
| shortages.[2]
|
| I really like this insight
|
| >To make a more resilient system, a lot of companies may have to
| rethink just-in-time manufacturing. Resilience doesn't show up as
| clearly on balance sheets as cost reduction, but it's crucial for
| surviving disruptive events. Lowering costs by creating economies
| of scale and volume looks good most of the time, but once there's
| a failure, companies don't have many options.[2]
|
| [1]https://www.autonews.com/article/20130715/OEM10/307159926/pi..
| . (Paywalled) Archive: https://archive.md/Yoqe2
|
| [2]https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/13/21177024/apple-just-in-
| ti...
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Just how much stock would companies need to avoid the problems
| we have now? This isn't just a supply side problem, demand for
| some goods has gone through the roof. How can a business
| compete on resilience when all their competitors are cheaper
| because they carry less stock.
|
| I'm not even sure I'd want that as a consumer. Mostly I'd
| rather wait than pay more (although obviously not for food).
| azinman2 wrote:
| Except waiting ripples through the economy. You may not need
| a particular thing, but something that depends on it for
| their business 18 chain links away from things you need,
| does. And without it, certain businesses might not be able to
| sell anything, and thus go bankrupt, and thus put people out
| of work. It's all a very complicated interconnected web
| smegcicle wrote:
| YInMn Blue is nothing but trouble
| oasisbob wrote:
| > "There is one basic color tint that is extremely difficult to
| get"
|
| Any idea of the possible tint which is being referred to?
| Wondering if it's a mineral source requiring mining, heavy-metal
| processing, or what?
| stan_rogers wrote:
| Likely cobalt. Most of the other blues are either made of
| relatively abundant elements or have very good synthetic
| equivalents.
| archildress wrote:
| Could be Titanium Dioxide that is involved in whitening. Have
| seen enough from my view that this would be my guess. And what
| could be more basic than that. :)
| nightfly wrote:
| If that was the problem then white wouldn't be available
| either
| cinntaile wrote:
| You need that for every color so that the sun doesn't
| discolor your paint so probably not.
| tombert wrote:
| This is completely tangential but does anyone who has any real
| experience with painting done anything with the VR painting apps?
| I have one called PaintingVR, and I think it's cool, but I have
| no real experience with physical paints (always opting to use a
| digital drawing tablet since I was a kid).
|
| If anyone has any experience, how do you feel it compares to the
| real deal?
| ozten wrote:
| VermillionVR[1] is incredibly realistic!
|
| I really felt like I was in that brick studio with a nicer set
| of equipment than I'd ever used. I guess I used easels sort of
| like that in college, but in the real world I didn't use such a
| formal setup.
|
| The realism and sense of presence made me notice the missing
| haptic feedback and the lack of smell feedback (linseed oil,
| turpentine, etc), but the audio feedback and the physics are
| really great.
|
| My experience was with Vive Pro 2 and Valve knuckles.
|
| [1] https://vermillion-vr.com/
| genghisjahn wrote:
| King Spray on the Oculus Quest is pretty good (cue the multi
| threaded chain about Oculus requiring a FB login).
| highland586 wrote:
| I'm really enjoying Kingspray as well. It's really close to
| spraycan painting, they even got the dripping effect just
| right.
| kaminar wrote:
| He's a victim of the planned crisis...it will only end when
| compete control is established...or those squeezing us are
| removed.
| archildress wrote:
| Thank you Toyota and practitioners of "lean" / "Six Sigma" that
| told us all about the wonders of just-in-time, to only carry
| exactly as much inventory was needed for demand. After all, we'd
| rather have that cash in a bank account than tied up in
| inventory.
|
| While well intentioned, the problem is that it all relies on
| assumptions, largely tied to demand. And when demand goes through
| a wild whipsaw, and everyone takes diverging viewpoints of the
| shape of that whipsaw curve, the highly interdependent chain
| snaps.
|
| Labor is an issue for sure. But make no mistake, the "restart
| from COVID" supply chain conundrum owes a lot of its pain to
| optimizing everything to the hilt, then reacting slowly as the
| world around us changed.
| LurkingPenguin wrote:
| Toyota actually isn't as JIT as you make it out to be, but that
| notwithstanding, what's the alternative? Stockpile 30 years'
| worth of Christmas ornaments in warehouses in Oklahoma, right
| next to the oil storage?
