General Chat / Discussion, page-13757

It's interesting how little many companies and nations learned from the COVID-19 pandemic and the shortages resulting from Just-In-Time ordering folly. Clearly accountants still hold sway over logistics.
Because I had been caring for a family member who need critical medications during the pandemic, I quickly learned back then how few of companies actually make things like insulin and other vital pharmaceuticals, yet the US still has the temerity to be "vulnerable" when they host some of the world's most powerful pharmaceutical companies and their parasitic lobby groups.
Another vulnerability that can't be solved by IXR in the short-term is our residual reliance on fossil fuels. Australia, even though its well aware of the economic pincer it finds itself in as the US pivots to Asia, still hasn't done anything about what that damned fool, Scott Morrison, did in regard to out emergency oil supply. It's stored in Texas of all places. Imagine ending up in a bloody war and having the tankers resupplying us sunk en route! No wonder the US spent hundreds of millions on building massive aviation fuel storage. I suspect they know that on a serious conflict, we're not getting that supply back... anymore than we'll have those bloody subs of our own built before anything goes kinetic.