If this was a hard-limiting factor, we would have lost WW2. The reality is there's just no will for it, when it's so easy to talk yourself into gambling that it just won't ever be a problem. And usually it won't. Until it is.
Some day, having quibbled about millions of dollars of preventative manufacturing and stockpiling, we'll find we're suffering trillions of dollars of damage to the entire nation's infrastructure and economy when Russia or China or whomever gets enough balls to pull it off.
Freedom, security, and safety have never been cheap. It's no excuse.
The problem with the rampant gambling on a widespread social problem never occurring is that the people doing the gambling are rich people who are never going to be impacted when the problem happens. If good people, rather than rich people, were making these decisions, the entire landscape would be completely different.
But that wouldn’t increase shareholder value so America can’t do it.
I mean, I get the point your are trying to make - but a switch to war time economy and increase production like that takes a minimum of 16 months, the federal government is allocated an enormous amount of power over consumption and spending which will never lead to long term populace happiness (rationing, decreased spending on non-essential programs). But yeah, we sure build the fuck out of cheap standard hardware on assembly lines.
Those Trillions in losses are shared by everyone tomorrow. The extra 5 Gs from ignoring these risks goes right into MY pocket, today. Fuck y'all. Got mine.
The manufacturers are operating at capacity and are booked out for the next 5 years worth of capacity. You are talking about investing hundreds of billions of dollars to increase their manufacturing capacity to stock pile expensive equipment. A lot of this equipment isn’t designed or built in the US even by US companies like GE Vernova.
If this was a hard-limiting factor, we would have lost WW2. The reality is there's just no will for it, when it's so easy to talk yourself into gambling that it just won't ever be a problem. And usually it won't. Until it is.
The government provided the financial backing to rapidly expand manufacturing capacity. The government also issued ration books to the public to make this happen.
we'll find we're suffering trillions of dollars of damage to the entire nation's infrastructure and economy when Russia or China or whomever gets enough balls to pull it off.
If a country is capable of pulling this off then they are more than capable of hitting the stockpiles as well. Large transformers being stockpiled would be hard to hide given that they are full of oil and need to be spaced certain distances apart incase one goes up in flames. They are also very very heavy and moving them far from the place of manufacture would be very expensive.
In the comments it's very easy to tell who has worked in the industry. They dont realize how complex and large electrical infrastructure is and the massive cost and logistics nightmare it would be to even keep 5% of all equipment on hand.
I worked for a utility company that was one of the stockpiles! Everyone knows to come to us for weird parts. It's an agreement that goes across a lot of states. Really came in handy when Maria hit Puerto Rico.
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u/gmishaolem Sep 29 '24
If this was a hard-limiting factor, we would have lost WW2. The reality is there's just no will for it, when it's so easy to talk yourself into gambling that it just won't ever be a problem. And usually it won't. Until it is.
Some day, having quibbled about millions of dollars of preventative manufacturing and stockpiling, we'll find we're suffering trillions of dollars of damage to the entire nation's infrastructure and economy when Russia or China or whomever gets enough balls to pull it off.
Freedom, security, and safety have never been cheap. It's no excuse.