| archildress wrote:
| It's almost as if there are happy mediums in between the two
| scenarios. :)
| LurkingPenguin wrote:
| 2 years' worth of Christmas ornaments? 10 years' worth?
|
| The amount of crap that we consume is astounding. And in
| many cases, each specific type of crap requires a bunch of
| smaller crap (components).
|
| There is literally no way for a consumption-driven society
| as broad and deep as ours to stockpile years' worth of
| everything.
| archildress wrote:
| All planning really is based on assumptions, like safety
| stock levels. In organizations you typically have someone
| who decides "hey, this is the right level of inventory to
| keep, based on our demand right now." That's not a bad
| approach, but the problem is a lot of supply chain
| planning is top-down and dictates "we only want to keep
| $x tied up in inventory" and as you can imagine that
| number is driven by management as low as possible. When
| COVID happened last year, levels were slashed so low and
| now the supply chains can't recover.
|
| Basically my view is that it's this over reactiveness and
| obsession with free cash flow has swung so far so as to
| create a too-painful jam.
|
| I would agree that over consumption is a problem, albeit
| a separate one to the conversation at hand.
|
| Cheers.
| jawns wrote:
| I think some companies recognized that it's possible for once-
| in-a-generation and once-in-a-lifetime disruptive events to
| occur, but they crunched the numbers and decided that they
| could squeeze more from lean practices over the long term than
| they stood to lose in the disruptive events.
|
| Like, suppose you could make $X in profit that is highly
| resilient to infrequent disruption or twice that with the
| understanding that every 20 years or so, you're going to have a
| few bad years because of black swan events. You might determine
| that you're willing to take your lumps during the chaotic
| times.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Planning for black swan events would be really dumb: they
| will never go exact as you plan them to. What if they planned
| for a GFC-like black swan event where nobody bought cars? Or
| one where gasoline suddenly went to $400 barrel?
|
| There are a million possible black swan events and there's a
| million ways to plan for them.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Few companies plan that far ahead....
|
| You'd get the same outcome by hiring someone and telling them
| they get a bonus proportional to increased profits, and no
| bonus in bad years.
| yunohn wrote:
| > Thank you Toyota and practitioners of "lean" / "Six Sigma"
| that told us all about the wonders of just-in-time, to only
| carry exactly as much inventory was needed for demand.
|
| While Toyota might have popularized the concept, it seems odd
| to blame them for the common-sense idea of just-in-time.
|
| It's quite natural, normal humans also don't hoard everything
| they can possibly think of needing, nor should companies. It's
| eco-friendly to be JIT as it leads to less wastage; while
| optimizing for rare shortages will result in wastage all the
| time.
| blix wrote:
| > It's quite natural, normal humans also don't hoard
| everything they can possibly think of needing...
|
| For most of human history we did exactly that. The deeply
| interconnected "JIT Consumption" world is really quite new.
| And if consumption patterns suddenly change then you can't
| buy toilet paper anymore.
| yunohn wrote:
| Do you have some sources to prove that "most of human
| history", everyone was hoarding?
|
| Necessity leads to JIT, only in times of surplus can you
| even try to hoard. Famines were common before, and still
| occur now - you just don't notice now thanks to
| globalization and in part, essential reserves maintained by
| governments and companies.
| blix wrote:
| Humans very quickly realized that food doesn't always
| come in at a constant rate and learned to hoard[1] in
| times of plenty to protect against times of scarcity. As
| you note, current governments still stockpile food, but
| before power was so heavily centralized this
| responsiblity fell to smaller communities and family
| units. The very first proto-states formed around resource
| stockpiles[2], but food preservation had been a big deal
| for much longer, some 12k years ago[3], predating
| agriculture. In contrast, the expectation that I can go
| to Walmart and buy fresh ground beef at any time is not
| even a century old.
|
| Neccesity leads to JIT, but also sustained surplus. If
| the winters are mild and food can grow year round, why
| bother stockpiling? If any widget can be obtained quickly
| and cheaply, why spend the extra effort to maintain
| inventory? If I can always buy ground beef at Walmart,
| why should I keep a winter's worth supply in my freezer?
| These practices are fine as long as the underlying
| assumptions remain valid. If one suddenly finds that they
| can't reliably buy toilet paper on demand, there is an
| incentive to hoard it. And that's exactly what happened.
