What about the environmental impact of people buying everything "just in case?" Should we be stockpiling oil like crazy right now when prices are low just in case (while also artificially driving up demand)?
Isn't one of the key criticisms of farm and manufacturing subsidies that they are wasteful uses of our budget while one of the arguments in favor of them is that it maintains our infrastructure "just in case"? What about trying to buy out a foreign company to control a coronavirus vaccine or mandating that all domestic companies fulfill federal government orders before any international orders so that we have enough materials "just in case"?
My point here is that the just in case attitude for non-essential goods like PPE normalizes the same thinking in other arenas and it is unclear where we should draw the line. It is a slippery slope.
If we did more "just in case" and less "just in time" we'd be in a much better situation right now. Maybe we need a better tradeoff between efficiency and resiliency.
Isn't one of the key criticisms of farm and manufacturing subsidies that they are wasteful uses of our budget while one of the arguments in favor of them is that it maintains our infrastructure "just in case"? What about trying to buy out a foreign company to control a coronavirus vaccine or mandating that all domestic companies fulfill federal government orders before any international orders so that we have enough materials "just in case"?
My point here is that the just in case attitude for non-essential goods like PPE normalizes the same thinking in other arenas and it is unclear where we should draw the line. It is a slippery slope.