Comments by "Not Today" (@nottoday3817) on "The horrors of British & US Logistics in WW2" video.
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@janehrahan5116 There are three issues with US healthcare (and two with healthcare in general).
1st, as a famous guy put it: 'If your system only focuses on treatment and surgeries, that is not a healthcare system, it's a treatment and surgery system. A healthcare system constantly looks after your health'. This is why many systems are so overworked around the world. Unlike US or even NHS or other countries, when the people go to the doctor when they are too much in pain, those systems also have to account for regular checkups or 'minor alerts'. Of course, people argue things like 'it's becuase of those minor alerts that our system is so screwed and ineffective. Those blokes could just endure it'. Unfortunetly, this is rather stupid. Even if the system is overextending a bit, having those minor check ups allow you to detect problems that could potentially show up later on. Fixing them early means lesser costs for the individual and the system. Just think of cavities (giving this example since it's personal experience). I've had quite a few in my lifetime (loved sweets, sue me). But I was afraid of the dentist. So I only went to the dentist when I absolutely needed it. In some cases, the teeth were beyond repair and had to be removed. In other cases, I had to undergo full reconstruction, which is a really expensive and time consuming procedure. But for the ones that I've treated as soon as they manifested a weakness, I ended up with lower costs than a reconstruction and with decent teeth. So, by following the initial quote, and taking care of my health, instead of just waiting for treatment, I saved myself money in the long run.
2nd. Input of specialists. You cannot just throw random people in a hospital and call them doctors. They need to be trained and they need to be wanting to work there. And the life of a doctor is Hell. I know a few of them on almost personal level (aka we are close, but not a familly or a couple). I've went for aerospace and literally rocket science in university, but I swear, it's nothing compared to medicine. In the current enviroment, where people are encouraged to 'dream' and 'be independent' and other bullcrap so business colleges could get their share of money, professions like doctors, which introduce you in a very grim and rigid world, are at a growing disadvantage. (And it's not only about general data here, I should mention. Even if many people enter med schools, how many are going to finish? From them, how many doctors are going to be into each specialisation? How many are going to last more than a few years, and so on. The population increases constantly, so the demand for doctors increases as well)
3rd. 'Price gauging' Perhaps the biggest issue with Medicare/Obamacare is how it is implemented. Even though it seems like a 'socialist' ideea, it's not. It's capitalism bleeding money from the state, because the hospitals can still charge you whatever the hell they want. Unless someone starts actually calculating how much effort and resources is poured into medical procedures, the costs will never actually go down.
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@aniksamiurrahman6365 'Great analysis buddy. But does it have a solution? Price is supposed to be the perfect fluid to fill up the small adjustments. But even if no one is distorting, price adjustments take time.' Well, it depends on what axiomatic system you rely on.
In reality, price is something abstract. Arguing with mathematics about 'price' is like arguing about dragons like Smaug or Ancalog (hopefully I did not butcher the name) using thermodynamics and aerodynamics. That is because price is derived from an abstract quantity itself: value. The original capitalist schools, austrian and classical, have defined value as something subjective, so it's not an ideea that I made up.
The real world has, however, things like cost and use. Costs mean the ammount of physical resources you have to invest in something while use is the potential employment of that something. An important thing to not, this 'potential'/'usage' is what later results in the value of an object. Economy means the management of resources, not the management of prices or stuff like that. Therefore, unlike the bullcrap that TIK is spewing, you can do some economic calculations without prices by creating a supply of objects and distributing them to their demanded use. In some cases, it might actually be easier to make those calculations compared to 'capitalism' because it features less abstract variables (like prices or psychological value), only focusing on mostly physical aspects. Of course, this would yeild results of different nature compared with the 'market capitalism' (like instead of km you get kg, not that with one you would get 10km with the other 100000km). but that's something different. The difference comes because the 'economic calculations' argument is a cyclical one. From the start economic calculations have been designed around the ideea of prices and currency, so they accept data about prices and/or currency as input or produce it at the output. Or both of them. That's how the current axiomatic system works. It doesn't mean its the only one. Conversly, it doesn't mean that calculations based on costs and uses are going to yield 'desirable' results, since what is 'desirable' depends on the view of each person, an that's in an ideal world.
In case I've deviated too much, to return to your point about prices being like an the fluid filling the gap, or the mortar in the cracks. It's not. The price comes as the result of negociations between costs and demands, which are derived from uses. So it's more disruptive than constructive. If I were to make an analogy, I would say a price is like an earthquake between two tectonic places 'negociating' the upper position.
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From an engineering point of view, the answer why logistics are so bad is rather simple: you need to account for small changes that are impossible to account for because no one wishes to change drastically.
When you lay out your logistics network, you can have the best mathematics laid out for your graph, they will still not be able to account for time. The capacity needed for a logistical chain varies with time. The need either decreases, and in this case you have people arguing your system is inefficient or it increases up to a point where it overflows the system, and people will again argue it's inefficient. This, however, is only the fuse of the problem. The problem in itself is the impossibility to change. Logistical lines don't appear overnight and in any place. Only Hyperscam fans could buy such things. If you want to build a road, you need to conduct soil tests, dig the foundation, fill it up and then lay out the asphalt. Then build bridges and all of that. Want a railroad? Kinda the same thing, but it takes longer. And you cannot just have a railway pop up in the middle of the city. That is why people in countries like Japan are packed in trains and metros like sardines (if not worse): the capacity of the system has been long exceeded, but there is simply not enough space and time to build an alternative.
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@thomasgaul6315 The thing is, the end of your argument is false, but proves the point. Civillian logistics handle more or less like the military one. However, most of what we see as 'civillian logistics' are trade chains: someone manufactures something in China for Amazon, a Chinese company transports the products to a port, Amazon picks them up, transports them to US, UK or Europe (or has them transported for them). then takes them from the port and delivered to their depots and from the depot to the customer. This is the whole trade chain. The logistic chain for Amazon specifically is only from the Chinese port to your housedoor, or even as short as from the depot to your house. This means they have much, much less responsibilities compared to a military (or a gouvernment civillian service). You need a new tyre in the military? The gouvernment needs to move its whole mass for it: acquisition (maybe even production) transport, delivery etc. You need a life saving drug or piece of tehnology? Amazon can be simply like: We don't have any in stock. Want some miracle pills, recommended by ours truely, Alex Jones? Amazon doesn't give a shite wether or not you need what you need or if the manufacturer has delays. All they care is this: it's in stock and you have money or not?
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