|
| [1] While it has taken on a somewhat different meaning in
| recent times, the early meaning of the word was 'to store
| and preserve for future use.'
| https://www.etymonline.com/word/hoard
|
| [2] https://www.jstor.org/stable/44687105
|
| [3] https://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/nchfp/factsheets/f
| ood_pre...
| munk-a wrote:
| I'd actually disagree pretty strongly with this. For most
| of human history the spoilage rate of pretty much
| everything we produced was so high that stockpiling goods
| for the sudden economic shocks was solely reserved to
| governing bodies. Remember how you built ten bazillion
| granaries in Civ? Sure, the game has taken quite a few
| liberties with history but we have evidence of communal
| food storage going all the way back to Babylon. When's the
| last time you saw a granary or any sort of food stock that
| was actually built and maintained by a government in the
| modern world?
|
| Before the modern epoch it was really rare to personally
| stockpile goods due to the extreme possibilities of
| spoilage (everyone loves weevils and moths right?) - that's
| only been an option in the near history.
| blix wrote:
| For most of the pre-modern era, 'governing body' simply
| means a group with enough stockpiled resources,
| especially food, to project power. Anyone who could get
| in on this action tried to. Spoilage is an issue, but
| humans came up with many neat tricks to work around this,
| many of which are still used today (fermentation, for
| example). Anyone who didn't want to live or die soley by
| the whims of the local warlord during a harsh winter had
| to maintain their own food stockpile.
|
| The great lie of Civ is to present this as centrally
| organized when for most of human history this power was
| very finely decentralized due to the expense of
| communication and logistics. But as socities become more
| centralized food stockpiles haven't disappeared. Many
| governments still maintain food stockpiles, especially
| poorer countries.
| rumpelstilz18 wrote:
| "After all, we'd rather have that cash in a bank account than
| tied up in inventory."
|
| The "We" includes you.
|
| And it is inherent in our society what we add layer of layer of
| complexity.
| snarf21 wrote:
| Would you be making the same statement if covid hadn't
| happened? I think companies realized that net net, JIT is more
| profitable and they'll worry about the outliers when/if they
| happen.
| jdlshore wrote:
| I hear this complaint frequently, and I always wonder if the
| people making it are well-informed about supply chain logistics
| or are just parroting what they've heard elsewhere. Because my
| understanding of TPS and Lean is that it solved serious issues
| with supply chains involving waste due to outdated and rusted
| (figuratively and literally) inventory. It also doesn't prevent
| the use of buffers to absorb shocks, as Toyota demonstrated in
| the first year of the pandemic.
| mzs wrote:
| Here's recent supply-chain thread calling-out a current
| bottle neck:
|
| https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1451543776992845834.html
|
| https://twitter.com/typesfast/status/1451543776992845834
| jdlshore wrote:
| That's a great thread, thank you. Do note that one of the
| replies calls his fundamental thesis into question, though:
| empties are sitting on chassis not due to regulation, but
| due to lack of equipment for stacking them higher.
| margalabargala wrote:
| Reasonably large mobile cranes exist and the cost of
| renting one for a day is small compared to the amount of
| capital bouncing around logistics operations surrounding
| the Port of LA.
|
| They're not currently in use at truck yards because it's
| illegal to stack containers high, but if it were no
| longer illegal then they could be quickly and temporarily
| set up.
| jdlshore wrote:
| There's a respondent in the thread claiming that it's not
| illegal, but I don't know how accurate their information
| is.
| missinfo wrote:
| That is amazing. Why is the Flexport CEO apparently the
| only one trying to diagnose and solve this critical
| problem? It's not even that hard. He lays out a relatively
| simple solution:
|
| 1) Executive order effective immediately over riding the
| zoning rules in Long Beach and Los Angeles to allow truck
| yards to store empty containers up to six high instead of
| the current limit of 2. Make it temporary for ~120 days.
|
| This will free up tens of thousands of chassis that right
| now are just storing containers on wheels. Those chassis
| can immediately be taken to the ports to haul away the
| containers
|
| 2) Bring every container chassis owned by the national
| guard and the military anywhere in the US to the ports and
| loan them to the terminals for 180 days.
|
| 3) Create a new temporary container yard at a large (need
| 500+ acres) piece of government land adjacent to an inland
| rail head within 100 miles of the port complex.
|
| 4) Force the railroads to haul all containers to this new
| site, turn around and come back. No more 1500 mile train
| journeys to Dallas. We're doing 100 mile shuttles, turning
| around and doing it again. Truckers will go to this site to
| get containers instead of the port.
|
| 5) Bring in barges and small container ships and start
| hauling containers out of long beach to other smaller ports
| that aren't backed up. This is not a comprehensive list.
| Please add to it. We don't need to do the best ideas. We
| need to do ALL the ideas.
|
| We must OVERWHELM THE BOTTLENECK and get these ports
| working again. I can't stress enough how bad it is for the
| world economy if the ports don't work. Every company
| selling physical goods bought or sold internationally will
| fail.
|
| The circulatory system our globalized economy depends has
| collapsed. And thanks to the negative feedback loops
| involved, it's getting worse not better every day that goes
| by.
|
| I'd be happy to lead this effort for the federal or state
| government if asked. Leadership is the missing ingredient
| at this point.
| extrapickles wrote:
| There is a emission's control law that is effectively
| banning any truck older than a 10 years from entering
| California which would also need a temporary stay to help
| get the bottleneck cleared as fast as possible.
| philwelch wrote:
| The problem isn't with the methodology itself but with how
| it's implemented in practice. Lean makes your buffers a lot
| more visible to management, and if you combine that with a
| culture of short-sighted cost-cutting, you run into issues.
| The problem isn't lean; it's a management culture of short-
| sighted cost-cutting.
| wongarsu wrote:
| And that management culture is an effect of how
| compensation works. Cut costs, put "reduced overhead by X
| Million" on resume, either get promoted or switch jobs
| before negative impact happens.
| philwelch wrote:
| Which might explain how Toyota has less of these
| problems. I don't think Toyota executives are the type of
| people to make these kinds of moves and hop jobs.
|
| Ted Ogawa, President and CEO of Toyota North America
| (https://pressroom.toyota.com/biographies/tetsuo-ogawa/):
|
| > After joining Toyota in 1984....
|
| Mark Templin, President and CEO of Toyota Financial
| Services(https://pressroom.toyota.com/biographies/mark-
| templin/):
|
| > Since joining Toyota Motor Sales (TMS) in 1990, Templin
| has held a number of positions.
|
| Chris Nielsen, Executive Vice President, Product Support
| & Chief Quality Officer
| (https://pressroom.toyota.com/biographies/chris-
| nielsen/):
|
| > Nielsen joined Toyota in 1987 as a buyer at its
| Georgetown, Kentucky, plant
|
| Toshio Niimi, Executive Vice President, Production
| Engineering and Manufacturing
| (https://pressroom.toyota.com/biographies/toshio-niimi/):
|
| > Niimi joined TMC in 1984 and has held positions in the
| company's engineering and manufacturing divisions.
|
| Takeshi Uchiyamada, Chairman of the Board of Directors (h
| ttps://global.toyota/en/company/profile/executives/board-
| of...):
|
| > Takeshi Uchiyamada was born on August 17, 1946. He
| graduated from Nagoya University with a degree in applied
| physics in March 1969, and joined Toyota Motor
| Corporation (TMC) in April the same year.
|
| Shigeru Hayakawa, Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors
| (https://global.toyota/en/company/profile/executives/boar
| d-of...):
|
| > Shigeru Hayakawa was born on September 15, 1953. He
| graduated from the University of Tokyo with a bachelor's
| degree in economics in March 1977, and joined Toyota
| Motor Corporation (TMC) in April of the same year.
|
| Akio Toyoda, President (https://global.toyota/en/company/
| profile/executives/board-of...):
|
| > He joined Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) in April 1984.
|
| (He also happens to be the grandson of the founder of
| Toyota.)
|
| Koji Kobayashi, Member of the Board of Directors (https:/
| /global.toyota/en/company/profile/executives/board-
| of...):
|
| > He graduated from Shiga University with a bachelor's
| degree in economics in March 1972, and joined Toyota
| Motor Corporation (TMC) in April of the same year.
|
| I can see how that would discourage short-term decision-
| making.
| [deleted]
| imtringued wrote:
| The problem isn't Toyota. It's that companies are so damn risk
| averse that they would rather have money in bank accounts
| rather than take a risk and keep producing too much even during
| a half year downturn.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I don't think it's risk aversion so much as it is "Parts on
| the shelf don't pay interest/dividends".
| bluGill wrote:
| Parts on the shelf also rust. My company saves a lot of
| money not having to de-rust iron parts now that everything
| is back out the door 5 days after it arrives in the
| factory. Not to mention sometimes parts rust enough that
| they no longer pass quality standards.
| cascom wrote:
| Except that when companies do this, and then ask to be
| rewarded for making that investment, they are lambasted for
| price gouging or profiteering...just ask any hardware store
| that has sat on a pile of snow shovels through the summer in
| order to capture a premium price when a blizzard is
| approaching...
| throaway46546 wrote:
| I agree price gouging laws lead directly to shortages. Take
| the recent toilet paper shortage. What is a more preferable
| outcome, not having toilet paper available or having to pay
| 4x as much for a roll? Because the latter is illegal we
| have empty shelves instead.
| mywittyname wrote:
| The problem with price gouging is that people are
| irrational and feel entitled to the price they paid last
| week. People get _super fucking angry_ at price gougers.
| Which is how the nation ended up with these laws to begin
| with.
|
| So even if the government were okay with "market
| adjustments" on basic goods, there would still be this
| risk of stores getting looted/destroyed because people
| are so angry at how quickly prices increased.
|
| Businesses are much less emotional. Most are just going
| to adapt to the new price.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| It is more than just people being angry. As was famously
| pointed out by Axel Leijonhufvud, inflation makes the
| process of economic planning extremely difficult. If you
| are a business, you need to make long term production
| plans, and when you have no idea what the costs will be,
| that severly disrupts the production process and leads to
| shortages regardless of how you feel emotionally about
| something.
|
| Instead of talking about "inflation", talk about "cost
| uncertainty". That should make clear how a complex
| society with long production chains can't really deal
| with it. That also includes households, who have much
| less capability for planning than firms and really need
| to know what their bills will be and how much things will
| cost when making decisions.
|
| https://www.academia.edu/43768978/NOTES_ON_COSTS_AND_CONS
| EQU...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > inflation makes the process of economic planning
| extremely difficult.
|
| It doesn't, though.
|
| > If you are a business, you need to make long term
| production plans, and when you have no idea what the
| costs will be, that severly disrupts the production
| process
|
| Sure, but that's the effect or unpredictable price
| changes, not inflation. USD is inflationary, Bitcoin is
| deflationary, but future (short or long term) prices of
| other goods and services in USD have a _lot_ less
| uncertainty than those in Bitcoin. Inflation is not at
| all the same thing as difficulty projecting future
| prices.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Inflation is not the same as price gouging.
|
| Price gouging is a legal term for people/retailers taking
| advantage of shortages or spikes in demand by charging
| well over market price for basic necessities.
| lonk wrote:
| Mining yellow from green can help.
| xyzelement wrote:
| I think the color purple is considered regal because whatever the
| dye used to be made from (crushed marine life or something like
| that) was very expensive. So if you had purple, it meant you were
| rich.
|
| It would be kinda funny if blue things became a sign of wealth
| because of this.
| routerl wrote:
| It wasn't just any purple, but the particular purple that came
| from a species of sea snail. For example, purple dyes were
| common in China many centuries before the Roman Tyrian Purple
| we're talking about, but never gained this luxury status.
|
| So it's worth pointing out that Tyrian Purple was an
| exceptionally long lasting dye; it did not fade when left in
| the sun, or after washing. Compared to other purple fabrics,
| Tyrian Purple fabrics always looked brand new, and I suspect
| that _this_ is the real origin of their high-status
| associations.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| So it was expensive to make _and worth the expense involved_
| because of it 's unusual durability. It wasn't some
| artificial scarcity, like modern day diamonds, nor "valuable"
| merely because it was scarce.
|
| Thank you for that. That's a wonderful bit of trivia.
| toxik wrote:
| Well, "worth it" is a stretch - I think they almost put the
| snail to extinction from needing so much of it.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I meant financially.
|
| People have been doing terrible environmental damage to
| indulge themselves for eons. We aren't exactly the
| brightest bulb in the box about some things.
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